CHAPTER XVIII1

CHAPTER XVIII¹

LIGHT OF LIBERTY

BUT THE FLOWERING of the renaissance in art, science, literature and love of country, however splendid and inspiring, could in no way suffice to raise the whole being of the nation to its highest stature. And the leaders did not take long to realise that no free development was possible in any field whatever under the conditions of subjection which acted like slow poison on the body-politic. This was also the feeling of some clear-sighted Englishmen. Speaking about the British colonies in America and India, Thomas Paine, that 'apostle of political liberty', said that colonialism in any form was an evil whose disastrous consequences were not simply for the affected countries alone to suffer but for the whole world. 'Prolonged submission to foreign yoke,' wrote Sir John Seely, 'is one of the potent causes of national deterioration.' Supporting this view in respect of India, C.F. Andrews held : 'This agony of subjection is eating like iron into the soul of India and the strain must be relieved at once.'

The awakening soul of India had already seen the light of liberty in Bankim's vision of the Mother, in the divine vision of Vivekananda that India was rising not for herself alone but for the whole world. There were besides other factors in the growth of this light in the mind and heart of the people. The pioneers, every one of them, had an unerring perception of the great future for which India must prepare. Those among them who rekindled the ancient vision in the creative consciousness of the race and thereby revived the ancient spirit in new and fresh forms of art, literature and science, opened up possibilities of its future greatness.

The feeling therefore began to deepen in the advanced mind of the race that the country could move no further even towards its cultural goal if it had no freedom to grow and expand to the measure of its creative urge. In Sri Aurobindo's view, the inner, therefore, the truer meaning of freedom is the realisation of perfection both in the individual and the collective life of man. Education, which, in its deepest sense, is a most important and effective means of perfection, could never be made to serve this end so long as the alien control was there to keep it down within limits. Without a State dedicated to the promotion of the nation's all-round well-being nothing of an enduring value could be expected in the life of the people. This feeling grew into a conviction with India's nineteenth century reformers and they made the first notable move to recover

¹ Unacknowledged quotations in this chapter are from Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother.

the national self and their efforts served to sow the seeds of nationalism. The next phases of the movement were more organised endeavours to assert the right of India to freedom and greatness as a self-governing nation.

Besides the spiritual and cultural factors in the growth of this feeling, there were also economic causes, particularly the grinding poverty of the people, the usurpation of their trade and industry by foreign rulers, the depletion of the country's wealth from wanton loot, plunder and continuous exploitation ever since the so-called battle of Plassey. There were then the Western ideas of freedom and revolution stirring the Indian mind. The natural reaction to this state of things was an awakening of the national consciousness and a stir in the soul of the ancient people fired by Bankim's revelation of the country's resurgence as a nation, and Vivekananda's clarion call to his countrymen to their great past and beckoning them to a greater future; to his prophetic vision the dark present was but the prelude to a new dawn.

But who was to incarnate the aspirations of the people and at the same time embody the Will of the Sakti of India that her children be great again, great as a free people, great 'as an enlightener of humanity' ? Who was to open the eyes of the people to the light of liberty, interpret to them its deeper meaning create in them the will to strive for and the will to win that liberty ? And who could do it but the one born to fulfil the Will of the Mother ?

'It has been the mantra of my life to aspire towards the freedom of my nation.' 'Nationalism is the Dharma of the age, and God reveals himself to us in our common Mother.' 'The sun of India's destiny would rise and fill all India with its light and overflow India and overflow Asia and overflow the world.' Flaming expressions of a truth-conscious soul, with a vast suggestiveness. Infallible indication too, that the truth which is India found in Sri Aurobindo its chosen instrument and made him its mighty voice to assure her children and humanity of their liberation into the light of her soul. The work began with a mounting aspiration, took a definitive form when nationalism became a dharma, was well on the way to the goal when the horizon became aglow with the gleamings of freedom. Thus did the soul of India awake in her chosen son and go on expanding in its scope and activity till its light brought about the freedom of the country and is now steadily growing towards its consummation.

The life of a great figure often makes the history of his country and not unoften proves a lever in the historic development of the human race. Rightly viewed, the life of Sri Aurobindo was a pilgrimage of India's awakening soul to that Temple of Light from whose pinnacle it would radiate its healing splendour over the whole world. The politico-economic freedom of fallen India was but the starting-point of her long,

arduous, uphill climb to the yet unattained summit of her being from where she can share the celestial wealth of her pilgrimage with the world around.

This pilgrimage, part of a great preparation, started with the Vedic Seers' wonderful spiritual discoveries which developed the intuitive mind of India; in its second stage she discovered the dharma, the right line of her evolution, expanding her thinking mind; in the third, the classical age, her soul having experiences of the material basis of life expressed its force through the richness and vividness of her vital being. This completed a cycle preparing for a New Age of the Spirit which would spiritualise life and mind, thus already developed, and then harmonise and orientate them to a larger vision and a freer play of Light. This age was long in coming; the Seer and the Leader had yet to appear. The interval was a prolonged lull, a sleep of centuries. But the light of India's soul had not completely died out when came the blast of the West bringing in a new problem. Rather it was an old one in a new but insistent form : reconciling the forces of life, the gift of the West, with the forces of the Spirit, the contribution of the East.

The nickering light flamed up in Sri Aurobindo whose pilgrim-soul visioned not only the oneness of all existence but also the unity of Matter and Spirit. This was the vision of the Vedic and Vedantic Seers and Sri Aurobindo by realising and affirming it today disclosed not only his secret affinity with them, but also his hold on India's historic life-line the pursuit of which would lead to the recovery of her ancient strength and the achievement of her true greatness. And he found that the basic condition must be her complete freedom.

How Sri Aurobindo grew up and did his work for India and the world is a difficult study since, to quote his own words, 'My life has never been on the surface for man to see.' Yet it would seem that every major event in his own life and in the life of the world was willed by a Higher Force with which his will was identified. This is borne out by his own words and of the Mother.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. His father Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose belonged to the well-known Ghoses of Konnagar in the District of Hooghly, Bengal. Konnagar, leaving its mark on the old literature of Bengal, maintained its importance even in the nineteenth century when it saw some of its illustrious sons taking leading positions in the public life of Bengal. Dr Ghose married Swarnalata, daughter of Rajnarayan Basu, 'the grandfather of Indian nationalism'. Krishnadhan had one daughter and four sons of whom Sri Aurobindo was the third, Monomohan the second and Barindra the youngest. Monomohan was a professor of English at the Presidency College, Calcutta. As a poet he received appreciation from English critics like Laurence Binyon. Dr Ghose had taken his medical education in England. A man of great ability,

strong personality and wide munificence, he belonged to that type of honest and well-intentioned Indians of his generation who loved European ways for what they sincerely believed to be of superior worth. Yet, like many of his type he was keenly alive to the injustices of British administration in India and felt strongly that they were the cause of all indignities and humiliations of his countrymen. He had no faith in the existing system of education in India. Neither did he believe that there was anything in what passed for culture at the time which might be imbibed to one's advantage. He therefore decided to send his children to England for their education. For two years till he was seven, Sri Aurobindo had had his early education at Loretto Convent School in Darjeeling.

A thing to note is that here he had his first direct experience of a supernatural character.

When Sri Aurobindo was seven, Dr Ghose took him along with his two other sons to England and placed them with an English family— the Drewetts who were his friends—'with strict instructions that they should not be allowed to make the acquaintance of any Indian or undergo any Indian influence. These instructions were carried out to the letter and Aurobindo grew up in an entire ignorance of India, her people, her religion and her culture.'

After his education at home for five years Sri Aurobindo was admitted to St. Paul's School in London where for his proficiency in Latin and Greek he was pushed through higher classes. When eleven, he had started writing English poetry and in a couple of years Latin and Greek poetry.

At eleven this young soul had two experiences that had prophetic bearings on his future life and work. A strong feeling began then to grow in him 'that a period of general upheaval and revolutionary changes was coming in the world and that he himself was destined to play a part in it. His attention was now drawn to India and this feeling soon developed into the idea of the liberation of his country. But it took full shape only towards the end of another four years.' On this point Sri Aurobindo wrote to his wife in 1905: 'Others know their country as a material thing, as fields, plains, forests, mountains, rivers; I know my country as Mother, I offer her my devotions, my worship. If a vampire sits upon her breast and prepares to suck her blood, what does her child do ? Does he sit down peacefully to his dinner and make merry with his wife and children ? Does he not rush out to her rescue ? I know I have in me the power to accomplish the deliverance of my fallen country....It is the power of Knowledge, brahmatej founded in jnāna. This feeling is not new to me, not of the present day; with this feeling I was born; it is in the marrow of my bones; God has sent me to earth to do this work, the seed of which first germinated when I was fourteen and it took deep root in me when I was eighteen.'

