Chapter 23The Indian National Congress: Moderates and · Start of the Bande Mataram

to recognise the finer elements in Gokhale’s mind and character; . . .

Alter as indicated. After an hour’s conversation with Gokhale in the train between Ahmedabad and Baroda it was impossible for Sri Aurobindo to retain any great respect for Gokhale as a politician, whatever his merits as a man.

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[In 1904 an extremist section was formed in the Congress; its members were waiting for the December 1904 session in Bombay in order to make themselves felt.]

It is not clear to what this refers. In 1904 the Extremist party had not been publicly formed, although there was an advanced section in the Congress, strong in Maharashtra but still small and weak elsewhere and composed mostly of young men; there were sometimes disputes behind the scenes but nothing came out in public. These men of extremer views were not even an organised group; it was Sri Aurobindo who in 1906 persuaded this group in Bengal to take [a] public position as a party, proclaim Tilak as their leader and enter into a contest with the Moderate leaders for the control of the Congress and of public opinion and action in the country. The first great public clash between the two par-ties took place in the sessions of the Congress at Calcutta where Sri Aurobindo was present but still working behind the scenes, the second at the [district]14 Conference at Midnapur where he for the first time acted publicly as the leader of the Bengal Nationalists, and the final break took place at Surat in 1907.

[At the Barisal Conference (April 1906)]

Sri Aurobindo took part in the Barisal Conference and was in the front row15 of three persons in the procession which was 14 MS Bengal Provincial. See Table 1, page 566. — Ed. 15 See Table 2, page 568. — Ed.

dispersed by the police charge. After the breaking up of the Conference he accompanied Bepin Pal in a tour of East Bengal where enormous meetings were held, — in one district in spite of the prohibition of the District Magistrate.

*

Besides Sri Aurobindo, there were also other fiery propagators of the new gospel of Nationalism — notably Brahmaban-dhab Upadhyaya, Bhupendranath Dutt and Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother, Barindra Kumar Ghose. . . .

Bhupendranath Dutt.

In the interests of truth this name should be omitted. Bhupen Dutt was at the time only an obscure hand in the Yugantar office incapable of writing anything important and an ordinary recruit in the revolutionary ranks quite incapable of leading anybody, not even himself. When the police searched the office of the newspaper, he came forward and in a spirit of bravado declared himself the editor, although that was quite untrue. Afterwards he wanted to defend himself, but it was decided that the Yugantar, a paper ostentatiously revolutionary advocating armed insurrection, could not do that and must refuse to plead in a British court. This position was afterwards maintained throughout and greatly enhanced the prestige of the paper. Bhupen was sen-tenced, served his term and subsequently went to America. This at the time was his only title to fame. The real editors or writers of Yugantar (for there was no declared editor) were Barin, Upen Bose who subsequently joined the Ramakrishna Mission (being acquitted in the Alipur case) and was [ ]16 prominent among the Sannyasis at Almora and as a writer in the Mission’s journals. Upen and Debabrata were masters of Bengali prose and it was their writings and Barin’s that gained an unequalled popularity for the paper. These are the facts, but it will be sufficient to omit Bhupen’s name.

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