18 Christianity Poor Christ. A nice enough gentleman from most accounts. Yet those who swear by him keep him hanging on the cross. Poor, poor Christ. He who could not tolerate sham in the name of religion. Remember his going to a Jewish temple—he was a Jew—with a broom and determinedly sweeping out all the pretentious priests? He must be hanging his head in shame at the doings of his 'followers.' Christian clergy and the laity alike felt no shame in doing everything in the name of their Lord. The wars fought in the name of the 'Apostle of Peace,' and the cruelties perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church in the name of the 'Apostle of Love,' b

16 West Europeans "But these early dawns cannot endure in their purity, so long as the race is not ready," wrote Sri Aurobindo in The Human Cycle. Because, after a time, the force dies down; then comes a static condition of the human mind and human life, entailing stagnation, decay, disintegration. The reason? "The multitude remains infrarational in its habit of mind," Sri Aurobindo explains, adding "though perhaps it may still keep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual receptiveness as its gain from the past." Just exactly what happened to the Indian people. Besides, the time of the Europeans had come. A spirit of advent

3 The Arrival Sri Aurobindo had landed on the Coromandel coast in 1910. What happened at the Guest House—his fifth house— happened from 1914 onwards. During those four preceding years at Pondicherry what type of life did Sri Aurobindo and, incidentally, his young companions lead? Let me try to be logical—chronological should I say?—and begin at the beginning. S.S. Dupleix had left her berth, N°l Esplanade Moorings, on the Hooghly river on Friday the first April, at 6:30 a.m. Under the command of Captain Musseau, the French mail steamer made steady progress as she steamed down the Bay of Bengal with her precious 'cargo.' On 4 April 1910, around four in the aft

-30_^Spasa^ Means Spy.htm 27 'Spasa' Means Spy Those who have read the Ramayana know how one day Rishi Vishwamitra came to the court of King Dasaratha of Ayodhya. Welcoming him and expressing great happiness at his coming, the king said that he was ready to do any bidding of the Rishi. Pleased, Vishwamitra replied that he had "begun to perform a yajna (sacrificial rites), but two Rakshasas, Marich and Subahu, along with their hosts, were giving too much trouble. They were raining down flesh and blood over the sacrificial platform. Would the king send his eldest son Rama with him for the ten nights of the ceremonies, so that Rama might protect the performing priests and destroy the Ra

-26_Sundar Chetty^s House.htm 23 Sundar Chetty's House The observant reader has surely noticed the change of address in Sri Aurobindo's letter. It was actually in October 1910 that the change took place. It was a rented house, let by one Sundar Chetty at Rs. 20 a month. Sri Aurobindo with Bejoy and Moni had already spent some six months—'less three and half days' to quote Moni— at Shankar Chetty's house. Then Sri Aurobindo's brother-in-law, Saurin Bose, turned up on 30th September, the 'last day' (Moni says) at Shankar Chetty's, and passed the night with the two young men. Next day, on the forenoon of 1st October, the four of them moved to their new residence. The move br

Table of Illustrations Page Frontispiece Sri Aurobindo around 1919, writing for the Arya (from Abhay Singh Nahar's collection) 29 Front page of India, a Tamil weekly 33 The old pier at Pondicherry (Abhay Singh's collection) 34 A horse cart like the ones used around 1910 (Abhay Singh's coll.) 38 Shankar Chetty's house (Abhay Singh's coll.) 49 V. Ramaswamy Iyengar (Va. Ra. of Tamil literature) 151 A view of Pondicherry in 1790 154 Duplex and his wife 155 Ananda Ranga Pillai 160 Map of Pondicherry by de Fer (1705) 169 Monument to Aayi in Pondicherry's park (Abhay Singh's coli .)

9 Some English Friends This was not the first time that the Government was questioned by the members of the House of Commons on its India policy and, more specifically, on the ongoing events in Bengal. India did have some English friends1 who took interest in her. A few were in the Parliament. Even at the risk of displeasing their party bosses and of their renomination in Parliament, some members took a bolder stand than the Moderates of the Indian Congress. A few names spring to mind: Sir Henry Cotton, Mr. Keir Hardie, Dr. H. V. Rutherford, Mr. Frederic Mackarness, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, all members of the House of Commons. They were ably assisted by a nu

33 The Quest "Living the dream of the Upanishads ..." "I left British India in order to pursue my practice of Yoga undisturbed," Sri Aurobindo stated in his 21 July 1911 letter to The Hindu. It was indeed a statement of fact, like the fact that the sun rises in the east. The British bureaucrats could be as sceptical as you like! After all the bureaucracy, British or otherwise, is notorious for its stationary ideas and fixed ways. Quite unlike the character who frequently said, "My ideas changed, so I changed my ways!" as portrayed by our Bengali poet D. L. Roy. In point of fact, all those who had known Sri Aurobindo during the intense political period of h

35 The Training His upward gaze fixed on what? Once in' Chandernagore Motilal Roy put the question to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo replied that before his eyes "some writings come floating, I try to decipher their meanings." He called them lipi, which in Sanskrit could mean a letter, or written characters, or the alphabet of a language. He also said that "Gods of the invisible world take form. These forms also are as significant as the lipi—and they want to convey something, which I strive to discover." Sri Aurobindo called these visions or seeing of forms rupa-drishti. Rupa in Sanskrit stands for form as well as beauty; drishti is seeing. That upwardly

30 He Knows Latin, He Knows Greek Though Governor Duprat gave a certificate of good conduct to the British secret police stationed in Pondicherry, in reality its conduct was not all that good. Even if the French government thought that with the Bengal Partition undone the threat from violence would subside, the British never thought so. That is why when they saw that the French were disinclined to expel the Swadeshi refugees from their territory, they tried to provoke some incidents there. After all, it is an English saying that 'all's fair in love and war,' isn't it? And hadn't they declared war on the Swadeshis? Let us note that for the A