Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/82

cost him his life, when an anarchist (who, by the way, was hardly able to use one of his arms) shot him dead within the precincts of the Magistrate's Court at Alipore. He had received threatening letters, and the authorities had offered him police protection. But he declined it, believing, fatalist that he was, that it was not in the power of any human agency to save him from what destiny had decreed.

Acute lawyer and sagacious man of the world that he was, there was in him a strange medley of orthodox and heterodox beliefs. Every Sunday he was a frequenter of the temple of Kali, where he performed his devotions; yet he never hesitated to dine with unorthodox people, and, if a dish were laid before him with a mixture of forbidden food, he would accept the unorthodox portion of the food without any objection. I mention this fact to show the sort of compromise that we meet with in Hindu society some- times, when the forces of othodoxy are compelled to fraternize with those of the opposite school, and in a manner that would have been abhorrent to the men of the same faith in the last generation. The spirit of liberalism is marching apace even in an atmosphere of rigid and inflexible formulae. Hindu society is moving, steadily moving, adapting itself, though very slowly, to its environment.

However that may be, it was my pleasing duty and privilege to have been of some service to his family after his death. I person- ally introduced his sons to the late Sir Edward Baker, who was then Lieutenant-Governor, and was partly instrumental in securing from the Government a suitable provision for the family. Sir Edward Baker took the matter up with the generous warmth that always distinguished him when he had to deal with individual cases where a wrong had to be redressed or the generosity of a great Government had to be exhibited in an impressive manner.

My friend, Babu Ashutosh Biswas and myself continued to edit the paper. We made no profit, but we were able to pay our way. It was no longer a losing concern. It ceased to be so from the year I took it up. We paid off the small debt we had incurred in purchasing the printing-press, plant, etc., and we followed the usual journalistic rôle—criticizing, commenting, making friends, and not infrequently creating enemies. There is perhaps one event that I may notice before the occurrence of the contempt case in which the Bengalee was involved in 1883. Sir Ashley Eden was about to retire from the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal, and it was proposed by some of his friends and admirers to hold a demonstra-