Gentlemen, when we started this agitation--basing it on the ideal to
which I have just referred--ever since then we have been living under a
cross fire. The bureaucracy has been against us, as it is natural they
would be against us, as it is natural they should be against us. But I
am sorry to say that along with these there is a party of Bengalees in
Calcutta who also have set themselves against the fulfilment of this
noble ideal. When I read the criticisms which appear in the _Statesman_
or the _Englishman_ I feel glad because I know that we have succeeded
in exposing the illogical position which they take. But when I read
similar things in the _Bengalee_, I assure you, I feel a great pain
in my heart. I cannot understand it. Is this ideal to be pursued from
the consideration of purely personal question? We have been told that
the leaders of yesterday are the only people who can lead us. I do not
deny their claim to lead. But I am not one of those who would follow a
leader simply because he was a leader yesterday. I want him to lead.
Anybody who leads the real politics of the country at the present time
is a man whom I honour and I am prepared to bow down and take the dust
of his feet. But if a man comes to me and says: look here you will
have to do this--it does not matter what the people of Bengal want--I
am the leader of Bengal--this has been done by me--it has got to be
supported--well, my answer to him is: "thou imposter!" No one has got
that right. We stand or fall as we pursue or desist from the popular
cause. I am nothing. No leader is anything. The strength belongs to the
nation whose representative I am, whose representative every one of us
may become. It is not my own strength. It is the peoples' strength.
Take your stand on that and we will worship you as a leader, as a
martyr, as anything which you can claim but fall short of that ideal
once by a hair's breadth, your claim is no longer to be recognised. If
I have expressed myself strongly, believe me, gentlemen, it is because
I have felt deeply--I feel, I have been stabbed to the heart by this
attitude--this contempt of public opinion.