Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, February 21st, 1908 }   The Latest Sedition Trial   We do not generally concern ourselves with the results of trials in bureaucratic law-courts. The law that is now recognised by the civilised world is the will of a people. The law that is really binding on a people is the mature deliberation of its own representatives as to the proper wont and scope of individual activity in relation to the common weal. Law if it is to be beneficial to society cannot be divorced from the truths established by science, on the contrary it derives its binding force from being based on them. That a bureaucratic law is not so much mea

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, October 11th, 1907 }   The Shadow of the Ordinance in Calcutta   The latest move of the bureaucrats to hamper the Swadeshi-boycott in Calcutta is one that has long been foreseen. The riots in Shyambazar had a double utility, to intimidate the people into giving up the boycott and to put an end to the meetings in the public squares which bore periodical witness of the quick and continued heart-beats of the great movement. The first object has not been served; on the contrary, popular exasperation has manifested itself in a more thorough-going resort to the weapon of boycott and the chances of a large sale of foreign

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 12th, 1907 }   An Out-of-Date Reformer   Time was and that time was not more than two years ago and indeed even less, when the reforms which Mr.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

APPENDIX TWO   Writings and Jottings Connected with the Bande Mataram 1906 ­ 1908   The pieces in this appendix deal with the formation of the Bande Mataram Printers and Publishers, Limited, or with the finances, management and production of the Bande Mataram newspaper. All but one of them are reproduced from Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts. The exception, the first piece, is a printed version of the original prospectus of the Bande Mataram Printers and Publishers, Limited (1906), which in all likelihood was written by Sri Aurobindo and which was signed by him and eight others.   "Bande Mataram" Printers & Publishers, Limite

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, March 7th, 1908 }   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 organization 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

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 26th, 1907 }   Graduated Boycott   The opponents of the new spirit have discovered that boycott is an illusion. An entire and sweeping boycott, they say, is a moral and physical impossibility; and their infallible economic authority, Mr. Gokhale, has found out that a graduated boycott is an economic impossibility. They point to the failure of the thorough-going boycott in Bengal as a proof of the first assertion; the second, they think, requires no proof, for how can what Mr. Gokhale has said be wrong? This assertion of the impossibility of a graduated boycott is an answer to the reasoning by which Mr. Tilak

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, December 14th, 1907 } Reasons of Secession   We have now placed all the facts of the Midnapore 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. "

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, December 17th, 1907 } The Awakening of Gujarat   When the word of the Eternal has gone abroad, when the spirit moves over the waters and the waters stir and life begins to form, then it is a law that all energies are forced to direct themselves consciously or unconsciously, willingly or against their will, to the one supreme work of the time, the formation of the new manifest and organised life which is in process of creation. So now when the waters of a people's life are stirred and the formation of a great organic Indian state and nation has begun, the same law holds. All that the adversaries of the movement have don

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 25th, 1907 }   Morleyism Analysed   The fuller reports of Mr. Morley's speech to hand by mail do not in any essential point alter the impression that was produced by Reuter's summary. The whole of the speech turns upon a single sentence as its pivot— the statement that British rule will continue, ought to continue and must continue. Mr. Morley does not say for ever, but that is understood. It follows that if the continuance of British rule on any terms is the fundamental necessity, any and every means used for its preservation is legitimate. Compared with that supreme necessity justice does not matter, hu

Commercial and Educational Swarajya   My countrymen, I am greatly obliged to you for the reception you have given me. This is not respect paid to me, but to our motherland through me as medium. The people of whatever place I have been in have shown a wonderful enthusiasm, which clearly proves that national sentiments are enkindled in their bosoms. The thought of what we were two years ago, what things were liked by the people then, and what a change has taken place in the mental condition is very encouraging. From the time the Swadeshi movement was started by the Bengalis, we notice an exalted and self-sacrificing spirit in the conduc