Bengali press in 1909 condemned him for taking up an unworthy cause

The overt ‘Hinduisation’ of the anti-Partition movement came about only later with the appearance of the English language revolutionary paper, Bande Mataram, on August 6, 1906. One of its editors, Aurobindo Ghose, was the first in a line of others who started to co-opt Bankim’s nationalistic credo into a dominant Hindu one. By Indrajit Hazra HindustanTimes Tuesday, September 5, 2006 ¶ 1:55 PM

Even Annie Besant, in the same year [1907], described him as dangerous, and made it clear that Sri Aurobindo would use any methods to upset British Rule. But even then, many others prophecied his greatness in other spheres, for he was not only a revolutionary patriot, but a humanist too. H.K. Kaul [From Preface to Sri Aurobindo: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1972]