Thus did Sri Aurobindo become conscious of his life's mission when he was only a boy living in a foreign land. He knew then that there was

for him a work of God to do and that work was India's liberation. When God's bright heaven full of the vision of the future used to burst on the consciousness of this young soul, he wondered why and how it was coming to him, and tried to trace it to the poetry of Shelley he was then reading. Years later he realised that it was prompted by a force higher than human.

The next phase of Sri Aurobindo's stay in England was the period of his preparation for the Indian Civil Service Examination. In 1890 he had passed with credit his final examination at St. Paul's securing a scholarship for further studies at College. The same year he appeared for the I.C.S. Examination which also he passed with credit, scoring record marks in the language-group, Greek and Latin. At the end of the period of probation, however, he avoided appearing at the departmental riding test. The fact is that he felt no call for the I.C.S. and wished to keep clear of that bondage. Sri Aurobindo now came to Cambridge and took up Classical Tripos and passed high in the first part (first class) of the examination, 'an exceedingly high examination', as Oscar Browning, the famous Cambridge don, told Sri Aurobindo and added, T have examined papers at thirteen examinations and I have never during that time seen such excellent papers as yours.'

While at Cambridge, Sri Aurobindo refreshed his knowledge of European languages to be able to enjoy the great literary works in the original. Here began his first political activity, making impassioned speeches on the evils of British rule in India and the need for strong revolutionary action to bring about her liberation. 'These speeches were noted by the India Office authorities and were one cause why they were ready to get rid of him as a prospective member of the Indian Civil Service.' As Secretary of the Indian Majlis at Cambridge, Sri Aurobindo did a great deal to rouse the Indian youths in England to the sad plight of their country under foreign rule, and to their rights and responsibilities as Indians.

As already said, Sri Aurobindo's eleventh-year feeling became more precise in his fourteenth when for the first time he became conscious of his work for the freedom of his country. In his eighteenth year he took the decision to dedicate himself to the cause. He had now clear ideas and some plan of the work he was meant to do. In London he discussed his plan of revolutionary action with K.G.Deshpande and Chittaranjan Das. There was then in London a secret society called 'Lotus and Dagger' formed by Indian students to work -for their country's freedom. Sri Aurobindo and his brothers became its members. But the society was still-born.

This was just before his return to India after fourteen years when Sri Aurobindo had uppermost in his thoughts only poetry and his country's freedom. Circumstances brought him into touch with Sir Sayajirao Gaekwad, who wanted an I.C.S. man for Baroda State. He at once chose Sri Aurobindo and took him back to India.

Thus ended the days in England of a soul who was to do mighty things for the future of his country and the world. What then was the bearing of his training in England on his future work ? His study of European history must have deepened his feeling that what India needed most at the time for her progress was freedom from foreign rule. Herself in bondage, she could do nothing for humanity. The future, he felt, would be a spiritual civilisation. It would integrate the best in the cultures of the East and the West, yet exceed and transmute them into a new creation under the sovereign sway of the Spirit. Such an eventuality would be possible when the present life and mind of man would lend themselves to the divine action of the Spirit. The East—India in particular—had tried this and made much headway towards the goal but could not follow it up for various untoward conditions, one of which was her latter-day exclusive otherworldly pursuits. These pursuits caused the disappearance of the true kshatriya spirit and the consequent intrusion of foreign rule and foreign cultures. Nevertheless, India retained in her soul the light of the Spirit her ancients had seen. It was this light that would give the next great drive towards the coming remaking of man. The West took the path of Life and its victories in that direction were the marvels of the modern world. But these victories brought upon it incalculable miseries in their train. The deliverance of man lay therefore in a harmony between these two apparently contrary but really complementary poles of existence.

It was thus ordained that the one who would reveal to man the truth of this harmony should himself know the essential meaning of these two poles. The early part of his tapasya in England unlocked to Sri Aurobindo the meaning of the West; the later part, in India, a more arduous tapasya, gave him the meaning of the East. The entirely foreign education, the foreign surroundings in which he lived, the academic brilliances and accomplishments he gained were more than sufficient to have denationalised an ordinary soul. But Sri Aurobindo came out of it all, untouched, intact, true to his own self, in every way a truer Indian than could be wished for.

1893 is a landmark in the long history of India's spiritual evolution. For the first time in the present age, it marks two remarkable coincidences : Swami Vivekananda goes out to the West; Sri Aurobindo comes home to the East. The one to illumine the West with the light of the East as a preparation for a greater light to follow. The other to liberate the Mother and through her to liberate the world. It was as if the Divine Mother had set her two mighty sons on two mighty conquests. The year also witnessed several 01 her coincidences that have bearing on India's resurgence in modern times. It was in this year that Annie Besant arrived in India, Gandhi sailed for South Africa, Tilak started the Ganapati Festival, and Sri Aurobindo wrote his first articles on Indian nationalism challen-

ging the whole outlook and policy of the Congress.

Another fact of note. As Sri Aurobindo set foot on the soil of India at Apollo Bunder in Bombay he felt a sudden sensation of deep calm and silence within him and without, pervading and enveloping his whole being. As a flash it came, but it came to stay for two or three days and then slowly passed. Years later he recognised and realised that it was Brahmic Calm ! Did it mean that while receiving him back to her bosom, the Mother initiated him then and here into the mystery of her soul and charged him with the work that was his to do ?

Early in 1893 Sri Aurobindo joined the Baroda Service in which he spent the next thirteen years of his life. It was simultaneously a period of his prodigious literary and revolutionary labours. He was now twenty-one. After a couple of years in the administrative departments of the State, he was at his own preference, transferred to the Baroda College as a part-time lecturer in French. Afterwards he became Professor of English, and later Vice-Principal of the College. During his last months at Baroda he officiated as Principal. The Maharaja however continued to seek his advice and help in dealing with momentous State affairs and drafting documents and despatches even while he was on the College staff.

Within six months of his return from England Sri Aurobindo began contributing a series of articles to the Bombay Weekly Indu Prakash, edited by K.G.Deshpande, his Cambridge friend, in which he categorically exposed the hollowness and futility of 'the policy of protest, petition and prayer' to which Indian National Congress had stood committed. Burning as he did for a bold and forward drive, he was also planning to prepare the country for armed rebellion. It was the first time that the Congress policy received a rude shock from a youth of twenty-one, just back home after long years in a foreign land and virtually with no contact with his own people and culture. His poignant words bespeak as much his love for the Congress as his disappointment : 'The Congress was to us all what is to man most dear, most high and most sacred.' But from being's proud banner in the batle of Liberty and a holy temple of concord where the races met and mingled', the Congress within eight years of its existence 'pitched from its noble height into a ignominious abyss'. 'Our actual enemy', wrote the young critic, 'is not the force exterior to ourselves, but our crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our purblind sentimentalism.... I say, of the Congress, then, this—that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders;—in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate, by the one-eyed....The National Congress was not really national, and had not attempted to become national.' Sri Aurobindo has thus righdy been called 'the first voice of Indian Freedom.'

When Surendranath Banerji said : 'We rely on the liberty-loving instincts of the greatest representative assembly in the world ..the British House of Commons', Sri Aurobindo came out in a series of articles : 'We must not eke out our scanty wardrobe with the cast-off rags and threadbare leavings of our English masters.' The sequence however had to be stopped because the Congress could not pull itself up to the height of the logic and bold idealism of the young critic. Mahadev Govind Ranade warned the proprietor of the paper that, if this went on, he would be prosecuted for sedition. Later, Ranade met Sri Aurobindo and, even though failing to meet his arguments, tried to dissuade him from continuing such articles against the Congress.

Sri Aurobindo contributed to the same paper another series of seven most illuminating articles on the life, genius and achievements of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, whom he called 'Creator and King of Bengali prose'. This series shows the writer's knowledge of Bengali language and literature and the cultural scenes of the time in which Bankim lived. 'The society by which Bankim was formed was the young Bengal of the fifties, the most extraorinary perhaps that India has yet seen,—a society electric with thought and loaded to the brim with passion. Bengal was at that time the theatre of a great intellectual awakening; a sort of miniature Renascence was in process.'

Sri Aurobindo's life in Baroda was pre-eminently a preparation for his future work. His studies were varied and vast. Surrounded by books on modem and classical Indian and European languages he would be deeply absorbed most of his time in study and writing. Sanskrit language and literature however had a special attraction for him. And in order to have a sound mastery of them, he used to translate into English the Epics and the Classics. His renderings¹ of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata made Rameshchandra Dutt say, 'My translations have been a child's play beside yours.'

Sri Aurobindo began a full-scale study of Kalidasa which he could not complete under the pressure of political work he was then secretly carrying on. He wrote a long essay on the Mahabharata, a unique piece of creative criticism. It is strange but true that Sri Aurobindo learnt Sanskrit without help from anybody. His Western-educated mind was drawn, to quote his own words, 'by natural attraction to Indian culture and ways of life and a temperamental feeling and preference for all that was Indian.'

