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Sri Aurobindo: Prophet of Indian Nationalism* Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar'
'T'HE year Sri Aurobindo was born, Rimbaud published his Illumination. But that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the year when Sri Aurobindo returned from England was also the year when Vivekananda sailed for the United States and the day when Sri Aurobindo was born became, after 75 years of course, the day of India's Independence. And the centenary year of Sri Aurobindo's birth has coincided with the Silver Jubilee celebration of our Independence. In India, Nationalism began as a cultural movement, the first emphasis being laid on a relentless opposition to the cultural influence of the West rather than to the rule or misrule of the British. Before trying to free her body from the chains of slavery, India grew anxious to save her soul. And that was natural, for although the Indians were mostly unmindful of military victories and defeats, they were quite sensitive to what was happening to their cultural and spiritual heritage. What havoc the Western influence had begun to play with our culture has best been described by Sri Aurobindo himself. Not merely Bengal but the whole of India "was drunk with the wine of European Civilisation and with the purely intellectual teaching it received from the West. It began to see all things, to judge all things, through the imperfect instrumentality of the intellect. When it was so, Bengal (and the rest of India also, let us add) became atheistic, it became a land of doubters and cynics." What was worse, the England-returned gentleman became a ridiculous perversion of his European contemporary, as Radhakrishnan has put it; "his voice became an echo," he says, "his life a quotation, his soul a brain and his free spirit a slave to things." No wonder, the shock to the masses was so great that they began to doubt every aspect of modernity, lest the shining gold might conceal some base metals, some abominable things which had revealed themselves in the conduct of many people who had received Western education and pretended to be modern and advanced. The shock was so deep and tremendous that the country has not recovered from its evil effects to this day. The wound went too deep into its subconscious
mind with the result that even now the masses are a little cold when faced with a modern idea or development. This is the background against which the character of Indian Nationalism should be judged and seen. This is the reason why Sri Aurobindo, who was destined to make his mark as a poet, a philosopher and a Yogi par excellence, was temporarily drawn to politics and political journalism. This also explains why it is difficult to decide whether Gandhi, who ultimately became the liberator of India, was a politician or a saint. This is a lesson for the writers and commentators of the world who want to understand India with the same vision with which they see, analyse, and judge the countries of the West. This is also a warning to the present and future rulers of India. If they play havoc with the cherished ideals of the Indian people, the latter too will play havoc with them, and if they try to destroy the eternal values that India has preserved and protected even in her worst days, the people will not hesitate to destroy them. We should always bear in mind that India is as indefinable as her Hinduism. India had survived the onslaughts of innumerable races and cultures as well as the cultural inroads of the West. Our first National movements were neither terrorist nor even political, but were generated by the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj. Our first leaders too were not freedom-fighters like Tilak, Gandhi, or Jawaharlal; they were Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Paramahamsa Ramakrishna, Swami Dayanand and Swami Vivekananda, who fought hard with their mighty mind and soul to save the spirit of India. And it must be said to their credit that they won the battle. Go to any other country in the world, and in most places you find the past completely defeated at the hands of the present. Only in India it has been giving a vigorous fight. Modernism is having a hard time in India, for she is not willing to assimilate the elements which do not suit her genius. Modernism is not an unmixed blessing. It will have to be rid of many of its drawbacks before India accepts it whole-heartedly. And when it is acceptable to India, only then will it be acceptable to and prove a real boon for all mankind. When India was fighting her cultural battle and had almost touched the peak point of victory, a national movement in its political form was born in the country. But it was much too tame. The Congress of those days was dominated by moderate leaders who did not want to displease the British Government altogether and thus invite risk to their security and position. They believed in petitioning to the Government "for crumbs of constitutional reform" and felt honoured when the Governors or the Viceroy invited them to dinners or to the periodic Durbars. There were exceptions too, such as Lokmanya Tilak, the tallest man of his time. Their Page-50 opinions, however, did not prevail. The country's sub-conscious was seething with fervour and discontent. But the nation lacked a genius who could fathom and express it, deepen and inflame it. Then appeared on the Indian scene a human colossus, pure in character, possessed of the highest intellect that men had ever seen, burning with passion to change the complexion of Congress politics and unlock the door behind which an unseen but mighty enthusiasm was pulsating in the people. This was Sri Aurobindo, the son of Dr. K. D. Ghose, a perfectly anglicised Indian gentleman who considered Europe to be far, far superior to his own wretched land of birth. Dr. Ghose did not intend his sons "to be in the least contaminated by the smoky and retrograde mysticism in which his country was running to waste". He did not even want them to know anything of the traditions and languages of India. Till the age of twenty, Sri Aurobindo hardly knew any Indian language. He began to learn Bengali, Sanskrit and Hindi after he came back from England in 1893 and settled in Baroda. Before he read the Bhagavad Gita in translation, he