I went out from Pondicherry in 1947 when India was on the eve of securing her partitioned freedom. On my return journey in the month of July 1947, I became conscious of the fact that it was my return to a place where I had passed nearly twenty-five years at a stretch. The memory of my first visit in 1918 awoke in me all the old impressions vividly. I saw then that even at that early period Sri Aurobindo was for me the embodiment of the Supreme Consciousness. I mentally began to search for the exact time-moment when I had come to know him. Travelling far into the past I found it was in 1914 when I read a notice in the Bombay Chronicle about the publication of a monthly magazine – the Arya – from Pondicherry by Sri Aurobindo. I hastened to register my name in advance. In those days of political storms, to avoid the suspicion of the college authorities and the police, I had ordered the magazine to be delivered to an address outside the college. Sri Aurobindo then appeared to me to be the personification of the ideal of the life divine which he so ably put before humanity in the Arya.

But the question “why did I order the Arya?” remained. On trying to find an answer I found that I had known him before the appearance of the Arya.

The Congress broke up at Surat in 1907. Sri Aurobindo had played a prominent part in that historical session. From Surat he came to Baroda, and at Vankaner Theatre and at Prof, Manik Rao's old gymnasium in Dandia Bazar he delivered several speeches which not only took the audience by storm but changed entirely the course of many lives. I also had heard him without understanding everything that was spoken. But ever since I had seen him I had the constant feeling that he was one known to me, and so my mind could not fix the exact moment of time when I knew him. It is certain that the connection seemed to begin with the great tidal wave of the national movement in the political life of India; but I think it was only the apparent beginning. The

¹By the author

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years between 1903 and 1910 were those of unprecedented awakening and revolution. The generations that followed also witnessed two or three powerful floods of the national movement. But the very first onrush of the newly awakened national consciousness of India was unique. That tidal wave in its initial onrush defined the goal of India's political ideal – anindependent republic. Alternating movement of ebb and flow in the national movement followed till in 1947 the goal was reached. The lives of leaders and workers, who rode, willingly and with delight on the dangerous crest of the tidal wave, underwent great transformations. Our small group in Gujarat got its goal fixed – the winning of undiluted freedom for India.

All the energies of the leaders were taken up by the freedom movement. Only a few among them attempted to see beyond the horizon of political freedom – some ideal of human perfection; for, after all, freedom is not the ultimate goal but a condition for the expression of the cultural Spirit of India. In Swami Shraddhananda, Pandit Madanmohan Malavia, Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi – to name some leaders – we see the double aspect of the inspiration. Among all the visions of perfection of the human Spirit on earth, I found the synthetic and integral vision of Sri Aurobindo the most rational and the most satisfying. It meets the need of the individual and collective life of man today. It is the international form of the fundamental elements of Indian culture. It is, as Dr. S. K. Maitra says, the message which holds out hope in a world of despair.

This aspect of Sri Aurobindo vision attracted me as much as the natural affinity which I had felt on seeing him. I found on making a serious study of the Arya that it led me to very rational conclusions with regard to the solutions of the deepest problems of life. I opened correspondence with him and in 1916, with his permission, began to translate the Arya into Gujarati.

But, though I had seen him from a distance and felt an unaccountable familiarity with him, still I had not yet met him personally. When the question arose of putting into execution the revolutionary plan, which Sri Aurobindo had given to my brother – C. B. Purani – at Baroda in 1907, I thought it better to obtain Sri Aurobindo's consent . Barin, his brother, had given the formula for preparing bombs to my brother, and I was also very impatient to begin the work. But still we thought it necessary to consult

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the great leader who had given us the inspiration, as the lives of many young men were involved in the plan.

I had an introduction to Sj. V. V. S. Aiyar who was then staying at Pondicherry. It was in December 1918 that I reached Pondicherry. I did not stay long with Mr. Aiyar. I took up my bundle of books – mainly the Arya – and went to No. 41 Rue Francois Martin, the Arya office, which was alsoSri Aurobindo residence. The house looked a little queer, – on the right side, as one entered, were a few plantain trees and by their side a heap of broken tiles. On the left, at the edge of the open courtyard, four doors giving entrance to four rooms were seen. The verandah outside was wide. It was about 8 in the morning. The time for meeting Sri Aurobindo was fixed at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I waited all the time in the house, occasionally chatting with the two inmates who were there.

When I went up to meet him, Sri Aurobindo was sitting in a wooden chair behind a small table covered with an indigo-blue cloth in the verandah upstairs when I went up to meet him. I felt a spiritual light surrounding his face. His look was penetrating. He had known me by my correspondence. I reminded him about my brother having met him at Baroda; he had not forgotten him. Then I informed him that our group was now ready to start revolutionary activity. It had taken us about eleven years to get organised.

Sri Aurobindo remained silent for some time. Then he put me questions about my sadhana – spiritual practice. I described my efforts and added : "Sadhana is all right, but it is difficult to concentrate on it so long as India is not free."

"Perhaps it may not be necessary to resort to revolutionary activity to free India," he said.

"But without that how is the British Government to go from India?" I asked him.

"That is another question; but if India can be free without revolutionary activity, whyshould you execute the plan? It is better to concentrate on yoga – the spiritual practice, he replied.

"But India is a land that has sadhana in its blood. When India is free, I believe, thousands will devote themselves to yoga. But in the world of today who will listen to the truth from, or spirituality of, slaves?" I asked him.

He replied : India has already decided to win freedom and

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so there will certainly be found leaders and men to work for that goal. But all are not called to yoga. So when you have the call, is it not better to concentrate upon it? If you want to carry out the revolutionary programme you are free to do it, but I cannot give my consent to it."

"But it was you who gave us the inspiration and the start for revolutionary activity. Why do you now refuse to give your consent to its execution?" I asked.

"Because I have done the work and I know its difficulties. Young men come forward to join the movement, driven by idealism and enthusiasm. But these elements do not last long. It becomes very difficult to observe and extract discipline. Small groups begin to form within the organisation,rivalriesgrowbetweengroups and even between individuals. There is competition for leadership. The agents of the Government generally manage to join these organisations from the very beginning. And so the organisations are unable to .act effectively. Sometimes they sink so low as to quarrel even for money," he said calmly.