As a teacher in Baroda College, Sri Aurobindo moulded many a young mind. An embodied idealism, a simple, quiet but dynamic personality, a brilliant scholar, an inspirer of youth, he was the idol of his students in Baroda. Many of those who served the country under Tilak's leadership were Sri Aurobindo's students in the Baroda College. How people became inspired by his presence can be inferred from what the English Principal

¹ Published in the Everyman's Library, England.

of that College said to C.R. Reddy, 'So you met Aurobindo Ghose. Did you notice his eyes ? There is a mystic fire and light in them. They penetrate into the beyond.' Then he added, If Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices, Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions.' K.M. Munshi, a student of Sri Aurobindo in the same College, spoke almost in the same vein. Dinendrakumar Roy who lived with Sri Aurobindo in Baroda as his helper in spoken Bengali, writes : 'Among the student community Aurobindo was regarded as a god. More than the English Principal of the College, this Indian professor was the object of their trust and respect. His ways of teaching had a charm for them....As long as I stayed with him, I could not think of him except as a devoted brahmacārin and a self-denying sannyāsin with a heart weighted with other's sorrows. The acquisition of knowledge seemed to have been the only concern of his life. And to achieve this he remained immersed in severe tapasya, amid the din and bustle of a busy world....Living with him day and night, the more intimately I got to know him, the more I understood that Aurobindo was not of this earth; a god he was, descended from Heaven. He alone could say why God had made him a Bengali and banished him to ill-fated India.' Such was the one who was to set aflame a nation with the will to freedom.

In the nineties of the last century a scheme was afoot in various parts of the country to organise secret societies for revolutionary work, particularly to prepare the field by infusion of revolutionary ideas. Bombay Presidency had its share in this movement, of which, says Sri Aurobindo, 'Thakur Saheb, a noble of the Udaipur State, was a leader. The Bombay Council of the movement was helping him to organise Maharashtra and the Maratha States. He himself worked principally upon the Indian army three or four regiments of which he had already won over.' Sri Aurobindo who was connected with this movement, 'took a special journey to Central India to meet Indian sub-officers and men of one of these regiments.'

There was in Maharashstra an organisation called Hindu Dharma Sangha which was started by Damodar Chapekar who was later condemned to capital sentence in the Rand murder case, the first of a series of political assassinations in Maharashtra. After the passing of its founder, this Sangha, the secret society of Thakur Saheb (then absent in Japan for revolutionary work), and Tarun Sangha, a society of youths, organised under Sri Aurobindo's direction, were amalgamated and Sri Aurobindo took over the management. Later he became the President of the central organisation for the whole of Gujarat.

Training the youths of the country for national service through revolutionary activities was an important item in Sri Aurobindo's plan. To this end he and his friend Deshpande set up a school called Bharati Vidyalaya at Ganganath on the banks of the Narmada, where besides general subjects, the training included team games, wrestling, marching drill, etc. One of the popular games was attack-and-defence played with

light sticks of split bamboos. One team climbed up the hill-side to reach the top, the other on the top tried to prevent it. Throwing stones was forbidden, but the use of sticks was encouraged. The injured players would never whine. Kesavananda, the chief disciple of Swami Brahmananda who was deeply interested in Indian independence and for whom Sri Aurobindo had great regard, was in charge of the spiritual education of the boys of the school.

The school was conducted on the lines laid down by Sri Aurobindo in the famous Bhavani Mandir scheme drawn up in elaboration of the ideas of Barindra, Sri Aurobindo's younger brother. The main idea of the scheme was to establish in a mountainous seclusion a temple consecrated to Bhavani, the Divine Mother, with an asram attached which would train a new order of Karma-yogis, spiritual workers, who would renounce all in order to work for the Mother. The consummation envisaged in the scheme is this : India cannot perish, our race cannot become extinct, because among all the divisions of mankind, it is to India that is reserved the highest and the most splendid destiny, the most essential to the future of the human race. It is she who must send forth from herself the future religion of the entire world, the Eternal Religion which is to harmonise all religion, science and philosophies, and make mankind one Soul,—the greatest and most wonderful work ever given to a race.' What would come out of this consummation, when achieved ? The writer puts the answer into the mouth of Bhavani herself: 'You will be helping to create a nation, to consolidate an age, to Aryanise a world. And that nation is your own, that age is the age of yourselves and your children, that world is no fragment of land bounded by seas and hills, but the whole earth with her teeming millions.'

These ideas of Sri Aurobindo, says Marquess of Zetland (Earl of Ronaldshay), 'seem indeed to have been the mainspring behind Sri Aurobindo's activities in support of the revolutionary movement; for in the same pamphlet we catch sight of the idea which was to form the core of the philosophy which he was to formulate later on during the long years of his retirement from the world.'

As the Partition hastened a crisis in the political situation in Bengal, the Bhavani Mandir scheme could not further materialise. But its central idea persisted in the mind of Barindra who under Sri Aurobindo's direction tried to give some form to it in his centre of revolutionary work at the Maniktala garden.

Sri Aurobindo himself was now keen on kindling within him the invincible fire of the Spirit with which to set ablaze a countrywide passion for freedom. 'He had some connection with a member of the governing body of the Naga Sannyasins who gave him a mantra (rather stotra) of Kali and conducted certain kriyās and Vedic Yajna for success in his political work.' He was now also trying to gain support for secret revolutionary

work. He disclosed the Bhavani Mandir scheme to Charuchandra Dutt, a member of the Indian Civil Service, whom he had already known as one interested in revolutionary work, and whom he called 'a fellow-warrior of the ages'. Dutt agreed to collaborate. Govindrao D. Madgaokar, also of the Indian Civil Service, was another collaborator of Sri Aurobindo in his revolutionary work in Western India.

While Sri Aurobindo was planning to prepare the country for an armed rebellion he had several visions and experiences—significant touches of the Spirit through which Mother India was giving him a direct insight into the spiritual genius of his race. In 1904, in the midst of political activities, he started practising Yoga with the help of a disciple of Swami Brahmananda of Chandod. The result was : 'My brain became prakaśamaya, full of light. The mind worked with illumination and power...I could write two hundred lines of poetry in half an hour, which before I took a month to produce. Along with this enhanced mental activity I could see an electric energy around the brain.' In a Bengali letter written to his wife in 1905, he says : 'If God is, then to feel His presence, to meet Him, there must be some way or other—I have started to follow the rules of the path laid down in the Hindu Sastras; in the course of a month I could feel that what the Sastras have said is no myth. I am experiencing the signs that are spoken of.' Later, when further advance in Yoga brought him epoch-making victories Sri Aurobindo extended the connotation of his early feeling saying: 'All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise and express the Divine.'

Sri Aurobindo now turned his attention to Bengal where the seeds of secret society work had already been sown by his grandfather Rajnarayan Basu. As seen before, Sri Aurobindo conceived his revolutionary plan while he was in England. Developing this plan, he now chose Bengal in which to give it shape. The plan was, to quote his own words, 'that centres were to be established in every town and eventually in every village. Societies of young men were to be set up with various ostensible objects, cultural, intellectual or moral and those already existing were to be won over for revolutionary use. Young men were to be trained in activities which might be helpful for ultimate military action, such as, riding, physical training, athletics of various kinds, drill and organised movement.'

Around 1900 there came to Baroda an adventurous Bengali youth named Jatindranath Bandyopadhyaya. Sri Aurobindo had him admitted to the Baroda army. After his training he served the State in important military ranks. In Baroda Sri Aurobindo initiated Jaitndra in the secrets of revolutionary work and in 1902 sent him to Bengal to collect men and material in order to prepare the country for liberation by armed rebellion. Sri Aurobindo knew that the military organisations of the time were not so overwhelming as they might be and that guerilla warfare accompanied by general resistance and revolt might be effective. If this resistance and

revolt became general and persistent their political instincts might lead the British 'to arrive at an accommodation to save what they could of their empire or in an extremity prefer to grant independence rather than have it forcibly wrested from their hands.' Sri Aurobindo thought that his programme of preparation and action might occupy thirty years before fruition could become possible.

Jatindra came to Calcutta in 1902 and started work according to Sri Aurobindo's direction. There had been already several organisations of physical and mental culture and Pramathanath Mitra (generally known as P.Mitrer) was one of their leaders. He was a barrister and a man of progressive ideas, and was like other prominent leaders of the time, a disciple of Yogi Vijayakrishna Goswami. Sri Aurobindo had already spoken to Mitter and other leading men of the group about the secret society in Western India. They all took the oath of the society, administered by Sri Aurobindo, and agreed to carry out its object on the lines suggested by him. They now began to collaborate with Jatindra who confined himself mainly to the propagation of revolutionary ideas and to recruitment. Later he was joined by Barindra whom Sri Aurobindo had already initiated in Baroda into revolutionary work by placing in his hands an unsheathed sword and a copy of the Gita.

