Chapter IV

Baroda

1893-1906

I

SRI AUROBINDO reached Baroda on February 8, 1893, i.e. only two days after his arrival at Bombay. What surprises us is that instead of first visiting his relatives in Bengal, he proceeded straight to Baroda. Could he have come to know the sad news of his parents - his father's death and his mother's illness? Difficult to surmise; perhaps there was urgent need to report for duty and thereafter he had to wait until he could get leave.

Sri Aurobindo joined service immediately. He started in the Survey Settlement Department as an attaché for learning the work. Then he was shifted to various departments until towards the end of 1895 he joined the Dewan's office or the Secretariat where he remained for the next few years. It seemed to be the same kind of work as in the ICS - files, office-work, touring etc.- then why Baroda? In explaining this Sri Aurobindo told us: 'True, but with a difference. Baroda was a native State under a native ruler. You did not have to be all attention to the superior English officer ruling your fate. There was much room for freedom and dignity.'

As an officer of the State Service he could hardly avoid administrative work but his real interests were engaged elsewhere. The Gaekwad, however, was fully aware of Sri Aurobindo's exceptional abilities and was keen to utilize them not only for his State but also for his personal work. He used to call Sri Aurobindo

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for drafting letters which required careful wording, preparing important memoranda or special reports, and also to write some of his speeches. A well-known Marathi historian, G. S. Sardesai, has an interesting account which throws light on Sri Aurobindo's relationship with the Gaekwad: 'Sri Aurobindo and myself were together with Sayaji Rao very often.... Once the Maharaja had to address a social conference. Sri Aurobindo prepared the speech. We three sat together and read it. The Maharaja after hearing it said: "Can you not, Aravind Babu, tone it down? It is too fine to be mine." Sri Aurobindo replied smiling: "Why make a change for nothing? Do you think, Maharaja, that if it is toned down a little, people will believe it to be yours? Good or bad, whatever it be, people will always say that the Maharaja gets his speeches written by others. The main thing is whether the thoughts are yours. That is your chief part." '

You see how Sri Aurobindo maintained his 'freedom and dignity'. I could give you another instance of Sri Aurobindo's independent way of working. On one occasion the Gaekwad passed an order that the officers should attend their office even on Sundays. Sri Aurobindo was not willing to accept the order. The Maharaja fined him Rs.50. When he heard of this Sri Aurobindo said, 'Let him fine as much as he likes. I shall neither pay the fine nor attend the office.' Good sense; however, prevailed on the Gaekwad and he did not press the matter.

For his special work for the Gaekwad Sri Aurobindo would often be invited to breakfast at the palace and would then be asked to stay on; but he was not appointed Private Secretary at any time. However, during a tour of Kashmir in 1903, the Maharaja took along Sri Aurobindo in that capacity, but the experiment was not a success. A disciple once wrote to Sri Aurobindo extolling the beauties of Kashmir and he replied, 'Quite agree with your estimate of Kashmir. The charm of its mountains and rivers and the ideal life dawdling along in the midst of a supreme beauty in the slowly moving leisure of a houseboat - that was a kind of earthly Paradise - also writing poetry on the banks of the Jhelum where it rushes down Kashmir towards the plains. Unfortunately there was the over-industrious Gaekwad to cut short the Paradise! His idea of Paradise was going through administrative papers and making myself and others write speeches for which he got all the credit. But after all, according to the nature, to each one his Eden.'

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Despite such differences, however, Sri Aurobindo had a very good relationship with the Gaekwad and his family. He considered the Maharaja to be an able ruler, far in advance of most of his contemporaries; and that the Maharani had a profound regard for Sri Aurobindo is apparent from the fact that in later years she wrote to him at Pondicherry seeking his spiritual help and guidance.

Soon there came an opportunity for more congenial work. How can a poet, litterateur, a man of culture be fitted into the cogwheel of administrative routine? In 1897 there was a suggestion that Sri Aurobindo could work in the Baroda College as a teacher of French. Later his services were lent informally to the College from time to time. Early in 1898 he was appointed Professor of English, and taught at the College in addition to his other official duties. Thus began his long association with the Baroda College which continued until he took extended leave in June 1906 to go to Bengal. In 1899 the Principal of the College, (an Englishman), pressed the Maharaja to make Sri Aurobindo's appointment at the College permanent but the former did not agree as he wanted Sri Aurobindo to write official reports etc. (also to ghost-write his memoirs, but nothing came of this!) and assist him generally in other work. However, by 1904 Sri Aurobindo was made the Vice- Principal of the College and in 1905 he became the acting Principal when the regular incumbent went on leave for a year.

Sri Aurobindo was a wonderful teacher - this is but natural since teaching was his swadharma. Fortunately, a few of his students at Baroda have recorded their impressions, and I shall quote from these, but occasionally in his talks with us also Sri Aurobindo spoke ®f his teaching days. His brother Manmohan had likewise become a Professor of English at the Presidency College, Calcutta. His teaching too was greatly admired but there was a difference between them. Sri Aurobindo told us: 'Manmohan was very painstaking.... I saw that his books used to be inter-leaved, marked and full of notes. I was not so conscientious.' When one of his disciples, Purani, demurred and said that people who had heard him in College spoke very highly of his lectures, Sri Aurobindo continued: 'I never used to look at the notes, and sometimes my explanations did not agree with them at all.... What was surprising to me was that the students used to take down everything verbatim and mug it up. Such a thing would never have happened in England.... Once I was giving a lecture on Southey's

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Life of Nelson and my lecture was not in agreement with the notes. So the students remarked that it was not at all like what was found in them. I replied that I had not read the notes - in any case, they were all rubbish. I could never go into minute details. I read and left my mind to do what it could. That is why I could never become a scholar.'

Sri Aurobindo was loved and revered by his students, as much for his profound knowledge of literature, his original way of teaching, as for his magnetic personality and gentle, gracious manners. One of his students, R.N. Patkar, writes in his memoirs: 'I had the good fortune to be his student in the Intermediate Class. His method of teaching was a novel one. In the beginning he used to give a series of introductory lectures in order to initiate the student into the subject matter of the text. After that he used to read the text, stopping where necessary to explain the meaning of difficult words and sentences. He ended by giving general lectures bearing on the various aspects of the subject matter of the text.'But more than his college lectures, it was a treat to hear him on the platform. He used to preside occasionally over the meetings of the College Debating Society. The large central hall of the College used to be full when he was to speak. He was not an orator but a speaker of a very high order, and was listened to with rapt attention. Without any gesture or movements of the limbs he stood, and language flowed like a stream from his lips with natural ease and melody that kept the audience spell-bound.... Though it is more than fifty years since I heard him, I still remember his figure and the ring of his melodious voice.'

Patkar writes further: 'I once asked him how I should improve my English, what authors I should read and study. I had read some portion of Macaulay's Lives of Great Men and I was fascinated by his style. I asked him if I should read Macaulay. Then, as was usual with him, he smiled and replied, "Do not be anybody's slave, but be your own master. By reading Macaulay or any other writer you will never be like him. You will not be a Macaulay but a faint echo of Macaulay. You will but be a copy to be derided by the world, but never an original. Therefore you may read any good author carefully, but should think for yourself and form your own judgment. It is likely you may differ from the views of the writer. You should think for yourself and cultivate a habit of writing and in this way you will be the master of your style."'