had read Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud in the original French, and many more masters in English, French, German, Italian and Greek. Sri Aurobindo had been intended and reared to be a complete un-Indian. But he turned an Indian with a vengeance. He was intended to be untouched by the corrupting influence of mysticism, but he grew to be a mystic of the highest order.1 Sri Aurobindo used to say that Nationalism was not a political movement. It was our religion, our Dharma. He also believed that National movements are led by God and that whenever a leader appears, it is he who appoints and guides him. To a rationalist this will sound curious, and the principle may not very well apply to all movements and leaders of Nationalism. But this certainly applies to Sri Aurobindo, for he was not made for politics but for something much higher. Yet God led him, as it were, to active politics for a brief spell of less than five years and then withdrew him into solitude again. Yet during that short period Sri Aurobindo uttered things which had not been uttered before, churned the Indian mind as it had never been churned through the centuries, and set the pace for India's freedom movement in the future. Here one naturally thinks of Gandhiji. Did Gandhiji march along the groove carved by Sri Aurobindo? Didn't he do things which Sri
Page-51 Aurobindo never even dreamt of? How far did Sri Aurobindo anticipate Gandhiji? Gandhiji was as much a leader appointed by God as Sri Aurobindo. When Sri Aurobindo made his debut on the national scene as a flaming apostle of extreme nationalism, Gandhiji was not there. He was practising in South Africa precisely what Sri Aurobindo was preaching in Bengal — passive resistance — and challenging in another part of the globe the same Power which Sri Aurobindo was challenging in India. But it will not be right to assume that either of them borrowed his ideas from the other. The circumstances being similar, the same remedy occurred to both of them. But there is no denying the fact that many of the programmes that were launched during the days of the Swadeshi movement were revived by Gandhiji in 1920 and afterwards, and carried forward. Sri Aurobindo had sown the seeds. Under Gandhiji's leadership the seedlings grew into trees, all of enormous size. The old programmes, which received new dimensions, were practised on a truly national scale. But under Gandhiji's leadership, they also received new directions and new forms. In a letter addressed to his wife, Sri Aurobindo had observed, "I firmly believe that all the qualifications, the genius, the higher learning and education, all the wealth that is given to one, they are all His. That which is needed for the upkeep of the family and that which is an imperative necessity alone, should be kept for personal use, the rest should be given back to God, to whom these belong. If I spend all for my own little self, my comforts and my luxuries, I am really a thief." This sounds peculiarly Gandhian, and contains in ample measure the seeds of Gandhiji's theory of Trusteeship by which he had laid great hopes, but which nobody has cared to practise — not even the public sector, the dearest darling of the Government. The boycott of foreign goods occupied a high place in Gandhiji's plan of work for freedom. But what was Swadeshi before, became Khaddar afterwards. National Schools became widespread after 1920, but a few of them had been opened even during the Swadeshi movement days. And, surely, what Sri Aurobindo had termed as BRAHMATEJ became strict non-violence in Gandhiji's scheme of things. So far as the ideal of non-violence was concerned, Sri Aurobindo did not believe in it. Nirodbaran in his Talks with Sri Aurobindo has recorded Sri Aurobindo as saying, "My idea was for an open armed revolution in the whole of India. What they did at the time was very childish, things like beating magistrates and so on. Later it turned into terrorism and dacoities, which were not at all my idea or intention.... We wanted to give battle after awakening the spirit of the race through guerilla warfare, as in the Irish Sinn Fein. But at the present stage of military conditions, Page-52 such things are impossible, bound to fail." It was on this account that Sri Aurobindo advocated the method of passive resistance, as an expediency and not as a creed. And in this, Sri Aurobindo seems to have anticipated Gandhiji, although for Gandhiji non-violence was a creed, and not an expediency. Shri Gopal Krishna Gokhale was sore with the extreme nationalists and believed that the latter had some hidden purpose in their hearts, perhaps the purpose of violence. When Gokhale, by implication, gave vent to his feelings, Sri Aurobindo gave the following curt reply: "We have told the people that there is a peaceful means of achieving independence in whatever form we aspire to it. We have said that by self-help, by passive resistance, we can achieve it.... Passive resistance means two things. It means, first, that in certain matters we shall not cooperate with the Government of this country until it gives us what we consider our rights. Secondly, if we are persecuted, if the plough of repression is passed over us, we shall meet it, not by violence, but by suffering, by passive resistance, by lawful means. We have not said to our young men, 'When you are repressed, retaliate'; we have said, 'suffer'. We are showing the people of this country in passive resistance the only way in which they can satisfy their legitimate aspirations without breaking the law and without resorting to violence." It is obvious from the above excerpt that it was Sri Aurobindo who first conceived of non-cooperation and passive resistance as the most effective weapon to fight the British. To call him the prophet of Indian Nationalism is, therefore, hardly an exaggeration. This tribute was first paid to Sri Aurobindo by no less a person than C. R. Das when he was defending Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case. The big difference between the two leaders, however, was that while Gandhiji held fast to non-violence as his creed which could not be diluted, Sri Aurobindo had no such scruple. When Devdas Gandhi asked Sri Aurobindo what his views about non-violence were, he put a counter question, "Suppose there is an invasion of India by the