On The Mother

CHAPTER 32

War and Peace

I

The Mother's New Year prayer for 1945 was partly an announcement of the coming victory and peace, and partly a hope and a warning that, unless the victorious powers fashioned a truthful and just peace, the fruits of victory would once again slip out of their hands:

The earth will enjoy a lasting and living peace only when men understand that they must be truthful even in their international dealings.

O Lord, it is for this perfect truthfulness that we aspire.¹

On the eve of the New Year when the darkness hadn't lifted yet, the Mother could already see the clear streaks of the dawn of victory, but also the gathering clouds far distant threatening to darken the day once more. There was the need to deal with the vanquished powers on a fair and truthful basis; and there was the even greater need for the victors to preserve a becoming sobriety and not to quarrel among themselves.

Towards the end of 1944, the Nazi forces counter-attacked and crossed into Belgium and Luxembourg again, but were halted near the Meuse. This was no more than the last flicker of the dying candle, for with the New Year, the Allied and Russian armies began penetrating deep into Germany from the West and East respectively. By March, the Rhine had been reached and was soon crossed, and in April, Berlin itself was surrounded by the Russians. Hitler's death was announced on 1 May, the German forces surrendered not long after, and the war in Europe was over on 8 May. The war against Japan continued for three more months; then, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (5 August) and Nagasaki (9 August) accounting for stunning devastation, Japan surrendered unconditionally, and 15 August was the day of complete victory.

In 1940, after the fall of France, Hitler had fixed 15 August as the day of his triumphant tryst with Britain. That he - guided by the Asuric genius that was the Lord of his fevered thoughts and uncanny actions - should have thought of 15 August (Sri Aurobindo's birthday) as his date with destiny was itself an indication that he was being blindly driven to hurl himself against the Divine. In a conversation on 20 May 1940, Sri Aurobindo had said that Hitler's fascination for 15 August was itself the sign that he was the enemy of the Divine's work that was being attempted in the Ashram; "and from the values concerned in the conflict it should be quite clear that what is behind him is the Asuric, the Titanic power".² Actually, Hitler was to receive a major set-back on that day in the aerial Battle of Britain. Again, five years later, the capitulation of Japan on 15

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August 1945 was another indication of the inner nature of the world conflict. The Ashram at Pondicherry was inwardly in the thick of this fight, although superficially out of it; and the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's force had been active all the time, and sometimes with decisive results. Now that the Enemy was vanquished at last, the Mother gave a prayer on 15 August:

The Victory has come, Thy Victory, O Lord, for which we render to Thee infinite thanksgiving.

But now our ardent prayer rises towards Thee. It is with Thy force and by Thy force that the victors have conquered. Grant that they do not forget it in their success and that they keep the promises which they have made to Thee in the hours of danger and anguish. They have taken Thy name to make war, may they not forget Thy grace when they have to make the peace.³

II

Victory had come in the East, as earlier in the West, but at what cost? It was the Atom bomb that hastened the end of hostilities, for on each of those two occasions, in the course of a split second, lakhs of innocent human beings - men, women, children, the aged, the sick, the helpless, one and all - had been destroyed or mutilated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Atom bomb: what was it really? The Devil's definitive weapon - or, somehow, a hope for the future? When the question was put to her, the Mother wrote dispassionately on 30 August 1945:

The Atomic bomb is in itself the most wonderful achievement and the sign of a growing power of man over material nature. But what is to be regretted is that this material progress and mastery is not the result of and in keeping with a spiritual progress and mastery which alone has the power to contradict and counteract the terrible danger coming from these discoveries. We cannot and must not stop progress, but we must achieve it in an equilibrium between the inside and the outside.⁴

In other words, while there is a vast difference between the rugged stone implements which the paleolithic man used and the sophisticated atomic arsenal at the disposal of the modern man, in his basic inclinations and character man is still wolf to man: homo homini lupus\ Even where man has developed intellectual qualities, these are more often than not mere bond-slaves of the vitalistic pulls and desires. Without an inner advance, a radical change in consciousness and character, the current heady pace of technological change can only mean a quicker and a deadlier capacity to kill and overkill, a racing of mankind towards self-perversion and a global suicide club.

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The choice is between integral Truth - and annihilation!