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K.M. Munshi, a leading politician both before and after Independence, was a student at Baroda College for a time and writes: 'My own contact with Sri Aurobindo dates back to 1902 when after passing the Matriculation examination, I joined the Baroda College. Though previously, I had, only on occasions, the privilege of being in personal contact with him, the Aurobindonian legend in the College filled me with reverence, and it was with awe that I hung upon his words whenever he came to College as Professor of English.'

Sri Aurobindo left an impression on all those who came to know him in the College. Dr. C.R. Reddy, a colleague, recalls: 'I had the honour of knowing him.... Dr. dark, the Principal, remarked to me, "So you met Aurobindo Ghose. Did you notice his eyes? There is mystic fire and light in them. They penetrate into the beyond. If Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices, Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions.'"

Whilst teaching was a welcome diversion from administrative work, Sri Aurobindo has himself said that his real interest at Baroda lay 'in Sanskrit, in literature and in the national movement'. During his stay in England, Sri Aurobindo had acquired a mastery of European literature and culture but of his own country he knew very little indeed. He was now determined to make up for the deficiency for, if he were ignorant of his country's culture, civilization and religion, how would he serve her? So he started learning Sanskrit and studying the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, Gita, Kalidasa's plays and other Sanskrit works. He learnt the language all by himself - no doubt the start he had made in England for his ICS studies as well as his proficiency in Greek, and Latin were a help in acquiring another classical language, but so great a mastery did he gain over Sanskrit that he was later able to make a deep study of the language of the Vedas and, with the help of his yogic vision, present a new interpretation of these ancient scriptures. Sri Aurobindo had a remarkable flair for languages and soon acquired a working knowledge of Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali. His immense powers of concentration and his ability to read with great rapidity, whilst retaining the essentials of what he read, enabled him to cover a very wide field of studies. Moreover, Sri Aurobindo had now the opportunity of giving expression to his creative talents. His official duties were not onerous and he could hardly have had the same scope if he had

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joined the ICS. He once observed quizzically: 'I wonder what would have happened to me if I had joined the Civil Service. I think they would have chucked me for insubordination and arrears of work.'

The amount of literary work that Sri Aurobindo produced in Baroda was formidable. This falls into several categories translations, poems and poetic drama, and prose writings on a wide variety of subjects; regrettably not all of it has been preserved. In May 1908, when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case, his papers and manuscripts were seized by the police. They were scrutinized to dig up evidence to convict him for revolutionary activities. Afterwards they were stored away in the Record Room of the Court. Under the rules, they should have been destroyed after the lapse of some years. But, thanks to the sensibility and initiative of the record-keeper, the papers - although shown as destroyed - were preserved in a corner. Later they were kept in a steel cupboard in the Judges' Retiring Room. Then, in the changed circumstances after Independence, the papers were found and a good many of the manuscripts belonging to the Baroda period were discovered. But, unfortunately, not all - for some disappeared 'in the whirlpool and turmoil of my political career' as Sri Aurobindo once described it. One such disappearance is a particularly sad loss. As he plunged into Sanskrit studies, Sri Aurobindo was inevitably drawn to the poetic genius of Kalidasa. It was his intention to write a full-scale book on Kalidasa for which he drew up an outline but he did not have the sustained leisure to complete it. He did, however, write extensively on Kalidasa - on the important works, the characters in the plays, the age he lived in and on other aspects of his genius. Moreover, he took in hand some translations of Kalidasa. Of these, a very fine rendering of Vikramorvasie was later published under the title The Hero and the Nymph, but the manuscript of his translation, in terza rima, of Kalidasa's Meghaduta could not be discovered. I remember that once when we were talking of the subject there was a tinge of regret in Sri Aurobindo's voice at the mention of this manuscript. 'It is a pity that the translation cannot be found,' he said, 'for it was well done.' This makes the loss all the greater, for he seldom spoke of his own achievements. At about this time Sri Aurobindo was also immersed in the Ramayana and Mahabharata and experimented with translations from these

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epics. When Ramesh Chandra Dutt, the well-known poet, novelist and historian, saw some of these during a visit to Baroda, he is said to have remarked: 'Had I seen them before, I would never have published mine. It now appears that my translations have been child's play before yours.' Besides translations, Sri Aurobindo wrote some 'Notes' on the Mahabharata as well as comments on the poetic genius of Vyasa and Valmiki. Also, he drew on the Mahabharata for a number of his own narrative poems of which Love and Death is the most outstanding. And, of course, for his supreme creation Savitri, the story was taken from the Mahabharata. In addition to poems, both short and long, Sri Aurobindo wrote a number of plays in blank verse. One of these, Perseus the Deliverer, is based on a Greek myth which Sri Aurobindo adapted. It is an imaginative presentation of the ideas of evolution and progress which were to recur so prominently in Sri Aurobindo's later works.

All in all, the Baroda period was wonderfully productive both in terms of interpretation of ancient Indian culture as well as his own literary creations. But the time for political action and his stupendous spiritual experiences was approaching and during the last years of his stay at Baroda he was to be increasingly absorbed in these.

I would now like to tell you how Sri Aurobindo resumed contact with his family in Bengal. Unfortunately, we have very little information to go on and there are many gaps which cannot now be filled.

About eleven months after his arrival at Baroda, in a letter dated January 11, 1894, to his grandfather, Rajnarayan Bose, Sri Aurobindo writes:

My dear Grandfather,

I received your telegram and postcard together this after- noon. I am at present in an exceedingly out of the way place, without any post-office within fifteen miles of it; so it would not be easy to telegraph. I shall probably be able to get to Bengal by the end of next week. I had intended to be there by this time, but there is some difficulty about my last month's salary without which I cannot very easily move. However I have written for a month's privileged leave and as soon as it is sanctioned shall make ready to start.... As I do not know Urdu, or indeed any other language of

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the country, I may find it convenient to bring my clerk with me. I suppose there will be no difficulty about accommodating him.

I got my uncle's letter enclosing Saro's. The letter might have presented some difficulties, for there is no one who knows Bengali at Baroda - no one at least whom I could get at. Fortunately the smattering I acquired in England stood me in good stead, and I was able to make out the sense of the letter, barring a word here and a word there. ...

If all goes well, I shall leave Baroda on the 18th; at any rate it will not be more than a day or two later.

Believe me

Your affectionate grandson

Aravind A. Ghosh

We do not have the exact dates, nor do we know if he took his clerk with him, but he did pay a visit to Bengal that year, the first since his return to India. He stayed for some time at the house of his grandfather at Deoghar. Naturally all the members of the family were jubilant. Sarojini, his sister, gives a pen-picture: 'A very delicate face, long hair cut in the English fashion, Sejda was a very shy person.' When his mother saw him, she exclaimed: 'He is not my Auro. My Auro was so small. Very well, let me see if he has a cut in his finger.' The cut was shown and she was satisfied. Those of us who attended on him after his accident in 1938 also remember that cut in his finger.

How greatly Sri Aurobindo enjoyed this visit to the family can be appreciated from a letter to his sister Sarojini on his return to Baroda. Here are some extracts from the letter.

Baroda Camp

25th August, 1894

My dear Saro,

... It will be, I fear, quite impossible to come to you again so early as the Puja, though if I only could, I should start tomorrow. Neither my affairs, nor my finances will admit of it. Indeed it was a great mistake for me to go at all; for it has made Baroda quite intolerable to me. There is an old story about Judas Iscariot, which suits me down to the ground. Judas, after betraying Christ, hanged himself and went to Hell where he was honoured with the hottest oven in the whole establishment. Here he must

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burn for ever and ever; but in his life he had done one kind act and for this they permitted him by special mercy of God to cool himself for an hour every Christmas on an iceberg in the North Pole. Now this has always seemed to me not mercy, but a peculiar refinement of cruelty. For how could Hell fail to be ten times more Hell to the poor wretch after the delicious coolness of his iceberg? I do not know for what enormous crime I have been condemned to Baroda, but my case is just parallel. Since my pleasant sojourn with you at Baidyanath, Baroda seems a hundred times more Baroda....

