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Archival Notes THE DEPARTURE TO CHANDERNAGORE
A NOTE
Since what follows is a critique rather than a narrative, the writer will not attempt to conceal his presence, as a narrative writer should, but will employ the first person throughout. This will serve to remind the reader that the opinions expressed are the writer's own.
THE DATE OF SRI AUROBINDO'S DEPARTURE
The date of Sri Aurobindo's departure from Calcutta for Chandernagore has long been a subject for speculation. It is the exact day and not the month that is uncertain; the event definitely took place in February. Sri Aurobindo is known to have left Chandernagore, after a stay of more than a month, on 31 March 1910. Two references in Sri Aurobindo's autobiographical writings confirm that the month of his departure was February 1910.1 But when in February? Sri Aurobindo was in Calcutta on the eleventh, when his uncle Krishnakumar Mitra was welcomed home after a fourteen-month detainment in Agra.2* He was again present on the evening of the fifteenth when two more deportees Satishchandra Chatterjee and Shyamsunder Chakravarty, the latter Sri Aurobindo's collaborator on the Bande Mataram were received at Calcutta's Chandpal Ghat.3 But the newspaper that reported Sri Aurobindo's presence at these events did not list him among those present at two subsequent functions where his attendance might have been expected. The first of these was a social gathering organised by the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj to fete Krishnakumar on the evening of the fifteenth. The second was a "grand soiree" held for the same purpose at the Indian Association on the nineteenth. These two gatherings in the honour of Sri Aurobindo's uncle, in whose house he was living at the time, were attended by many of Sri Aurobindo's associates and relatives. His sister Sarojini was present at the Brahmo Samaj meeting on the fifteenth; virtually the whole household attended the gathering of the nineteenth. Sri Aurobindo's absence must have been conspicuous then, and it is significant now in the light of his departure from Calcutta. In published reminiscences Krishnakumar and his daughter Basanti both state that one evening a few days after Krishnakumar's return on the eleventh Sri Aurobindo did not come home from work as usual.4 Neither of them saw him after this day; later they learned he had gone to Chandernagore and thence to Pondicherry. The phrase used by both writers "a few days after" (the Bengali is koyek din pare, Krishnakumar adds the intensive i) could mean three or four days, perhaps a week, but not much more. Sri Aurobindo's absence from the meeting on the nine-
* In the April 1983 issue of this journal (p. 97) I mistakenly gave the date of Krishnakumar's return as the fifteenth. Page-221 teenth and Krishnakumar's placing of this soiree a few days after (again koyek din pare) Sri Aurobindo's departure make it all but certain that Sri Aurobindo was gone before the nineteenth. Since he definitely was in Calcutta on the fifteenth, the probable dates of his departure lie between the fifteenth and the nineteenth. Most likely it was towards the beginning of this period. Motilal Roy, in whose house Sri Aurobindo stayed after reaching Chandernagore, has written that Sri Aurobindo arrived in February 1910 on the day after Saraswati Puja.5 In 1910 Saraswati Puja fell on 14 February.6* But it would be incorrect to suppose that Sri Aurobindo arrived in Chandernagore on the day after 14 February, since it is certain that he was in Calcutta on the evening of the fifteenth Still, the connection between Saraswati Puja and Sri Aurobindo's arrival is clear. In 1940 Sri Aurobindo recalled that he "was to be handed over [by Motilal] to somebody in whose house there was Saraswati Puja".7 It seems certain that the departure from Calcutta took place very shortly after the fourteenth. Is further precision possible? Perhaps. In the light of what I have written a clue provided by Basanti Chakravarty takes on special significance. Her reminiscences say that on the evening of the day Sri Aurobindo left her father's house for the last time, some visitors came to meet him. Shortly afterwards he went out, so abruptly that he did not even take the meal that she was waiting to serve him. "Where had he gone without eating?", Basanti wondered.8 She never found out, and we cannot now answer her question with certainty; but there was one event that occurred just after the fourteenth that Sri Aurobindo might well have passed up a meal to attend the welcoming home from exile of his friend and co-worker Shyamsunder on the fifteenth. Shyamsunder's steamer arrived at the ghat in the evening at 5.15 according to the Bengalee, 4.00 according to the Dharma. It is known that Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta for Chandernagore around eight at night. The office in Sham-bazar from which he departed is not far from the ghat. It is quite possible that he went to the office after meeting Shyamsunder on the evening of the fifteenth and from there left for Chandernagore. This date satisfies two desiderata. First it suits Basanti's description; and one is not, after all, called away from the table every evening. Secondly, the night of the fifteenth is the first occasion after the beginning of Saraswati Puja when Sri Aurobindo might have left Calcutta. If this was the night of his departure, it is even possible that he arrived in Chandernagore the day after the Puja, as Motilal says he did. If the Puja began late on the fourteenth, it would have continued into the evening of the fifteenth. The morning of 16 February would then be the morning of the day after the Puja. And it should not be forgotten that according to the Indian idea the new day begins at sunrise, not at midnight. Sri
* This is the day of the civil holiday. It is possible the puja was celebrated a day earlier or later. Pujas are determined by tithi (lunar day); a tithi does not generally begin with the beginning of the (solar) day, but occupies parts of two days. I have not been able to determine for certain when the Saraswati Puja in question began or ended, or when the puja was actually celebrated. There are different systems of reckoning, and experts disagree. In the most scholarly and well-researched article that has appeared on the subject, the historian Uma Mukherjee, relying on Motilal's statement, and unaware of the newspaper reports of Sri Aurobindo's presence in Calcutta on the evening of the fifteenth, gives the date of his departure as 14 February and of his arrival in Chandernagore as 15 February. See Uma Mukherjee, "How Sri Aurobindo Withdrew to Pondicherry". Mother India, vol.21, no.8 (August 1969), p. 489. (Reproduced from People's Path. Jullundur, September 1968.) Page-222 Aurobindo arrived in Chandernagore just before dawn. If he left Calcutta around 8 o'clock on the evening of the fifteenth, then whenever the Puja actually ended, it would still have been, by Indian reckoning, the night of the day after Saraswati Puja when he reached Chandernagore. I believe that Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta on the evening of 15 February 1910. Some of the evidence supporting this date is circumstantial, but the overall effect is convincing.
THE CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF A CONTROVERSY
The date of Sri Aurobindo's departure for Chandernagore may never be established with absolute certainty because the evidence is insufficient. The circumstances of the departure involve a different sort of historiographic problem. Here the documents are plentiful but the accounts disagree. The matter has been, and continues to be, a focus of controversy. Historians try to base their work on primary sources, in particular on non-narrative contemporary documents. There are no documents of this sort dealing with Sri Aurobindo's departure. The incident is not mentioned in official records or in private letters or diaries; no account was printed in a newspaper. All this is hardly surprising. Sri Aurobindo fled to Chandernagore in great secrecy. There is no official record precisely because he succeeded in eluding the police. His friends naturally made no announcement of his escape, and they also were circumspect enough not to preserve any written evidence. What happened that evening in February 1910 was known only to Sri Aurobindo and a handful of his associates. These revolutionaries had been trained to keep what they knew to themselves. EARLY RETROSPECTIVE ACCOUNTS But the event was dramatic and significant and from time to time those who were there did speak about it. This lead to the creation of some early retrospective accounts. Several were recorded by A. B. Purani, Sri Aurobindo's biographer and the compiler of his talks. One day in 1925 Sureshchandra Chakravarti, a fellow-disciple, was telling Purani his idea that Sri Aurobindo had always been a "passive instrument" in his action. As an example Suresh spoke about the flight to Chandernagore, which he had witnessed. Purani jotted the account down in a notebook; a verbatim transcription of this record is published as Document 1. This was not the first Purani had heard of the incident. A year earlier another disciple, Amrita, had referred to it in a similar context. Amrita told Purani that "in all important matters he [Sri Aurobindo] always got the correct direction from the Divine." For example, Amrita went on, "When he went to Chandra Nagore* it was decided for him."9 Amrita was no eyewitness, but he was a close associate of Sureshchandra Chakravarti and Nolinikanta Gupta, who were. He evidently had heard the story from one of them, if not from Sri Aurobindo himself. Sri Aurobindo's first recorded reference to the incident was made in 1926 during one of the talks with disciples that used to be held in those days. Asked by Haradhan, a sadhak from Chandernagore, about his flight to the French colony, Sri Aurobindo
* Purani's misspelling is common. The name is Candannagar, anglicised to Chandernagore. It is the city (rather the depot) of sandalwood (candana), not the city of the moon (candra). Page-223 gave a somewhat detailed reply. This was noted down by Purani (Document 2). Sri Aurobindo held no conversations with anyone except the Mother, his spiritual co-worker, between 1927 and 1938. In the latter year began a series of informal talks with disciples attending on him after an accident. Three times in as many months 18 December 1938, 21 January 1939 and 2 February 1939 Sri Aurobindo mentioned his going to Chandernagore to these disciples, among whom were A. B. Purani and Nirodbaran. Their separate records of the talk of 2 February 1939 are reproduced as Documents 3a and 3b. In these talks the topic always came up in the course of discussion of other matters, and as a result no special care was taken about the details. These accounts of the thirties, like those of the twenties, are of particular interest because they were recorded before controversy clouded the issue. THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSY The storm began quietly enough. In the Ashadh 1351 (June-July 1944) issue of Udbodhan, the Bengali organ of the Sri Ramakrishna Math, appeared a speech delivered by Girijashankar Raychaudhuri the previous Baishakh (May) on "The Influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on Sri Aurobindo". Girijashankar was a literary critic who at the time was contributing a serial biography of Sri Aurobindo to Udbodhan. In his speech he presented information that had been given to him by his friend Swami Sundarananda, editor of Udbodhan, in a letter written the previous February. A translation of Girijashankar's summary of the substance of this letter, extracted from the speech, is printed as Document 4. Two of Sundarananda's six points have to do with Sri Aurobindo's flight to Chandernagore: one alleges that Sri Aurobindo visited Sri Saradamani Devi, Sri Rama-krishna's consort, on the evening of his departure; the other that Sister Nivedita and a brahmachari of the Math saw him off at the ghat. Girijashankar's speech was read by Charuchandra Dutt, a former associate of Sri Aurobindo in the political field. Doubtful about the veracity of several of Girijashankar's statements, Charuchandra wrote Sri Aurobindo bringing the matter to his attention. Sri Aurobindo replied on 15 December 1944. His English letter (Document 5), not published until 1953, was used by Charuchandra to write a refutation in Bengali of several statements in Girijashankar's speech, including three of Sundarananda's points. This was published in the form of a letter to the editor of Udbodhan in Phalgun 1351 (February-March 1945). Charuchandra made reference to "the late Ram Majumdar", who according to Sri Aurobindo was the man who led him to the ghat on his way to Chandernagore. In a footnote to the letter, the editor of of Udbodhan made the following announcement: Srijut Ramchandra Majumdar is still living. Just a few days ago he came to the Udbodhan office and told us that he took Sri Aurobindo to the Holy Mother's residence in Bagbazar. Sri Aurobindo got into a boat at