At first Sri Aurobindo took part in Congress politics only from behind the scenes as he had not yet decided to leave the Baroda service; but he took long leave without pay in which, besides carrying on personally the secret revolutionary work, he attended the Barisal Conference broken up by the police and toured East Bengal along with Bepin Pal and associated himself closely with the forward group in the Congress. It was during this period that he joined Bepin Pal in the editing of the Bande Mataram, founded the new political party in Bengal and attended the Congress session at Calcutta at which the Extremists, though still a minority, succeeded under the leadership of Tilak in imposing part of their political programme on the Congress. The founding of the Bengal National College gave him the opportunity he needed and enabled him to resign his position in the Baroda service and join the college as its Principal....
Bepin Pal, who had been long expounding a policy of self-help and non-cooperation in his weekly journal, now started a daily with the name of Bande Mataram, but it was likely to be a brief adventure since he began with only Rs. 500 in his pocket and no firm assurance of financial assistance in the future. He asked Sri Aurobindo to join him in this venture to which a ready consent was given, for now Sri Aurobindo saw his opportunity for starting the public propaganda necessary for his revolutionary purpose. He called a meeting of the forward group of young men in the Congress and [they] decided then to organise themselves openly as a new political party joining hands with the corresponding group in Maharashtra under the proclaimed leadership of Tilak and to join battle with the Moderate party which was done at the Calcutta session. He also persuaded them to take up the Bande Mataram daily as their party organ and a Bande Mataram Company was started to finance the paper, whose direction Sri Aurobindo undertook during the absence of Bepin Pal who was sent on a tour in the districts to proclaim the purpose and programme of the new party.
The new party was at once successful and the Bande Mataram paper began to circulate throughout India. On its staff were not only Bepin Pal and Sri Aurobindo but some other very able writers, Shyam Sundar Chakravarty, Hemendra Prasad Ghose and Bejoy Chatterji. Shyam Sundar and Bejoy were masters of the English language, each with a style of his own; Shyam Sundar caught up something like Sri Aurobindo's way of writing and later on many took his articles for Sri Aurobindo's. But after a time dissensions arose between Bepin Pal on one side and the other contributors and the directors of the Company because of temperamental incompatibility and differences of political view especially with regard to the secret revolutionary action with which others sympathised but to which Bepin Pal was opposed. This ended soon in Bepin Pal's separation from the journal. Sri Aurobindo would not have consented to this departure, for he regarded the qualities of Pal as a great asset to the Bande Mataram, since Pal, though not a man of action or capable of political leadership, was perhaps the best and most original political thinker in the country, an excellent writer and a magnificent orator: but the separation was effected behind Sri Aurobindo's back when he was convalescing from a dangerous attack of fever. His name was even announced without his consent in Bande Mataram as editor but for one day only, as he immediately put a stop to it since he was still formally in the Baroda service and in no way eager to have his name brought forward in public. Henceforward, however, he controlled the policy of the Bande Mataram along with that of the party in Bengal.
Bepin Pal had stated the aim of the new party as complete self-government free from British control but this could have meant or at least included the Moderate aim of colonial self-government and Dadabhai Naoroji as President of the Calcutta session of the Congress had actually tried to capture the name of Swaraj, the Extremists' term for independence, for this colonial self-government. Sri Aurobindo's first preoccupation was to declare openly for complete and absolute independence as the aim of political action in India and to insist on this persistently in the pages of the journal; he was the first politician in India who had the courage to do this in public and he was immediately successful.
Source: Sri Aurobindo's Political Life
'Bande Mataram' Newspaper >>
It was not only against the British government that the articles abounded. "When I began the paper," Sri Aurobindo told a politician disciple in 1926, "I started attacking the big heads of the Moderate Party —among them Surendranath Banerji. And you will wonder, Bepin Pal wrote to me that I was unnecessarily creating trouble by writing them. Of course, I went on writing my articles without listening to what he said. I saw how little practical insight he had got in politics. At the 1906 Congress [at Calcutta] Tilak had to do the whole fighting alone against Pherozeshah and the rest and Bepin Pal could be of no help to him! I was then working behind the scenes."
