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CHAPTER FOUR
NATIONALISM AS DHARMA
Momentous was the beginning of the twentieth century. The Shakti of India was dynamically at work for her political liberation the seed-idea of which she had already sown in the one who was to be its high-priest. ' The voice incarnate of India's soul,' he uttered the truth of the New Nationalism, not as a passing political expedient, but as an abiding aspect of the immortal Idea which is India's portion to fulfil in the divine ordering of things. Nationalism in modern times is nothing but an aggrandisement of national egoism. Here was a unique evangel, a broader, nobler and mightier conception of the awakened soul of this ancient land rising again to receive the strength from the supreme Shakti in order first to be free and fulfil itself as a nation and then lead the peoples of the earth to their true freedom and fulfilment.
The work Sri Aurobindo had already initiated touched, as he desired, the youths of the country; and those that readily received the message right into their soul grew in numbers. The idea spread and deepened, and in more ardent spirits, flamed into a passion for self-dedication to the great cause symbolised by the inspired priest and prophet whose unerring vision and unseen force were irresistible in their appeal. From an ephemeral emotion of the heart and mind this passion passed into a deeper spring of the soul; patriotism became a dharma.
But this inner preparation could have no free play in the outer field because of the inhibition of the foreign rule, and in part, because of the individualistic temperament in the race. On the side of the workers themselves, there was a lack of reserve and of sufficient self-possession, due largely to their rapidly expanding activities and perhaps to some extent to the warmth of their youthful hearts. Government got scent of the movement, particularly of the preparations that were being made for overt action. They were perturbed, above all, that young students should be " infected with the virus of sedition'.
But their hand was stayed for want of evidence, the activities, at this stage, being secret and psychological. So, for a time at least, the revolutionary doctrines spread from mouth to mouth, and by the force of their inherent appeal and the ardent faith of the workers, stamped themselves on the youthful minds and steeled their nerves to action whenever the call would come. With no uniform programme of action, no central body to co-ordinate their activities, the secret societies yet remained bound in one common resolve, grew in numbers, in strength, and served as a great outlet of the growing discontent that did not take long to develop into a new militant nationalism, or if you will, a revolt.
The British Government was not slow to read the signs. Their representative in India—' that ambitious, unscrupulous and pompous young English noble'—was determined to crush this spirit of revolt. But there being no open action from the other side, there was none from his. He therefore tried the time-old policy of divide et impera—a stab in the heart of the race. Nothing could be deadlier or more sinister. The Muslim youths of East Bengal had to be alienated from their Hindu brothers of West Bengal, who, in his view, were the source of the ' trouble'. On the diplomatic plea of administrative efficiency, Lord Curzon proposed to partition Bengal. Little did he then realise that this would bring new life to the nation and death to the Empire he sought to perpetuate.
The Moderate leaders—the then custodians of the Congress—with their rooted faith in British justice, were of course taken aback by this step. Their feeling, as expressed by one of the foremost of them, was: ' We felt that we had been insulted, humiliated and tricked. We felt that the whole of our future was at stake, and that it was a deliberate blow aimed at the growing solidarity and self-consciousness of the Bengali-speaking population. . . . The Partition would be fatal to our political progress and to that close union between Hindus and Mohammedans upon which the prospects of Indian advancement so largely depended.'1
Sri Aurobindo, now in Baroda, wrote to his revolutionary group in Calcutta saying: ' Here is our great opportunity. Push on the anti-partition agitation with utmost force. Lots of workers will emerge from it.' He sent a booklet on ' No Compromise'. No press would print it. At length, ' we 2 bought type, stick, case and other things and had the writing composed in private by a Marathi young man Kulkarni who stayed with us. Several thousand copies were got printed overnight in a press and distributed to newspaper editors and distinguished men in educated circles. Barin and I took it to Sri Surendranath Banerjee. He asked us to leave it with him. But we were importunate. He gave it a passing notice and then no more could lay it by. He read it through with absorbed attention and felt astonished and asked who the writer was. ' It is not possible for an Indian, even for a Bengali, to write such English with such a striking presentation of facts and arguments,' was the opinion he expressed. When he learned that Aurobindo Ghose was the writer, he said, ' Oh yes, he alone could write it'.
Even before the announcement of the Partition proposal, Sri Aurobindo was planning to give some form to the second and third items of his programme of political action. They were to create in the people of India the will to freedom, and 'at the same time to push first a party and then the whole nation into an intense and organised political activity which would lead to the accomplishment of that ideal. His idea was to
1 Surendranath Banerji: A Nation in the Making, pp. 187-88. 2 Abinash Bhattacharya in Galpa Bharati mentioned in the previous chapter. capture the Congress and make it an instrument for revolutionary action, instead of a centre of a timid constitutional agitation which would only talk and pass resolutions and recommendations to the foreign government '. This was in his mind when in 1902 he witnessed the tame Moderate show at the Ahmedabad session of the Congress which he attended but not officially. He must have got disgusted with what the Congress did at that session, discussing and protesting against the proposed Universities Bill through which Lord Curzon wanted to officialise the universities and to bring the entire system of higher education under the control of the Government. ' There Tilak took Sri Aurobindo out of the pandal and talked to him for an hour in the grounds expressing his contempt for the tinker-work show and explaining his own line of action in Maharashtra.'
On his way to Ahmedabad Sri Aurobindo stopped at Bombay and met at the Taj Mahal Hotel G. D. Madgaokar of the Indian Civil Service, and several other close associates and discussed with them about revolutionary work in Gujarat in general, and particularly the plan of sending Madhavrao to Europe for training in revolutionary work, alluded to in the previous chapter. Madgaokar was one of Sri Aurobindo's ardent supporters in revolutionary work in western India.3
Again in 1904 Sri Aurobindo attended the Congress sessions at Bombay which was presided over by Sir Henry Cotton, who in his address made a vigorous protest against the proposed partition of Bengal, refuting every argument of Lord Curzon and pleading for the people in words like ' Babus from Bengal, strenuous and able, who rule and control public opinion from Peshawar to Chittagong'. He characterised the indifference of the Government to the nationwide protest against the partition as ' a most arbitrary and unsympathetic evidence of irresponsible and autocratic statesmanship'.
3 Barindrakumar Ghose: Agniyuga (in Bengali), p. 41.
Sir Henry visualized the Congress ideal as ' a Federation of free and separate states'—the ' United States of India', the whole country remaining a colony of the British Empire. But however liberal it looked from the standpoint of a Britisher, Sri Aurobindo could not accept it, taking, as he did, his stand on absolute freedom, ' freedom as an Englishman enjoys it in England, as an American in America '.
The next Congress at Benares met under circumstances the most exciting in the political life of India. But Bengal's feelings were hardly shared by other provinces and their leaders in the Congress except Maharashtra and the Punjab. So with armed revolution as the main item in his programme, Sri Aurobindo knew that in order to popularise and establish the idea of independence among the masses he should have in it such other items as the people could immediately take up and carry out. Therefore he insisted on Swadeshi and boycott as two immediate means and Swaraj or absolute autonomy as the goal.
Sri Aurobindo was present at Benares during the Congress. Though not attending the open sessions, he gave whatever help he could to the leaders from Bengal and other provinces, holding extreme views. Kalimohan Ghosh, in later life a co-worker of Poet Rabindranath Tagore in Viswabharati, was then a boy volunteer in charge of Sri Aurobindo's camp and hoped to attend the open session along with his guest. But to his surprise, he saw that Sri Aurobindo remained where he was and the prominent leaders came to him, discussed matters, went back to the open session and acted accordingly. Kalimohan spoke from personal knowledge of the on goings in both the places, for Sir Aurobindo, sensing the boy's desire to attend the meeting, provided him with an admission card. Kalimohan related this to the writer with tears of love and gratitude in his eyes.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale was President of the Benares Congress. He knew well enough what a tremendous force Bengal then was in the political life of India. It was he who, a few years later, almost re-echoed Sri Aurobindo's words written in 1894, when he said, ' What Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow.' But like other Moderate leaders he lacked the courage of a fighter and the farsightedness of a statesman and failed also to grasp the deeper bearings of the Nationalist programme on the' life of the country. He supported Swadeshi but rejected Boycott as a negative policy which Bengal might adopt for the redress of her grievances, but not the whole of India. Nevertheless, by accepting Swadeshi and recognising boycott as a means to fight a political wrong, the Benares Congress marked some advance in the growth of Indian Nationalism.
But mere protest and other paper resolutions could mean nothing to the monstrous evil the Partition was intended to be. Yet they were welcome as signs of the Leviathan awakening after centuries of sleep. And there were as many as two thousand public meetings held all over the country every one of which condemned the Government design in strongest terms. Indeed, India as a whole raised its voice against it. It was the breath of a new spirit that freshened up, for the first time, its whole atmosphere. Sri Aurobindo therefore ' regarded the Partition of Bengal as the greatest blessing that had ever happened to India. No other measure could have stirred national feeling so deeply or roused it so suddenly from the lethargy of previous years.' 4
The story of how this awakening began and how it made itself felt from end to end of this vast country and stirred all other aspects of the national life, social, cultural and economic, will ever remain an interesting chapter in the history of India's struggle for freedom. In its deepest import, it was the first concrete sign of a resurgence of her soul which, as if by a galvanic shock, leapt into a new impulse, developed a spiritual fervour, and worked up what was hitherto practically non est— national self-consciousness. The resultant expressions are
4 H. W. Nevinson: The New Spirit in India, p. 222
the cultural history of modern Bengal, and in a larger sense, of modern India.
It was indeed a fateful moment when Bengal uttered the mantra of India's dynamic Nationalism. The overburdened heart of the nation, lacerated by alien insolence, broke into a cry that rose to heaven and brought down its light to illumine its consciousness, to strengthen its resolve to do away with all opposition and help rethrone the Mother in her own right and in her own glory. That this mantra contains the essential truth of Indian Nationalism, that it justified then its power in her awakening and will yet play an immense part in a further awakening to her destiny should be no difficult matter for an Indian to understand.
The complete song Bande Mataram occurs in Bankim-chandra's famous novel Anandamath in which, as already said, he depicts the first revolt against the British organised by a huge brotherhood of ' Sannyasins' in Bengal. These anchorites worshipped India as an eternal Mother-aspect of the Divine by chanting the song, the first line of which is Bande Mataram, ' Mother, I bow to Thee!' In a rare moment of unlooked-for inspiration the text of the whole song came ready-made to the poet, and later on he very appropriately incorporated it in the novel.
Bankimchandra knew the bearing this song would have on a nationwide awakening. On his passing it on to the manager of the paper Bangadarshan he was then editing, the manager requested him to write a novel as a song could not cover much of its space. Bankim replied: ' You cannot understand the significance of this song now. But if you live twenty-five years more, you will see Bengal in raptures over it.' A prophecy that proved true to the letter.
Bankimchandra saw the vision of Mother India, the Mother as she had been in her glorious past, as she was in her state of subjection, as she would be in her even more glorious future. A royal vision, royally worded, in its inviolate vesture. It became, as it was intended to be, the mantra by which an awakened nation invoked the Mother and the Mother poured her Shakti into her children, shakti that made them invincible in spirit.
Till now Bankim was known to his countrymen as a great litterateur, a great writer, and an ardent lover of his country. It required a seer's eye to see in him a Rishi. It was Sri Aurobindo's that did it.' The supreme .service of Bankim to his nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother. The bare intellectual idea of the motherland is not in itself a great driving force; the mere recognition of the desirability of freedom is not an inspiring motive. ... It is not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the mind and seize the heart that these petty fears and hopes vanish in the all-absorbing passion for the Mother and her service, and the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others. It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote this great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no farther slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of a conqueror.'5
In his earliest political writings Sri Aurobindo had expressed himself strongly against the traditional Congress
5 Sri Aurobindo: Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, pp. 13-14.
policy of prayer, petition and protest. He advocated bold policy, bold action, bold self-giving. Later, he referred to Bankim's satirical writings in which the great thinker pointed out that ' the force from above must be met by a mightier reacting force from below,—the strength of repression by an insurgent national strength. He bade us leave the canine method of agitation for the leonine. The Mother of his vision held trenchant steel in her twice seventy million hands and not the bowl of the mendicant. It was the gospel of fearless strength and force which he preached under a veil and in images in Anandamath and Devi Chaudhurani. And he had an inspired unerring vision of the moral strength which must be at the back of the outer force. He perceived that the first element of the moral strength must be tyaga, complete self-sacrifice for the country and complete self-devotion to the work of liberation. His workers and fighters for the motherland are political bairagees who have no other thought than their duty to her and have put all else behind them as less dear and less precious and only to be resumed when their work for her is done '.6
Not without reason did Sri Aurobindo call Bankim 'a Maker of Modern India, a nation-builder', whose message to his countrymen Sri Aurobindo interpreted from his larger vision of India's awakening soul and of her great future.
The mantra of worship was given, the Mother in her three aspects, and their inner significance revealed. The work began. The soul of the nation infused itself into a movement of liberation, for which the powers-that-be had paved the passage through.
1905. A memorable year in the history of Bengal, the year that marked the starting-point of this movement, the year when a whole nation, after tasting the slow poison of a century and a half of foreign rule, resolved to reject it for ever.
6 Sri Aurobindo: Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, pp. 11-12
Page-71 After its declaration in July, the Partition took effect on the 16th of October 1905. The day was observed with all the solemnity of a religious ceremony. The same month the Government promulgated an order prohibiting students from participating in political meetings, processions and other demonstrations which were then being held in thousands all over the country. This gave a fresh impetus to the boycott movement, just started. Students openly defied the order and Government with its time-old method of repression and persecution came down upon them. Hundreds left schools and colleges and the leaders seized the opportunity of training them into valiant champions of country's freedom through education on national lines. Thus like the boycott movement, the National Education movement too owed its genesis to Government action.
It was but too patent to the Government that the national mantra Bande Mataram was the most powerful of forces behind the awakening of the nation. They therefore banned the cry. And because of the ban, the skies of Bengal rang with a redoubled force with the holy cry of open and courageous worship of the Mother rising out of the throbbing heart of the nation. The so-called Partition existed in the Statute book of the Government and in the new administrative set-up. The nation refused to accept it and more and more stubbornly as Government persisted more and more sternly in repression.
After the Benares Congress Sri Aurobindo returned to Baroda in December 1905. In February 1906, he took leave of the college without pay, and this, combined with the summer recess, enabled him to come to Bengal and stay there till June. The most important event during this period was the Bengal Provincial Conference at Barisal, which had the Partition as the principal item on the agenda. Barisal wrote a glorious page in the history of India's Freedom Movement. Pitted against the organised and armed wrath of the Government, leaders and young boys proved their mettle at its best in vindicating their country's honour and the honour of the sacred mantra of national worship. Barisal registered also the foolishness of the ban. Far from stifling an awakened nation's voice, it itself lay trodden down and stifled in death.
Sri Aurobindo, the high-priest of the mantra, ' took part in the Barisal Conference and was in the front row of three persons in the procession which was dispersed by the police charge. After the breaking up of the Conference he accompanied Bepinchandra Pal in a tour of East Bengal where enormous meetings were held, —in one district in spite of the prohibition of the District Magistrate '.
Barisal Conference and East Bengal tour gave Sri Aurobindo a firsthand knowledge of the political situation in the country. It is said that when he was moving from place to place, his personal contact electrified hundreds of souls to sacrifice their all in the cause of national freedom.
Sri Aurobindo now felt the need of an organ through which to keep up and intensify the nation's desire for freedom and to propagate revolutionary ideas on practical lines among the youths so that they might be in readiness for organised action in the future. ' At Barin's suggestion he agreed to the starting of a paper (in Bengali), Yugantar, which was to preach open revolt and absolute denial of British rule and publish series of articles on the conduct of guerrilla warfare. Sri Aurobindo himself wrote some of the opening articles in the early numbers, and he always exercised a general control.' Thus did the Yugantar make its first appearance in March 1906 as the mouthpiece of the revolutionary party. A tiny spark, it flew into a flame and burnt its way into the hearts of the people. Young and old, none could do without reading it, the first thing in the morning. In the words of Upendranath Bandyopadhyaya, a coworker of Barindra, who was also with him in the Maniktola Garden and in the Andamans, ' The Yugantar sold like hot cakes. One thousand—five thousand—ten— twenty thousand copies every week—that was how the sale leapt up in the course of a single year. The thing could scarcely be managed in one press; and we had to get it done secretly at other printing houses. But contrasted with this tremendous expanse, our business methods were quite hopeless. A broken box to put money in rested all the time in a corner of the office room. It was always unlocked. Nobody bothered about the income and expenditure, for we were not out for money-making.'
