Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history

CHAPTER 14

Karmayogin

I

A whole year in prison, in Alipur most of the time; in the eyes of the outside world, a year of bleak or baneful incarceration. Yet, for Sri Aurobindo himself, the jail had been no cage of confinement, but a veritable Yogashram where Purushottama had befriended him, and had sported as Guru, companion and guide. Thus had Sri Aurobindo's "enemies", by sending him to prison, only opened to him the doors of sudden enlightenment and felicity. And it had always been like that, for the highest good had come to Sri Aurobindo from his so-called "enemies" - and now he had no "enemy" in the world, the word had no meaning whatsoever.¹

Even in prison, then, for a soul unhorizoned like his there could be no real confinement. But when on acquittal the human body too was freed from captivity, he had to act a human role and speak in human accents. He knew that, on his arrest, his sister Sarojini had appealed for funds because, having "taken a vow of poverty in the service of the Motherland", he had no means of engaging the services of a barrister, and she had therefore been driven to the necessity of relying upon the public spirit and generosity of her countrymen on his behalf. The response had been good, and numberless people, known and unknown, had been with him in his hour of tribulation and trial. He therefore wrote a week after his release to the Bengalee this letter of thanksgiving:

...The love which my countrymen have heaped upon me in return for the little I have been able to do for them, amply repays any apparent trouble or misfortune my public activity may have brought upon me. I attribute my escape to no human agency, but first of all to the protection of the Mother of us all who has never been absent from me but always held me in Her arms and shielded me from grief and disaster, and secondarily to the prayers of thousands which have been going up to Her on my behalf ever since I was arrested. If it is the love of my country which led me into danger, it is also the love of my countrymen which has brought me safe through it.

Love was the one sovereign reality. Love of the country, love of the India the Mother, love that had bled at the sight of the Mother in bondage, this love had led him to dare danger and difficulty; and his countrymen's love - the infinite love of his numberless brothers and sisters - welling up to the mighty Mother had made Her take him in Her arms, shield him from defeat and despair, and brought him safely through the ordeal. Patriotism was but a form of love, and suffering itself was a means to the awakening of the love Divine.

Sri Aurobindo was "free", the bureaucracy had been humbled, and his friends were elated. But as for Sri Aurobindo himself, he had no cause for exultation, he could have no sense of victory;  

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there was only a deep calm, a fecund serenity that seemed poised for some new action. Bengal - and all India - had suffered a dismal change during the twelve months of his incarceration. A political paralysis seemed to be creeping over the country drying up the blood-streams of national life. What had happened to the promised Dawn? Where were the accredited tribunes of the people? Why were fewer and fewer political meetings held, and why were they attended - not by tens of thousands as before, but only by a few hundred? How had such listlessness and resignation seized the body and soul of the people of Bengal, the people of India?

But Sri Aurobindo wouldn't feel defeated or dispirited. He started holding meetings, even if they should be but poorly attended. He held discussions with leaders, he waited for the inner call. Then, suddenly, something - something quite extraordinary - happened. He was invited to Uttarpara, not far from Calcutta, to speak under the auspices of the Dharma Rakshini Sabha. On 30 May he went by train to Uttarpara, where he was received by the local Zemindar; and in the evening, Sri Aurobindo was taken in a procession to the place of the meeting on the banks of the Ganges. The audience numbered over ten thousand, and he was the sole speaker and was heard with rapt and reverent attention. He had intended at first to speak on the Hindu Religion, but as he sat there a word came to him, a word he had to speak to the Indian nation. In fact, the word had come to him in jail, and he must now speak it to the people. And so he rose to address the gathering that was thus uniquely privileged to hear first the "word" meant for the whole nation. He took a quick backward glance at recent events, the deportations, the thinning of the ranks of the nationalists, the drastic change in the political climate:

.. .now that I [have] come out I find all changed. One who always sat by my side and was associated in my work is a prisoner in Burma;* ... I looked round when I came out, I looked round for those to whom I had been accustomed to look for counsel and inspiration. I did not find them. There was more than that. When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country and men seemed bewildered; for instead of God's bright heaven full of the vision of the future that had been before us, there seemed to be overhead a leaden sky from which human thunders and lightnings rained.²**

The arrests and trials and heavy sentences and barbarous deportations - the "human thunders and lightnings"! - were meant to crush the spirit of the people, and

* Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who had been sentenced to six years' imprisonment for his articles in the Kesari commenting on the Muzzaferpore bomb-outrage, was then a prisoner at Mandalay in Burma.

* On 11 December 1908, Minto had issued orders for the arrest and deportation of Subodh Mullick, Krishna Kumar Mitra, Manoranjan Guhathakurta, Shyamsundar Chakravarti, Aswini Kumar Dutta and others.  

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this tidal wave of repression and the false logic behind it provoked even Morley to protest in these terms:

That's the Russian argument; by packing off train-loads of suspects to Siberia, we'll terrify the anarchists out of their wits, and all will come out right. That policy did not work out brilliantly in Russia, and did not save Russia from a Duma, the very thing that the Trepoffs and the rest of the 'offs' "deprecated and detested".³ *

But the "men on the spot" - the bureaucracy in India - had had their way, and the lights had gone out, and a pall and a silence had descended on the people. When Sri Aurobindo had last come to Uttarpara - that was over a year ago - Bepin Pal had made a memorable speech. He had then come out of the Buxar jail, and he had given the word that had come to him in jail from God. Sri Aurobindo too had been initiated in jail, and he would now give the Word to the world.

After this exordium, Sri Aurobindo went on to describe the circumstances of his arrest, his initial sense of defeat, the first hint of the Divine purpose behind his removal from the political scene, the reading of the Gita, the Vision of Narayana - the blissful experience of Vasudeva everywhere and in all things. Living with the other accused, he had seen them too hedged in with divinity; and when - after the killing of the approver, Narendranath - Sri Aurobindo had been once more "hurried away to the seclusion of a solitary cell". He had surprised him with more and more of His wonders. In his Baroda days he had first approached God and wanted, not mukti or personal salvation, but only strength for serving and uplifting his people. Again the cry was to be wrung from his heart:

Then in the seclusion of the jail, of the solitary cell I asked for it again. I said, "Give me Thy Adesh. I do not know what work to do or how to do it. Give me a message."⁴

Presently, in the communion of Yoga, he had received two messages. First, that it was the Divine intention that Sri Aurobindo should go forth into the world and do His work. Secondly, that the lights he had seen in prison, the truths he had glimpsed, the experiences he had gained in the year of seclusion should help Sri Aurobindo to take to the people the strength of the Sanatana Dharma. But this eternal religion, this Sanatana Dharma, albeit it had been cherished and preserved by the Aryan people in India, was really the possession of all humanity: the "Hindu" religion was also the universal religion, because it embraced the essence of all religions. And he went on to explain:

If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the one religion that can triumph over materialism by

* Cf. also Morley's letter to Minto of 6 January 1909: "After all, if we press to the bottom of things, I conjecture that the active man in this chapter of business must be Stuart or Plowden or somebody of the Police, and that breed needs searching scrutiny step by step in these matters. Lawyers are not always to be trusted; still less are Police authorities." [Quoted in Syed Razi Wasti 's Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement: 1905 to 1910 (1964), p. 121]  