Every scientific advancement, albeit achieved as a result of an inquiry in the realm of pure science, has permitted massive misuse as well as right use in the service of man. What engineers the wrong use is not the knowledge itself, but the vitalistic pull, individual or collective, that exploits that knowledge. Only, with the present pace in scientific advancement, the possibilities of proper use and criminal misuse have acquired a like exponential range. As an answer to the threat posed by modern science and technology, one might ask for a moratorium on further research, or even the destruction of all machinery and a return to Nature. But the Mother's answer was different: an inner development matching the outer, an integral change in consciousness that equates consciousness with the whole force of Truth. The Mother's answer to the danger posed by hectic scientific advancement was the transmuting power of Yoga, the discipline of soul-awakening and spiritual mastery. The future of civilisation, then, would depend on how soon, and how successfully, man acquired the necessary self-mastery and world-mastery through Yoga. Here, as the Mother saw it, was a positive role for the Ashram.

III

During the War years there was a steady expansion of the Ashram, measured not only by the number of inmates (including the children) but also the number of buildings rented or purchased, the institutions founded, and the Services organised. Because of the steady influx of visitors, especially at the time of the Darshans, more and more houses had to be requisitioned, and there was also a need for at least one modern residence for sadhaks with all reasonable amenities. In 1938, taking advantage of a handsome donation by the Government of the Nizam of Hyderabad on the initiative of the Diwan, Sir Akbar Hydari, who was one of Sri Aurobindo's ardent disciples, it now became possible for the Mother to plan the construction of a really good residence to be named Golconde. The Mother threw herself into this task with her customary zeal and meticulous attention to detail. The Harpagon Workshop came into existence, first as an ancillary to the Golconde enterprise, though it was presently to develop on its own. For a time all roads led to Golconde, and all talents were mobilised to hasten its completion. The Mother had an idea of her own, which the architects - Raymond, Sammer and others, an international team - translated into significant form. As many as possible of the sadhaks were pressed into service, and they worked shoulder to shoulder with the mass of paid workers. The old buildings on the site had first to be demolished, and then the architectural phoenix rose like a wonder as from nowhere. In Nirodbaran's words:

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She was in constant touch with the work through her chosen instruments... To anyone young or old asking for work, part time, whole time, her one cry: "Go to Golconde, go to Golconde." It was one of her daily topics with Sri Aurobindo who was kept informed of the difficulties... and at the same time, of the need of his force to surmount them.... How often we heard her praying to Sri Aurobindo, "Lord, there should be no rain now."... The Divine Force would of course win.... But as soon as the intended object was achieved, a deluge swept down as if in revenge.... During the roof-construction, work had to go on all night long and the Mother would mobilise and marshal all the available Ashram hands and put them there. With what cheer and ardour our youth jumped into the fray at the call of the Mother, using often Sri Aurobindo's name to put more love and zeal into the strenuous enterprise! We felt the vibration of a tremendous energy driving, supporting, inspiring the entire collective body.⁵

But a dormitory so uniquely beautiful yet so thoroughly functional needed careful maintenance as well as thoughtful use. The rules, as approved by the Mother, were rather strict, and some of the visitors to the Darshan of 21 February 1945 seem to have felt irked by the restrictions, and on this being conveyed to Sri Aurobindo, he wrote on 25 February explaining the Mother's view of Golconde and the paramount need for discipline in life:

First, Mother believes in beauty as a part of spirituality and divine living; secondly, she believes that physical things have the Divine Consciousness underlying them as much as living things; and thirdly that they have an individuality of their own and ought to be properly treated, used in the right way, not misused or improperly handled or hurt or neglected so that they perish soon and lose their full beauty or value; she feels the consciousness in them and is so much in sympathy with them.... It is on this basis that she planned the Golconde. First, she wanted a high architectural beauty, and in this she succeeded - architects and people with architectural knowledge have admired it with enthusiasm as a remarkable achievement... but also she wanted all the objects in it, the rooms, the fittings, the furniture to be individually artistic and to form a harmonious whole. This, too, was done with great care. Moreover, each thing was arranged to have its own use, for each thing there was a place, and there should be no mixing up, or confused or wrong use. But all this had to be kept up and carried out in practice.... That was why the rules were made and for no other purpose.⁶

But discipline in Golconde was only a part of the general discipline of the Ashram. Discipline indeed was the outer aspect of true tapasya, and to rebel against it was to sin against the very objectives of the Ashram. For some visitors, including even a few well-to-do, to want to stay in the Ashram and yet to grumble about paying the very moderate charges levied by the Mother was not exactly conducive to the Ashram discipline.

