Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 9th October 1909 — No.16
Facts and Opinions
The Apostasy of the National Council
We have received an open letter from some teachers of the Rangpur National school in which they warn the President of the National Council of Education of the evil effects likely to ensue from the recent National Risley Circular and protest strongly against the policy underlying it.
For reasons of space we are unable to publish the letter.
The signatories point out that the movement took its birth in the boycott movement and was from the first, closely associated with it in nature and sympathy, that the participation of young men in the national awakening has been one of the chief causes of its rapid progress and success and that the new policy of the Council not only divorces education from the life of the country, but destroys the sympathy and support of the most progressive elements in the nation.
It is also pointed out that the donation made by Raja Subodh Mullik1, from which the practicability of the movement took its beginning and the sacrifices made by the teachers and students of the first established schools were intimately connected with the revolt against the Risley Circular, and yet the same circular is repeated in a more stringent form by the Council itself.
There were two conditions attached to Raja Subodh Chandra's gift; the first that the maintenance of the Rangpur and Dacca schools, which were created to give shelter to students who persisted in taking part in politics in spite of all prohibitions, should be assisted out of his donation, and second that no form of Government control should be submitted to by the Council.
It would be mere hypocrisy to deny that the issue of the prohibitory telegrams by the Secretary was the result of the Government circular previous to the seventh of August.
We do not know by what morality or law of honour the Council clings to the donation while infringing in the spirit its most vital condition.
Perhaps these things also, no less than courage and sincerity, 
are considered unessential in this new “national” education.
We notice that Sj. Hirendranath Dutt at Dacca seems to have openly proclaimed the abjuration of all connection with politics as part of the duty of a “National” school.
We must therefore take the divorce of the National Council from the national movement as part of a deliberate and permanent policy, and not, as it might otherwise have been imagined, a temporary aberration due largely to the fact that the President and the most active of the two Secretaries are members of Legislative Councils and therefore parts of the Government which is supposed to have no control over the institution.
All that we can now expect of the Council is to be a centre of scientific and technical education; it can no longer be a workshop in which national spirit and energy are to be forged and shaped.