The office of the Yugantar was also a centre of revolutionary work. Once differences arose between Abinash and Barindra. Barindra, preoccupied with bomb and other matters requiring frequent visits to East Bengal, wrote articles which Abinash, as editor, had to recast. Sensitive Barin would not brook it and stopped writing. Sri Aurobindo intervened and decided in favour of Abinash and Barin readily yielded.7
Early in June 1906 Sri Aurobindo returned to Baroda, took indefinite leave without pay, and left for Bengal early in July. At Baroda he had met several Yogis of Western India. At Karnali, near Chandod, he along with several friends saw the great Yogi Swami Brahmananda. While taking leave each did pranam at the feet of the Yogi who received it with his eyes closed. When Sri Aurobindo did the pranam, he opened his eyes and cast on him a meaningful look. Sri Aurobindo once said that Brahmananda's eyes were extremely beautiful and that he had impressed him greatly.
In July Sri Aurobindo was in Calcutta putting up at 12, Wellington Square, the residence of Raja Subodh-chandra Mullik. Subodhchandra's association with the national movement began when he first met Sri Aurobindo at the residence of Charuchandra Datta in Thana in Gujarat, where Charuchandra8 was posted as a District Judge. Subodhchandra was Dutt's brother-in-law. We have already referred to Sri Aurobindo's meetings
7 Galpa Bharati, Pous 1357, p. 839. 8 In his later life he took up the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and passed the last eight years of his life in his Ashram at Pondicherry.
with Dutt in Thana, in one of which Sri Aurobindo met Subodhchandra and found in him a friend and collaborator in the country's cause. They met each other several times more at the same place and Subodhchandra gave Sri Aurobindo whatever co-operation he could in his secret revolutionary work as well as in his work in connection with the Bande Mataram and the Nationalist Party. It was he who was instrumental in Sri Aurobindo's coming to Calcutta to lead the national movement. Sri Aurobindo's taking long leave and his decision to participate in the Swadeshi movement were outwardly connected with the foundation of Jatiya Shiksha Parishad (National Council of Education) at Calcutta for which a donation of a lakh of rupees was made by Subodhchandra with the stipulation that Sri Aurobindo should be on the teaching staff on a salary of Rs. 100 p.m.
' Sri Aurobindo had been disgusted with the education given by the British system in the schools and colleges and universities, a system of which as a professor in the Baroda College he had full experience.' As early as in 1894 he characterised this system as ' the most ingeniously complete machine for murder that ' human stupidity ever invented, and murder not only of man's body but of a man's soul, of that sacred fire of individuality in him which is far holier and more precious than this mere mortal breath '.9 He had his own ideas of what national education should be, how it should be organised in the best interests of the country. By national education he meant education imparted on national lines, under national control, turned towards the realisation of national destiny. Sri Aurobindo wrote and published in the Karmayogin a series of articles developing these ideas which he later elaborated in the Arya from a spiritual standpoint and according to the genius of the race. ' The founding of the Bengal National College (under the Council) gave him the opportunity he needed
9 Bankimchandra Chatterji, p. 26.
and enabled him to resign his position in the Baroda Service, and join the College as its Principal.'
At College Sri Aurobindo was the idol of his students. Apart from his luminous and original ideas on poetry and literature, culture and history, the greatest thing he gave them was the inspiration of a dedicated life. This is what he emphasized when he took leave of his students to devote himself exclusively to the Bande Mataram and other political work:
' I take it that whatever respect you have shown to me today was shown not to me, not merely even to the Principal, but to your country, to the Mother in me, because what little I have done has been done for her, and the slight suffering that I am going to endure will be endured for her sake. . . . When we established this college, and left other occupations, other chances of life, to devote our lives to this institution, we did so because we hoped to see in it the foundation, the nucleus of a nation, of the new India which is to begin its career after this night of sorrow and trouble, on that day of glory and greatness when India will work for the world. What we want here is not merely to give you a little information, not merely to open to you careers for earning a livelihood, but to build up sons for the Motherland to work and to suffer for her. . . . There are times in a nation's history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer than her service, when everything else is to be directed to that end. If you will study, study for her sake; train yourself body and mind and soul for her service. . . . Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice.' 10
What greater ideals can there be before the students of a subject nation!
When Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal the country was
10 Sri Aurobindo: Speeches, pp. 4-5.
passing through stirring times. But practical difficulties claimed his immediate attention. He had to arrange for the publication of a daily paper in English for the propagation of nationalistic ideas all over India. Then there was the equally important work, of pooling all available resources for the success of his plan. Leaders and workers holding nationalistic views had to be organised into a party for effective action. All these were in his mind when he plunged into the work, simultaneously doing all he could in collaboration with others towards the execution of the three main items of his plan. Of these the work of preparing the country for an armed insurrection claimed his particular attention. Whatever was possible under the then circumstances was being done through the Yugantar and the group of workers associated with it. They had in the meantime started collecting arms and doing vigorous propaganda work. The Yugantar office itself, as already mentioned, was a centre of recruiting and organisational work.
A number of young revolutionaries in various parts of India entered the Congress in order to press upon it their extreme views on political action. Many of these in western India were Sri Aurobindo's students in Baroda, or were influenced by Tilak's ideas. But they were not an organised body. Sometimes they had strong differences among themselves. Neither were they very clear in their mind about what they would do and how. Sri Aurobindo came to know of their sporadic attempts during the Congress sessions in 1902 and 1904 at both of which he was present. Coming to Calcutta, he immediately set about co-ordinating all such elements including some elderly leaders of extreme views who had already done some practical work by way of enlisting popular sympathy and support to the nationalist cause. An imperative need of the moment was an English daily through which he could speak his mind not only to the supporters of the New Party all over the country but to all people and revolutionise their mind and outlook with the ideas that were then developing in him. The opportunity came when Bepinchandra Pal asked Sri Aurobindo to join him in his new venture —the starting of a daily paper with the name of Bande Malaram. In his articles Sri Aurobindo made an outright declaration of the aims of the Nationalists, the principal being ' absolute autonomy free from foreign control' as India's political goal. Most fitting and most significant that the goal of India's freedom struggle should be so clearly enunciated and announced at the first instance by one who alone could conceive and see it through. Was it an earnest of his fourteenth-year hint? History has given the answer and will give another when the realisation is complete. Bengal, sought to be smothered, had found her mantra, now her breath and voice—voice that rang from corner to corner of the subcontinent, breath that made her smouldering fire flame up. Indeed, the whole country leapt into a new life, a new enthusiasm as the columns of the Bande Mataram radiated from day to day the hope and promise of a new dawn after centuries of bleak despair and thickening darkness.
The movement, the Bande Mataram declared, which had started with an agitation against the Partition, ' has touched much deeper grounds. There is in this agitation a consciousness of a new strength, the quickening of a new life, the inspiration of a new ideal'. Even the revocation of the Partition, it asserted, would not kill or stunt the growth of this new spirit, because it no longer sought a reunion of her dismembered parts but a complete freedom for national self-fulfilment. Here are some of the exalting ideas that inspired the new movement, expressed in the leading article of the Bande Mataram for April 26, 1907: 'The new movement is not primarily a protest against bad government,—it is a protest against the continuance of British control; whether that control is used well or ill, justly or unjustly, is a minor and unessential consideration. It is not born of a disappointed expectation of admission to British citizenship,—it is born of a conviction that the time has come when India can, should and will become a great, free and united nation. It is not a negative current of destruction, but a positive constructive impulse towards the making of modern India. It is not a cry of revolt and despair, but a gospel of national faith and hope. Its true description is not Extremism, but Democratic Nationalism. . . . The Nationalists hold that Indians are as capable of freedom as any subject people can be and their defects are the result of servitude and can only be removed by the struggle for freedom, that they have the strength and, if they get the will, can create the means to win independence. They hold that the choice is not between autonomy and provincial Home Rule or between freedom and independence, but between freedom and national decay and death. They hold finally, that the past history of our country and the present circumstances are of such a kind that the great unifying tendencies hitherto baffled by insuperable obstacles have at last found the right conditions of success. They believe that the fated hour for Indian unification and freedom has arrived. In brief they are convinced that India should strive to be free, that she can be free and that she will, by the impulse of her past and present, be inevitably driven to the attempt and the attainment of national self-realisation. The Nationalist creed is a gospel of faith and hope.'
There was then no all-India organisation to execute the programme of Swadeshi and boycott, the Congress being only a deliberative assembly. The sponsors and adherents of the Nationalist programme, drawn up by Sri Aurobindo, had to organise themselves into a strong party working concertedly in all the provinces in order to be able to apply their united strength and enforce their programme on the Congress.
As Calcutta was to be the venue of the 22nd session of the Indian National Congress that year (1906), Sri Aurobindo called a meeting of the Nationalists and ' persuaded them to take public position as a party, proclaim Tilak as their leader and enter into a contest with the Moderate leaders for the control of the Congress and of public opinion and action in the country. The first great public clash between the two parties took place in the sessions of the Congress at Calcutta'. This step of the Nationalists was of great practical value. For the first time, the Congress, however partially, accepted Swaraj as its goal, and recognised Swadeshi and boycott as ' legitimate '.
Sri Aurobindo's choice of Tilak as the leader of the Nationalists had behind it a deeper understanding of the great soul. Later in 1918 Sri Aurobindo wrote: ' Mr. Tilak stands today as one of the two or three leaders of the Indian people who are in their eyes the incarnations of the national endeavour and the God given captains of the national aspiration.' 11
The first Congress in Calcutta after the Partition was to meet under extraordinary circumstances. Seething with discontent, Bengal was throbbing, as never before, with an upsurge of national feeling. Repression was in full swing. The Nationalists therefore wanted a strong man at the helm of the Congress and their choice fell on Tilak. The Moderates, in order to avoid a clash and the election of an extremist, decided upon a non-party man. Dadabhai Naoroji knew the situation in Bengal. On his arrival at Calcutta, he was given a cordial reception. While going in the presidential procession, he saw on the walls of the houses such slogans as ' Support boycott', ' Support autonomy'. He was not surprised. And he showed his political sagacity in his use of the word ' Swaraj ' and the connotation he gave to it, in his presidential address. And equally worthy of him were his ideas of economic and educational reform.
Sometime in the first week of December, that is to say, almost on the eve of the Congress session, Sri Aurobindo had reaffirmed in the columns of the Bande Mataram that nothing short of complete freedom, ' absolute autonomy free from British control' would
11 Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda, pp. 15-16. Page-80 satisfy the political aspirations of India. The people were aglow with a patriotic fervour inspired by the forceful words of their young leader reminding them of their aim and of their duty at the Congress.
The importance of the session attracted many distinguished visitors one of whom was the Gaekwad of Baroda whose other objects in coming to Calcutta were to preside at the Industrial Exhibition held in connection with the Congress, and to persuade Sri Aurobindo to return to Baroda.
The Congress met. A new spirit pervaded the atmosphere. It found expression in the idea of boycott which was on the lips of every supporter of the forward party, particularly of its young adherents who mustered strong at the Congress. Sri Aurobindo participated in the deliberations of the Subjects Committee. The official resolution on the boycott was that it should be recognised as legitimate only in Bengal. Bepinchandra Pal, the spokesman of the Nationalist Party, proposed that in order to be effective the boycott should be adopted by other provinces whose leaders, however, were against its extended scope. The President disallowed Pal's amendment which therefore was not put to vote. As a protest, Tilak, Pal, Sri Aurobindo, Motilal Ghosh, Khaparde and Aswinikumar Dutta, left the Subjects Committee, and went straight to the residence of Chittaranjan Das where they discussed what in the circumstances they should do in order to strengthen their Party. This might be taken as a prelude to the imbroglio at Surat.
' The forward party,' wrote Sri Aurobindo in the Bande Mataram, ' hoped to lend the impress of the new thought and life on the Congress, to get entire self-government recognised as its ideal, and Swadeshi and boycott as the means to obtain it. . . . The Congress has recognised the legitimacy of the boycott movement without limitation or reservation, recognised Swadeshi movement in its entirety and national education.'
This was due to the efforts of the Nationalists whose brain and heart was Sri Aurobindo. But the leadership of the Congress was yet confined to the Moderates who were unwilling to part with it. Unless and until the whole organisation came fully into their hands, the Nationalists found no scope for working out their programme, not to speak of expanding their activities. Apart from the leaders of other provinces who betrayed their incapacity in the Calcutta Congress to understand and face the implications of boycott, most of the so-called veterans of the old school in Bengal itself were, like their compeers in other provinces, yet far from the advanced political thought and spirit of the New School.
The philosophy of this new Nationalism, its different aspects and applications, its necessity, methods and objectives, all had to be explained and brought home to people. Bande Mataram became therefore the vehicle of all these and mote. Nationalist policies and programmes and the tactics by which to implement them, the new cult of self-reliance and self-sacrifice and absolute devotion to the cause, exposition of the hollowness of the loud-voiced Moderatism, the deeper meaning of the various aspects of Indian history, culture and thought, filled the columns of Bande Mataram from day to day, enlivened by the freshness of thought and language, clarity and cogency of reason, grim earnestness and quiet determination, all throbbing with the truth of the Spirit that sublimated these writings.
An idea of the influence it exercised over the people's mind could be formed from the view of a contemporary reader that ' anyone with an open mind reading even a stray issue of the Bande Mataram was sure to be persuaded to its views and become a Nationalist'. The rapid growth of its popularity was being watched by the Government who were always on the alert for an opportunity to prosecute its conductors, particularly Sri Aurobindo, ' the organising brain behind '. ' Sri Aurobindo had always taken care to give no handle in the editorial articles of the Bande Mataram either for a prosecution for sedition or any other drastic action fatal to its existence; an English editor of The Statesman complained that the paper reeked with sedition, patently visible between every line but it was so skilfully written that no legal action could be taken '.
When direct evidence against Sri Aurobindo or the paper was found difficult to produce, the Government on August 16, 1907, arrested him on a charge of sedition, based on translated versions of certain articles from the Yugantar, published in the Bande Mataram. The following is an extract from a leading article of the paper for 29th September on this prosecution: 'The bureaucracy has sought to cripple or silence the Bande Mataram because it has been preaching with extraordinary success a political creed which was dangerous to the continuance of bureaucratic absolutism and was threatening to become a centre of strength round which many Nationalistic forces might gather. It has sought to single out a particular individual because it chose to think that he was, as The Statesman expresses it, the master mind behind the policy of the paper. . . . The Bande Mataram has been for over a year attacking without fear and without disguise the present system of Government and advocating a radical revolutionary change. It has advocated that change on grounds of historical experience, the first principles of politics and the necessity of national self-preservation. It has not minced matters or sought to conceal revolutionary aspirations under the veil of moderate professions or ambiguous phraseology. It has not concealed its opinion that the bureaucracy cannot be expected to transfer itself, that the people of India and not the people of England must save India, and that we cannot hope for any boons but must wrest what we desire by strong national combination from unwilling hands.' We have here a re-statement of Bande Mataram's policy.
The prosecution cited Bepinchandra Pal as the principal witness. The charge failed because it could not be proved that Sri Aurobindo was the editor of the paper. This was largely due to the refusal of Bepinchandra, the only person in the know, to give evidence, and for this bold refusal this high-souled patriot had to undergo six months' imprisonment.
On his incarceration the Bande Mataram wrote: 'A great orator and writer, this spokesman and prophet of Nationalism has risen ten times as high as he was before in the estimation of his country. . . . Nationalism has already become the stronger for his self-immolation.' Sri Aurobindo's estimate of Bepinchandra was: ' Though not a man of action or capable of political leadership, Bepinchandra was perhaps the best and the most original political thinker in the country, an excellent writer and a magnificent orator.'