But even supposing that I grant sadhana to be of greater importance, and even intellectually understand that I should concentrate upon it, – my difficulty is that I feel intensely that I must do something for the freedom of India. I have been unable to sleep soundly for the last two years and a half. I can remain quiet if I make a very strong effort. But the concentration of my whole being turns towards India's freedom. It is difficult for me to sleep till that is secured".

Sri Aurobindo remained silent for two or three minutes. It was a long pause. Then he said: "Suppose an assurance is given to you that India will be free?”

"Who can give such an assurance?" I could feel the echo of doubt and challenge in my own question.

Again he remained silent for three or four minutes then he looked at me and added "Suppose I give you the assurance?’

I paused for a moment, considered the question with myself and said: "If you give the assurance. I can accept it."

"Then I give you the assurance that India will be free, he said in a serious tone.

My work was over – the purpose of my visit to Pondicherry was served. My personal question and the problem of our group was solved! I then conveyed to him the message of Sj. K. G. Deshpande

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from Baroda. I told him that financial help could be arranged from Baroda, if necessary, to which he replied, "At present what is required comes from Bengal, especially from Chandernagore. Sothere is no need."

When the talk turned to Prof. D. L. Purohit of Baroda Sri Aurobindo recounted the incident of his visit to Pondicherry where he had come to inquire into the relation between the Church and the State. He had paid a courtesy call on Sri Aurobindo as he had known him at Baroda. This had resulted in his resignation from Baroda State service on account of the pressure of the British Residency. I conveyed to Sri Aurobindo the good news that after his resignation Mr. Purohit had started practice as a lawyer and had been quite successful, earning more than the pay he had been getting as a professor.It was time for me to leave. The question of Indian freedom again arose in my mind, and at the time of taking leave, after I had got up to depart, I could not repress the question – it was a question of very life for me : "Are you quite sure that India will be free?"

I did not, at that time, realise the full import of my query. I wanted a guarantee, and though the assurance had been given my doubts had not completely disappeared.

Sri Aurobindo became very serious. The yogi in him came forward; his gaze was fixed at the sky that could be seen beyond the window. Then he looked at me and putting his fist on the table he said :

"You can take it from me, it is as certain as the rising of the sun tomorrow. The decree has already gone forth; it may not be long in coming.

I bowed down to him. That day I was able to sleep soundly in the train after more than two years. And in my mind was fixed for ever the picture of that scene : two of us standing near the small table, my earnest question, that upward gaze, and that quiet and firm voice with power in it to shake the world, that firm fist planted on the table, – the symbol of self-confidence of the divine Truth. There may be rank Kaliyuga, the Iron Age, in the whole world but it is the great good fortune of India that she has sons who know the Truth and have the unshakable faith in it, and can risk their lives for its sake. In this significant fact is contained the divine destiny of India and of the world.

After meeting Sri Aurobindo I was quite relieved of the great strain that was upon me. I felt that Indian freedom was a certainty, I could

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participate in public movements with equanimity and with a truer spiritual attitude. I got some experiences also which confirmed my faith in Sri Aurobindo's path. I got the confident faith in a divine Power that is beyond time and space and that can and does work in the world. I came to know that any man with a sincere aspiration for it can come in contact with that Power.

There were people who thought that Sri Aurobindo had retired from life, that he did not take any interest in the world and its affairs. These ideas never troubled me. On the contrary, I felt that his work was of tremendous significance for humanity and its future. In fact, the dynamic aspect of his spirituality, his insistence on life as a field for the manifestation of the Spirit, and his great synthesis added to the attraction I had already felt. To me he appeared as the spiritual Sun in modern times shedding his light on mankind from the height of his consciousness, and Pondicherry where he lived was a place of pilgrimage.

The second time I met Sri Aurobindo was in 1921, when there was a greater familiarity. Having, come for a short stay, I remained eleven days on Sri Aurobindo's asking me to prolong my stay. During my journey from Madras to Pondicherry I was enchanted by the natural scenery – the vast stretches of green paddy fields. But Pondicherry as a city was lethargic, with a colonial atmosphere – an exhibition of the worst elements of European and Indian culture. The market was dirty and stinking and the people had no idea of sanitation. The sea-beach was made filthy by them. Smuggling was the main business.

But the greatest surprise of my visit in 1921 was the "darshan" of Sri Aurobindo. During the interval of two years his body had undergone a transformation which could only be described as miraculous. In 1918 the colour of the body was like that of an ordinary Bengali – rather dark - though there was lustre on the face and the gaze was penetrating. On going upstairs to see him (in the same house) I found his cheeks wore an apple pink colour and the whole body glowed with a soft creamy white light. So great and unexpected was the change that I could not help exclaiming:

"What has happened to you?"

Instead of giving a direct reply he parried the question, as I had grown a beard: "And what has happened to you?”

But afterwards in the course of talk he explained to me that when the Higher Consciousness, descends from the

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mental level to the vital and even below the vital, then a transformation takes place in the nervous and even in the physical being. He asked me to join the meditation in the afternoon and also the evening sittings.

This time I saw the Mother for the first time. She was standing near the staircase when Sri Aurobindo was going upstairs after lunch. Such unearthly beauty I had never seen – she appeared to be about twenty years of age whereas she was more than forty.

I found the atmosphere of the Ashram tense. The Mother and Datta, ( Miss Hodgson), had come to stay in No. 40 Rue Francois Martin. The house had undergone a great change. There was a clean garden in the open courtyard; every room had simple and decent furniture, – a mat, a chair and a small table. There was an air of tidiness and order. This was, no doubt, the effect of Mother's presence. But yet the atmosphere was tense because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were engaged in fighting with forces of the vital plane.

