The Boycott Celebration A NATIONAL festival is the symbol of the national vitality. All outward action depends eventually on the accepted ideas and imaginations of the doer. As these are, so is his aspiration; and although it is not true that as is his aspiration, so is his action, yet it is true that as is his aspiration, so will his action more and more tend to be. If it is the idea that finally expresses itself in all material forms, actions, institutions and consummations, it is the imagination that draws the idea out, suggests the shape and gives the creative impulse. Hence the importance of celebrations like the 7th of August, especially in the first moveme

The Doctrine of Sacrifice THE genius of self-sacrifice is not common to all nations and to all individuals; it is rare and precious, it is the flowering of mankind's ethical growth, the evidence of our gradual rise from the self-regarding animal to the selfless divinity. A man capable of self-sacrifice, whatever his other sins, has left the animal behind him; he has the stuff in him of a future and higher humanity. A nation capable of a national act of self-sacrifice ensures its future. Self-sacrifice involuntary or veiled by forms of selfishness is, however, the condition of our existence. It has been a gradual growth in humanity. The first sacrifices are alway

The Alipur Judgment THE judgment of the Appeal Court in the Alipur Case has resulted in the reduction of sentences to a greater or less extent in all but two notable instances, and on the other hand, the maintenance of the finding of the Lower Court in all but six cases, on five of which there is a difference of opinion between the Chief Justice and Justice Carnduff. So long as these cases are still sub judice, we reserve our general comments on the trial. At present we can only offer a few remarks on special features of the judgment. The acquittal of the Maratha, Hari Balkrishna Kane, must give universal satisfaction, as his conviction in the absence of any evidence

Sj. Aurobindo Ghose* WE ARE greatly astonished to learn from the local Press that Sj. Aurobindo Ghose has disappeared from Calcutta and is now interviewing the Mahatmas in Tibet. We are ourselves unaware of this mysterious disappearance. As a matter of fact Sj. Aurobindo is in our midst, and if he is doing any astral business with Kuthmi or any of the other great Rishis, the fact is unknown to his other Koshas. Only as he requires perfect solitude and freedom from disturbance for his Sadhana for some time, his address is being kept a strict secret. This is the only foundation for the remarkable rumour which the vigorous imagination of a local contemporary has set floating

The Reformed Councils THE great measure which is to carry down the name of Lord Morley to distant ages as the inaugurator of a new age in India, — so at least all the Anglo-Indian papers and not a few of the Moderates tell us, — is now before us in all its details. The mountains have again been in labour, and the mouse they have produced this time is enormous in size and worthy of the august mountains that produced him, but not the less ridiculous for all that. What is it that this much-trumpeted scheme gives to a people which is not inferior in education or intellectual calibre to the Turk, the Persian and the Chinese who already enjoy or are in sight of full self-go

Facts and Opinions Volume I - Nov. 13, 1909 - Number 19 House-Searches One wonders what would happen in any European country if the police as a recompense for their utter inefficiency and detective incapacity were armed with the power and allowed to use it freely of raiding the houses of respectable citizens, ransack the property of absent occupants and leaving it unsafe and unprotected, carrying off the business books of Presses, newspapers and other commercial concerns, the private letters of individuals, books publicly sold and procurable in every bookshop, violating the sanctity of correspondence between wife and husband, searching the per

Passing Thoughts Volume I - Feb. 19, 1910 - No. 33 The Bhagalpur Literary Conference The prevalence of annual conferences in the semi-Europeanised life of Bengal is a curious phenomenon eloquent of the unreality of our present culture and the inefficiency of our modernised existence. Our old life was well, even minutely organised on an intelligent and consistent Oriental model. The modern life of Europe is well and largely organised on an intelligent and consistent Occidental model. It materialises certain main ideas of life and well-being, provides certain centres of life, equips them efficiently, serves the object with which they are institu

The Hughly Resolutions WE PUBLISH in this issue the draft resolutions of the Hughly Reception Committee which have reached our hands in a printed form. Formerly our information had been that the Committee had based its resolutions on the Pabna Conference resolutions and preserved them in the spirit if not in the letter. We regret to find that this information was erroneous. While appreciating the labours of the Committee we cannot pretend to be satisfied at the result. The letter of the Pabna resolutions has been preserved in a few cases and their manly and dignified character contrasts strangely with the company in which they are found, but for the most part the m

Facts and Opinions Volume I - Jan. 22, 1910 - Number 29 Lajpatrai's Letters The case of Parmanand, the Arya Samaj teacher, whom with a singular pusillanimity the D.A.V. College authorities have dismissed before anything was proved against him, has been of more than usual interest because of the parade with which Lajpatrai's letters to him were brought forward. The letters were innocent enough on the face of them, but prejudice and suspicion were deliberately manufactured out of the connection with Krishnavarma, the expression "revolutionary", the use of the word "boys", and an anticipation of the agrarian outbreak in connection with the Punja

A Thing that Happened IT IS not the policy of the Karmayogin to dwell on incidents whether of the present administration of the country or of the relations between the ruling caste and the people. To criticise persistently the frequent instances of high­handedness and maladministration inevitable under a regime like the present does not lead to the redress of grievances; all that it does is to create a prejudice against the reigning bureaucracy. The basis of our claim to Swaraj is not that the English bureaucracy is a bad or tyrannical Government; a bureaucracy is always inclined to be arrogant, self-sufficient, self-righteous and unsympathetic, to ignore the abuses wi