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Sri Aurobindo felt that perfect discipline in the Ashram was still a desired ideal and not the achieved fact:

What there is is organisation and order which the Mother has been able to establish and maintain in spite of all that. That organisation and order is necessary for all collective work; it has been an object of admiration and surprise for all from outside who have observed the Ashram; it is the reason why the Ashram has been able to survive and outlive the malignant attacks of many people who would otherwise have got it dissolved long ago.⁷

But if there was to be real organisation, rules and discipline could not be avoided. But those were by no means arbitrary impositions but merely the requisites for generating the necessary momentum for reaching a particular goal:

We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal.... But, all the same, the Ashram is a first form which our effort has taken, a field in which the preparatory work has to be done. The Mother has to maintain it and for that all this order and organisation has to be there and it cannot be done without rules and discipline.⁸

Then, towards the end of the long letter, Sri Aurobindo referred to the difficulties faced by him and the Mother in keeping the Ashram going in wartime, and the sanction of Grace behind the whole endeavour:

It has been an arduous and trying work for the Mother and myself to keep up this Ashram, with its ever-increasing numbers, to make both ends meet and at times to prevent deficit budgets and their results; specially in this war time, when the expenses have climbed to a dizzy and fantastic height.... Carrying on anything of this magnitude without any settled income could not have been done if there had not been the working of a divine Force.⁹

IV

The War had indeed come to a grinding halt, Germany was under the occupation of the four Big Powers (USA, USSR, UK and France), the new Poland was a truncated nation as compared with the Poland of 1939, and Japan was under the American sway. On 20 November, the trial of the Nazi war criminals opened at Nuremberg. In India, the general elections

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only polarised - more sharply even than before - the pro-Congress and the pro-Muslim League Provinces. Whether on the international or the Indian scene, the deployment of forces indicated potential confrontation rather than lasting reconciliation and harmony. The future was verily an ominous question-mark.

The Mother's New Year prayer for 1946 fully brought out her vast concern for the unfolding ambiguous future:

Lord, it is Thy Peace we would have and not a vain semblance of peace, Thy Freedom and not a semblance of freedom. Thy Unity and not a semblance of unity. For it is only Thy Peace, Thy Freedom and Thy Unity that can triumph over the blind violence and the hypocrisy and falsehood that still reign upon earth.

Grant that those who so valiantly struggled and suffered for Thy Victory, may see the true and genuine results of that victory realised in the world.¹⁰

The United Nations Organisation was being brought into existence, but this too - like the League of Nations after the First World War - was only a concert of the victorious powers. Already USA and USSR were enacting confrontation and carving out spheres of influence. The world was getting divided again into the victors and the vanquished, and the haves and the have-nots. Peace, Freedom, Unity: these were the godheads of the soul - not just verbal fabrications. The War against the Axis Powers had no doubt been won though at such a great cost, but not the war against violence and hypocrisy and falsehood. The violence was still there, and while America was determined not to share the secret of the Atom bomb with her former Allies, Russia was making frantic attempts to make bombs on its own. Hypocrisy sat entrenched in politics and diplomacy, and the Lord of Falsehood, the Lord of the Nations, stalked imperiously abroad as of old.

Millions had died, millions had been maimed, millions had been impoverished - all because of the War. Millions of young men had sacrificed their lives to make the victory over the Axis Powers possible. And yet, when the victory came, the double-dealing diplomats, the rapacious empire-builders, the creatures of the Lord of the Nations - the apes of perversion and greed - were taking over. The Mother's occult vision could clearly see the political configuration ahead, and hence this Prayer of 1946 out of the depths of her being.

V

As the Mother had feared, the political situation in India continued to be bedeviled by distressing disharmony in Hindu-Muslim and Indo-British relations. In September 1944, the Gandhi-Jinnah talks had failed to

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hammer out an agreement between the Congress and the Muslim League. The year of victory, 1945, had been wasted in futile poses and vain recriminations. The revolt of the Royal Indian Navy in February 1946 was the writing on the wall to the alien bureaucracy, and there was some rethinking in the right quarters. Earlier, Attlee had succeeded Churchill as the British Prime Minister, and Wavell had become the new Viceroy of India. A Cabinet Mission consisting of Cripps, Pethick-Lawrence and Alexander came to India with the offer of a three-tier Constitution for Free India. In a message dated 24 March 1946, Sri Aurobindo explained how he had always stood for India's complete independence, how as early as January 1910 he had prophesied that in the coming era the whole world would see "sudden upheavals and revolutionary changes", and how India would be free. The coming of the British Cabinet Mission was the latest sign that India was on her way to freedom. And Sri Aurobindo concluded, hopefully:

It remains for the nation's leaders to make a right and full use of the opportunity. In any case, whatever the immediate outcome, the Power that has been working out this event will not be denied, the final result, India's liberation, is sure.¹¹

But the leaders wrangled and mounted qualification upon qualification and a blurred picture became more smudged still. Even incitement to violence was not wanting, and riots were engineered, now here, now there, and presently over most of Northern India. Although an interim Government was installed on 2 September, it was followed by communal riots in Noakhali and Bihar. In that poisoned atmosphere, the all-India Constituent Assembly that was convened on 9 December 1946 was doomed from the very beginning to break up ultimately into two. The bestial Calcutta killings on 16 August 1946 had started a diabolical chain reaction over many parts of the country, and Jinnah's intransigency had grown new virulent wings of wild irresponsibility; and the Congress leaders had themselves lost their faith in the unity and integrity of the country. From the very outset, the Interim Government worked at cross purposes, the Congress members pulling one way and the Muslim Leaguers in the opposite direction. All efforts, whether in India or in Britain, to preserve a United India were successfully stalled by Jinnah and his associates. The year 1946 closed for India in bitter disillusion indeed.

VI

Throughout 1946, the Ashram preserved a calm exterior, and the communal and spiritual life of the sadhaks as also the education and physical culture of the pupils in the School were sustained at a high level of harmony and efficiency.

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But the Ashram, although it was a world apparently separate and secluded, could not be wholly immune to events in the outside world. Newspapers and Radio broadcasts spoke of chronic civil disturbances, and there were appeals to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo for advice, for help, for the deployment of their spiritual force. Numberless were the friends of the Ashram outside, and numberless the relations and friends of the sadhaks and children in the Ashram who were still outside the immediate charmed circle of protection in Pondicherry. Writing to a correspondent, Sri Aurobindo said on 2 June 1946:

I know that this is a time of trouble for you and everybody. It is so for the whole world. Confusion, trouble, disorder and upset everywhere is the general state of things. The better things that are to come are preparing or growing under a veil and the worse are prominent everywhere. The one thing is to hold on and hold out till the hour of light has come.¹²

Then exploded the bestialities in Calcutta and elsewhere, followed by the formation of the Interim Government at Delhi (to be called by Sri Aurobindo "the Interim mariage de con venance"). This again was greeted by the abominations at Noakhali and Tipperah on 14 October, to be echoed by those in Bihar on 25 October. In between, on 19 October, Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple admitting that things were "certainly very bad" in Bengal, and that the condition of the Hindus there might become even worse. But despair was not the way out of the difficulty. Surely, if Hitler couldn't quite exterminate the Jews, the Muslim fanatics too wouldn't succeed in liquidating the Bengal Hindus.

As for Hindu culture, it is not such a weak and fluffy thing as to be easily stamped out; it has lasted through something like five millenniums at least and is going to carry on much longer and has accumulated quite enough power to survive.

Sri Aurobindo added that he had warned the people of Bengal almost forty years earlier, and C.R. Das too - in the early 1920's had entertained grave apprehensions, and even told Sri Aurobindo while on a visit to Pondicherry that "he would not like the British to go out until this dangerous [communal] problem had been settled". All the same, it would be unwise to surrender to despair:

I know and have experienced hundreds of times that beyond the blackest darkness there lies for one who is a divine instrument the light of God's victory.... There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other blacknesses threaten to overshadow or even engulf mankind, but they too will end as that nightmare has ended.¹³

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It was in this spirit that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother continued their work, sustaining the Ashram and the inevitable expansion of its activities; tending it with divine solicitude as a controlled experiment for hewing new paths to the future, and also intervening in world affairs wherever feasible with a spiritual force to avert a disaster here, to ease a situation there, and generally to keep the lines open for a free evolution of humanity towards the next radical phase of self-development and global unity. Nor should it be forgotten that, whenever a message or important letter went forth from Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, it carried the authority and force of the other too, for theirs was a joint spiritual movement for man's and for the earth's ultimate transformation.

