13 PASSIVE RESISTANCE AND BOYCOTT BEFORE proceeding to analyse Sri Aurobindo's views on passive resistance and boycott, it will be helpful to place the matter in its historical perspective and take a brief look at the political developments that led to the birth and growth of this great movement of national protest against British rule. The boycott movement that swept Bengal and had its repercussions in other parts of India can directly be traced to the ill-fated partition of the Province in 1905 by Lord Curzon, who forced the measure down the throat of the Bengalis despite their widespread and vociferous opposition. It is not necessary here to go i

-20_Appendix-Sri Aurobindo^s Independence Day Message.htm APPENDIX THE FIFTEENTH OF AUGUST, 1947 AUGUST 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks fur her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life. the

9 HIS POLITICAL GOAL SRI AUROBINDO'S political goal for India was nothing less than complete freedom from foreign domination. He poured scorn and contempt upon the limited demands of the Moderates for expansion of the Legislative bodies, progressive Indianization of the Indian Civil Service, tariff protection for Indian industries and so on. In his view these minor administrative and economic reforms were utterly worthless without national freedom. The question can now be posed as to why Sri Aurobindo desired nothing less than absolute freedom for his country, at a time when the idea appeared utterly impractical and impossible of achievement.¹ From a st

12 DIRECT REVOLUTIONARY ACTION : TERRORISM AND ARMED REVOLT THE choice by a subject nation of the means it will use for vindicating its liberty,' writes Sri Aurobindo, 'is best determined by the circumstances of its servitude'. One of the courses... 'open to an oppressed nation is that of armed revolt. ... This is the old time-honoured method which the oppressed or enslaved have always adopted by preference in the past and will adopt in the future if they see any chance, of success; for it is the readiest and swiftest, the most thorough in its results, and demands the least powers of endurance and suffering and the smallest and briefest sacrifices

2 THE INDIAN RENAISSANCE -MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REFORM THE reaction to a many-sided impact is also bound to be rich and varied, particularly when the receiving civilization is one of the most ancient and profound in the history of Mankind. The British impact on India led ultimately to an amazing recovery and resurgence among the conquered. It is extremely difficult in a short span even to begin to do justice to this historical phenomenon, and this chapter is confined to outlining a few broad features to indicate the nature of die Indian revival which led to the development of modern Indian nationalism in which Sri Aurobindo was de

INTRODUCTION THIS work deals with the political thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, covering the period from 1893—when he returned to India at the age of 21 after fourteen years in England—to 1910 when he abruptly left Calcutta for Chandemagore and later proceeded to Pondicherry. It thus covers eighteen years, which include a twelve-year preparatory phase during which he lived mainly in Baroda and a brief, though meteoric, career of active politics from 1905 to 1910. The formation in 1885 of the Indian National Congress was an important landmark in the history of modern India. For several years after, its birth it was dominated by the so- called 'Moderate1 or 'Liberal' lead

THE BRITISH IMPACT IN 1498 Vasco da Gama and his tiny fleet comprising three small vessels and a hundred and sixty men landed on Indian territory and cast anchor at Calicut, thus marking the beginning of a new epoch in the long and varied history of India. At the time the event passed almost unnoticed in the country, and indeed for many decades the Europeans were no more than unusually adventurous traders. The whole glory of the Moghul Empire in India lay yet in the future, and no one then could have dreamed that Vasco da Gama's landing was the forerunner of European domination over the entire Asian continent, based firmly upon their maritime supremacy. Yet this was in fact

PART V ASSESSMENT OF SRI AUROBINDO AS A POLITICAL THINKER ASSESSMENT OF SRI AUROBINDO AS A POLITICAL THINKER HAVING surveyed the political thinking of Sri Aurobindo during the period beginning with his return from England in 1898 and ending with his departure for Chandernagore in 1910, we may now attempt a broad assessment of his contribution to modem Indian political thought This can conveniently be done under four headings:— 1. His concept of spiritual nationalism and the divinity of Motherland, which imparted an esoteric significance to the movement for India's liberation; 2. His exposition of the ideal of complet

4 RETURN TO INDIA IN 1893 THE BARODA PERIOD IN 1893, after staying abroad for over fourteen years, Sri Aurobindo returned to India and proceeded to Baroda to take up service in that State. He continued in service there for over thirteen years right up to 1907, though in the later years he often took long leaves of absence to attend to nationalistic activity. Finally the pressure of national events forced him to resign and jump into the very midst of active politics in Bengal, which was in turmoil as the result of Lord Curzon's partition of that Province in 1905. The period 1893-1905 can thus be considered a preparatory phase for Sri Aurobindo's s

7 HIS CONCEPT OF ‛NATION’ ' ALL great movements of life in India have begun with a new spiritual thought and usually a new religious activity.'¹ We have studied earlier how the renaissance in India and the gradual emergence in the nineteenth century of modem Indian nationalism were, in fact, determined largely by the religious and social reform movements resulting from the Western impact on the ancient Hindu culture of India. If Sri Aurobindo's aphorism is to be specifically applied, we might refer it to the publication in 1883 of the celebrated novel Ananda Math by the great Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. It was this book that, as Sri Aurobindo puts