The Mother and the Nation   We have lost the faculty of religious fervour in Bengal and are trying now to recover it through the passion for the country by self-sacrifice, by labour for our fellow-countrymen, by absorption in the idea of the country. When a nation is on the verge of losing the source of its vitality, it tries to recover it by the first means which the environment offers, whether it be favourable to it or not. Bengal has always lived by its emotions; the brain of India, as it has been called, is also the heart of India. The loss of emotional power, of belief, of expansiveness of feeling would dry up the sources from which she derives her stre

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 5th, 1907 }   Wanted, a Policy   A silence has fallen on the country since the inauguration of a new repressive policy by the bureaucracy, a silence broken only by Coconada riots on one side and talk of a special Congress session on the other. Srijut Surendranath Banerji has gone to Simultala to think over the situation and other leaders are thinking over it wherever they happen to find themselves. The only gentleman in authority who has come forward publicly with a policy is Srijut Bhupendranath Bose and we are grieved to find that the country has received this honourable and legislative gentleman's pro

A Sample-Room for Swadeshi Articles   Objects   1. I propose that a permanent sample-room should be maintained by the Baroda Industrial Association in its own offices, fulfilling the following purposes (1) an ocular demonstration to the public and the merchants of the number and kind of goods they can have from their own country; (2) a standing advertisement of Swadeshi articles procurable in the local market; (3) a register of information available to all interested in the industrial development of the country.   Means of providing the Sample-room at a minimum expense   2. The sample

Swadeshi and Boycott   Mr. Gadre and fellow countrymen, There are four subjects which usually form the subject matter of a Nationalist's speech. They are, first, Swadeshi; second, boycott; third, Swaraj; and fourth, national education. Swadeshi is the method, the way, the road by which the nation advances. Boycott is only the other side of Swadeshi, and both the Swadeshi and the boycott movements are actually encouraged in principle in the greater part of this country. National education is the training of the mind and heart of the younger generation. Swaraj is the goal of our national life. Our political efforts are directed to Swadeshi, boycott, Swa

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, October 30th, 1906 }   The Statesman's Voice of Warning   The Statesman has been sadly uneasy and troubled ever since the appearance of the new party as a force in politics. Probably, it feels its secure and comfortable position as a [......] and worshipped patron of the Indian people threatened by the emergence of an obdurate and unpatronisable element. And it is at a loss how to deal with this unexampled situation. Sometimes fatherly, sometimes magisterial, now menacing, now superiorly argumentative, now solemnly exhortatory, this father Prospero tries to conjure the unwelcome spirit back to the [.......

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 23rd, 1907 }   A Man of Second Sight   The tendency not to mince matters is in itself a virtue seldom appreciated by people who in consequence of long subjection cannot rate boldness in any form at its proper value. But to awaken boldness in a nation which has lost the sense of honour and self-respect, has always been the first engrossing effort of those political thinkers who meant to do their duty by the country honestly and sincerely. The capacity to look facts in the face and support a true grasp of the situation by a programme at once bold and heroic, has always met with a belated recognition when fallen nations have

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, July 15th, 1907 }   Boycott and After   The twentieth century dawned on a rising flood of renascent humanity surging over Asia's easternmost borders. The first report of it reached the astonished world in the victorious thunder of Japan. And it spread onward, this resurgent wave of human spirit, swiftly, irresistibly, overflooding in a sweeping embrace China, India, Persia and the farther West. India received the ablution of the holy waters singing her sacred hymn Bande Mataram that filled the spaces of heaven with joyous echoes heard of the Gods as of old, and the nations of the earth listened to the song of unfr

Part Six   Bande Mataram   under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo   with Speeches Delivered during the Same Period   6 February ­ 3 May 1908   After returning from Maharashtra in February 1908, Sri Aurobindo resumed his duties as chief editorial writer of the Bande Mataram. He wrote regularly for the journal over the next three months; during the same period he was occasionally called on to deliver speeches in Calcutta and other places in Bengal. Some of these speeches were published in the Bande Mataram . They are reproduced here at the date of their delivery and not the date of publication. On 2 May 1908 Sri A

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, May 6th, 1907 }   Look on This Picture, Then on That   Britain, the benevolent, Britain, the mother of Parliaments, Britain, the champion of liberty, Britain, the deliverer of the slave,— such was the sanctified and legendary figure which we have been trained to keep before our eyes from the earliest years of our childhood. Our minds imbued through and through with the colours of that legend, we cherished a faith in the justice and benevolence of Britain more profound, more implicit, more a very part of our beings than the faith of the Christian in Christ or of the Mahomedan in his Prophet. Officials might be o

A Fragment   Mankind is of a less terrestrial mould than some would have him to be. He has an element of the divine which the practical politician ignores. The practical politician looks to the position at the moment and imagines that he has taken everything into consideration. He has indeed studied the surface and the immediate surroundings, but he has missed what lies beyond material vision. He has left out of account the divine, the incalculable in man, that element which upsets the calculations of the schemer and disconcerts the wisdom of the diplomat.     Page – 1122