You say in your letter 'all here are quite well'; yet in the very next sentence I read 'Bari has an attack of fever'. Do you mean then that Bari is nobody? Poor Bari! That he should be excluded from the list of human beings is only right and proper, but it is a little hard that he should be denied existence altogether. I hope it is only a slight attack. I am quite well. I have brought a fund of health with me from Bengal, which, I hope it will take me some time to exhaust; but I have just passed my twenty-second mile- stone, August 15 last, since my birthday and am beginning to get dreadfully old.

I infer from your letter that you are making great progress in English. I hope you will learn very quickly; I can then write to you quite what I want to say and just in the way I want to say it. I feel some difficulty in doing that now and I don't know whether you will understand it.

With love

Your affectionate brother.

Auro

P.S. If you want to understand the new orthography of my name, ask uncle.

In what a delightful vein have laughter and tears mingled here! Mark too that he draws attention to the orthography or spelling of his name - the old 'Arvind' giving way to 'Aurobindo'.

When this letter was written, 'Bari' or Barindra, the youngest brother was fourteen years of age and Sarojini a couple of years older. The eldest brother Benoybhusan, had returned to India by then to make a career in the Cooch Behar State Service. Manmohan had just completed his studies at Oxford and earned

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his M.A. degree; he would be returning shortly to India to distinguish himself as an outstanding Professor of English in Government Service. Amongst his family members his maternal uncle, Jogendra, the eldest son of Rajnarayan Bose, was perhaps the closest to Sri Aurobindo. He was a cheerful and kindly man and Sri Aurobindo always enjoyed his company, calling him the 'Prophet of Ishabgul' for he used to prescribe this indigenous laxative to all with any kind of stomach complaint.

After this first visit Sri Aurobindo generally went to Bengal when he could obtain leave or during the College vacations. In Calcutta he often stayed with his maternal uncle, Krishna Kumar Mitra, an ardent patriot, who was later the editor of the Nationalist weekly Sanjivani. His daughter, Basanti Devi, has re- corded her impressions of her cousin: 'Auro Dada used to arrive with two or three trunks, and we always thought they must contain costly suits and other articles of luxury like scents etc. When he opened them, I used to look and wonder, - what is this? A few ordinary clothes and all the rest books and nothing but books. Does Auro Dada like to read all of them? We all want to chat and enjoy ourselves during our vacations; does he want to spend even this time in reading books? But because he liked reading, it did not mean that he would not join us in our chats and merry-making. His talk used to be full of wit and humour.'

These few authentic accounts we have of Sri Aurobindo's early meetings with his family reveal the affectionate side of his nature. He was by no means aloof and indifferent but interested in life and the people around him. Yet, the overall impression is one of inwardness, quiet poise and easy good humour.

Let me now give you a few glimpses of Sri Aurobindo's personal life at Baroda. In his biography of Sri Aurobindo, A.B. Purani has described the routine as follows: 'After morning tea Sri Aurobindo used to write poetry. He would continue up to ten o'clock. Bath was between ten and eleven o'clock and lunch at eleven o'clock - a cigar would be by his side even while he ate. Sri Aurobindo used to read journals while he ate. He took less of rice and more of bread. Once a day there was meat or fish....'

There exists for us, fortunately, a vivid and detailed pen-picture of Sri Aurobindo at Baroda by a contemporary. This writer was a man of letters, sensitive to atmosphere and personality, and the circumstances under which he wrote were interesting. At Baroda,

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Sri Aurobindo soon came to acquire a good grasp of literary Bengali which enabled him, as early as 1894, to write a series of articles of great depth and penetration, on Bankim Chandra. But, for want of practice, he could hardly express himself in spoken Bengali and he must have felt this deficiency during his visits to Bengal. So he arranged with his maternal uncle that Dinendra Kumar Roy, a well-known writer in Bengali, should come and stay with him as a companion at Baroda so that Sri Aurobindo could practise speaking with him in the vernacular. Roy stayed at Baroda for two years, from 1899 to 1900, and later wrote a charming little book of reminiscences in Bengali called Aurobindo Prasanga, in which he throws an authentic light on many aspects of Sri Aurobindo's life.

Of his first meeting with Sri Aurobindo, Roy writes:

'Before I met Aurobindo, I had formed an image of him somewhat like this: a stalwart figure, dressed from head to foot in immaculate European style, a stern gaze in his spectacled eyes, an affected accent and a temper exceedingly rough, one who would ' not tolerate the slightest breach of form. It is needless to add that I was rather disappointed in my estimate when I saw him for the first time. Who could have thought that this darkish young man with soft dreamy eyes and long, thin, wavy hair parted in the middle and reaching to the neck, clad in coarse Ahmedabad dhoti and close-fitting Indian jacket, his feet shod in old-fashioned Indian slippers with upturned toes, a face sparsely dotted with pock- marks - who could have thought that this man could be Mr. Aurobindo Ghose, a living fountain of French, Latin and Greek? I could not have received a bigger shock if someone had pointed to the hillocks about Deoghar and said: "Look, there stand the Himalayas."...

'He had gone to England as a mere boy, almost on the lap of his mother, and it was much after the first flush of his youth that he had returned to his motherland. But what struck me as amazing was that his noble heart had suffered not the least contamination from the luxury and dissipation, the glitter and glamour, the diverse impressions and influences, and the strange spell of Western society.'

The portrait drawn by Dinendra Kumar is truly astonishing. Fourteen of the most formative years of his life Sri Aurobindo had spent in England and yet within a few years of his return he had

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become an Indian to the core. This could happen only because of his inner strength which could imbibe and assimilate the best of European culture whilst rejecting its outward trappings to which most others so readily succumb.

In this book Roy also gives us a graphic description of Sri Aurobindo's immense powers of concentration and his deep absorption in books and studies: 'Two well-known booksellers of Bombay were his regular suppliers of books.... They used to supply his selected books on deposit account. He seldom received books by post; they came by railway parcels, packed in huge cases. Sometimes small parcels came twice or thrice in the course of a month. He would finish the books in eight or ten days and place fresh orders. I have never seen such a voracious reader....

'Aurobindo would sit at his table and read in the light of an oil lamp till one in the morning, unmindful of the intolerable bites of the mosquitoes. I used to see him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on the book he was reading, like a Yogi plunged in divine contemplation and lost to all sense of what was going on outside. Even if the house had caught fire, it could not have broken his contemplation. Often he would read through the night, poring over books in the different languages of Europe - books of poetry, fiction, history, philosophy, etc.'

Another side still of Sri Aurobindo has been brought out very well by Roy. He writes:

'Aurobindo used to get a handsome pay. He was single, he had no luxuries and did not waste an anna. Still at the end of the month he ran short of funds. He used to remit something regularly to his family. One day seeing him fill up a money-order form I too had the desire to send some money home. So I asked him for the amount. He laughed and, offering me whatever he had, said, "This is all I have - send it." I replied, "That can't be - as you were filling a money-order form, I thought - no, I shall send something later." But he shook his head and added, "Your need is greater than mine."'

