Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 18th December 1909 — No.24
Facts and Opinions
Sir Pherozshah's Resignation
The resignation of Sir Pherozshah Mehta took all India by surprise.
It was as much a cause of astonishment to his faithful friends and henchmen as to the outside world.
The speculation and bewilderment have been increased by the solemn mystery in which the Dictator of the Convention has shrouded his reasons for a step so suddenly and painfully embarrassing to the body he created and now rules and protects.
A multitude of reasons have been severally alleged for this sudden move in the game by ingenious speculators, but they seem mostly to be figments of the imagination.
It was an ingenious guess that Sir Pherozshah has been appointed, as a reward for his great services to the Government, on the India Council and could, therefore, take no farther part in party politics.
But until the appointment, if real, is announced, such self-denial is not obligatory, and surely Lord Morley would be quite willing to give his choice ten days' grace in order that he might pilot through this crisis in its fortunes a body so useful to the Government as the Convention that is striving this year to meet at Lahore.
We ourselves lean to the idea that it is the complications ensuing on the unmasking of the Reforms that are chiefly responsible for the move.
The Reforms are exasperating to Hindu sentiment, destructive to popular interests and a blow even to the Loyalist Hindus who were loudest in acclaiming the advent of the millennium.
The Bombay leaders cannot accept the Reforms without exasperating the people or refuse them without offending the Government.
They are in that embarrassing position which is vulgarly called being in a cleft stick.
It is not surprising in a tactician of Sir Pherozshah's eminence that, at such a critical juncture, he should prefer to guide the deliberations of the Lahore Convention from behind the veil rather than stand forward and become personally responsible for whatever he may think it 
necessary to compel the Convention to do.
The Bengal Conventionists are already in danger of drifting away from the moorings and the new Regulations have, we believe, created the imminence of another dissension among the remaining faithful.
The resignation of Sir Pherozshah makes it easier for the Bengal Moderates to attend the Lahore Congress, and that may not have been absent from the thoughts of the master tactician.
But we never thought that Sir Pherozshah would care so much for the co-operation of the Bengalis as to allow Srijut Surendranath to be President, as certain sanguine gentlemen in Bengal seem to have expected.
Failing Sir Pherozshah and Mr. Gokhale, who for obvious reasons cannot be put forward so soon after the Benares Presidentship, Mr. Madan Mohan Malaviya was evidently the man, and we find accordingly that he has been designated for the succession by the obedient coterie at Bombay.
We await with interest the upshot of this very attractive entanglement and the method by which the Convention will try to wriggle out of the very difficult hole into which Lord Morley has thrust it.