Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history

Part III

PILGRIM OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER 15

Chandernagore : Inn of Tranquillity

I

Ever since his acquittal in the Alipur case - a turn of events not at all to the Government's liking - Sri Aurobindo had repeated intimations from divers sources that he was a "marked" man still, that the Damocles' sword might fall on him any day. Once before - twice before - he had been prosecuted without a "scrap of reliable evidence"; he had been acquitted on both occasions, but the acquittal was no insurance against the risk of a fresh prosecution on equally flimsy evidence or of arbitrary deportation by a devious recourse to the regulation of 1818. In the eyes of the Government, Sri Aurobindo was an unrepentant seditionist and revolutionary, only a diabolically clever one since it was so very difficult to bring him to book. So soon after acquittal, he had started the Karmayogin and then the Dharma, and both were financial successes. He was constantly on his feet, and his speeches were widely reported and discussed. He still seemed to exert an unparalleled influence on the young men who met or read or heard him. He was still listened to with consideration and respect by many of the seasoned politicians. Everything he did, everything he said, was news! It wasn't surprising, therefore, that Government's uneasiness mounted week by week, day by day.

Of course, there was of late a new accent in his speeches and writings - what might be called the Uttarpara accent. God, God - Sanatana Dharma, Eternal Religion! What did he mean? Did he expect people to take him seriously? But when Sri Aurobindo spoke against the Reforms, when he fulminated against the ways of the bureaucracy, when he crammed indictments into his insinuations — the rapier thrust, the sharp edge, the needle point were seen again, the weapons often envenomed too! The talk of God, Sanatana Dharma, prison sadhana was, perhaps, no more than a smoke-screen for the arch-revolutionary's dangerous strategies of disaffection and insurrection. Was the Government to sit with folded hands, leaving him free to do his nefarious work? There was serious thought in high Government circles, and the Karmayogin articles were read between the lines, and sinister meanings were discovered that were never intended, and could never have been.

The floating rumours took a more concrete shape when Sister Nivedita, who had contacts with men in authority, spoke to Sri Aurobindo about the possibility of his imminent arrest or deportation. It was then, as we saw in the previous chapter, that he published his "Open Letter to My Countrymen" in the Karmayogin issue of 31 July 1909. That letter was to serve the double purpose of clarifying the political situation of the day and suggesting a comprehensive six-point programme of action for the immediate future. And the "Letter" was to stand as his Last Will and Testament in case he was deported. The Nationalist party was not to worry or feel depressed if he didn't return from deportation; even in that eventuality, the  

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country and the party would be led all the same, for the God-anointed leader would surely come in good time:

All great movements wait for their God-sent leader, the willing channel of His force, and only when he comes, move forward triumphantly to their fulfilment. The men who have led hitherto have been strong men of high gifts and commanding genius, great enough to be the protagonists of any other movement, but even they were not sufficient to fulfil one which is the chief current of a world-wide revolution. Therefore the Nationalist party, custodians of the future, must wait for the man who is to come, calm in the midst of calamity, hopeful under defeat, sure of eventual emergence and triumph and always mindful of the responsibility which they owe not only to their Indian posterity but to the world.¹

The movement of Indian independence (swaraj) was to be part of a world-wide revolution. The rediscovery of India's soul was to be the prelude to the emergence of the world's soul, the soul of humanity. Thus, as Sri Aurobindo saw the problem of leadership, India's leader had to be - at least potentially - the world's leader as well.

In another article ('The Past and the Future'), which appeared in the Karmayogin of 25 September, Sri Aurobindo returned to the question of education, and discussed how Western education - at once compartmental (and hence partial, not integral), commercial and materialistic - had wrought in the course of less than one hundred years the destruction of native Indian sensibility, damaged beyond recognition India's pre-eminence in the plastic arts and, by snapping the life-links with the Past, "beggared the nation of the originality, high aspiration and forceful energy" without which no country could hope to become great. In its first flush. Nationalism had at least encouraged and emboldened the people to throw off the miserable garbs of littleness, pettiness and petitioning, of tame subservience to the haughty alien, of meek acceptance of the role of the serf, or of an inferior race, or of perpetual subordination. The apocalyptic Vision of the Mother invoked by the mantra "Bande Mataram" had in the twinkling of an eye cleared the national atmosphere of the mists of mendicancy and despondency. This negative task already accomplished, there was still the far more difficult, the vastly more important, constructive task of national regeneration:

To raise the mind, character and tastes of the people, to recover the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan character and the high Aryan outlook, the perceptions which made earthly life beautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent spiritual experiences, realisations and aspirations which made us the deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted and most delicately profound in life of all the peoples of the earth, is the task next in importance and urgency.

