Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 14th August 1909 — No.8
Facts and Opinions
National or Anti-National
We have long noticed with the deepest disapprobation and indignation the equivocal conduct of the National Council authorities with regard to matters of great national importance, but we have held our peace from unwillingness to hurt an institution established with such high hopes and apparently destined to play an important part in the development of the nation.
We can hold our peace no longer.
The action of the authorities in forbidding their students to attend a national festival commemorating the inception of the movement by which the College and Council were created,— a prohibition extended by them to the mofussil schools,— is only the crowning act of a policy by which they are betraying the trust reposed in them by the nation, contradicting the very object of the institution and utterly ruining a great and salutary movement.
They imagine that by being more servile than the most servile of the ordinary institutions and flaunting their high academical purpose they will save themselves from official repression and yet keep the support of the people.
They are wrong.
Already there is such deep dissatisfaction with the Council that the mofussil schools are dying of inanition and people are turning away from the new education as differing in no essential from the old.
If the authorities persist in their evil course, the public mind will write Anti-national instead of National over their signboard in Bow Bazar1 and their schools be left empty of students.
We shall return to this subject in a future issue.