Barindra and Abinashchandra Bhattacharya, another trusted worker, started propaganda work in the city and set up new centres in its different parts. Districts began gradually to come under the influence of the new ideas propagated mainly through the efforts of Barindra. The centre of Midnapur was an important one. Here Satyendranath Basu was initiated according to Sri Aurobindo's direction. There were influential centres at Ranchi and Cuttack which were helped by many prominent men. The central organisation at Calcutta had supporters from among the leading citizens of the city including landlords and government officials. But it could not expand owing to temperamental difference between Jatindra and Barindra. Nevertheless, the seed was sown and the ground prepared for future work. Sister Nivedita was on the Council of the first Calcutta organisation. Its library of revolutionary literature was mostly her gift. Nivedita, be it noted, told Sri Aurobindo that she had been asked by Vivekananda to work for India's freedom. She was a collaborator of Sri Aurobindo in this work both in its early and later phases.

To an enquiry if Sister Nivedita had any connection with the revolutionary movement Sri Aurobindo emphatically said : 'She was one of the revolutionary leaders. She went about visiting places and contacting people. She was open, frank, talked openly of revolutionary plans to everybody. There was no concealing on her part. Whenever she used to speak on revolution, it was her very soul, her true personality that came out, her whole mind and life expressed themselves. Yoga apart, revolutionary work was the one that was intended for her. She was all fire. Her book

Kali the Mother is very inspiring but revolutionary, not non-violent. She went about among the Thakurs of Rajputana preaching revolution. Once she came to Baroda to persuade the Gaekwad to support the secret revolutionary party. She told him, If you have anything more to ask, you may ask Mr Ghose.' Asked about Nivedita's Yogic achievements, Sri Aurobindo said : T do not know. Whenever we met together, we talked about politics and revolution. But her eyes showed a power of concentration and revealed a capacity for going into trance. She had got something, 'realisation on the lines of Vedanta', said Sri Aurobindo on another occasion; 'she came to India with the idea of doing Yoga; but she took up politics as part of Vivekananda's work. Hers is the best book on Vivekananda. Vivekananda himself had ideas of political work and of revolution. Once he had a vision which corresponded to something like the Maniktala garden revolutionary centre.'¹ Vivekananda is said to have told a co-worker of Nivedita : '... I have travelled all over India for organising revolution, manufacturing guns etc...I have made friendship with Sir Hiram Maxim (maker of the Maxim gun). But India is in putrefaction. So I want a band of workers who would, as brahmacārin, educate the people and revitalise the country.'²

Nivedita's service of love for the uplift of India's womanhood, for the revival of Indian art, her brilliant exposition of India's social, cultural and national ideals, her original and illuminating interpretation of the historic evolution of India, her all-India revolutionary effort for our country's political independence—all this, in faithful execution of the great trust laid upon her by her Master, has woven her name into India's grateful memory. Her love of India, her sacrifice and her self-poise are an example in themselves for all time. In reply to a question as to how much is India indebted to Sister Nivedita, Sri Aurobindo said : 'Indebted ? There can be no measure of our indebtedness to Nivedita.' The constantly high pressure of her soul upon her body ended with its last vibration, in 1911, with the words, 'The ship is sinking, but I shall see the sunrise'.

To Abanindranath Nivedita 'was a flame of beauty and purity'. Rabindranath felt blest in having seen in her 'the might and greatness of the soul in human form, the lokamātā the mother of the people'. Her life-work was a literal fulfilment of her Master's benediction :

'The mother's heart, the hero's will,

The sweetness of the Southern breeze,

The sacred charm and strength that dwell

On Aryan Altars, flaming free;

All these be yours and many more

¹ "Talks with Sri Aurobindo" recorded by Nirodbaran, of which a Bengali version published in book form contains this talk dated 21.1.1939.

⁸ R. C. Majumdar : History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. I, pp. 463-64.

No ancient soul could dream before—

Be thou to India's future son

The mistress, servant, friend in one.'

The work of the Calcutta centre, says Sri Aurobindo, 'spread enormously among thousands of young men who were imbued with a spirit of revolution, and when later Yugantar (a Bengali revolutionary daily) appeared, the spirit became almost general in the youths of the country.' The British Government was not slow to see the writing on the wall. Their representative in India was determined to crush this spirit of revolt by adopting the policy of divide et impera—a stab in the heart of the race. On the plea of administrative efficiency, Lord Curzon proposed to partition Bengal. But the scheme, as has been very ably shown in a recent article,¹ was a subtle attack upon the growing solidarity of Bengali nationalism. The idea was first to break this by dividing the Bengali Hindus who constituted the vanguard of the national movement, into two sections, and second, by widening the gulf between Hindus and Muslims. Little did Lord Curzon realise then that this would bring new life to the nation and death to the empire he sought to perpetuate.

Sri Aurobindo, now in Baroda, wrote to his revolutionary group in Calcutta to say : 'Here is our great opportunity. Push on the anti-Partition agitation with utmost force. Lots of workers will emerge from it.' He sent also an article on 'No Compromise', thousands of copies of which were secretly printed by the workers and distributed to newspapers and prominent men of the city.

But before the Partition problem became acute Sri Aurobindo had been thinking of how to propagate and dynamise in the people a will to freedom. He wanted, as he said, 'first, to push a party and then a whole nation into intense and organised political activity. His idea was to capture the Congress and make it an instrument for revolutionary action instead of a centre of timid constitutional agitation which would only talk and pass resolutions and recommendations to the foreign government.' This struck his mind when in 1902 he witnessed the tame Moderate show at the Ahmadabad sessions of the Congress where he met Tilak and found how they both agreed on this point.

The 1905 sessions of the Congress at Benaras met under circumstances the most exciting in the political life of India. The Bengal Partition was then a settled fact. Maharashtra led by Tilak and the Panjab by Lajpat Rai stood by the Bengal Nationalists led by Sri Aurobindo for whom Swadeshi and boycott were the two immediate means, and Swaraj or absolute autonomy the goal, the only solution of the problem that Partition created for the country. Sri Aurobindo being yet in the Baroda Service did not attend the open sessions of the Congress but was present there advising

¹ P. C. Chakravarty in The Modern Review, April 1954.

the Nationalists who consulted him on every detail of their movement in the open sessions. The Benaras Congress by accepting Swadeshi and recognising boycott as a means of fighting political wrong marked some advance in the growth of Indian nationalism. But protests and paper resolutions could mean nothing to the monstrous evil of Partition which Sri Aurobindo regarded as 'the greatest blessing that had ever happened to India. No other measure', said he, 'could have stirred national feeling so deeply or roused it so suddenly from the lethargy of previous years.'

The awakening of the nation began at that fateful moment when Bengal uttered the mantra of India's dynamic nationalism, the spiritual truth of which was enshrined in 'Bande Mataram'. Bankim's was indeed a royal vision, royally vestured. By this mantra an awakened nation invoked the Mother, and the Mother poured her Sakti into her children, the Sakti that made them invincible in spirit. If Bankim was the seer of the mantra, Sri Aurobindo was its high-priest. He has written how this mantra in a single day converted a whole people to the religion of patriotism, giving it the strength never again to bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of the alien ruler.

1905. A memorable year in the history of Bengal, the year that marked the starting-point of this movement, the year when the nation, after writhing under the slow torture of a century and a half of foreign rule resolved to reject it for ever. An important historic event that strengthened this feeling among Indians, strengthened as well the cause of modern Asia's resurgence, was the spectacular victory of Japan over Russia, that coincided with the Partition of Bengal which developed into the seed-plot of revolutionary nationalism in the East.

The Partition took effect on 16 October 1905. The Government order prohibiting students from attending political meetings gave a fresh impetus to the boycott movement. Students openly defied the order. Hundreds left schools and colleges. The National Education movement started. The climax was reached when the Government banned the cry of 'Bande Mataram' which they found to be the most powerful of the forces behind the awakening. A glorious proof of this was the famous Barisal Conference held in April, 1906, which Sri Aurobindo attended. He along with other leaders defied the Government order which had declared the Conference illegal. Chittaranjan, a son of the Nationalist leader Monoranjan Guha-Thakurta, was hit hard on the head for uttering the same mantra; yet he went on shouting the mantra till from pain and bleeding he sank unconscious.

Sri Aurobindo felt the need of an organ through which to keep up and intensify the nation's will to freedom and to propagate revolutionary ideas on practical lines among the youths so that they might be in readiness for organised action in the future. 'At Barin's suggestion, he agreed to the starting of a paper (in Bengali), Yugantar, which was to preach open revolt

absolute denial of British rule and publish a series of articles on the conduct of guerilla warfare. Sri Aurobindo himself wrote some of the opening articles in the early numbers and he always exercised a general control.' The Yugantar made its first appearance in March 1906 as the mouthpiece of the revolutionary party. A tiny spark, it blew into a flame and burnt its way into the hearts of the people. Young and old, none could do without reading it, the first thing in the morning. In the words of Upendranath Bandyopadhyaya, a co-worker of Barindra, who was also with him in the Maniktala Garden and in the Andamans, 'the Yugantar sold like hot cakes. One thousand—five thousand—ten—twenty thousand copies every week—that was how the sale leapt up in the course of a year.'