Source
In August, 1907, The British sought to prosecute Sri Aurobindo under section 124A of Indian Penal Code for sedition as editor of Bande Mataram. Sri Aurobindo was arrested on 16.August.1907 and released on bail the next morning.
Bepin Pal was subpoenaed by the government as one of its witnesses. What a dilemma! If he refuses, he will be charged with contempt of court; if he says the truth he will implicate his young friend, harm the paper, and hurt the new Nationalist Party. People were in a dither to hear this witness. "I honestly believe," said Pal refusing to testify, "that prosecutions like that of the Bande Mataram are unjust and injurious; unjust because they are subversive of the rights of the people, and injurious because they are calculated to stifle freedom of thought and speech —nor are they justified in the interest of public peace. I have accordingly conscientious objection to take any part in that prosecution. I therefore refuse to be sworn or affirmed in that case."
Through his refusal, Bepin Chandra Pal became the first exponent of Passive Resistance. Judge Kingsford sentenced him to six months' imprisonment. Pal was sent to Buxar jail.
...The country will not suffer by the incarceration of this great orator and writer, this spokesman and prophet of Nationalism, nor will Bipin Chandra himself suffer by it. He has risen ten times as high as he was before in the estimation of his countrymen.... He will come out of prison with his power and influence doubled, and Nationalism has already become the stronger for his self-immolation. Posterity will judge between him and the petty tribunal which has treated his honourable scruples as a crime.
Bande Mataram > The Martyrdom of Bipin Chandra
The youngest in age among those who stand in the forefront of the Nationalist propaganda in India, but in endowment, education, and character, perhaps, superior to them all - Aravinda seems distinctly marked out by Providence to play in the future of this movement a part not given to any of his colleagues and contemporaries.... His only care is for his country - the Mother, as he always calls her. His only recognised obligations are to her. Nationalism, at the best a concern of the intellect with some; at the lowest a political cry and aspiration with others, is with Aravinda a supreme passion of his soul. Few, indeed, have grasped the full force and meaning of the Nationalist ideal as Aravinda has done..
The call [of India] went to the heart of Aravinda. His own native Province called for him. It laid on him the vow of poverty. It offered him the yoke of the saviours of their people and the uplifters of humanity - the yoke of calumny, persecution, imprisonment and exile. Aravinda obeyed the Mother's call, accepted her stern conditions, and cheerfully took up her chastening yoke. He gave up his place in Baroda, worth £560 a year, to take up the duties of Principal in the College started at Calcutta under the new National Council of Education at a bare subsistence allowance of £10 a month....
He went to Calcutta as an educationist. He knew that the foundations of national independence and national greatness must be laid in a strong and advanced system of national education. ... Aravinda is an apostle of modern education...
...Wider fields of public usefulness were soon opened up for Aravinda. The National School was without a daily English Organ. A new paper was started. Aravinda was invited to join its staff. A joint-stock company was shortly floated to run it, and Aravinda became one of the direc-tors. This paper - "Bande Mataram" - at once secured for itself a recognised position in Indian journalism. The hand of the master was in it, from the very beginning. Its bold attitude, its vigorous thinking, its clear ideas, its chaste and powerful diction, its scorching sarcasm and refined witticism, were unsurpassed by any journal in the coun try, either Indian or Anglo-Indian. It at once raised the tone of every Bengali paper, and compelled the admiration of even hostile Anglo-Indian editors. Morning after morning, not only Calcutta but the educated community almost in every part of the country, eagerly awaited its vigorous pronouncements on the stirring question of the day... It was a force in the country which none dared to ignore, however much they might fear or hate it, and Aravinda was the leading spirit, the central figure, in the new journal. The opportunities that were denied him in the National College he found in the pages of the "Bande Mataram", and from a tutor of a few youths he thus became the teacher of a whole nation..
32 A Unit of Force
32
Sri Aurobindo took part in the Barisal Provincial Conference held on 14 April 1906. He was in the front row of three in the procession, with Bepin Pal and Bejoy Chatterji. The president of the Conference, Abdul Rasul, passed with his English wife in a carriage. Other prominent leaders followed on foot in a procession. Nobody stopped them. But just as a band of young men came behind, the policemen lathi-charged the unarmed boys. Chittaranjan, the son of Monoranjan Guha Thakurta, was assaulted and pushed into a tank. Although he was severely injured the police could not stop him from shouting 'Bande Mataram.' That exemplifies the tyranny of the first Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal, Sir Bampfylde Fuller, and the undaunted courage of the youth.
