The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 3/Swaraj under Slave Mentality

Swaraj under Slave Mentality?

Our July article “On the Death of Mr. C. R. Das” (from the pen of Prof. Jadunath Sarkar) has been reprinted in some daily papers. The Marathi monthly review Prabodhan (of Poona) has also published a full translation of it. The writer there says:—

“..........we worship gurus, we love to surrender our moral judgment and human will to the one-man ruler, we look to him and him alone for guidance and order at every step..........The history of Bengal during the next few months will furnish the answer to the question whether we have..........acquired the one indispensable basis of popular government,..........Have we learnt that the nation is greater than the individual?”

An answer to the question has been furnished authoritatively with startling rapidity. Mr. J. M. Sen Gupta, the new chief of the Swaraj Party in Bengal, in a public speech on 2nd August last, declared:

“Their (i.e. Bengali) young men attach too much importance to their conscience. If they were earnest about winning Swaraj, they must he prepared to give less importance to their conscience..........and follow unquestioningly the leader appointed by the Association.” (The Statesman, 3rd August, 1925).

So, the situation is clearly this: one party leader of personal magnetism is gone and the party will fall to pieces unless his successor in office is paid blind obedience, by each man suspending his conscience, which is the power of distinguishing between right and wrong. Those who seek Swaraj must therefore, according to Mr. Sen Gupta, lose their own moral judgment, and while leader follows leader to the grave the young men of Bengal must continue to be hereditary bondsman to them. And this slave mentality is held upto our noblest youths as the sure road to Swaraj!

It would be truer to quote to them the poet’s answer to such deluded patriots,—

Not for you will Freedom’s altars flame
But slave succeed to slave through years
of endless toil

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