Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/148

 THE ORIGIN OP THE INDIAN ASSOCIATION. 139 •corporate body in a conquered country like India, is that it should have a man or a number of men ready at every emergency to write elaborate, well -reasoned and well-expressed memorials to the Government on sundry matters affecting the well-being of the society at large. Surendranath as the Secretary of the Indian Association is an adept in drawing up public memori- als, and since the death of the Hon'ble Kristo Das Pal a better memorial writer than Mr. Banerjee we have not found. The first question which the Indian Association took up was the raising of the limit of age for the Open Competitive Examination for the Civil Service of India. Lord Salisbury had reduced the limit of age from 21 to 19 years. A great public meeting was held in the Town Hall to protest against this reduction and in connection with it an agitation was set on foot by the Indian Association the like of which had never before been seen in India. Babu Surendranath with the memorial which had been adopted at Calcutta tra- velled through all the great towns of Northern India holding meetings and asking his countrymen to adopt the memorial. He visited Bombay, Madras, Puna, Su- rat and Ahmedabad on the same mission and was equally successful. For the first time it was practically demonstrated in modern Indian history that whatever might be our differences in religion, language, or so- cial customs, the varied races of India can meet upon the same ground of action for political purposes. The possibility of political unity was thus amply demons- trated and it produced splendid results in the not very distant future in the stupendous organization of the Congress. Mr. Lalmohan Ghose went to England with these memorials as the Delegate of the Indian Association and the result of his speech at Willis* Room was the creation of the Statutory Civil Service. Once again in 1^79 and in 1884 Babu Surendranath Banerjee made a tour through upper India advancing