Only a few days before my arrival a dismissed cook had managed to get stones hurled into Sri Aurobindo’s house through the agency of a Mohammedan occultist. This was the topic of excited talk when I was at Pondicherry. Upendranath Banerjee, who hardly believed in the possibility of such occult phenomena, had gone to the terrace with a lantern and a lathi to find the culprit. I heard the whole story from Upen himself. The stone-falling ended when the Mother took the matter in hand and removed the servant-boy, who was the medium, to another house. (The account of this is given on pages 177-78 and in Appendix II)

The Prabartak Sangh was started at Chandernagore by Motilal Roy and others under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo. In the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo life is accepted as the field for the manifestation of the Divine. Its main aim is not liberation merely but the manifestation of divine perfection. In his vision not only the individual but the collectivity also is a term of the Divine. Acceptance of life includes the collective life.

There is a deeper reason for accepting life. In his vision of the Reality Sri Aurobindo shows the rationality and the inevitability of an ascent by man to a higher consciousness than Mind. This ascent to the Higher Consciousness must lead to its descent in man. If the new element, the Supermind, is to become a permanent part of the earth-consciousness, then not only should

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it descend into the lowest plane of physical consciousness – the subconscient – but also must become a part of the collective consciousness on earth.

I asked him many questions about the organisation of a collective life based on spiritual aspiration.

On the last day of my stay of eleven days I met Sri Aurobindo between three and four in the afternoon. The main topic was sadhana.

When I got up to take leave of him I asked him:

"What are you waiting for?" I put the question because it was clear to me that he had been constantly living in the Higher Consciousness. "It is true," he said, "that the Divine Consciousness has descended but it has not yet descended into the physical being. So long as that is not done the work cannot be said to be accomplished."

I bowed down to him. When I got up to look at his face, I found he had already gone to the entrance of his room and, through the one door, I saw him turning his face towards me with a smile. I felt a great elation when I boarded the train: for, here was a guide who had already attained the Divine Consciousness, was conscious about it and yet whose detachment and discrimination were so perfect, whose sincerity so profound, that he knew what had still to be attained and could go on unobtrusively doing his hard work for mankind. External forms had a secondary place in his scale of values. In an effort so great is embodied some divine inspiration; to be called to such an ideal was itself the greatest good fortune.

The freedom of India, about which he had assured me, came, and I was fortunate to live to see it arrive on his own auspicious birthday, the 15th of August 1947.

It was to this Pondicherry that I was returning. I have lived there for nearly a generation but had never felt the Pondicherry Ashram as something fixed and unchanging. I realised this most strongly on the day I was returning to it. Pondicherry has always been to me the symbol of a great experiment, of a divine ideal. It is marching every hour towards the ultimate goal of man's upward ascent to the Divine. Not a city but a spiritual laboratory, a collective being with a daily changing horizon yet pursuing a fixed distant objective, a place fixed to the outer view but constantly moving – Pondicherry to me is always like the Arab's tent.

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APPENDIX II

Dilip Kumar Roy's Interview ¹

May I be permitted to begin with what Sri Aurobindo has since explained to me in a letter? The context is this: a friend of mine was visited in an omnibus (where she had no friend to help) with a terrible heart-attack of thrombosis and felt she was dying. She prayed to Sri Aurobindo and Mother and lo, she was cured "miraculously" and that in five minutes with not a trace of weakness left! She was impressed because thrombosis attacks leave their victims weak as waifs. I wrote to Sri Aurobindo whether she was imagining things or whether the Mother had actually been aware of her appeal for help. To this Sri Aurobindo wrote back in a letter dated 24th March 1949:

"As to her experience, certainly her call for help did reach Mother even though all the details she relates in her letter might not have been present to the Mother's physical mind. Always calls of this kind are coming to the Mother, sometimes a hundred close upon each other and always the answer is given. The occasions are of all kinds, but whatever the need that occasions the call, the Force is there to answer it. That is the principle of this action on the occult plane. It is not of the same kind as an ordinary human action and does not need a written or oral communication from the one who calls: an interchange of psychic communication is quite sufficient to set the Force at work. At the same time it is not an impersonal Force and the suggestion of a divine energy that is there ready to answer and satisfy anybody who calls it is not at all relevant here. It is something personal to the Mother and if she had not this power and this kind of action she would not be able to do her work; but this is quite different from the outside practical working on the material plane where the methods must, necessarily, be different, although the occult working and the material working can and do join and the occult power gives to the material working its utmost efficacy. ..."

¹. Condensed from Dilip Kumar Roy, Among the Great (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1950), pp. 320-59.

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Now for the personal experience:

I returned to Calcutta from Pondicherry in 1924 in a state of mind where the last traces of optimism, not to mention self-confidence, had been expunged now that there was no prospect of initiation in the near future. Do what I would, I could not keep my mind from brooding on his last words tantamount to a rebuff: "Yours is still a mental seeking: for my Yoga something more is needed.". . .

... At this juncture I heard a lecture of Swami Abhedananda, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. He spoke among other things of vairdgya mevabhayam and explained forcefully why turning away from life must mean deliverance from fear and bondage. I approached him and he kindly agreed to give me diksa – that is, initiation. But a friend of mine, a quondam disciple of Sri Aurobindo, intervened at the psychological moment and took me to consult a friend of his, a Yogi with remarkable occult powers. It was in a far-off village where we had to be his guests for the night. I told him how desperate was my need of a Guru and sought his advice. "Sit down and close your eyes," was all the answer he made. A little nettled, I obeyed all the same.

I don't know how long we sat there with closed eyes for a deepening peace had made me lose count of the passage of time; it filled every crevice of my thirsty soul. My friend gave me a nudge. I opened my eyes to meet my host's scrutinizing me. He smiled.

"But why are you hunting for a guru," he asked me abruptly, "now that Sri Aurobindo himself has accepted you?"

"But how can that be?" I asked sceptically. "I told you he hasn't."

"But I tell you he has."

My heart skipped a beat. "I don't understand," I faltered out. "Will you have the goodness to be a little more explicit?"

"But it is simplicity itself," he returned bluntly with a half smile; then, appraising me for a second or two, added almost casually: "He just appeared there – yes, just behind you – and told me to advise you to wait. He asked me to tell you that he would draw you to him as soon as you were ready. Is that explicit enough?"