VII

For 1947, the Mother gave as the New Year prayer something that was more than a prayer:

This is not a prayer, but an encouragement.

Here is the encouragement and a comment upon it:

"At the very moment when everything seems to go from bad to worse, it is then that we must make a supreme act of faith and know that the Grace will never fail us."

The hours before the dawn are always the darkest.

The servitude just before freedom comes is the most painful of all.

But in the heart endowed with faith bums the eternal flame of hope which leaves no room for discouragement.¹⁴

In the closing weeks of 1946, it was altogether soul-searing to think of the happenings in the country, - the near dead-locked Interim Government, the Hindu-Muslim confrontation in many parts of India, the proliferation of the communal virus, the retreat of the 'unity' ideal, the insane spread of defeatism and despair. The cumulative situation wasn't unlike the reign of Inconscience delineated by Sri Aurobindo in the opening canto of Savitri which appeared on 15 August 1946 in the fifth volume of Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual:

A fathomless zero occupied the world.

And yet the cardinal insight of the Savitri exordium was that "It was the hour before the Gods awake." Although it struck one as the hour of darkest extremity, yet Grace was round the comer, and would intervene effectively at the appropriate time. However thick the pall of darkness, however opaque the crust of the inconscience, nothing could forever resist the invasion of Grace:

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Intervening in a mindless universe,

Its message crept through the reluctant hush

Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy

And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,

Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.¹⁵

VIII

The year 1947 saw Lord Mountbatten as Governor-General of India in Wavell's place. Mountbatten was given a free hand to deal with the developing chaotic situation in the country. He had a mandate too to make firm arrangements for the transfer of power to Indian hands. Mountbatten's arrival, however, was the occasion for fresh communal riots in the Punjab partly engineered, it is said, by a group of British officers stationed there. The dance of destruction and the Rake's progress of cynicism went hand in hand, and faith seemed to knuckle under. Writing on 9 April 1947, Sri Aurobindo referred to this cynicism, this "refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure, to the exclusion of higher things, and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world". The classic ruse of the hostile forces is to sow defeatism where faith and hope had reigned before. Even so, Sri Aurobindo had no doubt that the Dawn wouldn't be delayed long:

I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.¹⁶

True enough, the 'leaders' of the country, having successfully if also purblindly polarised the people into suicidally aggressive attitudes, were now (most of them) only all too eager to leap into the dangled seats of power ignoring the larger interests of the country. They were tired old men, or not so old but very ambitious men, at any rate they were men seized by a sense of fatality; and they had been overtaken by events whose meaning they couldn't understand, and being both short-sighted and faint-hearted they made all kinds of noises and futile gestures. After a series of meetings with this miscellany of leaders, it became clear to Mountbatten that if Britain was to have some chance of safeguarding at least her vast commercial interests in India, she should withdraw soon after partitioning the country and handing over power to the 'two nations'. While things were still hanging in the balance, Sri Aurobindo seems to have made one more attempt through Surendra Mohan Ghose to get the Congress leaders to act on certain lines. But although some of the leaders said, "A very good

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thing, very good," nothing was really done - or could be done - to implement the suggestions. The leaders wouldn't follow Gandhiji's advice either and reject the partition proposal outright. Caught in a vicious trap, partly of their own making, they were prisoners of puzzlement, and Mountbatten had his way with Jinnah and the Congress leaders alike.¹⁷

IX

On 2 June 1947, the day after the announcement regarding the Partition was made, the Mother issued a statement, with the full concurrence of Sri Aurobindo:

A proposal has been made for the solution of our difficulties in organising Indian independence and it is being accepted with whatever bitterness of regret and searchings of the heart by Indian leaders.

Why had Partition become necessary? Why indeed? It was because, said the Mother, of the "absurdity of our quarrels", and only by accepting the Partition could people have a chance of living down that tragic absurdity! At the same time, the Mother added with her uncanny gift of near and far vision:

Clearly, this is not a solution; it is a test, an ordeal which, if we live it out in all sincerity, will prove to us that it is not by cutting a country into small bits that we shall bring about its unity and its greatness; it is not by opposing interests against each other that we can win for it prosperity; it is not by setting one dogma against another that we can serve the spirit of Truth. In spite of all, India has a single soul and while we have to wait till we can speak of an India one and indivisible, our cry must be:

