Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 2nd October 1909 — No.15
Facts and Opinions
Cook Versus Peary
It is with a somewhat sardonic sense of humour that we in India, whom that eminently truthful diplomat, Lord Curzon, once had the boldness to lecture on our mendacity and the superior truth of the Occidental, have watched the vulgar squabble between Dr. Cook and Commander Peary about the discovery of the North Pole.
Long ago, most of the romance and mystery had gone out of the search for the Pole.
The quest, though still extremely difficult and even perilous to an incautious adventurer, had no longer the charm of those gigantic dangers which met and slew the old explorers.
It was known besides that little was likely to reward the man who succeeded, and there was small chance of anything but ice and cold being discovered at the North Pole.
What little of the interesting and poetic was left in the idea, has now gone out of it for ever, and only a sense of nausea is left behind, as the controversy develops and leaves one with a feeling that it would have been better if the goal of so many heroic sacrifices had been left undiscovered for all time, rather than that it should have been discovered in this way.
The spectacle of two distinguished explorers, one, we suppose from his title, an American naval officer and the other a savant not unknown to fame, hurling at each other such epithets as liar and faker, accusing each other of vile and dishonourable conduct, advancing evidence that when examined melts into thin air, citing witnesses who, when questioned, give them the lie, while all Europe and America join and take sides in the disgusting wrangle, is one that ought to give pause to the blindest admirer of Western civilisation and believer in Western superiority.
We certainly will not imitate the general run of European writers who, arguing smugly from temporary, local or individual circumstances, talk in the style of self-satisfied arrogance, of Oriental barbarity, Oriental 
treachery and mendacity, Oriental unscrupulousness; we will not say that the continents of Europe and America are peopled by nations of highly civilised liars, impostors1 and fakers of evidence without any sense of truth, honour or dignity, although we have as good cause as any Western critic of Asia; but at any rate the legend of European superiority and the inferior morals of the Asiatic has, by this time, been so badly damaged that we think even the Englishman might think twice before it bases its opposition to national aspirations on the pretensions of the Pharisee.
It is evident that we are as good as the Europeans; we think we are in most respects better; we certainly could not be worse.