His eyes twinkled in irony. I was puzzled: was he laughing at me – but then –

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"Look here," he chimed in his downright way, "shall I tell you something more convincing still?"

I held his eyes. . . . My heart beat faster.

He seemed to deliberate for a moment before he added: "Tell me: do you happen to have some ailment in your left abdomen?"

I stared at him in blank surprise. "But how did you know?"

"I didn't – that is, not before he told me."

"T – told you?" I stammered. "B – but who?"

He smiled in evident amusement. "Who else but your Guru – who came to tell me that you had already been advised by
him to wait till the ailment was cured before you practised Yoga." He paused for a moment and then added: "But what is it?" "It – it's hernia. A tug-of-war caused the rupture."

He beamed, a picture of complacency. "That explains it. For Yoga will mean pressure on these parts, the vitals. Maybe that's why he asked you to wait till it healed up."

"There you are wrong." I demurred. "For he told me that my seeking was still a mental one." Then I related to him the
gist of our conversation in Pondicherry.

He listened very attentively and when I had come to the end of my story looked very kindly at me and said: "It's quite clear
now. He wanted you to wait till you recognised in him your Guru. You don't today, evidently; for otherwise you wouldn't have
dreamed even of going to another for guidance." He then went on to tell me many things about the forces that acted in and through Yoga, about Guruvada, about the hindrance of mental preconceptions and above all about the greatness of Sri Aurobindo and his, endeavour to invoke a Force – the Supramental descent for which our minds and the earth-consciousness were still far from ready. He told me also how he had visioned in his meditations "the greatest Yogi of this age" (Yugavatar was the word he used) and how he had seen also "the Mother" who was at once his disciple and collaborator of identical status. Lastly, he gave me some excellent practical directions as to how I might best profit by Sri Aurobindo's help during my novitiate. I do not remember all that he told me but I will never forget his final warning.

"You have been called," he said. "But remember it is even more difficult to be chosen. For that you will have to surrender your will utterly to your Guru so that he may mould you as he will but not as you will, mind you. For this you must have faith

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– a complete faith in his superior wisdom, not only because he is your Guru but also because he has attained the peak of occult powers."

Yoga-bibhuti was the word he used.

I was thrilled. For I had never yet come face to face with "occult powers" and such verifiable powers at that. I was especially impressed by the fact that he had told me the precise advice Sri Aurobindo had given me – a disciple of his, Moni, had communicated this to me in 1924 – though I still wondered whether the assurance about Sri Aurobindo's waiting till I was ready for surrender might not, after all, be too good to be true! And last, though by no means least, I was now delivered once and for all from my sense of responsibility which, like a cruel horseman, kept goading me all the time to be more alert in my aspiration. . . .

And I went to Pondicherry for the second time in August, 1928. But I was not a little crestfallen to learn that Sri Aurobindo had in the meanwhile gone into seclusion and made it a rule to see none except on three days in the year and even then he would not speak with them, they could only see him, make him their obeisance and then pass on in a file. But, I heard, the presiding deity of the Ashram – "the Mother", as they called her – had accepted to guide, in consultation with Sri Aurobindo, all who came and I was told that she was a radiant personality adored of all the inmates of the Ashram and looked upon by the disciples as the equal of the great Yogi. So I sought an interview with her after the darshan day as it was called. She was exceedingly kind to me and listened to me with great sympathy. I was charmed by her personality at once effulgent and soothing. . . .

... I felt overjoyed but told her, somewhat ruefully, that I had never yet had what is popularly termed "an experience" and that this made me doubt whether Yoga could be utterly convincing to a sceptic like myself. She only smiled and said she would try and told me to meditate in my room at nine in the evening when she would do the same in hers.

. . . One thing I was determined to be: watchful; in other words, not to accept any experience that might come. I had little use for the credulity of the devout and had a rooted aversion to accept as authentic any experience which might be explained away as auto-suggestion. The thing must be as concrete and indubitable

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as sense-experience before I could possibly admit it as valid. . . . I am at pains to stress this because what did come was so utterly unexpected as to rule out all auto-suggestion or wishful thinking. At all events, I was convinced that a Force was acting like a ferment within me which was too concrete to be dismissed.

The next day I surrendered to the Mother my will to be moulded by her and Sri Aurobindo. I was accepted and came finally to follow their lead three months later, on the 22nd November, to be more precise, dedicating all I had to what I have learned to love more and more as the holiest cause to which I could possibly consecrate my life. . . .

On February 4, 1943

I entered his room, the sanctum from which he had never once stirred out since 1926, and made my obeisance. He blessed me.

"Feeling better?" he asked, his eyes soft with kindness.

"Yes," I answered with some difficulty. I was moved. He bent his starry eyes on me expectantly. But not a word came to my lips. This was unusual with me for I had come equipped with a quiverful of questions. He came to my help and broke the silence, to put me at my ease. .

"You sent me some questions in writing this morning," he said. "Suppose we start with the first?"

I nodded and hung on his every word. . . .

"As to your first question," he said, "there are, broadly, two ways. One is that of Buddha who held, as you know, that although you may get some help or guidance from others, Guru or not, you will have to tread the Path alone, that is, hewing your way out of the wood with your own effort: in other words, the time-old path of tapasya. The other way is to take the Guru as a Representative of the Divine who knows the Way and therefore is in a position, obviously, to help others in finding it. That is the path followed by the aspirants here, in the Ashram – the path of Guruvad."

I nodded and said: "I know that. But I asked you in one of my questions: what should be one's attitude when one feels oneself held up by certain human limitations of the Guru?". . .

. . . "But I think I have gone into the question before and said

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that though something is determined by the power of the channel – that is to say, the Guru – much more is determined by that of the recipient, the disciple." He paused and gave me a half smile as he went on: "You see, the modem mind often makes a mental muddle in such questions for the simple reason that in the way of the Spirit the Force that works things out does not achieve its results on the lines laid down by mental reason. That is why it fails to appreciate this simple fact that once the disciple accepts the Guru as a Representative of the Divine, the Divine too accepts him through the Guru: put differently, when he opens to the Guru he opens to the Divine so that the Guru can, in spite of his 'human limitations' help him by the simple process of invoking a Force that acts through the Guru's personality – a Force which is not dwarfed by his human limitations. I wrote to you also once, I think, that the Guru's imperfections need be no stumbling block to a disciple who may contact the Divine through the Guru even before the Guru himself; so what matters, in the last analysis, is the Guru's spiritual capacity to get him the desired contact and not his human limitations – because these don't block the way. Do you follow?"

