All surviving political writings and speeches from 1890 to 1908 including articles originally published in the nationalist newspaper 'Bande Mataram'.
All surviving political writings and speeches from 1890 to 1908. The two volumes consist primarily of 353 articles originally published in the nationalist newspaper 'Bande Mataram' between August 1906 and May 1908. Also included are political articles written by Sri Aurobindo before the start of 'Bande Mataram', speeches delivered by him between 1907 and 1908, articles from his manuscripts of that period that were not published in his lifetime, and an interview of 1908. Many of these writings were not prepared by Sri Aurobindo for publication; several were left in an unfinished state.
We have seldom read anything more disgraceful, more unpatriotic, more opposed to all ideas of decency than the sneering and ill-natured attack on Lala Lajpat Rai which the Tribune has chosen this particular moment to deliver. It is a time when all over India men of all shades of opinion, except the worshippers of the bureaucracy, are putting aside their differences with this modest and self-sacrificing patriot in order to express their unanimous fellow-feeling with him in his hour of trial. It is precisely this moment that the Tribune chooses for its stab at Lala Lajpat Rai who is no longer there to speak for himself. If this unseemly conduct is dictated by a desire to dissociate itself from the exiled patriot in order to save its own skin, it can only be characterised as the basest cowardice; if by envy, party spirit and secret jubilation at the removal of a powerful Nationalist, it is indecent and unpatriotic. In ordinary times the Tribune was free to criticise and abuse Lajpat Rai and nobody would have cared, but when a man is suffering for his country, no one pretending to be a patriot has a right to vent on him either a private spleen or a dislike on public grounds. We have our own differences with Mr. Gokhale and Srijut Surendranath Banerji, but were either of these leaders to become the objects of official persecution, we should consider ourselves eternally disgraced if we remembered
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anything but the one fact that he was suffering for the sake of our common Motherland. The sneers of the Tribune would not in themselves be worth noticing; it is as an example of the utter want of true patriotism that it calls for condemnation.
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