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Archival Notes
SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER 1914-1920
A Photograph of Sri Aurobindo and Others
The photograph reproduced as Plate 1 was reproduced in the issue of April 1984 from an inferior print. The print used for the present, much sharper reproduction was donated to the Archives in January 1990 by Sri Paul Radjanedassou, Sri Antoine Vallabh Mariadassou, and Sri Joseph Djegaya Mariadassou, sons of the late Mangaladassou and grandsons of the late Vallabadassou. Our thanks to the three brothers for presenting this rare photograph to the Archives through their friend Sri Gopal Dalmia. According to Antoine Mariadassou, the photograph was taken in the courtyard of the house of Vallabadassou at 72 (now 100) Candappa Mudaliar Street, Pondicherry, sometime between 1910 and 1914. The man sitting at Sri Aurobindo's left is Nolini Kanta Gupta; Suresh Chakravarty (Moni) is standing behind Nolini. According to unconfirmed sources, the man standing behind Sri Aurobindo is Dumont and the man at Dumont's right is Nagen. The man seated at Sri Aurobindo's right is said to be Bijoy Nag, but this is somewhat doubtful.1
Friends in Pondicherry
During the early years in Pondicherry, Nolini, Moni, Bijoy and the other young men who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry .were in contact with some of the town's "young men of forward thinking and liberal ideas". In 1981 Nolini reminisced about these former companions, among them the sons of Vallabadassou.2 His reminiscences are reproduced as Document 1.
During these early years in Pondicherry Sri Aurobindo himself had some contact with the people of the town; his rare excursions outside the house were to attend ceremonies they had invited him to. On 15 September 1915, for example, he attended the marriage of Joseph David,3 and on 5 July of the next year the marriage of Sada Oidayar. In October 1919 he was present at the baptism of Joseph David's daughter Antoinette.4 On the way home, according to an old notation by one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples, he made an unexpected halt.
While Sri Aurobindo was coming back from Vallabhadas's house after the baptism of David's daughter (in his carriage) he stopped near the park and went in for about 15 minutes and sat on a bench. This was only once!
1 Nolini Kanta Gupta said in 1981 that this person could not be Bijoy, as Bijoy was in jail at the time. Bijoy was incarcerated in 1915 (see below). If Antoine Mariadassou is right in thinking that the photo was taken before 1915, it is possible that the person is Bijoy.
2 Two photographs of Vallabadassou are reproduced as Plates 2 and 3.
3 David later became mayor of Pondicherry. Two photographs of him are reproduced as Plates 4 and 5.
4 Information on the two marriages from records kept in the Pondicherry town hall. David: No. 53/1915/MC; Oidayar: No. 142/1916/PDM. Antoinette David was born on 21 September 1919. She told this writer in 1990 that her baptism would have taken place around two weeks after this. A Letter to The Hindu
The letter to The Hindu reproduced in this issue is one of at least four that Sri Aurobindo wrote to the Madras daily during the first two years of his residence in Pondicherry.5 In all four Sri Aurobindo used the columns of the nationalist newspaper to publicly state that he had retired from politics and was staying in Pondicherry in order to practise yoga. The third letter was written after the Anglo-Indian Madras Times had published two articles on the "anarchists" of Pondicherry, linking them to the recent murder of Thirunelveli District Magistrate Robert Ashe. The first Times article, published on 10 July 1911, spoke of Pondicherry as a centre for the publication of seditious literature, and warned its readers of the "dangers attending the presence of a gang of anarchists, free to carry out their nefarious schemes with impunity, within a hundred miles of the capital of the Province." Specifically the Times pointed out that there was "an organized Party in French India which supports Mr. Arabindo Ghosh and his friends." The paper asked "French Colonials" to give their support to "a measure designed to secure the extradition of Political offenders from French territory," arguing that "the safety of European colonists is of greater importance than the altruistic principle of granting a safe harbour to political refugees."6 A later article spoke openly of Sri Aurobindo as "a director of Anarchist societies, a criminal and an assassin".7
From Sri Aurobindo's point of view the worst feature of the articles was not the slander against him but the suggestion that the French authorities of Pondicherry ought to withdraw the hospitality they had extended to him and other political refugees since 1910. An immediate answer was called for. He addressed it to The Hindu since "the opportunity of reply" was "denied to me in the paper by which I am attacked". In his first letter, published on 20 July 1911, he dealt with five "definite assertions" made by the Times, showing that all were false or exaggerated. He closed, "I will refer to the general slander in a subsequent letter". This was published in the next issue of The Hindu and is reproduced in the present issue of Archives and Research for the first time since 1911.