The next question was about certain occult phenomena like materialisation or levitation. I had had a discussion with a friend to whom he had said, when told of my scepticism, that these were by no means all trickery and humbug as contended by many dogmatic scientists. ...

"But you needn't be alarmed," he put in placidly. "For Yoga has for its ultimate object the realisation of the Divine and achieving the Divine life. These are side-issues and as such need not be looked upon as germane to spiritual experience. So belief in them is not necessary, far less indispensable for realisation. You have the right of private judgment in matters such as these."

My heart-beat abated, and I said: "I am very much relieved. For I feared lest the inability to accept the Guru's view in every instance be looked upon by the Guru as a sure sign of one's unfitness to profit by the master's guidance."

"You may be reassured once more," he said kindly. "For you can take it from me that when I say or write anything it's only to state my findings or else explain my point of view. I don't insist on it as a law for others. And can you imagine, knowing me as you do all these years, that I should impose my outlook

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on others? I have never cared to be a dictator; neither do I insist that everybody's views must be molded by mine, any more than I insist that everybody must follow me or my Yoga." He paused and pointed at a bronze image in front. "For instance," he added, "I find that image very beautiful. But if you disagree why should I mind?". . .

". . . But," I hastened to add: "I revere you so much that even to have to differ from you on a small matter causes me a pang. . . . I want my mind to abdicate. But where is the new ruler whom I am to put on its throne. . . ?"

He gave me a long look, then said: "It would be easier for the mind to get the new light if it didn't insist as it does that its old Ruler, Reason, was fully capable of coping with the situation. For, boiled down, it comes to an insistence, really, that the mind was the ultimate judge of all experience. But spiritual experience has it that you can never hope to understand – get to the root of – anything by your mind alone. The mind by its very constitution is unable to apprehend more than a very small fraction of the Divine reality and its action. Of this action occult phenomena is an instance in point. You cannot understand the true nature of such phenomena with your mental probings and since this is a fact, it would be better if instead of dismissing them as fraud you could suspend your judgment till you became competent to judge. For this deeper judgment only comes through the dawn of a greater consciousness by whose light alone can you hope to understand Divine action behind its terrestrial or occult disguises."

"But – I mean – it's all right in theory," I still demurred, "but when one is actually confronted – for instance, take the case of Sri Bijoy Goswami who said that his Guru had spirited away his wife to a far off place across the sky. Do you mean to say that it can be authentic or possible?"

"Whether what he claimed did happen in his wife's case is more than I can tell you," he answered. "But since levitation has been seen to be possible and can be verified by the Yogis and has been, I don't see how it can be dismissed out of hand as impossible. Thousands of experiences testify to phenomena which utterly baffle the mind. For when all is said and done, experience is and must be the last touchstone of reality and experience has it that levitation or materialisation is possible–"

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"There," I interjected, "You have just anticipated me. For, I was going to ask you precisely about materialisation. One hears of such occurrences but I have so far met none who has seen these with his own eyes. One must have reliable evidence you know – not merely hearsay –"

He smiled and said: "Let me tell you then what I have seen with my own eyes if only to obviate your objection about the
hearsay evidence. And it was an occurrence witnessed to by at least half-a-dozen people besides, who were with me.". . . ;

"The stone-throwing began unobtrusively with a few stones thrown at the guest-house kitchen – apparently from the terrace opposite, but there was no one there. The phenomenon began at the fall of dusk and continued at first for half-an-hour, but daily it increased in frequency, violence and size of the stones, and the duration of the attack increased also, sometimes lasting for several hours until, towards the end, in the hour or half hour before midnight, it became a regular bombardment; and now it was no longer at the kitchen only but thrown in other places as well: for example, the outer verandah. At first we took it for a human-made affair and sent for the police, but the investigation lasted only for a short time and when one of the constables in the verandah got a stone whizzing unaccountably between his two legs, the police abandoned the case in a panic. We made our own investigations, but the places whence the stones seemed to be or might be coming were void of human stone-throwers. Finally, as if to put us kindly out of doubt, the stones began falling inside closed rooms; one of these – it was a huge one and I saw it immediately after it fell – reposed flat and comfortable on a cane table as if that was its proper resting place. And so it went on till the missiles became murderous. Hitherto the stones had been harmless except for a daily battering of Bijoy's door – during the last days – which I watched the night before the end. They appeared in mid-air, a few feet above the ground, not coming from a distance but suddenly manifesting and, from the direction from which they flew, should have been thrown close in from the compound of the guest-house or the verandah itself, but the whole place was in clear light and I saw that there was no human being there nor could have been. At last the semi-idiot boy servant who was the centre of the attack and was sheltered in Bijoy's room under his protection, began to be severely hit and was bleeding

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from a wound by stones materialising inside the closed room. I went in at Bijoy's call and saw the last stone fall on the boy: Bijoy and he were sitting side by side and the stone was thrown at them in front but there was no one visible to throw it – the two were alone in the room. So unless it was Wells' Invisible Man – !

"So far we had only been watching or scouting around, but this was a little too much, it was becoming dangerous and something had to be done about it. The Mother, from her knowledge of the process of these things, decided that the process here must depend on a nexus between the boy servant and the house, so if the nexus were broken and the servant separated from the house, the stone-throwing would cease. We sent him away to Hrishikesh's place and immediately the whole phenomenon ceased; not a single stone was thrown after that and peace reigned.

"That showed . . . that these occult phenomena are real, have a law or process as definite as that of any scientific operation
and that the knowledge of the processes can not only bring them about but put an end to or annul them."

