Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, December 6th, 1907 }   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 businesslike gravity, in which it settles the basis on which representation shou

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, August 10th, 1907 }   To Organise   Srijut Surendranath Banerji in his remarkable speech in College Square, the other day, observed that what the country now needed was not oratory but statesmanship, for the only effective answer to bureaucratic repression is the organisation of the whole strength of the country to carry out its national ideal in spite of all repression. We think the veteran leader has gauged the situation very accurately, but we confess we do not see at present where the statesmanship is to come from which is to carry out the difficult, arduous and delicate task before us. What we have done hi

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, May 20th, 1907 }   The Statesman on Mr. Mudholkar   Nothing can be more instructive than the way in which recent events have arrayed all Anglo-Indians, "liberal" or reactionary, on one side and on the other hand brought all Indian politicians, moderate or "extremist", nearer to each other. It shows that the profound division of interests creates an unbridgeable gulf between the aliens in possession and the people of the country in their different degrees of aspiration. Apparent alliances between Anglo-India and any section of the people, can only be temporary adjustments of self-interest or of policy. When the cr

The Proposed Reconstruction of Bengal   Partition or Annihilation?   In the excitement & clamour that has followed the revolutionary proposal of Lord Curzon's Government to break Bengal into pieces, there is some danger of the new question being treated only in its superficial aspects and the grave & startling national peril for which it is the preparation being either entirely missed or put out of sight. On a perusal of the telegrams which pour in from Eastern Bengal one is struck with the fact that they mainly deal with certain obvious & present results of the measure, not one of which is really vital. The contention repeatedly harpe

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 20th, 1907 }   Concerted Action   We publish in another column a letter from a correspondent signing himself "Organised Co-operation", in which a very elaborate plan is sketched out for ascertaining the opinion of the nation and following out in unison the programme arrived at. The scheme is, we fear, more elaborate than practicable. If the suggestion originally put forward by the Nationalists of the creation of Congress electorates had been adopted, such a plebiscite might have been possible; as it is, the necessary machinery does not exist. Moreover, such an all-India plebiscite covering the whole field of politics,

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, July 11th, 1907 }   English Obduracy and Its Reason   We seriously invite our Moderate friends to ask themselves for a reason as to why Englishmen should invariably meet all their demands for political reforms with the one unalterable answer that they are not fit to receive them. Why should John Morley whose writings and sayings are so instinct with an ardent love of liberty, so lightly flout their prayer for some concessions of a democratic nature? He not only denies the Indians the least measure of liberty, but shuts the door of any possible hope abruptly in their face by telling them that as long as his ima

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, November 16th, 1907 }   Nagpur and Loyalist Methods   The decision of the All-India Congress Committee, holding its session appropriately enough not in any place of meeting suitable to its character as a public body but in "Sir Pherozshah Mehta's bungalow", has put the crown on one of the most discreditable intrigues of which even Bombay Loyalism is capable. We held our peace about the real meaning of the Nagpur affair so long as there was the remotest possibility of the sense of shame and decency reawakening among even a section of the Nagpur Loyalists, lest a too trenchant exposure of the whole intrigue might imperil

New Lamps for Old   with   India and the British Parliament   The nine articles comprising New Lamps for Old were published in the Indu Prakash of Bombay from 7 August 1893 to 6 March 1894. A preliminary article, "India and the British Parliament", was published in the same newspaper on 26 June 1893.     India and the British Parliament   A great critic has pronounced that the aim of all truly helpful criticism is to see the object as it really is. The Press is the sole contemporary critic of politics, and according as its judgments are sound or unsound, the people whose political ideas it form

The Mother and the Nation   We have lost the faculty of religious fervour in Bengal and are trying now to recover it through the passion for the country by self-sacrifice, by labour for our fellow-countrymen, by absorption in the idea of the country. When a nation is on the verge of losing the source of its vitality, it tries to recover it by the first means which the environment offers, whether it be favourable to it or not. Bengal has always lived by its emotions; the brain of India, as it has been called, is also the heart of India. The loss of emotional power, of belief, of expansiveness of feeling would dry up the sources from which she derives her stre

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 5th, 1907 }   Wanted, a Policy   A silence has fallen on the country since the inauguration of a new repressive policy by the bureaucracy, a silence broken only by Coconada riots on one side and talk of a special Congress session on the other. Srijut Surendranath Banerji has gone to Simultala to think over the situation and other leaders are thinking over it wherever they happen to find themselves. The only gentleman in authority who has come forward publicly with a policy is Srijut Bhupendranath Bose and we are grieved to find that the country has received this honourable and legislative gentleman's pro