Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 4th December 1909 — No.22
Facts and Opinions
The Lieutenant-Governor's Mercy
The outcry of the Moderates against the exclusion of their best men has led to certain concessions by which apparently the Government hope to minimise or obviate the formidable opposition that is slowly gathering head against the new Councils.
These concessions remove not a single objectionable principle from the Bill.
They are evidently designed to facilitate the admission into the Council of the two men in Bengal whose opposition may prove most harmful to the chances of the exceedingly skilful Chinese puzzle called the Councils Regulations, by which the consummate tacticians of Simla hope to preserve full control for the authorities while earning the credit of a liberal and popular reform.
The modification by which men who have served three years on a Municipality become eligible even if they are no longer on any such body at the time of election, seems specially designed to admit Sj. Bhupendranath Bose who, with all the other well-known men of Bengal, was excluded by the careful provisions of the Scheme.
But to have placated Sj. Bhupendranath and at the same time disqualified the greater Moderate leader would obviously have been an infructuous concession.
Accordingly, we are now given to understand that the Lieutenant-Governor has been pleased to intimate to the most powerful man in Bengal that, if he stands for election, the disqualification under which he has been placed, will be waived as a special concession in his favour!
We do not know what were the feelings of Sj. Surendranath when he was informed that this back-door had been opened to him by the indulgence of the bureaucracy to its dismissed servant.
But to us the permission seems to be more humiliating and injurious than the original exclusion,— to Bengal, if not to Surendranath personally.
As things stand, he cannot make use of the concession without forfeiting his already much-imperilled popularity and putting himself 
uselessly into a ridiculous and undignified position.
If he stood now, the whole country would believe that his dissatisfaction with the Reforms was due to his personal exclusion and not to the vicious principles of the Scheme.
He would enter not in his own right, but by the grace and mercy of the bureaucracy of whom he has been the lifelong opponent.
And to what end?
To stand isolated or with a handful of ineffective votes against a solid phalanx of officials, Government nominees, Europeans, Mahomedans and lukewarm waverers or reactionaries.
Sj. Surendranath gains nothing for himself or the country by entering the Councils on these shameful terms; he gains everything by holding aloof and standing out for better conditions.