Political arena and early life as a Freedom Fighter, Calcutta 1905-1910

Bande Mataram, ‘Mother, I bow to thee’, becomes India’s National Song

For millions, the partition of Bengal was an unexpected blow to India and its ideal of unity. Suddenly, the unexpected happens: the inert mass of the Indian people awakens to the sound of a new mantra: Bande Mataram. It was prohibited to shout Bande Mataram in the open streets, but the people took it up as a war-cry and filled the air with full-throated chants of the two magic words.

Sri Aurobindo describes: “It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked around for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang ‘Bande Mataram’. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again be placed under the feet of the conqueror…” The slogan “Bande Mataram” soon becomes a nationalist prayer song during the anti-partition meetings.

The poem of Bande Mataram was written and published as a part of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Bengali novel Anandamath. It was first sung by Rabindranath Tagore in 1896 in the session held by the Indian National Congress that year. Since then, it has come to be used as a popular marching song for Indian freedom movement and political activism. Later it is banned by the British government, but the ban is overturned post-independence. It later becomes the national song of India.

In January, 1906 the Nationalist Party with Bal Gangadhar Tilak is organized.

During this same time, Bande Mataram becomes the spearhead of a new National party in Bengal and begins to circulate throughout India. Sri Aurobindo openly declares ‘complete autonomy free from British Control’ as the country’s aim. With Bal Gangadhar Tilak and others, the Nationalist Party is organized. [Note, this is over ten years before Ghandhi returns to India from Africa and enters India’s political scene.]

On the eve of the Calcutta Congress, headed by Dadabhai Naoroji, Sri Aurobindo participates as a counselor in forming the fourfold objectives of “Swaraj (the principle of national life independent of any form of government), Swadesh (preference for articles produced by Indian labor in India), Boycott (the determination not to use articles of foreign manufacture), and national education (an education unique to India)”. The Session in Calcutta passes the fourfold objectives and the proposal is forwarded to the Congress Session at Surat which was to meet on December 26, 1907.

1906, Sri Aurobindo is appointed assistant editor to Bande Mataram, an English newspaper, and later becomes editor

Bande Mataram is an English newspaper started by Bepin Pal and edited by Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo’s first preoccupation is 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.

The journal declared and developed a new political programme for the country as the programme of the Nationalist Party, non-cooperation, passive resistance, Swadeshi, Boycott, national education, settlement of disputes in law by popular arbitration and other items of Sri Aurobindo’s plan. The Nationalist Party took up the word ‘Swaraj’ (self-rule) to express its ideal of total independence and it soon spread everywhere.

The Bande Mataram is almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of a people and preparing it for revolution.

Earlier in 1906, Sri Aurobindo’s youngest brother, Barindra Kumar Ghosh, along with Abhinash Bhattacharya and Bhupendranath Dutt, founds Yugantar, a Bengali revolutionary newspaper in Calcutta. Yugantar preaches open revolt and the absolute denial of the British rule and includes such items as a series of articles containing instructions for guerrilla warfare. Sri Aurobindo writes some of the opening articles and exercises a general control.

Around this same time, Bengal National College opens with Sri Aurobindo as its principal. To reorganize the whole system of education on national lines was one of the planks in Sri Aurobindo’s revolutionary program. He aims for a system of education that is soul-oriented and has relevance to the needs of the country. With this in mind, the Bengal National College in Calcutta opens in 1906 by a group of freedom fighters and Sri Aurobindo is named Principal.

In 1907, he is arrested under a sedition law to curb the spread and impact of Bande Mataram. While taking leave of the teachers and students at the college, he reminds them of the aims with which the college was started and is functioning.

Sri Aurobindo on why the college was established

In 1907 at the age of 35, Sri Aurobindo resigns from service in Baroda

The chapter of intensive secret revolutionary preparation is now closing, and a new chapter of public political action opens in the mosaic of India’s destiny. In June, a meeting of the forward group of young men in the Bengal Congress is called. They decide to organize 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. Sri Aurobindo becomes the recognized leader of the Nationalist Party in Bengal. The party takes up the word Swaraj to express its own ideal of independence and is soon spread everywhere.

Sri Aurobindo’s idea is to capture the Congress and to make it an instrument for revolutionary action instead of a center of a timid constitutional agitation which would only talk and pass resolutions and recommendations to the foreign Government. There must be an increasing non-cooperation and passive resistance which would render the administration of the country by a foreign Government difficult or finally impossible, a universal unrest which would wear down repression and finally, if need be, an open revolt all over the country. His plan included a boycott of British trade, the substitution of national schools for the Government institutions, the creation of arbitration court to which the people could resort instead of depending on the ordinary courts of law, the creation of volunteer forces which would be the nucleus of an arm of open revolt, and all other action that could make the programme complete.