In June 1906 Sri Aurobindo returned to Baroda. When on a visit to Chandod he went to a temple of Kali on the bank of the Narbada. There he saw and felt a presence in the image and became convinced of the truth behind image worship.

In July he came to Calcutta and put up with Subodhchandra Mullik who was called Raja by his grateful countrymen for his donation of a lakh of rupees for national education, the only stipulation of the gift being that Sri Aurobindo should be on the teaching staff of the college. Subodhchandra was Sri Aurobindo's friend and collaborator in political work, and a brother-in-law of Charuchandra Dutt mentioned before. This was, in fact, the occasion for Sri Aurobindo to leave the Baroda service and participate in the Swadeshi movement. He was appointed Principal of the National College started by the National Council of Education, out of which has evolved the Jadavpur University of today. Sri Aurobindo soon became the idol of his students. While leaving the college to devote himself exclusively to political work he addressed the students concluding with the words : 'There are times in a nation's history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer than service, when everything else is to be directed to that end. If you study, study for her sake; train yourself body and mind and soul for her service....Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice....'

The most important work that lay before him now was the propagation of the new nationalistic ideas and ideals all over India. Next was the coordination of the Nationalist elements into one party, and the revolutionary into another. The opportunity for the first came when Bipinchandra Pal wanted him to join his daily paper Bande Mataram which soon became the chief organ of the Nationalist Party, the evangel of New Nationalism. To the second item he could give a form some time before the Calcutta sessions of the Congress in 1906. Sri Aurobindo called a meeting of the Nationalists and, as he said, 'persuaded them to take public position as a party, proclaim Tilak as their leader and enter into a contest with

the Moderate leaders for the control of the Congress and of public opinion and action in the country. The first great public clash between the two parties took place in the sessions of the Congress at Calcutta.' When, therefore, the election of the President came up, the Nationalists chose Tilak. The Moderates, in order to avoid the election of an extremist, decided upon a non-party man—Dadabhai Naoroji. Dadabhai knew of the stand of the Nationalists, most powerfully reaffirmed by Sri Aurobindo in the columns of Bande Mataram in which for days on end he reiterated that nothing short of complete freedom, 'absolute autonomy free from British control', would satisfy the political aspirations of India.

In the Subjects Committee of the Congress Bipinchandra Pal, the spokesman of the Nationalist Party, opposed the official resolution that the boycott should be recognised as legitimate only in Bengal. He proposed that in order to be effective the boycott should be adopted by other provinces. The President disallowed Pal's amendment. As a protest Tilak, Pal, Sri Aurobindo, Motilal Ghosh, Khaparde and Aswinikumar Dutta left the Subjects Committee. They decided that the only thing they should do now was to strengthen their Party. This might be taken as a prelude to the Surat imbroglio.

Sri Aurobindo started now to define the aims and methods of the New Party, and of the new movement vis-à-vis the country's sad plight under alien rule. Bengal, sought to be smothered, had found her mantra : now she received her breath and voice—the voice that rang from corner to corner of the sub-continent, the breath that made her smouldering fire blaze up. Indeed, the whole country leapt into a new life, a new enthusiasm as the columns of the Bande Mataram radiated from day to day the hope and promise of a new dawn after centuries of bleak despair and thickening gloom.

The extracts from the Bande Mataram, given here, may offer an insight into the vision and outlook of Sri Aurobindo in those days and afterwards : 'The new movement is not primarily a protest against bad government, —it is a protest against the continuance of British control... it is bom of a conviction that the time has come when India can, should and will become a great, free and united nation.' 'We advocate the struggle for Swaraj, first because Liberty is in itself a necessity of national life; secondly, because Liberty is the first indispensable condition of national development; thirdly because in the next great stage of human progress it is not a material but a spiritual, moral and psychical advance that has to be made and for this a free Asia and in Asia a free India must take the lead, and Liberty is therefore worth striving for for the world's sake. India must have Swaraj in order to live; she must have Swaraj in order to live well and happily; she must have Swaraj in order to five for the world, not as a slave for the material and political benefit of a single purse-proud and selfish nation, but as a free people for the spiritual and intellectual benefit of the

human race.' India is the guru of the nations, the physician of the human soul in its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to new-mould the life of the world and restore the peace of the human spirit. But Swaraj is the necessary condition of her work and before she can do the work_3<she must fulfil the condition.'

This aim became the aim of the New Party, and passive resistance was one of the means to this end. The theory and practice of passive resistance, elaborated in a sequence by Sri Aurobindo, was published in the Bande Mataram in April 1907. Defining its aim he wrote : 'Just as "No representation, no taxation" was the watchword of the American constitutional agitation in the eighteenth century, so "No control, no co-operation" should be the watchword of our lawful agitation—for constitution we have none—in the twentieth. We sum up this refusal of co-operation in the convenient word "Boycott", refusal of co-operation in the industrial exploitation of our country, in education, in government, in judicial administration, in the details of official intercourse.'

Sri Aurobindo also suggested 'a no-tax campaign' as a sequel to the passive resistance movement and a setting up of a popular authoriy, a kind of parallel government of the people. 'We have to establish a popular authority which will exist side by side and in rivalry with a despotic foreign bureaucracy.... This popular authority will have to dispute every part of our national life and activity, one by one, step by step, with the intruding force to the extreme point of entire emancipation from alien control.'

Sri Aurobindo concluded the series with these words : 'Vedantism accepts no distintion of true or false religions, but considers only what will lead more or less surely, more or less quickly to mokṣa, spiritual emancipation and the realisation of the Divinity within. Our attitude is a political Vedantism. India, free, one and indivisible, is the divine realisation to which we move,—emancipation our aim; to that end each nation must practise the political creed which is the most suited to its temperament and circumstances; for that is the best for it which leads most surely and completely to national liberty and national self-realisation. But whatever leads only to continued subjection must be spewed out as mere vileness and impurity. Passive resistance may be the final method of salvation in our case or it may be only the preparation for the final sādhanā. In either case, the sooner we put it into full and perfect practice, the nearer we shall be to national liberty.' 15 August 1947 bears witness to the truth of this foresight.

The great Tilak, a far-seeing leader of the time and a co-worker of Sri Aurobindo, read into his writings deeper bearings than the immediate and the obvious. Referring to the above series on passive resistance he wrote in his paper Mahratta : 'Who knows what is but sedition today may be divine truth tomorrow ? Mr. Aurobindo is a sweet soul.'

While such ideas, so powerfully expressed, acted on the mind and heart of the nation, they were too much for the Government to stand. But the articles were so skillfully written that they could not be brought under penal clauses. In the absence of direct evidence against Sri Aurobindo the Government arrested him on 16 August 1907 on a charge of sedition based on translated versions of the Yugantar articles published in the Bande Mataram, the prosecution citing Bipinchandra Pal as the principal witness. The charge failed as it could not be proved that Sri Aurobindo was the editor of the paper. This was mainly due to the refusal of Bipinchandra, the only person in the know, to give evidence, and the penalty he paid was six months' imprisonment. On this occasion, the Bande Mataram wrote : ^'A great orator and writer, this spokesman and prophet of Nationalism has risen ten times as high as he was before in the estimation of his country.... Nationalism has already become the stronger for his self-immolation.' Later, on another occasion Sri Aurobindo said : 'Bipinchandra was perhaps the best and the most original political thinker in the country, an excellent writer and magnificent orator,' 'one of mightiest prophets of Indian Nationalism'.

Explaining the Nationalist programme Bipinchandra once said : 'Our programme is that we shall so work in the country, so combine the resources of the people, so organise the forces of the nation, so develop the instinct of freedom in the community, that by these means we shall—shall in the imperative—compel the submission to our will of any power that may set itself against us.' Bipinchandra was a devout spiritual seeker. While in jail he had a spiritual experience in which he saw God in every man. One of his remarkable writings was his original and illuminating exposition of Bengal Vaishnavism in which he sensed the seed of 'Universal Divine Humanity.' Later Bipinchandra discovered the world significance of Indian Nationalism. 'Blessed is the perfected life of the individual. Blessed is the larger and diviner life of the nation wherein the individual finds his highest fulfilment; blessed, thrice blessed, is that Universal Life of Humanity wherein is the fulfilment of all national life and aspirations.'