Sri Aurobindo's arrest had a meaning in it both for him and for the country in that he who had so long been working from behind the scenes and wanted to remain obscure, was by the Government's action brought into prominence and almost at once into the full blaze of glory as the recognised leader of Indian Nationalism. The whole country from end to end expressed sympathy appreciating in glowing terms his ' invaluable service to the country's cause'. There was not a single newspaper with a nationalistic bent which did not publish leading articles on ' his incomparable genius, his sterling sacrifice '. The Indian Patriot wrote : ' At this moment millions of his countrymen are doing homage to his genius. They are pronouncing his name with reverence and gratitude. They honour him, because he honours them, he labours for them. . . . For his country's sake, he counts every suffering a gain. He has dedicated his life to the uplifting of his nation. ... If the greatness of an individual is to be judged by the richness of the sacrifice made in the cause of freedom and truth, Mr. Ghose is great indeed. Gold and power may not be his. But thy labour is not lost. Thy courage will live to inspire the race. Thou shalt live not only in marble and gold but in poet's song which is more enduring. Thou art splendidly in advance of the day.' Here are lines from the poet's song that came from the greatest of them, Rabindranath, written on the same occasion:
' Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my country's friend, O voice incarnate, free, Of India's soul! No soft renown doth crown thy lot, Nor pelf or careless comfort is for thee; thou'st sought No petty bounty, petty dole; the beggar's bowl Thou ne'er hast held aloft. In watchfulness thy soul Hast thou e'er held for bondless full perfection's birth For which, all night and day, the god in man on earth Doth strive and strain austerely; . . . . . . that gift supreme To thee from Heaven's own hand, that full-orb'd fadeless dream That's thine, thou'st asked for as thy country's own desire In quenchless hope, in words with truth's white flame afire, In infinite faith, hath God in heaven heard at last This prayer of thine? And so, sounds there, in blast on blast His victory-trumpet? . . . O Victory and Hail! Where is the coward who will shed tears today, or wail Or quake in fear? . . . O wipe away those tears, O thou of craven mind! The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God Hath come—-where is the king who can with chain or rod Chastise him? When I behold thy face, 'mid bondage, pain and wrong And black indignities, I hear the soul's great song Of rapture unconfined, the chant the pilgrim sings In which exultant hope's immortal splendour rings, Solemn voice and calm, and heart-consoling, grand Of imperturbable death, the spirit of Bharat-land, O Poet, hath placed upon thy face her eyes afire With love, and struck vast chords upon her vibrant lyre,— Wherein there is no note of sorrow, shame or fear, Or penury or want. And so today I hear The ocean's restless roar borne by the stormy wind, Th' impetuous fountain's dance riotous, swift and blind Bursting its rocky cage,—the voice of thunder deep Awakening, like a clarion call, the clouds asleep Amid this song triumphant, vast, that encircles me, Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!'12
Inspired words, words of light of the master-singer addressed to ' the voice incarnate of India's soul'. Poet Tagore called on Sri Aurobindo to offer his personal felicitations and to invite him to his own home.
With all eyes of the country now upon Sri Aurobindo, all its problems too centred round him as its leader. The Midnapur District Conference was to meet about the middle of December 1907, and the Indian National Congress at Surat in the last week. Both of these needed his immediate attention.
But before we come to that, let us for a moment see what Sri Aurobindo was in other than his own countrymen's eyes. His coming into prominence occasioned by the Bande Mataram case, attracted to him many publicists, authors and writers from various parts of India and abroad. Henry W. Nevinson, an English M.P. was one of them. He was on a study-tour in India and had an interview with Sri Aurobindo some time before December 1907. He recorded his impressions in his book The New Spirit in India. The following are a few extracts from it. ' Arabindo's purpose, as he explained to
12 Translated from Bengali original by Kshitishchandra Sen, and published in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Third Annual.
me, was a universal Swadeshi, not limited to goods but including every phase of life. His Nationalists would let the Government go its way and take no notice of it at all. They hoped nothing from reforms, all talk about which was meaningless to them. . . . He lamented the long peace, leading to degeneracy and effeminate ways . . . which had been rudely interrupted by the disguised blessings of Lord Curzon's errors. Indignation had again created patriotism when apparently it was dead, and the new party's whole policy was aimed at carrying forward the work that Lord Curzon had so successfully begun for the revival of national character and spirit. . . Where the consciousness of timidity exists among a people, the first duty of a patriot is to remove it at all costs. So in the columns of his paper and in his rare speeches Arabindo Ghose was insisting especially on the necessity of courage ': —.
' Courage,' said a leader in the Bande Mataram, ' is your principal asset. If you are to work out the salvation of your country, you will have to do it with heroism. . . . You have your only guide in the loftiness and spirituality that make their heaven in the thought of the wider light and purer happiness that you may bring to your country by long force of vision and endeavour. The rapturous contemplation of a new and better state for your country is your only hope. What great element is wanting in a life guided by such a hope?'
' There is a religious tone, a spiritual elevation, in such words very characteristic of Arabindo Ghose. In an age of supernatural religion Arabindo would have become what the irreligious mean by a fanatic. He was possessed by that concentrated vision, that limited and absorbing devotion. Like a horse in blinkers, he ran straight, regardless of everything except the narrow bit of road in front. But at. the end of that road he saw a vision more inspiring and spiritual than any fanatic saw who rushed on death with Paradise in sight. . . . Grave with intensity, careless of fate or opinion, and one of the most silent of men I have known, he was of the stuff that dreamers are made of, but dreamers who act their dream, indifferent to the means.'
J. Ramsay Macdonald, then the famous leader of the Labour Party, afterwards Prime Minister of the British Cabinet, also met Sri Aurobindo in 1909 and to his question ' What is your conception of the end which is being worked out by our Indian administration?' Sri Aurobindo replied, ' A free and independent India '. In his book The Awakening of India Macdonald records his impressions of his tour in India and quotes a number of extracts from Sri Aurobindo's writings in the Karma-yogin on his ideas of Indian freedom and Nationalism.
To come back to our theme. The growing spirit of Nationalism, reflected in the Calcutta Congress of 1906, did not seem enough for the Bengal Moderates to assess their position. It was indeed something other than the sole interests of the country that motived their persistence in carrying on their policy of petition and protest for the attainment of colonial self-government. From the very beginning Sri Aurobindo set his face against this ' mendicant policy' and condemned it as ' not only futile but demoralising'. What he disliked most in the advocates of Moderatism was their attempt to narrow down the scope of Swadeshi and boycott which the Nationalists considered indispensable for furthering the cause of Indian freedom.
While repression was at its worst and had to be resisted with whatever strength the nation possessed, the Nationalists had to face the other adversary, the Moderates, whom they had to meet in an ignoble encounter at the ensuing session of the Midnapur District Conference. The obstacle at home must be tackled first, the political atmosphere cleared of its reactionary influence. Sri Aurobindo gave the needed lead. He was now out to fight Moderatism and establish Nationalism in its place as the creed of every Indian, his dharma.
Midnapur, as already said, was a strong centre of secret revolutionary activities initiated by Sri Aurobindo. The Nationalist Party was a compact block in this district. It had its share of Moderates too, led by the President of the local bar,—a loyalist type of-Moderate. The District Conference 13 was to be held on December 7 and subsequent days. The organisers were both Moderates and Nationalists. At their invitation leaders of both the parties came from Calcutta, the Moderates led by Surendranath Banerji, the Nationalists by Sri Aurobindo. The Reception Committee of the Conference passed the Nationalist resolutions on Social Boycott, Self-defence and National Education, with the exception of one on absolute Swaraj which the people were not bold enough to declare as their goal. The loyalist President promised that the resolutions, as passed by the Reception Committee, would be placed before the Subjects Committee and then before the open session. Later, it was found that the President had decided to break his promise in the open session. This annoyed the Nationalists one of whom asked him in the Conference, when the Presidential election came up, if the rumour about his decision was true. His curt reply worsened the situation, and the Nationalists were with difficulty dissuaded from leaving the Conference. Meanwhile, at the instance of the Moderate leaders, the police served notices on certain Midnapur Nationalists to abstain from taking part in any procession. Not satisfied with this, they called in the Police Superintendent and had him seated between the President and Surendranath Banerji. Later, the Magistrate was also asked to assist at the Conference. This self-humiliating alliance with Bureaucracy heightened the irritation of the Midnapur Nationalists who regarded it as an abominable outrage on national sentiment.
Further trouble arose over the constitution of the Subjects Committee. The Nationalists proposed that the whole body of the delegates should go into the Subjects Committee; whereas the Moderates would have only a small number of their own selection. Upon this ensued
13 The account is based on reports and articles in the weekly Bande Mataram, December 15 and 22, 1907. Page-89 a mêlée of proposals and counter-proposals, objections and counter-objections. To help maintain order, the Nationalists did not press their point and agreed to a smaller number. But their proposal that the selected names be put to vote was contemptuously turned down, with the result that the Nationalists left the Conference in a body, regarding it as 'not a national conference, but a sort of fortress against the Nationalists, erected by the local Moderate leaders under the protection of Executive officials and police '. Thus left to themselves, the Moderates met in Conference and with no interruption passed the resolutions measured to their mentality, whittled down from the originals passed by the Reception Committee.
On the third day the Nationalists held an open-air Conference with one hundred delegates, attended by three thousand people, in which they explained their reasons for secession, and in which the original Nationalist resolutions including the one on Swaraj, the first Swaraj resolution, were passed unanimously. Maulvi Abdul Huq presided over this first formal Nationalist Conference held in India. The Bande Mataram wrote: ' It was also the most memorable district conference that has ever been held in Bengal.' It was indeed a landmark in the progress of the national movement in the country. The resolutions passed at this meeting reflected the courageous stand taken not only by the leaders but what the country as a whole would take under proper leadership. It was certainly a victory, a hard-won moral victory for the resurgent soul of India whose ' voice incarnate' and leading spirit was Sri Aurobindo.
Nationalism was now gaining ground and becoming more and more a dominant force in the political life of India. And the Bande Mataram played a large part in creating this force. The leader was now busy preparing for the forthcoming sessions of the Indian National Congress at Surat. There were a crop of problems that had to be solved to the best interests of the country. But the solutions did not lie only with the Nationalists. The Moderates wanted them in their own way which was not only retrograde but harmful to the country's cause. Sri Aurobindo called upon the Nationalists all over India, particularly of Bengal, to muster strong at Surat and ' swell the tide of national life which has just begun to flow '. Here are the concluding words of his fervent appeal to the Nationalists that appeared in the Weekly Bande Mataram of December 15, 1907: ' We must go as pilgrims to our Mother's temple. We have a great work to do and cannot afford to be negligent and half-hearted. Be sure that this year, 1907, is a turning-point of our destinies and do not imagine that the sessions of the Surat Congress will be as the sessions of other years. Let us fear to miss by absenting ourselves the chance of helping to put in one of the keystones of the house we are building for our Mother's dwelling in the future, the house of our salvation, the house of Swaraj. ... It is no leaden firmament but one aglow with sun and moon, which is the supreme need of the hour.'
Midnapur showed the gulf between the standpoints of the Moderates and the Nationalists with regard to the Congress aim and policy. Surat, the venue of the next Congress, foreboded Moderate preparations to go back upon the Boycott resolution passed and confirmed in two previous sessions of the Congress, and the Nationalists' preparations to counter the move by strengthening their position to the utmost. But a fresh crack appeared in another direction,—a crack that led to the crash. It was over the election of the President right at the beginning—the beginning that was its end, an end of the old and effete and the beginning of the new—' the beginning of the true National assembly which would reflect the Nation's life and do the Nation's will, and into which the Congress would develop in future.'
No more authentic account of the Surat Congress there could indeed be than the following from Sri Aurobindo himself: ' The session of the Congress had first been arranged at Nagpur, but Nagpur was predominantly a Mahratta city and violently extremist. Gujerat was at that time predominantly Moderate, there were very few Nationalists and Surat was a stronghold of Moderatism though afterwards Gujerat became, especially after Gandhi took the lead, one of the most revolutionary of the provinces. So the Moderate leaders decided to hold the Congress at Surat. The Nationalists however came there in strength from all parts, they held public conference with Sri Aurobindo as President and for some time it was doubtful which side would have the majority, but finally in this Moderate city that party was able to bring in a crowd of so-called delegates up to the number of 1,300 while the Nationalists were able by the same method to muster something over 1,100. It was known that the Moderate leaders had prepared a new constitution for the Congress which would make it practically impossible for the extreme party to command a majority at any annual session for many years to come. The younger Nationalists, especially those from Maharashtra, were determined to prevent this by any means and it was decided by them to break the Congress if they could not swamp it; this decision was unknown to Tilak and the older leaders. But it was known to Sri Aurobindo. At the sessions Tilak went on to the platform to propose a resolution regarding the presidentship of the Congress; the President appointed by the Moderates refused to him the permission to speak but Tilak insisted on his right and began to read his resolution and speak. There was a tremendous uproar, the young Gujerati volunteers lifted up chairs over the head of Tilak to beat him. At that the Mahrattas became furious, a Mahratta shoe came hurtling across the pavilion aimed at the President, Dr. Rashbehari Ghosh, and hit Surendranath Banerji on the shoulder. The young Mahrattas in a body charged up to the platform, the Moderate leaders fled; after a short fight on the platform with chairs, the session broke up not to be resumed. The Moderate leaders decided to suspend the Congress and replace it by a national conference with a constitution and arrangement which would make it safe for their party. Meanwhile, Lajpatrai came to Tilak and informed him that the Government had decided, if the Congress split, to crush the Extremists by the most ruthless repression. Tilak thought, and the events proved that he was right, that the country was not yet ready to face successfully such a repression and he proposed to circumvent both the Moderate plan and the Government plan by the Nationalists joining the Conference and signing the statement of adhesion to the new constitution demanded by the Moderates. Sri Aurobindo and some other leaders were opposed to this submission; they did not believe that the Moderates would admit any Nationalists to their conference (and this proved to be the case) and they wanted the country to be asked to face the repression. Thus the Congress ceased for a time to exist; but the Moderate Conference was not a success and was attended only by small and dwindling numbers. Sri Aurobindo had hoped that the country would be strong enough to face the repression, at least in Bengal and Maharashtra, where the enthusiasm had become almost universal; but he thought also that even if there was a temporary collapse the repression would create a deep change in the hearts and minds of the people and the whole nation would swing over to nationalism and the ideal of independence. This actually happened and when Tilak returned from jail in Burma after six years, he was able in conjunction with Mrs. Besant not only to revive the Congress but to make it representative of a nation pledged to the Nationalist cause. The Moderate Party shrank into a small body of liberals and even these finally subscribed to the ideal of complete independence.'
On another occasion Sri Aurobindo was more personal in a private letter, ' History very seldom records the things that were decisive but took place behind the veil; it records the shown front of the curtain. Very few people know that it was I (without consulting Tilak) who gave the order that led to the breaking of the Congress and was responsible for the refusal to join the new-fangled Moderate Convention which were the two decisive happenings at Surat. Even my action in giving the movement in Bengal its militant turn or rounding the revolutionary movement is very little known.'
Sri Aurobindo was all along in the pandal when the melee was on. ' He stood there calm and unperturbed, surrounded by some young revolutionary workers of Midnapur including Satyendra and Barindra', who all were looking with wonder at his absolutely unruffled face, though they knew well that they were standing by an extraordinary soul, a master-spirit who alone could take upon himself the responsibility of breaking up the Moderate Congress. Obviously, it was the only step that revolutionary Nationalism and wise and far-sighted statesmanship could take at that hour. It might also be an act of intuition, demanded by the awakened soul of the nation. The Mother wanted swift action. She would no longer tolerate ' the weak and timid', ' the untimely slumberer and loiterer ', begging and babbling protest and beguiling both sides. She wanted the country -to sweep with the rising tide of the new Nationalism. Therefore the fiat went forth, ringing and clear, from one who could read and do her will.
Thus did Surat signalise the end of Moderatism in Indian politics on one hand, and on the other, a further accentuation of the forward programme of the New Party, which the Country had already accepted with enthusiasm as an effective means of action. And he who caused this stir and this change was ' the most silent man' that lived in those exciting times, conscious of and working from the deeper and secret source of all movements in the external field of life. He had known and was in the hands of the Inner Guide who was directing his thoughts and actions. Later, in a speech Sri Aurobindo revealed that the breaking-up of the Congress at Surat was God's will.14 And knowing as he did the future, he made the prophetic declaration in the Bande Mataram of January 12, 1908: 'The old organisations have to be reconstituted to adapt themselves to the new surroundings. The death complained of is only a transition. The burial ground of the old Congress is, as the Saxon phrase goes, only God's Acre out of which will grow the real, vigorous, popular organisation.'
