The Future and the Nationalists WHATEVER view we take of the present situation, the first duty of every Nationalist is to take care that the great principles of Nationalism are not infringed by any concession to the party of fear and self-interest which would imperil the future of the movement and the destiny of the nation. All the articles we have written on the Convention have been the expression of a momentary policy dictated by the great and almost universal desire in the country that a split should be avoided. But we should never forget that policy is subordinate to principle. As a democratic party, it is our duty to bow to the will of the major

THE SLAYING OF CONGRESS A Tragedy in Three Acts Bande Mataram - February, 1908 A c t  O n e S C E N E  I Calcutta. Dadabhai, Mehta, Gokhale, Surendra, Tilak and others; Democracy, Congress.                 DADABHAI Much have I laboured, toiled for many years To see this glorious day. Our Lady Congress Grown to a fair and perfect womanhood, Who at Benares came of age, is now With pomp and noble ceremony arrived In this Calcutta to assume the charge Of her own life into her proper hands. Mehta and Gokhale, Tilak, Suren, all,

The 7th of August THE approaching celebration of the 7th of August has a double importance this year, for it has not only its general and permanent importance as the commemoration of our declaration of independence, but an occasional though none the less urgent importance as an opportunity of reaffirming our separate national existence against the arbitrary and futile attempt of the bureaucracy to reaffirm and perpetuate a vanishing despotism. The 7th of August will be recognised in the future as a far more important date to the building up of the nation than the 16th October. On the 16th October the threatened unity of Bengal was asserted against the disingenuous and da

The Morality of Boycott* AGES ago there was a priest of Baal who thought himself commissioned by the god to kill all who did not bow the knee to him. All men, terrified by the power and ferocity of the priest, bowed down before the idol and pretended to be his servants; and the few who refused had to take refuge in hills and deserts. At last, a deliverer came and slew the priest and the world had rest. The slayer was blamed by those who placed religion in quietude and put passivity forward as the ideal ethics, but the world looked on him as an incarnation of God. A certain class of mind shrinks from aggressiveness as if it were a sin. Their temperament forbid

Is Mendicancy Successful ? AN apologia for the mendicant policy has recently appeared in the columns of the Bengalee. The heads of the defence practically reduce themselves to two or three arguments. 1. The policy of petitioning was recommended by Raja Rammohan Roy, has been pursued consistently since then, and has been eminently successful — at least whatever political gains have been ours in the last century, have been won by this policy. 2. Supposing this contention to be lost, there remains another. There petitioning is bad, but when the petition is backed by the will of the community, resolved to gain its object by every legitimate means, it is not

The Old Policy and the New BABU Bhupendranath Bose has issued a manifesto of his views in the Bengalee, in which he explains his letter to the Secretary of the People's Association at Comilla. That document, it seems, was a private letter, although it was obviously intended to produce a public effect, viz. to prevent the nomination of Mr. Tilak and to counteract the effect of Babu Bepin Chandra Pal's meeting and speeches in Comilla. However, we have now an authoritative statement of Babu Bhupendranath's "policy", and no further misunderstanding is possible. This policy is precisely what we expected; it might have been penned in the pre-Partition and pr

The Vanity of Reaction THE devices of reactionary absolutism have a curious family resemblance all the world over. Reaction is never intelligent and never imaginative. Limited to the narrow horizon of its own selfish interests, committed to the preservation of the impossible and the resuscitation of corrupt systems and dead forms it has neither the vision to understand and measure the forces that have been new born to replace it, nor the wisdom to treat and compromise with the strength of Demogorgon while yet unripe so as to prolong its hour of rule for a little, — the only grace that Heaven allows to doomed institutions and forfeited powers. Like Kamsa of old, it se

The Voice of the Martyrs WE ARE now rejoicing over the release of Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal, but who among us is prepared to forget that so many have suffered for the country not less or more than he, and are still suffering? Yesterday when we welcomed the great orator, the man of high thoughts and inspired eloquence, the prophet of new ideas to his people, our thoughts went for a while to those who are now in British prisons, to Bhupen, to Basanta, to the Editor of the Barisal Hitaishi and the Rangpur Vartabaha, to the aged Moulavi spending the last years of his noble life in the severities of a criminal jail, to our fellow martyrs of East Bengal, to the few who

Nationalism not Extremism IT IS a curious fact that even after so many months of sustained propaganda and the most clear and definite statements of the New Politics, there should still be so much confusion as to the attitude of the Nationalist Party and the elementary issues they have raised. This confusion is to some extent due to wilful distortion and deliberate evasion of the true issues. The ultra-loyalist publicists especially, Indian or Anglo-Indian, are obliged to ignore the true position of the party, misnamed Extremists, because they are unable to meet its trenchant and irresistible logic and common sense. But with the great majority of Indian poli

The Village and the Nation WE WROTE yesterday of the necessity of going back to the land if the Bengali Hindu is to keep his place in the country and escape the fate of those who divorce themselves from the root of life, the soil. But there is another aspect of the question which is also of immense importance. The old organisation of the Indian village was self-sufficient, self-centred, autonomous and exclusive. These little units of life existed to themselves, each a miniature world of its own petty interests and activities; like a system of planets united to each other indeed by an unconscious force but each absorbed in its own life and careless of the other.