Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Calcutta, October 11^th, 1906

Part Two. Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Bipin Chandra Pal (6 August – 15 October 1906)

By the Way

Emerson and original sin have never as yet gone together. But Principal Herambachandra Moitra has achieved the impossible. Lecturing to a Bombay congregation on a Wednesday he solemnly declared that “even children themselves are not free from sin,” and on the following Sunday discoursed on “Emerson”. Poor sage of Concord!

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Calcutta is going to have a Tower of Silence for the Parsis. The Patrika would, however, seem to hold that it is more needed by our own patriots. They evidently permit writing in that dreadful place.

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A “veteran” laments the decay of manners among the people of this country, in the hospitable columns of the Pioneer. There was a time, only forty years ago, when on the approach of a European, Indian lads would cry “Gora ata Gora ata” and skid. When the same class of lads now “pass a European with a cigarette between their lips and stare him calmly in the face,” and a “large number of natives salaam with their left hands” the world, or the British Empire, which means the same thing, must be nearing its end.

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Bengal politicians seem determined to maintain the ancient reputation of the nation for its logical acumen and subtlety. The Barisal Conference resolved not to send any prayer or petition to Government; when the Conference was forcibly dispersed, the leaders sent a wire to the Viceroy on the ground that a telegram was surely not a petition. They have resolved not to approach the Lieutenant-Governors¹ of the partitioned Provinces² with any prayer or address, but may still draw their Honours’ “serious attention” to various matters, public and personal, including the gift of a Deputy Magistracy to their sons. Surely a cosy place in the Executive Service is not a membership of the Legislative Council.

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There is considerable indignation among the true “Friends of India” both in England and in this country, at the “political oration” delivered by Mr. Manmatha Chandra Mallik³ at the recent Tyabji memorial meeting in London. After this we shall be told that it would be sinful to discourse on religion at a commemoration service in honour of a Lord⁴ Bishop of Canterbury or to speak on science at a memorial meeting of a President of the British Association. We think at the recent Tyabji-Bose meeting in London, Babu Romesh Chandra Dutt⁵ must have discoursed, therefore, on the greatness of Islam, and Sir Henry Cotton on the saving grace of Brahmo-Theology. We anxiously await full reports of their speeches.

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in  30  volumes.- Volume 1.- Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings. 1890 - May 1908.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1973.- 920 p.

¹ 1973 ed. SABCL, vol.1: Lieutenant-Governor

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² 1973 ed. SABCL, vol.1: Province

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³ 1973 ed. SABCL, vol.1: Mullik

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⁴ 1973 ed. SABCL, vol.1: of Lord

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⁵ 1973 ed. SABCL, vol.1: Dutta

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