A Bengali Nationalist’s Search for ‘Civic Consciousness’ | Arup Kumar Sen

Bipin Chandra Pal is a well-known nationalist leader of India from Bengal. He along with Lala Lajpat Rai from Punjab and Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Bombay are popularly known as ‘Lal Bal Pal’ trio in the nationalist discourse. A selection of Bipin Chandra Pal’s writings and speeches during 1902-1907 is recently published (2020) with the title ‘Swadeshi and Swaraj: The Rise of New Patriotism’. In fact, the ‘composite nationalism’ preached by Pal was rooted in the Hindu religious tradition. In his classic book, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal: 1903-1908 (People’s Publishing House, 1973), Sumit Sarkar observed in this context: “Bepinchandra Pal – despite his Brahmo background, one of the stoutest advocates of giving to politics an orthodox Hindu colour – suggested in many of his writings a “federal” solution. His ideal was a “composite nationalism” in which Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others would retain and develop their characteristic traditions and customs and yet unite freely to form a broader and richer whole.” (pp. 74-75)

It is quite interesting that in the last phase of his life (a few years before his death in 1932), Bipin Chandra Pal pleaded passionately for ‘civic sense’ and ‘civic idealism’ in an essay published in 1927. He argued: “The city-beautiful could never have grown among peoples who had not developed a cultivated civic sense and an organised civic life.” (See Arun Kumar Roy (ed.), The Calcutta Municipal Gazette: Bipin Chandra Pal, The Kolkata Municipal Corporation, 2010) He further argued:

The creation of the civic sense is, therefore, the very first duty of our city-administrators…without which a healthy civic life can never grow…The law of civic life was summed up in the early ages by what is called the ‘golden rule’ – “Do unto others as you would be done by”, or, in the law of Christ, - “Love thy neighbour as thyself”. Long before Christ, in our books we find the injunction that the individual must try to realise the Indweller within himself as abiding equally in all other beings, and realising this he must treat brother-man as the revelation and the temple of his God. This universal God-consciousness is the highest and strongest foundation of all social ethics and social service. The development of this consciousness is the ideal-end and much in politics as in civics…This is the highest and the soundest basis of the civic sense and civic idealism. (ibid.)

Bipin Chandra Pal stated in this connection that the population of the city was “far more heterogeneous and cosmopolitan than the rural population.” (ibid.) Pal elaborated on his notion of ‘civic consciousness’ in another essay titled “Civic Service” (1928): “Civic Service or the service of the city to which we belong must, if it is to be real, be built upon developed civic consciousness. This civic consciousness is a cultivated and acquired consciousness…And this consciousness will have to be cultivated by systematic civic education, both theoretical and practical. On the theoretical side, the fundamental interdependence of all the vital interests of individual householders residing in the city must be demonstrated to them by a systematic course of training in Civics. On the practical side, we must have organized civic activities for the cultivation of this consciousness of the absolute impossibility of securing any vital interests for the individual householder without simultaneously securing it for his neighbours.” (See The Calcutta Municipal Gazette, ibid.)

It is true that Bipin Chandra Pal’s discourse on ‘civic sense’ and ‘civic consciousness’ was ethically rooted in the Hindu religious tradition. However, it bears testimony to his search for civic virtues in public life.

The violence-prone politics of Hindutva in contemporary India is a complete negation of the ‘civic’ nationalism preached by Bipin Chandra Pal.