Sri Aurobindo was to write later, in A System of National Education that, to make the most of the age of regeneration Indians should strive to be "children of the past, possessors of the present, creators of the future", the essential enduring past was to be their foundation, the present their material, the future their goal and

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summit. No blind revivalism, this; nor an uncritical acceptance or rejection of everything new-fangled, everything imported and alien. The mould of the old social organisation and mental formation was broken already, giving Indians of the new age a priceless opportunity to remould "in larger outlines and with a richer content":

Our half-aristocratic, half-theocratic feudalism had to be broken, in order that the democratic spirit of the Vedanta might be released and, by absorbing all that is needed of the aristocratic and theocratic culture, create for the Indian race a new and powerful political and social organisation. We have to learn and use the democratic principle and methods of Europe, in order that hereafter we may build up something more suited to our past and to the future of humanity. We have to throw away the individualism and materialism and keep the democracy.

Liberty, equality, fraternity - the godheads of the soul - had to be harmonised and practised in everyday life by an acceptance of the supreme spiritual truth of the One, of ultimate Reality manifesting in the phenomenal world as the Many, as the play of multiplicity. Commerce, industrial and social organisation, the pursuit of the beautiful, the useful and the holy as three interlinked objectives, economic growth, political maturity and strength, should all be integrated into a massive movement, leading to a moral and spiritual upliftment of India and the world. And the leader of such a movement must needs be a veritable Avatar of this Iron Age of Kali.

...he will be not only the religious guide, but the political leader, the great educationist, the regenerator of society, the captain of co-operative industry, with the soul of the poet, scholar and artist. He will be in short the summary and grand type of the future Indian nation which is rising to reshape and lead the world.²

II

The "Open Letter" of 31 July had said "Check!" to the baffled bureaucracy, while it had also rallied the drooping forces of the Nationalists on the cardinal issues before them as enunciated in the six-point programme. This gave some respite, almost a lull; and Sri Aurobindo wrote and spoke in the coming weeks and months with the assurance and urgency of the man who knew and could say like Hamlet: "It will be short; the interim is mine!" The Kumartuli speech, the launching of the Dharma, the Hooghly Conference, the Sylhet Conference were pointers to the new directions of Sri Aurobindo's thought. Frail, yet intent and indomitable, Sri Aurobindo was seen scouring the confused ocean of public life with a freedom and resilience and determination all his own. He was thinker, poet, teacher, artist in life, revolutionary leader, tactician and practical politician. Apostle of the Future and man of God all rolled into one — as if the great Power that rules the

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world was trying to cast Sri Aurobindo himself into the mould of leader of India and the world, the Avatar of the coming age. The Karmayogin was still Sri Aurobindo's principal medium for the expression of his views and for the projection of his prophetic Vision of the Future. But the political situation continued to be misty if not murky: repression stalked abroad very much as before, only abnormality had now acquired the respectability of a new hideous normalcy: and the eyes of the Moderates were fixed on the sweet fruit dangled before them as the Minto-Morley Reforms, with the scattered nationalists standing aloof re-enacting the Vedic parable:

Two birds, beautiful of wing, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow.³

Sri Aurobindo's attitude of sustained opposition to the Reforms so long as they were mere cumbrous tinsel containing not a milligramme of gold, caused great uneasiness to the Government, and once again there were set afloat rumours of his impending arrest. With the man there free to talk and write as he liked, the Reforms would have no chance at all of achieving their intended aim of hoodwinking the people. As for Sri Aurobindo, he too felt that the times were such that he should speak out. It was in this context that his second letter "To My Countrymen" appeared in the Karmayogin of 25 December 1909.

Sri Aurobindo began his second open letter with the remark that two decisive events had happened that called for some re-thinking and plain-speaking. In the first place, the phoney reforms had been published on 15 November 1909, and from the composition of the Councils it was clear that there was only the pretence of representation at the centre, while the reality of Swaraj was far, far beyond even the circumference. Secondly, the move for a united Congress, initiated by Sri Aurobindo at Hooghly Conference, hadn't succeeded, and there was no doubt that the proposed Moderate Convention was foredoomed to failure, and was likely to "perish of inanition, and popular indifference, dislike and opposition". Under these altered circumstances, what were the nationalists to do? If they stood back any longer. Nationalism might disappear as a force in Indian politics, and its place might be taken by "a sinister violent activity". Awakened India was unlikely to tolerate the induced coma of Moderatism. The national will, if it could not find self-expression through healthy and virile Nationalism employing the technique of Passive Resistance to the evil of alien rule, must unavoidably find an outlet through violent and terrorist resistance. As he explained the distinction in the article of February 5, 1910, on The Party of Revolution and its Growth and Extent:

Nationalism we advocate is a thing difficult to grasp and follow, needing continual intellectual exposition to keep its hold on the mind continual inspiration and encouragement to combat the impatience natural to humanity; its methods are comparatively new in politics and can only justify themselves to human conservatism by distinguished and sustained success. The preaching of the new revolutionary party is familiar to human imagination, supported

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by the records of some of the most inspiring episodes in history, in consonance with the impatience, violence and passion for concrete results which revolutionary epochs generate.

