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Part Two Bande Mataram
under the Editorship of Bipin Chandra Pal 6 August 15 October 1906
The Bande Mataram was launched by Bipin Chandra Pal in August 1906. Pal and other members of the group then known as the New Party or Nationalist Party, but since then generally referred to as the Extremist Party, had been intending to bring out their own English-language newspaper since the end of 1905. Eventually, acting on his own and “with only 500 rupees in his pocket”, Pal had the first issue of the paper printed on 6 August 1906. The same day he left Calcutta for a tour of East Bengal. Before going, he asked Sri Aurobindo, who was about to become principal of the Bengal National College, to contribute articles regularly. Sri Aurobindo agreed and for the next two months was one of the Bande Mataram’s principal writers.
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Front page of the daily Page – 110
Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, August 20th, 1906 } Darkness in Light
We regret to find our contemporary Light surpassing the most moderate of the moderatists in the timidity of its aspirations. “What the most ambitious of Indians have dared to hope for is that a day may come, it may be a century hence, when in the domestic affairs of their country they will enjoy some measure of freedom from autocratic control.” Here is an inspiring ideal indeed! Hail, Holy Light! thou art indeed a fit candle to illumine a somnolent constitutionalist’s repose! ____________
Our Rip Van Winkles
The development of sounder political ideas and the birth and growth of a new national energy has been so swift and wonderful that it is not surprising to find a number of our older politicians quite left behind by the rising tide. Stranded on their desert islands of antiquated political ideas, they look forlornly over the heaving tumult around them and strive piteously to imagine themselves still in their old carefully sheltered arena of mimic political strife and safe, cheap, and profitable patriotism. But the walls of the arena have been washed away, its very ground is being obliterated, and a new world of stern reality and unsparing struggle is rapidly taking its place. In the fierce heat of that conflict all shams must wither away and all empty dreams be dissolved. The issue has been fairly put between the Indian people and the alien bureaucracy. “Destroy or thou shalt be destroyed,” and the issue will have to be fought out, not “it may be a century hence,” but now, in the next two or three decades.
Page – 109 We cannot leave the problem for posterity to settle nor shift our proper burdens on to the shoulders of our grandchildren. But our Rip Van Winkles persist in talking and writing as if Partition and Boycott and Sir Bampfylde Fuller had never been. ________
Indians Abroad
India to hand this mail laments the exclusion of Indians from the representative system on which the new constitution in the Transvaal is to be based and plaintively recalls the professions and promises of the British Government at the time of the Boer war. The saintly simplicity of India grows daily more and more wearisome to us. Everybody who knew anything at all about politics understood at the time that those professions were merely a diplomatic move and the promises made were never meant to be carried out. We see no reason to lament what was always foreseen. What we do regret and blame is the spirit of Indians in the Transvaal who seek escape from the oppression they suffer under by ignoble methods similar in spirit to those practised by the constitutionalists in this country. The more the Transvaal Indians are kicked and insulted, the more loyal they seem to become. After their splendid services in the Transvaal war had been rewarded by the grossest ingratitude, they had no business to offer their services again in the recent Natal rebellion. By their act they associated themselves with the colonists in their oppression of the natives of the country and have only themselves to thank if they also are oppressed by the same narrow and arrogant colonial spirit. Their eagerness to dissociate themselves from the Africans is shown in Dr. Abdurrahman’s letter quoted by India. All such methods are as useless as they are unworthy. So long as the Indian nation at home does not build itself into a strong and self-governing people, they can expect nothing from Englishmen in their colonies except oppression and contumely. ______
Page – 110 Officials on the Fall of Fuller
The seriousness of the blow which has fallen on the bureaucracy by the downfall of Shayesta Khan can be measured by the spite and fury which it has excited in such public organs of officialdom as the Englishman and the Pioneer. The letter of I.C.S. to the Pioneer which we extract in another column is a more direct and very striking indication of the feelings which it has aroused especially among the colleagues of the deposed proconsul. The Anglo-Indian press has for the most part grasped the fact that the resignation of Sir Bampfylde Fuller was a victory for the popular forces in Eastern Bengal. Had the new province allowed itself to be crushed by the repressive fury of Shayesta Khan or answered it only with petitions, like a sheep bleating under the knife of the butcher, bureaucracy would have triumphed. But determined repression met by determined resistance finally made Sir Bampfylde’s position untenable. Neither Lord Minto who from the first supported the Fullerian policy nor Mr. Morley who has done his best to shield and protect the petty tyrant in his worst vagaries, deserves the angry recriminations with which they are being assailed. They have both acted in the interests of the bureaucracy and if they have made an error of judgment in throwing Sir Bampfylde to the wolves, it is because the choice put before them was a choice of errors. By maintaining their lieutenant they would have helped the revolutionary forces in the country to grow; by sacrificing him they have given fresh vigour and self-confidence to the people in their resistance to the Partition. There comes a time in all such struggles when whatever the Government may do, it cannot fail to weaken itself and strengthen the people. Such a time has come in India and all the rage of Anglo-India cannot alter the inevitable march of destiny. _____________
Cow Killing: An Englishman’s Amusements in Jalpaiguri
A correspondent writes to us from Jalpaiguri;— “An Englishman, a forester, at Jalpaiguri has shot three cows, one of them
Page – 111 belonging to the school Head Pandit. The open garden of the forester is near certain bungalows adjoining the school, and it appears that the cows strayed into the garden, whereupon the Saheb calmly proceeded to shoot them. This he did laughing and in spite of the remonstrance of another Englishman, his friend. On the Head Pandit consulting his neighbours, he was told to consider himself lucky that it was the cows and not he whom the Saheb elected to shoot. Perceiving the force of this remark and apprehensive about his service, the Pandit has swallowed and is trying to digest the loss and the mortification. I hear that when the bodies of the cows were being taken away, the Saheb was dancing with exultation.” We publish the above extraordinary story of wanton oppression with reservation, but Anglo-Indian vagaries of the kind are too common for us quite to disbelieve it. If it is a fact, we trust the sufferer will think better of it and seek redress; the fear of swift punishment is the only motive force that can keep these vagaries in check and every Indian who submits is partly guilty of the insults and oppressions inflicted on his fellow countrymen.
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