Well Done, Chidambaram! A true feeling of comradeship is the salt of political life; it binds men together and is the cement of all associated action. When a political leader is prepared to suffer for the sake of his followers, when a man, famous and adored by the public, is ready to remain in jail rather than leave his friends and fellow-workers behind, it is a sign that political life in India is becoming a reality. Srijut Chidambaram Pillai has shown throughout the Tuticorin affair a loftiness of character, a practical energy united with high moral idealism which show that he is a true Nationalist. His refusal to accept release on bail if his fellow-workers were left behind, is one more count in the reckoning. Nationalism is or ought to be not merely a political creed but a religious aspiration and a moral attitude. Its business is to build up Indian character by educating it to heroic self-sacrifice and magnificent ambitions, to restore the tone of nobility which it has lost and bring back the ideals of the ancient Aryan gentleman. The qualities of courage, frankness, love and justice are the stuff of which a Nationalist should be made. All honour to Chidambaram Pillai for having shown us the first complete example of an Aryan reborn, and all honour to Madras which has produced such a man. . Page 797, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |
Anti-Swadeshi in Madras The /Madras Standard /has undoubtedly hit the right nail on the head when it derives the Tinnevelly disturbances from the establishment of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company and the attempt to throw difficulties in the way of its success. The struggle generated an acute feeling on both sides and when the commercial war extended itself and the people took sides with Indian labour against British capital in the affair of the Coral Mills, the patience of the English officials gave way and they rushed to the help of their mercantile caste-fellows, misusing the sacred seal of justice and the strong arm of power as instruments to maintain their trade supremacy. Page 778, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |
Madras has taken up the /herol /out of our hands, and today it is over Tuticorin that the gods of the Mahabharat hover in their aerial cars watching the chances of the fight which is to bring back the glorious days of old. Gallant Chidambaram, brave Padmanabha, intrepid Shiva defying the threats of exile and imprisonment; fighting for the masses, for the nation, for the preparation of Swaraj, these are now in the forefront, the men of the future, the bearers of the standard. The spirit of active heroism and self-immolation has travelled southward. In Bengal the spirit of passive endurance is all that seems to remain and the bold initiative, the fiery spirit that panted to advance is dead or sleeping. "Work, there is no need to aspire; labour for small things and the great will come in some future generation”, is the spirit which seems to be in the ascendant. But the voices of the martyrs from their cells cry to us in a different key, "Work, but aspire, so that your work may be true to the call you have heard and which we have' obeyed; labour for great things first and the small will come- of themselves. Cherish the might of the spirit, the nobility of the ideal, the grandeur of the dream; the spirit will create the material it needs, the ideal will bring the real to its body and self-expression, the dream is the stuff out of which the waking world will be created. It was the strength of the spirit which stood with us before the alien tribunal, it was the force of the ideal which led us to the altar of sacrifice, it is the splendour of the dream which supports us through the dreary months and years of our martyrdom. For these are the truth and the divinity within the movement" Page 745, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |
When Srijut Chidambaram Pillai set
himself to the task of establishing a Swadeshi Steam Navigation
Company between Tuticorin and Colombo, he was taking a step which
meant the beginning of the end for the British commercial monopoly in
India. There are three departments of Swadeshi which have to be
developed in order to make India commercially independent, first, the
creation of manufactures, secondly, the retail supply, thirdly, the
security of carriage from the place of manufacture to the place of
supply. Of all these the third is the most essential, because the
others are bound to lead a precarious existence if all the means of
carriage are in the hands of the enemies of Swadeshi. |