R.N. Patkar, from whose memoirs I have quoted earlier, has also dwelt on these very traits. He writes:

'Sri Aurobindo used to be so absorbed while reading that he often forgot to have his dinner. At the servant's request, I had to remind him of it.... Another thing I noticed was his total absence of attachment for money. Whatever monthly salary he received he

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used to place in an open tray and keep no account. One day I asked him why he didn't keep his money safe somewhere. He answered: "Well, it shows we are living among honest and good people." "But how will you know this unless you keep an account?" He replied quietly, "God keeps my account. Why should I worry when he is taking care of me?"'

Finally, a few more revealing sketches of Sri Aurobindo from the pen of Dinendra Kumar Roy: 'He was not in the habit of dressing up. I never saw him change his ordinary clothes even while going to the Maharaja's court.... Like his dress, his bed was also ordinary and simple. The iron bedstead he used was such that even a petty clerk would have disdained to use it. Baroda being near a desert, both summer and winter were severe there; but even in the cold of January I never saw him use a quilt - a cheap ordinary rug did duty for it. He always appeared to me nothing but a self-denying brahmachari, austere in self-discipline and acutely sensitive to the suffering of others. Acquisition of knowledge seemed to be the sole mission of his life. And for the fulfilment of that mission, he practised rigorous self-culture even amidst the din and bustle of an active worldly life. I never saw him lose his temper. No passion was ever seen getting the better of him. It is not possible to have such control without the highest self-discipline.

'Marathi food did not agree with my taste, but Aurobindo was accustomed to it. Sometimes the cooking was so bad that I could hardly take a bite, but he ate quite naturally. I never saw him express any displeasure to the cook. He had a particular liking for Bengali food. The quantity of food he took was very small; and it was because of his abstemious and temperate habits that he kept perfectly fit in spite of heavy mental labour. He took good care of his health. For one hour every evening he would pace up and down the verandah of his house with brisk steps.

'His laughter was simple as a child's, and as liquid and soft. Though an inflexible will showed at the corners of his lips, there was not the slightest trace in his heart of any worldly ambition or of selfishness. There was only the longing, rare even among the gods, of sacrificing himself for the relief of human suffering.

'Aurobindo was always indifferent to pleasure and pain, prosperity and adversity, praise or blame. He bore all hardships with an unruffled mind.'

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Yet it should not be thought that at Baroda Sri Aurobindo led the life of a recluse, or of an intellectual immersed in books. On the contrary, it was always Sri Aurobindo's nature to study life in its various manifestations. He was interested in music, dancing and other cultural activities - from time to time, he would attend Court functions, entertainments, etc. Also, he had his circle of friends in whose company he relaxed. Amongst these may be mentioned Khaserao Jadav, who was a magistrate and a colleague in the Baroda State Service, his younger brother Lt. Madhavrao Jadav of the Baroda State Army, and Phadke, a young Maratha Brahmin of genial temperament and a man of letters. In fact, for some years Sri Aurobindo lived in Khaserao's house at Baroda, a beautiful two-storeyed building situated on the main road of the town; Madhavrao too was close to Sri Aurobindo and helped him in his political work. But Sri Aurobindo's life was never lived on the surface and behind the apparently placid external routine, he had started secret revolutionary work. And, within, burnt a blazing fire.

II

Sri Aurobindo was not a politician in the ordinary sense of the word: he was not interested in position, fame or money and, characteristically, he preferred to work silently from behind the scenes. His outward participation in Indian politics lasted only a few years but his vision of India was his own and by his own genius he projected it into the political sphere. In this way he planted a seed which has taken root and continues to grow. To help you understand this, I shall sketch briefly the background of the political scene of those days.

You must remember that when India entered the last decades of the nineteenth century, Indians had very little say in the administration of their country. After the Revolt of 1857, the East India Company was dissolved. Instead, the British Government directly assumed power over the Indian territories. A new political office was created in London, that of the Secretary of State for India, who became an important minister of the British Government and was put in overall charge of Indian affairs; but he seldom interfered

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in the internal administration of India. Here the Governor- General, now given the additional title of Viceroy to signify that he was the representative of the British monarch, was supreme. There were two small Councils, with legislative and executive functions, to assist the Viceroy but these bodies had only a handful of nominated members and Indians were not admitted to these Councils. This was the structure at the top. The vast territories over which the British ruled in India were divided into provinces which in turn were divided into smaller districts. Each province was under a Governor who was directly responsible to the Viceroy for the administration of his area. The Governor also had small Councils, again without any Indian members, to assist him; and a powerful secretariat of British officials to oversee the administration. The actual civil administration of the country was carried on through the Indian Civil Service. This was an exclusive cadre of service with immense prestige and authority. Recruitment was made through an open examination held once a year in London. In theory, Indians could become members of this service but the rules were so framed that until 1870 only sixteen Indians had ever attempted the examination and only one had been able to get into the ICS. So you can easily see that Indians had hardly any voice in the government of their own country. There can be no doubt that it was the painful recognition of this fact that prompted Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose to send all his three sons at such a tender age to England so that they could be equipped to compete with Englishmen in every way.

During the nineteenth century there were two parallel movements in India. On the one hand, there was an almost continuous growth of British power and domination in the political sphere. On the other, in the social, religious and cultural spheres there were far-reaching changes and reforms. Many a factor contributed to these changes but the most important was the impact of the new ideas and forces from the West as a result of the growth of education and the spread of the English language. At first there was a good deal of blind acceptance and servile imitation of western life but soon a number of powerful thinkers started examining their own ancient heritage in the light of the western impact. Raja Rammohan Roy is generally recognised to be the first of these pioneers and he was followed by many other great men such as Dwarkanath Tagore, his son Debendranath, Ishwar

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Chandra Vidyasagar, Dayanand Saraswati, Sri Ramakrishna, Keshav Chandra Sen, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Swami Vivekananda, Balgangadhar Tilak, Rabindranath Tagore, and others. The list is by no means exhaustive and I have given the names of only those who were Sri Aurobindo's precursors or contemporaries. They are outstanding figures and you are surely aware of their great contribution to national life. It will be sufficient here to say that not only did they represent the spirit of resurgent India but each, in his own way, was a link between India's past and her present. What is equally important is that by their integrity and example these great men inspired many others to follow and emulate them with the result that there was a great awakening in the religious, cultural and social life of the country.

It was inevitable that these changes should have repercussions in the political sphere also. The formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 was an expression of this new political awareness. But the political awakening, when it came, was slow and uncertain in its beginnings. The first generation of Congress leaders, among them M.G. Ranade, Surendranath Banerjee, Pherozeshah Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, were sincere patriots but they were men of prudence and moderation, who sought to cooperate with the British, not to confront them. Their group came to be known as the Moderates. They had faith in the justice and good intentions of the British and believed that if Indians could prove that their demands were reasonable and just, the British would grant them. So they advocated various economic reforms, sought representation of Indians on the Viceroy's and the Provincial Councils, pressed for increased admission of Indians to Government services, and asked for other similar concessions. At their meetings, the Congress would debate these issues at length and pass eloquent resolutions. The British attitude to all this was simple. So long as British authority and their right to rule over India were not questioned, the Congress could be allowed to act as a harmless safety-valve to keep Indians away from greater mischief. Occasionally some concessions would be announced with much fanfare but nothing much would really be conceded. The overriding consideration for the British was to retain their hold over India and the plea to justify their imperial rule was that the Indians were not yet ready for self-government; only the British could resolve their quarrels and differences.