Bagbazar's Ganga Ghat and went to Chandernagore.10 Along with Charuchandra's rejoinder the editor of Udbodhan published a surrejoinder by Girijashankar (Document 6). LATER DEVELOPMENTS In December 1944 Sureshchandra Chakravarti, the disciple of Sri Aurobindo who had accompanied him to Chandernagore thirty-four years earlier, wrote an Page-224 article giving his recollections of the event (Document 7). This was published in the Bengali journal Prabasi in Baishakh 1352 (April 1945). The account was Suresh's own work, but it was "brought to the notice of Sri Aurobindo who certified that it was true both as a whole and in detail" before its publication. It was not written in the form of a rejoinder; nevertheless its immediate origin was evidently Girijashankar's speech. In the course of the article Sureshchandra cited the two points of Sundarananda's letter mentioned above, and characterised them as utterly false. In a postscript he referred to the note in Udbodhan containing Ramachandra Majum-dar's information, and to some evidence offered by Girijashankar in his surrejoinder, and refuted both in strong terms. By this time the affair had attracted some attention in the Calcutta press. The editor of Shanibarer Chithi commented on it,* and one K. Ghose (Vedantachinta-mani) wrote a letter to the editor of the Hindusthan Standard of Calcutta, in which he supported Sundarananda's story in regard to the Holy Mother. The letter was published on 6 June 1945 (Document 8); on 17 June all or part of it was reprinted in the Sunday Times, a Madras weekly. Sri Aurobindo was shown the Madras reprint, and replied to it on two separate occasions. The text printed (for the first time) on pages 193 and 194 of the present issue is reproduced from a handwritten draft, not finalized and partly illegible, that has only recently been discovered. Document 9 was apparently prepared after the draft, but without reference to it; it is a statement dictated by Sri Aurobindo in the form of a letter to be sent over the signature of the Secretary of the Ashram. (This explains the use of the third person.) This was printed in the Sunday Times on 24 June 1945. In both replies Sri Aurobindo impugned the story that he visited the Holy Mother on the day of his departure. In Sraban 1352 (July-August 1945) the still-living eyewitness Ramchandra Majumdar was heard from again. The Prabasi of that month featured his own reminiscences (Document 10), in the course of which he attempted to refute many points in Sureshchandra's article, and added many details of his own. When Sri Aurobindo was shown Ramchandra's account, he dictated a lengthy reply, in which he characterised his "old friend's" version as "crammed with reckless inaccuracies and unreal details". Sri Aurobindo's statement (Document 11) was given to Nolini-kanta Gupta, who prepared from it a briefer reply (Document 12), which was published in the Prabasi of Phalgun 1352 (February-March 1946). Much of this article consisted of Nolini's Bengali translations of passages from Sri Aurobindo's account; the translator, himself an eyewitness, added a few comments of his own. Ramchandra's Prabasi article was reprinted in the Udbodhan in Bhadra 1352 (August-September 1945). Sundarananda, the editor of Udbodhan, published with
* The editor's comments are referred to by K. Ghose in his letter. I have not been able to obtain a copy of the issue of Shanibarer Chithi referred to, but it does not appear that the editor presented any new material. I have not been able to obtain a copy of this issue of the Sunday Times. Since the paper apparently just reprinted K. Ghose's letter, the text there has no special importance, except perhaps in one respect. In both of his replies, Sri Aurobindo implied that K. Ghose confused his departure to Chandernagore and his later departure to Pondicherry. But there is no mention of Pondicherry in the Calcutta text of K. Ghose's letter. I feel the confusion came about owing to something in the Sunday Times's presentation, perhaps a headline erroneously connecting the alleged happenings with Sri Aurobindo's departure to Pondicherry. Page-225 it a note of his own purporting to explain an inconsistency between his earlier information and Ramchandra's, and to declare his point about the Holy Mother proved (Document 13). This note was not noticed by Sri Aurobindo or any of his disciples. While these developments were unrolling in Calcutta, Lizelle Reymond published a French biography of Nivedita in Paris. This unscholarly work (it does not contain a single source-reference) was based on information she had gathered in Calcutta and other places. Several passages in it deal with Sri Aurobindo (Document 14); these were shown to him by Pavitra, a French disciple. On 13 September 1946 Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter to Pavitra containing corrections of certain statements made by Lizelle Reymond (Document 15). Pavitra communicated the contents of this letter to her. In an English translation of her biography published in 1953, Reymond retracted most of the challenged parts of her narrative, and reproduced a passage from the letter to Pavitra (Document 10).
OTHER ACCOUNTS
From time to time other accounts of the events of February 1910 have appeared in Bengali periodicals and books. None of these are as significant as the documents described above; many are second-hand reports, and those that claim to be eyewitness accounts have to be viewed with extreme caution. Still, for the sake of completeness, I will list seven accounts collected by Shankariprasad Basu, and published by him in a recent issue of Desh:11 1. A brief account by Sukumar Mitra, Sri Aurobindo's cousin, contained in a letter written to Shankariprasad Basu on 11 November 1968. Shankariprasad calls this a "partial eyewitness" report. 2. A detailed account given to Satyendusundar Chakravarty by Manorama Devi, daughter of Shyamsunder Chakravarty, included in an article published by Satyendusundar in the Ananda Bazar Patrika on 15 August 1965. Satyendusundar refers to Manorama as an eyewitness. 3. A detailed account by Satishchandra Sarkar, who speaks as an eyewitness. This version was published in an article by Sutapa Chakravarty that appeared in the Ananda Bazar Patrika on 19 August 1968. 4. A second-hand report by Hemendraprasad Ghose, an associate of Sri Aurobindo on the Bande Mataram staff, taken from an article by him on Sister Nivedita published in Udbodhan in Chaitra 1358 (March-April 1952). 5. The version of Motilal Roy, the man who received Sri Aurobindo in Chandernagore (but had no direct knowledge of what went on in Calcutta the night before). Motilal gave his opinion in two books cited by Girijashankar Ray-chaudhari in his biography of Sri Aurobindo. 6. The version of Bhupendranath Dutt, former editor of the Jugantar. Bhupen-dranath was in exile abroad in 1910. 7. The version of Barindrakumar Ghose, brother of Sri Aurobindo and a well-known revolutionary leader. In February 1910 Barin was in jail in Calcutta awaiting transportation to the Andamans. Page-226 A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE
To evaluate all these divergent accounts we will need a version against which all of them can be measured. Since the eyewitnesses differ, this version will have to be pieced together using the points of agreement of the most important accounts. Three undoubted eyewitnesses have left full-scale reports: Sri Aurobindo, Suresh-chandra Chakravarti and Ramchandra Majumdar. Sureshchandra's account agrees with Sri Aurobindo's; Ramchandra disagrees with both in many details. All particulars in which Sri Aurobindo and Ramchandra agree may be considered established. It will be seen that despite the discrepancies in details, there is a great deal of common ground between the two principal versions. A BASIC ACCOUNT 1. Ramchandra Majumdar got word from police sources that a warrant was about to be issued for the arrest of Sri Aurobindo. He informed Sri Aurobindo about this. 2. After receiving the news from Ramchandra, Sri Aurobindo announced that he was going to Chandernagore. 3. This was done at the office of the Karmayogin and Dharma in Shambazar, Calcutta. 4. Sri Aurobindo, Sureshchandra Chakravarti (alias Moni), Biren Ghose and Ramchandra went to a ghat on the Ganges. There a boat was hired and Sri Aurobindo, accompanied by Moni and Biren, went to Chandernagore. All sources may be collated with this basic account; those that are at variance with it may legitimately be dismissed without further ado. In this way it is possible to dispose of the stories of Manorama Devi and Satishchandra Sarkar (numbers 2 and 3 of "other accounts" above). Both are susceptible to detailed refutation, but are not worth the trouble. They introduce persons (including the "eyewitnesses" themselves) not mentioned by the undoubted eyewitnesses, and include incredible incidents not consistent with the basic account. The second part of Sukumar Mitra's story as related to Shankariprasad ("other accounts", 1) likewise stands convicted of error. Sukumar's story as related to Girijashankar Raychaudhuri (point 4 of Document 5) is even more positively discredited. Here Sukumar says the house was surrounded by the police; but if anything is certain about the whole affair, it is that the police knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo's going. This shows Sukumar to be an unreliable witness indeed. The first part of Sukumar's story as related to Shankariprasad is consistent with Ramchandra's account, and not with Sri Aurobindo's; but this might almost be taken as a mark against Ramchandra, so doubtful must anything said by Sukumar be considered. Thus at a stroke all the "other accounts" that claim to issue from eyewitnesses are eliminated. The four remaining versions on the same list are secondary sources. These need not be dealt with at length, but will be referred to in passing below. The two second-hand accounts of Lizelle Reymond (Documents 14 and 15) deserve a more detailed treatment, if only because one of Sri Aurobindo's narratives was written to contradict one of them. In Reymond's first account the information about Sri Aurobindo's impending arrest is traced from a C.I.D. agent, through two intermediaries, to a certain Ganen Maharaj, who warned Sri Aurobindo. In the Page-227 second account, written after seeing Sri Aurobindo's letter correcting the first, Reymond did away with this cast of characters and made Nivedita the recipient of the information, which she passed on to Sri Aurobindo "through the usual network of runners".* Neither of these versions are in accord with the basic account, and may be dismissed. Other details in Reymond's version are obviously inaccurate. In her French book she said that just before his departure (in February) Sri Aurobindo wrote an article entitled "An Open Letter to My Countrymen: My [last] Political Will and Testament". This Open Letter was definitely written in July 1909. In the English translation Reymond wrote that Sri Aurobindo left "in response to a divine order". This is in accord with Sri Aurobindo's accounts. Ramchandra originally said that Sri Aurobindo visited Saradamani Devi on his way to Chandernagore; in this he agreed with Sundarananda (Document 4). K. Ghose gave his support to this version (Document 8). In his full account Ramchandra shifted the visit to Saradamani Devi to an earlier occasion. Sundarananda in Document 13 retracted his original statement, agreeing with Ramchandra that the visit must have been earlier. Thus neither Ramchandra nor Sundarananda finally opposed Sri Aurobindo's statement that he did not visit Saradamani Devi on the night of his departure to Chandernagore. The question of whether this visit took place on an earlier occasion will be considered later. In regard to the departure to Chandernagore, then, we are left with the accounts of Sri Aurobindo (supported by Sureshchandra) and the account of Ramchandra. We have seen that there are many points of agreement between the two versions. On the other hand, there are so many disagreements that the two versions seem sometimes to be accounts of different events. The main points of difference are as follows: POINTS OF DIFFERENCE 1. Ramchandra connects the warrant that was to be issued against Sri Aurobindo with the Shamsul Alam murder case. Sri Aurobindo says the warrant was for his arrest in the Karmayogin sedition case. 2. Ramchandra says he first approached Sri Aurobindo with the news of his impending arrest at Krishnakumar Mitra's house, after which the two went together to the Karmayogin office. Sri Aurobindo says Ramchandra brought him the news at the Karmayogin office. 3. Ramchandra says Sri Aurobindo sent him from the Karmayogin office to Nivedita's house to ask her what she thought. Ramchandra went and brought back a cryptic remark from Nivedita. Hearing this Sri Aurobindo decided to go to Chandernagore. Sri Aurobindo denies that Nivedita was consulted or had anything to do with the affair. 4. Ramchandra adds that Sri Aurobindo, on his way to the Ghat, stopped at Sister Nivedita's house and spoke with her. Sri Aurobindo says he went directly to the Ghat.
