The Comilla Incident THE Comilla affair remains, after everybody has said his say, obscured by the usual tangle of contradictions. The Hindu version presents a number of allegations, — specific, detailed and categorical — of attacks on Hindus, making up in the mass a serious picture of a mofussil town given over for days to an outbreak of brutal lawlessness on the part of one section of the Mahomedan community, a Magistrate quiescent and sympathetically tolerant of the rioters, and the final resort by the Hindu community to drastic measures of self-defence on the continued refusal of British authority to do its duty as the guardian of law and order. A Mahomedan repo

Reasons of Secession WE HAVE now placed all the facts of the Midnapur Conference before the public and the reasons which made a Nationalist secession inevitable are sufficiently obvious. The Loyalist legend that the Nationalists came prepared to break up the Conference by force, but were either baffled, say some authorities, by the "mingled tact and firmness" of Mr. K. B. Dutt, or overawed, say others, by the presence of the President's bureaucratic friends and allies, and in their rage and disappointment seceded and held a separate meeting, is too contemptible a lie to be treated seriously. "Why should they secede? What was the necessity of a second Conference?" ask

Oligarchy or Democracy? APART from questions of aim and method, a fruitful source of discord between the two parties has been the divergence of views with regard to the spirit of the Congress, whether it is to be the Congress of the few or the Congress of the many. This divergence has been chiefly operative in bringing about struggles over the election of the President and his method of conducting the proceedings, over the selection of the Subjects Committee and the rights of the delegates to express their opinion and use every means to make it operative. One side demands implicit obedience to the authority of the President and a small circle of leaders, the other

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Volume I of the SRI AUROBINDO BIRTH CENTENARY LIBRARY is a compilation of Sri Aurobindo's political writings and speeches of the period 1890 to May 1908. Concerned principally with India's freedom from British rule and the means of attaining it, they cover also the resurgence of Asiatic countries, the necessity of their emergence as representatives of spiritual culture, and other historical and contemporary events or issues. Sri Aurobindo's preoccupation with India's freedom and renaissance began in his student days at Cambridge where he gave speeches at meetings of the Indian Majlis. Only a few incomplete notes on this subject are

The New Faith THE political struggle in India is entering on a new phase; and now that the Nationalists have been given a foretaste of its persecuting ability, the bureaucracy is making an awkward attempt to patch up a reconciliation with the Moderate leaders. The olive branch has been already held out; Lala Lajpat Rai and Sirdar Ajit Singh have been released, and vague rumours of other conciliatory measures are in the air. Press prosecutions, deportations and police hooliganism have done their work. It is now fondly believed that Nationalism is crushed and what remains is but to exchange a complimentary smile with Moderate politicians and swear eternal peace and goo

From Phantom to Reality THE action of the omnipotent and irresponsible executive in obstructing District Conferences alike in the proclaimed and unproclaimed areas of Bengal ought to carry home to every mind, however persistent in self-deception, the absurdity of vaunting the rights and privileges of a subject people. There is a taunt writ large over these ukases and it is this: "Fools and self-deceivers who think that rights can be held as the gift of a superior! Nothing is a right till it has been purchased by sacrifices as great as the aspiration is high. You were allowed to speak and pass resolutions so long as speeches and resolutions were all; but now that y

The Berhampur Conference THE Conference which meets at Berhampur tomorrow is the most important that has been yet held in Bengal, for its deliberations are fraught with issues of supreme importance to the future of the country. A heavy responsibility rests upon the delegates who have been sent to Berhampur from all parts of Bengal. For this is the first Provincial Conference after the historic twenty-second session of the Congress at Calcutta. At that session the policy of self-development and self-help was incorporated as an integral part of the political programme by the representatives of the whole nation, the policy of passive resistance was declared legiti

Caste and Representation THE policy of the Bureaucracy in the face of the national movement, so far as it is anything more than crude repression, is a policy of makeshifts and dodges, and, though skilful in a way, it shows throughout an extraordinary ignorance of the country they rule. The latest brilliant device is an attempt to reshuffle the constituent elements of Indian politics and sort them out afresh on the basis not only of creed, but of caste. The Pioneer has come out with an article in its best style of business-like gravity, in which it settles the basis on which representation should be given to India. For two years of unrest have brought us so far t

The Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves THE collapse of the Bande Mataram Prosecution and acquittal of Srijut Aurobindo Ghose, which have been welcomed with relief and joy by our countrymen all over India, are naturally gall and wormwood to the opponents of Indian Nationalism; but to none has the fiasco caused bitterer disappointment than to the Friend of India in Chowringhee. Sharing the common but mistaken impression that our paper depends on the writings of one man for its continued existence, the Statesman had evidently hoped that with the incarceration of Srijut Aurobindo Ghose the one paper in Bengal which it fears and which has ruthlessly expo

Personal Rule and Freedom of Speech and Writing MR. John Morley is reported to have delivered himself of the following fatuity: "One of the most difficult experiments ever tried in human history was whether we could carry on personal government along with free speech and free right of public meeting," and he was cheered by the House. He might as well have said, "We are carrying on in India the most difficult experiment of hunting with the hounds and running with the hare," and no doubt he would have been applauded with the same enthusiasm. The average member of Parliament is gifted with no remarkable powers of understanding and such intelli