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This, in brief, was the background when Sri Aurobindo returned to India in 1893. Soon after he had settled down at Baroda, Sri Aurobindo was approached By his Cambridge friend, K.G. Deshpande to contribute articles to the Indu Prakash, an English- Marathi weekly, which he was then editing from Bombay. Deshpande was aware of Sri Aurobindo's uncompromising views but he was willing to take the risk of publishing them. Accordingly, Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of nine articles over the period August 1893 to March 1894, under the title 'New Lamps for Old', to imply that these were new thoughts he was presenting to replace the o\d ideas and views of the Congress. He did not sign the articles because, as a member of the Baroda State Service, he did not wish his own views to cause embarrassment to the Gaekwad.

Sri Aurobindo started on a striking note. He wrote: 'If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch? So or nearly so runs an apophthegm of the Galilean prophet, whose name has run over the four quarters of the globe.... I myself two years ago would not have admitted that it can truthfully be applied to the National Congress. Yet that it can be so applied... is the first thing I must prove.' He then pointed out that the Congress had failed to fulfil the expectations of the people and went on to comment on the attitude with which it had started: 'There was a little too much talk, about the blessings of British rule, and the inscrutable Providence which has laid us in the maternal, or more properly the step-maternal bosom of just and benevolent England. Yet more appalling was the general timidity of the Congress, its glossing over of hard names, its disinclination to tell the direct truth, its fear of too deeply displeasing our masters.' He conceded however, that this initial posture could perhaps have been the sign of 'amiable weaknesses which would wear off with time'. But then he added with telling effect: 'Those amiable weaknesses we were then disposed to pass over very lightly, have not all worn off with time, but have rather grown into an ingrained habit; and the tendency to grosser errors has grown not only into a habit, but into a policy.'

In his subsequent articles Sri Aurobindo criticised the organisation, policy and aims of the Congress from many angles. He pointed out that the Congress 'was not national... it did not represent the mass of the population'. He wrote that the Congress had not heard 'the distant rumbling of the volcano of the ailing and tortured Indian proletariat', and warned that the volcano might

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erupt one day. He added: 'The proletariat is... the real key of the situation. Torpid he is and immobile; he is nothing of an actual force, but he is a very great potential force and whoever succeeds in understanding and eliciting his strength, becomes by the very fact master of the future.' Sri Aurobindo was particularly critical of the way in which the Congress relied on legalistic arguments to win its case, as if it was conducting an appeal in a court of justice. He wrote: 'Our appeal, the appeal of every high-souled and self respecting nation, ought not to be to the opinion of the Anglo- Indians, no, nor yet to the British sense of justice, but to our own reviving sense of manhood, to our own sincere fellow-feeling - so far as it can be called sincere - with the silent and suffering people of India.' But if it was useless relying on the British sense of justice it was equally pointless blaming the individual Englishmen who ruled over India. Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'I cannot really see why we should rage so furiously against the Anglo-Indians and call them by all manner of opprobrious epithets. I grant that they are rude and arrogant, that they govern badly, that they are devoid of any great or generous emotion, that their conduct is that of a small coterie of masters surrounded by a nation of Helots. But to say all this is simply to say that they are very commonplace men put into a quite unique position... they are really very ordinary men, - not only ordinary men, but ordinary Englishmen - types of the middle class or Philistines, in the graphic English phrase, with the narrow hearts and commercial habit of mind peculiar to that sort of people. It is something very like folly to quarrel with them for not transgressing the law of their own nature.' Then, with unerring insight, Sri Aurobindo went to the root of the problem: 'Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.'

And his final indictment of the Congress was devastating: 'I say, of the Congress, then, this - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and wholeheartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.'

We have to remember that Sri Aurobindo was only twenty-one

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when he wrote this. I do not know of a comparable instance of another political writer of any country who had at that age such rare qualities of the intellect, heart and pen.

These articles created a turmoil in political circles. But as to the outcome, I shall give you Sri Aurobindo's own words as he recalled the events to us many years later: 'When I came to Baroda from England I found out what the Congress was like at that time and I formed a strong contempt for it. Then I came into touch with Deshpande, Tilak, Madhavrao and others. Deshpande requested me to write something in the Indu Prakash. There I strongly criticised the Congress for its moderate policy. The articles were so fiery that M.G. Ranade, the great Maratha leader, asked the proprietor of the paper not to allow such seditious writings to appear in his columns; otherwise he might be arrested and imprisoned. Deshpande approached me with the news and re- quested me to write something less violent. I then began to write about the philosophy of politics, leaving aside its practical aspect. But I soon got disgusted with it.'

Sri Aurobindo's first entry into Indian politics was marked by an immediate clash with moderate opinion and, although he then withdrew from politics for a time, the fight was renewed in later years. But even at that time those with foresight must have divined that one day he would give the lead to India. There was an interesting sequel to these articles. Justice Ranade was so disturbed at what had appeared in the Indu Prakash that he wanted to meet the author and a meeting did take place at Bombay. This is what Sri Aurobindo wrote about it in his reminiscences of prison life, Karakahini written in Bengali, from which I give a translation. 'I remembered that fifteen years earlier after returning home from England, I had written some bitterly critical articles in the Indu Prakash. Realising that these articles were influencing the mind of the young, the late Mahadev Govind Ranade had told me, when I met him, that I should give up writing these articles and take up some other Congress work. He wanted me to take up the work of prison reform. I was astonished and unhappy at the unexpected suggestion and refused to undertake that work. I did not know then that this was a prelude to the distant future and that one day God himself would keep me in prison for a year and make me see the cruelty and futility of the system and the need for reform.'

There was another remarkable series of articles that Sri

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Aurobindo wrote for the Indu Prakash. These were occasioned by the death of Bankim Chandra Chatterji and appeared between July 16 and August 27,1894. Each of the seven articles on Bankim Chandra is brilliantly written and worth quoting in detail, but I will have to content myself by giving you only a few examples. Commenting on the versatility of Bankim's genius, Sri Aurobindo summed up: 'Scholar, poet, essayist, novelist, philosopher, lawyer, critic, official, philologian and religious innovator - the whole world seemed to be shut up in his single brain.' Of the student Bankim Chandra, Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'He ascended the school by leaps and bounds; so abnormal indeed was his swiftness that he put his masters in fear of him... and indeed his ease and quickness in study were hardly human. Prizes and distinctions cost him no effort in the attaining. He won his honours with a magical carelessness and as if by accident while others toiled and failed.... [At the Hubli College] he left behind him a striking reputation, to which, except Dwarkanath Mitra, no student has ever come near. Yet he had done positively nothing in the way of application or hard work. As with most geniuses his intellectual habits were irregular. His spirit needed larger bounds than a school routine could give it, and refused, as every free mind does, to cripple itself and lose its natural suppleness.... At the eleventh hour and with an examination impending, he would catch up his prescribed books, hurry through them at a canter, win a few prizes, and go back to his lotus-eating.'

These words are of particular interest because, perhaps unconsciously, they reflect Sri Aurobindo's own genius as a student and, in fact, there is a remarkable temperamental affinity between them in other spheres too of their activities. And here is Sri Aurobindo's concluding assessment of Bankim Chandra: 'When Posterity comes to crown with her praises the Makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a noisy social reformer but on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali who never clamoured for place or for power but did his work in silence for love of his work even as nature does, and just because he had no aim but to give out the best that was in him, was able to create a language, a literature and a nation.' Again, we have to marvel at the depth of perception and the mastery of language which found expression in one who was barely twenty- two years of age.

