Bande Mataram
CONTENTS
Part One Writings and a Resolution 1890 1906 |
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India and the British Parliament
The Proposed Reconstruction of Bengal On the Bengali and the Mahratta Resolution at a Swadeshi Meeting |
Part Two
Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Bipin Chandra Pal 6 August 15 October 1906
Darkness in Light 20.8.06
Our Rip Van Winkles
20.8.06
Indians Abroad 20.8.06
Officials on the Fall of Fuller
20.8.06
Cow Killing: An Englishman's Amusements in Jalpaiguri
20.8.06
Schools for Slaves 27.8.06
By the Way
27.8.06
The Mirror and Mr. Tilak
28.8.06
Leaders in Council 28.8.06
Loyalty and Disloyalty in East Bengal
30.8.06
By the Way 30.8.06
Lessons at Jamalpur
1.9.06
By the Way 1.9.06
By the Way
3.9.06
Partition and Petition 4.9.06
English Enterprise and Swadeshi
4.9.06
Sir Frederick Lely on Sir Bampfylde Fuller 4.9.06
Jamalpur
4.9.06
By the Way 4.9.06
The Times on Congress Reforms
8.9.06
By the Way 8.9.06
The Pro-Petition Plot
10.9.06
Socialist and Imperialist 10.9.06
The Sanjibani on Mr. Tilak
10.9.06
Secret Tactics 10.9.06
By the Way
10.9.06
A Savage Sentence
11.9.06
The Question of the
Hour 11.9.06
A Criticism 11.9.06
By the Way 11.9.06
The Old Policy and
the New 12.9.06
Is a Conflict
Necessary? 12.9.06
The Charge of Vilification 12.9.06
Autocratic Trickery
12.9.06
By the Way 12.9.06
Strange
Speculations 13.9.06
The Statesman under
Inspiration 13.9.06
A Disingenuous
Defence 14.9.06
Last Friday's Folly
17.9.06
Stop-gap Won't Do
17.9.06
By the Way 17.9.06
Is Mendicancy
Successful? 18.9.06
By the Way 18.9.06
By the Way 20.9.06
By the Way 1.10.06
By the Way 11.10.06
Part Three
Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo
24 October 1906 27 May 1907
The Famine near Calcutta
29.10.06
Statesman's Sympathy Brand 29.10.06
By the Way. News from Nowhere
29.10.06
The Statesman's Voice of Warning 30.10.06
Sir Andrew Fraser
30.10.06
By the Way. Necessity Is the Mother of Invention
30.10.06
Articles Published in the Bande Mataram in November and December 1906
The Man of the Past and the Man of the
Future 26.12.06
The Results of the Congress
31.12.06
Yet There Is Method in It 25.2.07
Mr. Gokhale's Disloyalty
28.2.07
The Comilla Incident 15.3.07
British Protection or Self-Protection
18.3.07
The Berhampur Conference 29.3.07
The President of the Berhampur Conference
2.4.07
Peace and the Autocrats 3.4.07
Many Delusions
5.4.07
By the Way.
Reflections of Srinath Paul, Rai Bahadoor, on the Present Discontents
5.4.07
Omissions and Commissions at Berhampur 6.4.07
The Writing on the Wall
8.4.07
A Nil-admirari Admirer 9.4.07
Pherozshahi at Surat
10.4.07
A Last Word 10.4.07
The Situation in East Bengal
11.4.07
The Doctrine of Passive Resistance 11 23.4.07
I.
Introduction
II.
Its Object
III.
Its Necessity
IV.
Its Methods
VI.
Its Limits
VII.
Conclusions
The Proverbial Offspring
12.4.07
By the Way 12.4.07
By the Way
13.4.07
The Old Year 16.4.07
Rishi Bankim Chandra
16.4.07
A Vilifier on Vilification 17.4.07
By the Way. A Mouse in a Flutter
17.4.07
Simple, Not Rigorous 18.4.07
British Interests and British Conscience
18.4.07
A Recommendation 18.4.07
An Ineffectual Sedition Clause
19.4.07
The Englishman as a Statesman 19.4.07
The Gospel according to Surendranath
22.4.07
A Man of Second Sight 23.4.07
Passive Resistance in the Punjab
23.4.07
By the Way 24.4.07
Bureaucracy at Jamalpur
25.4.07
Anglo-Indian Blunderers 25.4.07
The Leverage of Faith
25.4.07
Graduated Boycott 26.4.07
Instinctive Loyalty
26.4.07
Nationalism, Not Extremism 26.4.07
hall India Be Free? The Loyalist Gospel
27.4.07
The Mask Is Off 27.4.07
Shall India Be Free? National Development
and Foreign Rule 29.4.07
Shall India Be Free?