Afghans, how are you going to meet it with non-violence?" Sri Aurobindo did not like to be described as an apostle of non-violence. He also had his misgivings about the theory of "change of heart" and thought that what they called the "change of heart" was but the result of coercion. Another point of comparison between the two leaders is that both of them wanted to see God face to face. Sri Aurobindo makes mention of it in a letter to his wife, "I want to see God face to face, however difficult the journey and however long the way." I have my doubts if Gandhiji's approach to politics was totally secular. Page-53 All that we can say is that he treated all religions equally and considered them his own. But Sri Aurobindo was different. He did not conceal that his political ideal was, not secular, but spiritual. He used to speak and write openly that God was the leader of the national movement and he wanted the Sanatan Dharma of India to shine forth and not be dimmed by the clouds of Western ideas and plans. But the Freedom Movement did not ultimately go along tHe lines envisaged by Tilak, Sri Aurobindo or Gandhi himself. As early as December 1938, Sri Aurobindo had remarked, "India is now going towards European socialism which is dangerous for her, whereas we were trying to evolve the genius of the race along Indian lines. It was the soul of the race that awoke, throwing up very fine personalities. The leaders of the movement were either yogis or disciples of yogis." When the partition of Bengal became a fact of law on 16 October 1905, Bengal decided to rise as one man to oppose it, and to agitate against it till this black Act was annulled. As the revolutionary fervour of the people rose high, the repressive measures of the Government also increased. Under the national programme of Swadeshi, national education and boycott of foreign goods, a National College was founded in Calcutta and Sri Aurobindo gave up Baroda for good and became Principal of the Bengal National College in August 1906. In Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo became the real brain behind the Nationalist Party of Bengal. More important still was his association with the Bande Mataram, a daily newspaper published by Bepin Chandra Pal, and it was through its columns that Sri Aurobindo preached the gospel of nationalism and patriotism in a way the country had not known before. The Bande Mataram became the spearhead of the Nationalist movement in Bengal and, indeed, in the whole of India: "The hand of the master was in it from the very beginning. Its bold attitude, its vigorous thinking, its clear ideas, its chaste and powerful diction, its searching sarcasm and refined witticism were unsurpassed by any journal in the country, either Indian or Anglo-Indian."1 And this was how within a few months "from the tutor of a few students" Sri Aurobindo became "the teacher of a whole nation". Endowed with Sri Aurobindo's powerful, fearless and inspiring pen, the Bande Mataram became the mouth-piece of resurgent India. Besides dealing with contemporary problems, it created a whole generation of new patriots who were destined to fight for the freedom of India and ultimately make her free. For example, the late Dr. Sri Krishna Singh, the 'lion' of Bihar, belonged to this generation of patriots. When once asked by me
Page-54 as to why he chose the path of suffering and sacrifice, he said, "it was Sri Aurobindo who made us mad." It was through the columns of the Bande Mataram that Sri Aurobindo very quickly did all that was necessary to awaken, arouse and invigorate an inert nation and make it stand on its feet to fight its own war of liberation. As Sri K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar has very aptly summarised the many services that Sri Aurobindo rendered to the national cause through the columns of this celebrated journal, "Through him the disarmed and emasculated millions spoke with defiance and pride to the civilised world in the strength of their new found self-confidence and hope. The Prophet of Renascent India, the Tribune of the people, the Quartermaster-General of the Nationalists — these are the diverse powers and personalities of Sri Aurobindo that we glimpse in the Bande Mataram contributions." And yet, as Sri Aurobindo did not publicise himself, the Government were at a loss to discover the person who was exerting this powerful influence through his writings. Ultimately the veil lifted and they came to know that it was Sri Aurobindo; he was, therefore, arrested in August 1907. But since the particular charge levelled against him could not be proved, he had to be let off. This prosecution did the country a great good. The name of Sri Aurobindo was "in the twinkling of a second" on the lips of the whole people, and "appreciations, congratulations, exhortations, all sought Sri Aurobindo out from the four corners of the sub-continent". The event was so dramatic and great that it inspired the greatest living poet of India to compose the famous poem:
Paying a high tribute to Sri Aurobindo, the Indian Patriot wrote, "Slaves of ease and security, the butterflies of the hour look small and pitiable by his side." The year 1907 was also eventful from another point of view; it witnessed the Congress split at Surat. Sri Aurobindo had by then emerged as the accredited leader of the extreme nationalists and had found a noble and senior soul-brother in Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who was the "Generalissimo of the Nationalists" and their supreme High Command. Tilak and Sri Aurobindo had gone to Surat with a strong contingent to capture the Congress for the Nationalist Party. But the Moderates too under the leadership of Gokhale and Rash Bihari Ghosh had mastered sufficient strength. The Congress was evenly divided, and the differences between the parties were so sharp that the session could not be held. Page-55 After Surat, Sri Aurobindo went to Baroda, where he came into contact with Shri Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Yogi from Maharashtra. It was from Lele that Sri Aurobindo took his initiation in Yoga and advanced fast in his Sadhana to silence the mind. It is said that wherever he went, competent observers marked the calm that emanated from him and the spiritual heights from which his speech descended. In public meetings, "he