After his initial experience with the Indu Prakash, Sri Aurobindo

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kept away from any public connection with politics for a number of years, but he continued to study conditions closely so that he could judge and decide on the lines of action he would take at the appropriate time. He also plunged into studies, as you know, so as to understand better the culture and civilization of his country.

Sri Aurobindo's study of history led him to the conclusion that without a revolution no country could win its freedom. He has himself said that his politics ran on three lines. First, revolution: to build up a secret revolutionary organisation and to propagate revolutionary thoughts and ideas. Secondly, a public movement to make people accept the idea of complete independence, for most Indians then believed that to think or speak of independence was a madman's delirium - the British Raj was too powerful. Thirdly, to prepare the common people's mind for non-cooperation and passive resistance by which the government machinery could be paralysed. This anticipated Mahatma Gandhi's movement on similar lines in later years.

When we asked him once how he could even conceive of an armed insurrection against the vast well-equipped British garrisons, he answered: 'At that time, warfare and weapons had not become so lethal in their effect. Rifles were the main weapons, machine guns were not so effective. India was disarmed, but with foreign help and proper organisation, the difficulty could be overcome; and in view of the vastness of the country and the smallness of the regular British armies, even guerilla warfare might be effective, provided that the people gave their support. In the Indian Army, a general revolt was also a possibility.'

Around 1900 Sri Aurobindo made his first move when he sent a young Bengali soldier of the Baroda Army, Jatin Banerji, as his lieutenant to Bengal with a programme for preparation and action which he thought might need thirty years for fruition.

Dinen Roy has given us a vivid picture of how this step was taken. He writes: 'A tall, well-built Bengali youth came to our house one day with a lota and a long staff in his hand. The visitor told me, "Bengalis are not admitted to the British Army, so I am knocking about from place to place to see if by any good fortune I could enlist myself in the army of a native Prince." Aravinda was much impressed by the young man's courage, ardour and ambition.'

Sri Aurobindo got this young man into the Baroda Army,

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concealing his identity and passing him off as a Brahmin from the north. After a year's training, he sent Jatin to Bengal to prepare the necessary revolutionary climate and provided him with a programme of action: he should recruit members for the revolution, collect money and equipment, organise the young men into groups and units and give them intensive physical training so that in a future warfare they could play their role as efficient soldiers. Centres were to be established in every town and eventually in every village.

Since his initial visit in 1893, Sri Aurobindo went to Bengal whenever he could and especially during the college vacations. During his visit to Calcutta in 1901 he took an important step in his life. In April, he married Mrinalini, daughter of Bhupal Chandra Bose, a senior official in Government service. Sri Aurobindo was then 28; the bride Mrinalini, 14. She was beautiful, educated and belonged to an aristocratic family. It was an arranged marriage resulting from an advertisement inserted by Sri Aurobindo, which caught the notice of Principal Girish Chandra Bose of Bangabasi College, a close friend of Bhupal Chandra, and it was Girish Babu who negotiated the marriage. The wedding was attended by many distinguished persons of Calcutta, like Jagdish Chandra Bose, Lord. Sinha and others. Sri Aurobindo had insisted on the marriage ceremony being performed according to the Hindu rites. And this raised a problem. He was told that he would have to go through prayaschitta, a purificatory ceremony, for having crossed the 'black waters'. Like his father, he refused and also turned down other alternatives which were suggested. Eventually, some money passed into the hands of an obliging Brahmin priest and saved the face of society and shastra! After the marriage Sri' Aurobindo reached Baroda along with his wife and sister Sarojini, via Deoghar and Nainital where the Gaekwad was holidaying at the time.

About this time Sri Aurobindo's youngest brother, Barin, also joined him at Baroda. Because of his mother's illness and the untimely death of Dr. K.D. Ghose, Barin's education had suffered, but he had managed to pass the entrance examination, then tried various occupations, including running a tea-shop (then a most novel undertaking) at Patna; eventually he decided to try his lot with 'Sejda' at Baroda. He was a young man of valour and exceptional ability but of a volatile, somewhat unstable, temperament.

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He had already been initiated into a revolutionary coterie at Deoghar and proved to be an eager disciple at Baroda. He soon became friendly with Lt. Madhavrao, Khaserao Jadav's brother, who was in the Baroda Army, and took lessons from him in the use of fire-arms etc. Later, Madhavrao was sent to Europe for further military training. Sri Aurobindo helped Madhavrao meet the expenses from his own resources.

Among Barin's varied interests was spiritualism - experiments with planchette, table-tapping, etc. Sri Aurobindo would join him on some evenings and came across some startling results. Once a spirit assuming their father's name came and said: 'I gave a gold watch to Barin when he was a child.' This was confirmed by Barin who had forgotten all about it. When Dr. Krishna Dhan's spirit was asked what kind of a man Tilak was, the answer came: 'When all your work will be ruined and many men bow down their heads, this man will keep his head erect' - a remarkable prediction about Tilak's political greatness. On another occasion Sri Ramakrishna's spirit was invoked. He said, 'Mandir gado' (make a temple) which was construed to mean that a temple for political sannyasins was to be built like the Bhavani Mandir of Bankim Chandra's Ananda Math.

After training Barin, Sri Aurobindo sent him to Bengal to help Jatin Banerji in the organisation of revolutionary work and himself followed up with a visit in 1902 during the college vacation. He went to Midnapur for the first time accompanied by Jatin and Barin. There he met Hemchandra Das, the revolutionary leader. On his return to Calcutta Jatin arranged a meeting between Sri Aurobindo and Barrister P. Mitter who had started an organisation o& young men for revolutionary work under the guise of youth clubs for physical exercises etc. Mitter readily joined hands with Sri Aurobindo who administered the revolutionary oath to him and Hemchandra: holding a sword and the Gita in their hands, they vowed to Strive to secure at any cost the freedom of Mother India. It was also resolved to form six centres of revolutionary work in Bengal and to give training in rifle-shooting.

Earlier Sri Aurobindo had learnt of a secret revolutionary society in Maharashtra under the leadership of Thakur Ram Singh, a Rajput prince from the State of Udaipur. Sri Aurobindo joined its Bombay branch and took the oath of the party. The Thakur was actively engaged in winning over regiments of the

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Indian Army to the revolutionary movement. Sri Aurobindo paid a visit to Central India and met some regimental officers. He thus forged a link between eastern and western India, with Tilak working from behind in Maharashtra. Here I should also mention that Sri Aurobindo had a long meeting with this great Maharashtrian leader in December 1902 when both were present at the Ahmedabad session of the Indian National Congress. Sri Aurobindo had an exceptional regard for Tilak and their collaboration in the political field was both close and of immense significance for the national movement.

In 1903 Sri Aurobindo paid another visit to Calcutta to patch up differences which had cropped up between Jatin and Barin. Jatin, it appeared, had become too rigid a disciplinarian and was losing his hold on the youth. Sri Aurobindo formed a committee of five consisting of P. Mitter, Sister Nivedita, C.R. Das, Surendranath Tagore and Jatin to be in overall charge of the revolutionary work in Bengal. Although some differences continued, the work under P. Mitter's leadership increased enormously. Hundreds of young people joined the movement and even some government servants lent their secret sympathy and help. And by 1905 the movement received a tremendous fillip as a result of the Government's ill- conceived decision to partition Bengal.

