Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910 — No.29
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 22nd January 1910 — No.29
Facts and Opinions
Lajpat Rai's Letters
The case of Parmanand, the Arya Samaj teacher, whom with a singular pusillanimity the D.A.V. College authorities have dismissed before anything was proved against him, has been of more than usual interest because of the parade with which Lajpat Rai's letters to him were brought forward.
The letters were innocent enough on the face of them, but prejudice and suspicion were deliberately manufactured out of the connection with Krishnavarma, the expression “revolutionary”, the use of the word “boys”, and an anticipation of the agrarian outbreak in connection with the Punjab Government's ill-advised land legislation.
The bubble has been speedily pricked by the simple statement of facts in the Punjabee and by Lajpat Rai's own evidence.
That Lajpat Rai was acquainted with Shyamji Krishnavarma when he was in England, was known already; so were many men who worked with him, Sir Henry Cotton among others, when he was only an enthusiastic Home Ruler and violently opposed to violence.
The project of a Nationalist Servants of India Society well-equipped with a library and other appointments for political education was well advertised and known to the whole country previous to the first deportations.
The anticipation of the agrarian outbreak in the letter expresses 
an apprehension, not a desire, and merely shows that Lajpat Rai was uneasy at the rate at which the discontent was swelling and feared that it might lead to an outbreak prematurely forestalling the use of a peaceful pressure on the Government.
It is remarkable how throughout his career the honesty and consistency of Lala Lajpat Rai's adherence to a peaceful but strenuous Nationalism has been vindicated at every step, and this last revelation of his private and even secret letters is an ordeal of fire out of which he has triumphantly emerged with his consistency and his innocence wholly established.