Autobiographical Notes

Meetings with His Grandfather at Deoghar

I was at Deoghar several times and saw my grandfather there, first in good health and then bedridden with paralysis. As I was not in the College, I must have gone on privileged leave.

[In Deoghar, he stayed with his in-laws (beaux-parents).]

Sri Aurobindo always stayed at Deoghar with the family of his maternal grandfather Raj Narayan Bose. The beaux-parents did not live at Deoghar.

[Sri Aurobindo owed his views on Indian Nationalism to the influence of Rajnarayan Bose. His turn towards philosophy may be attributed to the same influence.]

I don't think my grandfather was much of a philosopher; at any rate he never talked to me on that subject. My politics were shaped before I came to India; he talked to me of his Nationalist activities in the past, but I learned nothing new from them. I admired my grandfather and liked his writings "Hindu Dharmer [Sresthata]¹" and "Se Kal ar E Kal"; but it is a mistake to think that he exercised any influence on me. I had gone in England far

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beyond his stock of ideas which belonged to an earlier period. He never spoke to me of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.

[His meetings with his grandfather were for political purposes.]

This is not correct. In these visits he was not concerned with politics. It was some years afterwards that he made a journey along with Devabrata Bose, Barin's co-adjutor in the Yugantar, partly to visit some of the revolutionary centres already formed, but also to meet leading men in the districts and find out the general attitude of the country and the possibilities of the revolutionary movement. His experience in this journey persuaded him that secret action or preparation by itself was not likely to be effective if there were not also a wide public movement which would create a universal patriotic fervour and popularise the idea of independence as the ideal and aim of Indian politics. It was this conviction that determined his later action.

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