Farewell to Politics
THE QUESTION to ask in connection with the current politics of the English people is not whether the House of Commons is composed of small men, but whether the nation itself is interested in doing great things in politics. I do not think so. The English have lost, not only their political ambitions, but also the greater part of their zest in politics. The only people who seem to be capable of working themselves up to a state of excitement over politics are the politicians themselves, whose personal and party interests are involved. That was the impression I got in England, which confirmed what I had vaguely felt before, and all that I have been reading since then has been confirming the impression itself.
Political interest, power, and passion are not things which have to be discovered by statistical analysis. If they are present they also make themselves felt in a highly wrought-up psychological state. I observed this for over forty years in my country, when the nationalist movement had set itself to secure our independence. Even when there is no subjection to foreign rule, the impact of live politics is felt as the current is felt in a river. English politics gave me the feeling that I was watching a swimming pool."
I was in England on the eve of a general election, and heard a political debate between two front-rank politicians, one Labour and the other Conservative. The formal announcement of the coming election had not been made as yet, so the Conservative spokesman could not say anything about it. The Labour politician took it as a certainty, and spoke bravely about the imminent victory of his party. There were a number of questions from the audience, and my friend from the B.B.C. said that it was a very good discussion. I could not help saying to myself, 'What a queer idea they have of a good political debate!"
The election campaign was even more unimpressive. I left England just as it was getting into its stride, and so I did not see its real form. But even the little I saw and heard was enough to show that it was a very tame affair. One day, at a party, a Conservative member of Parliament told me when I asked him about the possible result that his party would win by fifty-four seats. If he could get so close to the final result before any polling had taken place, the election could not even have been as exciting as a friendly game of cricket, let alone a Test Match. Altogether, it seemed to have very little significance.
Of course, since the attainment of independence, which the English people describe as their gift to us, and which we look upon as our victory over them, there has visibly been a marked decline of political interest even in India, compared with what could be seen before. But there is still sufficient factional rivalry to make the elections lively. There is also suffering and discontent enough to make it necessary for a government which calls itself parliament- ary democracy to have recourse to shooting and gassing as a matter of regular administrative routine more often than in any other independent coun; in the contemporary world. All this keeps the spirit of politics alive. But can Englishmen imagine that in any circumstances they would hear the sound of rifle fire or bursting tear-gas bombs in their streets, or see buses and tramcars set on fire? I suppose they would sooner expect a volcano, to erupt in the heart of London. Therefore, quite naturally, they look upon the speakers in Hyde Park as typical demagogues. That alone indicates what liveliness is left in English politics.
It must not be imagined, however, that I am saying this in a spirit of criticism or condemnation. If the English people are no longer able to get excited over politics it is because they have solved all their political problems or got rid of them, and so there is nothing left for them to do. At home they have ended social and economic injustice, so far as this can be removed at all in human society, and thus deprived their politics of its most power- ful motive force. They have also eliminated all competition for political power by distributing it among all, and making it diffuse. to the point of ineffectiveness. It is hardly likely that any class or any tyrant will arise among them in the future to monopolize political power and create a new struggle for it.
The only domestic problem they have still on their hands is not a political problem at all, though successive Governments are being saddled with it. It is the problem of living like a nation of gentle- men without the means of a gentleman on the national scale. It is a problem for the nation as a whole to solve, or it has to find its own solution. Any mere Government can deal with it only by adroit accounting, which is no cure at all but only a palliative. But since the English people will not face up to it no elderly gentleman who is in financial embarrassment ever does-- Governments, like the estate managers of grands seigneurs, are having to make a pretence of dealing with it.
If this is the state of politics at home, there is even less to do in the outside world. I have never read about any people who have been so happy to lose an empire and so ready to think that the loss is really a great gain. That simply shows that in spite of having created the greatest empire that history has seen, the English people never had any real understanding of empires. Those who have do not lose them in less than two hundred years. Consider the Russians, for instance. They and the English started their respective imperial enterprises at about the same epoch. But while the British Empire has disappeared, the Russian is still going strong, and despite the gabble and din about ending European colonialism, not one man in Asia raises his voice for the liberation of the largest number of Asiastics still under White rule. The truth is that only dying empires are kicked, living ones never.