If India was to avoid alike Moderatist coma and terrorist violence. Nationalism must become a living force once again, as in the great days following the "partition" of Bengal. There was every need, then, to bring fresh vigour and commitment and dedication to the tasks of national education, arbitration, swādeśhi-boycott, economic self-sufficiency, industrial independence and social dynamism:

These are the objects for which we have to organise the national strength of India. On us falls the burden, in us alone there is the moral ardour, faith and readiness for sacrifice which can attempt and go far to accomplish the task. But the first requisite is the organisation of the Nationalist Party.

Organise the national strength: have faith, be ready for sacrifice, go forth and conquer! Not surprisingly, the bureaucracy saw in these implied exhortation the distinct beginnings of a new Nationalist offensive against the ramparts of alien despotism in India.

Indeed, the second letter was rather more forthright than the first, for the circumstances were different. There could be no mistaking the sense of urgency or the tone of stridency. The period of waiting was over; the Moderates had to be written off as useless (if not as a hindrance) to the national struggle; the nationalists had to rely on God and on their own strength:

Whatever we do, we must do ourselves, in our own strength and courage. Let us then take up the work God has given us, like courageous, steadfast and patriotic men willing to sacrifice greatly and venture greatly because the mission also is great. If there are any unnerved by the fear of repression, let them" stand aside. If there are any who think that by flattering Anglo-India or coquetting with English Liberalism they can dispense with the need of effort and the inevitability of peril, let them stand aside....

The fear of law is for those who break the law.... We shall not break the law and, therefore, we need not fear the law. But if a corrupt police, unscrupulous officials or a partial judiciary make use of the honourable publicity of our political methods to harass the men who stand in front by illegal ukases, suborned and perjured evidence or unjust decisions, shall we shrink from the toll that we have to pay on our march to freedom? Shall we cower behind a petty secrecy or a dishonourable inactivity? We must have our associations, our organisations, our means of propaganda, and, if these are suppressed by arbitrary proclamations, we shall have done our duty by our motherland and not on us will rest any responsibility for the madness which crushes down open and lawful political activity in order to give a desperate and sullen nation into the hands of those fiercely enthusiastic and unscrupulous forces that have arisen among us inside and outside India....

The burden of the argument is simplicity itself. The Reforms were a mockery and a trap. The Moderates had eagerly swallowed the bait, and had to be left to stew in their own juice.

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But that couldn't affect the sullenness and despair of the people. The simmering discontent and resentment must break out, sooner or later, in forms of terrorist activity - unless the Nationalists were able to provide an alternative in the shape of open passive resistance within the four comers of the law. But there might be no need even for this, if only the Government would in time see the wisdom of scrapping the phoney reforms and ushering in something much closer to the expectations of the people:

We demand, therefore, not the monstrous and misbegotten scheme which has just been brought into being, but a measure of reform based upon those democratic principles which are ignored in Lord Morley's reforms, - a literate electorate without distinction of creed, nationality or caste, freedom of election unhampered by exclusory clauses, an effective voice in legislation and finance, and some check upon an arbitrary executive. We demand also the gradual devolution of executive government out of the hands of the bureaucracy into those of the people. Until these demands are granted, we shall use the pressure of that refusal of co-operation which is termed passive resistance.

Actually, from the extreme Nationalist point of view, this could be read as a concession, for all it asked for was a kind of "dyarchy" with a measure of genuine self-control, and with an inbuilt dynamism moving towards complete independence. Behind the guarded language, Sri Aurobindo had made his second open letter both an ultimatum to the Government and a mobilisation order to the Nationalist party.*

III

It was perhaps expected that, as after the publication of the first letter in July, the second letter of December too would by its very frankness make the Government stay their hand, even if they had earlier had the idea of arresting and deporting Sri Aurobindo. There it was, the Nationalist position, stated without reservations or ambiguity. The demand for Swaraj meant no hostility to the British people, no race hatred, but merely issued from the conviction that, without autonomy or a substantial measure of it immediately, the nation would not be able to develop on right lines and realise its destiny. Moderatism was one kind of escapism, the tamasic; and terrorism was another kind (the rajasic, a matter of spendthrift energy, a wasteful affair). On the other hand. Nationalism as Sri Aurobindo conceived it in terms of passive resistance was honest - was practical - and meant business. The Nationalist cards were all laid on the table, and the bureaucracy and their principals in England should have welcomed alike Sri Aurobindo's courage

* Cf. "Sri Aurobindo would have accepted Dyarchy as a step if it had given genuine control." (Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Vol. 26, p. 54)  

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and clarity and honesty and consciousness of crisis and sense of responsibility.

