Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Early Political Writings. 1890 — May 1908

Bande Mataram. September 23, 1907

Impartial Hospitality

The Englishman is ever predicting new horrors for the agitators. The agitator in the Press has been taken in hand, the present law is being tried to intimidate him into silence and as its inadequacy in this respect is being increasingly felt the coming winter will be taken advantage of to convert its present elasticity into a cast-iron rigidity. It will then crush the agitators at a single blow and the bureaucracy will have a merry time of it. In the meantime political considerations are expected to do the duty of the amended law. The present deficiency in quality is to be made up by an extensive enforcement of the law against all the miscreants. Prosecutions have already been instituted against all the seditious newspapers, and this ill-tongued messenger of the bureaucracy has brought us the latest news that seditious speakers will shortly meet with their deserts. The College Square and the Beadon Square must not be allowed to blow the pestilential seditious winds and the mild bracing air of the Pax Britannica should again form their healthy atmosphere. The prisoners' dock in the Police Court is now, we hear, to be occupied by guests from those quarters. The speakers are justly envious of the hospitality which is being lavished on the writers and as the Englishman now assures us of an impartial treatment, let no one complain of any partiality of British justice.

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