In the field of international politics, too, the English people are clearly conscious of the limits of their power, though they are not quite as frank about that as they are about the Empire. Taken all in all, then, what they want today in the way of politics is not politics properly so-called, but only administration, with a little politics to keep the bureaucracy in check. In such circumstances why should they be excited over politics?
On the other hand, it would seem that the only thing which can still rouse political passion and even fury among the English people is any attempt at involving them again in real politics. That was seen during the Suez affair. Memories of political power and action do not die out in a day, and Sir Anthony Eden and his supporters may have been carried away by them in a momentary throw-back to the past. But a cry of horror went up from at least half the nation. The mood of political holiness which had been sedulously developed in England to hide the absence of political power was shocked when a British Government suddenly showed signs of reverting to the unregenerate state by trying to partake once more of the fleshpots of Egypt. Yet it must be admitted that there was a hard core of common sense in the outcry, hysterical and sanctimonious as it was. The old prerogative of bombarding Copenhagen or Alexandria could simply not be exercised in the changed circumstances of the English people.
But I cannot see any vestige of sense in the behaviour of those other Englishmen who cannot forget their political past and who think they are continuing it !y practising a peculiarly self- deluding form of pseudo-politics, based mainly on clichés. Catch- words have always been the camp-followers of politics, but in many parts of the world today they are all that is left of it. So it is in England, and this I cannot understand, for in the past the hardest thinking in politics has always been seen when a nation has been in the midst of its worst troubles. Think of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, or Burke. They came to be regarded as political thinkers by rising above catchwords, but in the contemporary world the only sure'means of being hailed as a saviour of nations is to dole out nothing but cant. Emotionally also, the English people have developed a very peculiar yearning:
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
This is not a political book, and I will leave it at that. But I hope the English people will understand the hint, if their preference for understatement still holds good for politics.
I am glad to be able to say that the great majority of Englishmen are not of this way of thinking. They are too insular for that, and the Englishman is at his strongest and best when he is most insular. Even in olden days this made a thoroughgoing English imperialist a man of two minds, and the Little-Englander trait has won. It appears to me that the English people have reached a stage in their national evolution when they would be only too happy to say like the Duke in As You Like It:
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court?
And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. I would not change it.
And I would say:
Happy is your grace, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
But no, because non-political idylls are impossible of realization. The unpleasant truth is that even if a nation wants to give up politics, politics will not give it up. When Greek politics came to an end the Romans stepped in. When we Hindus lost or sterilized our politics the Muslims conquered us. And when the Muslims themselves were exhausted the Europeans marched in to fill the vacuum. The only sure means of doing away with politics is not to allow it to survive in any part of the world. I hope one day a worldwide political tyranny will make non-political private citi- zens of us all. But since that is not likely to happen in any predict- able future, the yearning for a non-political existence finds expression in a different manner. All the tailless foxes of the world. are appealing to the only two with brushes still left-and these the finest ever seen in the world-to cut them off. But the eloquence has not borne any fruit, nor ever will, it would seem.
This is bringing about a strange contradiction in the life of all peoples who are tired of politics and want to live in peace. For instance, there is nothing from which the English people shrink with greater horror than the mere idea of war, yet they are having to spend more money on armaments than at any other time in their long and warlike history. They denounce the H-bomb every day and still cannot refrain from making it. They are determined not to go to war, and yet they allow a foreign nation to have military bases on their own soil. All this is done in the name of practical politics. But if idealistic politics and practical politics have parted company in this fashion there cannot be any sense in either."
I myself was startled by what I saw of military preparations in the peaceful English scene. Both at Cambridge and Oxford I heard the screams of jets in the sky. To hear that sound in the eternal silence of those infinite spaces, and in a country which on the ground has absorbed a good deal of that stillness, was terri- fying. I cannot tell how much I disliked the immense American airfield which I saw when going from Cambridge to Ely. From the tower of the cathedral I saw the winding Ouse below, and the trails of the jets above.
All this is bringing a futile, and not ennobling, tragedy into the life of the English people. What a fine thing their farewell to politics would have been without it!