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including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have our being. ...It is the one religion which shows the world what the world is, that it is the Lila of Vasudeva. ...It is the one religion which does not separate life in any smallest detail from religion, which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed from us the reality of death.⁵

This was the 'word' that had been put into his mouth to speak to the people of India through the members of the "Society for the Protection of Religion". To protect the Hindu religion was to protect all true religion; it was to be able to assimilate the latest genuine science and philosophy; it was to see the One reality behind the facade of manifold appearance; it was to achieve closeness to God in all acts, thoughts and words; it was, above all, to win victory over the fear of death and embrace the puissance of the soul's immortality. Only men charged with purpose and power by such a universal, such an eternal religion - Sanatana Dharma - could successfully fight the battle of nationalism and win the right to call themselves true children of the Mother. It would be seen that between the Bombay National Union speech of 19 January 1908 and the Uttarpara speech of 30 May 1909, there was much common ground - but there was some significant difference in stress as well. Sri Aurobindo had spoken at Bombay after his Baroda nirvanic experience, while at Uttarpara he spoke after the Alipur experience of Narayana darsan. Yet it was the same man, dedicated to the service of the Mother, the man self-poised and self-giving and exuding iron resolve and tremendous purpose. At Uttarpara, Sri Aurobindo gave the "word" he had been charged to give, but there was still the "work" he had been ordained to do. And the time for it would come too, and the inner Guide would show him the way and the means at the appropriate time.

II

Along with Sri Aurobindo, some of the other accused too - Bejoy Nag and Nolini Kanta Gupta among them - had been released, and these two young men, "wandering about like floating weeds or moss",⁶ used to meet him in the afternoons, and also accompanied him on his short political tour of Assam. Presently, Sri Aurobindo decided to start two weekly papers, the Karmayogin in English and the Dharma in Bengali. The Nationalist party of Bengal had all but disintegrated, and Sri Aurobindo thought he should put new life into it and impart to it a new and steady sense of movement towards a clearly visualised goal. It is important to remember that, although he was offered the editorship of the Bengalee and although  

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he was promised help if he would re-start the Bande Mataram, Sri Aurobindo resolved rather to break fresh ground by launching journals entirely his own. Accommodation was found at 4, Shyampukur Lane, the press and the office in front and living rooms at the back. The Karmayogin came out on 19 June, and its Bengali counterpart, the Dharma, on 23 August. While staying on at his uncle's place (the Sanjivani office), Sri Aurobindo came to Shyampukur every afternoon and remained there till late at night. Besides Bejoy Nag and Nolini, who were permanent residents there, others too regularly joined them. Guru and senior comrade, Sri Aurobindo "taught" them all the time, albeit without their realising what was happening to them:

Sri Aurobindo had his own novel method of education. It did not proceed by the clock, nor according to a fixed routine or curriculum, that is, there was nothing of the school about it. It went simply and naturally along lines that seemed to do without rules.⁷

His method in teaching a foreign language like French seems to have been to begin straightaway with a classic, for example Molière's L'Avare. Again, as earlier at Baroda, at Shyampukur too Sri Aurobindo seems to have experimented with "automatic" or mediumistic writing or speech.* The young men sitting around Sri Aurobindo in an unlighted room at eight would suddenly hear a voice - Sri Aurobindo's and yet not his - breaking the silence, announcing its identity - perhaps Danton, or Bankim, or Theramenes! - and speaking in English. What did it all amount to? Certainly, supraphysical beings do exist; and some supraphysical beings - or portions or emanations of them - might achieve entry into a ready human medium, make compromises with the materials (body, life, mind) comprising the medium, and try to communicate as from the "beyond" to the "here and now". But such communications are seldom articulate to any definite purpose. There could be exceptions, of course, and Sri Aurobindo himself later claimed that Vivekananda had spoken in the Alipur jail to him and that Rammohan Roy had given the material that went into the book Yogic Sadhan⁸ But these were events of no more than marginal relevance to the "work" Sri Aurobindo had to do.

In its first issue, the Karmayogin, described itself as "a weekly Review of National Religion, Literature, Science, Philosophy, etc."; among the contributors would be "Srijut Aurobindo Ghose and others"; the cover illustration was of the Chariot, with Arjuna and Sri Krishna seated in it; and one of the three mottos of the journal was the Gita vākya, "Yoga is skill in works". It was to be a national review and not a weekly newspaper. Current events were important only in so far as they tended to help or hinder "the growth of national life and the development of the soul of the nation". Many things went into the life of the nation, and unless they became a total and purposive strength, an integrated dynamic of forward

* Cf. Sri Aurobindo: "The writing was done as an experiment as well as an amusement and nothing else.... But the results did not satisfy him and after a few further attempts at Pondicherry he dropped these experiments altogether." (Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 65)  

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looking motivation and action, mere varied activity in the divers fields of religion, politics, literature, science, philosophy, industry and commerce might prove to be activity at cross-purposes, and instead of strengthening the nation might actually weaken it and give its movement a wrong or even backward direction. India's political activity had "crept in a channel cut for it by European or Europeanised minds"; the other streams of national activity were running in "disconnected channels, sluggish, scattered and ineffectual". The one thing needful was to make them all flow together towards a truly worthy national goal. And the Karmayogin would address itself to the task of helping to bring this about:

There is the sentiment of Indianism, there is not yet the knowledge. There is a vague idea, there is no definite conception or deep insight. We have yet to know ourselves, what we were, are and may be; what we did in the past and what we are capable of doing in the future; our history and our mission. This is the first and most important work which the Karmayogin sets for itself, to popularise this knowledge. .. .And the second thing is how to use these assets so as to swell the sum of national life and produce the future. It is easy to appraise their relations to the past; it is more difficult to give them their place in the future. The third thing is to know the outside world and its relation to us and how to deal with it. That is the problem which we find at present most difficult and insistent, but its solution depends on the solution of the others.

In this supreme task of mobilisation of our faculties on the issue of taking resolute leaps towards the future, the urgent task was the awakening of our brahmatej, which was not what Europeans called "religion" but rather "spirituality":

...spirituality, the force and energy of thought and action arising from communion with or self-surrender to that within us which rules the world.... This force and energy can be directed to any purpose God desires for us; it is sufficient to knowledge, love or service; it is good for the liberation of an individual soul, the building of a nation or the turning of a tool. It works from within, it works in the power of God, it works with superhuman energy. The reawakening of that force in three hundred millions of men by the means which our past has placed in our hands, that is our object.⁹

To recapture the spiritual master-key to the solution of life's problems, to recover and integrate with our current life the essential inheritance from the past, to dare and fare forward: that was to be the national programme of action, and the Karmayogin would spell it out in detail and help to engineer the nation's movement towards a bright and purposive future.

The early issues of the Karmayogin carried Sri Aurobindo's English translations of the Isha, Kena and Katha Upanishads. The paper also published his renderings from Kalidasa's Ritusamhara and the first thirteen chapters of Bankim Chandra's Anandamath, besides several of Sri Aurobindo's poems. Who, Baji Prabhou, Epiphany, The Birth of Sin and An Image. Among the constructive prose contributions were several series of essays like A System of National Education, The Brain of India, The National Value of Art and The Ideal of the Karmayogin.  