Let the soul of India live for ever!¹⁸

But what is meant by "the soul of India"? Has a nation - a human aggregate inhabiting a seemingly arbitrary geographical area - a soul of its own? As if answering these doubts, Nolini explained in an editorial that he wrote in August, based on one of the talks by the Mother:

A nation is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is not merely the sum total of the individuals that compose it, but a collective personality of which the individuals are as it were cells, like the cells of a living and conscious organism.¹⁹

The slothful logic of expediency, the infernal arithmetic of selfish 'party' calculations, the fear of the possible immediate danger (the eruption of a

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civil war) and the ignoration of the bigger danger to the national psyche and the security of the subcontinent, all had conspired to batter down Congress resistance and stampede the leaders into ignominious acquiescence. But at least, the Mother hoped and the Mother prayed, that "the soul of India" wouldn't be rent in two but would still maintain its native splendorous unity. Sri Aurobindo too, although he had perforce to accept the event, was far from satisfied. Someone asked him whether he could not have prevented the monstrous division of the country? What had happened to his Yogic Force - to the supramental action? Writing on 7 July 1947, Sri Aurobindo explained that, after all, he was using, not the infallible supramental, but only the overmental force which in its operation on individuals and human collectivities might meet with sinister resistances resulting in unforeseen distortions. And he added with a touch of wry humour:

That is why I am getting a birthday present of a free India on August 15, but complicated by its being presented in two packets as two free Indias: this is a generosity I could have done without, one free India would have been enough for me if offered as an unbroken whole.²⁰

X

And so, Sri Aurobindo's 75th birthday - Friday 15 August 1947 - became the day of India's independence. In his message for the day, intended for broadcast from the Tiruchirapalli station of the All India Radio, Sri Aurobindo dwelt in some detail on the significance of the double event and the possibilities of the future.²¹ First about his birthday coinciding with the day of Independence:

As a mystic, I take this identification, not as a coincidence or fortuitous accident, but as a sanction and seal of the Divine Power which guides my steps on the work with which I began my life. Indeed almost all the world movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though at that time they looked like impossible dreams, I can observe on this day either approaching fruition or initiated and on the way to their achievement

Then he spoke of the five ideals or movements: a revolution which would bring about India's freedom and unity; the resurgence and liberation of Asia; the emergence of 'one world' in place of the many warring nationalisms; the assumption by India of the spiritual leadership of the human race; and, "finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the many problems of existence which have perplexed and vexed humanity, since men began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society."

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India had become free, but because of the Partition, it was only a "fissured and broken freedom". It was sad that the old communal division into Hindu and Muslim should have at last "hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country". But he added also this word of caution doubled with a word of prophecy:

It is to be hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go, it is to be hoped by a slackening of tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace and concord, by the constant necessity of common and concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form - the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, the division must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not be.

During the long years since this prophetic declaration was made, we have been witnessing the fulfilment almost to the letter of the many fears and hopes then expressed: the constant tension between India and Pakistan, the endemic prevalence of civil strife, the Chinese invasion of 1962, the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, the terrific strain on India's economy, the reign of genocide in East Pakistan in 1971, the coming of 10 million refugees to India, the emergence of free Bangladesh followed by the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan, and the hint of a possible betterment of relations between the nations that now constitute the Indian subcontinent. But whether - or when, and in what manner - Sri Aurobindo's positive forecast that the Partition "must and will go" would be accomplished is still for the future to unfold.

As regards Sri Aurobindo's other seemingly "impossible dreams", in August 1947 they did seem in greater or lesser measure - to be in a process of fulfilment:

Asia has arisen and large parts of it have been liberated or are at this moment being liberated.... There India has her part to play and has begun to play it....

The unification of mankind is under way, though only in an imperfect initiative, organised but struggling against tremendous difficulties. But the momentum is there....

The spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure....

The rest ["a new step in evolution..."] is still a personal hope and an

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idea and ideal which has begun to take hold both in India and in the West on forward-looking minds.... Here too... the initiative can come from India....

Such is the content which I put into this date of India's liberation; whether or how far or how soon this connection will be fulfilled, depends upon this new and free India.