On the publication of the letter, the authorities seem to have taken serious counsel and for a few days nothing happened. From the beginning of the new year, the Karmayogin was even able to bring out a cheaper edition at one anna a copy with no risk of financial loss. But soon the rumblings of rumour-mongering started again, and the source of some of the persistent rumours was traced to "those pillars of authority, the police". It was to be a massive operation apparently, involving "twenty-four men prominent and unprominent", who were to be deported during the next few days. As the Karmayogin wrote in its issue dated 8 January under the caption "The Menace of Deportation":

...so successfully has the noise of the coming coup d'état been circulated that the rumour of it comes to us from a distant comer of Bihar. It appears that the name of Sj. Aurobindo Ghose crowns the police list of those who are to be spirited away to the bureaucratic Bastilles.... The Government ought to make up its mind one way or the other, and the country should know, whether they will or will not tolerate opposition within the law; and this will decide it. Meanwhile, why does the thunderbolt linger? Or is there again a hitch in London?

With a Liberal, Lord Morley, at the India Office and a diehard. Lord Minto, as the Viceroy, there was always room for difference of opinion, at least on questions of detail. And even in India, the Government of Bengal and the central Government didn't always see eye to eye as regards the pace of repression or the intended victims. It was often a question of timing or the permissible limits of risk, but of course reason and logic and cold calculation could any moment be given a violent jolt by the spurt of the unexpected. The sudden eruption of the irrational can usually throw into confusion the carefullest contrivings and calculations.

On 24 January 1910, when Sri Aurobindo was at the Karmayogin Office as was his custom in the evenings, news was brought by a young man, Satish Sarkar, that Shams-ul-Alam the Deputy Superintendent of the Intelligence Department had just been shot down on the steps of the High Court, publicly and under the eyes of many, by a lad of twenty, Birendranath Dattagupta. Satish had been with Biren but had managed to come away; it was doubtful if Biren could have escaped. Shams-ul-Alam had more than distinguished himself during the Alipur proceedings and in other political cases by his excessive zeal to get the accused convicted, and the revolutionaries had had their eye on him for some time, and on their behalf Biren had now - as he thought - settled old scores; he was himself to be soon arrested, convicted and hanged. Like the bomb-outrage on the Pringle-Kennedy ladies in April 1908, the killing of Shams-ul-Alam also suddenly queered the political pitch in Bengal, and different interests began reacting in predictable ways. On 29 January the Karmayogin, commenting on this "startling assassination" which had broken "the silence which had settled on the country" deplored the event and added with a touch of resignation:

All we can do is to sit with folded hands and listen to the senseless objurgations of the Anglo-Indian press, waiting for a time when the peaceful expression

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and organisation of our national aspirations will no longer be penalised. It is then that Terrorism will vanish from the country and the nightmare be as if it never had been.

The previous issue (22 January) had carried the news that an anonymous letter had conveyed the information that "a certain Gopal Chandra Ray of the C.I.D. with several assistants was busy watching 6, College Square (Sri Aurobindo's place of residence), and the Post Office, and copying all the letters and postcards that came in his name without exception". The public killing of Shams-ul-Alam not unnaturally threw the authorities into a panic, the Anglo-Indian papers became hysterical, the leaders merely condemned terrorism without caring or daring to look at the poison-tree that bore such bitter fruit, and the only result was that normal legal nationalist political activity became almost impossible. Sri Aurobindo who had been thinking in the open letter of 25 December of a reorganisation of Nationalist activity in terms of clarity, orderliness, careful deliberation and disciplined and well-planned political action, was compelled in the article "The Necessity of the Situation" of February 5 to revise his views and as good as order a halt:

A triangular contest between violent revolution, peaceful Nationalist endeavour and bureaucratic reaction is an impossible position, and would make chaos more chaotic.... The Government demands co-operation from the Moderates, silence from the Nationalists. Let us satisfy them.... Revolution paralyses our effort to deal peacefully but effectively with Repression. Repression refuses to allow us to cut the ground from under the feet of Revolution. Both demand a clear field for their conflict. Let us therefore stand aside, sure that Time will work for us ... our hour may be delayed, but not denied to us for ever.

