Autobiographical Notes

The Bande Mataram Sedition Case

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 Bande Mataram was never prosecuted for its editorial articles. 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.

He had been acquitted then, but the prosecution had succeeded, 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

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behind the scenes, not caring to advertise himself or put forward his personality, but the imprisonment and exile of other leaders and the publicity given to his name by the case compelled him to come forward and take the lead on the public platform.