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In some of the later issues appeared a group of Landor-like Conversations of the Dead - Dinshaw, Perizade; Turiu, Uriu; Two Souls in Pitri-Lok. In the last of these "conversations", Sri Aurobindo makes the Souls in Pitri-Lok say that, since the sorrows of the world call them, they will return to the earth and re-establish there the reign of joy, beauty and harmony.

Thus, although the spread of interests was commendably wide, it was nevertheless inevitable that the central accent should be on the developing political scene. Papers like the Bengalee and the Indian Social Reformer had chosen to ridicule Sri Aurobindo's Uttarpara speech and the tremendous revelations of his sadhana in prison. What could the Lord have appeared and spoken - actually spoken - to an under-trial prisoner? Impossible and altogether improbable! The fourth issue of the Karmayogin gave a balanced and detailed rejoinder to these immaculate rationalists of Calcutta and Bombay. Again, when Baikunthanath Sen, President of the Hooghly Conference (5th and 6th September 1909), described Sri Aurobindo as an 'impatient idealist', the Karmayogin commented:

The reproach of idealism has always been brought against those who work with their eye on the future by the politicians... who look only to the present. The reproach of impatience is levelled with equal ease and readiness against those who in great and critical times have the strength and skill to build with rapidity the foundations or the structure of the future.¹⁰

'Ideals' were not idle things but the fruit of noble natures possessed of intensity of purpose:

Lifted high above the maya of manhood and womanhood is the life of the ideal. Ideals are not accidents. They are the fruit of long tapas and of many lives. Human life is made great in proportion to their intensity.

And running counter to the popular view about sannyāsa (renunciation) and the escapist adoration of a past golden age or a future existence other than the terrestrial, Sri Aurobindo affirmed categorically:

Let us think reverently of the task that is before us. Never in history has there been a greater age than now. Nothing in the past is too high for the present. Sannyāsa was not greater than public service. No form of Ishwara could be higher than Bhumia Devi. This Devi we have to realise. Her worship we have to establish. And we may remember that in the form of Gandhari she still sings to the Duryodhanas of this day, as of another long ago, yato dharmastato jayah.

III

We have seen in an earlier chapter (III.vi) how the fiery-souled Sister Nivedita met Sri Aurobindo at Baroda in 1902, having read earlier with profound admiration his articles in the Indu Prakash. She could see in him even then the same missionary spirit that had animated her own great Master, Swami Vivekananda,  

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and Sri Aurobindo glimpsed in her the Shakti that had made her the inspired author of Kali, the Mother. Returning to Bengal, she gave sustained support to him in his secret work, and in 1903 he appointed her a member of the controlling revolutionary committee of five; and during his first short spell of hectic political activity consequent on the Partition of Bengal, Nivedita kept close and continuous contact with him. His arrest and the rounding up of the revolutionaries proved a setback to the cause, but she was nothing daunted, and she wasn't dispirited either. Returning from Europe to India in July 1909, Nivedita was delighted that Sri Aurobindo was free again, and she promptly organised celebrations in her school. And she wondered at the marvellous change - the transformation - that had come over Sri Aurobindo. His face seemed to be all eyes and little else, eyes burning with the intensity and power that had become his during his sadhana in prison. This man with the tight-drawn skin and possessed of rock-like calm and exuding infinite assurance was no mere politician; he was the Life Force itself, the soul's sprout from the soil of India pointing fiercely towards the future. In the words of her biographer, Lizelle Raymond, in The Dedicated:

Nivedita thought she could still hear the voice of Swami Vivekananda stirring up the masses: "Arise, Sons of India! Awake!" That had been the first phase of the struggle. Now this life-giving cry was repeated differently, because the effort required in the changing circumstances was no longer identical; but the source of it was still the same! Now the new order was that every individual should become a sadhak of the nation - a seeker - so that "the One could find Himself and manifest Himself in every human being, in all humanity". Aurobindo Ghose... was, as Nivedita understood him, the successor to the spiritual Masters of the past, offering the source of his inspiration for all to drink from in Yogic solitude. Since his imprisonment at Alipur, Aurobindo Ghose was no longer a fighter but a Yogi.

In the meantime, repression went on with redoubled ruthlessness, and there was also unending talk about the coming "reforms". Sri Aurobindo could hardly help taking note of these in his speeches and writings. In his Beadon Square speech on 13 June, Sri Aurobindo commented on both. Thus of the notorious "Sunset Regulation":

It appeared that we were peaceful citizens until sunset, but after sunset we turned into desperate characters, - well, he was told, even half an hour before sunset; apparently even the sun could not be entirely trusted to keep us straight. We had, it seems, stones in our pockets to throw at the police and some of us, perhaps, dangle bombs in our Chaddars.¹¹

In his comprehensive speech on 27 June at the annual meeting of the Howrah People's Association, he spoke fervently on "The Right of Association" and on the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, and mounted an attack on the bureaucratic moves to brand rights and ideals as offences and crimes. And Sri Aurobindo could be devastatingly sarcastic when he wanted:

...there was the imagination of a very highly imaginative police which saw  

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hidden behind the lathi the bomb. Now nobody ever saw the bombs. But the police were quite equal to the occasion; they thought there might be bombs. And what if there were not? Their imagination was quite equal to realising any bomb that could not be materialised.... The police suspected that the lathi was the father of the bomb. Their procedure was simple with the simplicity of the highest detective genius. When they heard of a respectable-sized dacoity, they immediately began to reason it out. They said, "Now why are there so many dacoities in the land? Obviously, the lathi fathered the bomb and the bomb fathers the dacoities. Who have lathis? The Samitis. Therefore it is proved. The Samitis are the dacoits." Our efficient police have always shown a wonderful ability. Generally when a dacoity is committed, the police are nowhere near.... They only come up when the dacoity is long over and say, ''Well this is the work of the National volunteers."¹²

In his Kumartuli speech, again, Sri Aurobindo described with playful irony his varied "friends" - the Hare Street friend, the Police-wallah, the Madras friend - and replied to their "friendly" suggestions. The Madras friend (the Indian Patriot) had advised Sri Aurobindo to eschew politics and take to Sannyasa; the police would very much like him not to open his mouth "too much"; and the Hare Street friend (the Englishman) had asked Sri Aurobindo to devote himself to literature and religion, and not to make speeches on Swadeshi and Boycott. Yes, indeed, said Sri Aurobindo in reply: he was devoting himself to literature and religion; he was writing on Swaraj and Swadeshi, and that was a form of literature, and he was discoursing on Swaraj and Swadeshi, and that was part of his religion!¹³

As for the 'Minto-Morley' Reforms that were dangling in all their insubstantiality in the mid-air of political speculation, Sri Aurobindo had little doubt, with his intimate knowledge of the British people and the variety of their manufactures, that the Reforms belonged to the category of "Brummagem goods... a synonym for shoddy"; they would only throw "an apple of fresh discord among them"; they were hollow and pretentious, and "this offer of conciliation in one hand and the pressure of repression in the other" was a dangerously repressive policy.¹⁴ It was the classic policy of "In the one hand there is the sugar plum and in the other there is repression", as a statesman was to point out on the floor of the Indian Legislative Assembly nearly twenty years later.* Sri Aurobindo therefore rightly insisted that the Reforms were a mockery and a trap, and that the cooperation expected from the people was not what true cooperation should be but merely a pitiful parody of the same:

Co-operation can only be given if the Government which is now alien becomes our own, if the people have a share in it, not merely in name, not merely by the right of talk in the Legislative Council, not merely by apparent concessions,

* S. Srinivasa lyengar, on 12 March 1929. Cf. Lord Minto: "The Government of India had to play a double part. With one hand to dispense measures calculated to meet novel political conditions; with the other hand sternly to eradicate political crimes." (India: Minto and Morley, p. 414)  

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but by getting some measure of control in the matter of legislation, in the expenditure of the taxes they are called on to pay for the maintenance of the administration....¹⁵

But, then, there were the Moderates all agog with excitement in anticipation of the "coming Reforms". Any sporadic act of violence by an Indian - whether in England or in India - threw the Moderates into flutters of apprehension lest the Reforms should, after all, fail to materialise. Sri Aurobindo had thus to cross swords both with the bureaucracy and with the forces of Moderatism. Thus, when Gokhale made a speech in Poona in connection with the murders of Curzon Wylie and Lalcaca, the Karmayogin came out with a slashingly sarcastic editorial which concluded with these pointed and envenomed words:

He [Gokhale] publishes himself now as the righteous Bibhisan who, with the Sugrives, Angads, and Hanumans of Madras and Allahabad, has gone to join the Avatar of Radical Absolutism in the India Office, and ourselves as the Rakshasa to be destroyed by this new Holy Alliance.

An intimate knowledge of the Ramayana is needed to appreciate the subtlety of Sri Aurobindo's assailment of the Moderatist position. In the words of Prema Nandakumar, "the whole point of the indictment is that Morley (or the British Government) was not an avatar like Rama, and Gokhale and his friends erred by imagining themselves in the righteous role of Vibhishana and the other allies of Rama, and erred even more by taking the Tilaks, Bepin Pals and Aurobindos to be of the tribe of Ravana". ¹⁶

Like his countrymen, Sri Aurobindo too did not fail to recognise the finer elements in Gokhale's mind and character; he actually described the Poona leader in the Kumartuli speech as "one who had served and made sacrifices for the country". ¹⁷ But when Gokhale denounced the ideals and activities of the Nationalists, when he said that "the ideal of independence was an ideal which no sane man could hold ", when he described the people who advocated the peaceful methods of passive resistance as "men who, out of cowardice, do not speak out the thought that is in their hearts", it became then incumbent on Sri Aurobindo to accept the challenge and enter the fray. In both his College Square and Kumartuli speeches of July 1909, Sri Aurobindo replied to Gokhale and incidentally went again into the implications of the policy of Passive Resistance advocated by the Nationalists:

This was a very dangerous teaching which Mr. Gokhale introduced into his speech, that the ideal of independence - whether we call it Swaraj or autonomy or Colonial Self-Government, because these two things in a country circumstanced like India meant in practice the same... - cannot be achieved by peaceful means; Mr. Gokhale knows or ought to know that this ideal which he decries is deeply rooted in the minds of thousands of people and cannot be driven out. He has told the ardent hearts which cherish this ideal of independence and are determined to strive towards it that their ideal can only be achieved by violent means. If any doctrine can be dangerous, if any teacher can be said to have uttered words dangerous to the peace of the country, it is Mr. Gokhale  

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himself.... We have told the people that there is a peaceful means of achieving independence in whatever form we aspire to it. We have said that by self-help, by passive resistance we can achieve it... .Passive resistance means two things. It means, first, that in certain matters we shall not co-operate with the Government of this country until it gives us what we consider our rights. Secondly, if we are persecuted, if the plough of repression is passed over us, we shall meet it not by violence, but by suffering, by passive resistance, by lawful means. We have not said to our young men, "When you are repressed, retaliate"; we have said, "Suffer." . ..We are showing the people of this country in passive resistance the only way in which they can satisfy their legitimate aspiration without breaking the law and without resorting to violence.¹⁸

As for the charge of "cowardice" implied in Gokhale's Poona speech, Sri Aurobindo said that, although he was himself no model of courage, "residence for the best part of a year in a solitary cell had been an experience which took away all the terrors of transportation", and the conclusion he would draw from his own experience was simply this:

Imprisonment in a righteous cause was not so terrible as it seemed, suffering was not so difficult to bear as our anticipations made it out. The prize to which they aspired was the greatest to which a nation could aspire and if a price was asked of them, they ought not to shrink from paying it.¹⁹

The Nationalists were not, then, the mad men conjured by the imagination of the Moderates; nor were they cowards or men of double-talk eager merely to save their skins. On the contrary, they were genuine patriots who were ready, if required, to pay the price for the Swaraj they thirsted for and must obtain at all cost.

Repression, repression, hundred-limbed repression might prevail for the nonce, but that would not silence or cow down the Nationalists. What, after all, was repression? Soon after coming out of prison, Sri Aurobindo articulated a significant answer in the course of his Jhalakati speech on 19 June:

...it is a strange idea, a foolish idea, which men have... that a nation which has once risen, once has been called up by the voice of God to rise, will be stopped by mere physical repression.... Storm has swept over us today. I saw it come, I saw the striding of the storm-blast and the rush of the rain and as I saw it an idea came to me. What is this storm that is so mighty and sweeps with such fury upon us? And I said in my heart, "It is God who rides abroad on the wings of the hurricane...." A storm like this has swept also our national life. That too was the manifestation of the Almighty. We were building an edifice to be the temple of our Mother's worship.... It was then that He came down upon us.... He shook the roof with his mighty hands and part of the building was displaced and ruined. Why has He done this? Repression is nothing but the hammer of God that is beating us into shape so that we may be moulded into a mighty nation and an instrument for his work in the world. We are iron upon his anvil and the blows are showering upon us not to destroy but to re-create. Without suffering there can be no growth. It is not in vain that Aswini Kumar Dutt has been taken from his people.  

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It is not in vain that Krishna Kumar Mitra* has been taken from us and is rotting in Agra jail. It is not in vain that all Maharashtra mourns for Tilak at Mandalay. It is He, not any other, who has taken them and his ways are not the ways of men... .²⁰

Great as Aswini Kumar Dutt and Tilak were, even without them - or without others who might be taken away - the movement would still go on, for God was the real leader, and He was irresistible. Had not Sri Aurobindo seen through the jail and the jail-keeper, the judge and the assessors, the confronting lawyers Mr. Norton and Chittaranjan, the witnesses and the visitors, and seen behind them all but one visage, one form, one manifestation? Temporary set-backs should not frighten the true sadhaka in the Temple of Patriotism. Set-backs were natural, set-backs were even inevitable in a high endeavour like the fight for freedom. But the national resolve must prevail in the end:

What is it that we seek? We seek the fulfilment of our life as a nation.... that is why God has sent us into the world to fulfill him by fulfilling ourselves in our individual life, in the family, in the community, in the nation, in humanity. ... Our object, our claim is that we shall not perish as a nation, but live as a nation. Any authority that goes against this object will dash itself against the eternal throne of justice - it will dash itself against the laws of Nature which are the laws of God, and be broken to pieces.²¹

IV

Sri Aurobindo's life, divided mainly between his uncle Krishna Kumar Mitra's house and the premises of the Karmayogin office, pursued its even course in the weeks and months immediately after his release from prison. In the mornings he sat on the veranda with hands crossed and dressed in dhoti and shirt, and expounded the Gita to the young men who gathered round him day after day. In the evenings, he was at the office in Shyampukur Lane, or away somewhere to speak at a public meeting. But the man of God, the new-gospeller of Sanatana Dharma, the unflinching Nationalist, the eloquent expounder of the Gita, the unconventional teacher of French, the experimenter with mediumistic automatic speech, this Yogi, this Nationalist, this Fighter was also gentleness incarnate in his relations with those near and dear to him. Basanti his cousin** has given us this intimate glimpse of Sri Aurobindo at this period of his life:

I never saw [Sri Aurobindo] getting angry. Auroda is sitting and writing. His sandals are lying at a little distance. My mother comes, puts on his sandals and goes up to the terrace to take her constitutional walk. After some time

* Krishna Kumar Mitra was Sri Aurobindo's uncle in whose house (the Sanjivani office) he was staying at the time.

