An Open Letter to My Countrymen THE position of a public man who does his duty in India today is too precarious to permit of his being sure of the morrow. I have recently come out of a year's seclusion from work for my country on a charge which there was not a scrap of reliable evidence to support, but my acquittal is no security either against the trumping up of a fresh accusation or the arbitrary law of deportation which dispenses with the inconvenient formality of a charge and the still more inconvenient necessity of producing evidence. Especially with the hounds of the Anglo-Indian Press barking at our heels and continually clamouring for Government to re

Youth and the Bureaucracy SIR Edward Baker is usually a polite and careful man and a diplomatic official. It is not his fault if the policy he is called upon to carry through is one void of statesmanship and contradictory of all the experience of history. Neither is it his fault if he lacks the necessary weight in the counsels of the Government to make his own ideas prevail. He carries out an odious task with as much courtesy and discretion as the nature of the task will permit and, if we have had to criticise severely the amazing indiscretion foreign to his habits which he was guilty of on a recent occasion, it was with a recognition of the fact that he must h

The Necessity of the Situation A VERY serious crisis has been induced in Indian politics by the revival of Terrorist outrages and the increasing evidences of the existence of an armed and militant revolutionary party determined to fight force by force. The effect on the Government seems to have been of a character very little complimentary to British statesmanship. Faced by this menace to peace and security the only device they can think of is to make peaceful agitation impossible. Their first step has been to proclaim all India as seditious. Their second is to announce the introduction of fresh legislation making yet more stringent the already all-embracing l

Facts and Opinions Volume I - July 24,1909 - Number 5 The Indiscretions of Sir Edward The speech of Sir Edward Baker in the Bengal Council last week was one of those indiscretions which statesmen occasionally commit and invariably repent, but which live in their results long after the immediate occasion has been forgotten. The speech is a mass of indiscretions from beginning to end. Its first error was to rise to the bait of Mr. Madhusudan Das' grotesquely violent speech on the London murders and assume a political significance in the act of the young man Dhingra. The theory of a conspiracy behind this act is, we believe, generally rejected in Eng

Facts and Opinions Volume I - Jan. 29, 1910 - Number 30 The High Court Assassination The startling assassination of Deputy Superintendent Shams-ul-Alam on Monday in the precincts of the High Court, publicly, in daylight, under the eyes of many and in a crowded building, breaks the silence which had settled on the country, in a fashion which all will deplore. The deceased officer was perhaps the ablest, most energetic and most zealous member of the Bengal detective force. It was his misfortune that he took the leading part not only in the Alipur Bomb Case in which he zealously and untiringly assisted the Crown solicitors, but in the investig

The Hughly Conference THE chances of politics are in reality the hidden guidance of a Power whose workings do not reveal themselves easily even to the most practised eye. It is difficult therefore to say whether the successful conclusion of the Provincial Conference at Hughly without the often threatened breach between the parties, will really result in the furtherance of the object for which the Nationalists consented to waive the reaffirmation of the policy formulated at Pabna and refrained from using the preponderance which the general sentiment of the great majority of the delegates gave them at Hughly. If things go by the counting of heads, as is the rule in dem

"Swaraj" and the Musulmans we EXTRACT in our columns this week the comments of Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal's organ, Swaraj, on the Government's pro-Mahomedan policy and its possible effects in the future. We are glad to see this great Nationalist again expressing his views with his usual orginality and fine political insight. We do not ourselves understand the utility of such a campaign as Srijut Bepin Chandra is carrying on in England. In politics quite as much as in ordinary conduct the rule of desh-kal-patra, the right place, the right time and the right person, conditions the value and the effectiveness of the work. For Bepin Babu's mission there could not be

Nationalist Organisation THE time has now come when it is imperative in the interests of the Nationalist Party that its forces should be organised for united deliberation and effective work. A great deal depends on the care and foresight with which the character and methods of the organisation are elaborated at the beginning, for any mistake now may mean trouble and temporary disorganisation hereafter. It is not the easy problem of providing instruments for the working of a set of political ideas in a country where political thought has always been clear and definite and no repressive laws or police harassment can be directed against the dissemination of just polit

The New Policy A POLICY of conciliation, a policy of trust in the people, a policy liberal, progressive, sure if slow, — that was the forecast made by the Moderate astrologers when the Reform comet sailed into our startled heavens. The prophets and augurs of the Anglo-Indian Press friendly to Moderate India — friendly on condition of our giving up all aspirations that go beyond the Reforms — prophesied high, loud and often to the same purpose, and if, like the Roman augurs, they winked and smiled mysteriously at each other when they met, the outside world was not supposed to know anything of their private opinions. Even the disillusionment caused by the publication of the C

An Extraordinary Prohibition PANDIT Bhoje Dutt of Agra has been in our midst for some time, and none had hitherto imagined that he was a political agitator or his teachings dangerous to the public peace. We all knew him as secretary of the Suddhi Samaj, a religious body having for its object the readmission of converts from Hinduism into the fold of the religion and also, we believe, the admission of converts to Hinduism from other religions into Hindu society with the full status of Hindus. The society has been working for some time with signal success and no breach of the law or the peace. Yet the other day Mr. Swinhoe thought fit to prohibit the Pandit from