From the Government's point of view, the situation clearly called for drastic action. There was Sri Aurobindo, in their eyes Public Enemy Number One, still at large and free to do as he liked, and there was now this shocking murder of Shams-ul-Alam under the very nose of the Government as it were! Of course, there would be no use trying to connect Sri Aurobindo with the murder. That sort of smart linking-up had ignominiously failed in the Alipur case, and would fail again if attempted. Sri Aurobindo was not the sort of man to get directly implicated in such acts of terrorism, much less to leave clues behind him. Why not - more prosaically, perhaps, but more safely - prosecute him for sedition on account of the signed letter in the Karmayogin of 25 December? The law officers of the Government thought that the letter was seditious, and it was decided therefore to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sri Aurobindo under Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. One night in February - Probably on the 14th - when Sri Aurobindo was sitting with his assistants in the Karmayogin office at 4 Shyampukur Lane, young Ramchandra Majumdar brought the news derived from a high police official that the arrest of Sri Aurobindo and a search of the office were imminent, and the police might come the next day.⁴ While the young men discussed animatedly what was the best thing to do under the circumstances and whether they should not  

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make an attempt to resist the police when they came, Sri Aurobindo who was sitting in silence listening to their talk received a clear ādeś, or inner command 'in three words': "Go to Chandernagore."

Ever since his first Nirvanic realisation with Yogi Lele in Baroda two years earlier, Sri Aurobindo had heard the Voice on crucial occasions, and had learned to obey it implicitly. This was beyond cold reason or calculation; this was a Divine Command. So he got up and said quietly, "Come, let us move out just now!" Surprisingly enough, there were no C.I.D. men outside the Karmayogin office that night, though that was almost the routine till then. He sent one of the young men to Sister Nivedita, requesting her in a note to take up the editorship of the Karmayogin in his absence. Preceded by Ramachandra, and followed at some discreet distance by Biren Ghose and Suresh Chakravarti (Moni), he walked to the river-side and reached the Ganga Ghat in about ten minutes' time. A boat was immediately engaged, and Sri Aurobindo boarded it, and it made for Chandernagore; Biren and Suresh were with him, while Ramachandra returned. The journey took the greater part of the night, and once or twice the two boatmen, when they came to shallow waters, had to drag rather than row the boat. Anchoring at last at the Strand at Chandernagore when it was still dark, Biren sought Charuchandra Roy (who had been arrested in the Alipur case but later released) and asked him to make arrangements for Sri Aurobindo's stay. Finding him hesitant, Biren turned to one Sisir Ghose who took them to Motilal Roy, a prominent citizen. On coming to know who had come, Motilal went to welcome Sri Aurobindo and took him home, and promised to make all necessary arrangements for his stay and also to keep his arrival secret. The young men started for Calcutta in the morning so as not to give room for suspicion.*

At first, Motilal arranged for Sri Aurobindo's stay in the drawing room, he was then shifted to a more secluded place in the first floor of the house. Thus, with a single firm gesture of withdrawal, Sri Aurobindo had succeeded in shaking off the dust of Calcutta and politics, and finding a temporary haven - an Inn of Tranquillity - in Motilal Roy's house in Chandernagore, a piece of French territory at the time and hence reasonably insulated from the attentions of the British police.

IV

The sudden disappearance of Sri Aurobindo - his actual whereabouts remained a carefully guarded secret with five or six of his closest associates - gave rise to much wild speculation, and came as a setback to the moves set afoot by the Government.

* See Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences, pp. 40-1, and Sri Aurobindo, 0» Himself, Vol. 26, pp. 60, 70. The story that Sri Aurobindo visited Baghbazar Math on his way to Chandernagore to receive initiation from Saradamani Devi has been dismissed as a wholly unfounded fabrication. (See Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Vol. 26, p. 60)

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A search of the Karmayogin office yielded no results, and the officers of the Government felt checkmated, and found it difficult to justify their actions to Lord Morley at the India Office. "Although he escaped conviction in the Alipur case," the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Minto, "yet it is beyond doubt that his influence has been pernicious in the extreme." He added that with his "semi-religious fanaticism" Sri Aurobindo had spread seditious doctrines with greater success than almost anyone else. Minto himself later wrote to Morley, throwing off all masks whether of diplomacy or propriety:

As to the celebrated Arabinda, I confess I cannot in the least understand your hope that we shall not get a conviction against him!... he is the most dangerous man we now have to reckon with, he was one of the instigators in the Manicktolla murders and has an unfortunate influence on the student class, and Indians who know him well have told me he is quite beyond redemption. Surely you cannot hope that such a man should remain at large.