** Krishna Kumar Mitra's daughter; Krishna Kumar had married Sri Aurobindo's mother's sister.  

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people come to see [Sri Aurobindo]. He gets up, searches all round for his sandals. In the meantime he sees his aunt, smiles and asks her: "Little aunty! have you put on my sandals? There are visitors who have come to see me." The aunt gives him his sandals. That she took them away - that he had to wait - nothing of this has made him angry.²²

And whenever his aunt had to go to the Ganges for a bath, Sri Aurobindo was ready enough to interrupt his own writing and accompany her to the river and back.²³

Two months after the Karmayogin had been launched, the first issue of its Bengali counterpart, the Dharma, came out on 23 August 1909. It carried as one of its two epigraphs the verse from the Gita: yadā yadāhi dharmasya glānirbhavati Bhārata abhutthānamadharmasya tadātmānam srjāmyaham (Whenever Dharma declines and adharma is on the ascendant, 0 Bharata, it is then I bring about my birth). The professed object of the Dharma was to propagate Sanatana Dharma, the "Eternal Religion". Not "religion" exactly, for dharma really means much more; it is nearer to the essential and unchanging Law of Life, or the Law Divine - for only the Law Divine can both include the essence of all religions while firmly surpassing their temporal limitations. As used by Sri Aurobindo, Sanatana Dharma was an inclusive yet timeless concept, true for all times and therefore true for his time as well:

Our aim is to spread the eternal religion and, based on that eternal religion, the observance of the religion of the race and the spirit of the age.... Knowledge, devotion and non-attached activity are the root of an Aryan education;* liberality, love, courage, energy, modesty are signs of the Aryan character....We have fallen from the ways of our religion, moved away from our goals...' it should be our first aim to give the entire nation, especially the youth of the country, an adequate education, high ideals and a way of activity that will arouse these Aryan ideals. Till we succeed in doing that the spread of the eternal religion will be like sowing seeds in a barren field.

The performance of the racial religion will make it easier to serve the spirit of the age. This is an age of energy, shakti, and love.... Entering into and manifesting in the Aryan religion, composed of knowledge, devotion and non-attached action, these same powers are seeking for expansion and self-fulfilment. The signs of that energy of expression are severe austerity, high ideals, and noble action....

When the religion of the race and of the time-spirit are fulfilled, the eternal religion will spread and establish itself throughout the world.... The entire world will come to the Knower of Brahman, who will arise in the Aryan land.... It is to bring that day nearer that the Indians are rising, that is why this fresh awakening of Aryan ideas.²⁴ *

* Most of Sri Aurobindo's contributions to the Dharma appear in translation in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual Nos. 26 and 27.  

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There are constants as well as variables in all religions, - and it is the way of all religions progressively to ignore the constants of spirituality and to stratify the variables, even when they have become quite irrelevant, into the pseudo-constants of dogma, ritual and mere superstition. But Sanatana Dharma has a way of meeting, and entering into creative relationship with, both unique racial peculiarities and the peremptory requirements of the Time Spirit. Twentieth century India couldn't ignore the achievements of Western education, science, social and political organisation: nor could it ignore the essential Aryan ideals and virtues. Only an unfaltering grounding in the Spirit would help modern India to be Aryan, to be truly modem, and to fulfill its future role as the Guru of the Nations. Like the Karmayogin, the Dharma too would make the propagation of this message the cardinal aim of its high journalistic endeavour.

During its brief period of life, the Dharma seems to have given something new to Indian journalism. Although Sri Aurobindo never actually addressed a public meeting in Bengali, he had already - by the time he launched the Dharma - won an individual mastery of the language to be able to make an astonishing variety of contributions to the paper: essays on the Upanishads, the Puranas and the Gita (including a rendering of the first two Books), essays on Nationalism, religion and spirituality, essays on subjects like 'The Eight Siddhis', 'Sannyasa and Tyaga', 'National Resurgence' and 'The Problem of the Past'. The Dharma was no doubt meant specially for those who couldn't read the Karmayogin, but the change of medium, the shift to a concentrated regional audience with its own ethos and slant of sensibility, and the resulting larger freedom and intensity of expression must have given to the Dharma a fierce urgency and directness of appeal that perhaps even the Karmayogin lacked.

While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to attempt a full review of Sri Aurobindo's contributions to the Dharma, it would not be out of place to refer here to one or two essays that throw a revealing light on the direction of his current thinking. In one essay, for example, he warned against the Indian political movement going the way of the West, exploiting hatred and necessarily employing violence. Although in its first stage, politics in India had handled Western methods, soon the second stage came when, "imbued with the spirit of the Divine Law", the main stress was on the adoration of India as the Mother. Politics was not a thing apart from life, but was a part of the Divine Law, and Sri Aurobindo pleaded that our young men should learn to root out hatred from their hearts, for rajasic turbulence in thought, feeling or action must defeat itself in the end.²⁵ The main requirement was the strength of calm, not the self-defeat of tumult and agitation. Human society had already passed through the largely vital and the largely mental (or rational) stages. The West had tried to translate the concepts of equality, fraternity and liberty into everyday realities - but without enduring success. Mankind must therefore either fare onward towards the heights where the soul (not the mind) was predominant, or slink back precipitately to mere animality.²⁶ In another essay, Sri Aurobindo referred to the bullock-cart, the motor-car and  

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the well-built chariot as vehicles symbolic of the tamasic, rajasic and sattwic types of the human personality - but "The Chariot of Jagannath" is yet to come into being:

The ideal society is the vehicle of the indwelling Godhead of a human aggregate, the chariot for the journey of Jagannath. Unity, Freedom, Knowledge and Power constitute the four wheels of this chariot.²⁷

Other societies had been conglomerations of egoistic men, loosely or insecurely held together and threatened by all kinds of inner tensions. But the society of the Future would be a "gnostic community created by delight and the unifying power of self-knowledge and divine knowledge":

The day Self-born unity will come into being by the harmony and integration of knowledge, devotion and work, as impelled by the Will of the Virat Purusha the Universal Person, on that day the Chariot of Jagannath will come out of the avenues of the world, radiating its light in all directions. Satya Yuga the Age of Truth will descend upon earth; the world of mortal man will become the field for the play of the Divine, the temple-city of God, the metropolis of Ananda.²⁸

