Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 4th December 1909 — No.22
Facts and Opinions
An Ominous Presage
The Indian Daily News nowadays plays the Statesman's abandoned role of the Friend of India.
This journal has been recently harping on the necessity of the reform of the Municipalities and throwing out suggestions of the lines on which those reforms should be framed.
We cannot imagine anything more ominous, more fatal to the little of self-government that we possess, than these suggested reforms.
We pointed out in our article on the Reforms that under this scheme the Municipalities were the only weak point in the Government's armour and we hazarded a prophecy that the Government would follow the policy of thorough and mend this vulnerable part.
This is precisely what our Anglo-Indian “friend” earnestly and repeatedly calls on them to do without farther delay.
The principle to be enforced is that same false, vicious and anti-democratic principle of the representation of separate interests which has made the new Reforms a blow straight at the heart of progress instead of an important step in progressive development.
It is true that the Daily News deprecates separate electorates and advocates official control veiled and occasional instead of official control insistent, naked and unashamed.
But we know perfectly well that official control veiled and occasional, as in the universities, can be made as potent and effective a weapon for the suppression of independent 
action as official control direct and habitual.
And if the European, the Mahomedan and the landlord are to predominate in the Municipalities as in the reformed Councils and the representation of the “professional classes” carefully restricted, we do not care whether it is done by separate electorates or by some other equally careful manipulation of the electoral lists.
The result will be the same.
The Daily News seems to be inspired in its anxiety for reform by two lofty motives, the predominance of the European vote, wealthy but small in numbers, and the distinction of the predominance of the professional men who, under present circumstances, can alone represent educated India.
On the Councils the non-official European representation is small, not in proportion to the numbers of its constituency, but in its comparative voting power, yet this class is on the whole satisfied, because it not only gets what it knows to be disproportionately large representation but can be sure of the co-operation of the official in farthering its interests.
On the Municipalities, if the direct official control disappears, it will be necessary for the European vote to be dominant so as to prevent a combination of other elements from pushing other interests to the detriment of European privilege or monopoly.
The distinction which this journal, in common with other Anglo-Indian papers, draws between men with a real stake in the country and educated men, who apparently because of their education have none, sheds a flood of light on the kind of friendship which it cherishes for the people of this country.