TIME-SPIRIT AT WORK?

A WIDE CANVAS

TIME-SPIRIT AT WORK ?

Keen students of history or literature, if they stand aside and reflect on what they read will notice how the over-all ideas of the writers or leading personalities of the times converge on some themes. It is as if they are all part of an orchestra, being directed by an unseen conductor, with an unseen baton! We may perhaps call it the time spirit.

In English literature, this has long been perceived and the different themes and ages named and labelled: Middle ages, Elizabethan Age, Romantic Age, Victorian Age, Modern Age, Post-modern, etc. While some of the differences are real ( eg.Classical as against Romantic), some seem to be merely semantic fashion ( Structuralism, Deconstruction, etc.) The modern tendency is to stress any difference for the sake of it,exalt it and celebrate it as a cult, and build a power-structure round it- be it academic, or bureaucratic.

But in history, the subtle change in ideas or approaches goes largely unnoticed. Our historians divide the whole into periods according to their convenience, which often can be arbitrary. For independent students, somethings can be striking. And such things are  mainly related to individuals.

Winston Churchill is an outstanding example. He was active in politics and public affairs for half a century.He had a dramatic escape in South Africa during the Boer Wars. In politics after the First World war, he became the Chancellor of the Exchequer during 1924-29 and returned England to the gold standard at the pre-war parity- an act of unimaginable economic unwisdom! It led to a period of great economic distress for England. He was in the political wilderness in the 30s but this was the period in which he kept warning England and USA about the dangers from Nazi Germany. He was taken as a war-monger, and consistently ignored. But Germany started the Second World War ( even as it had started the First) on 3 September 1939. PM Neville Chamberlain stood discredited, and Churchill was made PM on 10 May 1940. He resisted the ideas of surrender, galvanised the nation and led England to a magnificent triumph.  But in the general election in 1945, his party was defeated and he had to sit in the Opposition! He became PM again in 1951.

Churchill making his famous V sign ten days after taking over as PM. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In this life, we see how the Time Spirit played with him. In the spell as Chancellor, he was acting as the arch-conservative, keen on restoring England to its past glory and chose the the return to gold standard at pre-war parity as his instrument- a monumental blunder. But as PM, he was an instrument in the hands of the Time Spirit, resisting the gravest evil force the world had seen, in the form of Hitler. Later, he had misgivings about Stalin too, but by that time, the US had become the real power, and Roosevelt did not listen to him. The Time-Spirit would not let Churchill remain silent.  No longer the PM, invited to the US by president Truman, Churchill delivered his historic "Iron Curtain" speech on 5 March 1946:

Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing  tendencies........

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended  across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe: Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia. all these famous cities  and populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow.

In the complacent glow of the post-war peace that the West was enjoying, and weary of any more war, the US and the West ignored Churchill, while Stalin promptly called him war monger! Yet within a year, Stalin repudiated the agreement reached at Yalta  in February 1945 and went ahead to build up his East European empire, which the US was unable to stop. (But Churchill had also made a slip: he did not fully trust Stalin, but somehow yielded at Yalta.. He had hoped that he was not making a mistake, unlike Chamberlain who made a mistake in trusting Hitler. But this was Churchill's mistake.)

Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta: Feb, 1945
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

It took nearly half a century for the countries of Eastern and Central Europe to come out of the Soviet orbit, when the USSR itself disintegrated. But those countries have not yet recovered economically and fully regained their former poise. Meanwhile, the world has also come to realise that Stalin was far more cruel, and had killed more people than even Hitler. Hitler killed about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust; Stalin is said to have killed from 20 million to 60 million civilians in different stages!

I am inclined to think that today the West is committing the same mistake in underestimating the menace from Islamic forces. US is coming closer to Iran , like Chamberlain did with respect to Hitler. There is no outstanding figure in the West like Churchill today, though independent scholars are warning about the danger from Islamic forces. The Western leaders are seeing and believing a non-existent difference between Islam as such, and its militant form- which Muslims themselves do not believe in! They are appeasing the Muslims, in country after country. We do not know how the Time-Spirit is operating now!

In India we have seen other aspects of the Time Spirit. While Gandhiji was fighting for freedom, Dr.Ambedkar was supporting the British govt. Gandhiji and his associates were arrested  and put in prison in August 1942, while Dr.Ambedkar joined the Viceroy's council! Yet in Independent India, it is his followers who wield power and his pictures are seen along with those of Gandhiji in public places! In Tamil Nadu, E.V.Ramasway Naicker, the leader of the Dravidian party cabled  Attlee on 3 July 1947 that  they should create a Dravidanadu for the Muslims and Dravidians of Madras! Yet, it is his followers who have been ruling Tamil Nad for the last 40 years, and the self-styled Indian National Congress is courting one or the other Dravidian faction for its survival!