(I must pause here to be able to explain the episode for the general reader. I was told afterwards by Amrita, who had been an eye-witness of the whole drama that all this had happened in mid-winter in 1921 day after day. And fortunately, he had kept a record of the whole incident which he showed me. From this I gathered that a cook called Vattal was the author of the mischief. Infuriated for having been dismissed, the fellow had threatened that he would make the place too hot for those who remained. And he went for help to a Mussalman Faqir who was versed in black magic, and then it all began. I asked Amrita whether the stones could have been illusory. He smiled and said he had had them collected and kept as exhibits for months and that they had a very curious feature in that they were all covered with moss. I was also told that among those who were then on the spot there was the rationalist stalwart Upendra Nath Banerji who had at first pooh-poohed the black-magic story and girded up his loins to unearth the miscreants who were responsible for it all. But even he had to confess himself beaten in the end as he could not make any sense out of the strange episode. But it all transpired when Vattal's wife came in an extremity of despair and threw herself at the mercy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Her husband had realised that nemesis had overtaken him for he

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knew occultism enough to realise that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had hurled the force back. When such occult forces are aroused against one who can repel them they inevitably recoil back upon the head of its original author. So her husband had fallen desperately sick. Sri Aurobindo in his generosity forgave the fellow and said in Amrita's presence: "For this he need not die." The black magician recovered after that.)

"So you see," he said, at the end of his narration, "the Mother who had studied occultism in North Africa could understand it all because of her deep occult knowledge."

"And you?"

He smiled but deliberated for a split second before he answered: "I too have had hundreds of personal experiences about
occult forces."

"What about the question of levitation?"

"I take levitation as an acceptable idea, because I have had experience of the natural energies which, if developed, would
bring it about and also physical experiences which would not have been possible if the principle of levitation were untrue."

"But why is it then," I asked after a slight pause, "that the modern mind is so definitely against accepting such experiences
as valid?"

"I have answered that question in my various writings," he answered, "and have said there that the mind is an instrument
of Ignorance growing towards knowledge. This does not mean that mind has no place at all in the spiritual life; but it does mean
that it cannot be even the main instrument much less the authority to whose judgment all must submit themselves including the Divine. Mind must learn from the greater consciousness it is approaching and not impose its own standards on it. ... The popular notion that you can judge what is beyond the ordinary consciousness when you are still in the ordinary consciousness is untenable. So the best way is to make your mind as passive as you can and open to the Truth delivered from these preconceptions. The thing is to grow in consciousness as to be able to realise the higher truths. If you can do that and let your psychic being take the lead, it will, in due time, lead you to the opening you seek where the mind with its half-lit consciousness will no longer circumscribe your vision because a higher Light, descending from above," he pointed at a region above his head, "will then

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take its place and knowledge will pour in from the higher reaches of the mind up to Overmind and Supermind. That is my Yoga, as you know."

I nodded without enthusiasm. "I know," I answered, "and I see, too, that 'mental passivity' is likely to be helpful if one can
but achieve it. But my difficulty is that my mind is too refractory to abdicate obligingly. And then," I hesitated for a split second
and added: "the difficulty is by no means lessened when I catch myself wondering. . . whether mental questioning too may not
have some use . . . serving some purpose! At such moments I would ask myself if... if even our doubts too might not be helpful through the very suffering they entailed. ..."

The next day I wrote to him confessing my inability to recapture what he had answered apropos and went on to explain what had been at the back of my mind. In conclusion I asked him if he would be so kind as to write from memory what he had said hereanent reminding him about what he had written in his Life Divine with regard to "grief, pain, suffering, error" etc. ...

. . . [Sri Aurobindo replied:] "As for doubts, I don't think mere doubts can bring any gain; mental questioning can bring gains if it is in pursuit of truth, but questioning just for the sake of sceptical questioning or in a pure spirit of contradiction can only bring, when it is directed against the truths of the spirit, either error or a lasting incertitude. If I am always questioning the Light when it comes and refusing its offer of truth, the Light cannot stay in me, cannot settle; eventually finding no welcome and no foundation in the mind, it will retire. One must push forward into the Light and not be always falling back into the darkness and hugging the darkness in the delusion that it is the real light. Whatever fulfilment one may feel in pain and misery and doubt belongs to Ignorance: the real fulfilment is in the Divine joy and the Divine truth and its certitude and it is that for which the Yogin strives. In the struggle he may have to pass through doubt, not by his own choice or will but because there is still imperfection in his knowledge."

The next question I asked was whether mental evolution might not on occasion hinder the psychic evolution.

"It may and very often does," he answered, "especially if the attitude is wrong; that is, if the mind presumes that it is the last
term of our personality. The reason I have told you before. It

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is that the higher Light which comes to expedite the evolution invites our co-operation. Consequently if the pride of the mind and vital in the surface mental ideas declines to make room for it it cannot effect an entry. That is why I have told you more than once, I think, that in the realm of the Spirit it is only when one knows that one is ignorant that one really begins to know. For so long as one is unwilling to go beyond the mind one is unlikely to have any but the vaguest ideas of the higher functions of the consciousness. For instance, men who live and are content to live in the mental, regard themselves generally as physical beings or beings of life or mental beings without feeling any urge to posit a soul. For, they don't feel it except perhaps in the hope that it is something which survives the dissolution of the body. But beyond this they are not prepared to go for the simple reason that they have not experienced the soul as distinct from the mind. So these," he added, "identify themselves with their mental beings and assert that the soul is a fiction because they don't feel they have any souls. And this happens so long as the psychic being remains still veiled – behind.". . .

I nodded somewhat sadly and answered: "But it is one thing to understand but quite another to do the bidding of the under-
standing. What I mean is that though I see the wisdom of getting the mind to help, yet I find it enormously difficult to achieve the plasticity you advocate. So why not give me some practical hints as to how I am to set about it?"

: ". . . Didn't I advise you in so many of my letters to get into contact with your inner being, to try to live within, to take the
help of your poetry and music, for instance, because these promote your devotion – bhakti – and help you take up the right attitude? I have told you – and you have known this too – how much easier it becomes to tread the psychic path, the sunlit path, when one's attitude is right, since it becomes then ever so much easier for the psychic being to come to the front. And I have told you also, so many times, that the more your psychic being comes to the fore, the less difficult will become the task of transformation of the human nature into its divine absolute. That is why I have always enjoined on you to follow this path – the path of devotion, service and work – since it is easier for your nature to follow this path than any other."

