Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 25th September 1909 — No.14
Facts and Opinions
The Convention President
The nomination of Sir Pherozshah Mehta as the President of the three men's Convention at Lahore is not an event that is of any direct interest to Nationalists.
Just as the three tailors of Tooley Street represented themselves as the British public, so the three egregious mediocrities of the Punjab pose as the people of their province and, in defiance of the great weight of opinion among the leading men and the still stronger force of feeling among the people against the holding of a Convention Congress at Lahore, are inviting the representatives of the Moderate party to a session of what is still called, even under these discouraging circumstances, the Indian National Congress.
It is of small importance to us whom these three gentlemen elect as their President.
The nomination was indeed a foregone conclusion.
Sir Pherozshah Mehta, having got rid of his Nationalist adversaries, now rules the Convention with as absolute a sway as he ruled the Corporation before the European element combined against him and showed that, servile as Bombay respectability might be to the Corporation lion, it was still more servile to the ruling class.
Indirectly, however, the election is of some importance to Bengal owing to the desire of the people of this province for a1 United Congress.
It is no longer a secret that in Bengal 
Moderate circles the feeling against Sir Pherozshah is almost as strong as it is in the Nationalist party.
It has even been threatened that, if Sir Pherozshah becomes the President, Bengal will not attend the session at Lahore.
This has since been qualified by the proviso that Bengal as a province will not attend, although some individuals may overcome their feelings or their scruples.
Bengal as a province would in no case attend the sitting of a mutilated Congress.
Even the whole Moderate party were not likely to attend unless their objections on the score of constitutional procedure were properly considered.
All that the threat can mean is that, even of those who would otherwise have gone, most will not attend.
This is, after all, a feeble menace.
Neither Sj. Surendranath nor Sj. Bhupendranath nor the Chaudhuri brothers are likely to forego attendance, and, for all practical purposes, these gentlemen are the Moderate party in Bengal.
If the Bengal leaders do go to Lahore, they are certain to obey meekly the dictates of Sir Pherozshah Mehta; for there is not one of them who has sufficient strength of character to stand up to the roarings of the Bombay lion.
They were in the habit of obeying him even when he had no official authority, and it can well be imagined how the strong, arrogant and overbearing man will demean himself as President, and how utterly impossible it will be even to suggest, either in Subjects Committee or in full meeting, any idea which will not be wholly palatable to the autocrat.
Sj. Surendranath Banerji at Hughly advanced the strangely reactionary conception of the President of a Congress or Conference as by right not less absolute than the Czar of all the Russians, bound by no law and no principle and entitled to exact from the Conference or Congress implicit obedience to his most arbitrary and unconstitutional whims and caprices.
This absolutist conception is likely to be carried out to the letter at the Lahore Convention.
If ever there was any hope that the Lahore session of the Convention might be utilised for bringing about a2 United Congress, that has now disappeared.
The hope was cherished by some, but it was from the first an idle expectation.
A firm combination of all, whether Moderates or Nationalists, who are in favour of union, and the holding of a freely elected Congress at Calcutta was all along the only chance of bringing about union.