* Reymond tried to support this new version by saying that it was "Nivedita's own story". Nivedita died several decades before Reymond undertook to immortalise her. Nivedita's published letters contain no reference to the event. A later biographer who had access to Nivedita's diaries has informed me that there is no reference in them to a warrant against Sri Aurobindo or to his departure. "Nivedita's own story" was evidently communicated to Reymond in the form of hearsay. Page-228 These points of difference will be considered one by one. POINT 1: THE WARRANT Government of India records leave no doubt about the charge on which Sri Aurobindo was to be arrested. They show that legal action was initiated against him early in 1910, and that the charge was sedition, not abetment of murder. The Home Department files dealing with the murder and its sequel make no mention at all of Sri Aurobindo.12 It is true that the assassin, Birendranath Duttagupta, after his arrest implicated Jyotindranath Mukherjee, who had in fact abetted the murder. Jyotindranath was arrested, but no case could be made out against him. It is also true that in confessions made on the eve of his execution Birendranath mentioned "leaders" who had misled him and others. The police may well have assumed that one of these leaders was Sri Aurobindo. (Jyotindranath was working under Sri Aurobindo at the time, and it is possible that Birendranath knew this.) But much more than an indirect passing reference in a gallow's-eve confession would have been needed before the police could have thought of approaching a magistrate for a warrant. They had been convinced for two years that Sri Aurobindo was behind the revolutionary movement in Bengal. What they had been looking for since May 1909 was an indictable offence. Birendranath's confession, besides, was made on 19 February and repeated on the twentieth. This is after the date when Sri Aurobindo is presumed to have left for Chandernagore four days after the date I have proposed above. Another Home Department file provides very positive evidence that when a warrant for Sri Aurobindo's arrest was finally obtained, it was for the offense of writing an article considered seditious.13 A section of sixteen documents from this file was published in the previous number of this journal. They show the development of the prosecution from its inception in mid-January 1910, a month before the departure to Chandernagore, up to 4 April, when the warrant was belatedly issued. It is noteworthy that the government "decided to prosecute" sometime before. 25 February. They had not issued a warrant by that date because they were in the midst of investigating (obviously with police aid) whether it could be proved that Sri Aurobindo wrote the article. It is of incidental interest that at no time in late February 1910 was any warrant actually issued against Sri Aurobindo. The news brought by Ramchandra Majumdar was premature. To summarize, there is no evidence that the police connected Sri Aurobindo with the murder of Shamsul Alam or planned to arrest him for this crime. There is abundant evidence that the police were planning to arrest Sri Aurobindo for sedition, and that investigations in connection with this case were in progress in February 1910. It must be added that these facts do not deny the possibility that rumours might have circulated that Sri Aurobindo was going to be arrested for the murder. But Ramchandra speaks of a warrant, and a warrant was in fact issued a warrant for sedition. POINT 2: THE HOUSE OR THE OFFICE It is agreed by all reliable witnesses that the news about the warrant against Sri Aurobindo and his expected arrest was brought to him by Ramchandra Majumdar. Ramchandra says he took this information to Krishnakumar Mitra's house, Page-229 where Sri Aurobindo was staying, and from there the two went to the Karmayogin office. Ramchandra's version is given some support by Sukumar Mitra, who said the news was given in his presence (Sukumar lived in his father Krishnakumar's house), and that Sri Aurobindo subsequently went to the office. We have seen that Sukumar is not a good witness. This whole incident is negatived by Sri Aurobindo and Sureshchandra. Here no government documents are available which might support or prove one version or another. Common sense, however, supports Sri Aurobindo. Why, if he intended to evade arrest, would he go from his house to a place which he knew was being watched by the police? This surveillance is mentioned in Sureshchandra's account; Ramchandra's does not deny it. Police records confirm that the Karmayogin office was being watched. POINT 3: ADVICE FROM SISTER NIVEDITA OR ADESH FROM GOD Most of the controversy in regard to this incident has centred around the role played by Sister Nivedita. According to Ramchandra, and those who follow him, as well as Lizelle Reymond and the four secondary sources still to be considered, Sri Aurobindo decided to go to Chandernagore on Nivedita's advice. Some of these accounts leave the choice of destination to Sri Aurobindo, but insist that he made the decision to go into hiding after hearing from Nivedita. Sri Aurobindo says that Nivedita had nothing whatsoever to do with the decision. While sitting in the Karmayogin office he received an adesh ("voice", literally "command") in the form of three words, "Go to Chandernagore", and he obeyed at once. There was really no decision at all. Sri Aurobindo has explained in several places that such commands, unlike the ordinary voices sometimes heard in yoga, cannot be misapprehended or disobeyed. Sri Aurobindo does not seem to have spoken to anyone about the adesh on the night of his departure. Like most yogins, he spoke about spiritual experiences, if at all, only long after their occurrence. His first recorded reference to the voice came in the account of 28 June 1926 (Document 2). This predates the claim made by Ramchandra that Sri Aurobindo went to Chandernagore on Nivedita's advice by nineteen years. None of Sri Aurobindo's accounts "prove" the adesh. Such things are no more susceptible of proof than of disproof. But it will be interesting to examine how others, who of course could not hear Sri Aurobindo's voice, looked on his sudden "decision" to leave Calcutta. Two such observations were made before the first recorded reference to the adesh. Sureshchandra's oral account (Document 1), with which his written one is in agreement, speaks of Sri Aurobindo's "decision" as coming after he "remained thoughtful" for a short time. Sri Aurobindo said he heard the adesh after sitting for some time in silence. In Document 1 Sureshchandra spoke of Sri Aurobindo's going to Chandernagore as an example of his acting as a "passive instrument". Amrita's account of 1924 says similarly that Sri Aurobindo's going to Chandernagore "was decided for him"; it was a case of "direction from the Divine". These observations, by an eyewitness and someone who had spoken with eyewitnesses, are consistent with Sri Aurobindo's later explanation. They are just what one would expect from persons who could see Sri Aurobindo's actions without knowing what lay behind them. In support of Nivedita's advice we have only Ramchandra's account, and five Page-230 late second-hand stories whose sources are not acknowledged and which I consider to be hearsay. (I will give my reasons for thinking this below.) In support of the adesh we have (1) one oral account by Sri Aurobindo which predates Ramchandra's account, (2) six written or dictated accounts by Sri Aurobindo, all consistent with the oral account and with one another, (3) two corroborative accounts by Sureshchandra, and (4) one early second-hand account by Amrita. The burden of proof in this matter lies upon Ramchandra and his supporters. I do not think they have even made a case. POINT 4: A VISIT TO NIVEDITA OR A MESSAGE All Sri Aurobindo's written and dictated accounts are consistent in saying that he went directly from the Karmayogin office to the ghat without stopping to see anybody. Sureshchandra's account (Document 7) says the same. Ramchandra, after saying, "All that Suresh has written after this [i.e. after Sri Aurobindo's decision to depart] is correct", added, apparently as an afterthought, that Sri Aurobindo, accompanied by him and the two others, went to Nivedita's house in Bosepara Lane, Bagbazar, before proceeding to the ghat. Ramchandra speculated that Sri Aurobindo and Nivedita may have spoken about the management of the Karmayogin. It is accepted by all that Nivedita took charge of the paper after Sri Aurobindo's departure to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo says he sent a message to Nivedita the next day asking her to do this.* Sri Aurobindo's first oral account, recorded almost two decades before the controversy began, was given in answer to the question whether he went "straight to Chandernagore". This account makes no mention of Nivedita. In another oral account, however, that of 5 February 1939, Sri Aurobindo made a statement that stands in direct contradiction to what he said in all his other accounts. This provides the greatest problem in the evaluation of the evidence under consideration. Told that a letter of Nivedita's contained the information that he had given her charge of editing a newspaper, Sri Aurobindo explained that this was true; the paper was not, as someone had supposed, the Bande Mataram, but rather the Karmayogin. He then added, "I saw her before I left Calcutta for Chandernagore and asked her to take charge of the paper which she did." Here and nowhere else Sri Aurobindo
* According to Nolinikanta Gupta this message was sent through Ganen Maharaj. (Personal communication circa 1975.) Interestingly, no letter containing this information is published in the recent edition of Letters of Sister Nivedita. Sri Aurobindo went on to say: "It was from her I got news of my contemplated arrest. . . . Then I wrote the article "My political Will" that stopped the arrest." In these sentences Sri Aurobindo was clearly speaking of the open letter of July 1909, and not the open letter of December, which was the cause of the warrant issued against him. The way he jumps back from February to July shows that the two open letters had got mixed together in his mind. This slip is evident also in an earlier talk (18 December 1938). The confusion is similar to his mixing together of the Pabna and Hooghly Conferences in the long note on his political life, about which I wrote in the December 1983 issue of this journal. Read with what precedes, "It was from her I got news of my contemplated arrest" would seem to contradict Sri Aurobindo's later accounts considered under my "Point 3". Read with what follows, it is clear he is referring to the July incident. I do not feel it necessary to deal further with this apparent contradiction. Page-231 said he met Nivedita before going to Chandernagore. Although he did not say that he met her on the night of his departure, this conclusion could easily be drawn. Document 1 also gives room for a visit to Nivedita. Sureshchandra is recorded here as saying that after Sri Aurobindo announced he was going to Chandernagore he "got up went by tram to some place then to ghat." The tram-trip to "some place" seems to stand in contradiction to what Sri Aurobindo said in his retrospective accounts that he went on foot directly to the ghat. It also differs from Sureshchandra's own later account, which was written without reference to the earlier one. There Suresh said: "On that day Ramchandra led Sri Aurobindo straight to the Ganges ghat and nowhere else. There can be no mistake about this." Of course Suresh's earlier account does not say that Sri Aurobindo spoke to anyone, much less Nivedita, on the way to the ghat. It says in fact that in going he gave no thought to anything, even the Karmayogin. If a tram was taken, it is possible that the four men simply covered part of their journey to the ghat by this means. (There was and is a tram line near Shampukur Lane, site of the Karmayogin office; it ran down Grey Street now Sri Aurobindo Sarani in the direction of the ghat.) After going "some place", perhaps simply to throw the police off the scent (for Sri Aurobindo used to take this tram