30.4.07
Moonshine for Bombay Consumption
1.5.07
The Reformer on Moderation 1.5.07
Shall India Be Free? Unity and British Rule
2.5.07
Extremism in the Bengalee 3.5.07
Hare or Another
3.5.07
Look on This Picture, Then on That 6.5.07
Curzonism for the University
8.5.07
Incompetence or Connivance 8.5.07
Soldiers and Assaults
8.5.07
By the Way 9.5.07
Lala Lajpat Rai Deported
10.5.07
The Crisis 11.5.07
Lala Lajpat Rai
11.5.07
Government by Panic 13.5.07
In Praise of the Government
13.5.07
The Bagbazar Meeting 14.5.07
A Treacherous Stab
14.5.07
How to Meet the Ordinance 15.5.07
Mr. Morley's Pronouncement
16.5.07
The Bengalee on the Risley Circular 16.5.07
What Does Mr. Hare Mean?
16.5.07
Not to the Andamans! 16.5.07
The Statesman Unmasks
17.5.07
Sui Generis 17.5.07
The Statesman on Mr. Mudholkar
20.5.07
The Government Plan of Campaign 22.5.07
The Nawab's Message
22.5.07
And Still It Moves 23.5.07
British Generosity
23.5.07
An Irish Example 24.5.07
The East Bengal Disturbances
25.5.07
Newmania 25.5.07
The Gilded Sham
Again 27.5.07
National Volunteers
27.5.07
Part Four
Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28 May 22 December 1907
The True Meaning of the Risley Circular 28.5.07
Cool Courage and Not Blood-and-Thunder
Speeches 28.5.07
The Effect of Petitionary Politics
29.5.07
The Sobhabazar Shaktipuja 29.5.07
The Ordinance and After
30.5.07
A Lost Opportunity 30.5.07
The Daily News and Its Needs
30.5.07
Common Sense in an Unexpected Quarter 30.5.07
Drifting Away
30.5.07
The Question of the Hour 1.6.07
Regulated Independence
4.6.07
A Consistent Patriot 4.6.07
Holding on to a Titbit
4.6.07
Wanted, a Policy 5.6.07
Preparing the Explosion
5.6.07
A Statement 6.6.07
Law and Order
6.6.07
Defying the Circular 7.6.07
By the Way. When
Shall We Three Meet Again? 7.6.07
The Strength of the Idea
8.6.07
Comic Opera Reforms 8.6.07
Paradoxical Advice
8.6.07
An Out-of-Date Reformer 12.6.07
The Sphinx
14.6.07
Slow but Sure 17.6.07
The Rawalpindi Sufferers
18.6.07
Look on This Picture and Then on That 18.6.07
The Main Feeder of Patriotism
19.6.07
Concerted Action 20.6.07
The Bengal Government's Letter
20.6.07
British Justice
21.6.07
The Moral of the Coconada Strike 21.6.07
The Statesman on Shooting
21.6.07
Mr. A. Chaudhuri's Policy 22.6.07
A Current Dodge
22.6.07
More about British Justice 24.6.07
Morleyism Analysed
25.6.07
Political or Non-Political 25.6.07
Hare Street Logic
25.6.07
The Tanjore Students' Resolution 26.6.07
The Statesman on Mr. Chaudhuri
26.6.07
"Legitimate Patriotism" 27.6.07
Khulna Oppressions
27.6.07
The Secret Springs of Morleyism 28.6.07
A Danger to the State
28.6.07
The New Thought. Personal Rule and Freedom of Speech and Writing
