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 criticised, and the habit of fault-finding which they turned into a weapon of

Palli Samiti* THE resolution on which I have been asked to speak is from one point of view the most important of all that this Conference has passed. As one of the speakers has already said, the village Samiti is the seed of Swaraj. What is Swaraj but the organisation of the independent life of the country into centres of strength which grow out of its conditions and answer to its needs, so as to make a single and organic whole? When a nation is in a natural condition, growing from within and existing from within and in its own strength, then it develops its own centres and correlates them according to its own needs. But as soon as for any reason this natural condition is in

The Surat Congress WHEN the All-India Congress Committee first betrayed its charge and degraded itself from the position of a high arbiter and guide in all national affairs to that of a party machine subservient to a single political tactician, we said that there were but two courses open to us, either to refuse to accept a party trick engineered in defiance of justice, decency and all the common rules of public procedure and to hold our own Congress at Nagpur, or to go in force to Surat and, if we could not swamp the Congress, at least to show that into whatever farthest nook or corner of India Sir Pherozshah Mehta might fly for refuge, he could not get rid of the pre

The "Mirror" and Mr. Tilak                 THE Indian Mirror, which is now the chief ally of Government among the Congress organs in Bengal, has chosen, naturally enough, to fall foul of Mr. Tilak. Our contemporary, it appears, has heard that some people propose to put forward Mr. Tilak's name as President of the next Congress, and it hastens to point out how extremely distasteful the idea is to all thoughtful and enlightened men, that is to say, to all whose views agree with the Mirror's. Mr. Tilak, we learn, has seriously offended our contemporary by giving honour to Mr. Bhopatkar on his release from jail; his speeches on the occasion of the Shivaji festival wer

The Nagpur Affair and True Unity THE Nagpur Nationalists are now being run down in every quarter for having failed to work in unison with the Moderates. The cause of rupture as disclosed by the Indian Social Reformer, a hostile critic of the Nationalist Party, will convince every right-thinking man that the Nationalists had ample provocation for what is being denounced as a highly reprehensible conduct on their part. They had a Nationalist majority in the Executive Committee and the Moderates were arranging for a fresh meeting of the Reception Committee to alter this state of things. This unconstitutional step led to the subsequent unpleasant dev

An Out of Date Reformer TIME was and that time was not more than two years ago, and indeed even less, when the reforms which Mr. Morley has announced would have been received in India by many with enthusiasm, by others with considerable satisfaction as an important concession to public feeling and a move, however small, in the right direction. Today they have been received by some with scorn and ridicule, by others with bitterness and dissatisfaction, even by the most loyal with a cold and qualified recognition. Never has an important pronouncement of policy by a famous and once honoured statesman of whom much had been expected, delivered moreover under the most dra

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 unfree India and knew what it was — a voice in the chorus of Asiatic liberty. Th

The Martyrdom of Bepin Chandra WE HAVE felt considerable delicacy hitherto in writing on the prosecution of Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal for refusing to take the oath in the Bande Mataram Case, as that prosecution has arisen directly out of our own. In fact, all the more important events of recent occurrence in Calcutta have been so closely connected, directly or indirectly, with this case that we have been practically compelled to keep our lips closed on current public affairs. The imprisonment of the Nationalist orator and propagandist, the most prominent public figure of the New Party in Bengal, is nevertheless a matter of capital importance on which we canno

-046_Shall India be Free (T. L. G.).htm Shall India be Free ? THE LOYALIST GOSPEL LIBERTY is the first requisite for the sound health and vigorous life of a nation. A foreign despotism is in itself an unnatural condition and if permitted, must bring about other unhealthy and unnatural conditions in the subject people which will lead to fatal decay and disorganisation. Foreign rule cannot build up a nation -- only the resistance to foreign rule can weld the discordant elements of a people into an indivisible unity. When a people, predestined to unity, cannot accomplish its destiny, foreign rule is a provision of Nature by which the necessary compelling pressure is applied to driv

“Bande Mataram” Prosecution THE prosecution of the Bande Mataram, the most important of the numerous Press prosecutions recently instituted by the bureaucracy, commenced with a flourish of trumpets, eagerly watched by a hopeful Anglo-India Press, has ended in the most complete and dismal fiasco such as no Indian Government has ever had to experience before in a sedition case. The failure has not been the result of any lukewarmness or halfheartedness in the conduct of the prosecution or any unwillingness to convict on the part of the trying Magistrate. The Police left no stone unturned to get a particular man convicted, the Standing Counsel did not hesitate to pr