There can be no better assessment of Sri Aurobindo's work for his country through the Bande Mataram than that by his contemporaries. But before quoting them let its own editorial notes speak : 'It (Bande Mataram) claims that it has given expression to the will of the people and sketched their ideals and aspirations with the greatest amount of fidelity. It is for this reason that it has received a splendid reception in almost all the provinces of India. The amount of support it has got in the first year of its existence surpasses all previous records in Indian journalism.' Here are the words of Bipinchandra : 'This paper at once secured for itself a recognised position in Indian journalism. The hand of the master (Sri Aurobindo) was in it, from the very beginning____ From a tutor of a few youths he thus became the teacher of the whole nation... .His only care is for his coun-

try—the Mother as he always calls her. His only recognised obligations are to her. Nationalism—at the best a concern of the intellect with some, at the lowest a political cry and aspiration with others—is with Aravinda a supreme passion of his soul. Few, indeed, have grasped the full force and meaning of the Nationalist ideal as Aravinda has done.' K. N. Katju said : 'Vande Mataram was a wonder to the people of that time. In fact, it worked like a miracle____ Sri Aurobindo has been to us like a star of freedom.' S.K.Ratcliffe, a British journalist, wrote : 'We know Aurobindo Ghose only as a revolutionary nationalist and editor of a flaming newspaper which struck a ringing new note in Indian daily journalism____ It was the most effective voice of what we then called nationalist extremism.' But the most glowing tribute of all came from Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya, a great scholar, an intrepid fighter for India's freedom and a co-worker of Sri Aurobindo in the field of revolutionary journalism. He hailed Sri Aurobindo's writings in the Bande Mataram as a 'mantric power'.. He wrote : 'Our Aurobindo is a rare phenomenon in the world. In him resides the sattwic divine beauty, snow-clad, resplendent. Great and vast. Vast in the vastness of his heart. Great in the glory of his own self, his swadharma as a Hindu. A man so pure and complete—a fire-charged thunder, yet tender and delicate as the lotus-leaf. A man rich in knowledge, self-lost in meditation; you can nowhere find his like in the three worlds. When such a one worships the Mother, Swaraj is now no far-off event.'

On Sri Aurobindo's arrest the whole country from end to end expressed sympathy appreciating in glowing terms his 'invaluable service to the country's cause.' Here are the opening lines from the famous poem of the greatest of poets marking the occasion :

'Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee !

O friend, my country's friend, O voice incarnate, free,

Of India's soul !'

With all eyes of the country now upon Sri Aurobindo all its problems too centred round him as its acknowledged leader. The Midnapur District Conference was to meet about the middle of December 1907, and the Indian National Congress at Surat in the last week. Both of these claimed his immediate attention.

Some time before December 1907, Henry W. Nevinson, an English M.P., who was on a study-tour in India, had an interview with Sri Aurobindo in Calcutta. Concluding his impressions in his book The New Spirit in India, he said : 'Grave with intensity, careless of fate or opinion, and one of the most silent of men I have known, Arabindo was of the stuff that dreamers are made of, but dreamers who act their dreams, indifferent to the means.' J. Ramsay MacDonald, then the famous Labour Party

leader, also met Sri Aurobindo. To his question 'What is your conception of the end which is being worked by our Indian administration ?' Sri Aurobindo replied, 'A free and independent India.'

The Calcutta sessions of the Congress showed that the Moderate influence was yet strong in it. So, to fight Moderatism was the immediate task before the Nationalists. The Midnapur Conference was attended by both the parties. The Moderates were led by Surendranath Banerji, the Nationalists by Sri Aurobindo. When their legitimate proposals were 'contemptuously turned down' the Nationalists left the Conference in a body regarding it as 'not a national conference but a sort of fortress against the Nationalists, erected by the local Moderate leaders under the protection of Executive officials and police.' On the third day the Nationalists held an open-air conference attended by three thousand people, in which they explained their reasons for secession, and in which the original Nationalist resolutions including the one on Swaraj, the first Swaraj resolution, were passed unanimously. It was certainly a victory, a hard-won victory for the resurgent soul of India whose 'voice incarnate' and leading spirit was Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo now called upon his countrymen to muster strong at Surat and 'swell the tide of national life which has just begun to flow.' In Surat also, wrote Sri Aurobindo, the Moderates would not give any quarter to the Nationalists. Their President refused to give permission to Tilak to speak but Tilak insisted on his rights and began to read his resolution and speak. Then was there a tremendous uproar. And when some Gujarati volunteers tried to hurl chairs at him, others from Maharashtra became furious; Sri Aurobindo then gave the order to break the Congress. Here are his own words: 'History very seldom records the things that were decisive but took place behind the veil; it records the show in front of the curtain. Very few people know that it was I (without consulting Tilak) who gave the order that led to the breaking of the Congress and was responsible for the refusal to join the new-fangled Moderate Convention which were the two decisive happenings at Surat. Even my action in giving the movement in Bengal its militant turn or founding the revolutionary movement is very little known.'

Sri Aurobindo was all along in the pandal when the mêé was on. He stood there calm and unperturbed, surrounded by some young revolutionary workers of Midnapur including Satyendra and Barindra, who all were looking with wonder at his absolutely unruffled face, though they knew well that they were standing by an extraordinary soul, a master-spirit who alone could take upon himself the responsibility of breaking up the Moderate Congress.

Thus did Surat signalise on the one hand the end of Moderatism in Indian politics and, on the other, a further accentuation of the forward programme of the New Party, which the country had already accepted

with enthusiasm as an effective plan of action.

As regards Sri Aurobindo's inner life about this time nothing is known except that, as stated by one of his constant companions, 'he was all the time in a state of meditation'. In January 1907, in a letter to his wife he wrote :'.. .henceforth I am no longer to be guided by my own will. I shall have to go where God will lead me, to do what God will have me do, as a puppet in His hands.' While at Surat, he felt the need of some help in his spiritual pursuits. And this he received from Vishnu Bhaskar Lele at Baroda where he came after the Surat Congress. The meditation that he did according to Lele's instructions gave him in three days the realisation of 'the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman'. This was his first major spiritual realisation; the second one, in Alipur Jail, was that of 'the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine in all beings and in all that is'.

Sri Aurobindo's mind now was absolutely stilled, completely empty, without any thought, any idea. He asked Lele what to do at a Bombay meeting he was invited to address. Lele told him to make namaskār to the audience and wait and speech would come to him from some other source than the mind. So in fact the speech came, and ever since all speech, writing, thought and outward activity so came to him from above the brain-mind. And what a speech it was ! In every sense, a revelation of the unique philosophy of Nationalism which he called 'a religion that has come to India from God....Nationalism is immortal; Nationalism cannot die, because it is no human being, it is God who is working in Bengal.'

On his return to Calcutta Sri Aurobindo's began affirming in the columns of the Bande Mataram the spiritual significance of the national movement led by the New Party. He wrote : 'Nationalism is an Avatar....It is a divinely-appointed Shakti and must do its God-given work before it returns to the bosom of Universal Energy from which it came.' Here is another prophetic declaration of his: 'The movement of which the first outbreak was political will end in a spiritual consummation.' He set forth the mission of Indian Nationalism: 'To recover Indian thought, Indian character, Indian perceptions, Indian energy, Indian greatness, and to solve the problems that perplex the world in an Indian spirit and from the Indian standpoint, this, in our view, is the mission of Indian Nationalism.'

In his speeches of this time Sri Aurobindo laid down the spiritual basis of the new movement. Happily, most of its leaders were ardent devotees of God, disciples of Sri Ramakrishna or of Yogi Vijayakrishna Goswami, or of other Gurus of the time. Among those who had imbibed such influence were, as mentioned by Sri Aurobindo, Bipinchandra Pal, Aswinikumar Datta, Monoranjan Guha-Thakurta, Pramathanath Mitra, Satischandra Mukhopadhyaya, all co-workers of Sri Aurobindo. It is by their selfless work and by their inspiring teachings that national service was

exalted into a dharma, the one duty assigned to every Indian.

Besides their political work, everyone of the leaders did something notable in social, cultural and educational spheres. Satischandra's contribution was more cultural and educational than political. Through his journal The Dawn he did remarkable work in awakening the people to their ancient heritage. It contained authentic expositions of the glorious past of India, and suggestions for the revival of the ancient spirit in new and fresh forms. His "Dawn Society" moulded hundreds of youths who later served their country in various ways. The Society has been rightly called the first phase of the National Education movement. A man of exemplary character, of large vision and high idealism, Satischandra furthered the cause of his country's uplift in a devoted manner.