V

Sri Aurobindo came out of prison on 6 May 1909 and launched the Karmayogin on 19 June. Clearly, he didn't allow the grass to grow under his feet. Speeches, consultations, exhortations - his mere presence - and now this weekly paper! The bureaucracy couldn't appreciate the shift in emphasis implied in the change from the Bande Mataram to the Karmayogin. Perhaps a trap - a subtle and dangerous trap - was suspected in the change itself. Chafing at the earlier defeat in their attempt to get Sri Aurobindo convicted and now fuming and fretting because the incendiary author of Bhawani Mandir was back among his young men and was doubtless engaged in some explosive new mischief, the bureaucracy wondered whether it would not be a good idea - since he couldn't be sent to the Andamans - to deport him at least to some inaccessible place. In particular, Sri Aurobindo struck the bureaucracy as a major impediment to India's acceptance of the proposed Reforms, and hence his removal from the political scene seemed an obvious remedy. Coming to know of these bright ideas, Sister Nivedita advised Sri Aurobindo either to go into secrecy or to continue his political activity from outside India. But Sri Aurobindo thought that it would be sufficient if he published a signed letter in the Karmayogin, clearly spelling out his views on the political situation generally and on the controversial Reforms in particular. This "Open Letter to My Countrymen", dated "July 1909", appeared in the issue of 31 July, and presented in bold and clear outline a policy for nationalist India. Sri Aurobindo began with the observation that a public man's position in "India today" was most precarious, and even after his recent acquittal there was no security against a

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fresh accusation or a recourse to the law of deportation. There were rumours too that a case for his deportation had been submitted to the Government. Sri Aurobindo therefore thought it advisable to address a letter, to his countrymen:

In case of my deportation it may help to guide some who would be uncertain of their course of action, and, if I do not return from it, it may stand as my last political will and testament to my countrymen.²⁹

The Nationalist Party was very much there still, notwithstanding the blasts of repression; what it needed was a policy and a leader: "The first it may find, the second only God can give it". It was, however, a firm oral ground on which the Nationalists' cause had to be reared, then as always:

The strength of our position is moral, not material. .. .The whole of the moral strength of the country is with us, justice is with us. Nature is with us. The law of God which is higher than any human, justifies our action; youth is for us, the future is ours. On that moral strength we must rely for our survival and eventual success.³⁰

The ground being so strong, there was no occasion for "rash impatience". There was no virtue in defying the law for its own sake; on the contrary, "a respect for law is a necessary quality for endurance as a nation". Sporadic terrorist outrages had no doubt taken place, but even they were only "the rank and noxious fruit of a rank and noxious policy", and unless the authors of that policy (the alien bureaucracy) turned from their errors, nothing could prevent "the poison-tree from bearing according to its kind". The claim for Swaraj was a moral and spiritual one, and didn't admit of any admixture of hatred:

We find a bureaucratic administration, we wish to make it democratic; we find an alien government, we wish to make it indigenous; we find a foreign control, we wish to render it Indian. They lie who say that this aspiration necessitates hatred and violence. Our ideal of patriotism proceeds on the basis of love and brotherhood and it looks beyond the unity of the nation and envisages the ultimate unity of mankind. But it is a unity of brothers, equals and free men that we seek, not the unity of master and serf, of devourer and devoured.³¹

Such being the "ends", the "means" had to be in consonance with them; the big change that had to be brought about would be accomplished through the methods of passive resistance:

The essence of this policy is the refusal of co-operation so long as we are not admitted to a substantial share and an effective control in legislation, finance and administration.³²

The strategy of "No control, no co-operation" was but an adaptation relevant to Indian conditions of the classic American war-cry, "No representation, no taxation". And the tactics of boycott, swadeshi, national education merely flowed from the main strategy.

There were, however, difficulties in making the national will articulate in expression and effective in action. A disunited Congress, divided on basic issues of

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policy and programme, was the first of the impediments. And there was also the question of accepting or rejecting the proposed Reforms. As Sri Aurobindo saw it, there was room for compromise on all questions without a surrender of the basic principles of the Nationalist party. In conclusion, he outlined this six-point programme: persistence, with a strict regard to law, in a peaceful policy of self-help and passive resistance; "No control, no co-operation" with the Government; a rapprochement with the Moderates wherever possible, and the reconstitution of a united Congress; revival of the Boycott movement on an effective basis; extension of the programme to Provinces other than Bengal, and ultimately to the whole country; organisation of a system of co-operation which will not contravene the law and will yet enable workers to proceed with the task of self-help and national efficiency.³³

For all its eminent reasonableness, the "Open Letter" had in no way resiled from the position Sri Aurobindo had held before, but here was a closely-reasoned document that stated the Nationalist point of view with utter clarity, and when he met Nivedita next she told him that the "Letter had had the desired effect and the Government had dropped the idea of taking action against him, at least for the present. In writing his "Letter", Sri Aurobindo had relied "upon an intuitive perception that the Government would not think it politic or useful to deport him if he left a programme which others could carry out in his absence".³⁴ He had indeed calculated correctly, and the "Letter" also greatly helped the Nationalist party by giving it both a policy and a programme. Taking advantage of the precarious "freedom" he still enjoyed, Sri Aurobindo led the Nationalist party at the District Political Conference held at Hooghly on the 6th and 7th September 1909. The main question at the Subjects Committee was the issue of acceptance or rejection of the Minto-Morley Reforms. The Nationalists, with their majority, were in a position to throw out the resolution moved by the Moderates, welcoming the Reforms. But the Moderate leaders threatened to secede, and so "to avoid a scission he [Sri Aurobindo] consented to allow the Moderate resolution to pass, but spoke at the public session explaining his decision and asking the Nationalists to acquiesce in it... so as to keep some unity in the political forces of Bengal".³⁵ The Nationalist delegates were understandably disappointed that they were being asked to forego their advantage, but nevertheless they accepted his decision and left the hall so that they wouldn't have to vote either way. The seasoned Moderate leaders thought it strange, and even felt a little humiliated, that having refused to listen to them, the Nationalists should have trooped out in disciplined silence at the bidding of Sri Aurobindo.

A few days later, the Karmayogin made an assessment of the results of the Hooghly Conference. For one thing, the situation at Hooghly wasn't strictly comparable to the one at Surat, where the order for the breaking-up of the Congress had to be given. Again, at Hooghly the Nationalists were in a position of commanding strength, and therefore they could the more easily afford to be generous to the other party. Under Sri Aurobindo's lead, the Nationalists were content to

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adhere to their "main point of securing some definite step in relation to the holding of an united Congress".³⁶ Proceeding next to attend the Sylhet District Conference, Sri Aurobindo addressed many meetings on the way, and spoke on politics as well as Sanatana Dharma. He was gratified to find that, in that distant part of East Bengal, Nationalism was vigorously alert and alive and Moderatism was practically extinct. As he wrote in the Dharma afterwards, "the people of Sylhet held a conference in the very birth-place of repression and proclaimed Swaraj as their goal and moral force and passive resistance as the means of attaining it".