After the breaking up of the Conference Sri Aurobindo 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."
"When after the Barisal Conference, we brought in the peasants into the Movement, forty or fifty thousands of them used to gather to hear Pal," recalled Sri Aurobindo. B.C. Pal,
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though lacking in organizational ability and not capable of political leadership, was perhaps the best and most original political thinker in the country, an excellent writer and a magnificent orator. Said Sri Aurobindo, "Pal was a great orator and at that time his speeches were highly inspired, a sort of descent from above."
Up to 1901 Bepin Chandra Pal was an avowed Moderate who believed in the 'Divine Providence' that had brought the British to India "to help it in working out its salvation." But the political turmoil unleashed by the Partition of Bengal, which brought him in close contact with B. B. Upadhyay and in closer association with Sri Aurobindo, wrought a change in him. Pal's speeches became full of the fire of Nationalism laced with philosophical knowledge. "Every large human movement, essentially a movement of thought, has, whether consciously or unconsciously, some Philosophy of Life behind it." By 1907 he became, not only a foremost political preacher in Bengal, but swept Madras off its feet with his impassioned nationalism. Srinivasa Shastri gives a vivid description of those speeches. "Babu Bipinchandra Pal burst into full fame in Madras as a preacher of the new political creed. For several days on the sands of the beach, he spoke words hot with emotion and subtly logical, which were wafted by the soft evening breeze to tens of thousands of listeners invading their whole souls and setting them aflame with the fever of a wild consuming desire. Oratory had never dreamed of such triumphs in India ; the power of the spoken word had never been demonstrated on such a scale."1
1. Swadeshi and Swaraj,
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Pal spoke on Swadeshi and Swaraj. "Swaraj," he explained, "will be the Swaraj of the Indian people, not of any section of it." This new National Movement in India, he asserted, "is essentially a Spiritual Movement." In a word, he became a popular exponent of the spiritual nationalism of Swami Vivek-ananda and Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo was always more explicit. "Swaraj" he said in his address at Jhalakati in June 1909, "is not the Colonial form of Government nor any form of Government. It means the fulfilment of our national life. That is what we seek, that is why God has sent us into the world to fulfil Him by fulfilling ourselves in our individual life, in the family, in the community, in the nation, in humanity.... There are some who fear to use the word 'freedom,' but I always used the word because it has been the Mantra of my life to aspire towards the freedom of my nation."
Sri Aurobindo based his understanding of Swaraj on the Vedic literature. The nature of the Universal, explain the Vedas, is "independent, self-protecting, and stands by its greatness, and in its greatness—stands sva-mahimni," which is synonymous with Swaraj.
The word 'Swaraj' was a bugbear to the Europeans. When they heard it they became full of unreasoning terrors. So there is no need to describe the consternation of the Anglo-Indian Government at Bepin Pal's triumphant oratory. "I do not think we should allow Bepin Chandra Pal to stump the country preaching sedition as he has been doing," wrote Minto, the Governor-General of India, to Morley, the Secretary of
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State for India, on 2 April 1907. Within three months of this, Minto went further and proposed the deportation of Pal on the ground that "Pal's behaviour has been monstrous, and it is the danger of it that we cannot ignore." No, the government did not ignore the danger. On a flimsy charge a few months later, the Government got him sentenced to six months' imprisonment. His sin? He refused to testify in court against his colleagues, in what came to be known as the Bande Mataram Sedition Case.
Bepin Pal had been writing articles in his weekly organ New India. Then he started another journal with the name of Bande Mataram. He asked Sri Aurobindo to join him in this venture to which a ready consent was given, for now Sri Aurobindo saw his opportunity for starting the public propaganda necessary for his revolutionary purpose. In article after article Sri Aurobindo traced out the programme of the new Nationalist Party. One of the recurring themes was the inclusion of the neglected masses and the organization of all forces in the nation for revolutionary action as the sole effective policy. A few samples.