28.6.07
The Secret of the Swaraj Movement 29.6.07
Passive Resistance in France
29.6.07
By the Way 29.6.07
Stand Fast
1.7.07
The Acclamation of the House 2.7.07
Perishing Prestige
2.7.07
A Congress Committee Mystery 2.7.07
Europe and Asia
3.7.07
Press Prosecutions 4.7.07
Try Again
5.7.07
A Curious Procedure 9.7.07
Association and Dissociation
9.7.07
Industrial India
11.7.07
From Phantom to Reality 13.7.07
Audi Alteram Partem
13.7.07
Swadeshi in Education 13.7.07
Boycott and After
15.7.07
In Honour of Hyde and Humphreys 16.7.07
Angelic Murmurs
18.7.07
A Plague o' Both
Your Houses 19.7.07
The Khulna Comedy
20.7.07
A Noble Example 20.7.07
The Korean Crisis
22.7.07
One More for the Altar 25.7.07
Srijut Bhupendranath
26.7.07
The Issue 29.7.07
District Conference at Hughly
30.7.07
Bureaucratic Alarms 30.7.07
The 7th of August
6.8.07
The Indian Patriot on Ourselves 6.8.07
Our Rulers and Boycott
7.8.07
Tonight's Illumination 7.8.07
Our First Anniversary
7.8.07
To Organise 10.8.07
Statutory Distinction
10.8.07
Marionettes and Others 12.8.07
A Compliment and Some Misconceptions
12.8.07
Pal on the Brain 12.8.07
Phrases by Fraser
13.8.07
To Organise Boycott 17.8.07
The Foundations of Nationality
17.8.07
Barbarities at Rawalpindi 20.8.07
The High Court Miracles
20.8.07
The Times Romancist 20.8.07
A Malicious Persistence
21.8.07
In Melancholy Vein 23.8.07
Advice to National College Students [Speech]
23.8.07
Sankaritola's Apologia 24.8.07
Our False Friends
26.8.07
Repression and Unity 27.8.07
The Three Unities of Sankaritola
31.8.07
Eastern Renascence 3.9.07
Bande Mataram 12-9-07
The Martyrdom of Bipin Chandra
12.9.07
Bande Mataram 14-9-07
Sacrifice and Redemption 14.9.07
Bande Mataram 20-9-07
The Un-Hindu Spirit
of Caste Rigidity 20.9.07
Bande Mataram 21-9-07
Caste and Democracy 21.9.07
Bande Mataram Prosecution
25.9.07
Pioneer or Hindu Patriot? 25.9.07
The Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves
26.9.07
The Statesman in Retreat 28.9.07
The Khulna Appeal
28.9.07
A Culpable Inaccuracy 4.10.07
Novel Ways to Peace
5.10.07
"Armenian Horrors" 5.10.07
The Vanity of Reaction
7.10.07
The Price of a Friend 7.10.07
A New Literary Departure
7.10.07
Protected Hooliganism -A Parallel 8.10.07
Mr. Keir Hardie and India
8.10.07
The Shadow of the Ordinance in Calcutta 11.10.07
The Nagpur Affair and True Unity
23.10.07
The Nagpur Imbroglio 29.10.07
English Democracy Shown Up
31.10.07
Difficulties at Nagpur 4.11.07
Mr. Tilak and the Presidentship
5.11.07
Nagpur and Loyalist Methods 16.11.07
The Life of Nationalism
16.11.07
By the Way. In Praise of Honest John 18.11.07
Bureaucratic Policy
19.11.07
About Unity 2.12.07
Personality or Principle?
