Birth Anniversary of Sri Aurobindo : What no one says about the Great Master
India is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the greatest Avatar of the 20th century, Sri Aurobindo. All kinds of articles, essays and books have come out, dealing with different aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s genius : His philosophy, probably one of the highest and most far-reaching, which he expounded in books like The Life Divine or The Synthesis of Yoga; his extraordinary poetry, which he penned in his masterpiece Savitri, that has been compared in style, and rhythm to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and some of Shakespeare’s visionary plays. His culture and vision of artistic India, summed up in The Foundations of Indian Culture, which 110 years after it was written, should be the Bible of every painter, sculptor, architect here. His political work of course, how he led with Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Pal and others, a nationalist programme to counterbalance the pro-British moderate wing of the Congress.
What has been bypassed and kept under wraps ?
What has been bypassed and kept under wraps, though, is his espousing the message of the Bhagavad Gita, that sometimes when Dharma is in danger, when your people, your culture, and your borders are being trampled upon by an oppressor, force and violence may be necessary. In the words of Sri Aurobindo himself : “Sri Aurobindo has never concealed his opinion that a Nation is entitled to attain its freedom by violence, if it can do so or if there is no other way; whether it should do so or not, depends on what is the best policy, not on ethical considerations”.
Sri Aurobindo’s choice of violence for liberation from the British colonial yoke
The human mind is linear, which means that it cannot see multiple truths at the same time, and divides the world into evil and divine, good and bad, black and white … In this way, every historian, every biographer of Sri Aurobindo, even his closest contemporary disciples, have ignored or swept under the carpet Sri Aurobindo’s choice of violence for liberation from the British colonial yoke.
These biographies pretend that Sri Aurobindo’s brother Barin, manufactured bombs and revolvers in the basement of their father’s ancestral house in Calcutta without the knowledge of the Master. Some of these bombs were actually used, for instance against British magistrate Douglas Kingsford who hanged many revolutionaries (but unfortunately missed him). This was attributed to Barin, but listen to what Sri Aurobindo wrote, “If Sri Aurobindo had not believed in the efficacy of violent revolution or had disliked it, he would not have joined the secret society whose whole purpose was to prepare a national insurrection”.
Influence of ahimsa at any cost seems to haunt the minds of political leaders
The Buddhist and Gandhian influence of ahimsa at any cost seems to haunt the minds of political leaders post-Independence, not only from the ranks of the Congress, but also of the BJP and even the RSS. Violence is considered unspiritual, undivine and adharmic. We see, for instance, that China is able to hoodwink India at every step, encroaching upon its territory in Ladakh, Sikkim or Arunachal Pradesh, then pretends to negotiate, retreat only partly, and then encroach somewhere else.
Sri Aurobindo never minced his words, and in private conversations with his disciples, recorded in the famous book Evening Talks by AB Purani, he often lambasted Mahatma Gandhi’s absolute and rigid nonviolence – for instance, during the Caliphate movement, or when Churchill’s envoy Sir Stafford Cripps offered in 1939 Independence to India as a Commonwealth Nation, if the National Congress cooperated with the allies’ Second World War effort, which Gandhi pressured Nehru to refuse.
Sri Aurobindo was inspired by all the great figures of Western history who used violence to liberate their countries : “I had studied with interest the revolutions and rebellions which led to national liberation, the struggle against the English in mediaeval France and the revolts which liberated America and Italy. I took much of his inspiration from these movements and their leaders, especially Jeanne d’Arc and Mazzini”.
Sri Aurobindo must be given his rightful place
Thus, the history of the independent movement, which was mostly penned by Congress-related historians with a Marxist bend of mind, needs to be rewritten, giving Sri Aurobindo his rightful place, and mentioning his endorsing of violence as a dharmic tool. Will it happen ? One is surprised to see that in the huge committee formed to celebrate Sri Aurobindo’s 150th Anniversary, one finds politicians with little or no knowledge of Sri Aurobindo, high bureaucrats who have a Nehruvian intellect, or Gandhians. One is surprised that very few people from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram have been included and absolutely nobody from Auroville, the 52-year-old international township near Pondicherry, which is founded along Sri Aurobindo’s ideals.
Sri Aurobindo saw all the wrong directions that India was taking
Sri Aurobindo himself, from 1947 till his samadhi in 1950, saw all the wrong directions that India was taking, and the Mother herself, his spiritual companion who continued his work, said that he was suffering from it. Building statues, forming committees and writing papers are not enough – what one has to do is put into practice Sri Aurobindo’s ideals. Indeed, he wrote a lot on what an independent India must look like, not blindly copying the West, but remaining faithful to her ancient roots, while adopting the latest technologies and scientific discoveries of the Western world and being aggressive and unforgiving towards India’s enemies.
Nehru totally disregarded Sri Aurobindo’s ideals
Nehru totally disregarded Sri Aurobindo’s ideals, refused to equip his army and continued his ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai’, in spite of many signs that Mao Zedong considered India an enemy. The humiliation of the 1962 India-China war still rankles today.
India needs to revive the spirit of Kshatriya
India needs to revive the spirit of Kshatriya which has been blunted by Mahatma Gandhi’s policies. And for that, we need to rediscover the true nationalism as preached and practised by the Great Master : “Peace is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with any finality”.
(Courtesy : Mr Francois Gautier’s Article under the same title on www.firstpost.com/, 3.3.2022.
Mr Francois Gautier is a French journalist and author of A History of India as It Happened. He is also building a museum of true Indian history in Pune.)
Nature of freedom according to Sri Aurobindo
No one has ever explored the nature of freedom more profoundly and passionately than Sri Aurobindo. ‘The longing to be free’ he wrote ‘is lodged in such a deep layer of the human heart that a thousand arguments are powerless to uproot it’.
Sri Aurobindo looked at the concept of freedom first through the eyes of a revolutionary political leader who was also a poet, and later through the eyes of the mystic and spiritual Master that he became. What does ‘freedom’ mean ? How can it be realised for the individual and in the collective life of a Nation ? How do we strike the right balance between individual freedom and the collective interests of a society or Nation ? Why does the struggle for freedom, fuelled by brave and inspiring words, so often end in bloodshed and a new kind of tyranny ?
In the course of a lifetime devoted to finding answers to these questions, he gradually developed an integral vision of human freedom that has become his legacy to India, and through India, to the world. For him, freedom was more than just ‘a convenient elbow room for our natural energies’. For him, freedom was an eternal aspect of the human spirit, as essential to life as breath itself. His whole concept of freedom is based on the premise that there is in mankind an evolving soul requiring freedom for its evolution, just as there is in nature a secret urge towards unity. These twin demands of our nature, acting overtly or behind the scenes, act as a spur to progress until man fulfils his destiny to exceed himself. They must be reconciled if our questions about freedom are to find an answer.
In a talk in London in October 2007, Ms Sonia Dyne provided Sri Aurobindo’s message broadcast on All-India Radio in 1947 :
“August 15th 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free Nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed on this day I can watch almost all the world movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, although then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position…”
(Excerpts from an Article courtesy : auroville.org/page/sri-aurobindos-concept-of-freedom)
Editorial Perspectives
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| When Dharma is in danger, when your people, your culture, and your borders are being trampled upon by an oppressor, force and violence may be necessary ! |