Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Calcutta, May 14^th, 1907

Part Three. Bande Mataram under the Editorship of of Sri Aurobindo (24 October 1906 – 27 May 1907)

A Treacherous Stab

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 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.

This work was not included in SABCL, vol.1 and it was not compared with other editions.