Theosophy Cardiff, Wales, Uk:- Theosophy and the Great War. India and England by Annie Besant

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Theosophy and the Great War

India and England

Annie Besant

First Published October 13^th 1914

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EDUCATED India has never desired to throw off her allegiance to the Crown; she has only asked for the self-government enjoyed by the Colonies. Her loyalty is not a change of opinion; it is not an approval of the Arms Act, and the Press Act, and the many badges of racial inferiority branded upon her; she hates these things as she has ever hated them, but, of her own free will, she chooses now to put them on one side. And why? Because she loves England for having aroused her from the sleep of centuries by holding up before her the ideal of liberty, for having sheltered the oppressed of every nation. She rallies to her because England is the mother of free nations; because, if England fell, tyranny would stalk unchecked over prostrate peoples; because England is the most sanely progressive nation on earth, and, with whatever temporary vagaries, her face is steadily set towards the goal of liberty. India has been inspired politically by the glorious history of England's struggles for freedom.

She has read, with breathless interest, how England, step by step, won constitutional liberty; how she curbed her kings; how she lifted her serfs; how she refused the payment of unjust taxes; how her merchants built up her prosperity; how she educated her masses; how she has widened the sphere of self-government by Act after Act; how her Commons have twice honestly cancelled their own resolutions when they infringed on popular liberty; how she has declared that "taxation without representation is robbery"; how she has freed her press; how she has won full liberty of speech. All this has created the ideals of educated India, and her clear vision has seen the real England through the thick fog of autocracy and bureaucracy which shroud her here. The danger of teaching English history to boys under an autocracy has been recognised of late years in the efforts to check the teaching, but the check comes too late; it has already inspired educated India, the India which believes in old England, the real England, despite the new-fangled Anglo-England, and with pathetic intensity believes that if England only knew and understood her grievances all would be redressed. And she is right. How, save in amity with England, how, save with England's help, can she build up the fair fabric of India's liberty, and become that which her voice, her Congress, has persistently demanded, a self-governing nation within the Empire?

The war broke out with a thunderclap, and the Mother of Freedom, waking from her lethargy, sent out her ringing call for help to maintain national honour, international faith. All her admiration for England's past, all her hopes for work with England's future, all her loyalty to a King who had shown her honour and sympathy, all her ingrained feelings of chivalry and truth and faith, brought India springing to her feet, and made her pour out her all for the guarding of the Empire's life - the Empire which is the ark in which all the hopes of the world's freedom are embarked, and which is tossing on the stormy waves of war. India's freedom is in that ark; France, the standard-bearer of ideas, is in that ark; where else can India be?

By her quick answer to the call of the King, India won instantaneous recognition. And now, to make new discord, to re-arouse the sense of injury so magnanimously thrown aside, the strident voices of ungenerous effort to use against India India's magnanimity arise, and thinly veiled dislike of the advocates of liberty endeavours to misrepresent her motives, and to use her loyalty to buttress autocracy.

Does Ireland, in rallying to the Empire, proclaim that in the Penal Laws, in the destruction of her manufactures, in the famine-compelled exile of her once-numerous population, in the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, in the hanging of Emmet, in the imprisonment of Davitt, England ruled her well? Does Russia, in silencing every voice of reproach and rallying round the Tsardom which has knouted, exiled, starved, imprisoned, hanged her noblest sons and daughters, declare that she approves of all these things? Nay. Both nations forget the evils, because loyalty and patriotism, and belief in the splendid immortal soul of England, of Russia, outweigh all transitory wrongs. Oh! let not the fair opportunity of the present union of hearts be flung away by the covert insinuations of those who have tried to build England's rule in India on the ignorance of peasants and the servility of office-seekers, instead of on the rock of the loyalty of free men! Let it be remembered that, under the influence of the spirit of the age, there is no safety for any empire, for any throne, unless it be, like the throne of Britain, in Britain, "broad-based upon the people's will". - New India, October 13, 1914.

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