Morley had found, after a perusal of the Karmayogin articles (including the open letter of 25 December 1909), that they were hardly likely to sustain a prosecution for sedition;* and future events were to justify him rather than the Viceroy or the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.

Still the question of questions remained: Where had Sri Aurobindo gone? The press, the public and of course the Government, all participated in the hectic game of speculation. The exasperated police sought him here - sought him there - and drew blank everywhere. The Karmayogin, which was now edited by Sister Nivedita, published in its issue of 26 March 1910 a note sent by Sri Aurobindo from Chandernagore:

We are greatly astonished to learn from the local Press that Sj. Aurobindo Ghose has disappeared from Calcutta and is now interviewing the Mahatmas in Tibet. We are ourselves unaware of this mysterious disappearance. As a matter of fact Sri Aurobindo is in our midst, and if he is doing any astral business with Kuthumi or any other of the great Rishis, the fact is unknown to his other Koshas. Only as he requires perfect solitude and freedom from disturbance for his Sadhana for some time, his address is being kept a strict secret....

The Dharma also announced on 21 March that, as he was engaged in the practice of Yoga, he would not be taking up any political or journalistic work, and his place of sādhanā too was being kept a secret.

Baulked in their first attempts to locate Sri Aurobindo's place of retreat, the police made certain oblique moves. Letters went to Sri Aurobindo's Calcutta address

* Edward-Baker, Lt. Governor of Bengal, wrote to Minto on 19 April 1910; Morley wrote to Minto on 5 May, stating that the articles in question were unlikely to lead to a conviction; and Minto, , feeling both piqued and pricked, wrote back to Morley on 26 May in scarcely concealed bad humour. On 15 July, Morley wrote to Minto that they had information in London that Sri Aurobindo had become a "converted sinner" who had retired from the business of political agitation. (Quoted from the Minto and Morley Papers in M. N. Das's India Under Morley and Minto p. 145.)   

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(his residence in College Square or his office in Shyampukur) challenging him, or insinuatingly inviting him, to come out into the open; and it was hoped that these letters would force him to come out of his retreat, so that he could be immediately put under arrest. But Sri Aurobindo saw through the game and refused to walk into the trap. The warrant of arrest was suspended for a while, but the bureaucracy, having presumably learned the wrong end of the lesson of the Bande Mataram case of 1907, decided to prosecute Manmohan Ghose, the printer of the Karmayogin, for the publication of the seditious article (the open letter of 25 December) contributed to the paper by Sri Aurobindo. The author himself having made a flight to escape arrest, the printer had to stand the charge!

At the Court of the Chief Presidency Magistrate at Calcutta, the printer was found guilty and sentenced to six months' rigorous imprisonment. But the printer duly preferred an appeal to High Court, and there on 7 November 1910, Justice Holmwood and Justice Fletcher, in separate but concurring judgements, held that the article in question was not seditious, and accordingly set aside the conviction and ordered his release from jail. Justice Fletcher said, in the course of his learned judgement:

I have come to the conclusion that it does not appear from the article that it is such as is likely to cause disaffection or produce hatred and contempt of the Government, nor can I find from the article that such was the intention of the writer. Doubtless, to many, if not to most people, the writer's view of the great reform scheme would appear to be unreasonable and one that does not recognise the great advance that has been made; but with that we are not concerned. All that we have to decide is whether the law has or has not been broken by the publication of this article, and I have come to the conclusion that it has not.

Alas, this was worse even than the Bande Mataram debacle! "There is nothing to be done," the Secretary of State was informed telegraphically, "the able judgement of Justice Fletcher... will enable a writer with a facile pen (such as Aravinda Ghose) to publish sedition with impunity...." A rueful conclusion, indeed! On the other hand. Lord Hardinge the new Viceroy was able to draw the right lessons from the failure of the prosecution. Writing on 11 January 1911 to the Secretary of State (Lord Crewe), Hardinge said that prosecutions for sedition should be taken up only if conviction was practically assured: especially in a case against Sri Aurobindo the risk of failure should have been examined "with more than usual care and avoided": and the prosecution against him seemed to have been "taken up in a more venturesome spirit than the gravity of the step warranted". On his part. Lord Crewe wrote to Hardinge on 13 January that "the ill-luck of this prosecution" was that Sri Aurobindo, dangerous though he might be, was "well-known here [England], and looked on a high-souled enthusiast, averse to crime, and thus a man who ought not to have been attacked without the clearest proof, (in fact, late in April 1910, the issue was raised in the House of Commons by Ramsay MacDonald, .who had met Sri Aurobindo earlier and formed a high opinion of the spiritual  

