We call upon Nationalists, who are at all desirous of the spread of Nationalist principles and Nationalist practice all over India, to make ready at whatever inconvenience and, if they find it humanly possible, go to Surat to support the Nationalist cause. We are aware of the tremendous difficulties in our way. Surat is far distant… and yet we must go. What is a Nationalist good for if he cannot make up by his enthusiasm and energy for his other deficiencies, if he cannot make nothing of difficulties and turn the impossible into the possible. It is to sweep away difficulties and to strike the word impossible out of the Indian’s dictionary that our party has arisen.
We must go as poor men whose wealth is our love for Motherland. …as pilgrims travelling to our Mother’s temple. We have a great work to do and cannot afford to be negligent and half-hearted. Be sure that this year 1907 is a turning point of our destinies. …Let us fear to miss by absenting ourselves the chance of helping to put in one of the key stones of the house we are bulding for our Mother’s dwelling in the future, the house of her salvation, the house of Swaraj. History very seldom records the things that were decisive but took place behing the veil; it records the show in front of the curtain. Very few people know that it was I (without consulting Tilak) who gave the order that led to the breaking of the Congress and was responsible for the refusal to join the newfangled Moderate Convention which were the two decisive happenings at Surat.
There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation. …they are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turn into a laughing stock; for it is the day of the prophet, the dreamer, the fanatic and the crusader, — the time of divine revelation when Avatars are born and miracles happen… in such a period we find ourselves at the dawn of this twentieth century the years of whose infancy have witnessed such wonderful happenings. …We are assisting now at the birth of a new Asia and the modernisation of the East.
I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell, but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna who I saw standing there and holding over his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. …I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them 1 saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these
darkened souls and misused bodies.
Extract from C. R. Das’s speech
My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India but across the distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this court, but before the bar of the High Court of History