on his way home every night), the four might have alighted and continued on foot to the river. Except for the tram-ride there is nothing in Suresh's earlier version that is positively inconsistent with Sri Aurobindo's and his own later accounts. And the very mention of the tram, which is referred to by no other eyewitness, or by Suresh in his own written account, casts some doubt on the oral document. It should be remembered that Suresh probably never saw, and certainly never approved, Purani's record of their casual talk. No such favourable reading can be found to remove the inconsistency between Sri Aurobindo's oral "I saw her [Nivedita] before I left Calcutta for Chandernagore and asked her to take charge of the paper", and his later written or dictated accounts according to which he sent a message to Nivedita the next day asking her to take charge of the journal. Either the 1939 version is correct and all the rest of Sri Aurobindo's accounts wrong, or vice versa. The weight of the evidence is clearly against the solitary reference of 1939. But a document containing an anomaly must be treated with more respect than it might in itself deserve. One cannot act like the proverbial scientist who, finding an anomalous specimen in the field, simply throws it away as far as he can. The opportunity to discard this difficult piece of evidence has been given me by Nirodbaran, one of the recorders of the talk. When I spoke to him about the problem, he said the solution was simply that Sri Aurobindo's words were not recorded correctly. He reminded me that both he and Purani (the other recorder) issued warnings along with their books saying that their records should not be taken as literal transcriptions of what Sri Aurobindo said. In this case, Nirodbaran maintained, the recorders must have erred. This is quite possible. In other places their records are not in accord with primary sources. But here I believe the record is true to what Sri Aurobindo said. I have examined the rough notes (jotted down shortly after the conversations) and the fair copies (written out later) of both Nirodbaran's and Purani's transcripts. All agree in having Sri Aurobindo say "I saw her before I left for Chandernagore." I believe the mistake here was not in the recording, but in the telling. The anomalous account cannot be ignored, but neither should it be given undue Page-232 importance. Other accounts, for example the oral account of 1926, have to be accorded greater weight. The 1926 version, which predates the controversy by almost twenty years, is far more detailed than the 1939 account. The topic under discussion in 1926 was Sri Aurobindo's departure. Sri Aurobindo made no mention of Nivedita, and gave an implied positive answer to the question, "Is it true that you came away straight to Chandernagore from the Dharma office?" In 1939 the topic under discussion was whether or not Nivedita was given charge of the Karmayogin; the way Sri Aurobindo communicated his request to her was not then in question. Sri Aurobindo said, Yes, I saw her and gave her the charge. Later, in his written accounts, he said that he sent a message asking her to take up the paper. The 1939 oral version originated as a casual utterance, the later versions as parts of deliberate and well-thought-out attempts to set forth the truth of the whole departure episode. This special purpose would count as a mark against all the written or dictated accounts if it could be shown that Sri Aurobindo had something he wanted to conceal. But Sri Aurobindo never hesitated to give credit where credit was due. In all his explanations of the July Open Letter he acknowledged that he acted on Nivedita's advice. What reason would he have to conceal a later indebtedness if one existed? If no motive for concealment can be put forward, the deliberate accounts deserve to be given more value than the casual 1939 reference. It is more reasonable to suppose that in 1939 he made a slip about one detail than to presume that in 1944 and 1945 he six times resorted to deliberate dissimulation in regard to a whole episode. Another explanation might be put forward: between 1939 and 1944 Sri Aurobindo forgot about the visit, and in his first written account (Document 5) he denied that it occurred; subsequently this version became fixed in his mind, and as a result all subsequent written or dictated accounts are consistent with the first. This explanation would allow one to suppose that the visit to Nivedita did take place without having to assume that Sri Aurobindo deliberately falsified the record later. I have gone to the trouble to suggest this possibility because the 1939 account and Suresh-chandra's 1925 account read together do lend support of sorts to the Nivedita visit as related by Ramchandra. I do not believe however that these documents are sufficient to show that this visit took place. The explicit statement in the pre-controversy 1926 account is more significant than anything said in the 1939 account, and there is no reason to distrust Sri Aurobindo's postcontroversy narratives. Sureshchandra's early account says nothing about Nivedita; it need not be read in such a way as to support any visit; and it very likely is unreliable in regard to the tram-ride anyway. So much for a critical appraisal of the documents bearing on this point. Now we may again apply the test of common sense. Why, if Sri Aurobindo was anxious to avoid arrest, would he walk or take a tram from Shambazar a mile north to Bagbazar just to ask Nivedita to take up his paper a request of far less moment than his presumed imminent arrest and one that easily could be made by note or messenger? The whole episode seems unlikely in the extreme, and inconsistent with the precautions that were taken and the secrecy that was observed. An ingenious interpreter with his mind made up that Sri Aurobindo visited Nivedita could find some support for his preconception in the 1939 account and the oral account of Sureshchandra. A more level-headed critic would have to reject this interpretation. Page-233 Even Girijashankar Raychaudhuri accepted Sri Aurobindo's denial that the supposed visit took place (see Document 6). This completes my survey and analysis of the evidence bearing directly on Sri Aurobindo's departure. I have abstained for the most part from using subjective criteria to evaluate the documents. I have included in my investigation all available accounts except a few minor ones that are inconsistent with the basic account and are besides incredible. I have shown that all the difficulties of interpretation come from discrepancies between Sri Aurobindo's and Ramchandra's accounts. Sureshchandra's accounts, especially his article written after the controversy began, must be given secondary value. Suresh was undoubtedly an eyewitness, but he was also a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. Though his article was written without consulting Sri Aurobindo,* and he was no mere puppet of his master, he is not likely to have contradicted him. The same can be said in regard to Nolinikanta Gupta, who supported Sureshchandra's and Sri Aurobindo's accounts, and added a few details of his own in Document 12. It comes down finally to a choice between Ramchandra and Sri Aurobindo. It is appropriate now to examine the reliability of the witnesses. Sri Aurobindo was certainly an eyewitness of his actions, and he is the only one who could say anything about his motives. It is customary for historians to view retrospective autobiographical accounts with caution. But it is hard to see what Sri Aurobindo would have gained by falsifying the record in regard to the disputed points. Many people would consider Sri Aurobindo incapable of such falsification. They would say the moral elevation he acquired through his practice of yoga would preclude any deliberate dishonesty on his part, particularly of such a petty nature. Sri Aurobindo's competence cannot be questioned. He occasionally made minor mistakes of detail in recounting events in his past. But here it is not details but whole incidents that are in question. His accounts are clear, well-organised, balanced, and self-consistent. He is known to have been in full intellectual vigour in 1945. He had recently finished revising several of his world-famous works and was working constantly on an epic poem. All evidence shows him to have had a truly remarkable degree of creative intellectual power and to have retained it until his passing in 1950. To cite just one authority, Jawaharlal Nehru, in some respects no admirer of Sri Aurobindo, called him "one of the greatest minds of our generation".14 Ramchandra on the other hand was a non-entity, so much so that I have not been able to find out much about him, not even the exact dates of his birth and death. He was dead before 195215, and in 1910 was "still under thirty" (Document 7). If he was over twenty-five, he would have been over sixty in 1945. His account shows the rambling one often associates with men of this age. It must in fairness be admitted that Sureshchandra's account also rambles; but this is typical of his style of writing, and Suresh was a writer of considerable accomplishment, which Ramchandra was not.16 Ramchandra taxes Suresh for his youth in 1910, calling him a "mere boy". Suresh was then eighteen. This is not young enough to disqualify him as a competent witness. It would be far more appropriate to tax Ramchandra for his age in 1945.
* Sri Aurobindo was not available for personal consultation with any of his disciples in 1944. I have not been able to find any correspondence between Sureshchandra and Sri Aurobindo on the matter, and I do not believe there was any. Page-234 I do not think Ramchandra bore any ill-will towards Sri Aurobindo. A letter from the former to the latter written in 1926 shows Ramchandra's attitude towards Sri Aurobindo then to have been a sincere, if somewhat conventional devotion. But another letter he wrote in 1925 or before shows him to have been somewhat erratic, and to have given a great deal of importance to the brief role he played in the drama of Sri Aurobindo's life. This letter was mentioned in a talk of 19 November 1925 recorded by Purani. It appears that Ramchandra asked "in wrong and ridiculous French" to be "inserted" in a biography of Sri Aurobindo that had appeared or was under preparation. But whether or not Ramchandra's attitude towards Sri Aurobindo in 1945 was balanced, it is clear that his attitude towards Sureshchandra was not free from hostility. He spoke of him with condescension, even with scorn. Sureshchandra had written some hard things about Ramchandra in his article; it is not unfair to suppose that Ramchandra (whom his letters show to have been an emotional man) might have taken Sureshchandra's criticism to heart. It should be remembered that Ramchandra's article was written in answer to Sureshchandra's, and all his criticisms are directed against him, not Sri Aurobindo himself. Whether Ramchandra's account is marred by bias or not, I feel that despite his protestations to the contrary, at the time he wrote his article his age had begun to affect his memory. Sukumar Mitra certainly bore no ill-will towards his cousin Sri Aurobindo, but in his old age (he was about as old as Ramchandra) he concocted a fantastic story about the events in question to which all credit must be refused. As in the stories of many senescent men, we find Sukumar at the centre of his tale. Ramchandra certainly played a major role in Sri Aurobindo's departure; but we may observe that the disparities between his version and Sri Aurobindo's involve supposed incidents in which Ramchandra gives himself special importance. I do not have space to criticise all of Ramchandra's assertions; only those related to the departure-episode have been considered. But many of his other statements are absurd on the face of them. It would be easy for anyone at all familiar with Sri Aurobindo's life, works, and manner of expression to contravene Ramchandra's improbable stories. But I think enough has been said. An impartial judge would have to agree with Sri Aurobindo that Ramchandra's narrative is one in which "the element of truth is small and that of poetic fiction stupendous".
