পাতা:সাহিত্য-সাধক-চরিতমালা পঞ্চম খণ্ড.pdf/৫২০

দেশ-সেবা २ ¢ পরবর্তী ২৩এ ফেব্রুয়ারি টাউন-ইলে এক বিরাট সভায় ডললিউ. সি. বোনাজি কলিকাতাবাসিগণের পক্ষ হইতে রমেশচন্দ্রকে মানপত্র দান করিয়াছিলেন । মানপত্রের কয়েক পংক্তি উদ্ধত করিতেছি – We are aware that one of the principal reasons of your early retirement from the Indian Civil Service was a desire to be more useful to your country and an anxiety to direct the attention of our rulers to the aspirations and grievances of the people of India from a position of greater freedom. The way in which you have employed your time since your retirement has fully justified the wisdom of that step. You have, within a short time, done much, through the press and the platform, to inform and enlighten public opinion in England on home of the most momentous questions of Indian administration-particularly about the recent change in the law of sedition in India and the Calcutta Municipal Bill. You have also sought to explain Indian questions to Members of the Finglish Parliament and have made timely representations to the India Office regarding them. While helping in the election of some members of the British House of Commons, you have availed yourself of the opportunity thus afforded of pleading the cause of your countrymen before the English people. You have also spoken to crowded English audiences on several occasions on Farmine and Länd-assessment in India, and have been earnestly endeavouring to impress upon the authorities the close relation the one bears to the other. For these services and labours, so disinterestedly and ungrudgingly rendered, your grateful countrymen elected you President of the 15th Indian National Congress, —the highest office in the gift of the people of this country. Your services to literature have been no less conspicuous. You have considerably enriched our national literature by your works of fiction,--presenting an important period of our past history in a most vivid and attractive form. By your scholarly and faithful translation of the Rig-Veda, you have helped to diffuse a wider knowledge of its treasures among our countrymen. Your masterly exposition of Ancient India in your historica?