Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 31st July 1909 — No.6
Facts and Opinions
Nervous Anglo-India
Time was when Srijut Surendranath Banerji1 was held by nervous Anglo-India to be the crowned King of an insurgent Bengal, a very pestilent fellow flooding the country with sedition and rebellion.
The whirligig of Time brings round with it strange revenges and at this moment Srijut Surendranath is returning to India acclaimed by English Conservatives as a pillar of the British Empire, India's representative with a mighty organisation behind him pledged to loyalty, co-operation and the support of Morleyan reform.
After Surendranath, Srijut Bipin2 Chandra Pal, reputed editor of Bande Mataram and author of the great Madras speeches, loomed as the arch-plotter of revolution and the chief danger to the Empire.
The same Bipin3 Chandra is now a peaceful and unsuspected journalist and lecturer in London acquitted, we hope, of all wish to be the Ravana destined to 
shake the British Kailas.
But Anglo-India needs a bogeyman and by a few letters to the Times Mr. Krishnavarma has leaped into that eminent but unenviable position.
Who knows?
In another year or two even he may be considered a harmless if inconvenient idealist.
What is it, one wonders, that has turned the firm, phlegmatic Briton into a nervous quaking old woman in love with imaginative terrors?
Is it democracy?
Is it the new sensationalist Press run by Harmsworth and Company?
The phenomenon is inexplicable, but it is to be feared it is going to be permanent.