A DEAD HORSE DISINTERRED
Most serious writers give no credit either to Ramchandra Majumdar's account of Sri Aurobindo's departure or to the first account of Lizelle Reymond, which like Ramchandra's gives an important role to Sister Nivedita. It is not only Sri Aurobindo's admirers that reject them. Pravrajika Atmaprana, Nivedita's very competent English biographer, dismissed these narratives, considered together, as a "fantastic story".17 Uma Mukherjee, referring in particular to Lizelle Reymond's account, called it "basically inaccurate" and having "hardly any foundation in reality."18 Nagendrakumar Guharay, while affirming that the versions of Sureshchandra Chakravarti (Document 7), Nolini Kanta Gupta (Document 12) and Ramchandra Majumdar (Document 10) were all worthy of note, endorsed Sureshchandra's version and accepted none of Ramchandra's embellishments.19 Page-235 One serious writer who does not reject Ramchandra's version, and indeed gives it special value and prominence, is Shankariprasad Basu. In the chapter of his work on Nivedita already referred to, Shankariprasad reproduces one of Sri Aurobindo's narratives and admits he does not have the "right" to deny it; but he says that since Sri Aurobindo's retrospective narratives are in places at variance with contemporary letters of Sister Nivedita, Sri Aurobindo's accounts are at least partly discredited. He therefore considers it legitimate to give serious consideration to Ramchandra's account. Shankariprasad allows the two versions to stand together, without insisting that one or the other is correct. But by closing his chapter with an extensive quotation from Ramchandra, he shows where his predilections lie. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with Shankariprasad's method. A non-narrative contemporary document created by a competent witness must be given more value than a retrospective account dealing with the same event, whatever its origin. There are, of course, no letters by Nivedita which deal with the escape to Chandernagore. But if her letters do show definite errors in Sri Aurobindo's narratives, the authority of the narratives as a whole is effectively challenged. It becomes necessary then to examine in detail the alleged discrepancies between Nivedita's letters and Sri Aurobindo's narratives. We must find out first whether the differences are real. If they are, we must if possible extend the range of our inquiry in order to find out which of the two was right.
NIVEDITA'S LETTERS AND SRI AUROBINDO'S NARRATIVE ACCOUNTS AN EVALUATION
1. THE EFFECT OF THE OPEN LETTER ON THE DEPORTATION PROCEEDINGS Sri Aurobindo wrote several times that he was told by Nivedita that the Open Letter of 30 July 1909 had had the desired effect of preventing the Government from deporting him. Shankariprasad says this is "not at all correct".20 He cites passages from Nivedita's letters to demonstrate that it was only her sending of Sri Aurobindo's Open Letter to England and the efforts made there by her friends the Rat-cliffes and, more particularly, a certain Mr. Mackarness, that prevented Sri Aurobindo (and others) from being deported.21 I have dealt with this matter in some detail in an earlier essay.22 Here I will summarise. Nivedita first mentioned the deportation threat in a letter of 30 July 1909.23 A previous letter, of 21 July, written three days after her return to Calcutta after a two-year absence, states that she had heard that there would be "no more deportations but arrest under the new act."24 The meeting that Sri Aurobindo speaks of at which she informed him of his proposed deportation evidently took place after 21 July and before 31 July (when his Open Letter, written after the meeting, was published). Official records show that Sri Aurobindo's deportation had indeed been considered.25 On 9 July 1909 the Government of India informed the Government of Bengal that though detention of Sri Aurobindo by means of a sedition-prosecution was impossible at that time, other "preventive action" ought to be taken. By this the Government of India meant deportation. The hint was so understood by Sir Edward Baker, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, without whose recommendation the Government of India would not act. The Lieutenant-Governor refused to take upon himself the responsibility of recommending Page-236 such a step. He knew that the Secretary of State for India, John Morley, would be dead against it. Morley had reserved for himself the right to approve all deportations under Regulation III of 1818 after the nine deportations of 1908. His correspondence with the Viceroy shows that he would never have approved another such action. The Lieutenant-Governor's refusal to recommend deportation was based on a report submitted by F. W. Duke, his Chief Secretary, dated 21 July. Baker read this on 23 July and arrived "at exactly the same conclusions as the Chief Secretary has stated". This marks the effective decision not to deport Sri Aurobindo. Six days later the Government of India was officially informed of this decision. The efforts of Ratcliffe and Mackarness to prevent Sri Aurobindo's deportation began after Nivedita's letter of 30 July reached them in England. It is evident that whatever Nivedita's friends did in London had no influence on a decision that had already been arrived at in Calcutta. It is also evident that Sri Aurobindo's 31 July Open Letter had no effect on the decision. Of course those concerned did not know any of this at the time. Sri Aurobindo, moved by the no-longer-valid information that his deportation was imminent, wrote and published his Open Letter. Later, informed by Nivedita that his ploy had succeeded, he believed that his letter really had done the job. Nivedita apparently felt no need to tell Sri Aurobindo about the role she assumed Ratcliffe and Mackarness had played in his "salvation"; she likewise felt no need to stress the importance of the Open Letter when she told her English friends that all was due to them. There is nothing unusual in Nivedita's saying one encouraging thing to her friend in Calcutta and another encouraging thing to her friends in London. Friends do things like this all the time, and they are believed by their friends. The ignorance of all concerned as to what really took place may be put down to the inadequacy and tardiness of Nivedita's information. However high her sources, they did not penetrate the inmost sanctuaries of Belvedere. It is true that another of Nivedita's friends, Dr. J. C. Bose, did meet the Lieutenant-Governor there sometime before 30 July.26 But it would be absurd to suppose that the supreme British official in Bengal would chat freely with an Indian, a new acquaintance at that, about the most secret affairs of state. No more reasonable would be a presumption that one of the three or four officials party to the Lieutenant-Governor's correspondence had spilled the beans. Leaks from official sources if not deliberate or due to espionage filter down slowly through the bureaucratic echelons until, much transformed and often out-of-date, they meet someone likely to pass the information along. This evidently is what happened here. Shankariprasad feels that Nivedita's sources were remarkably good; he expresses astonishment at her ability to get hold of "secret information". He points out that she had heard before 1 December 1909 that the nine deportees were about to be released and then notes triumphantly that they were released more than two months later. The nine deportees were being spoken about by everyone in Calcutta and by many in London; among those interested in them in the English capital were certain members of Parliament and also the beleaguered Secretary of State, who had been pleading with the Viceroy for months to order their release.27 The question was never whether Morley had "ordered release of the deportees", as Nivedita put it,28 but rather when the Government of India would comply with his wishes. Minto had been considering the matter for some time the decision was his to take, but he could not ignore Whitehall forever and it was only the assassination Page-237 attempt against him in November 1909 and the successful assassinations the same year in Calcutta (2 February) and Nasik (21 December) that had delayed the release. Rumours such as those Nivedita wrote of on 1 December must have been commonplace in Calcutta at the time. In any case, her having heard the rumours in November coupled with the deportees' eventual release in February scarcely makes her the privileged recipient of secret information.
2. THE QUESTION OF FURTHER DEPORTATION PROCEEDINGS
Nevertheless, Nivedita apparently did have sources in the government and she did try to draw as much advantage from them as she could. And she indisputably was a confidante of Sri Aurobindo. All references to him in her letters are of the greatest interest to students of his life. Two letters are of special importance because they mention conversations between Sri Aurobindo and Nivedita that he did not refer to in any of his accounts. These letters are dated 30 September 1909 (No. 606) and 1 December 1909 (referred to above).29* It is in connection with these letters that Shankariprasad makes another of his allegations. He points out that while Sri Aurobindo wrote in one of his retrospective accounts (Document 15) that after the publication of the Open Letter the matter of deportation was dropped, these letters show that at the time Sri Aurobindo himself did not think this was so. In the first letter Nivedita says: "The leader of the Nationalists is expecting to be arrested and refused bail for a few weeks." This is extremely interesting and adds something to our knowledge of the period; but it stands in contradiction to nothing in Sri Aurobindo's accounts. In all of them he wrote of deportation, not arrest. The two mean quite different things in fact they are in a way opposites. "Deportation" the term always used then (and now by historians) for confinement under Regulation III of 1818 is a misnomer, or rather a euphemism, since the "deportee" was not always sent out of the country. Indeed, if Burma is counted as part of the Indian Empire (and of course it was so considered at the time), no case of "deportation" between 1907 and 1910 involved departure from India. Action under Regulation III meant confinement without charge (and so without legal arrest) and without trial. An arrest in which one might be refused bail for a few weeks can hardly mean deportation. The idea of a deportee being refused bail is somewhat amusing. Sri Aurobindo never said and certainly never believed that the government had given up hope of arresting him. He must have assumed that each issue of the Karmayogin and the Dharma was being read by government officials anxious to institute a sedition-case against him. And government records show that this was so. Indeed, a prosecution against the Open Letter was considered.30 There is no discrepancy between Nivedita's letter of 19 September and anything ever written by Sri Aurobindo.
