Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 24th July 1909 — No.5
Facts and Opinions
The Indiscretions of Sir Edward
The speech of Sir Edward Baker in the Bengal Council last week was one of those indiscretions which statesmen occasionally commit and invariably repent, but which live in their results long after the immediate occasion has been forgotten.
The speech is a mass of indiscretions from beginning to end.
Its first error was to rise to the bait of Mr. Madhusudan Das' grotesquely violent speech on the London murders and assume a political significance in the act of the young man Dhingra.
The theory of a conspiracy behind this act is, we believe, generally rejected in England.
It is not supported by a scrap of evidence and is repudiated by the London police, a much more skilful detective body than any we have in India and, needless to say, much more reliable in the matter of scrupulousness and integrity.
It is the opinion of the London police that the act was dictated by personal resentment and not by political motives.
It is not enough to urge in answer that the young man who committed this ruthless act himself alleges political motives.
His family insist that he is a sort of neurotic maniac, and it is a matter of common knowledge that natures so disturbed often catch at tendencies in the air to give a fictitious dignity and sensational interest to actions really dictated by the exaggerated feelings common to these nervous disorders.
Madanlal Dhingra evidently considered that Sir William Curzon-Wyllie was his personal enemy trying to alienate his family and interfere with his personal freedom and dignity.
To an ordinary man these ideas would not have occurred or, if they had occurred, would not have excited homicidal feelings.
But in disturbed minds such exaggerated emotions and their resultant acts are only too common.
Unless and until something fresh transpires, no one has a right to assume that the murder was a political assassination, much less the overt act of a political conspiracy.
Anglo-Indian papers of the 
virulent type whose utterances are distorted by fear and hatred of Indian aspirations, may assume that of which there is no proof,— nothing better can be expected of them.
But for the ruler of a province not only to make the assumption publicly but to base upon it a threat of an unprecedented character against a whole nation is an indiscretion which passes measure.