3.12.07
More about Unity 4.12.07
By the Way
5.12.07
Caste and Representation 6.12.07
About Unmistakable Terms
12.12.07
The Surat Congress 13.12.07
Misrepresentations about Midnapore
13.12.07
Reasons of Secession 14.12.07
The Awakening of
Gujarat
17.12.07
"Capturing the
Congress" 18.12.07
Lala Lajpat Rai's
Refusal 18.12.07
The Delegates' Fund
18.12.07
Part Five
Speeches 22 December 1907 1 February 1908
Speeches 13-1-08
Speeches 15-1-08
Speeches 19-1-08
Speeches 24-1-08
Speeches 26-1-08
Speeches 29-1-08
Speeches 30-1-08
Speeches 31-1-08
Speeches 1-2-08
Part Six
Bande Mataram
under the
Editorship of Sri Aurobindo with
Speeches Delivered during the Same Period 6
February 3 May 1908
Revolutions and Leadership
6.2.08
Speeches 12-13-2-08
waraj 18.2.08
The Future of the
Movement 19.2.08
Work and Ideal
20.2.08
By the Way 20.2.08
The Latest Sedition
Trial 21.2.08
Boycott and British
Capital 21.2.08
Unofficial
Commissions 21.2.08
The Soul and
India's Mission 21.2.08
The Glory of God in
Man 22.2.08
A National
University 24.2.08
Mustafa Kamal Pasha
3.3.08
A Great Opportunity
4.3.08
Swaraj and the
Coming Anarchy 5.3.08
The Village and the
Nation 7.3.08
Welcome to the
Prophet of Nationalism 10.3.08
The Voice of the
Martyrs 11.3.08
Constitution-making
11.3.08
What Committee?
11.3.08
An Opportunity Lost
11.3.08
A Victim of
Bureaucracy 11.3.08
A Great Message
12.3.08
The Tuticorin
Victory 13.3.08
Perpetuate the
Split! 14.3.08
Loyalty to Order
14.3.08
Asiatic Democracy
16.3.08
Charter or No
Charter 16.3.08
The Warning from
Madras 17.3.08
The Need of the
Moment 19.3.08
Unity by
Co-operation 20.3.08
The Early Indian
Polity 20.3.08
The Fund for Sj.
Pal 21.3.08
The Weapon of
Secession 23.3.08
Sleeping Sirkar and
Waking People 23.3.08
Anti-Swadeshi in
Madras 23.3.08
Exclusion or Unity?
24.3.08
How the Riot Was
Made 24.3.08
Oligarchy or
Democracy? 25.3.08
Freedom of Speech
26.3.08
Tomorrow's Meeting
27.3.08
Well Done,
Chidambaram! 27.3.08
The Anti-Swadeshi
Campaign 27.3.08
Spirituality and
Nationalism 28.3.08
The Struggle in
Madras 30.3.08
A Misunderstanding
30.3.08
The Next Step
31.3.08
India and the
Mongolian 1.4.08
Religion and the
Bureaucracy 1.4.08
The Milk of Putana
1.4.08
Swadeshi Cases and
Counsel 2.4.08
The Question of the
President 3.4.08
The Utility of
Ideals 3.4.08
Speech at Panti's
Math 3.4.08
Convention and
Conference 4.4.08
By the Way 4.4.08
The Constitution of
the Subjects Committee 6.4.08
The New Ideal
7.4.08
The Asiatic Role
9.4.08
Love Me or Die
9.4.08
The Work Before Us
10.4.08
Campbell-Bannerman
Retires 10.4.08
Speech 10-4-08
The Demand of the
Mother 11.4.08
Speech 12-4-08
Peace and Exclusion
13.4.08
Indian Resurgence
and Europe 14.4.08
Om Shantih 14.4.08
Conventionalist and
Nationalist 18.4.08
Speech 20-4-08
The Future and the
Nationalists 22.4.08
The Wheat and the
Chaff 23.4.08
Party and the
Country 24.4.08
The Bengalee Facing
Both Ways 24.4.08
The One Thing
Needful 25.4.08
New Conditions
29.4.08
Whom to Believe?
29.4.08
By the Way. The
Parable of Sati 29.4.08
Leaders and a
Conscience 30.4.08
An Ostrich in
Colootola 30.4.08
By the Way 30.4.08
Nationalist
Differences 2.5.08
Ideals Face to Face
2.5.08
Part Seven
Writings from Manuscripts
1907 1908
Appendixes
Incomplete Drafts of Three
Articles
Draft of the Conclusion of
"Nagpur and Loyalist Methods"
Draft of the Opening of "In
Praise of Honest John"
Incomplete Draft of an
Unpublished Article
Writings and
Jottings Connected with the Bande Mataram 1906 1908
"Bande Mataram"
Printers & Publishers, Limited.
