A Centenary Tribute

K.D. Sethna as the Editor

of Mother India

K.D. SETHNA (Amal Kiran) is a veteran editor of the journal Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture. Nirodbaran says: "Sri Aurobindo had made Amal a political thinker and a commentator as well. When Mother India was started in Bombay with Amal as its editor, he used to send his editorials for Sri Aurobindo's perusal and sanction. I used to read them to Sri Aurobindo. The Mother found one editorial too strong and brought it to his notice. But he approved of it. He considered Mother India as his paper, as did the Mother consider the Bulletin as her paper.

"During the twelve years when all correspondence was stopped only Dilip and Amal were made exceptions."¹

Why did the editor decide to launch Mother India on 19th February close to the Mother's birthday, 21st February?

On 21st February the earth received into its bosom the child that was destined to become the manifestation and embodiment of the Divine Shakti, the Mother who, sacrificing the heavens for a mortal birth, came so that she might ensure the fulfilment of the Supreme Endeavour, the Supramentalisation of earth's nature. She was destined, in this earth-drama of evolution, to play the role of Prakriti to her Purusha, Radha to her Krishna and Savitri to her Satyavan. She is the Mediator between the light and the human consciousness bringing her Force to the disciples who could bear its Light and Power.

1. Nirodbaran and Deshpande, R.Y., Ed. Amal-Kiran: Poet and Critic, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1994, pp. 306-07.

Page 62

The Mother and SriAurobindo are the guiding spirits of the Ashram. The Ashram is the nucleus of the Integral Yoga where the true Indian consciousness, the consciousness of the Divine and Eternal, is sought to be developed on the basis of a new, dynamic solution to the problems of life.

K.D. Sethna, editor of Mother India, has chosen this name for the magazine, because "India is a country whose very birth-cry, so to speak, was for the Superhuman, the Divine in concrete experience. The Vedas and the Upanishads are not primarily artistic creations, structures of speculative thought or manuals of morality and religious injunction. No doubt, they are masterpieces of poetic beauty and sub-limity, embalm enormous audacities of the thinking mind, fountain forth a myriad wisdom of noble living. But, first and foremost, they are scriptures of God-realisation, word-embodiments of mysticism and spirituality, testimonies of union with the Infinite and the Eternal. India, therefore, essentially represents the luminousness that is the Truth of truths."²

Growth and decay, changes and revolutions may occur in the body of a country, in the outer form, but so long as the idea it represents is kept secure and living and conscious, there is no danger to the country. Sri Aurobindo has said, "In the worst period of decline and failure this spirit was not dead in India... ."³ He further says: "In spite of all drawbacks and in spite of downfall the spirit of Indian culture, its cen-tral ideas, its best ideals have still their message for huma-ity and not for India alone. And we in India hold that they are capable of developing out themselves by contact with new need and idea as good and better solutions of the prob-lems before us than those which are offered to us second-hand from Western sources."⁴

2. Mother India, February 1952, p. 2.

3. Sri Aurobindo on India, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Society, p. 50.

4. Ibid., pp. 14-15.

Page 63

The living idea in the inner being of Bharat is the attempt to achieve a resolution, a reconciliation, a harmonisation and synthesis of the oppositions, contradictions, riddles and paradoxes of this world. The seers, who saw oneness in the manyness that we see around us, began to explore the causes of the apparent multiplicity, how the many are strung invisibly upon the thread of the unity, how the one unites the many and how this is the answer to the problem of existence, this the explanation and this the synthesis. It was then that the idea which is the soul of Bharat was born.

What is the ideal of Mother India?

K.D. Sethna published his first editorial in Mother India on February 19, 1949 under the title "WHAT WE STAND FOR". I am quoting the following lines from his article: "We have named our paper Mother India with a purpose. There is a tendency among us to regard India as just a collection of human beings with certain common racial and cultural characteristics. But India is more than a collection of human beings. India is a living entity, a pre-siding genius, the one self of all these human beings and the one consciousness that is at work in them. You cannot make a nation with a mere aggregate of individuals. A nation is a single being....

"The sense of India as the living Mother is what we are aiming to kindle everywhere in this country. But to kindle this sense is not to answer the whole need of the times. Every country has a presiding genius, whether openly acknowledged or not. But every country has predominant qualities, a typical nature, a central function. We must realise what exactly are the face and form of our presiding genius. What is Mother India?