Pandit Nehru was anointed his heir by Gandhiji himself. Yet, Nehru did not take up even a single programme or idea of Gandhiji for implementation! He had opted for the Soviet model, and was now increasingly surrounded by leftists of different hues.All true Gandhians left him, but they operated individually. The power structure and party machinery so changed after Independence that communal considerations weighed in governance, while economic policies became more and more authoritarian and Statist. Only Rajaji was able to see the danger it posed for our democracy and economy and he raised the banner of revolt against the Permit-Licence- Quota Raj! Yet , he went without mass support. He formed the 'creative minority'. It took 30 more years, a near total economic collapse on the external account and a temporary break from the hold of the Nehru dynasty for the Govt to make a shift in policy, introducing the so-called Liberalisation! It is more than 20 years since, but we are still talking about it! The more it is said to change, the more it looks like the old dispensation!

Rajaji as Governor General with Sardar Baldev Singh, India's defence minister and the Service Chiefs, 1948. 
The former Governor General became the guardian-general of our democracy, anticipating the dangers of rising statism- so menacingly realised during the Emergency, 5 years after his passing!

During the freedom movement, all our leaders were inspired by our National ideals. Tilak talked of Swaraj,  they raised slogans of Vande Mataram, treating the country as the Divine Mother. This was the slogan dominating our nation before Gandhiji came. It reached its crescendo during and after the Bengal partition of 1905, and reverberated throughout the country. But  the colonial govt.unleashed savage repression , leaders like Tilak were imprisoned at Mandalay, Sri Aurobindo was kept in solitary confinement at Alipore jail for a year from May, 1908 to 1909 and in 4 short years, the complexion of the country changed. A deathly silence descended on the nation.

 Lokamanya Balgangadhar Tilak who taught us: "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it".



Coming out of the jail, Sri Aurobindo did not miss the spirit of the times. He said in his Uttarpara speech on 30 May 1909 :

It is I this time who have spent one year in seclusion, and now that I come out I find all changed. One (Tilak) who always sat by my side and was associated in my work is a prisoner in Burma; another (Lala Lajpat Rai) is in the north rotting in detention.

When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation,the hope of millions of men who have risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country and men seemed bewildered; for instead of God's bright heaven full of the vision of the future that had been before us, there seemed to be overhead a leaden sky from which human thunders and lightnings rained.......But one thing I knew, that as it was the Almighty Power of God which had raised that cry, that hope, so it was the same power which had sent down that silence. He who was in the shouting and the movement was also in the pause and the hush. He has sent it upon us, so that the nation might draw back for a moment and look into itself and know His will. 

Sri Aurobindo. 
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Will any of our present day politicians - who deserves to be called a 'leader'?- think of or utter the word God  or Almighty Power in respect of the nation? Will they utter in public Vande Mataram or even Jai Hind? All those shameless people who enjoy the fruits of the labours and sacrifice of those giants? They can only think of what next to borrow or imitate or import from America or elsewhere. .

As we see the nation in the grip of empty slogans and vain promises, amidst local and petty issues, swayed by every passing fancy, we wonder where the Time-Spirit is leading us!

NOTE:

Indians today have no idea of the role played by Sri Aurobindo, as the Nehru dynasty and leftist historians who dominated our politics and academics have tried to whitewash the part played by him, before the arrival of Gandhi on the scene. Curiously, Gandhiji himself did not openly acknowledge how much he had borrowed from Sri Aurobindo- especially where he was successful! 

But the British govt had the sense to assess the importance of Sri Aurobindo. His role and the govt's attempt to get him implicated falsely in the Alipore Bomb Case were discussed in the House of Commons and the Viceroy, Lord Minto wrote to Morley, Secretary of State, on 14 April, 1910:

I have been somewhat exercised by the questions in the House of Commons about Aurobindo Ghose. He is the most dangerous man we have to deal with at present and he has great influence with the student class.

He repeated this again, on 26 May 1910:

As to the celebrated Arabindo,........I can only repeat.. that he is the most dangerous man we now have to reckon with....and has an unfortunate influence with the student class, and Indians who know him well have told me he is quite beyond redemption.

Two years earlier, on 19 May 1908, when an earlier attempt to implicate Sri Aurobindo had failed, Sir Andrew Fraser, Lt.Governor of Bengal wrote to the Viceroy in a confidential note reviewing Sri Aurobindo's life  that it had been a "deplorable blunder" of the authorities to have excluded him from the I.C.S.


2. In the 19th century and early 20th century,  Hinduism was under attack from various sides: Macaulay's minions, Missionaries, Modern reformers of various hues, politicians, etc. It was the great men of Bengal who rose to the occasion and caused a Renaissance  to save Hinduism: Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore. After Independece, it was Bengal which took the lead in denigrating Hinduism and disowning its own great sons: the leftist govt in West Bengal blatantly rewrote history to belittle Hindus and glorify Muslims! Even today, it is these 'eminent' Bengali troupe consisting of people like Ramachandra Guha, Amartya Sen etc who are virulent anti-Hindus ! See how the Time-Spirit is playing! We recall the old saying that nectar and poison came out of the churning of the same ocean! (though here the sequence seems to have changed)