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The British combined the attack on the militants with the offer of some constitutional reforms. It was the usual mixture of carrot and stick. The Morley Minto proposals of 1907 constituted the carrot. It was a legal frame which sought to perpetuate colonial rule with the assistance of collaborators from the ruled. It was the tried and tested gambit of a colonial power when called upon to contend with a rising national consciousness - a gambit which is not without significance today. The Morley Minto reforms sought to set up provincial legislatures where the majority would be nominees of the British government and a central Council with a few Indians, again nominated by the British. Aurobindo's response was immediate and caustic. He wrote in Bande Mataram in June 1907, under the title 'Comic Opera Reforms': "Mr.Morley has made his pronouncement and a long expectant world may now go about its ordinary business with the satisfactory conviction that the conditions of political life in India will be precisely the same as before... We find it impossible to discuss Mr.Morley's reforms seriously, they are so impossibly burlesque and farcical" These words were written for publication in the Bande Mataram but the manuscript was seized by the Police. The article was produced as an exhibit in the Alipore conspiracy case in May 1908. Sri Aurobindo together with about thirty others, including his brother, were charged with conspiracy to murder a British judge who had acquired notoriety for the manner in which he dealt with Indians who were brought before him. The bomb intended for the judge, killed instead, his wife and child. Sri Aurobindo remained on remand for more than a year. It was a period of intense reflection and meditation. Sri Aurobindo's stay in prison marked a turning point in his personal evolution. It also represented a turning point in the development of the Indian freedom struggle. After his acquittal he found that the British had successfully broken the back of the resistance movement. The path of 'passive resistance' coupled with a tacit acceptance (and justification) of direct violence had failed to mobilise a successful resistance movement. There was an inherent contradiction which dissipated strength.
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