The growing strength of the Nationalists as well as their apparent willingness to take the Moderates with them encouraged Surendranath Banerjee to make a move to bring the two parties together. This he did at Barisal, at the time of the Provincial Conference. If Banerjee could go to the next session of the Congress at Benares as the head of a united Bengali delegation, the Nationalists becoming his sword-arm or ginger group, he might be able to get the better of the right wing of the Moderates led by Gokhale and his friends. The private conference, however, came to nothing, for there were too many intractable problems to solve. To qualify for delegation to Benares, the Nationalists would have first to accept the undemocratic Constitution imposed on the Congress at Surat, and this Sri Aurobindo was not prepared to do. A "united Congress", then, seemed to be not possible of realisation; not, certainly, at that stage. The path taken at Hooghly had, after all, led to a blind alley. The Reforms had proved an apple of discord, and had hoodwinked many into a somnolent acquiescence in them. Sri Aurobindo knew better, but as for the Moderates they would feel the bitterness of the fruit only when they came actually to taste it. Such foreknowledge as was his could nevertheless be dismissed as of no consequence by the selfish and the easy-going alike. In that bleak climate of Indian politics, what was Sri Aurobindo to do? A 'Home Rule' movement strictly within the four comers of the existing law? An intense nation-wide movement of passive resistance? neither appealed to him, the former because it would have meant a dilution of the ideal of Swaraj or Independence, and the latter because he felt convinced that the time was not propitious and he was himself not ready for such a mass movement.³⁷

Sri Aurobindo's brief period of political activity after Alipur - a matter of hardly ten months - saw him grow new dimensions of understanding and farseeing leadership. On the one hand there was the new stress on Sanatana Dharma and on integral national growth, and the hope and conviction that a changed and transformed India would be the Guru of the Nations; and, on the other hand, there was the clear grasp of the deteriorating political situation caused by the incarceration or deportation of the leading Nationalists, the eager anxiety of the Moderates to work the phoney Reforms, and the seething underground discontent finding expression in mere terrorism. Were the Nationalists to fight on two fronts - bureaucratic repression and terrorist activity - and decimate themselves to no purpose? On the one hand, there was the piling up of repressive measure on repressive measure, stifling the free expression of patriotic feeling whether in the press or on the platform;

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and on the other, there was a succession of daring acts like the killing of Nandalal Banerjee (who had arrested Prafulla Chaki), the attempt on Minto on 13 November 1909, and the assassination of Jackson, the Collector of Nasik, on 21 December, Repression and terrorism fatally incited each other and produced a terrifying chain-reaction. Where was room for honest and forthright Nationalism in such a vicious situation? It is only against such a twilight background of uncertainty that we should try to understand Sri Aurobindo's short spell of evangelism during the last months of 1909 and the opening months of the following year.

VI

Given the curious complex of political forces in the country, the ease with which the alien bureaucracy was apt to get panicky for no reason, and the extreme precariousness of a Nationalist politician's life, Sri Aurobindo knew that he might any day be removed from the political scene (or he might himself have to remove himself!). It was part of wisdom to plan one's campaign of action as if one might live to be a centurion; but one had also to hold oneself in readiness to quit the scene any moment whatsoever. The fullness, the ripeness was all. It was in this mood of the sthitaprajña that Sri Aurobindo made his varied contributions in verse and prose to the pages of the Karmayogin.

But, first, what exactly was 'Karmayoga' ? What should be the "Ideal of the Karmayogin"? Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of ten articles on the subject, the first two appearing in the inaugural issue itself. These ten essays have since been collected, rearranged, and published as a book, along with two of Sister Nivedita's contributions, under the title of The Ideal of the Karmayogin. Although written in a certain context and for a particular audience, the message is for all and comes to us - especially to the youth of India - with a pointed contemporaneous urgency. In the memorable exordium, Sri Aurobindo states his thesis with a characteristic succinctness and force:

A nation is building in India today before the eyes of the world... the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world. This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts his hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer.³⁸

The Karmayogin's mind is necessarily set on action, on change, or revolutionary transformation; it is not to be merely external or mechanical, but moral and spiritual. Salvation cannot lie in India trying to fabricate a toy model of European freedom, with bicameral legislatures, colourless societies, secularist postures and materialist panaceas. It is not as the "ape of Europe" that Indian society can achieve social renovation, for "it is the spirit alone that saves, and only by becoming great and free in heart can we become socially and politically great and free".³⁹  

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Nor is there any sense in countenancing the emergence of new sects; they solve nothing, and only add to our problems or give further vicious twists to them:

The religion which embraces Science and faith. Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, - that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced, turning it to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion. This sanatoria dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita, Upanishad, Darshan, Purana, Tantra, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduce the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.⁴⁰

Let the Hindu, let the Indian, look into the secret cavern of his heart and discover the perennial fount of spirituality. Matter needn't be denied, indeed it shouldn't be; but spirituality should be affirmed and accepted and realised as the deeper reality.

"Karmayoga" was simply "the application of Vedanta and Yoga to life". Vedanta and Yoga were nothing forbiddingly esoteric; nor were they limited to India. Already in 1909, they had exceeded their "Asiatic limit" and were beginning to "influence the life and practice of America and Europe". And Vedanta didn't mean a flight from life, and Yoga wasn't simply a series of exercises:

"Abandon all," says the Isha Upanishad, "that thou mayest enjoy all, neither covet any man's possession. But verily do thy deeds in this world and wish to live thy hundred years...." It is an error to think that the heights of religion are above the struggles of this world.... The Charioteer of Kurukshetra driving the car of Arjuna over that field of ruin is the image and description of Karmayoga; for the body is the chariot and the senses are the horses of the driving and it is through the bloodstained and mire-sunk ways of the world that Sri Krishna pilots the soul of man to vaikuntha.⁴¹

In the particular national context, the Karmayogin had to guard against the only too common tendency to cling to every detail sanctioned by past practice:

In all life there are three elements, the fixed and permanent spirit, the developing yet constant soul and the brittle changeable body. The spirit we cannot change, we can only obscure or lose; the soul must not be rashly meddled with, must neither be tortured into a shape alien to it, nor obstructed in its free expansion; and the body must be used as a means, not overcherished as a  

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thing valuable for its own sake. We will sacrifice no ancient form to an unreasoning love of change, we will keep none which the national spirit desires to replace by one that is a still better and truer expression of the undying soul of the nation.⁴²