XI

It was an extraordinary message, notable alike for its vast comprehension and its insights into the near and far future. It was a message for the statesmen and the philosophers, for bridge-builders and man-makers, and for the forward-looking men and women of all countries. On the other hand, for the millions and millions of Mother India's children now suddenly sundered by the mechanics of the Partition, for the numberless Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists who still felt that they lived only as the cells and arteries and tissues and blood-corpuscles of India the one beloved Mother of one and all, for these anguished children the right prayer for the occasion that evoked joy and sorrow at once, was given by the Mother out of her vast compassionate understanding and love:

O our Mother, O Soul of India, Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other masters and denied thee, now when they have arisen and the light is on thy face in this dawn of thy liberation, in this great hour we salute thee. Guide us so that the horizon of freedom opening before us may be also a horizon of true greatness and of thy true life in the community of the nations. Guide us so that we may be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all the peoples.²²

Also, in the morning the Mother hoisted her - flag which was to be called "the Spiritual Flag of India" - blazoning forth India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and Ceylon all together, with her own symbol at the centre, over the main Ashram building. There was a record number of visitors to the Ashram, and over two thousand had Darshan in the afternoon. Presently the Mother appeared on the low terrace over Dyuman's room; the courtyard was packed to capacity. The Bande Mataram was sung as it had never been sung before, for now it was the moment of fulfilment, and the Mother responded with 'Jai Hind!' and the congregation was to cherish the memory of her marvellous gesture for long afterwards.

The Mother's - flag the Spiritual Flag of India - which since 15 August

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1947 has been for us a flaming minister, a symbol of hope and a declaration of faith, has been flying high and serene in the minds and sensibilities of countless numbers of Indians. The blue flag figuring the great Indian subcontinent stretching from Kashmir to Sri Lanka, from Sind to Burma, environed by the Himalaya in the North, the Indian ocean in the South, the Arabian sea on the West and the Bay of Bengal in the East, and with the Mother's symbol of her Shakti, her four powers and her twelve emanations concentrically arranged as the heart of the living Mother of a seething mass of humanity numbering almost a billion, - what is this Spiritual Flag of India but a revelation, an epiphanic projection, a visual recordation of the deeper reality, the inspiring Truth, of this primordial Asiatic region, the matrix of the stupendous human adventure on the earth, and the destined scene of the next leap forward to the horizons of supermanhood?

This flag symbolising the spiritual reality and unity of Greater India - the true India - was verily the Mother's answer to the brutal partition of India decreed by the erstwhile British rulers and accepted by the shortsighted and faint-hearted Indian leaders of 1947, for the Spiritual Flag of India with the Mother's symbol as the central design and highlighted by the blue background was the Ashram's flag as well. Explaining its significance, Sri Aurobindo said in 1949:

The blue of the flag is meant to be the colour of Krishna and so represents the spiritual or divine consciousness which it is her work to establish so that it may reign upon earth.

It is used as the Ashram flag because "our work is to bring down this consciousness and make it the leader of the world's life".²³ It was by no means irrelevant to talk of the Spiritual Flag of India, for the Spirit is elemental Affirmation, the Everlasting Yea; the Spirit is the great harmoniser; the Spirit is the great unifier. What the politicians, the communalists, the calculators, the soulless power-mongers, the pinchbeck lords of the sub-nations had fissured and fractured and sundered, the Mother still viewed as an integral whole, breathed life into it, and lighted up the divine Agni within. The physical body is a prisoner of its own limitations, the vital is often caught at cross-purposes, even the mind is usually content to be a slave of the vital's irrational pulls and drives: these are but dungeons walled within the walls of the human personality. Only the soul can leap over all frontiers; only the river of the human soul can flow seraphically free from all obstruction and join the ocean of the spirit; only the soul can affirm:

The world's deep contrasts are but figures spun

Draping the unanimity of the One.

My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,

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My body is God's happy living tool,

My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.²⁴

Like the human soul, the nation's soul too defies all man-made boundaries - physical, legal, constitutional - and embraces the infinities. Even so, by charging the new Map of India with a spiritual glow and infinitude of connotation, the Mother tried to undo in some measure the mischief of the Partition mentality of self-fragmentation, the surge of mutual suspicion and hatred, and the enthronement of communal and sub-national egoisms that were alien to the spiritual ideal of oneness, wholeness and integrality, India was the Mother - India was Bharati, Bhavani Bharati ²⁵ - and the Mother was not limited to the head alone, the feet alone, the hands alone, or even the visible body alone. The Mother's ambience of protective love and sovereign Grace overflowed the visible boundaries. Salute to the Mother! Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!

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