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THE INDIAN ASSOCIATION
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and telling than one held in any other place in Upper India. At Lahore I was received with the utmost kindness by my countrymen of all denominations, Hindus, Mohamedans and Sikhs. It was an exhibition of friendliness that was a revelation to me, It showed that a common system of administration and education had prepared the ground for the realization of one of our most cherished ideals, namely, united action by the different Indian provinces for the fulfilment of our common national aims and aspirations. At a crowded public meeting of all sections of the Indian community held at Lahore, the Calcutta Resolutions and Memorial on the Civil Service question were adopted. At another public meeting I spoke on the question of Indian Unity, and a political Association under the name of the Lahore Indian Association was formed. Its constitution was modelled on that of the Indian Association of Calcutta. It was affiliated to that body. It was, I believe, the first political organization in the Punjab that provided a common platform fer all sections of the Indian community. It has done valuable public work for the province.

In the Punjab I formed friendships, the memory of which, though the friends, alas, are now dead, is a grateful treasure of my life. There for the first time I met Sirdar Dayal Singh Majeetia. Our acquaintance soon ripened into warm personal friendship. He was one of the truest and noblest men whom I have ever come across. It was perhaps difficult to know him and to get to the bottom of his heart, for there was a certain air of aristocratic reserve about him, which hid from public view the pure gold that formed the stuff of his nature. He threw himself actively into the work for which I had been deputed. I persuaded him to start a newspaper at Lahore. I purchased for him at Calcutta the first press for the Tribune newspaper and to me he entrusted the duty of selecting the first editor. | recommended the late Sitala Kanta Chatterjee of Dacca for the post, and his successful career as the first editor amply justified my choice. His fearless courage, his penetrating insight into the heart of things, and above all his supreme honesty of purpose, the first and last qualification of an Indian journalist, soon placed him in the front rank of those who wielded their pen in the defence of their country’s interests.

The Tribune rapidly became a powerful organ of public opinion; it is now perhaps the most influential Indian journal in the Punjab, and is edited by a gentleman who in his early career was associated with me as a member of the staff of the Bengalee. But it is not