spoke neither like a professional politician nor like an elder statesman, but rather like an evangelist, a prophet". Thus, in one of the meetings, he said, "Nationalism is a religion that has come from God. It is a religion by which we are trying to realise God in the nation, in our fellow countrymen. We are trying to realise Him in the three hundred millions of our people." One feels as if one were hearing an echo of Vivekananda who was already dead, and an echo of Gandhiji who was to make his appearance ten years later. As the awakening in the people deepened and they clamoured for Swaraj, the Government came down on the people with a heavy hand. The repressive measures adopted by the Government were so severe that the Secretary of State for India was a little alarmed and he wrote to the Viceroy, "We must keep order, butt the excess of severity is not the path to order; on the contrary it is the path to bomb." On April 1908, Khudiram Bose threw a bomb in Muzaffarpur (Bihar) which killed two innocent English ladies. This enraged the Government beyond all measure and they started arresting young men right and left. As the brother of Barindra Ghose, a well-known terrorist who was found connected with a bomb factory, Sri Aurobindo too was arrested on 5 May 1908 and lodged in the Alipore Jail where he spent a full year as an under-trial prisoner. The case that was started against Sri Aurobindo and others is known as the "Alipore Bomb Case", but its history need not be narrated here in detail. The only point worth mentioning here is that this custody in jail proved to be a boon to Sri Aurobindo, as it brought about a complete transformation in him. It is said that Sri Aurobindo saw in the jail a vision of Vasudeva who assured him that nothing would happen to him, and that he was marked out for some other work higher than politics. Again, in Nirodbaran's book, Talks with Sri Aurobindo, he is reported as saying, "It was Vivekananda who, when he used to come to me during meditation in Alipore Jail, showed me the Intuitive Plane. For a month or so he gave instructions about Intuition." In another place in the same book, Sri Aurobindo is reported to have said, "It was the spirit of Vivekananda who first gave me a clue in the direction of the Supermind." God had decided to take away Sri Aurobindo from politics. Page-56 The Alipore Bomb Case itself was a sensational event that made the whole country hold its breath to see what would happen to Sri Aurobindo, the hero of the people. The speech of C. R. Das, who defended Sri Aurobindo, was spread over eight days and "was an eloquent epic of forensic art". But the piece that has gone down in history as a prophesy and a solemn utterance of the age is the one where C. R. Das, appealing on behalf of Sri Aurobindo, addressed the court from the highest plane that an advocate can possibly reach: "My appeal to you is this, that long after this controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil and 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 re-echoed, not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this court, but before the bar of the High Court of History." The assessors returned a unanimous verdict of "Not guilty" and Sri Aurobindo was set free early in May 1909. When Sri Aurobindo came out of the jail, he was disappointed to find that much of the fervour generated by him was gone and an atmosphere of uneasy silence prevailed in the country. He gave vent to his feelings in his celebrated speech at Uttarpara: "When I went to jail, the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail, I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country and men seemed bewildered." Obviously repression had succeeded temporarily, as it often does. Consoling the masses Sri Aurobindo said: "Repression is nothing but the hammer of God that is beating us into shape so that we may be moulded into a mighty nation and an instrument for His work in the world."1 Coming out of the jail, Sri Aurobindo launched the Karmayogin in English and Dharma in Bengali. The main idea was to organise the Nationalist Party again which had all but disintegrated. But the tone of
Page-57 the papers could not be maintained on the mundane level. It often rose to spiritual heights, an indication that the personality of the editor was being pulled in two different directions by politics and Yoga. Sri Aurobindo began to think that the social reforms that were being preached in the country aimed merely at mechanical changes. Unless there was a change in the spirit, misery and degradation will not end: "It is the spirit alone that saves, and only by becoming great and free in heart can we become socially and politically free." This sounds verily like a distant preface to what Sri Aurobindo was to say later in the context of the Supramental evolution of man. In July 1909 a hot rumour spread throughout Calcutta that the Government had decided to deport Sri Aurobindo. Although he remained unperturbed, he seized the occasion to publish an "Open letter to My Countrymen" in which he used phrases such as "in case of my deportation" and "if I do not return." This open letter, Sri Aurobindo said, was to stand as his "last political will and testament" to his Countrymen. "All great movements", the letter declared, "wait for their God-sent leader, the willing channel of His force, and only when he comes, move forward triumphantly to their fulfilment. Therefore, the Nationalist party, the custodians of the future, must wait for the man who is to come." History has amply demonstrated that Gandhiji was the leader of whom Sri Aurobindo had spoken as above. It was, however, a pity that the two leaders could never meet. In February 1910, Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta and went over to the neighbouring French territory of Chandernagore. It is presumed that Sri Aurobindo might have thought of this step in order to thwart the evil designs of the Government who were this time determined to take him away from the country for good and probably deport him to the Anda-mans. And actually, when Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta, the Government had started the third prosecution against him, but eventually it also failed. Ultimately under the guidance of an "inner Voice", an ades from above, Sri Aurobindo left Chandernagore