Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 24th July 1909 — No.5
Facts and Opinions
Sir Edward's Menace
The final indiscretion of Sir Edward Baker was also the worst.
We do not think we have ever heard before of an official in Sir Edward's responsible position uttering such a menace as issued from the head of this province on an occasion and in a place where his responsibility should have been specially remembered.
We have heard of autocrats threatening contumacious opponents with condign punishment, but even an autocrat of the fiercest and most absolute kind does not threaten the people with the punishment of the innocent.
The thing is done habitually — in Russia; it has been done recently in Bengal; but it is always on the supposition that the man punished is guilty.
Even in the deportations the Government has been eager to impress the world with the idea that although it is unable to face a court of justice with the “information, not evidence” which is its excuse, it had ample grounds for its belief in the 
guilt of the deportees.
Sir Edward Baker is the first ruler to declare with cynical openness that if he is not gratified in his demands, he will not care whether he strikes the innocent or the guilty.
By doing so he has dealt an almost fatal blow at the prestige of the Government.
If this novel principle of administration is applied, in what will the Government that terrorises from above be superior to the dynamiter who terrorises from below?
Will not this be the negation of all law, justice and government?
Does it not mean the reign of lawless force and that worst consummation of all, Anarchy from above struggling with Anarchy from below?
The Government which denies the first principle of settled society, not only sanctions but introduces anarchy.
It is thus that established authority creates violent revolutions.
They abolish by persecution all the forces, leaders, advocates of peaceful and rapid progress and by their own will set themselves face to face with an enemy who cannot so be abolished.
Terrorism thrives on administrative violence and injustice; that is the only atmosphere in which it can thrive and grow.
It sometimes follows the example of indiscriminate violence from above; it sometimes, though very rarely, sets it from below.
But the power above which follows the example from below is on the way to committing suicide.
It has consented to the abrogation of the one principle which is the life-breath of settled governments.