Draft of a
Prospectus of 1907
Notes and Memos
Nationalist Party
Documents
Appendixes
These appendixes comprise materials written by Sri Aurobindo, mostly by hand, between 1906 and 1908. The first one contains incomplete drafts of three articles, two of which were later published in the Bande Mataram . The second one contains writings and jottings related to the organisation and running of the newspaper, the third, organisational material for a proposed independent Nationalist Party, and the fourth, an interview of 1908.
APPENDIX ONE
Incomplete Drafts of Three Articles
Draft of the Conclusion of "Nagpur and Loyalist Methods" (see pages 742 43)
[.....] whether they will or will not recognize this unconstitutional decision to transfer the place of session arrived at on an unofficial representation and while there were still citizens of Nagpur[,] members of the Reception Committee willing & able to carry out the resolution of the Calcutta Congress to hold the next session at Nagpur. If we do not, we have two courses open to us, either to separate from the dictator-ridden Congress altogether and hold a Nationalist Conference at Nagpur or to leave the Loyalists to a purely Moderate Congress at Surat and according as they act, decide our future course. In any case we think there should be a council of leading men of our party at Nagpur in December to confer on our future action, for in view of the bureaucratic campaign & the danger of a retrograde step on the part of the Congress the times are critical for the Nationalist movement and concerted action is imperative.
Draft of the Opening of "In Praise of Honest John" (see pages 751 54)
The onslaught of the bureaucracy on the Nationalists of Bengal has to a certain extent found the
There is no more common question on men's lips nowadays than
the question which is naturally suggested by our apparent inability to answer the attacks of a bureaucracy armed with all the
weapons of the law and not overscrupulous as to their use, the question "What shall we do?" The bureaucracy is determined
Page – 1125 to crush the movement. It has no qualms, no scruples; for has not Mr. Morley, the great Radical philosopher, justified anything . and everything they may do by the immortal dictum that the eternal principles which apply to Britain or Ireland or Canada are not eternal & need not exist in India? The analogy of the fur coat need not stop with political conduct, it may be extended to moral conduct. For
Mr. John Morley is a very great man, a very remarkable and
. exceptional man. I have been reading his Arbroath speech again
and my admiration for him has risen to boiling point, so that I am at last obliged to let it bubble over into the columns of the Bande
Mataram. Mr. Morley differs from ordinary mortals in three .
very important respects; first, he is a literary man; secondly, he is a philosopher, thirdly he is a politician. This would not matter
much if he kept his literature, philosophy & politics apart; but he doesn't. He is a literary philosopher or a philosophic litterateur;
better than this he is a literary philosopher-politician. This is a superlative combination; God cannot better it & the devil does
not want to. For if an ordinary man steals, he steals and no more bones are made about it; he gets caught and is sent to prison,
or he is not and goes on his way rejoicing; in either case the matter is a simple one without any artistic possibilities; but if a
literary philosopher steals, he steals on the basis of the great & eternal verities and in the choicest and most poetical English. An
ordinary man may be illogical and silly and everybody realizes that he is illogical and silly. But the philosopher is logically
illogical and talks nonsense according to the strictest rules of philosophical reasoning, and the literary man will be brilliantly
foolish and illogically convincing. An ordinary man may turn his back on his principles and he will be called a turncoat, or
break all the commandments and be punished by the law & society, unless, of course, he is a millionaire or a member of the
ruling race in India— but the literary philosopher will reconcile his principles and his conduct by an appeal to a fur-coat or a
syllogism from a pair of Northampton boots. He will abrogate all the ten commandments on the strength of a solar topi.
Page – 1126 A politician again will lie and people will perceive it and take it as a matter of course; but a literary philosopher politician will easily prove to you that when he is most a liar, then he is most truthful and when he is juggling most cynically with truth & principle, then he most deserves the name of Honest John; and he will do it in such well turned periods that one must have a very bad ear for the rhythm of sentences to quarrel with his logic. Oh yes, a literary philosopher politician is the choicest work of Heaven, when he is not the most splendid instrument in the hands of the Prince of Darkness. For the Prince of Darkness is not only a gentlemen, as Shakespeare discovered, but a gentlemen of artistic perceptions who knows a fine and carefully-worked tool when he sees it and loves to handle it with the best dexterity and grace of which he is capable.
