BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 22 of 143

Correct — B, Aurobindo Ghosh. 'New Lamps for Old' was a series of nine articles that Aurobindo Ghosh published in the Indu Prakash of Bombay between 7 August 1893 and 6 March 1894, preceded by a separate piece, 'India and the British Parliament', in the same newspaper on 26 June 1893 — dates recorded in the editorial note to his Complete Works. He was twenty-one, newly returned from a long education in England, and had just entered the service of the Baroda State. The series is an attack on the Indian National Congress, then only eight years old, for the mildness of its politics, and the first article opens by turning a gospel line against the organisation: 'If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into a ditch? ... very few Indians will be found to admit — certainly I myself two years ago would not have admitted — that it can truthfully be applied to the National Congress.' The preliminary article had already put the charge at its bluntest, arguing that Indians 'must no longer hold out supplicating hands to the English Parliament, like an infant crying to its nurse for a toy'. Even the title carries the argument. It alludes to the Aladdin story, in which the magician walks the streets offering new lamps for old and takes away the one thing of real value — which is exactly what Aurobindo accused the Congress of doing, trading self-reliance for the glitter of constitutional reform. Written in 1893, this is the earliest sustained statement of what would later be called the Extremist position, more than a decade before the Surat split of 1907.

• (a)Surendranath — Surendranath — that is, Surendranath Banerjea, the leading Bengal Moderate, founder of the Indian Association and twice President of the Congress. His own famous book is his autobiography, A Nation in Making. The option is instructive rather than merely wrong: Banerjea belonged to precisely the school of constitutional agitation that 'New Lamps for Old' was written to demolish, so he is closer to being the target of the series than its author.
• (c)Motilal Ghosh — Motilal Ghosh — present on this list because he shares a surname with the right answer, which is the oldest trick in the option-writer's book. He was a figure of the Calcutta press, long associated with the Amrita Bazar Patrika, one of the great nationalist newspapers of the period. But the Patrika was a Calcutta paper, and 'New Lamps for Old' appeared in the Indu Prakash of Bombay, written by a very different Ghosh.
• (d)More than one of the above — More than one of the above — correct only if at least two of the three preceding attributions were true at once, which is impossible in the ordinary case of a single titled work with a single author. Run the count anyway: option (a) is false, option (c) is false, option (b) is true. One true attribution is not more than one, so the option fails on its own terms before any historical question arises.

The Indian National Congress of its first two decades practised what its critics called mendicancy — petitions, prayers, resolutions and appeals to British public opinion, on the assumption that British rule was fundamentally just and needed only to be informed of Indian grievances. Its great intellectual achievement was the economic critique of empire, the drain theory argued by Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt, but its method never went beyond constitutional agitation. Against that, from the 1890s onward, a second current rose that held the assumption itself to be false: Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh argued for swadeshi, boycott, national education and passive resistance, and for self-reliance rather than appeal. The two currents broke apart at the Surat session in 1907. 'New Lamps for Old' matters because it states the second position fourteen years before that split, at a moment when almost nobody was saying it. Aurobindo went on to write for the nationalist newspaper Bande Mataram between 1906 and 1908, was tried in the Alipore Bomb Case, and in 1910 withdrew from politics to Pondicherry, where his later philosophical works including The Life Divine were written.

The option list has been built around a surname. Two of the four names are Ghoshes, and telling Aurobindo Ghosh from Motilal Ghosh is the whole difficulty; the fourth option then offers an escape route that does not work. The reliable method is to hold each man by what he is known to have produced rather than by his name — Surendranath Banerjea by A Nation in Making and the Indian Association, Motilal Ghosh by the Amrita Bazar Patrika, Aurobindo Ghosh by 'New Lamps for Old', his Bande Mataram writing and, much later, The Life Divine. If the names still blur, read the title itself. 'New Lamps for Old' is ironic, literary and contemptuous, the voice of a young critic accusing an organisation of deceiving itself; it is not the voice of the organisation's own leadership. That tone points to the Extremist camp rather than the Moderate one, and among these four only one man belongs there. Finish with the counting rule for option (d): it needs two simultaneous truths and there is only one, since a single titled series has a single author.

• The editorial note to the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo records: 'The nine articles comprising New Lamps for Old were published in the Indu Prakash of Bombay from 7 August 1893 to 6 March 1894.'
• A preliminary article, 'India and the British Parliament', appeared in the same newspaper on 26 June 1893 and argued that Indians 'must no longer hold out supplicating hands to the English Parliament, like an infant crying to its nurse for a toy'.
• The title alludes to the Aladdin story, in which the magician offers new lamps for old and carries off the one of real value — the charge being that the Congress was exchanging self-reliance for the promise of reform.
• Aurobindo was twenty-one when the series began, newly back from his education in England and just entered into the Baroda State service; the Congress he was attacking was itself only eight years old.
• His later political career ran through the nationalist newspaper Bande Mataram between 1906 and 1908 and the Alipore Bomb Case, after which he withdrew to Pondicherry in 1910 and wrote philosophical works including The Life Divine.
• The other names on the list belong elsewhere: Surendranath Banerjea, the Bengal Moderate, wrote the autobiography A Nation in Making, while Motilal Ghosh was associated with the Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta.

• Choosing on the surname. Two of the four options are Ghoshes, and Motilal Ghosh belongs to the Amrita Bazar Patrika, not to the Indu Prakash.
• Assuming a critic of the Congress could not be a nationalist. Aurobindo attacked the Congress from a position more radical than its own, not from outside the movement.
• Treating 'More than one of the above' as an option to fall back on when unsure. A single titled series has one author, so at most one of the three attributions can be true.

BPSC asks who-wrote-what as a bare one-liner and packs the option list with contemporaries who share a surname or a province, then adds 'More than one of the above' so that a candidate who narrows it to two names has nowhere safe to go. UPSC has asked this identical work, and it frames it more informatively — naming the critique of Moderate politics and the series title together, so the question teaches the historiography while testing the name. Prepare authors and works as pairs, and attach each pair to the political camp it came from.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'New Lamps for Old', the series criticising the early Congress, was published in which newspaper ?

  • (a)Amrita Bazar Patrika
  • (b)Kesari
  • (c)Indu Prakash
  • (d)The Bengalee

  Answer(c) Indu Prakash, of Bombay, in nine articles between 7 August 1893 and 6 March 1894. The Amrita Bazar Patrika and The Bengalee were Calcutta papers and Kesari was Tilak's Marathi weekly from Poona.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The autobiography 'A Nation in Making' was written by

  • (a)Aurobindo Ghosh
  • (b)Surendranath Banerjea
  • (c)Bipin Chandra Pal
  • (d)Dadabhai Naoroji

  Answer(b) Surendranath Banerjea — the Bengal Moderate who founded the Indian Association and twice presided over the Congress. Dadabhai Naoroji's best-known work is Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.