{"id":266,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=266"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:59","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:59","slug":"168-bibliographical-note-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/01-bande-mataram-volume-01\/168-bibliographical-note-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-168_Bibliographical Note.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nBIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nVolume I of the SRI <\/font>AUROBINDO <\/font>BIRTH
\n<\/font>CENTENARY <\/font>LIBRARY <\/font>is a
\ncompilation of Sri Aurobindo’s political writings and speeches of the period
\n1890 to May 1908. Concerned principally with India’s freedom from British rule
\nand the means of attaining it, they cover also the resurgence of Asiatic
\ncountries, the necessity of their emergence as representatives of spiritual
\nculture, and other historical and contemporary events or issues.<\/p>\n

\nSri Aurobindo’s preoccupation with India’s freedom and renaissance began in his
\nstudent days at Cambridge where he gave speeches at meetings of the Indian
\nMajlis. Only a few incomplete notes on this subject are found in his manuscripts
\nof 1890-1892.<\/p>\n

\nSoon after his return to India in 1893, Sri Aurobindo contributed a series of
\nunsigned articles to the Indu Prakash<\/i>, a Marathi-English daily of Bombay,
\nat the request of its editor, K. G. Deshpande, his Cambridge friend. The series
\ncalled "New Lamps for Old" was stopped after a time because the editors were
\nadvised that, if the views expressed in their columns were continued, the
\nGovernment would take action against the paper. The nine articles of this series
\nwritten during the period 1893-1894 are reproduced here directly from the
\nIndu Prakash<\/i>. Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee have included them in
\ntheir book Sri Aurobindo’s Political Thought <\/i>(Calcutta 1958).<\/p>\n

\nFrom 1894 to 1902 we do not find any political writings, published or
\nunpublished.<\/p>\n

\nFrom 1902 to 1906 Sri Aurobindo carried on his political work in secret. Some
\nstray notes and unfinished articles found in his manuscripts of that period have
\nbeen collected in this volume. Of the published writings of this period only
\nBhavani Mandir<\/i> exists. This was recovered from the Government of West Bengal
\nfiles and first printed in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual<\/i> in 1956. ‘No
\nCompromise’, an article which was privately printed and circulated, has not been
\ntraced so far.<\/p>\n

\nOnly after his return to Bengal in February 1906 could Sri Aurobindo do his
\npolitical work openly, unhampered by conditions imposed by his Baroda service.
\nIn March the same year, under his guidance his brother Barindra Kumar and others
\nstarted a Bengali weekly, Yugantar<\/i>. Sri Aurobindo wrote a few articles in
\nthe earlier issues of this journal and kept a general control over its conduct
\nand policy. It openly preached revolutionary ideals of political freedom and
\naction. We have, however, not been able to find a single copy of this journal.<\/p>\n

\nOn August 7, 1906 the Bande Mataram <\/i>was started by Bepin Chandra Pal with
\nSri Aurobindo’s assistance. It was in this journal that Sri Aurobindo gave full
\nexpression to his ideas on Independence as India’s political goal<\/p>\n

\n

\nand discussed the methods of its realisation. Of this journal no complete file
\nis available at present. Only one file is known to be extant, that with the
\nPrabartak Sangha of Chandernagore, and this is incomplete. The file, however, of
\nthe Bande Mataram<\/i> Weekly, which began later in June 1907, is available in
\nits entirety. As most of the important editorials, articles and comments
\npublished in the Bande Mataram<\/i> Daily were reproduced in this Weekly, the
\nperiod from June 1907 to September 1908 is well represented. The gaps in the
\nfile are most notable in August, November and December 1906 and January 1907. A
\nseries of articles on the Calcutta Congress of December 1906, referred to in
\nThe Doctrine of Passive Resistance<\/i>, is missing.<\/p>\n