* It should be noted that Sri Aurobindo's name or initials do not occur in either letter. Shankariprasad is quite correct in stating that for obvious resons Nivedita sometimes felt it best not to refer to him directly, but instead wrote "Bengali Mazzini", "missing journalist". "Leader of the Nationalists" and "Recalcitrant Leader". The last two are the phrases used in the two letters in question. It is worth mentioning that in the other letters the content is such as to make any mistake about Sri Aurobindo's identity impossible, but that in these two the context offers no positive support. There are, however, good reasons for thinking that Nivedita was referring to Sri Aurobindo in both places and I have assumed that she was without reservation in the first case, in the second case with some qualms that I will explain in a subsequent footnote. Page-238 The second letter is both more interesting and more difficult to evaluate. Nivedita wrote on 1 December 1909: "The Recalcitrant Leader ( = R. L. in future) sends me word that the Indian Govt. are urging his deportation on John [Morley]."* Sri Aurobindo's later accounts do not mention that he was ever aware of renewed attempts to deport him. This letter would seem to show that he had received information of such an attempt in November 1909. If we assume that the Recalcitrant Leader and Sri Aurobindo are the same, Sri Aurobindo's later accounts are at least incomplete. Whether they are wrong is another matter. Sri Aurobindo dealt with the effect of his Open Letter in four different places. In a note written independently of the controversy he said "he felt sure that this [Open Letter] would kill the idea of deportation and so in fact it turned out."31 In Document 5 he wrote: "Nivedita afterwards [i.e. after the Open Letter came out] told me that it had served its purpose, the government had abandoned the idea of deportation." Document 11 reads almost identically, though the third person is used: "Afterwards Sister Nivedita told him that it had had the desired effect and there was no more question of deportation." Document 15 differs very little: "This was done and on my next visit to her she told me that my move had been entirely successful and the idea of deportation had been dropped." It is evident that all four passages refer to the same thing that sometime after Sri Aurobindo published the Open Letter on 31 July he was told by Sister Nivedita that it had succeeded in its object: the idea of deporting him had been abandoned. I have shown that the Government's decision not to deport Sri Aurobindo had nothing to do with the Open Letter, or with the efforts made by Nivedita's friends Ratcliffe and Mackarness in England. Sri Aurobindo did, however, believe what Nivedita had told him that his Open Letter had done the trick. He maintained this honest, though erroneous, belief throughout his life, and expressed it in the four accounts that I have quoted from above. What now has to be determined is whether there is a discrepancy between Sri Aurobindo's accounts and the statement in Nivedita's letter of 1 December 1909. I do not think there is. The accounts deal only with the immediate aftermath of the Open Letter of 31 July 1909; none of them speak of developments between that
* Of all Nivedita's supposed indirect references to Sri Aurobindo, the one in this letter is the most doubtful. Sri Aurobindo certainly was a leader, and the British certainly considered him recalcitrant. But there were other leaders, and a number of them might have been characterised by Nivedita as stubbornly resistant to authority. The context of the letter does little to suggest Sri Aurobindo. He never spoke of having sources of information inside the government besides Nivedita herself. Moreover, the very fact that the letter does not accord easily with Sri Aurobindo's later accounts throws doubt upon the identification of the Recalcitrant Leader with Sri Aurobindo. But the authenticity of the later accounts is the very matter under consideration; to use their presumed authenticity to descredit a letter that might cast doubt on it would be arguing in a circle. I am therefore bound to accept, if only for the sake of argument, that Sri Aurobindo is the Recalcitrant Leader. There are good reasons to think that he in fact was; but I do not think this identification is unchallengeable. The wording of Document 11, "there was no more question of deportation", allows room for verbal quibbling, since "no more question" can be taken to mean "never any question again at any time". But it is apparent if the four accounts are read together that "there was no more question of deporation" is intended to mean the same thing as "the government had abandoned the idea of deportation", "the idea of deportation had been dropped" or the vaguer "and so in fact it turned out". It is the immediate result of the Open Letter that is spoken of all four times. It should be noted besides that Sri Aurobindo says clearly enough in Document 11 that it was Nivedita who said "there was no more question of deportation". Page-239 open letter and the second open letter of 25 December. In Document 5 Sri Aurobindo did write that subsequent to the Open Letter "no occasion arose for her [Nivedita] to repeat her advice" about leaving the country to escape deportation. He did not mention here that he had ever learned of his proposed deportation and spoken to Nivedita about it. The omission of this detail from this and the other accounts may appear now to be significant, but it can hardly be considered flagrant. It could be explained in any number of ways: not considered relevant, forgotten, etc. And an omission is in any case not a discrepancy.
3. THE MURDER OF SHAMSUL ALAM, NIVEDITA AND THE DEPARTURE TO CHANDERNAGORE
The last important allegation made by Shankariprasad concerns a problem that has already been dealt with. Shankariprasad writes that following the murder of Shamsul Alam "Nivedita learned that Sri Aurobindo would certainly be arrested. She gave this information to Sri Aurobindo. And Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta."32* What is clearly stated here is that Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta as a result of a warning from Nivedita. What is implied is that what she warned him of was his imminent arrest in connection with the murder of Shamsul Alam. Earlier, Shankariprasad seems to insinuate that the adesh that Sri Aurobindo declared was the cause of his departure arrived rather opportunely.33 Later, he suggests that since Sri Aurobindo left for Chandernagore on the advice of Nivedita (and not under the command of the Divine), the event and its sequel cannot have had the spiritual significance claimed for them.34 I have shown that there is nothing in any government record to suggest that the police connected Sri Aurobindo with the murder of Shamsul Alam. What these records do show is that the government intended to arrest him for sedition just as Sri Aurobindo said. In putting forward his other assertions Shankariprasad has opened new vistas by citing from Nivedita's hitherto unknown letters. Here he does not do so, because the letters give him no help. Nivedita did write, in late February and March 1910, of "recent terrible events" and "the last assassination"; but she did not link Sri Aurobindo, by name or otherwise, with the murder.35 The "vague announcements" she had heard of a "gigantic conspiracy about to be unearthed," which would "involve everybody" may have had to do with the deportations proposed in early 1910 that I spoke of in the April 1983 issue of this journal. These "involved" Sri Aurobindo and 52 other revolutionaries virtually everyone active in western Bengal at the time. But this affair cannot be taken as proof that Sri Aurobindo was connected with the murder, since deportation was proposed for Sri Aurobindo
* Girijashankar Raychaudhuri made a similar assertion in Document 6, point 3. Like Shankariprasad he offered no evidence. His impressively worded logical demonstration of his point provides a real textbook example of arguing in a circle. To "prove" that after July 1909 Sri Aurobindo was advised by Sister Nivedita a second time to leave the country, he offers as premises: (1) "Aurobindo went to Chandernagore five months after writing 'My Last Political Will and Testament' [i.e. the Open Letter]" (common knowledge); (2) "he went to Chandernagore a month after Shamsul Alam was murdered in the High Court" (common knowledge); (3) "Sister Nivedita advised Sri Aurobindo to go to Chandernagore after Shamsul Alam's murder" (a completely baseless assertion which contains in it the conclusion). Two platitudes plus one erroneous statement equals a proof! Page-240 and the others precisely because they could not be arrested on any charge. Neither would it be correct to assume that Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta because he heard that he was about to be deported. All important accounts of Sri Aurobindo's departure, including Ramchandra's, speak of a proposed arrest. I have also shown that there is no reliable evidence that Sri Aurobindo left Calcutta on Nivedita's advice. Shankariprasad cites a letter from Nivedita to the Ratcliffes in which, according to him, it is "clearly indicated" that Sri Aurobindo did so.36 I am at a loss to see how this letter provides such an indication. The passage cited tells us three things relevant to our inquiry: (1) that Sri Aurobindo (the "missing journalist") "seems not yet to be found"; (2) that Nivedita had sent a copy of the Karmayogin article of 25 December 1909 to England, apparently to Ratcliffe; (3) that Ramsay Macdonald and Kier Hardie were defending Sri Aurobindo (in the House of Commons). Point (1) was at this time known to anyone in Calcutta, and indeed in India, who cared to know it. The newspapers were full of speculation on the whereabouts of "the missing journalist".37 (The C.I.D. had in fact located him, but this information was still secret.) Point (3) was known to anyone in England who read the reports of parliamentary debates printed in the newspapers there and the historian R.C.K. Ensor assures us that a surprisingly large number of Englishmen did. It was also known to anyone in India who read the summaries of the debates that were printed in the Indian papers. Point (2) was known to no one but Nivedita, Ratcliffe, and perhaps a few others, including probably Ramsay Macdonald, whose mysteriously supplied copy of Sri Aurobindo's article (see Archives and Research, April 1984, p. 117) had apparently come from Nivedita. None of this has anything at all to do with Nivedita's telling Sri Aurobindo to go to Chandernagore. The only other primary document Shankariprasad refers to in this connection is the diary of Nivedita, as cited by Pravrajika Atmaprana. This he considers inconclusive. The diary tells us that Nivedita went to Chandernagore on 14 February and 27 March 1910. Atmaprana assumes that "she must have gone on both the occasions only to meet Sri Aurobindo."38 She certainly did not go to meet him on the fourteenth, since, as I have shown above, he was still in Calcutta on that date. Sri Aurobindo was in Chandernagore on 27 March, but none of the accounts of his stay there mention a visit from Nivedita. I believe she went to Chandernagore on her own errand the first of the three possible explanations suggested by Shankariprasad. In December 1910 and January 1911 Nivedita, then abroad, wrote of her intention to stay in Chandernagore when she returned to India.39 It is probable that she had made contacts there before she left the country in October 1910. To support his opinion that Nivedita advised Sri Aurobindo to go to Chandernagore the only "sources" Shankariprasad offers are the seven "other accounts" referred to above. I have already shown that the first three of these those of so-called eyewitnesses are unworthy of credit. The other four accounts are from secondary sources. None of the informants had any direct knowledge of Sri Aurobindo's departure. All of them say he left Calcutta at the urging of Nivedita, but none of them gives the source of his information. One informant, Barindrakumar Ghose, later repudiated the view cited by Shankariprasad.40 Hemendraprasad Ghose's remark and the account of Bhupendranath Dutt are clearly based on hearsay. The remarks by Motilal Roy are of more interest, since Motilal met Sri Page-241 Aurobindo (for the first time) the morning after his departure from Calcutta. Motilal repeated his version in a conversation of 1945 cited in Document 6 by Girijashankar. But here too Motilal did not state his sources. He condemned those who "have no personal knowledge about this matter", but he himself fell into this category. There is no reason to suppose that Sri Aurobindo spoke with Motilal about his motives for leaving Clacutta. Always reticent, especially about personal matters, he spoke hardly at all during his six weeks at Chandernagore. Motilal made no mention in his accounts of Sri Aurobindo's stay with him of any conversations on the subject. Rather he said he and Sri Aurobindo spoke exclusively about spiritual matters. I believe that Motilal's ideas about Nivedita's role in Sri Aurobindo's departure were also based on hearsay. Nagendrakumar Guharay, a close associate of Motilal's, and a protagonist in Sri Aurobindo's departure for Pondicherry on 31 March 1910, supports Sureshchandra's version, in which Nivedita is not mentioned. I will not examine other charges and suggestions made by Shankariprasad Bose. Neither will I try to show that the tone of his article says more than his explicit statements. I have dealt only with one fairly obvious insinuation: that Sri Aurobindo fled from Calcutta out of fear that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Shamsul Alam, and that adesh he offered later as an explanation for his action was some spiritual hocus-pocus meant to cover up for his loss of nerve. I do not deny to anyone the right to believe this; but an appeal to incompetent witnesses and misread documents is not the right way to support any belief. One might also remember in this connection that when Nivedita asked Sri Aurobindo to flee the country in July 1909, he refused. In other connections Shankariprasad's tone does not concern me. The question is whether the use he makes of his documents is correct and the conclusions he draws from them valid. In particular, is he right in considering Sri Aurobindo's narratives so discredited by information contained in Nivedita's letters that the narrative of Ramchandra Majumdar may be given equal or even greater value? I think I have shown well enough that Nivedita's letters do not discredit Sri Aurobindo's accounts. All the apparent discrepancies dissolve when the texts of the letters and the accounts are analysed carefully, and when reference is made to government documents. These show that Nivedita's information, which Shankariprasad assumes was always correct, was sometimes not. This is not at all surprising. A source may be perfectly contemporary and non-narrative and yet the information it contains may not be correct.