Comment in 150 words: “Nationalism is not a mere political programme but, a way of life like religion.” (Aurobindo Ghose) (2014, 10 Marks)
The statement condenses Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghose)‘s speech “The Present Situation”, delivered at Bombay on 19 January 1908, weeks after the Surat split. There he said Nationalism is not a mere political programme; Nationalism is a religion that has come from God. The line explains why Karan Singh titled his study of Aurobindo’s politics Prophet of Indian Nationalism (1963): the claim is metaphysical before it is political.
Programme versus Religion
The contrast is the key to the line:
| A political programme | Nationalism as religion | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | An instrument, adopted or dropped | A dharma one lives by |
| Agent | A party member calculating gains | An instrument of the divine |
| Response to repression | Retreat when costs rise | Fearlessness and sacrifice |
| Scope | Office, reforms, concessions | The whole life of the nation |
Since the nation is a manifestation of the divine Mother, subjection is not just misgovernment; it frustrates the divine purpose working through a people. Freeing it is therefore worship through action, read through the Bhagavad Gita‘s call to desireless action on the field of duty. Because such a movement is no merely human thing, he argued, prosecution cannot kill it. In the Uttarpara speech (30 May 1909) he went further and equated nationalism with the Sanatan Dharma.
Why He Needed This Claim
- Moderate petitioning had bred a habit of mendicancy; only a faith could produce the courage to suffer jail and boycott.
- A religious idiom reached villagers whom English-language constitutionalism never touched.
- Devotion to one Mother was meant to rise above divisions of caste, sect and region into a felt oneness.
Critique
- If nationalism is a religion, its claims escape public reasoning and compromise becomes betrayal. Rabindranath Tagore‘s Nationalism (1917) warned exactly against worshipping the nation.
- A Hindu idiom of the goddess could not be equally owned by Muslims, whatever its author’s universalist intent, and the felt oneness left caste hierarchy untouched.
- The “way of life” formula still divides Indian public law. In Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo (1995) the Supreme Court described Hindutva as a way of life. In Abhiram Singh (2017) a seven-judge bench, splitting 4:3, barred appeals to religion in elections but declined to revisit that description.
Conclusion
The statement captures Aurobindo’s decisive move: turning nationalism from a demand into a vocation. That moral energy made complete independence thinkable. Yet a constitutional democracy must keep nationalism a matter of equal citizenship, not of a shared faith.