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orientation of his life). Lord Crewe concluded with the doleful remark that, as a result of the prosecution, "all the material has been supplied for turning him [Sri Aurobindo] into a hero". There was nothing to do except grin and bear it!⁵

There was a mini-anticlimax too. Days passed and the poor printer wasn't released from prison. An application was made before Dr. Thornbill, the Chief Presidency Magistrate, on 18 November, and the Magistrate asked with some incredulity: "What? Do you really mean to tell me that the man is not yet released?" Then he ordered the Superintendent of the Presidency Jail to take immediate action and sent the order by a special messenger. As regards the two papers, the Karmayogin and the Dharma, although they bravely carried on for some months after Sri Aurobindo's departure from Calcutta, they had eventually to be closed down. The police were after the young men associated with the journals, who decided accordingly to disperse and make themselves scarce. Of the three permanent residents at the Shyampukur office, Suresh took refuge in the Tagore family, Bejoy disappeared in Calcutta, and Nolini found a temporary asylum in the house 6f a friend in a remote village.⁶

V

Sri Aurobindo stayed in Chandernagore for a month and a half, from about 15 February to 31 March 1910. The problem for Motilal Roy was to look after his unique guest with reverent care, and at the same time to keep his presence in Chandernagore a close secret. Having first conveyed Sri Aurobindo from the drawing room to the uninhabited first floor of his house, Motilal went out to get some food for his guest, and when he returned, he found that Sri Aurobindo was in deep meditation. When the food was placed before him, he ate it as if he was hardly conscious of what he was doing. The same night, he was moved to another house for rest. Next day, however, he returned to Motilal's house, as the other house was not perhaps to his liking. Later, Sri Aurobindo was taken to Gondalpara in the northern part of the town, and lodged in the house of Balai Chandra De. That was an obscure enough place and hence a safe retreat and he was now able to devote himself wholly to his sadhana.

It is likely that during July-December 1909, the period between the two "open letters", Sri Aurobindo had more than once considered the possibility of a temporary withdrawal from active politics so as to be able to make a more effective intervention feasible at a later and more favourable time. The spiritual and political pulls had been with him all along, from the time of the composition of Bhavani Mandir at least; but whereas, during the editorship of the Bande Mataram, the political pull was rather stronger than the spiritual, during the editorship of the Karmayogin and the Dharma, the spiritual pull was decidedly stronger, and this was confessedly the result of his prison-sadhana at Alipur. Although during the short spell of his political leadership he proved a superb strategist and technician

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of political action, although his speeches and writings bore the impress of a masterful and wide-ranging intellect, yet he had learned, as a result of his spiritual experiences, to subordinate everything to the Divine Command whenever it might come. Thus it was that in mid-February, whatever his contingency plans before, when the ādeś actually came, "Go to Chandernagore" - it was the countermanding of a mental plan and the issue of a Divine Command - he followed it implicitly. And in Motilal Roy's upstairs room, Sri Aurobindo must have felt a sudden cleansing of the dust and odour of politics, for he was found sitting in meditation as one on the threshold of a new life. He sent no further contributions to the Karmayogin or the Dharma, and reduced his contacts with the world to an absolute minimum. As the days passed, he saw that his real destiny was to make spiritual, rather than political, conquests. In a manner of speaking, the political period was now ended; the Yogic period had begun.

Molital Roy himself was now attracted to Yoga, and Sri Aurobindo gave him the necessary guidance: "Surrender everything to God!" was the key instruction, and this was ultimately to lead to the establishment of the Prabartak Sangha which Motilal managed, first in affiliation to Sri Aurobindo, and after 1920 on his own. Apart from Motilal, Sri Aurobindo hardly saw anybody else while in Chandernagore. It was a period of sustained sadhana for him, and since he is said to have seen "subtle forms and spiritual visions" - including three goddesses whom he later recognised as the Vedic Ila, Mahi (Bharati) and Saraswati - his sadhana must have taken him to the occult worlds above and below and the inner countries of the mind, heart and soul. Motilal Roy has recorded that he found Sri Aurobindo "a completely surrendered individual - one felt when he spoke as if somebody else was speaking through him.... He appeared to be absorbed even when he was eating; he used to meditate with open eyes, and see subtle forms and spiritual visions."⁷ One of the ablest commentators on Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, Satprem, builds a fascinating edifice of speculation on Motilal's testimony and other casual hints. Chandernagore was doubtless the hyphen connecting the political period in India and the Yoga period in Pondicherry. From Chandernagore Sri Aurobindo could have returned to Calcutta; he preferred rather to proceed to Pondicherry. Superficially, of course, Sri Aurobindo left for Pondicherry because Chandernagore was too inconveniently and dangerously near Calcutta, the storm-centre of the Indian political world of those days; at distant Pondicherry, he would not be as easily accessible to the police spies of the Bengal Government. But was there not a deeper reason as well? That could have been provided only by the course of his sadhana in Chandernagore. What, then, was the particular Yogic realisation there?

