Chapter 26The Indian National Congress: Moderates and · The Surat Congress

pretty harshly and had the insertion discontinued. I also wrote a strong letter on the subject to Subodh. From that time Bepin Pal or wrote that he resumed his editorship after I was arrested in the Alipur Case. I never heard of that. I was told by Bejoy Chatterji after I came out from jail that he, Shyamsundar and Hemprasad had carried on somehow with the paper, but the finances became impossible, so he deliberately wrote an article which made the Govt come down on the paper and stop its ´eclat and in all honour.

In other ways also Sri Aurobindo sought to appeal to the hearts of the Indian and British peoples. . . . Vidula . . . appeared in the second issue of the Weekly Bandemataram, which also contained “An Unreported Conversation” in verse between a Briton and Ajit Singh on the eve of his arrest. Another inspiring item in the issue was . . .

As a politician it was part of Sri Aurobindo’s principles never to appeal to the British people; that he would have considered as part of the mendicant policy. These articles and other items (satiric verse, parodies, etc.) referred to in these pages (not of course Vidula and Perseus) were the work of Shyamsundar Chakrabarti, not of Sri Aurobindo. Shyamsundar was a witty parodist and could write with much humour, as also with a telling rhetoric; he had caught some imitation of Sri Aurobindo’s style and many could not distinguish between their writings. In Aurobindo’s absences from Calcutta it was Shyamsundar who which were sent by Aurobindo from Deoghar.

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He was able to contemplate politics purged of all rancour . . .

Sri Aurobindo never brought any rancour into his politics. He never had any hatred for England or the English people; he based his claim for freedom for India on the inherent right to freedom, not on any charge of misgovernment or oppression; if he attacked persons even violently, it was for their views or political action, not from any other motive.

Earlier in the year [1907] he had been prosecuted in connection with his editorship of Bandemataram and the series of articles he wrote for the paper under the heading, “The New Path”.

No — the prosecution was for a letter written by somebody to the Editor and for the publication of articles included in the Jugantar case but not actually used by the prosecution. The The editor of the Statesman complained that they were too diabolically clever, crammed full of sedition between the lines, but legally unattackable because of the skill of the language. The Government must have shared this view, for they never ventured to attack the paper for its editorial or other articles, whether Sri Aurobindo’s or from the pen of his three editorial colleagues. There is also the fact that Sri Aurobindo never based his case for freedom on racial hatred or charges of tyranny or misgovernment, but always on the inalienable right of the nation to independence. His stand was that even good government could not take the place of national government, — independence.

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He had been acquitted then, but the prosecution had suc-ceeded, if anything, only in putting Sri Aurobindo to the fore-front and making the Indian intelligentsia only more than ever eager to read and con the columns of the one and only Bandemataram.

Sri Aurobindo had confined himself to writing and leadership