1 September 1906 —"The true policy of the Congress movement should have been from the beginning to gather together under its flag all the elements of strength that exist in this huge country. The Brahman Pandit and the Mahomedan Maulavi, the caste organisation and the trade-union, the labourer and the artisan, the coolie at his work and the peasant in his field, none of these should have been left out of the sphere of our activities. For each is a strength, a unit of force; and in politics the victory
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is to the side which can marshal the largest and most closely serried number of such units and handle them most skilfully, not to those who can bring forward the best arguments or talk the most eloquently.
December 17, 1907 —"Nationalism depends for its success on the awakening and organising of the whole strength of the nation; it is therefore vitally important for Nationalism that the politically backward classes should be awakened and brought into the current of political life;... the shopkeepers, the artisan class, the immense body of illiterate and ignorant peasantry, the submerged classes, even the wild tribes and races still outside the pale of Hindu civilisation, Nationalism can afford to neglect and omit none.
April 1908 (?) —"The new [Nationalism] overleaps every barrier; it calls to the clerk at his counter, the trader in his shop, the peasant at his plough; it summons the Brahmin from his temple and takes the hand of the Chandala in his degradation ; it seeks out the student in his College, the schoolboy at his book, it touches the very child in its mother's arms; and the secluded zenana has thrilled to its voice; its eye searches the jungle for the Santal and travels the hills for the wild tribes of the mountains. It cares nothing for age or sex or caste or wealth or education or respectability.... It speaks to the illiterate or the man in the street in such rude vigorous language as he best understands, to youth and the enthusiast in accents of poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of philosophy and logic, to the Hindu it repeats the name of Kali, the Mahomedan it spurs to
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action for the glory of Islam. It cries to all to come forth, to help in God's work and remake a nation, each with what his creed or his culture, his strength, his manhood or his genius can give to the new nationality. The only qualification it asks for is a body made in the womb of an Indian mother, a heart that can feel for India, a brain that can think and plan for her greatness, a tongue that can adore her name or hands that can fight in her quarrel."
Just as he would leave not a single element out of the national life, so would he leave not an element out of yogic life. "To the last atom," said Sri Aurobindo.
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Source: Mother's Chronicles Book 5 > A Unit of Force
The Old Policy and the New (12-September-1906) The Comilla Incident (15-March-1907) British Protection or Self-Protection (18-March-1907) Look on This Picture, Then on That (06-May-1907)
More references to Bipin Chandra Pal >>
Bipin Chandra Pal was born on 7th November 1858 in Poil Village, Habiganj District, now a part of Bangladesh, in a wealthy Hindu Vaishnava family.
He was admitted to Presidency College in Calcutta but unfortunately could not complete his education and started his career as a headmaster. In the later years, while Bipin was working as a librarian in Calcutta public library he met many political leaders like Shivnath Shashtri, S. N. Banerjee and B. K. Goswami and was influenced and inspired by them. He went to England to study comparative ideology in 1898. In a span of one year he returned to India and since then he started preaching the idea of Swaraj. Being a good journalist and orator he always used articles, speeches and other forms of writing to spread nationalism, humanity and social awareness and the need for complete independence.
In his youth, Bipin Chandra Pal was inspired by his political Guru, Surendra Nath Banerjee. He started taking interest in politics in the early eighties of the last century. He shared the views of the Moderate leaders of the Congress. There was a certain change in him during 1904, due to the official announcement that Bengal was going to be partitioned. There was an anti-partition agitation against the decision of the government. Bipin Chandra like a true leader flung himself into the movement. He laid stress on the futility of the old methods of agitation through prayers, petitions and protests. According to Sri Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra Pal was one of the mightiest prophets of Nationalism. He was a man of mission, a great publicist and a magnificent orator. Bipin Chandra Pal was destined to become one of the chief propagator of the Swadeshi Movement.