Nationalism for Sri Aurobindo was a means for enriching and extending life, not for diminishing or destroying it as was attempted later by Fascism and Nazism. Sri Aurobindo clearly pointed out that, once India's nationalism had brought political order and economic prosperity to the country, it should "preserve itself in Cosmopolitanism somewhat as the individual preserves itself in the family, the family in the class, the class in the nation, not destroying itself needlessly but recognising a larger interest".⁴³ A strong nation was one thing, but the totalitarian "god-state" was a very different thing; and the so-called, but really ungodly, god-state could only rise from the grave of the individual. But even the greatest individuals were mere instruments in the hands of the Divine, "inspired Texts [in Carlyle's words] of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named history." Men in themselves were but helpless pieces of straw swaying hither and thither as the vagrant breeze intermittently disturbed them; they were great only to the extent the energy of Mahakali informed and inspired them, and carried them onward by the momentum of its own impulsion. In other words: "The greatness of individuals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within."⁴⁴ Ultimately it came to this: the true Karmayogin had the clue to "the stillness of assured sovereignty which commands the harmony of life"; in that calm, "right knowledge comes"; and "right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action. Yogah karmasu kauśalam". Having tempered, purified and perfected the instrument, the Karmayogin would do wisely to leave it in God's hands. Ridden by the Spirit within, the actions of the Karmayogin might puzzle the ordinary man. A wise passivity today, fire and brimstone tomorrow; in either case, he would but be following the inner Light of which others might be totally unaware. There is, of course, very real danger in all and sundry talking about their intuitions and inner voices and proclaiming themselves to be agents of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo was therefore careful to add that, not everybody, but only the man who had gone through the austere discipline of Yoga and communed with the Divine would be able to interpret His purposes and translate them into action. Everybody is potentially a great Karmayogin, but not everybody is aware of the indwelling God, and not everybody is able to pierce the crusts of egoism and false appearance and reach the illimitable power-house of the Spirit. Once man the seeker is awakened enough to realise that he is the heir to immortality and the agent of the Divine, he becomes an irresistible leader of mankind; he is irresistible because he is guided by a Power, he becomes a Power, which no other merely human agency can stand against; he is irresistible being now himself the arm of the eternal Consciousness-Force. He, the great Karmayogin, is in fact God manifesting Himself to average humanity; he has caught a glimpse of Infinity and seen in it both the auspicious God and the terrible God:  

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The God of Wrath, the God of Love are one,

Nor least He loves when most He smites. Alone

Who rises above fear and plays with grief,

Defeat and death, inherits full relief

From blindness and beholds the single Form,

Love masking Terror, Peace supporting storm.

The Friend of Man helps him with Life and Death,

Until he knows. Then freed from mortal breath

He feels the joy of the immortal play;

Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.

He too grows Rudra fierce, august and dire,

And Shiva, sweet fulfiller of desire.⁴⁵

VII

Apart from The Ideal of the Karmayogin group of essays, the paper also published some other sequences of articles that have since been collected as The Brain of India, the National Value of Art and A System of National Education. The Brain of India (which first appeared in October-November 1909), with its emphasis on the Brahmacharya-Yoga axis in education, has been referred to already in an earlier chapter (11.1). The National Value of Art series appeared in November-December 1909, and A System of National Education followed in the early weeks of 1910. All these sequences bespeak Sri Aurobindo's constant preoccupation with the problems of right education in the context of the national resurgence. Sri Aurobindo's ideas on ends and means in the field of education were elaborated in later years, and the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondicherry has been trying over a period of twenty-five years to serve as a pilot project to translate his dreams and ideals into practice. But the germs of the Aurobindonian conception of integral education can be seen even in the series of articles published in the Karmayogin over sixty years ago.

The core of Sri Aurobindo's educational thesis is in the following passage: Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.⁴⁶

The essential things cannot really be "taught", they can only be helped to flower, as the sun's rays warm the bud to spread itself out petal by petal. "The teacher is not an instructor or task-master", says Sri Aurobindo; "he is a helper and a guide". And in education, as in other activities, the child should be helped to develop in accordance with his own svabhava, or complex of inborn aptitudes, and not as the teacher or the parent peremptorily desires. But although self-education is the secret

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of all true education, the teacher might still provide the catalysis and create the proper atmosphere for the child:

The best method of suggestion is by personal example, daily converse and the books read from day to day.... This is a kind of good company, satsanga, which can seldom fail to have effect so long as sententious sermonising is avoided, and becomes of the highest effect if the personal life of the teacher is itself moulded by the great things he places before his pupils. It cannot, however, have full force unless the young life is given an opportunity, within its limited sphere, of embodying in action the moral impulses which rise within it.⁴⁷

Sri Aurobindo distinguishes in the functioning of buddhi or the intellect two complementary groups of faculties:

The faculties of the right-hand are comprehensive, creative and synthetic; the faculties of the left-hand critical and analytic. To the right-hand belong judgement, imagination, memory, observation; to the left-hand comparison and reasoning. The critical faculties distinguish, compare, classify, generalise, deduce, infer, conclude; they are the component parts of the logical reason. The right-hand faculties comprehend, command, judge in their own right, grasp, hold and manipulate. The right-hand mind is the master of the knowledge, the left-hand its servant. The left-hand touches only the body of knowledge, the right-hand penetrates its soul. The left-hand limits itself to ascertained truth, the right-hand grasps that which is still elusive or unascertained. Both are essential to the completeness of the human reason. These important functions of the machine have all to be raised to their highest and finest working-power... .⁴⁸

A still higher range of faculties, exceeding those of both the right-hand and the left-hand, also await exploration and mastery: "sovereign discernment, intuitive perception of truth, plenary inspiration of speech, direct vision of knowledge to an extent often amounting to revelation, making a man a prophet of truth". The teacher's tasks would be to understand the way of nature, to open up possibilities, to put the child in the way of self-growth in consonance with his svabhāva and the nation's genius, and to include in the regiment the whole are of education comprising the physical, vital, mental, moral and spiritual: and yet the teacher has to limit himself, all the time, to playing the paraclete, putting the "growing soul into the way of its own perfection".

In the six essays on "The National Value of Art", Sri Aurobindo has differentiated between the three uses of Art: the purely aesthetic; the intellectual, educative or moral; and the spiritual. The aesthetic appeal, the sense of the beautiful exemplified through the play of colour, form, rhythmic and symbolic sound, has helped savage man to become the civilised man. But Art can also bring about katharsis, cittaśuddhi or purification, and herein lies its educative or moral appeal:

Poetry raises the emotions and gives each its separate delight. Art stills the emotions and teaches them the delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction....

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Music deepens the emotions and harmonises them with each other. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified, self-controlled, deep and harmonious.⁴⁹

Higher still is the service of Art in awakening or satisfying the spiritual being or in advancing the growth of spirituality in the race:

Spirituality is a single word expressive of three lines of human aspiration towards divine knowledge, divine love and joy, divine strength, and that will be the highest and most perfect Art which, while satisfying the physical requirements of the aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outward reality, as the best European Art satisfies these requirements, reaches beyond them and expresses inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy of God in the world and its beauty and desirableness and the manifestation of divine force and energy in phenomenal creation. This is what Indian Art alone attempted....⁵⁰

Sri Aurobindo ends with the plea that "the spirit of old Indian Art must be revived" so that the whole nation may be "lifted again to the high level of the ancient culture - and higher".⁵¹

Such, then, were his searching backward glances into India's past, such his significant explorations and findings; and such too was his clear vision of the unfolding future - "higher... and higher"! Stationed on the perilous ridge of the ambiguous present, Sri Aurobindo yet commanded a view of both past and future in their incandescent vividness. He had come to the world with a mission: not simply to dream dreams nor to see uplifting visions alone, but rather to pass from dream to supreme exertion, and from Vision to definitive Realisation. Hadn't the time come for him to shake off the clinging dust of the frustrating present and boldly take a leap into the Future? He listened with his stilled soul, he waited for the divine command. The Mother of Radiances was dawning on the horizon, the unpredictable ādeś was being initiated by a sovereign compulsion. And the Karmayogin was expectant in the poise of utter readiness to break out into "another Space and Time".  

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