At the Turn of the Century   The last century of the second millennium after Christ has begun; of the twenty centuries it seems the most full of incalculable possibilities & to open the widest door on destiny. The mind of humanity feels it is conscious of a voice of a distant advancing Ocean and a sound as of the wings of a mighty archangel flying towards the world, but whether to empty the vials of the wrath of God or to declare a new gospel of peace upon earth and goodwill unto men, is as yet dark to our understanding.   Jottings from a notebook.   Page – 63

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, June 26th, 1907 }   The Tanjore Students' Resolution   At a meeting of the Tanjore students a resolution was passed exhorting the students and guardians at Rajamundry "to lose no time in starting a National College free from the shackles of the Government". Thus we find Madras students realising the situation better than the students in Bengal who played so prominent a part in the agitation that followed the Partition of Bengal. We have all realised that the education the Government prescribes for our young men is not calculated to help in developing the manhood of the nation. The system of education that pre

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, March 29th, 1907 }   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

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, December 13th, 1907 } 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 P

Appendixes   These appendixes comprise materials written by Sri Aurobindo, mostly by hand, between 1906 and 1908. The first one contains incomplete drafts of three articles, two of which were later published in the Bande Mataram . The second one contains writings and jottings related to the organisation and running of the newspaper, the third, organisational material for a proposed independent Nationalist Party, and the fourth, an interview of 1908.       APPENDIX ONE   Incomplete Drafts of Three Articles   Draft of the Conclusion of "Nagpur and Loyalist Methods" (see pages 742 ­ 43)  

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, March 24th, 1908 }   Exclusion or Unity?   We dealt yesterday with the question of the function of the Congress, whether it should be merely to focus public opinion and proceed no farther or to gather up the life of the nation and deploy its strength in a struggle for national self-assertion. When this question is decided the next which arises is that of the aim towards which the Congress is to work. If its function is merely to focus public opinion, its aim can only be to submit grievances to the Government for redress, to beg for privileges and to petition for favours. It will then admit the absolute autho

National Education   National Education is a vast subject. When I was told about the topic I did not quite realise its implications at first, but when I started thinking about it I understood its importance. The difficulties about the concept of National Education that are encountered here do not exist in Bengal. Here in the Bombay Province, the meaning of the term "National Education" is not clear to many. National Education, with its specific connotation, is suspect and men of wisdom dismiss it. In Bengal, on the other hand, the need to explain the concept does not even arise. There may be people in favour of it or against it, but National Education is something

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 13th, 1908 }   Peace and Exclusion   The Bengalee has a knack of crying "Peace, peace", when not peace but a tactical advantage is in its heart. It has been appealing to us to refrain from party attacks and recriminations while it carries out its policy of excluding the Nationalist party from the Congress unmolested. The singular nature of this demand has attracted bitter comment and given cause for irritation as well as amusement in the minds of our friends of the Nationalist party, but it is nothing new on our contemporary's part. Ever since the struggle began between the parties, the Bengalee has adopted th

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, August 20th, 1907 }   Barbarities at Rawalpindi   The process of terrorism that is going on at Rawalpindi in the name of administering justice is too open and transparent to require any unravelling. Of course, everyone who takes politics seriously thought that the British law and administration would at once reveal their true nature if the people were to enter on a real struggle for self-improvement and the repression that is being resorted to in the Punjab under the pretext of trial has caused no surprise to those with whom the work for the nation's future is a duty demanding enormous self-sacrifice. But the

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, December 3rd, 1907 }   Personality or Principle?   Our contemporary, the Punjabee, has in its last issue a balanced and carefully impartial comment on the Congress trouble and the action of the All-India Congress Committee, or rather of Sir Pherozshah Mehta in the exercise of his role of Congress Lion and Dictator. There is one remark of our contemporary's, however, which seems to us unfair to the Nationalist party and with which therefore we feel bound to join issue. He censures the Nagpur Nationalists for forcing on a division in the camp over a personal question like the election of Mr. Tilak as President. The que