"I follow all that intellectually, you may be sure," I answered

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ruefully. "Only – well, I find this path anything but easy, as I too have told you again and again. My mental and vital self-will
simply keeps butting in and spoiling all and there I find myself in a quandary taking always the wrong view of things. . . .

". . . The thing is – I mean I simply can't retain the – the psychic attitude. Why can't I?"

"I can answer that. It's because your vital gets restless through impatience and then your mental starts fidgeting and questioning – didn't I tell you all that before?". . .

"But what about the way of knowledge to quieten the mind?"

"Well, there are several approved techniques – for those, I mean who are called to tread the path. The one Vivekananda followed, for instance. You know that process, don't you?"

"I have read about it in his Rajayoga."

(Here is what the great Vedantin wrote: "The first lesson, then, is to sit for some time and let the mind run on. The mind is bubbling up all the time. It is like a monkey jumping about. Let the monkey jump as much as he can; you simply wait and watch. ... Until you know what the mind is doing you can't control it. Give it rein. . . . You will find that each day it is becoming calmer . . . until at last the mind will be under perfect control. . . .")

"Well, that is one way of achieving mastery over your thoughts," Sri Aurobindo said after explaining the process. "There are others. Lele, for instance, showed me one. 'Make your mind quiet,' he told me, 'don't think actively. Then you will see that the thoughts you believe to be yours come from outside; throw them away as they come and your mind will fall silent.' I had never heard of such a thing before. But I did not question the possibility nor doubt the truth of it. I accepted what he told me and made my mind inactive, only watching what thoughts were coming and whence. Then I saw a wonderful thing: the mind as a whole silent and single thoughts coming, indeed, from outside! And I threw these away before they could enter the aura of my mind. Thus in three days I was free from all thoughts and my mental became universal and liberated, and I became the master of the incoming thoughts and no longer their puppet, since I could choose the ones I would and reject the rest. ...

"But in your case . . . you would be better advised to follow the psychic way, as I told you before."

"But I do try," I returned, "through my music and poetry

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as you put it specifically, and you know very well too how hard I have worked on those lines. But the difficulty is – and. it is a growing one, I fear – that these activities satisfy me no longer, as I wrote to you so many times in the past. For do what I will, I simply can't get rid of a feeling that such activities are – how shall I put it – well, pointless, in the last analysis, like games you don't enjoy and yet you have to pretend you do."

"I know," he answered after a thoughtful pause, "it is the old trend of vairagya which has taken root somewhere in your nature." He paused and looked at me fixedly as he added: "Personally, I do not care for vairagya as you know. I have always preferred the way of samata – equality – of the Gita, in which one is not attached to or bound by anything.". . .

". . . And yet," I added, "the curious and somewhat embarrassing part of it is that others seem to feel that I am a radiant
crystal of joy and faith and strength even when I am, in dull earnest, just sad and weak and lonely. How is that?"

"That's simple enough," he said, "they only come in contact with your inner being in which these are sparkling all right. ..."

(When he said this I was reminded of a curious experience in 1936....)

He seemed to read my thoughts. For he said: "Such things do happen in the spiritual field – things which the mind finds
difficult to conceive. I will give you an instance. It is a fact of spiritual experience that the Guru may even be less than the disciple and yet able to help; he may even be instrumental in imparting to his disciple what he never himself realised.". ...

"Well," I apologised a little abashed, "I didn't exactly doubt your word, only I wondered – how shall I put it – I mean I
asked myself whether it was a concrete Force you had meant when you speak about it."

"Concrete? What do you mean by 'concrete' ? Spiritual Force has its own concreteness. It can take a form – like a stream for instance – of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force – it may be spiritual, mental or vital – to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-

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waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion – for example, anger, sorrow etc. – which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or the inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him. Influences good or bad may propagate themselves in that way; that can happen without intention and naturally, but also a deliberate use can be made of them. There can also be a purposeful generation of force, spiritual or other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea acting directly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation which is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective. These things are not imaginations or delusions or humbug, but true phenomena."

As he warmed up his face looked more radiant than ever and I felt a thrill coursing through my spine. And, in a moment, I caught the contagion of his power and felt as though I had been transformed into a being of certitude! The darkness of doubt now seemed, suddenly, so alien! But above all that wonder and exaltation, above the incredible intoxication of drinking in his words face to face there was a feeling of awe that such an incarnation of power and wisdom should be talking to me face to face as a friend! But I felt no pride, only a deep humility, which is shy to the point of declining an invitation, that such a being made of the stuff of Light and Love should have given me the right to laugh with him, to exchange views – even to break a lance with him as a comrade might! . . . A lull intervened and I wondered what was coming next. But he said nothing. I met his eyes and then looked away. Still he did not speak. I then made a strange move which I can't explain. I blurted out a pointblank question apropos of nothing at all. I darted a glance, at him and said: "When are you going to come out?"

He smiled and answered: "I don't know."

"How do you mean? Surely you must be knowing?"

He laughed. "Not in the way you know," he said looking intently at me. He paused for a split second, then added, tantalisingly: "For I stand no longer on the mental plane. I do not decide from the mind."

"But still," I insisted, "You can't really mean to say that a radiant personality like you will be cooped up in this small room
till the – the end of time?"

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"But I told you things are not predetermined with me," he said in an unruffled voice. "Suffice it to say for the present that I
can't do what I have to do if I go on seeing people etc.". . .

"I have explained to you partly, in my recent letters, what I am busy with," he added after a slight pause. "But you can well imagine there are many other kinds of resistance I have to overcome.". . .

In another letter – 20-10-46 – he wrote to me: "... I know and I have experienced hundreds of times that beyond the blackest darkness there lies for one who is a divine instrument the light of God's victory."

. . . "Have you any direct evidence in favour of such a prognosis?" I asked again.

A half smile edged his lips. He held my eyes for a few seconds without replying, then said: "I have."

