Today is not only the Independence Day, it is also the birthday of one of India’s greatest thinkers. On this day in 1872, Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta
First calls for independence
In 1906, Aurobindo was one of the first Indians to openly call for complete independence from the British, “at a time when the Congress Moderates were busy praising the ‘providential character,” according to Michel Danino
Bande Mataram
Just a year before, Aurobindo found Bande Mataram. Through the pages of the weekly paper, “Sri Aurobindo exhorted his countrymen to find in themselves the strength to stand up to their colonial masters.
He soon became the leader in Bengal of those whom the Moderates contemptuously called the “Extremists,” Danino, a IHCR member adds
British Press and Aurobindo
Another prominent freedom fighter Bipin Chandra Pal commended Aurobindo and his newspaper in the journal Swaraj. Long extracts from Bande Mataram were reproduced “week after week” in the exclusive column of the Times in London, according to Pal
“It at once raised the tone of every Bengali paper, and compelled the admiration of even hostile Anglo-Indian editors… It even forced itself upon the notice of the callous and self-centered British press,” Pal wrote