Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 21st August 1909 — No.9
Facts and Opinions
Srijut Surendranath Banerji's Return
The veteran leader of Moderate Bengal has returned from his oratorical triumphs in the land of our rulers.
The ovations of praise and applause which appreciative audiences and newspaper critics of all shades of opinion have heaped upon him, were thoroughly deserved.
Never has the great oratorical gift with which Srijut Surendranath is so splendidly endowed, been displayed to such faultless advantage as in these the crowning efforts of his old age.
The usual defect of his oratory, an excess of language and rhetoric over substantial force, a defect which also limited Gladstone's oratory and made it the glory of an hour instead of an abiding possession to humanity, was absent from these speeches in England.
For the first time the orator rose to the full height of a great and sound eloquence strong in matter as in style.
With the statesman's part in the speeches we do not wholly agree.
Nevertheless it must be accounted as righteousness to Srijut Surendranath that he enforced the Moderate Nationalist view of things,— a very different view from Mr. Gokhale's which is certainly not Nationalism and hardly even strong enough to be called Moderatism,— to its utmost limits and did not leave the English public under the vain delusion that some paltry tinkerings with the Legislative 
Councils would satisfy the aspirations of an awakened India.
His first speeches accepting the reforms were great blunders which might have done infinite harm, but his later utterances, however equivocal on this point, did much to redress the balance.
We await with interest Sj. Surendranath's action in this matter.
In our view the one policy for us is “No control, no co-operation,” and in this we believe we are supported not only by the whole mass of advanced Nationalist opinion but by a great body of Moderates.
The danger is that the older Moderates, trained in a much less exacting system of political agitation, may attempt to enforce the demand for control only in speech while in action conceding co-operation without control and thus giving away for some fancied and worthless advantage the vital position of the new movement.
The reforms give no control, therefore the reforms must be rejected.
Co-operation is our only asset, the only thing we can offer in exchange for control, the only thing by withholding which we can by pressure bring about the cession of control.
It would be the height of political folly to give away our only asset for nothing.