Nothing is known of Sri Aurobindo's inner life in this period except what he himself wrote to his wife in February 1907, for, as stated by Abinash Bhattacharya in his article already referred to in the previous chapter, he was all the time in a state of meditation. Sri Aurobindo wrote: ' On January 8 I was to have come, but I could not. It did not happen by my will. I had to go where God had taken me. This time I had not gone on my own errand but God's. Now my mind has undergone a change. I will not disclose it in this letter. Come over here and I will tell you what I have to. Only this much I must say here that henceforth I am no longer to be guided by my own will. I shall have to go where God will lead me to, do what God will have me do, as a puppet in His hands.'15
While at Surat Sri Aurobindo felt the need for a deeper spiritual life for which he wanted some outside help. It seems that due to his political preoccupations he was not then able to be so regular in the practice of Yoga which he had started in 1904. At Surat he met the famous Maharashtrian Yogi Shakhere Baba, who was intensely interested in Indian independence. About the end of December, Sri Aurobindo came to Baroda where he met Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, another Yogi of Maharashtra. Lele was ready to give Sri Aurobindo the spiritual help he wanted, provided he suspended his political activity for some time. Sri Aurobindo agreed, saying that he could not give it up entirely. Then they
14 Speeches, p. 39. l5 Sri Aurobinder Patra (in Bengali), pp. 13-14. Page-95 both remained together for three days without being disturbed by anybody. The result of this meditation with Lele was the realisation by Sri Aurobindo of ' the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and attended at first by an overwhelming feeling and perception of the total unreality of the world'. When he came to Bombay, this realisation seemed to have deepened. ' From the balcony of a friend's house,' he said, ' I saw the whole busy movement of Bombay as the picture in a cinema show, all unreal and shadowy.' This feeling was replaced by his second realisation, in the Alipore jail, of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is.
The Bombay National Union invited Sri Aurobindo to deliver a lecture on The Present Situation. He accepted the invitation. But when he tried to think of what he should say, he found his mind completely empty, without any thought, any idea. This he said to Lele who was with him. ' Lele told him to make namaskar to the audience and wait, and speech would come to him from some other source than the mind. So in fact, the speech came, and ever since all speech, writing, thought and outward activity have so come to him from some source above the brain-mind.' This speech was the famous one in which Sri Aurobindo revealed his unique philosophy of Nationalism which he called ' a religion that has come to India from God.
. . Nationalism is immortal; Nationalism cannot die; because it is no human being, it is God who is working in Bengal . As Sri Aurobindo was speaking, a silence prevailed in the lecture hall that gave the audience an intimation of its source in a higher world of the Spirit.
' Before parting from Lele,' Sri Aurobindo said, ' I asked for his instructions. He was giving me detailed instructions. In the meantime I told him of a Mantra that had arisen in my heart. Suddenly while giving instructions he stopped and asked me if I could rely absolutely on Him who gave me the Mantra. I replied that I could always do that. Then Lele said that there was no need of further instructions.' This was obviously an advanced stage in his spiritual life which he developed still more in jail.
During his stay in Baroda Sri Aurobindo held secret meetings with a number of revolutionary workers one of whom was Chhotalal Purani to whom, under Sri Aurobindo's instructions, Barindra explained the details of the revolutionary work that was being done at that time in Bengal and in other parts of India. These workers who had known Sri Aurobindo before were stimulated by this direct contact into more vigorous activities through which developed the revolutionary movement in Gujarat.
From Bombay Sri Aurobindo returned to Calcutta where Barindra wanted him as early as possible in connection with the reorganisation of their revolutionary work. On the way Sri Aurobindo delivered lectures at Amraoti and Nagpur—an evidence of his resumption of political activity almost immediately after that spiritual realisation. A few weeks after his arrival in Calcutta, Lele came over, at the invitation of Barindra, to help in giving spiritual training to the revolutionary workers. Barindra had all along cherished the' belief that competence for revolutionary work should be based on a training of this kind. The Bhavani Mandir scheme by Sri Aurobindo was drawn up to this end.
When Lele met Sri Aurobindo in Calcutta and made enquiries about his Yoga, Sri Aurobindo told him that he had stopped sitting down in meditation in a formal way since it was practically going on all the time. On this Lele said that the Devil had taken possession of him and offered him certain instructions. Sri Aurobindo listened in silence and said nothing. He had received a command from within that a human Guru was no longer necessary for him. In fact, he was rising from higher to higher consciousness and from there was working in the external field of activity which kept him fully engaged till the last day of his stay in Bengal. On his return to Calcutta Sri Aurobindo began to receive numerous invitations from the city itself and from far and near in his province to speak on the problems of the day. His response were those inspiring speeches he delivered at different places till he was put under arrest in May of the same year.
These speeches on the new Nationalism made from a new status of the mind—silent and vacant—are fervent expressions of his soul-thought, ideas and ideals that were new to modern Indian politics. They reflect faith and far-sight, daring and planning, high idealism blended with clear-cut hints on realisation. They are a call to action, to all that is highest and holiest in his countrymen, without flourish and rhetoric, yet profoundly moving. How possible? They were all an inrush from the higher ranges of consciousness above the mind which he had transcended. What applies to his speeches applies as well to his writings. Thoughts came down from above, once he said, direct to his pen not through his mind. These creations of light from the heavens of the Spirit form a literature of unique excellence, unparalleled in the world of thought.
An attempt may now be made to present as far as possible in his own words the spirit and form of Indian Nationalism through which the soul of this ancient land expressed its inherent strength and possibilities. A revealer of India's soul to her children and to the world, Sri Aurobindo, once a pilgrim, now became the high-priest. In the temple of the Mother, he stood before the Infinite Glory that is she. The high-priest is privileged to vision the Glory and the Glory installs itself in his heart. One in his soul with the Mother, he utters the word of worship praying that she may manifest in the land and illumine it with her light and strength by which her children may recover their national self, ' the centre of India's being, the fountain-head of all that is beautiful, noble, great and generous in her'. In fact, it is a light of the Mother, an aspect of her Force, through which she shapes and guides India's destiny. Here are extracts from the hymn:
' MOTHER DURGA! Rider on the lion, giver of all strength, Mother, beloved of Siva! We born from thy parts of Power, we the youth of India, are seated here in thy temple. Listen O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest in this land of Bengal.
'MOTHER DURGA! Giver of force and love and knowledge, terrible art thou in thy own self of might, Mother beautiful and fierce. In the battle of life, in India's battle, we are warriors commissioned by thee; Mother, give to our heart and mind a titan's strength, a titan's energy, to our soul and intelligence a god's character and knowledge.
' MOTHER DURGA! India, world's noblest race, lay whelmed in darkness. Mother, thou risest in the eastern horizon, the dawn comes with the glow of thy divine limbs scattering the darkness. Spread thy light, Mother, destroy the darkness. . . .
'MOTHER DURGA! India lies low in selfishness and tearfulness and littleness. Make us great, make our efforts great, our heart vast; make us true to our resolve. May we no longer desire the small, void of energy, given to laziness, stricken with fear:
'MOTHER DURGA! Extend wide the power of Yoga. We are thy Aryan children, develop in us again the lost teaching, character, strength and intelligence, faith and devotion, force of austerity, power of chastity and true knowledge, bestow all that upon the world. To help mankind, appear, O Mother of the world, dispel all ills.
'MOTHER DURGA! Slay the enemy within, then root out all obstacles outside. May the noble heroic mighty Indian race, supreme in love and unity, truth and strength, arts and letters, force and knowledge, ever dwell in its holy woodlands, its fertile fields, under its sky-scraping hills, along the banks of its pure-streaming rivers. This is our prayer at the feet of the Mother. Make thyself manifest.
' MOTHER DURGA! Enter our bodies in thy Yogic strength. We shall become thy instruments, thy sword slaying all evil, thy lamp dispelling all ignorance. Fulfil this yearning of the young children, O Mother. Be the master and drive thy instrument, wield thy sword and slay the evil, hold up the lamp and spread the light of knowledge. Make thyself manifest.
'MOTHER DURGA! When we possess thee, we shall no longer cast thee away; we shall bind thee to us with the tie of love and devotion. Come, Mother, manifest thyself in our mind and life and body.
' Come, Revealer of the hero-path. We shall no longer cast thee away. May our entire life become a ceaseless worship of the Mother, all our acts a continuous service to the Mother, full of love, full of energy. This is our prayer, O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest in the land of Bengal.'16
Very movingly do these words voice the deepest yearning of the soul for India's liberation—a liberation which meant not merely her political freedom but her recovery of all that was of eternal value in her culture on which alone could be built again her true greatness and glory. It is the prayer of an awakened nation to the Dispenser of its destiny, the divine Shakti whose warriors are the souls dedicated to her service. Indeed, they are her part. It is her light, her strength, that moved the nation to that mighty striving which wrought wonders within three years, ' changed the whole race (Bengal), gave it a new spirit and heart, and put it in front of all Indian races'.
Those who were blessed to live and work in those stirring years were the chosen children of the Mother, her proper instruments, who saw in her face the golden glory of the Dawn and consecrated themselves to her lotus-feet that the Dawn might break upon the country in all its heavenly splendours, the Dawn of Freedom and. Knowledge and Unity and Greatness which her children aspired for their country through the leader
16 Sri Aurobindo: Jagannather Rath (in Bengali), pp. 28-31. (This portion translated by Nalini Kanto Gupta).
and high-priest who perceived in India's future the bright sun of an everlasting day for the whole world.
A beginning had to be made, and the path indicated that would lead to the splendid Tomorrow. Therefore Sri Aurobindo gave to his countrymen a new creed, the creed of Nationalism, the truth of which came to him from the heavenly source of Yogic consciousness. He said: 'Nationalism is not a mere political programme; Nationalism is a religion that has come from God; Nationalism is a creed which you shall have to live. Let no man dare to call himself a Nationalist if he does so merely with a sort of intellectual pride, thinking that he is more patriotic, thinking that he is something higher than those who do not call themselves by that name. If you are going to be a Nationalist, if you are going to assent to this religion of Nationalism, you must do it in the religious spirit. You must remember that you are the instruments of God. . . . Nationalism has come to the people of Bengal as a religion, and it has been accepted as a religion. But certain forces which are against that religion are trying to crush its rising strength. It always happens when a new religion is preached, when God is going to be born in the people, that such forces rise with all their weapons in their hands to crush the religion. In Bengal too a new religion, a religion divine and sattwic has been preached, and this religion they are trying with all the weapons at their command to crush. By what strength are we in Bengal able to survive? Nationalism has not been crushed. Nationalism survives in the strength of God and it is not possible to crush it, whatever weapons are brought against it.'17
Explaining why Nationalism was first born in Bengal whose children invoked the Mother with the mantra of Bande Mataram, and whose high-priest prayed to her with the word of his soul to manifest in the land at that hour of its distress, Sri Aurobindo said: ' The
17 Speeches, pp. 7, 8, 9. Page-101 Bengali has the faculty of belief. Belief is not a merely intellectual process, belief is not a mere persuasion of the mind, belief is something that is in our heart, and what you believe, you must do, because belief is from God. It is to the heart that God speaks, it is in the heart that God resides. This saved the Bengali. Because of this capacity of belief, we were chosen as the people who were to save India, the people who were to stand foremost, the people who must suffer for their belief, the people who must meet everything in the faith that God was with them and that God is in them. Such a people need not be politically strong, it need not be a people sound in physique, it need not be a people of the highest intellectual standing. It must be a people who can believe. . . .18 When therefore the message came, Bengal was ready to receive it and she received it in a single moment, and in a single moment the whole nation rose, the whole nation lifted itself out of delusions and out of despair, and it was by this sudden rising, by this sudden awakening from dream that Bengal found the way of salvation and declared to all India that eternal life, immortality and not lasting degradation was her fate. Bengal lived in that faith. She felt a mightier truth than any that earth can give, because she held that faith from God and was able to live in that faith.'19
Speaking on ' the one thing needful', he said that it was not any political programme, however effective it might be, but ' one over-mastering idea, one idea which nothing can shake, and this was the idea that there is a great Power at work to help India, and that we are doing what it bids us. . . . There is only one force, and for that force, I am not necessary, you are not necessary, he is not necessary. . . . God is doing everything. He himself is behind us. He himself is the worker and the work. He is immortal in the hearts of the people. . . . This movement of Nationalism in Bengal is a religion
18 Speeches, pp. 12, 13 19 Ibid., pp. 12-13, 20 Page-102 by which we are trying to realise God in the nation, in our fellow-countrymen '.20
' From Bengal has come the example of Nationalism. Bengal which was the least respected and the most looked-down-on of all the Indian races for its weakness has within these three years changed so much simply because the men there who were called to receive God within themselves were able to receive him, were able to bear, to suffer and live in that Power, and by living in that Power they were able to give it out. And so in three years the whole race of Bengal has been changed, and you are obliged to ask in wonder, " What is going on in Bengal?" You see a movement which no obstacle can stop, you see a development which no power can resist, you see the birth of the Avatar in the Nation, and if you have received God within you, if you have received that power within you, you will see that God will change the rest of India in even a much shorter time, because it is His Mission, and he has something for us to do. He has a work for this ancient nation. Therefore he has been born again to do it, therefore he is revealing himself in you not that you may be like other nations, not that you may rise merely by human strength to trample under foot the weaker peoples, but because something must come out from' you which is to save the whole world. That something is what the ancient Rishis knew and revealed, and that is to be known and revealed again today, it has to be revealed to the whole world and in order that he may reveal himself, you must first realise him in yourselves, you must shape your lives, you must shape the lives of this great nation so that it may be fit to reveal him and then your task will be done, and you will realise that what you are doing today is no mere political uprising, no mere political change, but that you have been called upon to do God's work.'21
This is the spiritual, therefore, the true significance
20 Speeches, pp. 23-24. 21 Ibid., pp. 33-35. of Indian Nationalism, of its first and most wonderful outburst in 1905. In a deeper sense, the origin of this movement may be traced to the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, that God-man of Dakshineshwar, ' the man who had the greatest influence and has done the most to regenerate Bengal'. This ascetic, says Sri Aurobindo, knew not how to read and write, yet men from all parts of the country came to fall at his feet. And why? Because ' he had this one divine faculty in him, he had more than faith and had realised God. . . . The work of salvation, the work of raising India was begun '
Many of those who were leading the national movement were the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, Yogi Bejoykrishna Goswami or of any other Guru of the time. Among those who had imbibed such influence were, as mentioned by Sri Aurobindo, Bepinchandra Pal, Aswini-kumar Dutta, Monoranjan Guha-Thakurta, Satischandra Mukhopadhyaya, Pramathanath Mitra, all co-workers of Sri Aurobindo. It is by their selfless work and inspiring teachings that national service was exalted into a dharma, the one duty God assigned to every Indian. Splendid times they were when Indians sought their country's freedom as the immediate need for its soul to grow into its highest possibilities. It is significant that he who revealed this truth and led India towards its realisation was also the one who later showed to her the path to yet greater fulfilments of her soul, hints on which he gave when he uttered in his inimitable words the deeper implication of Indian Nationalism, its essential intention. In fact, it was for this, its ultimate end, that the new Nationalism rose and flourished in India at a crucial period in her history. ' Nationalism is an Avatar. ... It is a divinely-appointed Shakti and must do its God-given work before it returns to the bosom of Universal Energy from which it came.'22 And what could that work be but the creation of a new India and a new world through the attainment by man of his
22 Bande Mataram, 3.5.1908. highest spiritual destiny. Thus ' the movement of which the first outbreak was political will end in a spiritual consummation .'23
In elucidating this aim in Nationalism Sri Aurobindo said: 'To recover Indian thought, Indian character, Indian perceptions, Indian energy, Indian greatness, and to solve the problems that perplex the world in an Indian spirit and from the Indian standpoint, this, in our view, is the mission of Nationalism. . . . The primary aim of the prophets of Nationalism was to rid the nation of the idea that the future was limited by the circumstances of the present, that because temporary causes had brought us low and made us weak, low therefore must be our aims and weak our methods. They pointed the mind of the people to a great and splendid destiny, not in some distant millennium but in the comparatively near future, and fired the hearts of the young men with a burning desire to realise the apocalyptic vision.'24
Sri Aurobindo then indicates certain broad lines on which the work of national reconstruction could be taken up. ' We have to recover the Aryan spirit and ideal and keep it intact but enshrined in new forms and more expansive institutions. We have to treasure jealously everything in our social structure, manners, institutions, which is of permanent value, essential to our spirit or helpful to our future; but we must not cabin the expanding and aggressive spirit of India in temporary forms which are the creation of the last few hundred years. . . . We had to come; to close quarters with English democratic organisation, draw it into ourselves and absorb the democratic spirit and methods so that we might rise beyond them. . . . We have to learn and use the democratic principles and methods of Europe, in order that hereafter we may build up something suited to our past and to the future of humanity. We have to throw away the individualism and materialism and keep the democracy. We have to solve
23 Bande Mataram, 29.3.1908. 24 Karmayogin, Vol. I, No. 14. for the human race the problem of harmonising and spiritualising its impulses towards liberty, equality and fraternity.25 In order that we may fulfil our mission we must be masters in our own home. It is out of no hostility to the English people, no race hatred that we seek absolute autonomy, but because it is the first condition of our developing our national self and realising our destiny.'26
But India aspired for her freedom for a yet nobler purpose. ' We advocate the struggle for Swaraj, first because Liberty is in itself a necessity of national life; secondly, because Liberty is the first indispensable condition of national development; thirdly because in the next great stage of human progress it is not a material but a spiritual, moral and psychical advance that has to be made and for this a free Asia and in Asia a free India must take the lead, and Liberty is therefore worth striving for for the world's sake. India must have Swaraj in order to live; she must have Swaraj in order to live well and happily; she must have Swaraj in order to live for the world, not as a slave for the material and political benefit of a single purse-proud and selfish nation, but as a free people for the spiritual and intellectual benefit of the human race.'27 ' India does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. She has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.'28 Therefore, ' the idea of a free and united India has been born and arrived at full stature in the land of the Rishis, and the spiritual force of a great civilisation of which the world has need, is gathering at its back '.29
25 In one of his speeches (vide Speeches, pp. 114-18) Sri Aurobindo shows the Indian way in which these three ideals can reach their spiritual fulfilment. 26 Karmayogin, Vol. I, No. 14 27 Weekly Bande Mataram, dated 7.7.1907. 28 Speeches, p. 67. 29 Bande Mataram, dated 9.6.1907.