From this time a relationship of firm friendship and cooperation grew up between Sri Aurobindo and Sister Nivedita. It had started when Nivedita visited Baroda in 1902 to give some lectures. Sri Aurobindo went to the station to receive her. She had heard of him as a worshipper of Kali and Sri Aurobindo had appreciated her book Kali, the Mother. Nivedita had an interview with the Maharaja at which Sri Aurobindo was present. She tried to persuade the Maharaja to support the revolutionary movement but he merely said he would send his reply through Mr. Ghose. Of course he had no intention of joining the movement; but he seemed a little surprised that Sri Aurobindo was taking such a keen interest in it.

Sri Aurobindo had great admiration and respect for Nivedita and spoke about her with much warmth. 'She was a true revolutionary leader,' he told us once, 'she was open, frank and talked freely of revolutionary ideas. There was no concealment about her. It was her very soul that spoke. Whenever we met we spoke about politics and revolution. But her eyes showed a power

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of concentration and revealed a capacity for going into trance. Her book Kali, the Mother is revolutionary and not at all non-violent.'

'What about Barin,' we interposed, 'he was also fiery?'

'But not like Nivedita. She was fire, if you like. She did India a tremendous service.'

With the revolutionary movement gathering strength, Barin hit upon the idea of giving a concrete shape to Sri Ramakrishna's words heard at the spirit sessions, Mandir gado. So he stalked far and wide in the Vindhya hills looking for a suitable place where a temple, along the lines of the Mandir in Ananda Math, could be built the course of these wanderings he contracted a 'hill fever', a violent and almost incurable disease, and had to return to his Sejda at Baroda. Now it happened, one day, that a naga sannyasi arrived at the house and, seeing Barin laid up in his emaciated condition, asked, 'Who is that lying there?' When he was given the story, he said, 'Fetch a glass of water.' Then muttering some mantra he cut the water crosswise with a knife and asked Barin to drink it. 'Tomorrow the fever will leave you,' he predicted and truly it did. A fever, which had persisted for days, disappeared as if by magic!

About this striking incident Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'This was a first-hand proof of yoga-power. I thought - if yoga has such powers, why not use them for the country's sake? This was the immediate cause of my turning to yoga. Ramakrishna's message gave the necessary push. That is why I have said that I entered yoga by the back door.'

This brings me to the subject which will assume increasing importance as we go on, viz., Sri Aurobindo's turning to yoga. Actually, Sri Aurobindo was a born yogi. I have already told you of the rare spiritual experience which came to him when he first stepped on the shores of India. Let me give you another instance of an experience he had in the first year of his stay in Baroda, again in a most unexpected manner. Sri Aurobindo had then a very old-fashioned horse-carriage, known as a 'Victoria' carriage. Dinen Roy wrote that the horse was a huge creature but in movement it was the cousin-brother of a donkey and whipping had no effect on it! Anyway, Sri Aurobindo was going through the city streets in this carriage when, suddenly it went out of control. A serious accident was imminent. Sri Aurobindo willed that that must not happen and immediately a Being of Light emerged out of

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him and took control of the situation. Later in a splendid sonnet, 'The Godhead', Sri Aurobindo recalled this experience and if you read the poem aloud, you will feel its power, extraordinary rhythm and vividness. This was probably Sri Aurobindo's first experience of the Divinity within himself. Nearly ten years later, in 1903, he had another remarkable experience. This was in Kashmir where he had gone with the Maharaja. While walking on the ridge of the Takht-i-Suleman or Hill of Shankaracharya, Sri Aurobindo had an experience which too he expressed in a sonnet, 'Adwaita':

An unborn Reality world-nude,

Topless and fathomless, forever still...

Probably in the same year Sri Aurobindo visited a temple of Kali on the banks of the Narmada. This he did on the persuasion of his friends, as he himself had at the time no faith in idols or image- worship. 'With my European mind,' he wrote, 'I had no faith in them and I hardly believed in the presence of God.' But when he looked at the image of the goddess, he found 'a living Presence deathless and divine, A form that harbours all infinity...' and he writes: 'For the first time I believed in the presence of God.' In an indirect reference to this experience, he wrote afterwards: '...You stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what? a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment, mysteriously, unexpectedly, there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother.' We can but wonder at such experiences, rare even amongst those who have dedicated their entire lives to the practice of yoga. I should also remind you of the vivid description given by Dinen Roy of Sri Aurobindo in 1899/1900 - his self-control, detachment, equanimity, compassion for the poor - which are all signs associated with a yogi who is far advanced on the path.

Before he turned to the practice of yoga, Sri Aurobindo had started on certain practices of pranayam having learnt some rules from an engineer friend, Devadhar. Sri Aurobindo said that he practised it 'on my own for five or six hours a day for nearly four years. As a result, the brain became full-of light, prakashamaya. The mind worked with great illumination and power. My power of writing poetry as well as prose increased tremendously. Usually I wrote about 200 lines of poetry a month. After the pranayam I wrote pages and pages in a single day and that flow I never lost. I

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used to feel that an electric energy was all round the brain because of which the mosquitoes did not bite me during the pranayam. My health too improved, even the skin became fair and there was a peculiar substance in the saliva which probably produced these changes. I adopted a vegetarian diet. That gave lightness and some purification. But that was all and there was no farther advance. Besides, politics kept me too busy and owing to irregularity in the practice of pranayam I fell seriously ill. It nearly carried me off.'

However wonderful as these earlier experiences were, 1904 is usually taken to be the year in which Sri Aurobindo actually commenced the practice of yoga. He himself has said that he had no pull towards yoga to begin with. When asked to explain how the conversion took place, he replied, 'God knows how. At Baroda my friends asked me to practise yoga. I didn't care for it; my idea about yoga was that it was a life-denying affair. One has to retire to the hills and become a sannyasi, while my heart's call was to seek for the freedom of the country. But the cure of Barm's fever opened my eyes and I realised my error about yoga. Slowly my mind turned towards it and when I decided to take up yoga I made this prayer: "If You do exist. You know my mind. You know I don't care for liberation; what others want has no attraction for me. I want power so that I may raise this country and serve my dear countrymen.'"

In another revealing letter he explained: 'I didn't know what God was. Deshpande was doing Hatha Yoga asanas and other kriyas at that time and as he had a great proselytising tendency he wanted to convert me to his view. But I thought that a yoga which required me to give up the world was not for me. I had to liberate my country. I took to it seriously when I learnt that the same Tapasya which one does to get away from the world can be turned to action. I learnt that Yoga gives power and I thought why the devil should I not get the power and use it to liberate my country.... It was the time of "country first, humanity afterwards and the rest nowhere". It was something from behind which got the idea accepted by the mind; mine was a side-door entry to the spiritual life.' It is evident, then, that there was no conflict in Sri Aurobindo between the practice of yoga and politics and one became a part of the other.

At this time, that is around 1905, Sri Aurobindo visited the Ashram of Swami Brahmananda of Karnali on the banks of the

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river Narmada, had the darshan of the maha yogi and was greatly impressed. Usually when receiving pranams Swami Brahmananda sat with closed eyes but for Sri Aurobindo he made an exception and gazed at him with his eyes fully open as if some extraordinary person or kindred soul had come. 'He had very beautiful eyes,' Sri Aurobindo said, 'and his penetrating look saw everything inside me.'