"Mother India is manifold. Art, philosophy, science, politics, industry - all these she has been known for through the ages. Yet brighter than her fame for these has been her fame for seeking the Godhead secret within earth's life... And un-less we realise that Mother India is a spiritual light we shall either fumble in the dark or run after delusive gleams. We

Page 64

cannot fulfil our destiny without following the instinct of divinity in us.

"Does this mean we must be religious zealots, fanatics of a creed? Certainly not. The spiritual light that is Mother India is wider than religiosity. It has room for a thousand different ways of worship. Inasmuch as it is not limited to a narrow sectarianism it makes for a secular view of the State. But by 'secular' we must not understand indifference to the instinct of divinity. To be secular can be for Indians nothing except being widely spiritual rather than narrowly religious. The instinct of divinity we must never lose hold on: without it we shall be false to our whole historical development and to the power that has made us great in the past and led to our survival while all other ancient civilisations have died. It shows us our 'swabhava' our real fountainhead of action. If we deny our 'swabhava', we shall miss our goal.

".. .We have to admit that there has been a trend in India to look too much beyond the world and renounce earth-life. But it is not the only trend, and spirituality can be dynamic as so often spirituality has been in India. The full flowering, the full richness of life on earth is what we aim at when we point to the instinct of divinity as the 'swabhava' of the Indian nation.

"Our paper, therefore, will not stand aloof from the march of events. It will be in the very thick of them and take its position in the arena of politics. But in the hubbub of political slogans we bring a standard that is non-political.... And our standard of judgment, by being essentially non-political and above all parties, will conduce to an impartiality, a freedom, a wideness, a depth of vision.

"We are on the side of neither capitalism nor communism nor any other political 'ism'. In every field of activity we shall criticise whatever militates against the instinct of divinity and blocks the work of the spiritual force that is Mother India.... The Godhead secret within man is the truth of the man and most keenly the truth of the Indian nation, he truth that has to be lived out as much as possible. Not

Page 65

for any lesser ideal dc/we launch our paper and only this highest ideal we have in mind when we take as our motto the ancient cry: 'Great is truth and it shall prevail'."⁵

Why is our magazine called a Monthly Review of Culture?

Culture means essentially inner refinement and education. It means also the outer system of civilisation, the arts and crafts, the literature, the physical and psychological sciences, the social-political organisation, the economic and industrial set-up. In a deeper and truer sense, the culture of India is a way of life intended to prepare man for a greater existence. Both the individual and collectivity seek to achieve that aim through this culture. But each depends on the other for its growth. Therefore in social orders and institutions every facility is given for man to develop and grow in readiness for the ultimate aim of life. Sri Aurobindo has explained the distinctive character of Indian Culture in his books: The Foundations of Indian Culture, The Renaissance in India, Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Yoga.

We can sum up the distinctive character of Indian Culture in the following passage from Sri Aurobindo's writings:

"...the people of India, even the 'ignorant masses' have this distinction that they are by centuries of training nearer to the inner realities, are divided from them by a less thick veil of the universal ignorance and more easily led back to a vital glimpse of God and Spirit, self and eternity than the. mass of men or even the cultured elite anywhere else.... This strong permeation or close nearness of the spiritual turn, this readiness of the mind of a whole nation to turn to the highest realities is the sign and fruit of an agelong, a real and a still living and supremely spiritual culture."⁶

K.D. Sethna has shown the highest aim of culture in his articles published in Mother India, In the following passages he gave his illuminating  thoughts; "...a proper understanding

5. Sethna, K.D., India and the World Scene, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Institute of Research in Social Studies, 1997, pp. 3-5.

6. The Foundations of Indian Culture, SABCL, Vol. 14, pp. 128-29.

Page 66

of the cultural activity points to a spiritual origin of it and a spiritual objective. In Culture, considered deeply and not as a mere inventive exercise for the adornment or aggrandisement of common life, we have two movements - the unfoldment of man's power of the True, the Beautiful and the Good and the lifting of that power to its highest realisable creativity.... The second movement of Culture - the lifting ever higher of our power of unfolding the True, the Beautiful and the Good - directs attention beyond the intellect which seeks to catch the whole of complex Reality in logically consistent formulas, the aesthetic faculty which strives to seize in delightful patterns all the affinities and contrasts of existence, the ethical nature which longs to turn the varied conditions of life into equal occasions for striking into unegoistic shapes the interrelations of individuals. The second movement does not only testify to the idealist in the thinker, the artist and the moral man: it also gives evidence of a gradation in Values. Truth is seen as of many planes - outer, inner, inmost, highest. Beauty is visioned as of several degrees - gross, subtle, supernatural, beatific. Goodness is beheld as of numerous poises - impulsive, intelligent, inspired, enlightened. And an urge is felt to rise from stage to stage, refine and largen one's capacity, merge one's initiative with some in-dwell-ing and over-brooding Mystery that is the All-True, the All-Beautiful, the All-Good." ⁷

The editor of Mother India kindles a vision that bears on the whole human situation, meeting its most central and re-current as well as its most external and diverse issues, man in every mode and field - the thinker and scientist, the artist and the mystic. Reminiscences, essays, stories, talks on Art and Culture, Integral Yoga and world problems have poured from his pen.

