{"id":2852,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2852"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:11","slug":"136-bande-mataram-24-8-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/06-07-bande-mataram\/136-bande-mataram-24-8-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-136_Bande Mataram 24-8-07.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
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\n\t
\n\tBande Mataram<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, August 24th, 1907 }
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\n

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\n
\nSankaritola’s Apologia
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\nThe omniscient editor of the Indian Nation <\/i>exposed himself last week to a well-deserved castigation at our hands by trespassing
\ninto history, of which he evidently knows less than a fifth form school-boy in an English public school. We gave him his deserts,
\nbut were careful to couch our criticism, however deservedly severe, in perfectly courteous language. We find, however, that
\nthe courtesy was thrown away on the most hysterically foulmouthed publicist in the whole Indian Press. The late Shambhunath Mukherji ironically described Mr. N. N. Ghose as a thundering cataract of law: he might more aptly have described
\nhim as a thundering cataract of Billingsgate. He has attempted to answer our criticism in this week’s
\nIndian Nation<\/i>, but the answer
\nis so much befouled with an almost maniacal virulence of abuse that most of our friends have advised us to ignore his frenzies
\nand never again give him the notoriety he desires by noticing him in our columns. It is true that the
\nIndian Nation <\/i>addresses itself
\nto a microscopic audience and expresses the personal vanities, selfishness, jealousies of a single man, but so long as it enjoys
\na false reputation for learning and wisdom even with a limited circle or trades on that reputation to attack and discredit the
\nnational movement, it is our duty to expose its pretensions, and we shall not be deterred by any abuse, however foul.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nMr. N. N. Ghose’s reply falls into three parts, of which one consists merely of rancorous vituperation, another of a feeble
\nattempt to wriggle out of the uncomfortable position he has got into by his failure to consult a few historical primers before
\nwriting, and the third is a restatement of his opinions about nationality formulated this time in the shape of general ideas
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\nwithout any basis either of historical fact or of Metropolitan
\nCollege fiction. As to the abuse we can only say that it might have been more skilfully done. At least it might have been more coherent. The aggrieved sage of Sankaritola picks out from all the Bande Mataram
\n<\/i>writers Srijut Aurobindo Ghose for the object
\nof his wrath and among other elegant terms of abuse calls him a prig and a Graeculus esuriens<\/i>. To those who may not be such
\naccomplished Latin scholars as the Principal of the Metropolitan College, we may explain that the last expression means a
\nstarving and greedy scholar who is prepared to commit any vileness for the sake of earning a livelihood. We will not stop to
\nask whether this description applies to Srijut Aurobindo Ghose or to a Principal who daily exhorts his students to subordinate
\nhonour, high feeling and patriotism to the supreme consideration of bread and himself practises the lofty philosophy he preaches.
\nWe will only ask Mr. Ghose whether a man can be at once a prig and an esurient Greekling<\/i>. Srijut Aurobindo Ghose may be
\none or the other or neither, but he can hardly be both. Either Mr. N. N. Ghose’s knowledge of Latin is as distinguished and
\ncorrect as his knowledge of history, or else he is so ignorant of English as to be even ignorant what the word prig means. We can
\nunderstand his being in a rage at the merciless exposure of his pretended scholarship, but that does not excuse his incoherence:
\nnor is it a sufficient reason for what was once a fair counterfeit of a gentleman and a scholar turning himself into the image of
\na spitting and swearing tom-cat. And with that we leave Mr. N. N. Ghose the fishwife and pass on to Mr. N. N. Ghose the
\nhistorian.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nHe does not try to justify his blunders,\u2014 that would be
\nhopeless\u2014 but he does try to excuse them. He practically admits that his Italian republics are a blunder and that he was thinking of the Middle Ages when he was writing of the nineteenth century. But he pleads that Burke uses the word commonwealth
\nin the sense of state and therefore Mr. N. N. Ghose can use the word republic in the same sense. This is Metropolitan College
\nlogic and Metropolitan College knowledge of English. Does Mr. Ghose really think that republic and commonwealth mean the
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\n\tsame thing precisely or that Burke would have talked of the Russian republic when he meant the Russian monarchy? But, says Mr. Ghose, it does not matter, as I was not talking about forms of
\ngovernment. But if Mr. Ghose in his class was to talk about adjectives when he meant nouns, would it be an excuse to say that
\nhe was not talking about the difference between various parts of speech? His defence of his other blunders is still more amusing.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tSays the Oracle: “To combat our proposition about ancient Greece an academic commonplace is trotted out, namely, that
\nthe people of Greece never developed a Pan-Hellenic sentiment.” Really this is enough to take one’s breath away. Mr. Ghose told
\nus last week that the Greeks became an united nation under the pressure of the Persian invasion: this week he coolly tells us that
\nit is an academic commonplace that the Greeks never even developed a Pan-hellenic sentiment. We certainly never said anything
\nof the sort. The Greeks, as any tyro in history knows, did develop a Pan-hellenic sentiment but it was never strong enough\u2014 and
\nthat was all we said\u2014 to unite them into a nation. But Mr. Ghose flounders still deeper into the mire in the next sentences. “What
\ndoes it signify whether they did or not? The whole question is, could the Greek states have been set against one another?
\nAthens and Sparta, for instance, against each other? And if not, why not?” Really, Mr. Ghose, really now! Is it possible you do
\nnot know that soon after the Persian invasion which you say made Greece an united nation, Athens and Sparta were at each
\nother’s throats and the whole of the Greek world by land and sea turned into one vast battlefield on which the Hellenic cities
\nengaged in a murderous internecine strife? What would we think of a “scholar” who pretended to know Indian history and yet
\nasserted that the Hindus became an united nation under the pressure of the Mahomedan invasion and that it was impossible
\nto set the Hindu states against each other, Mewar and Amber for instance? Yet this is precisely the blunder Mr. Ghose has
\ncommitted with respect to Greek history. But he pleads bitterly that his facts are no doubt all wrong, but the conclusions he
\nbases on them are right. What do facts matter? It is only Mr. N. N. Ghose’s opinions which matter.
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\n\tMr. Ghose accuses us of incapacity to understand the substance of his article. We quite admit that it is difficult to understand the mystic wisdom of a sage who asserts that the
\nsoundness of his premises has nothing to do with the soundness of his conclusions. Mr. Ghose stated certain facts as supporting
\na conclusion otherwise unsupported. We have proved that his facts are all childish blunders. He must therefore accept one of
\nthe two horns of a dilemma; either his facts had nothing to do with his “truism” or his “truism” itself is an error. But we had
\nanother object in view in exposing the pretentious sciolism of this arrogant publicist. Our business with him is not so much to
\ndisprove his opinions as to convince the few who still believe in him of the hollowness of his pretensions. It was for this reason
\nthat we dwelt on his blunders last week and have done the same this week,\u2014 in order to show that this gentleman who claims
\na monopoly of culture and wisdom in India, is a half educated shallow man whose boasted mastery of the English language
\neven is imperfect and who in other subjects, such as history and politics, is an ignoramus pretending to knowledge.
\n    <\/span><\/p>\n

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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, August 24th, 1907 }   Sankaritola’s Apologia   The omniscient editor of the Indian Nation exposed himself last week to a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-06-07-bande-mataram","wpcat-54-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852","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=2852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}