In later years Sri Aurobindo made some observations about Swami Brahmananda which were very interesting. There was much speculation about the age of the Swami, some claiming that he was more than 400 years old. Sri Aurobindo wrote: '400 years is an exaggeration. It is known however that he lived on the banks of the Narmada for 80 years and when he arrived there, he was already in appearance at the age when maturity turns towards overripeness. He was when I met him just before his death a man of magnificent physique showing no signs of old age except white beard and hair, extremely tall, robust, able to walk any number of miles a day and tiring out his younger disciples, walking too so swiftly that they tended to fall behind, a great head and magnificent face that seemed to belong to men of more ancient times. He never spoke of his age or of his past either except for an occasional almost accidental utterance. One of these was spoken to a disciple of his well known to me, a Baroda Sardar, Mazumdar .... [who] learned that he was suffering from a bad tooth and brought him a bottle of Floriline, a toothwash then much in vogue. The Yogi refused, saying, "I never use medicines. My one medicine is Narmada water. As for the tooth I have suffered from it since the days of Bhao Girdi." Bhao Girdi was the Maratha general Sadashiva Rao Bhao who disappeared in the Battle of Panipat [14.1.1761] and his body was never found. Many formed the conclusion that Brahmananda was himself Bhao Girdi, but this was an imagination. Nobody who knew Brahmananda would doubt any statement of his - he was a man of perfect simplicity and did not seek fame or to impose himself. When he died he was still in full strength and his death came not by decay but by the accident of blood-poisoning through a rusty nail that entered into his foot as he walked on the sands of the Narmada.' All this shows that the ordinary norms of age or indeed the usual consideration of everyday life can scarcely be applied to great yogis.

Let me now tell you of the booklet Bhawani Mandir which Sri

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Aurobindo wrote at this time. It was Barin who conceived the idea that a temple consecrated to the Divine Mother, invoking Mother India as Bharat Shakti, Bhawani Bharati, would be extremely effective for the propagation of the new revolutionary gospel, and at his request Sri Aurobindo wrote the booklet. It begins: 'A temple is to be erected and consecrated to Bhawani, the Mother, among the hills.' Bhawani is the Mother, the Infinite Energy that 'looms up in the vision of man in various aspects and infinite forms. Each aspect creates and marks an age.' In our age, the Mother's characteristic aspect is Shakti or masterful strength; in this aspect her name is Bhawani. 'Everywhere the Mother is at work... remoulding, creating. She is pouring Her spirit into the old; She is whirling into life the new.'

But in India tamos has taken possession of the people. 'We have abandoned Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts, in our brains, in our arms.' So Sri Aurobindo gives the call: India must shake off her lethargy and rise to her full stature. And what is India, our mother-country? Sri Aurobindo's answer is crystal clear: 'It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons.'

Three things are necessary: first, a temple for the Mother; secondly, a new Order of Karma Yogis, 'Men in whom the Shakti is developed to the uttermost extent'; and, thirdly, the message of so-ham, 'the mighty formula of the Vedanta...the knowledge which when vivified by Karma and Bhakti, delivers men out of all fear and all weakness.' And India must be reborn because her rebirth is demanded for the future of the world. Then comes Sri Aurobindo's final call: 'Come then, hearken to the call of the Mother. She is already in our hearts waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be worshipped, - inactive because the God. in us is concealed by tamas, troubled by Her inactivity, sorrowful because Her children will not call on Her to help them. You who feel Her stirring within you, fling off the black veil of self, break down the

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imprisoning walls of indolence, help Her each as you feel impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your speech or with your wealth or with your prayers and worship, each man . according to his capacity. Draw not back, for against those who were called and heard Her not She may well be wroth in the day of Her coming; but to those who help Her advent even a little, how radiant with beauty and kindness will be the face of their Mother."

Neither the Mandir nor the new Order of Karma Yogins materialized, although later Barin sought to give some shape to these ideas on a small scale amongst the community of revolutionaries who gathered at Maniktolla garden. However, the booklet was a source of inspiration and courage to hundreds of revolutionaries, causing much alarm among official circles. And Sri Aurobindo's call still rings for us to respond to in our hearts, for that is where the Mandir has to be built.

We have now come to the closing period of Sri Aurobindo's stay at Baroda. In March 1905 Sri Aurobindo took over as acting Principal at Baroda College and he held that position until February 1906 when he took privilege leave to go to Bengal. Meanwhile much was happening in that province. On October 16, 1905, the Partition of Bengal had become an 'accomplished fact', the decision of an alien Government in complete disregard of the wishes of the people. This was to have far-reaching consequences. Sri Aurobindo remained in close touch with the situation. In December 1905 he attended the Benares Session of the Indian National Congress to feel the pulse of the nation. Mark how many things he had simultaneously taken up by this time: yoga, revolutionary work, politics, teaching, besides his own literary activity. But we can get a glimpse of his main preoccupation from the letters he wrote in Bengali to his wife Mrinalini at this time. These letters were not meant for publication but expressed only his private thoughts and feelings and were written in order to answer some of her anxious queries. They were seized by the Police when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in May 1908 and were produced before the Court as part of the evidence against him. I shall quote only a few extracts to show how his intense aspiration for the Divine had merged with his ardent love for the motherland without any contradiction between these two urges of his being, and how deeply concerned he was that Mrinalini should under- stand him and follow him in his path.

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In the letter of August 1905, Sri Aurobindo writes: 'I have three madnesses. The first is this. I firmly believe that the accomplishments, talent, education and means that God has given me, are all His. Whatever is essential and needed for the maintenance of the family has alone a claim upon me; the rest must be returned to God. If I spend everything for comfort or luxury, then I am a thief.... The second madness which has recently seized hold of me is: I must somehow see God.... If He exists, there must be ways to perceive His presence, to meet Him. However arduous the way, I am determined to follow that path. In one month I have felt that the Hindu religion has not told lies - the signs and hints it has given have become a part of my experience. Now I want to take you along with me.... My third madness is that other people look upon the country as an inert piece of matter, a stretch of fields and meadows, forests and rivers. To me She is the Mother. I adore Her, worship Her. What will the son do when he sees a rakshasa sitting on the breast of his mother and sucking her blood? Will he quietly have his meal or will he rush to deliver his mother from that grasp? I know I have the strength to redeem this fallen race. It is not physical strength, it is the strength of knowledge. The power of the Kshatriya is not the only power. There is also the power of the Brahmin, the power founded upon knowledge. This feeling is not new, I was born with it and it is ia my very marrow. God has sent me to this world to accomplish this great mission. When I was fourteen, the seed began to sprout; at eighteen the foundation became firm and unshakable.'

In another letter he wrote: 'In these dark days, the entire country is seeking refuge at my door. Among the thirty crores of my brothers and sisters many are dying from hunger and starvation.... They must be helped. This was the secret I wanted to tell you.'

This is but a bare gist ,of the letters. You have to go through them in full to realise Sri Aurobindo's greatness even in those early days. The letters were perhaps an enigma to Mrinalini - we must remember that she was only 18 at the time, and even for one more mature it would have been difficult indeed to follow the steep and narrow path of austerity and sacrifice that her husband had chosen for himself. But, to her great credit, she faced her ordeals bravely during the years of her husband's incarceration and remained steadfast in her devotion to him.

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On completion of his privilege leave in June 1906 Sri Aurobindo returned to Baroda but only to stay for a few days. On June 19 he took one year's leave without pay to go back to Bengal. This marked practically the end of his long association with Baroda. Bengal was in ferment and the agitation had spread to other parts of the country. Sri Aurobindo was to play a crucial role in the momentous hour which was now on the nation.

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