Besides giving a sharp revolutionary turn to journalism and politics, Sri Aurobindo did secret work for an armed insurrection. The Partition, and the violent repression started at Barisal and pursued with greater and greater violence elsewhere, widened the field of recruitment. The seed of revolution sown in 1902, hitherto sprouting under difficult conditions, was now unwittingly fostered by Government itself! The Barisal atrocities served to swell the number of new recruits from many quarters. Some of them gave to Sri Aurobindo himself the pledge of secret work and self-dedication. It was time to organise the young men into a centre and Barindra, at the instance of Sri Aurobindo, did so in the Maniktala garden. The daily programme there included meditation, study of revolutionary literature and regular reading of the Gita. Most of the young men of this group were heroic souls of an unprecendented courage, blessed by their heaven-born guide, philosopher and friend. One of them was Nolini Kanta Gupta, now Secretary, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and an authentic exponent of Sri Aurobindo, from whom the writer has had information about this revolutionary centre. It was indeed a glorious hour in India's history when these dedicated children of the Mother were preparing themselves in that garden for the sacred work of their country's freedom. To make bombs for murder of officials was not their aim. It was only to rouse the kshatriya spirit whose disappearance, said Sri Aurobindo, was the cause of India's downfall. The plan was to organise a countrywide challenge to authority, to destroy the enemy of the national movement. 'The New Nationalism,' wrote Sri Aurobindo, 'is a call for the men of faith, men who dare and do impossibilities, the men of extremes, the prophets, martyrs, the crusaders and rebels, the desperate adventurers and reckless doers, the kshatriyas, the samurai, the initiators of revolutions. It is the right of the new India.'

As Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, Kingsford was then inflicting brutal punishments on political workers, young and old. The Maniktala revolutionaries decided to do away with this devil of a man. But the two young men sent for the job hit two innocents at Muzuffarpur where Kings-

ford was transferred. This as well as several other attempts roused the Government to drastic action which meant widespread searches and arrests started within a couple of days of the above incident. Sri Aurobindo and about forty workers were arrested on 2 May 1908.

Now began that memorable and long-drawn-out political trial. A notable episode during their detention in jail as undertrials was the shooting in jail of the approver Narendra Goswami by Satyendra Basu and Kanailal Dutta—two of the greatest martyrs in the cause of India's freedom. A British paper compared them with Harmodius and Aristogeiton of Greek fame.

A remarkable feature of this sensational trial of Sri Aurobindo was his magnificent defence by Chittaranjan Das, poet and patriot and his friend and collaborator. In his peroration he made a fervent appeal to the Judge and the Assessors: 'My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this court but before the bar of the High Court of History.'

Sri Aurobindo's life in jail was for him 'Ashram life'. 'Long and hard had I striven,' he wrote, 'to have a direct vision of Narayana in the heart; high hopes had I cherished to have the Lord of the universe, the Purushottama, as friend and master. But a thousand and one pulls of the world, bonds of various activities, and the massed obscurities of ignorance stood in the way. At length the God of all grace and bliss put away those obstacles with a single wave of his hand and cleared the way, showed me the Yogashram and himself stayed with me in the small cell of sadhana, as Friend and Guru.... The one result of the wrath of the British Government was my attainment of God.'¹

Sri Aurobindo devoted his time in jail to the study of the Gita and the Upanishads, and to the practice of the Yoga of the Gita which brought about certain changes in his body. One such noticed by his fellow undertrials was that his hair was shining continually though no oil was allowed in jail. He had besides attained mastery over bodily functions. Another notable experience of Sri Aurobindo in jail, as said at length in Chapter XIV, was that he heard for a fortnight the voice of Vivekananda giving him 'a clue in the direction of the Supermind'. Sri Aurobindo had yet another direct experience of Vivekananda's presence when he was practising Hathayoga. Might it be that there was an inner affinity between these two divine souls?

Sri Aurobindo's companions in jail, undertrials like him, were absolutely

' Sri Aurobindo : Kara-Kahini (Bengali).

unconcerned about their future—death on the gallows or transportation for life. They passed their days in Yoga and study, in mirth and merriment. One day a European warder said to his fellow-warder, 'Look here the man's going to be hanged, and he laughs.' The companion, an Irishman, replied, 'Yes, I know; they all laugh at death.' Here are Sri Aurobindo's words on them: '...let me speak about the boys,—my co-accused, my companions in danger. From their bearing in court I could well perceive that a new age had dawned over Bengal, children of a new mould were on the lap of the Mother....A glance at these boys gave one the impression as if men of different culture, high-souled, indomitable heroes of another epoch, had now returned to India. That frank, fearless look, those manly accents, that carefree cheerful laughter, the same force-fulness of spirit, unshaken even in such grave danger, the same light heart, the absence of sadness, of worry or of anguish were the marks not of the Indians sunk in ignorance and inertia but of a new age, a new race, a new stream of activity. If they were murderers, one must say that the monster's shade of murder had not fallen over their nature; of cruelty, fanaticism, brutality there was no trace in them.'

Almost in the same vein Sri Aurobindo spoke of another great martyr to India's freedom, Jatindranath Mukhopadhyaya. 'He was one of my most trusted lieutenants, a wonderful man who would belong to the front rank of humanity; such beauty and strength combined into one I have not seen. His stature was like that of a warrior.' In 1915 Jatindra died fighting single-handed, to the last of his bullets, a pitched battle on a hill-top at Balasore (Orissa) with a large armed Police force. Another heroic soul was Kanailal Datta who, when sentenced to capital punishment for shooting to death his country's traitor, began to grow in weight, his ever-bright face looked brighter, his whole figure seemed a robe of celestial light. Quite to the surprise of all, he was found fast asleep even on the very morning of his execution. Even English officials expressed their spontaneous homage to his heroic soul as well as to Jatindra's. These true children of the Mother of Light that India is, in whose vision they lived, moved and had their being, will for ever shine in letters of gold in the history of India's struggle for freedom, in the history as well of her resurgence in modern times.

On 5 May 1909, just after one year, Sri Aurobindo came out of jail. He made his first public utterance at Uttarpara, in which he mentioned his spiritual realisations and experiences in jail, his vision of Sri Krishna everywhere. Here are his own words : T looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for

a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the croarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.'

Some of the writer's relations who attended the meeting felt an exalting influence in the atmosphere, a strange stirring in their soul as they heard the divine names of Narayana, Vasudeva, Sri Krishna, fall from Sri Aurobindo's lips in clear ringing notes.

It was with a definite Command from God that Sri Aurobindo came out of jail. The command was to work for the all-round uplift of the nation both in the inner and outer spheres of life. But conditions were not favourable. There was discouragement and depression. Yet he was determined to resume and continue the struggle. He began addressing public meetings both in Calcutta and the districts. He started two weeklies, the Karmayogin in English, and Dharma in Bengali, which soon had a fairly good circulation. In these journals and in his speeches he reinterpreted the New Nationalism from the larger vision of India's spiritual ideal divinely revealed to him in jail. In the Bengal Provincial Conference at Hooghly he showed his bold statesmanship in the way he tackled the problem of bringing about a rapprochement between the Moderate and the Nationalist sections in the political life of Bengal. He knew—and none better—that a united Congress would be the most powerful front the country could present to the alien bureaucracy. When the Moderates would not accept any item of the Nationalist programme, he gave way and agreed only to their main point of securing some definite step in relation to the holding of a united Congress.

Speaking about the position of the Nationalist Party at this time Sri Aurobindo wrote : 'The Nationalist Party is in practical possession of the heart and mind of Bengal. It is strongly supported in other parts of India and controls Maharashtra. It is growing in strength, energy and wisdom. It surely inherits the future. Under such circumstances, it can afford to wait.'

During this period of his public activities Sri Aurobindo reaffirmed the principal items of his political programme, which, by the way, formed part of later movements for liberation. He showed that the endeavours of his party were for a complete regeneration of the country and that freedom was its indispensable basis. Realising at every step that there was a spiritual force at work, that, as he said, 'a Power from above came down to uplift the nation', that everything was being shaped by a divine Will, that India's awakening was a divine intention, he called upon his countrymen to be conscious of that Will and to work for the country

as instruments of the Divine. To be able to do so, they must have a clear grasp of the deep significance of India's culture and history and develop as well some inner power. The one thing needful in that hour of India's rebirth, he insisted, was a recovery of her spiritual strength. If India was to be true to herself and rise to the greatness assigned to her, she must repossess her inborn spirituality and make that the foundation and motive power of all her endeavour, for, he said, 'the outer result can only endure if it is founded on inner realities.'

That repossession, according to him, was 'the path by which we shall arrive at a higher national character and evolution.' He asserted : This God's Will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature.... For iris in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and she waits for worship that she may give strength.' 'We believe that it is to make Yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the Yoga she will get strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness, by the Yoga she will keep strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only a shadow and reflex.'

At that time the talk of some Reforms was in the air. Sri Aurobindo exposed their utter hollowness. He declared that they meant no real transfer of power to India, and that so long as there was no real control, there would be no cooperation. This he emphasised in his 'An Open Letter to My Countrymen' published in Karmayogin of 31 July 1909. It contained a reaffirmation of his Nationalist political programme suited to the then existing conditions of the country, which he himself summed up as follows :

1. Persistence with a strict regard to law in a peaceful policy of self-help and passive resistance.

2. The regulation of our attitude towards the Government by the principle of 'No control, no cooperation'.

3. A rapprochement with the Moderate party wherever possible and the reconstitution of a united Congress.

4. The regulation of the Boycott Movement so as to make both the political and the economic boycott effective.

5. The organisation of the Provinces if not of the whole country according to our original programme.

The Government read into this and other utterances and activities of Sri Aurobindo a meaning which justified the continuance of their repressive policy. They now decided to get rid of Sri Aurobindo by deporting

him. Sister Nivedita suggested that he should now leave British India-and work from outside. Sri Aurobindo contented himself with publishing in the Karmayogin a signed article in which he spoke of the projected deportation and left to the country what he called his last will and testament.