and sailed for Pondicherry, another French possession in India, which he reached on April 4, 1910, and lived there till the end of his life writing poetry and essays and practising Yoga. Doubts are often raised as to why Sri Aurobindo quit politics. Was it because of the feeling that, instead of wasting life in a cell in the Anda-mans, it was better to go into solitude and spend his life in the pursuit of poetry, philosophy and spiritual realisation? This hypothesis seems to possess some weight no doubt, but it is Page-58 rather a cheap criterion to judge the motives of one who did so much for the world in general and for his country in particular and who left so huge and noble a heritage for all mankind. Something must have happened to him which convinced him that politics could not be combined with Yoga, and that he must give it up to pursue the highest ideals. This may perhaps be inferred from what Sri Aurobindo once said about C. R. Das: "He came here (Pondicherry) and wanted to be a disciple. I said, he would not be able to go through in Yoga as long as he was in the political movement." The same thing happened to the late Sri A. B. Purani who had gone to see Sri Aurobindo in December 1918. Sri Purani informed Sri Aurobindo, "Our group is now ready to start revolutionary activity. It has taken us eleven years to get organised." But Sri Aurobindo replied, "Perhaps it may not be necessary to resort to revolutionary activity to free India." And Sri Aurobindo wanted Purani to concentrate on his Sadhana and give up politics altogether. This, however, did not satisfy Puraniji. He said, "I must do something for the freedom of India.... The concentration of my whole being turns towards India's freedom. It is difficult for me to sleep till that is secured." Sri Aurobindo, after a long pause, said: "Suppose an assurance is given to you?" Sri Purani paused for a moment and then said, "If you give the assurance, I can accept it." Sri Aurobindo in a serious tone replied, "Then I give you the assurance that India will be free." Earlier, Sri Aurobindo had told Puraniji, "India has already decided to win freedom and so there will certainly be found leaders and men to work for that goal. But all are not called to Yoga. So when you have the call, it is better to concentrate upon it." I am one of those who are not at all puzzled as to why Sri Aurobindo gave up politics and took to Yoga. Page-59 Transformation, Leadership and Freedom in the Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo* S. Alam Khundmiri
THE aim of this paper is to examine in a modest critical manner some of the leading ideas of Sri Aurobindo's political philosophy. The qualification of modest is meaningful, as a great thinker like Sri Aurobindo ought to be studied with humility and modesty and at the same time a critical spirit has to be maintained, without which the study turns into a kind of idolatrous worship which, I am sure, was never the intention of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo demands serious attention because his philosophic thought represents a continuity of the Indian tradition as well as an attempt to integrate it with the world thought and to take it on an upward direction. His philosophic thought gets distinctness from that of his contemporaries because it combines tradition with modernity and also with futurity. He knew that historic progress presupposes a tradition which advances, and this advance necessitates a reinterpretation of the tradition in the light of actual progress and also the future direction which is always immanent in the present. It will not be an exaggeration to say that history as a category of thought finds its place for the first time in the Indian philosophic discussion in the writings of Sri Aurobindo, and it is on this account that his philosophic presuppositions include reference to this category. To make the discussion precise and meaningful, it is proposed to enumerate the philosophic presuppositions of Sri Aurobindo, as the writer has been able to understand them. It is a philosophic conviction of the present writer that presuppositionless thought is an ideal which has, perhaps, not been reached by the human intellect yet. It is therefore not possible to distinguish, as Husserl demands, between reflection and theoretical construction. I would like to stress one more point in this regard, that I consider Sri Aurobindo a great thinker and a great system builder, but not 'the voice of Future' or an infallible thinker who has said the last word on any problem of human concern. The important presuppositions of Sri Aurobindo's thought are: (1) Universe is essentially Spirit which unfolds itself through different
stages in Time, (2) the world of Nature and the world of Man represent a single process of evolution with increasing complexity, (3) History as the evolutionary process of the world of Man has a definite direction, and (4) this direction is the transformation of the present human species into spiritualised or 'gnostic' beings. I call them presuppositions because, in the philosophic writings of Sri Aurobindo, we are never given any reasons why they should be considered as true. They could not be regarded as a 'mystic' or 'poetic' vision because Sri Aurobindo tries to build a coherent system on their basis and does not merely express them in an aphoristic manner. In the light of these presuppositions an attempt will be made to discuss the following three concepts: Sri Aurobindo's idea of the transformation of the human world, the 'agents' of this transformation or the problem of Leadership, and the meaning of freedom in the human world. The first and the third have been the preoccupation of the Indian philosopher for more than the last two thousand years, but Sri Aurobindo's philosophic innovation consists in enlarging the area of Spiritual Realization and Perfection and not restricting them to a select group of mankind; and so far as the second item, i.e. Leadership, is concerned making it total, — in other words, Sri Aurobindo introduces the characteristics of'prophet-hood' in the spiritually perfected man. These can hardly be called problems of political philosophy, if the term is used strictly in the context of Western tradition; but they acquire significance if they are discussed in the background of Indian tradition, which