Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

The Literary Firmament of the Ashram

THE world Sri Aurobindo and the Mother tried to create here in Pondicherry under the institutional name of Sri Aurobindo Ashram during their stay of six to seven decades among us is a subject worth studying from various angles, sociological, holistic, and as a new evolutionary model and others. We know that the word 'Ashram' was used by Sri Aurobindo for want of a better word to denote what he visualised to create and found on the earth. In reality the attempt was to create a new centre of life, a centre of Life Divine. We must know mat the emphasis on Life was as great as on the word Divine. My purpose in this short essay is limited to presenting some of the physical and intellectual aspects of this unique attempt.

For our present purpose let us look at the character of this life as it has been developing through the past six or seven decades and all its various manifestations in terms of its material growth, its expanding social structure and character, its handling of material things and their appropriate organisation, its educational and cultural activities, its economic structure and functions and other new emerging trends creative or research-oriented. The very ideal of a spiritual commune demands essential freedom for its members and plasticity in its organisation and relationships in its functioning bodies. How well these factors work out in the actuality of its adventurous life towards the evolutionary goal it has set before itself should attract our keen attention and enlightened curiosity.

Any earthly existence and embodied life must take into account all the elements of existence from the material to the heavenly and find a related whole for this existence. The elements of material composition, the living and expanding factors of growth and bodily health and well-being, the positive elements of life, desires

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and emotive factors and vital and mental exchanges, the mind and its various functions, its higher and ascending reaches and the soul-life and its secret all-sustaining springheads must all find their natural place in any fuller view of life and progressive expansion and integration in a worthwhile existence. To create a field for these elements to express themselves in a free atmosphere of life in a collectivity is not only necessary; but the various contributing factors must come together to work out a rich harmony and a vibrant orchestration. It is to this end that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother undertook this difficult experiment; certainly a worthwhile task for humanity if it has to pull itself out of its present round of blind repetitiveness, devoid of a larger vision and perspective.

It is not necessary here to trace the history of the Ashram, its development and the growth of its activities, since my purpose is to give some salient features and significant results which may be found gratifying or otherwise, as the first results of a futuristic experiment of a collective life and the hazards of its growth and encourage further study.

Any individual capable of taking a broad and comparatively large and sympathetic view of the Ashram-commune and its life is first struck by its organisation, the orderly functioning of its various departments, businesslike and realistic as far as the material life is concerned. It may even appear too materialistic at first sight. The second aspect that would come to be noticed is the freedom in which the people seem to move about, a kind of laissez faire, style of life, an archipelago of separate islands of activities, both practical and spiritual-cultural. But to a sensitive being, even this practical approach will clearly appear to carry a cultural air and individual freedom and, at times, even a fair amount of individual idiosyncrasies. Behind all these variations of engrossing activities, when the evening meditation hour approaches, mere seems to descend an equalizing peace - a commonality of uplifting freedom and a sense of silent liberty from earthly inhibitions indicating the real spiritual ground of the life of the commune.

Of the various activities and services of the Ashram, utilitarian,

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agricultural, industrial, handicraft, artistic, cultural, educational, research-oriented and scientific and intellectual, with all their ramifications, the first that began to formalise and take shape from its early beginning were its literary and intellectual formulations. Practically all the first disciples of Sri Aurobindo began to write, translate and interpret Sri Aurobindo's vision and also express their own feelings, experiences and insight through poetry and prose in their native or chosen language. They all received encouragement from Sri Aurobindo, because he laid great emphasis on the clarity of perception and its right self- expression - not just adequate, but full and as perfect an expression as possible in words and rhythm and content. We need not underrate this early mental and intellectual activity. It is in the mental world that the perception of Truth and its force and light have to clearly establish themselves, preferably before they can percolate to other areas of life.

We know how Nolini and Suresh Chakrabarti, Sri Aurobindo's earliest disciples and companions, became writers of importance in Bengali before the twenties of this century and each one in his own manner and field and style of self-expression. Nolini is seen as a perceptive intellectual child of Sri Aurobindo - brief and compact in thought and diction, sensitive and intuitive in his poetry and critical and perceptive in his literary pieces. Suresh Chakrabarti established himself with a fighting force of speech and rebutting satire. Satyen, a linguist by predilection and training, began to write as if the doors of Truth were opened to him. It was a short brief hour, but brilliant and significant in its own time. In Amrita we see a power beyond him possessing him and making him say what he himself could not even comprehend at the moment. Purani began to translate Sri Aurobindo's works into Gujarati and also write on his own, and became a well-known voice reflecting Sri Aurobindo's thought in Gujarat. He also acquired renown as a proven writer of Gujarati prose. And again we find Pujalal, coming from a meek background, becoming a spontaneous voice of Saraswati, ringing with lucent rhythm and expression in Gujarati and Sanskrit verse and even sometimes in English. His was the work of an accomplished

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prosodist. The work of Kapali Sastri and Jagannath Vedalankar, both Vedic scholars, needs special mention for their expositions in Sanskrit of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Vedas. Later came Sundaram with achievements already to his credit. He attained the highest status as a poet with many works to his credit and won the highest literary laurels. His History of Gujarati Literature and other works in prose made him one of the undisputed voices of Gujarati genius.

With the thirties came Dilip Kumar, Nirodbaran, Nishikanto, Arjava, Amal Kiran, Harindranath, Behari, Jyotin, Jyotirmoyee, Sahana-devi, Tehmi, Madhav Pandit, and others, followed by Jugal Kishore, Kishor Gandhi, A. S. Dalal, Peter, Deshpande and others. It will be difficult to go into their special contributions and the merits of their works in this essay, but they should not be underrated for that reason. However, we must make one exception here. Although many of those mentioned above are no longer with us, Amal Kiran is very much with us with a background of nearly seventy years and merits a special place for his various contributions in so many disciplines of thought and creative research. His editing of Mother India for nearly half a century is an added glory to his intellectual acumen and literary output. As a writer in English, he earned a special mention from Sri Aurobindo - "He knows how to write English", which he could not say about others. Although Amal's first love is poetry, his intellectual mind takes interest in many activities of life and thought. His letters to his friends on life, literature and yoga, his literary criticism, his political comments on the burning questions of the day as the editor of Mother India, his researches into Vedic history, Panini's age and historicity, archaeological pre- history and even Einstein's Theory of Relativity prove beyond doubt his breadth of mind and poise, his creative energy and painstaking research in whatever he deals with. Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), for all his various qualities of mind and heart, his long memories of the life of the Ashram and his vast and varied literary output, has come to occupy a unique place in the world of thought and word, created in the ambience of the Ashram.

I wish I had the competence to analyse and record the work of

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the Ashram not only in the field of cultural and intellectual activities, but also its social and educational work where the inhibiting factors of finance and resources have been kept separated from the essential work, which is how it should be in any understanding and enlightened view of life and its expanding boundaries. Today the active men of the world have neither the time nor the urge to probe into the first principles and think of reorganisation of human society on different and enduring lines. At the present juncture, it seems, Sri Aurobindo's work and initiating light and thought and the discipline he- placed before us will take centuries to be appreciated fully and made the working base on a new creation. This however should not matter if there are at least a few communes which would hold on to the light through the thickest clouds of passing darkness.

JAYANTILAL PAREKH

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