At Baroda in January 1908, the Nirvanic or Shunya realisation; at Alipur in May-June 1909 and after, the realisation of the omnipresent Divine, of Vasudeva who is everywhere and in everybody and in everything, Vasudevah sarvamiti', what was the new siddhi at Chandernagore? Mainly on the basis of Motilal Roy's words quoted above, Satprem writes:

That day of 1910 at Chandernagore Sri Aurobindo reached the bottom of the  

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hole, he had crossed all the layers of dirt on which Life had sprung up, inexplicable flower; there was now only this Light above shining more and more intensely as he descended, throwing up all the impurities one by one under its keen ray as though all this Night called ever a greater Light, as though the line of the subconscient was withdrawing, withdrawing towards the depth in an ever more solid concentration in the inverse image of the concentration above, leaving this single wall of Shadow under this one Light; when, at one bound, without transition, at the bottom of this "inconscient" Matter and in the dark cells of this body, without falling into ecstatic trance, without the loss of the individual, without cosmic dissolution, and with eyes wide open, Sri Aurobindo found himself precipitated into the supreme Light.⁸

When Satprem says: "Sri Aurobindo found the Secret at Chandernagore in 1910 and worked on it for forty years; he gave up his life for this"⁹, he is right in the sense that Chandernagore certainly led to Pondicherry - that Chandernagore was both the end of the first phase of Sri Aurobindo's mission and the beginning of the second phase - but, on the other hand, reading so much as Satprem has done in Motilal Roy's simple words ("one felt when he spoke as if somebody else was speaking through him... he used to meditate with open eyes") doesn't quite carry conviction. But, then, we are here in the realm of imponderables, at the meeting-place of the infinitudes, where hyperbolic-asymptotic-like the extremes! opposites are found to be next-door neighbours, where the dark is light enough, where defeat is the truer victory, and death is verily life everlasting.

When all attempts have been made to unravel the mystery, the brief Chandernagore interlude remains a bit of an enigma. We have, of course, Sri Aurobindo's own word that "at Chandernagore he plunged entirely into solitary meditation and ceased all other activity".¹⁰ Hardly ten months after his release from the Alipur jail, here was Sri Aurobindo going into a prison of his own forging -

Upon Truth's solid rock there stands

A thin-walled ivory tower.¹¹

The first development, something compulsive and instantaneous almost, was the complete surrender to the Divine, a total identification with the supreme creatrix, a continuation and intensification of the experience in the Alipur jail where he had felt the presence not only of Krishna but also of Kali.¹² Very likely what now happened was not unlike Aswapathy's early realisations when he had resolutely withdrawn from the pressures and pains of the world, - withdrawn from outer sovereignty so as to be able to explore the divers occult conditions and wrest the ultimate secret:

The intense creatrix in his stillness wrought;

Her power fallen speeches grew more intimate;  

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She looked upon the seen and the unforeseen,

Unguessed domains she made her native field.

All-vision gathered into a single ray,

As when the eyes stare at an invisible point

Till through the intensity of one luminous spot

An apocalypse of a world of images

Enters into the kingdom of the seer.

A great nude arm of splendour suddenly rose;

It rent the gauze opaque of Nescience...

A traveller between summit and abyss

She joined the distant ends....¹³

Sri Aurobindo had come to Chandernagore because of the inner direction, "Go to Chandernagore." At Chandernagore too there were plans on his behalf. Friends thought of sending him away to France. Sri Aurobindo himself wondered what he should do next, "There I heard the Adesh [command] to go to Pondicherry."¹⁴ The decision had once again been taken out of his hands. In retrospect, the whole Chandernagore interlude, hedged in as it was by two divine commands, filled all the while by the ambience of the Mother, sustained by constant Vision of Her powers and personalities, would seem to have been for Sri Aurobindo's, not merely an Inn of Tranquillity for his physical being, but also a momentous tunnelling for the soul through the hard rocks of consciousness to emerge on a plateau of possibility at the other end with its own Cave of Tapasya.

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