gives primary importance to the spiritual transformation of man but scrupulously leaves behind man's social and political life in the search for spiritual transformation and freedom. Similarly, the Realized Person leaves matters social and political to be taken care of by those who are still imprisoned in Samsara and have not reached the stage of Moksha or salvation. This innovation of Sri Aurobindo marks a turning-point in the Indian philosophic tradition, as the classical idea of the elimination of human suffering for the first time includes man's suffering as a social and political being and an attempt for its elimination in a total manner. The only other thinker in contemporary India belonging to the Indian tradition who has a deep concern for the concrete man with his total commitments to life, is Swami Vivekananda. I am purposely excluding Gandhiji from this category because, for him, spirituality serves as a background and is not his sole concern. Secondly, for Gandhiji spirituality is co-extensive with and equal to the ethical level and does not necessarily transcend it. The innovation of Gandhiji is altogether a different matter and might even be called a radical departure, in spite of his apparent closeness to the Indian tradition. Page-61
(A) The Transformation of the Human World
It is a basic assumption of all social philosophies that man and his world are inseparable and that man has a desire to change his world and also himself. All our institutional life derives meaning and significance from this basic assumption. Aristotle, with his assumption that 'reason' is immanent in the universe and the human world, started a new secular tradition in Western thought. The underlying principles of this new tradition were, that the universe is intelligible, that man is rational, that he has a right to seek happiness, and that happiness (which can also be termed as 'blessedness') consists in a life led by reason. It has to be pointed here that Aristotle made an attempt to purge reason of the Platonic-mystic element and identified it with logical intelligence. This Aristotelian meaning of Reason as a middle term between the universe and man remained one of the leading ideas of the Western world and was also for some time shared by the Islamic civilisation, perhaps in its best age. In the age of enlightenment and reason in the Western world, this Aristotelian heritage was revived by Hegel and then in the uncompromising secular philosophic outlook of Marx. Hegel's insistence that freedom and law have their meaning in the institutional life had an implication that changes in the human situation have their roots in history. In the philosophic outlook of Marx this idea was further extended to the point that human consciousness was regarded as an effect of social existence, i.e., the institutional life of man in history. As Marx also conceived the human world, along with the world of non-human nature, as a dynamic dialectical process, the above-mentioned assumption led to the conclusion that changes in the institutional life precede, logically as well as chronologically, changes in the human psyche. This view regards conflict and struggle as the mechanism of change, which now meant social and technological change. An obvious outcome of this new ideology was the expulsion of a providential view of history and the replacement of the 'divine in man' with man as a Prometheus and a Faust. The Promethean-Faustian image of man becomes a characteristic feature of the 'new humanism'. But very soon a contradiction arose in the highly technological societies. Man's technological reason surpassed his intelligence to control the forces of technology and to make therh subserve the demands of human happiness. Consequently the faithj in human capacity to determine his existence in the light of his own reason! was terribly shaken. What perhaps happened in this crisis was that the failure to make corresponding changes in institutions with changes and revolutions in technology was identified as an ultimate failure of human reason. The great failure of the contemporary man was his Page-62 failure continuously to revise the social relations and the educational plans in the light of new advances in technology. It is also true that the prevailing Bourgeois industrial system had retained the belief in the infallibility of the mechanism of enlightened self-interest, and the new socialist order put undue emphasis on the efficacy of the new socialist state. If the former system left the non-economic and non-political levels of human existence to the mercy of technology, the latter system relied heavily on the mechanism that the changing base will look after the superstructure and the human creativity will not lag behind the technological reason. The philosophies of 'unreason', a major trend of the present century, are the product of this despair. One common point of all these philosophies, in spite of their major differences, is their despair about human reason. The more insightful among them turned their attention to a principle other than human reason, i.e. the logical reason which develops gradually, dialectically, by overcoming the contradictions inherent in the human situation. They agreed that the human situation needs a radical change and that the human world demands a fundamental change, both at the institutional and the psychic level, but they felt that a mechanism or instrument other than reason, which was supposed to be immanent in existence, had to be discovered. Technically Sri Aurobindo's social and political philosophy belongs to this category. It is, in a sense, correct to call his philosophic view integral (it is not easy at the present moment of human thought to draw an infallible line of demarcation between the integral and the eclectic), because he has not dropped his faith in the Promethean-Faustian image of man along with his loss of faith in the ultimacy of human reason. In the tradition of Nietzsche and the historicist thinking of the 19th century, he has faith in the evolutionary scheme that will ultimately lead to the emergence of a new man or a new race which will be finally able to resolve the tensions of the new civilization. This presupposition serves as the dynamic principle of Sri Aurobindo's philosophic thought. This faith in continuous evolution could have