What then was exactly the nature, content and connotation of the freedom Sri Aurobindo had in mind when he first declared it as the goal of India's political aspirations? From the very beginning, as already said, he was against the colonial form of self-government in which India would have to remain an apanage to the British Empire. To him it was a halfway house, a positive drag on the true progress of India. ' Moderatism as an ideal means nothing. . . . The ideal must always be the highest and noblest that can be conceived to breed in us a determination to remove the Alps for its attainment. Human soul does not stir itself unless it be for a journey towards that perfection to which its nature impels it. . . . The true object of an ideal is to exalt man's hearts and minds into a region where it seems base to calculate nicely whether our efforts will lead to any immediate good. In such magnificent carelessness lies true wisdom. There are times when it is wise to die for honour alone. Judged by such a standard, any ideal that falls short of demanding what alone can ensure our perfection as a nation must be discarded as barren and false.'30
The logic of India's freedom sprang directly from her degradation brought about by subjection. ' Morally and materially India has been brought to the verge of exhaustion and decay by the bureaucratic rule and any further acquiescence in servitude will result in that death-sleep of centuries from which a nation, if it ever awakes at all, awakes emaciated, feeble and unable to resume its true rank in the list of the peoples.'31 To the plea of India's unfitness for freedom, Sri Aurobindo's bold retort was: ' Liberty alone makes a nation fit for liberty. . . . No nation can be fit for liberty unless it is free; none can be wholly capable of self-government, unless it governs itself.' Therefore should India have nothing short of ' absolute autonomy'. ' Our object is Swaraj or national freedom. . . . The 'Congress (at Calcutta in 1906) has contented itself with demanding
30 Bande Mataram, 1.12.1907. 31 Passive Resistance, p. 33
self-government as it exists in the Colonies. We of the new school would not pitch our ideal one inch lower than absolute Swaraj,—self-government as it exists in the United Kingdom. We believe that no smaller ideal can inspire national revival or nerve the people of India for the fierce, stubborn and formidable struggle by which alone they can again become a nation. We believe that this newly awakened people, when it had gathered its strength together, neither can nor ought to consent to any relations with England less than those of equals in a confederacy. To be content with the relations of master and dependent or superior and subordinate, would be a mean and pitiful aspiration unworthy of manhood; to strive for anything less than a strong and glorious freedom would be to insult the greatness of our past and the magnificent possibilities of our future.'32
Therefore, ' our ideal is that of Swaraj or absolute autonomy free from foreign control. We claim the right of every nation to live its own life by its own energies according to its own culture and ideals. We reject the claim of aliens to force upon us a civilisation inferior to our own or keep us out of our inheritance on the untenable ground of a superior fitness. While admitting the stains and defects which long subjection has induced upon our native capacity and energy, we are conscious of that capacity and energy reviving in us. We point to the unexampled national vigour which has preserved the people of this country through centuries of calamity and defeat, to the great actions of our forefathers continued even to the other day, to the many men of intellect and character such as no other nation in a subject condition has been able to produce, and we say that a people capable of such unheard-of vitality is not one which can be put down as a nation of children and incapables. We are in no way inferior to our forefathers. We have brains, we have courage, we have an infinite
32 Passive Resistance, pp. 69-70. and various national capacity. All we need is a field and opportunity. That field and opportunity can only be provided by a national government, a free society and a great Indian culture. So long as these are not conceded to us, we can have no other use for our brains, courage and capacity than to struggle unceasingly to achieve them.
' Our ideal of Swaraj involves no hatred of any other nation nor of the administration which is now established by law in this country. We find a bureaucratic administration, we wish to make it democratic; we find an alien government, we wish to make it indigenous; we find a foreign control, we wish to render it Indian. They lie who say that this aspiration necessitates hatred and violence. Our ideal of patriotism proceeds on the basis of love and brotherhood and it looks beyond the unity of the nation and envisages the ultimate unity of mankind. But it is a unity of brothers, equals and freemen that we seek, not the unity of master and serf, of devourer and devoured.'33
The theory and practice of passive resistance as an instrument of political action came in for a detailed treatment in a sequence by Sri Aurobindo published in the Bande Mataram in April 1907. In this he discussed the various aspects of the doctrine, its object, methods, necessity, obligations and limits. It is well known how passive resistance in one form or other has helped India more than any other to reach her goal. The policy of passive resistance was evolved partly as a necessary complement of self-help, partly as a means of putting pressure on the government. The essence of this policy is the refusal of co-operation so long as we are not admitted to a substantial share and an effective control in legislation, finance and administration. Just as " No representation, no taxation " was the watchword of the American constitutional agitation in the eighteenth century, so " No control, no co-operation "
33 Speeches, pp. 173-75. Page-109 should be the watchword of our lawful agitation—for constitution we have none,—in the twentieth. We sum up this refusal of co-operation in the convenient word " Boycott", refusal of co-operation in the industrial exploitation of our country, in education, in government, in judicial administration, in the details of official intercourse.'34
What Sri Aurobindo had written fourteen years before on the methods of passive resistance was echoed and followed by the leaders and exponents of the Non-co-operation Movement in the twenties. Pointing out the negative aspect of this method Sri Aurobindo said: ' The bureaucracy depends for the success of its administration on the help of the few and the acquiescence of the many. If the few refused to help, if Indians no longer consented to teach in Government schools or work in the Government offices, or serve the alien as police, the administration could not continue for a day."35 On the positive and constructive aspects of passive resistance Sri Aurobindo said: ' It is at once clear that self-development and such a scheme of passive resistance was supplementary and necessary to each other. If we refuse to supply our needs from foreign sources, we must obviously supply them ourselves; we cannot have the industrial boycott without Swadeshi and the expansion of indigenous industries. If we decline to enter the alien court of justice, we must have arbitration courts of our own to settle our disputes and differences. If we do not send our boys to schools owned or controlled by the Government, we must have schools of our own in which they may receive a thorough and national education. If we do not go for protection to the executive, we must have a system of self-protection and mutual protection of our own.'36
Sri Aurobindo also suggested 'a no-tax campaign' as a sequel to the passive resistance movement of which
34 Speeches, pp. 177-78. 35 Passive Resistance, p. 38. 36 Ibid., p. 39. Page-110 an even more striking aim, as defined by him, was to make a beginning in the establishment of a popular authority, a kind of parallel government of the people. ' We have to establish a popular authority which will exist side by side and in rivalry with a despotic foreign bureaucracy. . . . This popular authority will have to dispute every part of our national life and activity, one by one, step by step, with the intruding force to the extreme point of entire emancipation from alien control.'37 Sri Aurobindo's idea was that the Congress itself might develop into a popular assembly of that type and prepare the country for self-government. He wrote: ' No growth is possible under perpetual tutelage. We must devise means for stimulating activities on the part of our people. This cannot be better done than by organising a really representative assembly that in its annual or periodic sittings will decide on our course of action. It does not necessarily follow that such an assembly will come into collision with the powers that be. We have every right to organise ourselves independently. ... As the Government cannot see their way to giving us any real voice in the administration, even in a dim and distant future, we have no other course open to us. Let us relieve the bureaucratic administration of as much of its duties as we can by undertaking to govern ourselves in as many departments as possible.'38 ' This attempt at self-development by self-help is absolutely necessary for our national salvation, whether we can carry it peacefully to the end or not. In no other way can we get rid of the fatal dependence, passivity and helplessness in which a century of all-pervasive British control has confirmed us. To recover the habit of independent motion and independent action is the first necessity.'39 To this end, ' the New Party long ago formulated and all Bengal has in theory accepted the doctrine of passive, or, as it might be more
37 Passive Resistance, pp. 5-6. 38 Bande Mataram, dated 21.1.1908. 39 Passive Resistance, p. 8. Page-111 comprehensively termed, defensive resistance' which envisages that ' the only true cure for a bad and oppressive financial system is to give the control over taxation to the people whose money pays for the needs of Government. The only effective way of putting an end to executive tyranny is to make the people and not an irresponsible Government the controller and paymaster of both executive and judiciary. The only possible method of stopping the drain is to establish a popular government which may be relied on to foster and protect Indian commerce and Indian industry conducted by Indian capital and employing Indian labour. This is the object that the new politics places before the people of India in their resistance to the present system of Government,—not tinkerings and palliatives but the substitution for the autocratic bureaucracy, which at present misgoverns us, of a free constitutional and democratic system of government and the entire removal of foreign control in order to make way for perfect national liberty '.40
It is quite obvious that all later political movements in India were a continuation of what the Nationalist pioneers said and did during the Swadeshi days.
Bold in the elucidation of his programme as leader of the Nationalist Party, Sri Aurobindo was equally bold in declaring that ' the choice by a subject nation of the means it will use for vindicating its liberty is best determined by the circumstances of its servitude. The present circumstances in India seem to point to passive resistance as our most natural and suitable weapon. We would not for a moment be understood to base this conclusion upon any condemnation of other methods as in all circumstances criminal and unjustifiable. ... It is the nature of the pressure which determines the nature of the resistance. Where, as in Russia, the denial of liberty is enforced by legalised murder and outrage, or as on Ireland formerly, by brutal coercion, the answer of
40 Passive Resistance, pp. 15-16. Page-112 violence to violence is justified and inevitable. Where the need for immediate liberty is urgent and it is a present question of national life or death on the instant, revolt is the only course. . . .'41
' For ourselves we avow that we advocate passive resistance without wishing to make a dogma of it. In a subject nationality, to win liberty for one's country is the first duty of all, by whatever means, at whatever sacrifice; and this duty must override all other considerations. The work of national emancipation is a great and holy yajna of which boycott, Swadeshi, national education and every other activity, great arid small, are only major or minor parts. Liberty is the fruit we seek from the sacrifice and the Motherland the goddess to whom we offer it; into the seven leaping tongues of the fire of the yajna we must offer all that we are and all that we have, feeding the fire even with our blood and lives and happiness of our nearest and dearest; for the Motherland is a goddess who loves not a maimed and imperfect sacrifice, and freedom was never won from the gods by a grudging giver. But every great yajna has its Rakshasas who strive to baffle the sacrifice, to bespatter it with their own dirt or by guile or violence put out the flame. Passive resistance is an attempt to meet such disturbers by peaceful and self-contained Brahmatej; but even the greatest Rishis of old could not, when the Rakshasas were fierce and determined, keep up the sacrifice without calling in the bow of the Kshatriya. We should have the bow of the Kshatriya ready for use, though in the background. Politics is especially the business of the Kshatriya, and without Kshatriya strength at its back, all political struggle is unavailing. . . .42
' Our attitude is a political Vedantism. India, free, one and indivisible, is the divine realisation to which we move,—emancipation our aim; to that end each nation must practise the political creed which is the most suited
41 Passive Resistance, pp. 29, 30, 31. 42 Ibid., pp. 77, 78. Page-113 to its temperament and circumstances; for that is the best for it which leads most surely and completely to national liberty and national self-realisation. But whatever leads only to continued subjection must be spewed out as mere vileness and impurity. Passive resistance may be the final method of salvation in our case or it may be only the preparation for the final sadhana. In either case, the sooner we put it into full and perfect practice, the nearer we shall be to national liberty.'43
No higher conception of Nationalism as dharma has ever found expression in language. This dharma was a large ideal visioned by a seer. Far from anything in it being base or low, it was ennobling and elevating. ' Sri Aurobindo never brought any rancour into his politics. He never had any hatred for England or the English people; he based his claim for freedom for India on the inherent right to freedom, not on any charge of misgovernment or oppression; if he attacked persons even violently, it was for their views or political action, not from any other motive. . . . His stand was that even good government could not take the place of national government—independence.'
Sri Aurobindo gave great importance to boycott as an effective means of political action. When ' a poet of sweetness and love, who has done much to awaken Bengal', wrote deprecating the boycott as an act of hate, Sri Aurobindo replied that ' in reality the boycott is not an act of hate. It is an act of self-defence, of aggression for the sake of self-preservation. To call it an act of hate is to say that a man who is being slowly murdered, is not justified in striking his murderer. . . . Politics is the ideal of the Kshatriya, and the morality of the Kshatriya ought to govern our political actions. To impose in politics the Brahmanical duty of saintly sufferance is to preach varnasankara '.44
' Love has a place in politics, but it is the love of one's country, for one's countrymen, for the glory, greatness
43 Passive Resistance, p. 79. 44 Ibid., pp. 81, 83, 83. Page-11 and happiness of the race, the divine ananda of self-immolation for one's fellows, the ecstasy of relieving their sufferings, the joy of seeing one's blood flow for country and freedom, the bliss of union in death with the fathers of the race. The feeling of almost physical delight in the touch of the mother-soil, of the winds that blow from Indian seas, of the rivers that stream from Indian hills, in the hearing of Indian speech, music, poetry, in the familiar sights, sounds, habits, dress, manners of Indian life, this is the physical root of that love. The pride in our past, the pain of our present, the passion for the future are its trunk and branches. Self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, great service, high endurance for the .country are its fruit. And the sap which keeps it alive is the realisation of the Motherhood of God in the country, the vision of the Mother, the knowledge of the Mother, the perpetual contemplation, adoration and service of the Mother.'45
Sri Aurobindo gave equal importance to the practical aspect of the boycott. He ' favoured an effective boycott of British goods—but of British goods only; for there was little in the country to replace foreign articles; so he and Tilak recommended the substitution for the British of foreign goods from Germany and' Austria and America so that the fullest pressure might be brought upon England. They wanted the boycott to be a political weapon and not merely an aid to Swadeshi; the total boycott of all foreign goods was an impracticable idea and the very limited application of it recommended in Congress resolutions was too small to be politically effective'.
That boycott and Swadeshi were effective was evident from the fact that Britain's trade shrank, Manchester and Liverpool shrivelled and shrieked. An axe was laid at the main root of the British domination. The other and the positive aspect of this success was the foundation it laid of an Industrial India which is now rapidly
45 Passive Resistance, pp. 83-84. Page-115 developing, although wholesale industrialisation was not the aim of the early sponsors. The Charkha was not there, neither could it meet the sudden and enormous demand created by the boycott. Handlooms, spinning and weaving mills sprang into existence in Bengal and multiplied in Bombay, then in other provinces. These flourished quickly and offered an incentive to other means of small and large-scale production. The Swadeshi idea also led to the revival and promotion of rural and home industries, masses and classes joining hands to this end. It may be noted that had the Moderates given their whole-hearted support to the boycott, India would have perhaps her economic freedom much earlier than her political.
