Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 8th, 1907 }   The Strength of the Idea   The mistake which despots, benevolent or malevolent, have been making ever since organised states came into existence and which, it seems, they will go on making to the end of the chapter, is that they overestimate their coercive power, which is physical and material and therefore palpable, and underestimate the power and vitality of ideas and sentiments. A feeling or a thought, Nationalism, Democracy, the aspiration towards liberty, cannot be estimated in the terms of concrete power, in so many fighting men, so many armed police, so many guns, so many prisons, suc

Note on the Texts   BANDE MATARAM: POLITICAL WRITINGS AND SPEECHES 1890 ­ 1908 includes all of Sri Aurobindo's surviving political writings and speeches from the years before his arrest in May 1908. Political writings and speeches from the period after his imprisonment are published in Karmayogin: Political Writings and Speeches 1909 ­ 1910, volume 8 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. The bulk of the present volumes consists of articles published in the newspaper Bande Mataram in 1906, 1907 and 1908. They also include writings and a resolution from before the Bande Mataram period, speeches delivered during that period, writings from tha

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 25th, 1907 }   Bureaucracy at Jamalpur   The most recent accounts of the Jamalpur outrage emphasise the sinister nature of the occurrence and the defects in our own organisation which we must labour to remove. The most disgraceful feature of the riots has been the conduct of the British local official who seems to have deceived and betrayed the Hindus into the hands of the Mahomedan goondas. The nature of the attack, its suddenness and completeness, show beyond doubt that it had been carefully planned beforehand and was no casual outbreak either of fanaticism or rowdyism. It is impossible to believe that t

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, August 17th, 1907 }   To Organise Boycott   That boycott is the central question of Indian politics is now a generally recognised fact, recognised openly or tacitly by its supporters and its opponents alike. The Anglo-Indian papers are busy trying to make out that it is a chimera and a failure: the executive are straining every nerve to crush it by magisterial interference, by police zulum, by prosecution of newspapers and all the familiar machinery of repressive despotism: the friends of the alien among ourselves are reiterating that the movement is a foolish affair and that no nation ever was made by boycot

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, December 31st, 1906 }   The Results of the Congress   The great Calcutta Congress, the centre of so many hopes and fears, is over. Of the various antagonistic or contending forces which are now being hurled together into that Medea's cauldron of confused and ever fiercer struggle out of which a free and regenerated India is to arise, each one had its own acute fears and fervent hopes for the results of this year's Congress. Anglo-India and Tory England feared that the Extremists might capture the assembly; they hoped that a split would be created, and, as a result, the Congress either come to an end and lan

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 4th, 1908 }   Convention and Conference   When the leaders of the Moderate party meet at Allahabad, they will be on their trial before India and all the world. They have done much in the past for the country. Whatever we may think of the views they hold or the methods dear to them, they are the survivors of a generation which woke the nation from political apathy and helped to break the spell which British success had thrown upon the hearts of the people. They turned a critical eye on things which had been taken for granted, British peace, British justice, British freedom. Even while they lauded, they critici

  Sri Aurobindo at the Surat Congress, December 1907   In the upper photograph, Sri Aurobindo is seated next to Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In the lower photograph, Sri Aurobindo (seated at the table) is presiding over a Nationalist Party meeting. Tilak (standing) is speaking.     Part Four Bande Mataram   under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28 May ­ 22 December 1907   On 2 June 1907 the first issue of the weekly edition of Bande Mataram was published. Issued every Sunday, the weekly edition was intended for circulation both in Bengal and in other provinces. It consisted mo

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, September 14th, 1907 }   Sacrifice and Redemption   The abiding attributes of humanity, those that have endured through time's changes and have redeemed man's nature from the mortality of the flesh, have behind them a tradition of sacrifice. There is not a single ideal in the world that has been able to secure permanence in human thought without striking root in a soil manured with the martyr's blood and growing in its initial stages through an atmosphere charged with human sorrow and suffering. Mankind has been mercilessly exacting of those unto whom it has rendered its worship and unquestioning obedi

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 8th, 1907 }   The Writing on the Wall   When things violent or fearful take place let no one be alarmed or discouraged— they also are "His goings forth". That there will be only the piping time of peace and we shall sing of the cuckoo and the spring is expecting something unnatural. An individual or a nation cannot rise to its full height except through trouble and stress. The stone block patiently submits to hammering, cutting and chiselling to be made into the statue which pleases the eye and gladdens the soul. If it could feel it certainly would say, "How dearly I have to pay for the beautiful tr

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 28th, 1907 }   The Secret Springs of Morleyism   The apostasy of John Morley has come as a surprise and a scandal to that numerous class of believers in British professions who looked upon him as an avatar of the spirit of philosophic Liberalism. To those who had studied the man at closer quarters there was no disappointment and no surprise. As the Kesari pointed out in the early days of his administration, the new Secretary of State might be a philosopher and defend human liberties in his books, but in the India Office he was bound to be a British statesman first of all and defend the continuance of Brit