two possible alternative directions: that man will be able to develop his intelligence further, which has been a mark of evolution, or he will surpass himself and will evolve a new faculty which was already hidden in him. Sri Aurobindo opts for the latter alternative in the Nietzschean tradition. It must be pointed out here that a philosophy of history taking reason as its guide will not venture to extend its investigation into future. Hegel the great system-builder of the rationalist tradition had rightly pointed out that history must end with the present because nothing else has happened, and that future as future is an object, not of knowledge, but of hopes and fears, and hopes and fears are not history.1 Sri Aurobindo is aware of this difficulty Page-63 and therefore he has based his future vision of man on a devastating critique of human reason. There is nothing that can be called refreshing or novel in Sri Aurobindo's criticism of reason which has not been said earlier by Pascal or Kierkegaard or in the contemporary philosophic world by Henri Bergson.2 The difference lies, not in the criticism offered, but the solution put forth. Pascal and Kierkegaard offered a humbler solution, and that was calling man to revive his faith in the Biblical prophetic vision of God. In the contemporary Indian tradition, Swami Vivekananda tried to seek the social and political implications of the Universal Vedantic faith. Revival of faith is a religious solution which has certain social and political implications which might fit in the tradition. Sri Aurobindo's scheme of man's spiritual transformation is based on the rejection of the philosophic as well as the religious past. After asserting the insufficiency and the total breakdown of reason in guiding man and putting the blame of the failure of all systems, political and social, on reason, Sri Aurobindo puts religion and particularly the institutionalised religion to a ruthless criticism. It must be admitted that his criticism of the traditional religion is much more relevant than his criticism of reason. He rightly points out that the usual tendency of the credal religion is to turn towards an after-world and to make the regeneration of the earthly life a secondary motive.3 He is also right, and the history of religions supports the contention, that religions usually subordinate spirituality to intellectual belief, to outward forms of life and to external ritual.4 Marxians and Freudians will completely agree with Sri Aurobindo on this point. The classical Indian view of spirituality and the supremacy of the inner life will also confirm Sri Aurobindo's critical remarks about religion. A serious question, however, arises when Sri Aurobindo offers his alternative plan of human transformation. He describes it in his familiar prophetic style: "The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the Spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature."5 The humanistic urge of Sri Aurobindo gets articulated when he draws a picture of this transformation: Not only to see and find the Divine in oneself, but to see and find the Divine in all, not only to seek one's own individual liberation or perfection but to seek the liberation and perfection of others, is the complete law of the spiritual being. If the Divinity sought were a separate Godhead within oneself and not the one Divine, or if one sought God for oneself alone, then indeed the result might be a grandiose egoism, the Olympian egoism of a Goethe or the Titanic egoism imagined by Nietzsche, or it might be isolated self-knowledge or asceticism of the ivory tower or the Stylites pillar.6 Even the scientific humanists will agree with this aim of spiritual transformation; there will Page-64 be no dispute with statements like this also: "We must remember that our aim of self-fulfilment is an integral unfolding of the Divine within us, a complete evolution of the hidden divinity in the individual soul and the collective life."7 But the serious question is: Is our philosopher justified in rejecting the principle of Reason altogether and employing a different and also a higher category of Spirit as the future stage of human evolution? True, reason has not succeeded in guiding man to the upward path, but is it also a fact that reason had been used and employed exhaustively in human history? Can the collectivist organisation of human affairs be rightly called the unfolding of human reason ?8 Sri Aurobindo has raised a very pertinent question in this regard: whether reason will ever be satisfied or can even rest from questioning the foundation of established things, — unless indeed it sinks back into a sleep of tradition and convention, or else goes forward by a great awakening to the reign of a higher spirit than its own and opens into a supra-rational or spiritual age of mankind.9 The question is serious, but can't we assume that the dialectics of reason can proceed further endlessly and resolve the tensions in a gradual piecemeal manner ? Is not an equal element of wisdom contained in the optimism of Bertrand Russell regarding human reason: "...the main thing needed is intelligence. And this, after all, is an optimistic conclusion, because intelligence is a thing that can be fostered by known methods of education."10 Russell is less prophetic, but points to an important fact that reason has not exhausted its possibilities in history. In fact it has not been allowed to play its full role, as the infra-rational has dominated the rational so far in human history. Sri Aurobindo's vision of the transformed state of humanity becomes clear when he announces: "It (Spirit) will aim at establishing in society the true inner theocracy, not the false theocracy of a dominant Church or priesthood, but that of the inner Priest, Prophet and King."11 The term theocracy is not necessarily a dangerous term; but the question is, cannot this true inner theocracy degenerate into the false one ? The question is not irrelevant, unless one has a dogmatic belief that the age of Spirit has already dawned upon mankind and that Nature has closed all the possibilities of relapse into an earlier age of darkness. Of course, there is no return to the earlier in the realm of organic evolution, but there is no sufficient reason to deny the possibility of a return to the earlier in the human world.