Sri Aurobindo was fully alive to the necessity of resuscitating the village life of India ' which is the old foundation of Indian life and the 'secret of Indian vitality. But the village must not be isolated and self-sufficient, but must feel itself bound up with the life of its neighbouring units, living with them in a common group for common purposes.' 46
The most important work of Sri Aurobindo as leader and exponent of the New School of political thought and action was a total denial of foreign rule which he called a maya that he wanted to dispel by unceasingly reiterating and emphasizing complete freedom as India's goal, and fix the ideal in the national consciousness to such an extent that all later political movement of the forward type in the country was inspired and motived by this absolute ideal. The creation of this new spirit in the country must for ever stand out in the history of India's Freedom Movement as the greatest thing ever done for her emancipation. ' In the enthusiasm that swept surging everywhere with the cry of Bande Mataram ringing on all sides men felt it glorious to be alive and dare and act together and hope; the old apathy and timidity were broken and a force created which
46 Speeches, p. 51.
Page-116 nothing could destroy and which rose again and again in wave after wave till it carried India to the beginning of a victory.'
The Evangel of New Nationalism, revealed by one who knew no language but that of light and truth, rang loud and clear, through its organ the Bande Mataram, and toned up the general trend of the country's Press which, excepting the Anglo-Indian papers, played, more or less, a noble part in the Freedom Movement. Here are the words of Bepinchandra Pal about the Bande Mataram: 'This paper at once secured for itself a recognised position in Indian journalism. The hand of the master was in it, from the very beginning. ... It raised the tone of every Bengali paper and compelled the admiration of even hostile Anglo-Indian editors and self-centered British press. Long extracts from it commenced to be reproduced week after week even in the exclusive columns of the Times in London. It was a force in the country which none dared to ignore, and Aravinda was the leading spirit, the central figure, in the new journal. . . . From a tutor of a few youths he thus became the teacher of the whole nation.' 47 Here is another luminous extract from Bepinchandra's book The New Spirit: 'The aspirations of Young India were in his writings a divine intention of the Spirit of Liberty, the beatings of whose wings were being heard over Asia; an exaltation, an urgency, a heartening call on his countrymen, to serve and safe the Motherland, an impassioned appeal to their manhood to reinstate her in the greatness that was hers. ... It was from the height of this vision of India to be that he called upon his countrymen to prepare themselves to be free.' In the course of his address at Sri Aurobindo's seventy-seventh birthday celebration meeting in Calcutta, Dr. K. N. Katju, then Governor of West Bengal, said: ' Sri Aurobindo had a great part to play in the achievement of our freedom. The patriotic
47 Indian Nationalism, pp. 179-80. Page-117 movement that he carried on through his paper, Vande Mataram, was a wonder to the people of that time. In fact, it worked like a miracle. When the history of Indian nationalism is written, the history of this miracle which brought about our deliverance will also be written. Sri Aurobindo will live among us for ever through his spiritual teachings. He has been to us like a star of freedom and wherever he may be we can look to him for guidance.' Yet another appreciation from a British journalist, S. K. Ratcliffe, for many years associated with The Statesman as its editor, who wrote the following letter to the Manchester Guardian of December 26, 1950 (after Sri Aurobindo's passing): 'We know Aurobindo Ghose only as a revolutionary nationalist and editor of a flaming newspaper which struck a ringing new note in Indian daily journalism. It was in 1906, shortly after Curzon's retirement, that Sri Aurobindo and his friends started Bande Mataram (Hail to the Mother). It was a full size sheet, was clearly printed on green paper; and was full of leading and special articles written in English and with brilliance and pungency not hitherto attained in Indian press. It was the most effective voice of what we then called nationalist extremism.'
With no capital to bank upon, the Bande Mataram maintained itself largely on Raja Subodhchandra Mallik's and others' contributions and on its own truth-force. Among Sri Aurobindo's collaborators in the editing of the paper, besides Bepinchandra, ' there were able writers like Shyamsundar Chakravarty, Hemendra-prasad Ghosh and Bejoy Chatterji. Shyamsunder and Be joy were masters of English language, each with a style of his own. Shyamsunder caught up something like Sri Aurobindo's way of writing and later many took his articles for Sri Aurobindo's. . . . He was also a witty parodist and could write with much humour'.
Sri Aurobindo's way of writing editorials was his own. As from a spring, they welled up. He would hardly keep them ready beforehand. ' When a man from the Office would come for articles, he would ask him to wait and start writing and go on sometimes with his eyes on, sometimes away from, what he wrote. No stop of his pen or pencil. A few pages done, he would ask if that would do.' 48 This was how he wrote what all India drank in as into their thirsty soul.
The news of Lajpatrai's deportation reached Calcutta at about midnight, a couple of hours before Bande Mataram would go to the press. When Sri Aurobindo was roused from his sleep and given the news he dashed off the following: ' Lala Lajpatrai has been deported out of British India. The fact is its own comment. The telegram goes on to say that indignation meetings have been forbidden for four days. Indignation meetings? The hour of speeches and meetings is past. The bureaucracy has thrown down the gauntlet. We take it up. Men of the Punjab! Race of the Lion! Show these men who would stamp you into the dust that for one Lajpat they have taken away, a hundred Lajpats will arise in his place. Let them hear a hundred times louder your war cry " Jai Hindusthan !" '
When Nawab Salimullah of Dacca got his Muslim ryots in Comilla to protest against the boycott and Swadeshi policy of the Congress, they went so far as to attack Hindus, loot their houses and outrage women. When distressing tales of these atrocities in Comilla and Jamalpur reached Sri Aurobindo, the following words of fire from him appeared in the Bande Mataram of May 7, 1907: 'From all parts of East Bengal comes the terrible news of violation or threatened violation of women by badmashes (ruffians). Bengal is then dead to all intents and purposes. Nowhere is the honour of women valued as in India. And if our people do not lift their finger or court death when seeing women violated before their eyes, they have morally ceased to exist. Long subjection has crushed the soul and left the mere corpse. If Bengal has been seized with such a
48 Abinash Bhattacharya, mentioned before. Page-119 severe palsy as not to strike a blow even for the honour of our women, it is better for the people to be blotted out from the earth than cumber it longer with their disgrace.'
Beneath the sharply revolutionary turn he gave to journalism and politics, Sri Aurobindo was doing secret work for an armed insurrection. Partition, and repression violently started at Barisal and pursued with greater and greater violence elsewhere, widened the field of recruitment. The seed of revolution sown in 1902, hitherto sprouting slowly under difficult conditions, now had a rapid growth through the fostering care of Government action. The Barisal atrocities served to swell the numbers of new recruits from many quarters. To some of them Sri Aurobindo himself gave the pledge of secret work and self-dedication. Full of Bhavani Mandir ideas, Barindra went, in 19Q5, to Kaimur Hill near Rhotas-garh on the Sone and selected a suitable place for the Mandir and the ashram where the work was to start, but a severe attack of hill-fever turned him back.
While repression drove discontent underground and burst out in terrorism which was not in Sri Aurobindo's original programme, the open work of Bande' Mataram and Yugantar effected an elevating change in the psychology of the people.
Early in 1907 Sri Aurobindo asked Barindra to organise the centre in the Maniktola garden. This garden, a family property of Sri Aurobindo, a plot about two acres and a half, included a tank with pucca stairs, a pond, a good number of trees, and a three-roomed one-storied building with a veranda. Barindra shifted to this garden with a few select co-workers and began to lead a life of discipline, not very different from what was envisaged in the Bhavani Mandir scheme. The site, however, was the heart of the city and not a mountainous retreat as in the original scheme. Barindra along with his co-workers dissociated themselves from the Yugantar, leaving it in the charge of a group of workers who conducted it till its suppression by Government. This group continued to carry on under the same name and did some notable work in the twenties and later.
Barindra was now deep in his work of building up the organisation in the Maniktola garden. The daily programme there included meditation, study of revolutionary literature and regular reading of the Gita conducted by Upendranath Bandyopadhyaya. Every member was given proper facilities to develop his special capacities and aptitudes which could be utilised for revolutionary work, of which experiment in the making of bombs was then the most important part, collection of arms being another. The invention of an effective shell occupied their concentrated energy. This led some of them to Deoghar where the experiment ended iii the death of one of the brightest souls that have served the revolutionary cause of India. Here is the story told by Nolinikanto Gupta, now Secretary of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, then one of the experimenters: 'The revolutionaries of Calcutta belonging to Barindra's group made some bombs and in order to test them sent a party of five to Deoghar. There on a hill one of them, Prafulla Chakravarty, threw a bomb from behind a boulder, but failed to take cover in time. The bomb burst in the air and a splinter pierced his temple and killed him on the spot.' This happened in January 1908. And none knew of it, not even the ever-alert watch-dogs of the Government.
That most of the young men who formed the Maniktola group were of an exceptional character was evident from their choice of a life of dare and do. Heroic souls of an unprecedented courage, blessed by the Heaven-born guide, friend and philosopher, they had an inner life founded in quietude, faith and will. Maybe, some of them were not religious in the ordinary sense, but they were inspired by their new religion of patriotism to a vision of the Light that their beloved Motherland was to be. Pure, unostentatious, unswervingly consecrated to the noble Ideal, they were far above the common run, pioneers of the new race to be. Many of them would pass hours in silent contemplation. Nolinikanto Gupta— to whom we are indebted for these facts—says that after nine, every evening, he felt impelled to move into a secluded spot in the garden and sit absorbed in meditation there, regardless of the thorny bush infested with poisonous snakes and insects. Before going to experiment on bombs at Deoghar, he read the Upanishads every morning and felt uplifted by its teachings. It was a quiet determination of their soul and a resignation to a higher Will that guided their efforts.
Sri Aurobindo had invoked the Mother for light and strength that the youths of India might be her valiant warriors. He got her answer. The light descended and set ablaze the heart of the nation, the strength came and moved the youths to action. Here Bhavani was the Mother of whom India was the image; and her temple was in the hearts of her dedicated children. Indeed it was a glorious hour in India's history when these children of the Mother were preparing themselves in that garden for the sacred work of their Country's freedom.
Yes, they were experimenting with the making of bombs and trying their best to produce the most effective types. Their object was to paralyse the administration and render foreign rule impossible by counter-terrorism to the policy of terrorism Government was practising upon the people to suppress the movement against the Partition. Stray murders of officials were certainly not their aim. Sporadic attempts, they knew, would avail nothing. The plan was to organise a country-wide challenge to authority, to destroy the enemy of the national movement. That was why they welcomed repression that the country might wake up and react and swell the forces of revolution.
To all these ideas and endeavours these youths were inspired by the teachings of the Gita which enjoin upon the Aryan to fulfil his dharma by fighting the forces that obstruct his path to progress and self-fulfilment. This is the justification of the revolutionary Nationalism propounded by Sri Aurobindo. ' Nationalism,' he wrote,.' is a creed, but it is more than a creed; it is a method, but more than a method. The New Nationalism is an attempt at a spiritual transformation of the nineteenth century Indian; it is a notice of dismissal or at least of suspension to the bourgeois and all his ideas and ways and works. It is a call for the men of faith, men who dare and do impossibilities, the men of extremes, the prophets, martyrs, the crusaders and rebels, the desperate adventurers and reckless doers, the kshatriyas, the samurai, the initiators of revolutions. It is the right of the new India.'
Sri Aurobindo did not confine his political work to passive resistance which he knew had its place and necessity in the wide field of Indian politics at that stage of its evolution. His aim in the defensive movement was that it should some day develop into an offensive revolutionary action.
It may be noted that Sri Aurobindo never concealed his view that a nation is entitled to attain its freedom by violence, if it can or if there is no other way; whether it should do so or not, would depend upon particular circumstances. Sri Aurobindo's stand in this matter was the same as Lokamanya Tilak's and other Nationalist leaders'. ' 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. If attempted on any other basis like a mental principle or the gospel of Ahimsa, it will fail, and even may leave things worse than before. Sri Aurobindo was no doubt in favour of an attempt to put down war by international agreement and international force, what is now half-heartedly contemplated by U.N.O.—if that proves possible, but that would not be Ahimsa, it would be a putting down of anarchic force by legal force, and one cannot be sure that it would be permanent.'
Sri Aurobindo regards violence in hostilities as inevitable in the evolution of the race. But hostilities could be no permanent feature of life whose aim in evolution is perfection founded on Love and Harmony. He gives luminous exposition of this truth in the fifth chapter of his celebrated work Essays on the Gita. ' War and destruction,' he says, ' are not only a universal principle of our life here in its purely material aspects, but also of our mental and moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual life of man intellectual, social, political, moral we can make no real step forward without a struggle, a battle between what exists and lives and what seeks to exist and live and between all that stands behind either. It is impossible, at least as men and things are, to advance, to grow, to fulfil and still to observe really and utterly that principle of harmless-ness which is yet placed before us as the highest and best law of conduct. . . . Even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. ... Evil cannot perish without destruction of much that lives by the evil . . . the whole of human history bears witness to the inexorable vitality and persistent prevalence of this principle in the world.' Therefore the Command of God to the Aryan: ' Destroy when by destruction the world must advance, but hate not that which thou destroyest.'
It was not for nothing that the Bande Mataram published from time to time lines from Sri Aurobindo's renderings of the Mahabharata in which Vidula the widowed queen, exhorts her dispirited son Sunjoy to take courage and fight the enemy who had dispossessed him of his kingdom.
' Out to battle, do thy man's work, falter not in high attempt; So a man is quit before his God and saved from self-contempt.' . . .
During these days Sri Aurobindo wrote also his famous narrative poem Bail Prabhou showing how that heroic Maratha fought with only fifty against the innumerable Moghul hordes, defending the gorge that led to Shivaji's capital and in the effort laid down his life. It is, as it were, an Indian version of the story of the heroic Leonidas in Thermopylae, told in picturesque poetry. Says Baji:
' God within Rules us, who in the Brahman and the dog Can, if He will, show equal godhead. Not By men is mightiness 'achieved; Baji Or Malsure is but a name, a robe, And covers One alone. We but employ Bhavani's strength, who in an arm of flesh Is mighty as in the thunder and the storm! ..., So fought they for a while; then suddenly Upon the Prabhou all the Goddess came. Loud like a lion hungry on the hills He shouted, and his stature seemed to increase Striding upon the foe. . . .'
Sri Aurobindo once wrote that politics and poetry were his primary occupations before coming to Pondicherry. And, as a matter of fact, he made a vehicle of both for expression of his burning zeal for India's freedom.
A Karma-Yogin himself, Sri Aurobindo knew ' Yoga as skill in action.' He would not tolerate any work done in a desultory or slip-shod Way. And this he impressed upon those who worked under his direction. When therefore the question of political killing was decided upon, Sri Aurobindo's instruction was, ' If anything is worth doing at all, it must be done well.'49
The Maniktola activity, however, was not directly controlled by Sri Aurobindo. It was Barindra who had practically the sole power and responsibility.
Bombs were ready; so also were the hands to throw them on those who were in the way to the nation's march to freedom. After several abortive attempts, two brave souls—Kshudiram Basu and Prafulla Chaki—hit two innocents other than their right target Kingsford who as Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta inflicted the
49 Nolinikanta Gupta.
crudest of punishments on political workers, young and old. It was he who had sentenced the high-souled patriot Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya who refused to recognise the British Court and died a martyr's death in hospital before undergoing the sentence. But Kings-ford's even more barbarous act was to have a young boy of fifteen flogged before him for having challenged a European sergeant making lathi charge upon an innocent procession organised by the students of Calcutta on Sri Aurobindo's arrest for publishing seditious articles in the Bande Mataram. The brute saw the boy rendered half dead by the stripes.
This was provocation enough for young revolutionaries to retaliate. Hence the attempt on Kingsford which was made on April 30, 1908, at Muzaffarpur in Bihar, where he was transferred within a month after the above affair. On receiving the news Sri Aurobindo told Barindra to remove forthwith the workers and the materials from the Maniktola garden to a place of safety. Sri Aurobindo's direction was that there should be nobody in the garden and no trace of the secret society work. Barindra carried out the direction but not to the letter. He sent away a number of workers but not all of them to safe quarters and himself chose with a few to stay on in the garden where under earth he hid the weapons and bomb materials. At about the midnight of May 2 the police started raiding the houses they suspected including some of those to which workers and weapons had been shifted. They made a number of arrests and seized the weapons. Every nook and corner of the Maniktola garden was ransacked, the bombs and weapons were unearthed, Barindra and those who were with him arrested.