The Madras Times' campaign against Sri Aurobindo and his fellow refugees had little or no effect, and they were able to remain in Pondicherry under police surveillance but without interference. After the start of the war in Europe the situation changed.8 The Government of India passed the Ingress into India Ordinance, under which any "undesirable" person attempting to enter British India could be interned without trial. Nolini Kanta Gupta and other friends of Sri Aurobindo who were in Bengal at that time rushed back to the safety of Pondicherry. Bijoy Nag was foolish enough to try moving in the opposite direction. In October, while on his way to Bengal, ostensibly to obtain subscribers for Sri Aurobindo's review Arya, he was picked up after crossing the border between
5 The dates of the other three known letters, and their places of publication, are as follows: 7 November 1911 (A & R 8 [April 1984]: 61); 23 February 1911 (A & R 5 [Dec. 1981]: 186-87); 20 November 1911 (Sri Aurobindo, Supplement [1973], p. 500-501).
6 "Anarchism in the French Settlements". The Madras Times, 10 July 1911, p. 8.
7 This is Sri Aurobindo's paraphrase, in his letter of 20 July, of the words in this article, which this writer has not seen.
8 See "Archival Notes", A & R 9 (Dec. 1985): 221-25. Pondicherry and the British district of South Arcot, and was interned in Vellore Jail. Here he remained, despite an attempt of Paul Richard to obtain his release, until the end of the war (Document 2).9
By June 1919 the situation was sufficiently relaxed for border crossings again to be possible. That month Saurin Bose and Nolini Kanta Gupta left Pondicherry for Calcutta. Nolini stayed on for some time, eventually getting married. A humourous draft-letter in which Sri Aurobindo spoke to his young friend about marriage and yoga is reproduced in this issue.
During the war years Sri Aurobindo gave much of his time to the writing and editing of Arya. His various works, among them The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga, are well known. His editorial labours are less celebrated. He had to do much of the office work himself. This included writing letters to correspondents, two of which are reproduced in this issue. Another letter, to K. R. Appadurai, brother-in-law of the poet Subramania Bharati, shows that the publication of Arya did not bring in enough money to cover all of Sri Aurobindo's expenses. The "MT. K. V. R." referred to in this letter is of course Kodiyalam V. Rangaswami Iyengar, of whom much was written in a previous instalment of Archival Notes.10
The war also had an effect on the lives of Paul and Mirra Richard. Obliged to leave Pondicherry in February 1915, they remained in Europe for about a year. In February 1916 Richard got a post as a delegate of a French trade organization (Document 4). He and his wife Mirra and Mirra's friend Miss Hodgson (later known in Sri Aurobindo Ashram as Datta) arrived in Yokohama on 11 March 1916 (Document 5). The Richards and Miss Hodgson remained in Japan for four years,11 returning to Pondicherry in April 1920 (Document 10). While in Japan Richard wrote several books, one of which, Au Japon (To Japan), is mentioned in Document 6. The book comprises an essay, dated January 1917, and a prose poem, both of them printed in French, English and Japanese. The English translation is attributed to Mme Mirra Richard. The gist of Richard's thinking is contained in two lines of the prose poem: "Sole people of Asia who hast remained free / Thou it is who must be the liberator of Asia." 12 In the essay Richard urged Japan to become the head of an Asian Federation, but warned: "What would it profit thee to have conquered towns, if thou lettest thy heart be invaded by the allurement which comes from the abyss and fascinates the conquerors?" Japan must serve the higher will that prepared all peoples "for the voluntary solidarity which alone will unify the divided members of the human family." This was the will of the one Richard called "The Lord of the Nations".13 Later, speaking from an occult point of view, the Mother said that the Lord of the Nations was the entity behind the outbreak of World War II.
9 See also Sri Aurobindo's letters to Motilal Roy dated "[September, 1914]" (evidently incorrect) and January 2,1920 (Sri Aurobindo, Supplement [1973], pp. 468-70,484-85) and "Documents in the Life of Sri Aurobindo", A & R 13 (April 1989): 110-11 (Documents 20 and 22).
10 A & R 12 (Dec. 1988): 203-6. The letter to K. V. Appadurai was reproduced in that instalment of Archival Notes, and not as a text, since the editors did not then have access to the original manuscript. This has since been obtained.
11 Document 7 gives some details about the stay of the Richards and Datta in Tokyo. It suggests that some members of the household worked as teachers.
12 Paul Richard, Au Japon (Tokio, 1917), p. 39.
13 Ibid., pp. 24, 30, 35. Richard's interest in Pan-Asianism was shared by the members of the Black Dragon Society. It was with the help of this group that Rashbehari Bose, the Bengali revolutionary who had masterminded the bomb-attempt against the Viceroy Lord Hardinge, was able to remain in Japan when ordered to leave by the government during the war, in which Japan was nominally the ally of Britain. One member of the society, Shumei Okawa, published an article on Sri Aurobindo in a Japanese newspaper in August 1918 (Document 8). A translation of this article is reproduced as Document 9. |