'Sometime after this', wrote Sri Aurobindo, 'one night information was brought to him of the Government's intention to search the office and arrest him. While considering what should be his attitude, he received a sudden command from above to go to Chanderanagore, then in French India. He obeyed the command at once, for it was now his rule to move only as he was moved by the divine guidance and never to resist and depart from it; he did not stay to consult with anyone but in ten minutes was at the river ghat and in a boat in the Ganges; in a few hours he was at Chanderanagore where he went into secret residence....At Chanderanagore he plunged entirely into solitary meditation and ceased all other activity. Then there came to him a call to proceed to Pondicherry. A boat manned by some young revolutionaries of Uttarpara took him to Calcutta; there he boarded the Dupleix and reached Pondicherry on 4 April 1910.'

Here closes one phase of his career. But before the next is taken up for study it may be well to make a rapid review of his work for India's freedom. Enumerating his services as a political thinker, a recent publication¹ says that his first great service was that 'he could divine the greatest political need of the country and defined it in the shining ideal of Swaraj. The second great service of his political genius was the clear and logical formulation of a new revolutionary line of action known as "passive resistance". The third great service of the master-mind was the powerful advocacy of a new conception of the country which was not to him a mere "stretch of earth or a mass of individuals", but the Divine Mother herself. In his intuitive vision he realised "the motherhood of God in the country" and, moved by that divine ecstasy, he called upon his countrymen to see the same "vision of the Mother." With him patriotism was the first impulse and nationalism the supreme religion.' As regards his political action, Sri Aurobindo's immediate aim was, as he himself said, 'to establish and generalise the idea of independence in the mind of the Indian people.' 'The lava-like flood of the Swadeshi movement fertilised the soil and did for the country in six years the work of six ordinary decades; it fixed the goal of freedom in the mind of the people.' The brief spell of Sri I Aurobindo's political activity, by its own intrinsic force, was enough 'to ! change the whole face of Indian politics and the whole spirit of Indian , people to make independence its aim and non-co-operation and resistance its method, and even an imperfect application of this policy heightening into sporadic periods of revolt has been sufficient to bring about the victory. The course of subsequent events followed largely the line of Sri Aurobindo's

¹ Haridas Mukherji and Uma Mukherji : Sri Aurobindo's Political Thought.

ideas. The Congress was finally captured by the Nationalist party, declared independence its aim, organised itself for action,...and secured from Britain acceptance of independence for India....But the greatest thing done in those years was the creation of a new spirit in the country. In the enthusiasm that swept surging everywhere with the cry Bande Mataram ringing on all sides, men felt it glorious to be alive and dare and act together and hope; the old apathy and timidity was broken and a force created which nothing could destroy and which rose again and again in wave after wave till it carried India to the beginning of a complete victory.'

In explaining to a disciple why he left politics Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1932 : 'I did not leave politics because I felt I could do nothing more there; such an idea was very far from me. I came away because I got a distinct Adesh in the matter and because I did not want anything to interfere with my Yoga. I have severed connection entirely with politics, but before I did so I knew from within that the work I had begun there was destined to be carried forward, on lines I had foreseen, by others, and that the ultimate triumph of the movement I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence. There was not the least motive of despair or sense of futility behind my withdrawal. For the rest, I have never known any will of mine for one major event in the conduct of world affairs to fail in the end, although, it may take a long time for the world-forces to fulfil it.'

In 1918 when a young Gujerati¹ saw Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and asked for permission to do revolutionary work Sri Aurobindo's reply to him was that such work was no longer necessary. The young man wondering how otherwise freedom would come, Sri Aurobindo's categorical words were: T give you the assurance that India will be free', firmly adding after a while, 'you can take it from me, the freedom of India is as certain as the rising of the sun tomorrow. The decree has already gone forth. It may not be long in coming.' In 1920 Sri Aurobindo repeated this to another disciple² to whom he said that when he received from God His assurance of India's freedom and His command to take up Yoga, he changed his course.

But long before all this, in April 1908, Sri Aurobindo expressed in the Bande Mataram his perception : 'England's mission in India is over and it is time for her to recognise the limit of the lease given to her....She will stay as long as the destinies of India need her and not a day longer, for it is not by her own strength that she came or is still here, and it is not by her own strength that she can remain. The resurgence of India is begun, it will accomplish itself with her help, if she will, without it if she does not, against it if she opposes.'

¹ A. B. Purani, now a member of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry from whom the writer received this information.

² S. Doraiswamy Iyer, from whom the writer received this information.

Similar feelings were expressed by Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya, that flaming revolutionary and co-worker of Sri Aurobindo. He edited a weekly called Sandhya, 'Twilight', famous for its fiery ideas, in which he condemned the foreign rule in India as the worst of evils to be removed forthwith. In course of an article for which he was prosecuted and sentenced, he wrote: 'We have heard the voice telling us that the period of India's suffering is about to close, that the day of her deliverance is at hand.' Brahmabandhab refused to recognise the British Court and died a martyr's death in hospital before undergoing the sentence.

Sri Aurobindo's words and actions and the influence they exercised on the people of India bespeak the unique position he held in the leadership of the country in that critical period of her history. There were many powerful men who led the movement of liberation, but Sri Aurobindo was its life and soul. The weight of his presence, naturally silent but dynamic, his words, his actions were always of incalculable value. The distress, the agony, the indignity of India bleeding in bondage broke forth through his voice and pen and action and generated a fire that shall burn on till the India of his vision becomes a living reality.

'Aurobindo shone for years as the brightest star on the Indian firmament. His association with the National Education movement at its inception lent dignity and charm to the cause... .Aurobindo's genius shot up like a meteor. He was on the high skies only for a time. He flooded the land from Cape to Mount with the effulgence of his light.¹

'The nationalism of Aurobindo Ghose was a burning religious emotion, the voice of God in man, the invincible demand on the part of the great Indian spiritual culture for expression through the reawakened soul to the world.'²

Says the greatest historian of modern India: 'Above all, the Extremist Party had an accession of immense strength when it was joined by Arabinda Ghose who proved to be a host in himself. Indeed the entry of this new personality in the Congress arena may be regarded as a major event in Indian politics. Arabinda's articles in the Bande Mataram put the Extremist Party on a high pedestal all over India. He expounded the high philosophy and national spirit which animated the Party, and also laid down its programme of action. But far more valuable to the Extremist Party than even his discourses was his striking personality. Fired with religious fervour he preached nationalism as a religion.. .and he, the prophet of this new religion, infused, by his precept and example, courage and strength into everyone that came in touch with him. His emergence in Indian politics was as sudden as it was unexpected. Of him it may be truly said that he awoke one morning and found himself famous, or that he came, he saw, he conquered. He rose like a meteor and vanished like it from the political atmosphere. But unlike the meteor the dazzling light he

¹ B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya : History of Indian National Congress, Vol. I, p.70.

² M. A. Buch : Rise and Growth of Indian Militant Nationalism, pp. 187-188.

shed on Indian politics did not vanish with him. The torch which he lighted continued to illumine Indian politics till it passed into the hands of worthy successors who led it to its destined goal.'¹

Yet another evidence of Indian minds opening to the fuller significance of Sri Aurobindo's work for India's freedom: 'Sri Aurobindo thus emerges as a political thinker of great importance in modern Indian political thought. He was largely responsible for imparting an esoteric and spiritual significance to the national movement, for placing before it the inspiring ideal of complete independence, for invigorating the spirit of India by a reassessment of the true bases of her great cultural heritage, for expounding a practical system whereby the goal of independence could be achieved, and for placing the whole movement in the broader context of internationalism and the ideal of human unity. For a person to have done this in the short period of hardly five years of active political life is an achievement of no mean importance. Sri Aurobindo must be counted among the great builders of modern India, as he contributed nobly towards laying the foundations for the edifice of national freedom which Mahatma Gandhi and others later reared. Even after 1910 his interest in Indian freedom remained undiminished, and he lived to see the fruition of his work when India finally achieved Independence on his seventyfifth birthday, the fifteenth of August, 1947.²

In his Foreword to the book which concludes with the above-quoted words, Jawaharlal Nehru affirms in his inimitable way the singular importance of Sri Aurobindo's pioneering work for India's liberation.

¹ R. C. Majumdar : History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. II, pp. 203-4.

² Karan Singh: Prophet of Indian Nationalism, A Study of the Political Thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, 1893-1910, p. 154.