What is a Nation?

Self-Government is necessary to the self-respect and dignity of a
People; Other-Government emasculates a Nation, lowers its character, and
lessens its capacity. The wrong done by the Arms Act, which Raja Rampal
Singh voiced in the Second Congress as a wrong which outweighed all the
benefits of British Rule, was its weakening and debasing effect on
Indian manhood. "We cannot," he declared, "be grateful to it for
degrading our natures, for systematically crushing out all martial
spirit, for converting a race of soldiers and heroes into a timid flock
of quill-driving sheep." This was done not by the fact that a man did
not carry arms--few carry them in England--but that men were deprived of
the _right_ to carry them. A Nation, an individual, cannot develop his
capacities to the utmost without liberty. And this is recognised
everywhere except in India. As Mazzini truly said:

God has written a line of His thought over the cradle of every
people. That is its special mission. It cannot be cancelled; it
must be freely developed.

For what is a Nation? It is a spark of the Divine Fire, a fragment of
the Divine Life, outbreathed into the world, and gathering round itself
a mass of individuals, men, women and children, whom it binds together
into one. Its qualities, its powers, in a word, its type, depend on the
fragment of the Divine Life embodied in it, the Life which shapes it,
evolves it, colours it, and makes it One. The magic of Nationality is
the feeling of oneness, and the use of Nationality is to serve the world
in the particular way for which its type fits it. This is what Mazzini
called "its special mission," the duty given to it by God in its
birth-hour. Thus India had the duty of spreading the idea of Dharma,