(B) THE AGENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
Certain implications of the thesis of spiritual transformation become clear in Sri Aurobindo's ideas on the problem of Leadership or on the Page-65 problem of the agents of transformation. The utopic character of Sri Aurobindo's political philosophy becomes clear when we turn to his concept of the 'spiritual elite' or the 'future leaders' of mankind. As it has been already suggested, the realised elite of Sri Aurobindo combines the qualities of a Semitic prophet along with the qualities of Plato's 'philosopher kings' and the Bodhisattva of the Mahayana tradition. It is certainly an integral concept, but the source of its integrality lies in the fact that Sri Aurobindo has revived an idea which was already contained in the 'ancient wisdom' or in the gnostic tradition. Like all gnostic traditions, the elitist character of Sri Aurobindo's thought becomes quite articulate on this point. In the concluding chapter of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo gives a description of the gnostic beings in ringing words. The gnostic beings are those who act selflessly, instinctively, for the good of humanity, endowed with spiritual freedom, above the temptations of political power, conscious of the unity of mankind, and confident of their ability to turn and adopt the world to their own truth and purpose of existence; they will mould life itself into their own spiritual image.12 It is no wonder that the Gnostic Being of Sri Aurobindo resembles so much the 'future man' of the poet-philosopher, Iqbal. According to Iqbal also, the future man is the nexus and the driving force of evolution. The entire human race is the field and he is the harvest: he is the goal of life's caravan. He is sleeping in the ashes of today, and he is the flame of a world consuming morrow. The moment he emerges on the stage of existence, he rolls up the ancient order.13 Iqbal, like Sri Aurobindo, derived this idea from the gnostic tradition in Islam represented by Ibn Arabi and Abdal-Karim Aljili. The gnostic being of Sri Aurobindo and the future man of Iqbal remind one of Heidegger's idea of the 'authentic being'. Similarities are not accidental, the 'ancient oriental wisdom' and the philosopher prophet of the 19th-20th century, Nietzsche, are common sources for Sri Aurobindo, Iqbal and Heidegger. Speaking about the true freedom and perfection, Sri Aurobindo says that it "will come when the Spirit within bursts through the forms of mind and life and, winging above to its own gnostic fiery height of ether, turns upon them from that light and flame to seize them and transform into its own image.... Man's road to spiritual supermanhood will be open when he declares boldly that all he has yet developed, including the intellect of which he is so vainly proud, are no longer sufficient for him, and that to uncase, discover, set free this great light within shall be henceforth his pervading pre-occupation."14 Speaking about the role of the spiritualised beings, Sri Aurobindo writes: "...if the spiritual change of which we have been speaking is to be effected, it must unite two conditions which have to be simultaneously satisfied but are most difficult to bring together (italics Page-66 mine). There must be the individual or the individuals who are able to see, to develop, to re-create themselves in the image of the Spirit and to communicate both their idea and its power to the mass. And there must be at the same time a mass, a society, a communal mind or at least the constituents of a group-body, the possibility of a group-soul which is capable of receiving and effectively assimilating, ready to follow and effectively arrive."15 To Sri Aurobindo it seems a certainty that the Spirit who is here in man, "will descend more fully as the Avatar of a yet unseen and unguessed Godhead from above into the soul of mankind and into the great individualities in whom the light and power are the strongest."16 Even if this subjective certainty becomes an historical actuality, it is not clear in what manner and through which mechanism this new elite will be able to influence the actual historic course of events, in other words how the process of mediation in history will occur. The other alternative is that the entire mankind gets spiritually transformed and the necessity of institutional life is overcome by man, which will be the greatest and the final revolution for mankind and of the human world. It will be the final revolution because spiritualised humanity will be able to live a life of complete blessedness and consciousness. That will be the dawn of freedom and the Spiritual Anarchism. This Utopian portrait of the future is undoubtedly better than the surrealistic image of the actual present, but the question is, will it come ? If reason which is nearer to what Sri Aurobindo calls the 'vital' could not make institutional reforms successful, how this final revolution will come, is not clear. Like all religious philosophies, Sri Aurobindo's vision to become a reality needs Divine Grace. In the beginning we were on the margin of political philosophy but at the end we are on the threshold of religion where man can only pray. Notwithstanding these utopic elements in Sri Aurobindo's thought, his idea of freedom is inspiring even for those who still believe in gradual institutional changes. The plan for institutional changes also needs an ideal towards which institutions have to move. The idea of Freedom as self-determination for individuals and the human groups is a fine synthesis of the classical democratic idea and the contemporary Socialistic doctrine.17 It is a restatement of the classical Indian concept of Swadharma. It raises man above the opposition of egoism and altruism, as the love of one's neighbour becomes a condition of one's own development. Unlike his German predecessor, Nietzsche, and his contemporary Heidegger, Sri Aurobindo does not leave the concrete individual outside his definition of freedom. Speaking about the individuals who will most help the future of humanity Sri Aurobindo writes: "They will not make society a shadowy background to a few luminous spiritual figures or a rigidly fenced and earth-bound root for the growth of a comparatively Page-67 rare and sterile flower of ascetic spirituality. They will not accept the theory that the many must necessarily remain for ever on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and light, but will start from the standpoint of the great spirits who have striven to regenerate the life of the earth and held that faith in spite of all previous failures."18 The portrait of the man resembles the classical Karmayogin, but the question has to be repeated: unless these persons with a clear vision of the human situation intervene in the actual process of history would pious hopes be fulfilled?
REFERENCES
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