Sri Aurobindo was then residing in a house in Grey Street in north Calcutta. This house was to be the office of the Bengali daily paper Navashakli which he was to edit. Sri Aurobindo was also then in sole charge of the Bande Mataram. Early in the morning of May 2, while he was still asleep, the police charged up the stairs, revolver in hand, and put him under arrest. They tied him with a rope round his waist, which however was removed on the remonstrance of Bhupendranath Basu, the Moderate leader, who on hearing of the arrest had come to enquire about the affair. Sri Aurobindo was then taken to the police station at Lai Bazar and thence to Alipur Jail.
Now began that memorable and long-drawn-out political trial with 36 accused, 206 witnesses, 4,000 documents, and 5,000 exhibits consisting of bombs, revolvers, ammunition, detonators, fuses, poisonous acids, and other explosive materials. It took just a year during which the undertrials were detained in prison, some including Sri Aurobindo lodged for a month each in a solitary cell, and the rest in small groups in separate cells. After some time all of them were kept together in a large room where Sri Aurobindo made the acquaintance of most of the fellow-accused. But this was only till the shooting in jail of the approver Narendra Goswami by Satyendra Basu and Kanailal Dutta—two of the greatest martyrs in the cause of India's liberty, compared by a British paper with Harmodius and Aristogeiton of Greek fame. This incident—certainly a heroic act of the first magnitude—caused these undertrials to be thrown apart, each into a cell, where they had to pass their dreary days all alone. They could meet only when they were taken out together in a cage to Court. The charges against them were on many counts, the common one being ' waging war against the King'.
Government could clearly see that the new national consciousness growing rapidly all over the country was almost solely Sri Aurobindo's creation and so also was the spirit of revolution by which the youths of the country were being inflamed. But unfortunately for them and fortunately for India and the world, they could produce no substantial evidence to prove the charge of waging war against Sri Aurobindo. And as they had failed before, they failed again. A memorable feature of this sensational trial was the magnificent defence by Chittaranjan Das, poet and patriot, friend and collaborator of Sri Aurobindo in the country's cause. But Chittaranjan's coming forward to take up the case was not a mere chance, but willed by Providence. Here are Sri Aurobindo's words about it: ' You have all heard the name of the man who put away from him all other thoughts and abandoned all his practice, who sat up half the night day after day for months and broke his health to save me,— Srijut Chittaranjan Das. When I saw him, I was satisfied, but I still thought it necessary to write instructions. Then all that was put from me and I had the message from within, " This is the man who will saye you from the snares put around your feet. Put aside those papers. It is not you who will instruct him. I will instruct him." '50
Chittaranjan admitted in his masterly argument that freedom was certainly the keynote of all Sri Aurobindo's teachings, that it was his dominant principle by which he wanted his country's politics and his countrymen's lives to be governed. If that was a crime Sri Aurobindo would willingly admit his guilt. This admission, by itself, was the essence of whatever Sri Aurobindo had done and said as the political and revolutionary leader, —a Vedantic Nationalist, as Chittaranjan chose to call him. He was at the peak of his eloquence when in his peroration he made a fervent appeal to Beachcroft the Judge and the Assessors: ' My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and reechoed, not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is
50 Speeches, p. 71. Page-128 not only standing before the bar of this court, but before the bar of the High Court of History.'
Almost from the beginning Sri Aurobindo had the assurance from within that he would be acquitted. He therefore left the case entirely to his lawyers. He did not make any statement or wish to answer the Court's questions. All through the case Sri Aurobindo remained absorbed in meditation attending little to the trial and hardly listening to the evidence.
By bringing Sri Aurobindo out from his self-chosen obscurity into the light of the .day, Government really placed him before the admiring gaze of the world. When his sister Sarojini Ghose made an appeal for contributions to the Fund created to meet the huge costs of his defence, people of all classes responded without fear of police harassment. From everywhere, even from the remotest villages contributions poured in, subscribed as much by poor peasants and labourers as by the educated community. There were remittances from European friends, who were Sri Aurobindo's class-fellows in England, from the Continent, from America and from Australia. A blind beggar—all honour to him!—gave Sarojini a rupee out of his hard-earned alms; a poor student, by denying himself his daily tiffin, made a modest contribution. The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha made good collections for the Fund. More than their material value, they were tokens of the nation's love for its leader.
Sri Aurobindo's days in jail had a significant bearing on his life. In the very first page of his Bengali book— Kara-Kahini—in which he recounted his jail experiences he says: " I did not know that that day (the day of his arrest) would see the close of one chapter of my life and the opening of another—a year-long incarceration, a severance of all my ties with man, a year-long stay like a caged beast outside human society. Little did I know that I should not be the same old familiar Aurobindo Ghose but a new man with a new character, a new intellect, a new life, a new mind, charged with a new work, when I should re-enter my field of work, fresh from the Alipur Ashram. I have characterised it as a year's incarceration. I should have said, a year's exile, a year's Ashram life. Long and hard had I worked to have a direct vision of Narayan in the heart; high hopes had I cherished to have the Lord of the universe, the Purushottama, as friend and master. But a thousand and one pulls of the world, attachments to various activities, and the massed obscurities of ignorance stood in the way. At length the God of all grace and bliss put away those obstacles with a single wave of his hand and cleared the way, showed me the Yogashram and himself stayed with me in the small cabin of sadhana, as Friend and Guru. That Ashram was the British prison. All through my life, I have been experiencing this strange paradox that whatever good my well-meaning friends might or might not have done me, it is my wrong-doers —whom shall I call my enemies? I have no more enemies—that have done me more good. They wanted to do me evil, but they ended by doing me good. The one result of the wrath of the British Government was my attainment of God.'
Sri Aurobindo's time in jail was devoted to the study of the Gita and the Upanishads, and the practice of the Yoga of the Gita. A glimpse of his life there may be had from what Upendranath Bandyopadhyaya who was with him in jail as an undertrial, writes about him: ' Arabinda would also keep his corner and get lost in his spiritual meditations. Even the hell of the noise that the musical boys made did never disturb or affect him. In the afternoons he would pace up and down the room, and read the Upanishads or such holy things. . . .51 One day I found his hair shining with oil. This was extraordinary and confounding, as we were not allowed oil. So, I made bold to ask him, " Do you have oil for your hair?" He stunned me with the reply, " I don't bathe." " But your hair looks shiny." " It does. But you see I am
51 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 73. Page-130 passing through some physical changes as I develop spiritually. My hair draws fat from the body." . . . Later, I saw more of this sort of wonders in Arabinda. Once I was sitting in the prisoner's dock when I chanced to look at him. I saw his eyes set like glass-balls. I had heard that the total suspension of the diverse functions of the mind, and its concentration on a single thing might produce a physical result of this kind. I at once called the attention of some boys to it. None dared approach him; and at last Sachin slided up to him and asked, " What have you got by your spiritual practices?" Arabinda put his hands on Sachin's shoulders and answered, " Why, my boy, the thing I looked for." '52 Sri Aurobindo then told them how he mastered the secrets of Vedantic and Tantrik Yogas. ' Then we asked him if he could divine the issues of the case wherein we were involved. He said, " I shall be acquitted." 53 His prophecy came true. A year's trial came to a close, and we got our sentences. Ullas and Barin were to be hanged. Arabinda got acquitted. Ten of us were to be exiled to the Andamans for life; and the rest got transportations or rigorous imprisonment for five or ten years. Ullas was apparently delighted. He came back with a flicker of a clear smile on his face. and said, " Thank God, this damn'd show is ended after all." The remark made a European warder say to his fellow warder, " Look here, the man's going to be hanged, and he laughs." The companion who was an Irishman replied, " Yes, I know; they all laugh at death." '54
A splendid compliment to the prisoners these warders had to deal with. Here are Sri Aurobindo's words on them: '. . . let me speak about the boys,—my co-accused, my companions in danger. From their bearing in court I could well perceive that a new age had dawned over Bengal, children of a new mould were on
52 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 92-94. 53 According to Barindra Sri Aurobindo also assured them that their life would be spared. 54 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 94-95.
the lap of the Mother. ... A glance at these boys gave one the impression as if men of different culture, high-souled, indomitable heroes of another epoch had now returned to India. That frank, fearless look, those manly accents, that care-free, cheerful laughter, the same force-fulness of spirit, unshaken even in such grave danger, the same light heart, the absence of sadness, of worry or of anguish were the marks not of the Indians sunk in ignorance and inertia but of a new age, a new race, a new stream of activity. If they were murderers, one must say that the monster's shade of murder had not fallen over their nature; of cruelty, fanaticism, brutality there was no trace in them. Unconcerned about the future, unworried by the results of the case, they passed their prison days like boys at play, in mirth and merriment, in study and criticism. Very quickly they got into friendly terms with jail officials, sepoys, convicts, Euro-, pean sergeants, Intelligence and court officials and started telling stories and cracking jokes with all, making no distinction between great and small, friend and foe. The court hours were boring to them, for in the farce of the hearing they had little interest. To pass this time they had no books to read, no permission to talk. Those who had commenced Yoga had not yet learned to meditate amid the hubbub of a crowd. It was on them that time hung particularly heavy. At first a few of them began to bring books; others then followed their example. Then arose this strange scene: the hearing was going on; the whole future of thirty or forty accused was at stake; the result might be death on the gallows or transportation for life; yet without caring for all that, they were seen reading either Bankim's novels, of Vivekananda's Raja Yoga or Science of Religion, the Gita or the Puranas, or European philosophy.'55
Words of light! How glowingly they depict the flower of Bengal's youth, the precursors of the New Dawn in
55 Kara-Kahini, pp. 73-75. Page-132 India! The first to face with nonchalance the worst of foreign rule, they showed the way to undo it.
The first outburst of the bomb on the political scene took the Moderate breath away. Chiming in with Government, they rent the skies with loud declarations of horror against ' the dastardly outrage on India's reputation ' and ' the misguided youths ' concerned with it, their ' energies directed into disastrous channels'. In flat refutation of all this and in bold vindication of these noble youths, Sri Aurobindo wrote, in jail, a series of articles, ' The Message of the Bomb', ' The Morality of the Bomb ', ' The Psychology of the Bomb ', ' The Policy of the Bomb '. Nolinikanta Gupta, one of the co-accused, had them in his possession. They were irrefutable in logic, superb in diction, one of Sri Aurobindo's best political writings, says Nolinikanta who passed them out through a friend who used to call. The bombs were a symbol of hope and courage. And courage is the soul of spirituality. The nation that produced such youths could never remain in subjection. There were words like these in those documents, so far as Nolinikanta remembers them. But to avoid their seizure by the police who raided his house shortly after, the friend had put them, rolled up, in the hollow of a bamboo piece and dug it in the earth. When in safer days he dug it up, he found that the papers had been eaten up by white ants.
On May 5, 1909, Sri Aurobindo came out of jail. He made his first public utterance at Uttarpara in \the district of Hooghly, where a rousing reception was given to him. In that speech Sri Aurobindo for the first time spoke publicly of his Yoga and his spiritual experiences in jail, of which the most revealing was his realisation of the cosmic consciousness, of the Divine in all beings and in all that is. ' To the other two realisations, that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and of the higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind he was already on his way in his meditations in Alipur Jail.' These are important facts having direct bearing on Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life and they explain what he himself wrote about his life in jail, how it fulfilled a pressing need of his soul. A few extracts from the Uttarpara speech may elucidate the point further:
' When I was arrested and hurried to the Lai Bazar hajat I was shaken in faith for a while, for I could not look into the heart of His intention. Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried out in my heart to Him, " What is this that has happened to me? I believed that I had a mission to work for the people of my country and until that work was done, I should have Thy protection. Why then am I here and on such a charge?" A day passed and a second day and a third, when a voice came to me from within, " Wait and see ". Then I grew calm and waited, I was taken from Lai Bazar to Alipur and was placed for one month in a solitary cell apart from men. There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go into seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, " The bonds you had not strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work".'56 And this was what God vouchsafed to him in jail: 'I looked at the jail that secluded me from men
56 Speeches, p. 66. Page-134 and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. 1 walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna who I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.'57
This realisation led Sri Aurobindo to devote himself more exclusively to Yoga. And this is how he did it: ' So when I turned to the Yoga and resolved to practise it and find out if my idea was right, I did it in this spirit and with this prayer to Him, " If Thou art, then Thou knowest my heart. Thou knowest that I do not. ask for Mukti, I do not ask for anything; which others ask for. I ask only for strength to uplift this nation, I ask only to be allowed to live and work for this people whom I love and to whom I pray that I may devote my life." I strove long for the realisation of Yoga and at last to some extent I had it, but in what I most desired I was not satisfied. Then in the seclusion of the jail, of the solitary cell I asked for it again. I said, " Give me Thy Adesh. I do not know what work to do or how to do it. Give me a message." In the communion of Yoga two messages came. The first message said, " I have given you a work and it is to help to uplift this nation. Before long the time will come when you will have to go out of jail; for it is not my will that this time either you should be convicted or that you should
57 Speeches, pp. 66-69. Page-135 pass the time, as others have to do, in suffering for their country. I have called you to work, and this is the Adesh for which you have asked. I give you the Adesh to go forth and do my work." The second message came and it said, " Something has been shown to you in this year of seclusion, something about which you had your doubts and it is the truth of the Hindu religion. It is this religion that I am raising up before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed through the Rishis, saints and Avatars, and now it is going forth to do my work among the nations. I am raising up this nation to send forth my word. . . . When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the Sanatan Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world."'58
We may state here a fact that is not generally known —a fact more or less of subjective experience felt by some of those who attended the above-mentioned meeting at Uttarpara. In the nature of things, what the audience expected was a weighty political pronouncement from their beloved leader, just released from a long detention and a historic trial. Instead, what did they see? Sri Aurobindo spoke no doubt in his usual calm, clear and measured accents. But why in another vein, in another language, with a different trend? Was it Aurobindo that was speaking, the same familiar intellectual and political leader of trenchant views?—they wondered. Presently they felt a new atmosphere, an exalting influence, a strange stirring in their soul, a heightening of their being as they heard the divine names Narayana, Vasudeva, Sri Krishna, fall from his lips in clear ringing notes. Nay more. They saw an unusual light on the face of Sri Aurobindo. They sensed the presence of Sri Krishna. Altogether it was a unique, a thrilling experience, they averred.59
It was with a definite Command from God that Sri
58 Speeches, pp. 75-76. 59 Sisirkumar Mitra: Sri Aurobindo and Indian Freedom, p. 58. Page-136 Aurobindo came out of jail. This command was to work for the all-round uplift of the nation. The work was necessarily to be both in the inner and the outer spheres of the nation's life. But he found that the whole political aspect of the country had altered. Most of the Nationalist leaders were in jail or in self-imposed exile and there was a general discouragement and depression. But the feeling in the country was there; it had gone underground. Sri Aurobindo determined to resume and continue the struggle. He held weekly meetings in Calcutta but the attendance which had formerly numbered thousands full of enthusiasm was now only hundreds with no longer the same force and life. He moved into districts to speak. He started two weeklies, the Karmayogin in English and Dharma in Bengali, which had a fairly good circulation, and were, unlike Bande Mataram, easily self-supporting.
Sri Aurobindo's aim in these activities was to reaffirm to his countrymen the main lines of his political action and rouse them to a sense of their rights and responsibilities. In fact, he gave a fresh lead to the nation from an inner power and light then guiding every movement of his life.
Sri Aurobindo now turned to the reorganisation of the Nationalist Party and to the reinterpretation of the New Nationalism from the larger vision of the spiritual Idea which the Divine Revelation in jail had opened to him. Many of his old comrades rallied round him and gave full support to his programme. Thus, in possession again of whatever Nationalist forces were then available in the country, Sri Aurobindo attended the Bengal Provincial Conference at Hooghly in September 1909. As leader of the Party Sri Aurobindo showed his bold statesmanship in the way he tackled the problem of bringing about a rapprochement between the Moderate and the Nationalist sections in the political life of Bengal. He knew—and none better—-that a united Congress would be the most powerful front the country could present to the alien bureaucracy. In the meantime Government came up with certain reform proposals by way of an appeasement of the country's feeling. The Nationalist Party intended to put forward a formal protest against any acceptance of the reforms which they were convinced did not mean any real transfer of power to Indians. They wanted also to press the Bengal Provincial Conference Pabna resolution on boycott, and above all, to insist on the conference taking some definite step towards a United Congress or once for all show that union was impracticable. ' The Moderate leaders came determined on four things, not to allow any resolution recognising general passive resistance, not to allow any resolution amounting to an absolute refusal of the Reforms, not to allow any resolution debarring delegates from joining the Lahore Convention in case of that body rejecting union and not to consent even to the bringing forward of any amendment or proposal of a pronounced nationalist character in the Conference. On all these points it was clear that if the Nationalists pressed their own views the Conference would break by the secession of the Moderate leaders. In all these disputed matters, therefore, the Nationalists gave way and adhered only to their main point of securing some definite step in relation to the holding of a united Congress.'60
That Nationalism was again in the ascendant was evident from the majority Sri Aurobindo commanded in the Subjects Committee of the Hooghly Conference which helped him to defeat the Moderate resolution welcoming the Reforms and to have his own resolution passed, rejecting them as utterly inadequate and unreal. But the Moderate leaders threatened to secede if this was maintained. To avoid this Sri Aurobindo consented to allow the Moderate resolution to pass but spoke at the open session explaining his decision and asking the Nationalists to acquiesce in it in spite of their victory so as to keep some unity in the political forces in
60 Karmayogin, Vol. I, No. 12. Page-138 Bengal. ' The Nationalist delegates, at first triumphant and clamorous, accepted the decision and left the hall quietly at Sri Aurobindo's order so that they might not have to vote either for or against the Moderate resolution. This caused much amazement and discomfiture in the minds of the Moderate leaders who complained that the people had refused to listen to their old and tried leaders and clamoured against them, but at the bidding of a young man new to politics they had obeyed in disciplined silence as if a single body.'