* Writers of letters, like everyone else, make mistakes. Government documents can generally be trusted as records of what the government actually did, even though the reasoning advanced in them may be questioned. Can a private letter containing second- or third-hand information about government actions be given equal value? Not by anyone who wishes his work to be taken seriously. All historical documents must be subjected to critical scrutiny. This applies
* If an authority is needed to support this commonsense assertion, I give the opinion of the historian Marc Bloch: "It should be superfluous to recall that that evidence which is entirely above suspicion as to its avowed origin is not, for that reason, necessarily truthful." Bloch goes on to describe errors made by historians who "take such pains" to prove the authenticity of a document "that afterwards they sometimes lack the stamina to criticise its contents." Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft, New York: Vintage Books, 1953, pp. 91-92. Page-242 as much to Nivedita's letters as it does to Sri Aurobindo's accounts. I have noted that Sri Aurobindo's autobiographical writings sometimes contain errors of detail name, date or sequence. I may add that I have never found him to have been wrong about the general import of an event. In the passages referred to above in which Sri Aurobindo mixed up the Pabna and Hooghly Conferences, he did correctly analyse the political trends of 1908 and 1909, and this is what he was trying to do in the passages. The Nivedita letters are historical documents of the first importance. But they must be used critically if they are to add to our knowledge of the period. I do not accuse Shankariprasad Basu of unmitigated ill-will or bias; he often shows restraint and objectivity. To give one example, he is careful, before introducing Ramchandra's account, to inform us that Sri Aurobindo considered it a cock-and-bull story. 1 think rather Shankariprasad has become a victim of one of the most common of historio-graphical pitfalls the allure of the single source. He laboured over his excellent and invaluable edition of Sister Nivedita's letters for twenty years. Naturally he began to see things from her standpoint. Her contemporary observations often show established historical opinion to be mistaken. It was Shankariprasad's duty to bring these inconsistencies to the attention of scholars and the general public. But before doing so he should have confirmed Nivedita's views by referring to other primary sources. If he yet does this, his hopes of Nivedita being given her rightful place in the history of the country will be sooner realised.
THE QUESTION OF THE VISIT TO THE HOLY MOTHER
The entire controversy began with two statements by Swami Sundarananda, editor of Udbodhan, viz.: that Sri Aurobindo visited Sri Saradamani Devi on his way to Chandernagore, and that Sister Nivedita and another saw him off at the ghat. Both assertions are inconsistent with the basic account. The first supposed incident was moved from the night of the departure for Chandernagore to another occasion by Ramchandra Majumdar (see Document 10). Swami Sundarananda agreed with this reassignment of date, excusing himself in the process for his earlier "quite negligible" mistake (Document 13). Sundarananda did not mention that Ramchandra had made the same quite negligible mistake in the information he gave to Sundarananda which the latter printed in the note translated above (see my footnote 10). Ramchandra found it necessary to drop this incident from his later narrative because he chose to have Sri Aurobindo pay a visit to Sister Nivedita on the way to Chandernagore. Two social calls on such an evening were too much even for Ramchandra to propose. The second supposed incident Nivedita's seeing Sri Aurobindo offwas not reconsidered by Sundarananda, since he was interested only in the Holy Mother episode.* This incident, denied by Sri Aurobindo and supported by no eyewitness, may be considered refuted. This leaves us with a supposed visit of Sri Aurobindo to the Holy Mother at
* It is significant that Girijashankar Raychaudhuri, who was interested only in the "influence of Sri Ramakrishna on Sri Aurobindo", and in Sister Nivedita, made no reply in his surrejoinder (Document 6) to Charuchandra Dutt's denial of the Holy Mother story. Page-243 the Udbodhan office sometime before his departure to Chandernagore. Sri Aurobindo impugned this in clear terms. He said in Document 5, "I never met her [Sarada-mani Devi] or ever saw her in my life." In Document 8 he said the claim was "opposed to the facts"; in the text printed on pages 193 and 194, he wrote that it "was quite unfounded." Since no date is given to the supposed incident it could be assigned to any day its proponents desire. Since I cannot account for every evening Sri Aurobindo passed in Calcutta, there is no way I could demonstrate the falsity of the incident to one not inclined to accept Sri Aurobindo's straightforward dismissal. All I can do is question the reliability of the witnesses and the likelihood of the event. The visit was first mentioned in print by Sundarananda, who in 1944-45 was a monk of Belur Math and the editor of Udbodhan. His only cited source is Swami Vishweshwarananda-ji, who in 1910 was a Brahmachari of the Math and manager of Udbodhan (see Document 13). These two are supported by Mr. K. Ghose (Vedan-tachintamani), and Ramchandra. All four advocates of the visit were either members of the Ramakrishna Math or closely connected with it.* The bias of Sundarananda and Vishweshwarananda-ji is too obvious to need pointing out. The visit is alleged to have taken place in the office of the magazine these men were connected with. The allegation was made in the columns of this magazine. K. Ghose began his account with the following exordium: "neither the confirmation, nor the denial of the fact of Sri Aurobindo's paying homage to the Holy Mother would tend to maximise or minimise the spiritual glory in which She is immovably established." Ramchandra concluded his narrative, in which he gives himself a major role, with a last-minute introduction of no one other than Mr. K. Ghose. This he did despite the fact that K. Ghose stated, "I went to the Bagbazar Math on the day when Sj. Aurobindo left", while Ramchandra went to some trouble to show that Sri Aurobindo visited the Math some days before his departure. That Ramchandra had read the ubiquitous K. Ghose's statement before writing his own is also shown by the exordium with which his account begins: "Sri Aurobindo's visit will add nothing at all to the glory of the Most Venerable Sri Matathakurani [Saradamani Devi], adored by Sri Ramakrishnadev." The language of this passage, translated from Ramchandra's Bengali, is almost the same as that of K. Ghose (Vedantachintamani). It is obvious that the interest of these four devotees of the Holy Mother is to demonstrate that Sri Aurobindo was devoted to the object of their devotion. The story about Sri Aurobindo's short stature recounted by K. Ghose and repeated by Ramchandra is peculiarly well chosen to underline Sri Aurobindo's presumed inferiority to her. The suggestion that Sri Aurobindo took initiation from the Holy Mother is evidently intended to show that his yoga was derived from the yoga of Sri Ramakrishna and his consort. That Sri Aurobindo's yoga derives in part from Ramkrishna's may readily be conceded. Girijashankar Raychaudhuri, in the speech which started the whole affair, attempted to prove "the influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on
* A letter from Ramchandra to Sri Aurobindo dated 22 February 1914 shows that he was a devotee of Sri Ramakrishna even at that time. In this letter Ramchandra asked Sri Aurobindo to contribute an article on Ramakrishna to a journal (perhaps Prabuddha Bharata, the English equivalent of Udbodhan). Sri Aurobindo does not appear to have replied and he certainly did not write the article. (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives MS.SA.LSGli, 3.) Page-244 Sri Aurobindo". The speech is not very convincing, because Girijashankar does not make use of any documents of value. Many of his citations are from articles not written by Sri Aurobindo. A better-documented paper than Girijashankar's would have as its chief citation this extract from a letter written by Sri Aurobindo to Motilal Roy in 1912: "Remember also that we derive from Ramakrishna. For myself it was Ramakrishna who personally came & first turned me to this [Sri Aurobindo's own] yoga. Vivekananda in the Alipore jail gave me the foundations' of that knowledge which is the basis of our sadhana."41 Before 1920 Sri Aurobindo wrote often about the saint of Dakshineshwar, and he never concealed his admiration for him. About Saradamani Devi, however, he had little to say. He mentioned her nowhere in his public writings (except in the Documents reproduced in this issue); in his correspondence there is only one known reference, found in a passage, hitherto held back, of the letter of 1912 just cited: "I do not think that they [the Ramakrishna Mission] will escape from it [the error of not keeping open to new outpourings of Ramakrishna's spirit] so long as their 'Holy Mother' is with them. She represents now the Shakti of Ramakrishna so far as it was manifested in his life. ...."* This does not sound like the words of one who two years before had approached the Holy Mother as a devotee and initiate. Sri Aurobindo certainly had nothing against Sri Saradamani Devi; but it is clear that his attitude towards her was not the same as his attitude towards Sri Ramakrishna. It is true that Sri Aurobindo's wife Mrinalini became a devotee, though not an initiate, of the Holy Mother. In Document 5 Sri Aurobindo said that he had nothing to do with this; that it happened long after he left for Pondicherry; and that his wife was taken to the Holy Mother by Sudhira Bose. All this is supported by a statement written by Mrinalini's father Bhupal Chandra Bose on 26 August 1931: Sri A[urobindo] disappeared from Calcutta at the end of February or beginning of March 1910. Mrinalini was living at the time in Calcutta. We did not know of his whereabouts, until several weeks later...... Mrinalini often visited Sri-Ma (widow of Paramahansa-deo) [i.e. Saradamani Devi] at the Udbodhan office in Baghbazar who treated her with great affection..... Mrinalini desired at one time to receive diksha [initiation] from one of the sanyasins of the R. K. Mission. Her father [i.e. the writer] wrote to Sri A[uro-bindo] for the necessary permission, but the latter in reply advised her not to receive initiation from anyone else, and he assured her that he would send her all the spiritual help she needed. She was content therefore to remain without any outward initiation.42 The idea put forward by Ramchandra that Sri Aurobindo was accompanied by his wife on his supposed visit to the Holy Mother is effectively contradicted by Sri Aurobindo in Document 11 (and also Nolinikanta Gupta in Document 12). That Mrinalini was not living with her husband at the time of the alleged visit is indicated well enough in the statement of Bhupal Chandra Bose cited above.