There are other reasons for which I admire Mr. John Morley.
. I admire him for what he has done not only for the way in
which he has done it. It is true he is not so great a man as his master Gladstone, who was the biggest opportunist and most
adroit political gambler democracy has till now engendered and yet persuaded the world that he was an enthusiast and a man
of high religious feeling and principle. But Gladstone was a genius and his old henchman is only a man of talent. Still Mr.
. Morley has done the best of which he is capable and that is by
no means a poor best. He has served the devil in the name of God with signal success on two occasions. The first was when
he championed the cause of the financiers in Egypt, the men who gamble with the destinies of nations, who make money
out of the groans of the people and coin into gold the blood of patriots and the tears of widows & when, abusing his position
as an influential journalist, he lied to the British public about Arabi and urged on Gladstone to crush the movement of democratic and humanitarian Nationalism in Egypt, that movement in which all that is noble, humane and gracious in Islam sought
to find fulfilment and a small field on earth for the fine flowering of a new Mahomedan civilisation. The second is now when he
is trying in the sordid interests of British capital to crush the
Page – 1127 resurgent life of India and baffle the attempt of the children of Vedanta to recover their own country for the development of a revivified Indian civilisation. The two foulest crimes against the future of humanity which any statesman in recent times could possibly have committed have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of Mr. John Morley. Truly, Satan knows his . own and sees to it that they do not their great work negligently.
Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great democrat, a great exponent of principles. No man better fitted than he to prove
that when great human movements are being suppressed by the sword and the prison, it is done in the interests of humanity; that
when a people struggling to live is trampled down by repression, pushed back by the use of the Goorkha and the hooligan, the
warder's lash & the whipping post into the hell of misery & famine & starvation, of insult & ignominy & bondage from
which it dared to hope for an escape, the motive of the oppressor finds its root in a very agony of conscientiousness, and it is with a
sobbing & bleeding heart that he presses his heel on the people's throat for their own good; that the ruthless exploitation and
starvation of a country by foreign leeches is one of the best services that can be done to mankind; the international crimes
of the great captains of finance a work of civilisation and the brutal & selfish immolation of nations to Mammon an acceptable offering on the altar of the indwelling God in humanity. But these things have been said & done before; they are the
usual & blasphemous cant of nineteenth-century devil-worship formulated when Commerce began to take the place once nominally allowed to Christ and the ledger became Europe's Bible. Mr. Morley does it with more authority than others, but his
. own particular original faculty lies in the direction we indicated
when we drew the distinction between the ordinary man & the extraordinary Morley. What he has done has been, after all,
largely on the initiative of others; what he has said about it, is his own, and nothing more his own than the admirably brilliant
& inconsequential phrases in which he has justified wickedness to an admiring nation.
Page – 1128
Incomplete Draft of an Unpublished Article
It is always useful to inquire into the inner psychology of common & vulgar types. Their very crudeness and coarseness is an
advantage, because we see in them in the rough and laid bare to a surface analysis the secret motives which in the higher evolutions
of the type are too self-conscious & self-concealing to be easily detected. It is not easy to detect at first the common Britishness,
if we may be allowed the word, of two men so different, at such opposite poles of human evolution as Mr. John Morley, the
. litterateur, politician, philosopher & fine perfection of the most
serious & sober British culture, and the vulgar Newmaniac, the loud, ranting, blustering, impudently lying Yahoo of Hare Street.
And yet it is by understanding the Newmaniac that we shall best understand not only John Morley but his whole race and
understand too that the policy which Morley accepted from the first to the wonder & dismay of his Indian worshippers, was the
only policy he or any other Englishman could have accepted. It is the common Briton in each which forms the bond of sympathy
between the Newmaniac & Mr. John Morley and makes them .
think so wonderfully alike. That is the only answer which we can give to the question why Englishmen professing to be just,
beneficent & all that is noble & unique, have so readily accepted a mingled policy of brutal repression and false conciliation in
India— because it is the nature of the beast. The Britisher may wish to be or at least to seem just, noble, generous, humane,
beneficent; but what is the use? "To their nature all things at the last return, and what shall coercing it avail?"
Page – 1129 |