This is what Sri Aurobindo wrote on the position of the Nationalist Party at this time: 'The Nationalist Party is in practical possession of the heart and mind of Bengal. It is strongly supported in other parts of India and controls Maharashtra. It is growing in strength, energy and wisdom. It surely inherits the future. Under such circumstances it can afford to wait.'61
The compromise at Hooghly did not altogether split the two parties apart and both joined in the Conference at Barisal, though there could be no representatives of the Nationalist Party at the meeting of the Central Moderate Body which had taken the place of the Congress. ' Surendranath Banerji had indeed called a private conference attended by Sri Aurobindo and one or two other leaders of the Nationalists to discuss a project of uniting the two parties at the session in Benares and giving a joint front to the dominant right wing of the Moderates; for he had always dreamt of becoming again the leader of a united Bengal with the Extremist party as his strong right arm; but that would have necessitated the Nationalists being appointed as delegates by the Bengal Moderates and accepting the constitution imposed at Surat. This Sri Aurobindo refused to do; he demanded a change in that constitution enabling newly formed associations to elect delegates so that the Nationalists might independently send their representatives to the All-India session and on this point the negotiations
61 Karmayogin, Vol. I, No. 12. Page-139 broke down. Sri Aurobindo began however to consider how to revive the national movement under the changed circumstances. He glanced at the possibility of falling back on a Home Rule movement which the Government could not repress, but this, which was actually realised by Mrs. Besant later on, would have meant a postponement and a falling back from the ideal of independence. He looked also at the possibility of an intense and organised passive resistance movement in the manner afterwards adopted by Gandhi. He saw however that he himself could not be the leader of such a movement.'
The next Nationalist victory after Hooghly was the Sylhet District Conference which adopted Swaraj and Boycott in loto.
During this period of his public activity Sri Aurobindo reaffirmed not only the principal items of his political programme that were followed in all later movements of liberation but also the spiritual force at work behind the endeavours his party had been making for the all-round regeneration of the country, of which freedom, Sri Aurobindo emphasized, was the indispensable basis. He knew and perceived more than ever before that everything was being shaped by a divine "Will and to work for the country as its instrument was the only duty that lay before every Indian who should first become conscious of that Will, and its intention in India's awakening, and last but never the least, of the means of fulfilling that aim; and all these against the background of a clear understanding of the deeper significance of India's culture and history. But this is not possible for the "nation to attain unless it develops some inner power. It was therefore a recovery of the spiritual strength that Sri Aurobindo emphasized as the one thing needful at that hour of India's history. Indeed, it is this that India must repossess if she is to be great and herself again; for, as in the past, her inborn spirituality must again be the foundation for all her future achievements. Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Karmayogin 62 that while all the defects and weaknesses in the Swadeshi movement had been overwhelmed by an inrush of higher feelings and a greater and nobler energy, it could not be said that they had been thrown out or utterly replaced. Though that was the way the work could begin, yet for India to reach the very summit of her destiny, her children must be ever on the march to higher and higher heights till the highest was attained. The movement of India's liberation did progress enormously towards the goal but it could not achieve the success it promised, because it could not rise to the height of the national soul, and did not always follow the truly Indian line of development. Therefore, ' the task we now set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is sanatana dharma, the eternal religion.'63 This is the newer and further elaboration of the message of Nationalism Sri Aurobindo gave to India. He said: ' We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle.'64
What then is the Way that can lead the nation to
62 Vol. I, No. 20, p. 1. 63 The Ideal of the Karmayogin, pp. 3-4. 64 Ibid., p. 3. Page-141 its highest goal? It is the ever-true inner method of self-discipline. The sanatana dharma, which in jail Sri Aurobindo was commissioned by the Divine to revive, has grown, he says, ' out of a continuously enlarging tradition of the Godward endeavours of the human spirit'. And this tradition has been built up by the practice of the Yoga for more than five thousand years, which brought to the ancients a mastery of the highest truths of existence and which Indians must practise again for the advancement of the race. Herein lies the inwardness of Hinduism.
Sri Aurobindo called upon his countrymen to recover this basic source of all their strength and by it to march forward to victory. This is ' the path by which we shall arrive at a higher national character and evolution '. He asserted: ' It is God's will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature.' 65 And Yoga is the only means by which all these can be achieved. That is why it has always been regarded in India as the source of all knowledge and power. ' For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength.'66 And this is the path which not only India but the whole world will have some day to take as the only path for the realisation of its highest spiritual perfection. ' We believe that it is to make Yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the Yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and
65 The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. l2. 66 Ibid., p. 14. Page-142 greatness, by the Yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and -reflex.'67 Of this spiritual revolution God himself will be both the Initiator and Leader. For ' India's work is the world's work, God's work.' ' We are a people in whom God has chosen to manifest himself more than any other at many great moments of our history. It is because God has chosen to manifest himself and has entered into the hearts of his people that we are rising again as a nation.' ' Therefore the fiat of God has gone out to the Indian nation, " Unite, be free, be one, be great," '68 because without a free India the world cannot progress to its divine destiny.
This is the burden of whatever Sri Aurobindo wrote and spoke after his coming out of jail. He was now convinced that India must discover her soul, and seek to fulfil it in every sphere of her national life. The Indian spirit must prevail everywhere. It requires that all our actions should be guided by a higher consciousness which is attainable by Yoga, that our outward life must accept the rule of God and become a complete reproduction of the motions of the Spirit. This is what the soul of India seeks to accomplish in the spiritual evolution of man. And this has ever been the ideal of India, and her great epochs are those in which she made a near approach to it. Sri Aurobindo revisioned this ideal and called upon his countrymen to strive for its attainment.
It may be remembered that Sri Aurobindo said all these not from his mind but from a higher plane of consciousness. What he uttered are truths seen in the soul in constant communion with superconscient worlds,—the only source of all strength and light. -This is how Indian Nationalism received its spiritual baptism from him. Sri Aurobindo's therefore is a unique contribution not only in the growth and expansion of
67 The Ideal of the Karmayogin, p. 5. 68 Speeches, pp. 102, 142. Page-143 India's national consciousness but also in its splendid reorientation. His was the finger of light that pointed India to her glorious future which would be greater than her great past because it would evolve out of the grand synthesis of all that is best in India and Europe a new spiritual culture that would prepare the earth for the permanent reign of God, of His unveiled Light and Glory.
This is the meaning of the political beginning of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual work which concentrated itself at the outset on India only to draw within its circum-ambience the whole of the world. The deeper implication of this beginning is that the New Nationalism Sri Aurobindo revealed to India awakened a great spiritual force in the country, gave the new generation great ideals, a wide horizon of hope and aspiration, and an intense faith and energy. And all these have since then been working in the national being, helping forward the progress of the race, though under conditions not always congenial, sometimes even repellent. The spiritual turn that he gave to the aspirations of young; India deepened into a positive powerful yearning towards the national past, a still more mighty and dynamic yearning towards a truly national future. That past is a shining monument of the nation's life in the Spirit, that future of Sri Aurobindo's vision is a more luminous Dawn than was visioned by the ancient Seers.
An articulate voice of the new light he saw in the rising of the nation, Sri Aurobindo was not for a moment indifferent to the actualities in the country's political situation. He was always alive to them and never failed to give his weighty pronouncement on any important question affecting the prowess of his Motherland.- In fact, the people of India—her youths in particular—had been already convinced like Poet Tagore that Sri Aurobindo's were the words of India's soul, in which lay the secret of her true advancement.
At that time the talk of some Reforms was still in the air. Sri Aurobindo who had already expressed his views on them, exposed once again their utter hollow-ness. He declared that they meant no real transfer of power to Indians, and that so long as there was no real control, there would be no co-operation. This he emphasized in his ' An Open Letter to My Countrymen' published in the Karmayogin of July 31, 1909. It contained a reaffirmation of his Nationalist political programme vis-a-vis the then existing conditions of the country, which he himself sums up as follows:
1. Persistence with a strict regard to law in a peaceful policy of self-help and passive resistance. 2. The regulation of our attitude towards the Government by the principle of ' No control, no cooperation '. 3. A rapprochement with the Moderate party wherever possible and the reconstitution of a united Congress. 4. The regulation of the Boycott Movement so as to make both the political and the economic boycott effective. 5. The organisation of the Provinces if not of the whole country according to our original programme.
Sri Aurobindo however was never against ' the acceptance of any substantial reforms, provided they give real political, administrative and financial control to popular ministers in an elected Assembly'. Of these there was no sign till the Montague Reforms proposals, made in 1919, in which something of the kind seemed to appear for the first time. ' He foresaw that the British Government would have to begin trying to meet the national aspiration half-way, but he would not anticipate that moment before it actually came.'
' Meanwhile the Government were determined to get rid of Sri Aurobindo as the only considerable obstacle left to the success of their repressive policy. As they could not send him to the Andamans they decided to deport him. This came to the knowledge of Sister Nivedita and she informed Sri Aurobindo and asked him to leave British India and work from outside so that his work would not be stopped or totally interrupted. Sri Aurobindo contented himself with publishing in the Karmayogin a signed article in which he spoke of the project of deportation and left the country what he called his last will and testament; he felt sure that this would kill the idea of deportation and in fact it so turned out. The policy of deportation left aside, the Government waited for some opportunity to prosecute him for sedition and this chance came to them when he published in the same paper another signed article reviewing the political situation. The article was sufficiently moderate in its tone and later on the High Court refused to regard it as seditious and acquitted the printer.
Sometime after this ' one night at the Karmayogin Office a young member of the staff brought to Sri Aurobindo information of the Government's intention to search the office and arrest him. While considering what should be his attitude, he received a sudden command from above to go to Chandernagore in French India. He obeyed the command at once, for it was now his rule to move only as he was moved by the divine guidance and never to resist and depart from it; he did not stay to consult with anyone but in ten minutes was at the river ghat and in a boat in the Ganges; in a few hours he was at Chandernagore where he went into secret residence. He sent a message to Sister Nivedita asking her to take up the editing of the Karmayogin in his absence. This was the end of his active connection with his two journals. At Chandernagore he plunged entirely into solitary meditation and ceased all other activity. Then there came to him a call to proceed to Pondicherry. A boat manned by some young revolutionaries of Uttarpara took him to Calcutta; there he boarded the Dupliex and reached Pondicherry on April 4, 1901.'
Here closes one phase of his career and opens another. In and inner meaning of the whole is for the present and succeeding ages to ponder and assimilate. Was he a mere champion of his country's liberty? Was he only the high-priest of the gospel of New Nationalism? Or was he that Divine Warrior of the Ages who incarnated to salvage a submerged nation, to awaken it to its proper Light, to restore it to its Self-hood, and all this in order to salvage a long-lost world to its Divinity? Even that was but a speck in the incalculable Vast that he was.
The pragmatist may ask, why should he have left the struggle for freedom at an immature stage? His post-jail utterances are a sufficient answer in which he categorically declared his perception that God was in the rising of the nation, that He was leading it. This Divine Guidance was difficult, if not impossible, for an ordinary mind to feel, especially in the conditions then prevailing in the country—darkness everywhere with a streak of light only for the seeing eye to catch.
' Rising,' Sri Aurobindo wrote, ' from out of the solitary depths of the dark was a faint voice ringing in the ear: Tapah, tapah, tapah. It was the voice of the Mother, of the World-Mother in the garb of Mother India on the threshold of a new life. Tapasya brought India into being, tapasya made her great, tapasya kept her immortal amid a thousand catastrophes, tapasya will give her a new body, endow her with a new youth, a new beauty and a new greatness, fill her with a new hope and a new victory, to the delight and ecstasy of her children. . . . Give up attachment to soulless forms, plunge into the cave of your heart and draw strength from tapasya. Free the country with the wonderful force of tapasya. There is no other way.'69 This call of the Mother her devoted worshipper listened and responded to, and the result was the discovery of a Truth that has never before been known to man in recorded history, a Truth that will make its own history.
That God or His Shakti is leading India, that in this
69 Bengali weekly Dharma, Vol. I, No.11. Page-147 work one can help only by becoming her faithful instrument, and that only to these instruments she gives the vision of the Future, are facts that cannot be proved to human reason to which are equally unintelligible the actions of the great souls which are moved by a higher Will.
In a letter to a disciple written in 1932 Sri Aurobindo said: ' I may also say that I did not leave politics because I felt I could do nothing more there; such an idea was very far from me. I came away because I got a distinct Adesh in the matter and because I did not want anything to interfere with my Yoga. I have severed connection entirely with politics, but before I did so I knew from within that the work I had begun there was destined to be carried forward, on lines I had foreseen, by others, and that the ultimate triumph of the movement I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence. There was not the least motive or despair or sense of futility behind my withdrawal. For the rest, I have never known any will of mine for one major event in the conduct of world affairs to fail in the end, although it may take a long time for the world-forces to fulfil it.'
From what Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Bande Mataram in April 1908, it is clear that even at that time, that is to say, before his going to jail, he perceived that ' England's work in India was over'. The article is a masterly study of the cultural work in India vis-a-vis the British rule through which India had her needed experience of European science and materialism, generally speaking, a reliving of the experience she had in her great past when she evolved a culture into whose texture were woven the varied expressions of her life, inspired and motived by her inherent spirituality. In fact, India had developed centuries before the present era almost all the exact sciences for many of which the modern world is indebted to her. Nevertheless, India required to resuscitate her ancient spirit of knowledge, receive and reassimilate its present forms and march abreast with a progressive world to a synthesis that is hers to build.
' It was the mission of England to bring this rough material to India, but in the arrogance of her material success she presumed to take upon herself the role of a teacher and treated the Indian people partly as an infant to be instructed, partly as a serf to be schooled to labour for its lords. The farce is played out. England's mission in India is over and it is time for her to recognise the limit of the lease given to her. ... She will stay as long as the destinies of India need her and not a day longer, for it is not by her own strength that she came or is still here, and it is not by her own strength that she can remain. The resurgence of India is begun, it will accomplish itself with her help, if she will, without it if she does not, against it if she opposes.'70
In January 1910, just a month before he left Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo made the following prophecy to a correspondent of a Tamil nationalist weekly India: ' Since 1907, we have been living in an era which is full of hope for India. Not only India, but the whole world will see sudden upheavals and revolutionary changes. The high will become low and the low high. The oppressed and the depressed will be elevated. The nation and humanity will be animated by a new consciousness, new thought, and new efforts will be made to reach new ends. Amidst these revolutionary changes India will become free.' This is a clear vision of the future that came to him then: that it was fulfilled almost, to the letter is recent history.
His own words and actions and the influence they exercised on the people of India are indications enough of the unique position he held in the leadership of the country at that critical period of its history. There were many powerful men who led the movement of India's
70 Weekly Bande Mataram, dated 12.4.1907. Page-149 liberation, but Sri Aurobindo was its life and soul and inspiration. The distress, the agony, the indignity, the indignation of India bleeding in bondage broke forth through his voice and pen and action and generated a fire that burns on till the India of his vision takes her full shape and be herself.
' Sri Aurobindo's genius shot up like a meteor. He was on the high skies only for a time. He flooded the land from Cape to Mount with the effulgence of his light.'71
Very true. And the next phase of his light is to be to flood the earth from pole to pole.
71 B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya: History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. I, p. 70.
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