\nAfter Bepin Chandra Pal left the Bande Mataram<\/i> sometime towards the end
\nof 1906 Sri Aurobindo became its chief editorial writer. The paper had no
\ndeclared editor. (Sri Aurobindo’s name was given in one issue without his
\nknowledge but was withdrawn on his protesting against it.) Sri Aurobindo was the
\nguiding spirit,\u00b9<\/font> but there were other
\ncontributors of marked literary ability: Shyam Sunder Chakravarty, Bijoy Krishna
\nChatterjee and Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, and it would have been very difficult to
\nattribute specific Bande Mataram<\/i> editorials to Sri Aurobindo with
\nreasonable certainty were it not that a certain number of them, admittedly
\nsmall, had been identified by Sri Aurobindo himself. References and allusions in
\nhis notes\u00b2<\/font> and letters have also been made
\nuse of in identifying his writings. A few of the articles selected for inclusion
\nin this volume on the basis of style have been confirmed by notes made by
\nHemendra Prasad Ghosh in his diary.<\/p>\n

\nThe Bande Mataram<\/i> editorials and leading articles were occasionally
\nreproduced in other papers of the time, e<\/i>.g<\/i>. in the Maratha<\/i> of
\nPoona, and were also translated into several Indian languages. A journal in
\nMarathi, Vande Mataram<\/i>, published by Hari Raghunath Bhagavat from the
\nVande Mataram Press Poona drew much of its material from its English namesake.
\nThe Vande Mataram Press also published in 1909 selections from Bande Mataram<\/i>
\nin three parts. The Swaraj Publishing House, Benares brought out in 1922 a
\nselection from the Bande Mataram<\/i>. Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee
\nincluded some articles in their book Bande Mataram<\/i> and Indian
\nNationalism<\/i> (1957). They have also made a comprehensive study and identified
\nover a hundred articles of Sri Aurobindo in their two<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font>R. C. Majumdar in his book
\nHistory of the Freedom Movement in India<\/i> has quoted the following passage
\nfrom J. L. Banerji’s tribute to Sri Aurobindo.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n"Whoever the actual contributor to the Bande Mataram<\/i> might
\nbe \u2014 the soul, the genius of the paper was Arabinda. The pen might be that of
\nShyam Sundar or whoever else…but the voice was the voice of Arabinda
\nGhose…."<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00b2<\/font>See Centenary Volume No. 26,
\npage 28: "Shyam Sunder (Chakravarty) caught up something like Sri Aurobindo’s
\nway of writing and later on many took his articles for Sri Aurobindo’s."<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbooks, Sri Aurobindo’s Political Thought <\/i>(1958) and Sri Aurobindo and
\nthe New Thought in Indian Politics <\/i>(1964). But in these books some articles
\nare wrongly attributed to Sri Aurobindo. That they are not by him is revealed by
\na file of some Bande Mataram<\/i> articles read out to Sri Aurobindo for
\nidentification. Similarly On Nationalism <\/i>(1965), published by the Sri
\nAurobindo Ashram, also contains two articles that are not his.<\/p>\n

\nFor the purposes of this volume, all available issues of the Bande Mataram<\/i>
\nwere collected in microfilm and photostat copies and their editorial contents
\nstudied.<\/p>\n

\nHowever, even after all the clues and circumstantial evidence have been taken
\ninto account, the authorship of some of the writings included here may still be
\nquestioned. On the other hand, it may be argued that a few of the articles left
\nout are by Sri Aurobindo. We hope future scholarship will give us a more
\ncomplete collection made on a surer and ampler basis.<\/p>\n

\nSri Aurobindo’s speeches were brought together in book-form in 1922 by the
\nPrabartak Sangha of Chandernagore. They were reprinted in 1948 by the Arya
\nPublishing House, Calcutta and issued again by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1952
\nand 1969. The speeches of 1907-1908 and 1909-1910 are arranged chronologically
\nin Volumes 1 and 2.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE   Volume I of the SRI AUROBINDO BIRTH CENTENARY LIBRARY is a compilation of Sri Aurobindo’s political writings and speeches of the period…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}