Selected speeches of Sri Aurobindo from the period 1907-1910. Most of these speeches were made as a Nationalist leader, before his retirement from Politics.
On 21 December 1907, Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta to attend the Surat session of the Indian National Congress. The next day he addressed a meeting in Nagpur. After the violent break-up of the Congress he passed a few days in Baroda, and then visited a number of cities in Maharashtra at the invitation of Nationalist colleagues. In all of these places he gave speeches, most of which have been preserved in one form or another. See the next page for details.
All told, Sri Aurobindo delivered fourteen speeches in Maharashtra between 22 December 1907 and 1 February 1908. Reports of eleven of them survive. Two were published in the Bande Mataram shortly after their delivery. Another was published in the Mahratta, an English weekly newspaper. Five others are known only by means of Marathi translations, while three exist only in the form of summaries or transcriptions made by the British police. There are no surviving reports of the remaining three speeches.
22 December 1907——Nagpur——Police report
12 January 1908——Poona——No known report
13 January——Poona——English report
15 January——Bombay——Marathi report
19 January——Bombay——English report
24 January——Nasik——Marathi report
25 January——Nasik——Police report
26 January——Dhulia——Police report
27 January——Akola——No known report
28 January——Amravati——No known report
29 January——Amravati——English report
30January——Nagpur——Marathi report
31 January——Nagpur——Marathi report
1 February——Nagpur——Marathi report
In the following pages, nine reports are reproduced. Only the two published in Bande Mataram may be considered adequate representations of Sri Aurobindo's words. The other reports are expressed in language that is sometimes awkward or defective; they have been edited to a greater or lesser extent to make them more clear and readable.
Source: Bande Mataram
During a trip to and from western India in the winter of 1907-8, Sri Aurobindo delivered at least fourteen speeches. Three of them were preserved in the form of transcripts published shortly afterwards in different newspapers, three others in the form of police reports in English, and five in the form of transcripts made first in Marathi by friends or police agents and subsequently retranslated into English. No transcripts of the other three speeches are known to exist.
Reports of nine of the fourteen speeches are reproduced in this part. Only two of them—those published in the Bande Mataram—may be considered reasonably adequate representations of his words. The other transcripts were recorded in language that is awkward or defective in one way or another. These have been edited to a greater or lesser extent to make them more clear and readable.
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