* The paragraph of the letter from which these sentences are taken is reproduced for the first time as Document 17. Sri Aurobindo added, "I was glad that she [Mrinalini] had found so great a spiritual refuge, but I had no hand in bringing it about." This might be taken by a casual reader as an expression of devotion; but anyone familiar with Sri Aurobindo's manner of expression would recognise it as simple politeness and due respect. Page-245 I would like to make clear that the above has not been written in a spirit of disrespect towards the Holy Mother. I write as a historian and have no interest whatsoever in sectarian polemics. My intention has been to show that there is no reason to disbelieve Sri Aurobindo's simple statement that he never saw the Holy Mother in his life, much less took initiation from her, and good reason to disbelieve the elaborate stories of the four men I have referred to. To her devotees Sri Sarada Devi is indeed "immovably established" in "spiritual glory", as Mr. K. Ghose put it. Since, as he added, She has nothing either to gain or lose from the supposed visit of Sri Aurobindo, it would be best to let this imaginary event pass into oblivion.
A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE EVENT
This concludes my critique of the documents. There remains the task of reconstructing what actually took place that night in February 1910. I have shown that the accounts of Sri Aurobindo must be considered the most important sources of information on this event. The accounts of Sureshchandra Chakravarti give general support to Sri Aurobindo and provide some additional details. The account of the other eyewitness, Ramchandra Majumdar, is in general agreement with Sri Aurobindo and Sureshchandra, but in many particulars it must be dismissed as unreliable. Other accounts, based on secondhand information or hearsay, may be left out of consideration.
SRI AUROBINDO'S DEPARTURE TO CHANDERNAGORE A COMPOSITE NARRATIVE ACCOUNT
One evening in February 1910, probably the fifteenth of the month, Sri Aurobindo went as usual to his office at 4 Shampukur Lane, in the Shambazar section of north Calcutta. It was here that the editorial work on his two journals the English Karmayogin and the Bengali Dharma was done. This particular night there was not much work, and Sri Aurobindo and six younger men sat in a first-floor room having an automatic-writing seance. While they were engaged in this amusement, at around 8.00 p.m., another member of the newspaper staff, a certain Ramchandra Majumdar, entered. He told Sri Aurobindo he had received information emanating from a high police official about a soon-to-be-issued warrant: in a day or two the office would be searched and Sri Aurobindo arrested. (Government records show that no warrant had in fact been issued at this time, but that a case against Sri Aurobindo was under preparation. Sri Aurobindo was to be charged with writing a seditious article. A warrant ultimately was issued six weeks later.) When Ramchandra delivered his news, a sudden change came over the happy gathering. After a moment's silence, the younger men began an animated exchange of opinions about what action should be taken. Ramchandra went so far as to suggest resisting the police. Sri Aurobindo meanwhile was sunk in what Sureshchandra Chakravarti called "a thoughtful state". It was actually a condition of yogic concentration, in which he heard a voice commanding him to "Go to Chandernagore", a French possession up the river from Calcutta. The voice came suddenly it was probably a matter of seconds and Sri Aurobindo acted immediately; for it was now his habit, after more than two years of intense sadhana, to accept without question the guidance that came to him from higher sources. He stood up and told Page-246 those present that he was going to Chandernagore that very moment. He consulted no one, sent no word to his wife, friends or associates, made no arrangements for the conduct of his two papers or his political work. He simply left the office and set out for the bank of the Ganges. He was led there by Ramchandra, a resident of the area, and followed by his cousin Biren Ghosh and Sureshchandra Chakravarti.* The four walked in silence. In order to elude the policemen who always shadowed their movements, but who this night were happily inattentive, Ramchandra followed a tortuous path through the twisted lanes of north Calcutta. They stopped nowhere, but proceeded directly to the river. After about fifteen minutes they reached a ghat on the Ganges, apparently one of those located south of Bagbazar Ghat. Here Ramchandra called out to a boatman, "Hey, will you take a fare?" After the usual negotiations, Sri Aurobindo, Biren and Sureshchandra stepped from the ghat into the vessel one of those wooden country-boats that used to ply the river. The three passengers bid farewell to Ramchandra, who stayed behind. No one else was there to see Sri Aurobindo off. The boat at once set sail and proceeded straight to Chandernagore, where it arrived before dawn. Arrangements for Sri Aurobindo's stay were made that morning and Biren and Suresh returned to Calcutta. The same day, perhaps with the returning young men, Sri Aurobindo sent a message to his political co-worker Sister Nivedita informing her of his departure and asking her to take charge of the Karmayogin during his absence. She accepted and edited the journal till its demise two months later. Sri Aurobindo, now in the care of a young revolutionary named Motilal Roy, put aside all thought of politics. During his six-week stay in Chandernagore he became absorbed in spiritual sadhana. P.H.
* It is worth at least a footnote to mention that the four men may have travelled part of the way to the river by tram. But only one document speaks of a tram-ride, while more than a half-dozen say nothing about it. Neither Sri Aurobindo nor Sureshchandra name the ghat, but Sri Aurobindo specifically excludes Bagbazar Ghat. Sureshchandra says they walked northward. The river is almost due west of Shambazar. If they walked north, it was only briefly as a diversionary tactic. Sureshchandra admits to not having been familiar with the part of Calcutta they walked through.
REFERENCES
1 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972), pp. 54, 60. 2 Bengalee, 12 February 1910. 3 Bengalee, 16 February 1910; Dharma, 9 Phalgun 1316, p. 11. 4 Krishnakumar Mitra, Atmacharit, Calcutta: Basanti Chakravarty, 1937, pp.338-39; Basanti Chakravarty, "Amader Aurodada", Galpa Bharati, vol.6, no. I (Paush 1357), p. 784. 5 Letter Motilal Roy to Nagendrakumar Guharay, 16 May 1950, quoted in Nagendrakumar Guharay, "Debata Biday"". Galpa Bharati, vol.5, no. 12 (Jyaishta 1357), p. 1323. 6 See "Important Notice" in Bengalee, 13 February 1910. This is confirmed by a remark in Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam Political Confidential File 13 of 1910 that Sri Panchami (the same as Saraswati Puja) fell in 1910 on 14 February. 7 Nirodbaran, ed., Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Volume III, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1973, p. 69. 8 Basanti Chakravarty, loc. cit. Page-247 9 A. B. Purani notebook PTMS 5, pp. 74-75. 10 Footnote added by editor of Udbodhan (Swami Sundarananda) to Charuchandra Dutt, "Prati-bad", Udbodhan, vol. 167, no. 2, (Phalgun 1316), p. 56. 11 Shankariprasad Basu. "Nivedita O Jatiya Andolan", chapter 18, Desh, vol.50, no.12 (22 January 1983), pp. 26-27. 12 Government of India, Home Department Political-A. March 1910, Nos. 118-23; ibid. July 1910, 83-85. See also March 1910, 33-40. 13 Government of India, Home Department Political-A. December 1910, Nos. 14-42. 14 Obituary notice quoted in K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo: A Biography and a History, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1972, p. 1330. 15 Nagendrakumar Guharay, in the work of 1952 already cited, refers to "the late Ramchandra Majumdar". I assume he was better informed about Ramchandra's demise than Charuchandra Dutt was in 1944. 16 The Hindustan Standard wrote about Sureshchandra on 1 May 1951: "Sri Chakravarty belonged to the new group of progressive Bengali litterateurs and made his mark as a writer of powerful essays, short stories and lyrical poems." 17 Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna- Vivekananda, Calcutta: Sister Nivedita Girl's School, 1967, p. 221. 18 Uma Mukherjee, op. cit., p. 488. 19 Nagendrakumar Guharay. op. cit., p. 1623. 20 Shankariprasad Basu, op. cit., p. 25, col. 1. 21 Shankariprasad Basu, ed., Letters of Sister Nivedita, Calcutta: Navabharat Publishers, 1982 [hereafter Nivedita letters], pp.998, 1037. 22 "Archival Notes". Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research, vol. 7, no. 1 (April 1983), pp. 95-96. 23 Nivedita letters, p. 988. 24 Ibid., p. 986. 25 All the Government records alluded to and quoted from below are cited in full in Archives and and Research, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 93-94. 26 Nivedita letters, 988. 27 See, for examples letters Morley to Minto, 20 August 1909 and 27 January 1910. India Office Library, Eur. MSS. D 573/4. 28 Nivedita letters, p. 1037. 29 Nivedita letters, 1015, 1036. 30 Government of India. Home Department Proceedings-D. September 1909. No. 28. 31 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972), p. 36. 32 Shankariprasad Basu, op. cit., p. 26, col. 2. 33 Ibid., p. 25, col. 3. 34 Shankariprasad Basu, op. cit., p. 27, col. 3. 35 Nivedita letters, p. 1070, 1072. 36 Nivedita letters, 1093; cited Shankariprasad Basu, op. cit., p. 26, col. 3. 37 See Manoj Das, Sri Aurobindo in the first Decade of the Century, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1972, pp. 162-5. 38 Atmaprana, op. cit., p. 221. 39 Nivedita letters, pp. 1175, 1180, 1182-83. 40 Barindrakumar Ghose, "Sri Aurobindo as I Understand Him" (unpublished manuscript). This book was written in the 1940s, long after Barin had become estranged from his brother. His repudiation was evidently not dictated by Sri Aurobindo. 41 Sri Aurobindo, Supplement (1973), p. 435; the date given on page 433, 1913, is not correct. 42 Statement by Bhupal Chandra Bose dated Ranchi, 26 August 1931 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives). Page-248 |