He married a widow (he had to sever ties to his family for this). At the time of Bal Gangadhar Tilak's ("Bal") arrest and government repression in 1907, he left for England, where he was briefly associated with the radical India House and founded the Swaraj journal. However, political repercussions in the wake of Curson Wyllie's assassination in 1909 by Madanlal Dhingra led to the collapse of this publication, driving Pal to penury and mental collapse in London. In the aftermath, he totally moved away from his 'extremist' phase and even nationalism, as he contemplated an association of free nations as the great federal-idea. His plea for a transcendence to a broader entity than a 'nation' derived from the notion of the sociability of human beings, which he thought would create a common bond between nations.
He was among the first to criticize Gandhi or the 'Gandhi cult' since it 'sought to replace the present government by no government or by the priestly autocracy of the Mahatma.' His criticism of Gandhi was persistent beginning with Gandhi's arrival in India. In the 1921 session of the Indian National Congress, he delivered in his presidential speech, a severe criticism of Gandhi's ideas as based on magic rather than logic, addressing Gandhi: 'You wanted magic. I tried to give you logic. But logic is in bad odor when the popular mind is excited. You wanted mantaram, I am not a Rishi and cannot give Mantaram...I have never spoken a half-truth when I know the truth... I have never tried to lead people in faith blind-folded', for his 'priestly, pontifical tendencies', his alliance with pan-Islamism during the Khilafat movement, which led to Pal's eclipse from political life from 1922 till his death in 1932 under conditions of abject poverty. Comparing Gandhi with Leo Tolstoy during the year he died, Pal noted that Tolstoy 'was an honest philosophical anarchist' while Gandhi remained in his eyes as 'a papal autocrat', firm and ethically grounded, not only did he perceive the 'Congress Babel' in terms of its shortsightedness in late 1920s or, Congress as an instance of repudiating debt's folly, composed of a generation 'that knows no Joseph', Pal's critical comments should be located in context, since nobody can jump out of his skin of time. An estimation of Bipin Chandra Pal's entire corpus and the depth of his published writing cannot produce a fair idea or provide due justice if that is produced with the benefit of post-independence hindsight. Though there are many articles and books written about him from India and Europe, most of which are not hagiographical, his 'pen played not an inconsiderable part in the political and social ferments that have stirred the alters of Indian life', as the Earl of Ronaldshay wrote in 1925, what Nehru said in a speech during Pal's birth centenary in 1958 surmises 'a great man who functioned on a high level on both religious and political planes' opens a gate for enquiring this high-minded yet anomalous persona.
A journalist himself, Pal used his profession in spreading patriotic feelings and social awareness. He had also published a lot of journals, weekly and books to spread nationalism and the idea of Swaraj. The more prominent books of Pal include 'Indian Nationalism', 'Nationality and Empire', 'Swaraj and the Present Situation', 'The Basis of Social Reform', 'The Soul of India', 'The New Spirit' and 'Studies in Hinduism'. He was the editor of the 'Democrat', the 'Independent' and many other journals and newspapers. 'Paridarsak' (1886-Bengali weekly), 'New India': (1902-English weekly) and 'Bande Mataram' (1906-Bengali daily) and 'Swaraj' are some of the journals started by him.
Sri Aurobindo (far right) & Bepin Chandra Pal (far left) - Uttarpara, April, 1908
....It was more than a year ago that I came here last. When I came I was not alone; one of the mightiest prophets of Nationalism ( = Bepin Pal) sat by my side. It was he who then came out of the seclusion to which God had sent him, so that in the silence and solitude of his cell he might hear the word that He had to say. It was he that you came in your hundreds to welcome. Now he is far away, separated from us by thousands of miles....
...When Bepin Chandra Pal came out of jail, he came with a message, and it was an inspired message. I remember the speech he made here. It was a speech not so much political as religious in its bearing and intention. He spoke of his realisation in jail, of God within us all, of the Lord within the nation, and in his subsequent speeches also he spoke of a greater than ordinary force in the movement and a greater than ordinary purpose before it. Now I also meet you again, I also come out of jail, and again it is you of Uttarpara who are the first to welcome me, not at a political meeting but at a meeting of a society for the protection of our religion. That message which Bepin Chandra Pal received in Buxar jail, God gave to me in Alipore. That knowledge He gave to me day after day during my twelve months of imprisonment and it is that which He has commanded me to speak to you now that I have come out...
Sri Aurobindo > Uttarpara Speech
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