K.D. Sethna's untiring effort has been to bring out the in-ner truth of manifold activities and problems of human life.

7. "The Cause of Culture", Mother India, March 1952, pp. 1-2.

Page 67

A message was given by the Mother to the Society for the Spiritual and Cultural Renaissance of Bharat on 23 August 1951:

"Let the splendour of Bharat's past be reborn in the realisation of her imminent future with the help and blessings of her living soul."

Throughout his life K.D. Sethna has followed the method of "Remember and Offer" in editing the magazine. When Mother India was in a quandary at the time of launching it, the editors of other magazines of Bombay discouraged him from launching the magazine on the particular date as the materials for at least six months were not ready at hand. "The Editor was rather worried over that part of his job which was to consist in writing thousands of words on various political themes in a manner that would be clear, cogent, penetrating, widely informed, easily authoritative, enlightened by a view of national and international situations from the height of Sri Aurobindo's thought."⁸ In order to be relieved from the burden, the editor put it to the Mother: '"Mother, I have to be an expert political thinker and writer. But I have no turn for politics and no touch with it.' She smiled a cool sweet smile and answered: 'Neither have 17 The editor got a start: 'Well, then what shall I do?' Again the imperturbable sweetness and then the reply: 'There is Sri Aurobindo. He will guide you in everything.' A sudden flood of power swept over the hearer. 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'Sri Aurobindo will surely do the impossible.' And Sri Aurobindo did."⁹

K.D. Sethna writes: "When the main articles for the first issue - written by the Editor and Albless -* were sent to Pondicherry, not only Sri Aurobindo but also the Mother listened to Nolini's reading out of them. Both the Gurus sent words of praise and total sanction. However, in the Bombay-

8. Sethna, K.D., The Sun and the Rainbow, Hyderabad: Institute of Human Study, 1981, p. 60.

9. Ibid, p. 61.

Page 68

office where various practitioners of journalism dropped in for a close look at the experiment, a crisis arose. The office had been set up only six or seven weeks before the projected date for the opening number. There were no materials in reserve except for two or three issues. Several newspapermen raised their eyebrows to convey that this would never do. One day a veteran journalist appeared and clinched the others' contention. He told the small staff that they were heading for the rocks: unless they had six months' matter in hand it was foolhardy to start on February 21,1949. They said their opening number would be a brilliant one and it would be a shame to suppress it.

"Mother India was in a quandary.... Yet the Editor could not bring himself to involve everything in a rapturous risk. He thought it best to consult the Mother. So he despatched to her an .urgent note... On January 27, 1949, the Editor received the telegram: 'Stick to the date. Live on faith. Blessings - Mother.' With a whoop the office went into action - and faith in the Mother's Grace has kept Mother India in action up to now."¹⁰

Throughout his life Amal Kiran has been depending on the Mother's Grace. It was noticed by me when Amal met with a serious accident in 1991 and he fell down in his office room while moving with the help of his 'Walker' and his right thigh-bone was fractured. He was taken to the Ashram Nursing Home. It was decided by the doctors that his leg should be kept in traction. I was with him often in the Nursing Home and noticed what an uncomfortable life it was for him. But he was calm, always smiling. The days were spent in meditation, in writing letters, dipping into literary journals or else preparing the future issues of Mother India. I remember that he had told me, just two days after his fall, that he had the matter ready for the next issue, but that it might not be possible to continue under these circumstances. As the manager of Mother India, without thinking for a moment,

10. Ibid., pp. 61-62.

Page 69

I told him: "No, Amal, the Mother's Mother India cannot be discontinued. Did you forget the Mother's gracious telegram at the time of your first publication, 'Stick to the date. Live on faith. Blessings'?" When I reminded him of these words, his face lighted up and he said: "Yes, it will be continued." I kept on saying: "Whatever help you need from me for bringing out the magazine I am ready to give." I have found that he was able to bring out subsequent issues very meticulously without any difficulty. What Grace it was! It is my feeling that Amal Kiran lives in Sri Aurobindo.

Page 70