"Do I understand that your Supramental means business after all – I mean, by coming down at long last for us humans?"

His smile now broadened into laughter. "Yes," he parried, "only tell them when you meet them that the business is not theirs.". . .

"Do I understand," I pursued again after the laughter had subsided, "that the conquest of the Asuric forces will usher in the Supramental Descent?"

"Not in itself," he said with a far-away look, "but it will create conditions for the Descent to become a possibility."

There was something in his tone and look which stirred a chord deep down in me. I hesitated for a little and then hazarded the question, just to have the answer from his lips, was it? I do not know. All I know is that something irresistible impelled me to it.

"Is your real work this invocation of the Supramental?"

"Yes," he replied, very simply. "I have come for that,"

And I was laughing with him, arguing with him, examining his point of view . . . because he had given me the right by calling
me "a friend and a son," in his infinite compassion! The remorse of Arjuna in the Gita recurred to me, inevitably:

Oft I addressed thee as a human mate

And laughed with thee – failing to apprehend

Thine infinite greatness, sharing with thee my seat

Or couch – by right of love for thee as a friend:

For all such errors of irreverence

Thy forgiveness I implore in penitence.. . .

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The Address Delivered by Professor Ghose at the College Social Gathering ¹

In addressing you on an occasion like the present, it is inevitable that the mind should dwell on one feature of this gathering above all others. Held as it is towards the close of the year, I am inevitably reminded that many of its prominent members are with us for the last time in their college life, and I am led to speculate with both hope and anxiety on their future careers, and this not only because several familiar faces are to disappear from us and scatter into different parts of the country and various walks of life, but also because they go out from us as our finished work, and it is by their character and life that our efforts will be judged. When I say, our efforts, I allude not merely to the professorial work of teaching, not to book-learning only, but to the entire activity of the college as a great and complex educational force, which is not solely meant to impart information, but to bring out or give opportunities for bringing out all the various intellectual and other energies which go to make up a man. And here is the side of collegiate institutions of which this Social Gathering especially reminds us, the force of the social life it provides in moulding the character and the mind. I think it will not be out of place, if in dwelling on this I revert to the great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge which are our famous exemplars, and point out a few differences between those Universities and our own and the thoughts those differences may well suggest.

I think there is no student of Oxford or Cambridge who does not look back in after days on the few years of his under-graduate life as, of all the scenes he has moved in, that which calls up the happiest memories, and it is not surprising that this should be so, when we remember what that life must have meant to him. He goes up from the restricted life of his home and school and finds himself in surroundings which with astonishing rapidity expand his intellect, strengthen his character, develop his social faculties,

¹ Baroda College Miscellany, Vol. V, No. 11 (September 1899), pp. 28-33. The address was given on 22 July 1899.

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force out all his abilities and turn him in three years from a boy into a man. His mind ripens in the contact with minds which meet from all parts of the country and have been brought up in many various kinds of trainings, his unwholesome eccentricities wear away and the unsocial, egoistic elements of character are to a large extent discouraged. He moves among ancient and venerable buildings, the mere age and beauty of which are in themselves an education. He has the Union which has trained so many great orators and debaters, has been the first trial ground of so many renowned intellects. He has, too, the athletics clubs organized with a perfection unparalleled elsewhere, in which, if he has the physique and the desire for them he may find pursuits which are also in themselves an education. The result is that he who entered the university a raw student, comes out of it a man and a gentleman, accustomed to think of great affairs and fit to move in cultivated society, and he remembers his College and University with affection, and in after days if he meets with those who have studied with him he feels attracted towards them as to men with whom he has a natural brotherhood. This is the social effect 'I should like the Colleges and Universities of India also to exercise, to educate by social influences as well as those which are merely academicals and to create the feeling among their pupils that they belong to the community, that they are children of one mother. There are many obstacles to this result in the circumstance of Indian Universities. The Colleges are not collected in one town but are scattered among many and cannot assemble within themselves so large and various a life. They are new also, the creation of not more than fifty years – and fifty years is a short period in the life of a University. But so far as circumstances allow, there is an attempt to fill up the deficiency, in your Union, your Debating Club and Reading Room, your athletic sports and Social Gathering. For the success of this attempt time is needed, but your efforts are also needed: and I ask you who are soon to go out into the world, not to forget your College or regard it as a mere episode in your life, but rather as one to whose care you must look back and recompense it by your future life and work, and if you meet fellow-students, alumni of the same College, to meet them as friends, as brothers.

There is another point in which a wide difference exists. What makes Oxford and Cambridge not local institutions but great and

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historic Universities? It is the number of great and famous men, of brilliant intellects in every department which have issued from them. I should like you to think seriously of this aspect of the question also. In England the student feels a pride in his own University and College, wishes to see their traditions maintained, and tries to justify them to the world by his own success. This feeling has yet to grow up among us. And I would appeal to you – who are leaving us – to help to create it, to cherish it yourselves, to try and justify the College of its pupils. Of course, there is one preliminary method by which the students can add fame to their College. Success in examinations, though preliminary merely, and not an end in itself, is nevertheless of no small effect or importance. You all know how the recent success of an Indian student has filled the whole country with joy and enthusiasm. That success reflects fame not only on India but on his University and College, and when the name of the first Indian Senior Wrangler is mentioned, it will also be remembered that he belonged to Cambridge and to St. Johns. But examinations, however important, are only a preliminary. I lay stress upon this because there is too much of a tendency in this country to regard education as a mere episode, finished when once the degree is obtained. But the University cannot and does not pretend to complete a man's education; it merely gives some materials to his hand or points out certain paths he may tread, and it says to him, – "Here are the materials I have given into your hands, it is for you to make of them what you can"; or– "These are the paths I have equipped you to travel; it is yours to tread them to the end, and by your success in them justify me before the world."

I would ask you therefore to remember these things in your future life, not to drop the effects of your College training as no longer necessary, but, to strive for eminence and greatness in your own lines, and by the brilliance of your names add lustre to the first nursing home of your capacities, to cherish its memory with affection as that which equipped your intellects, trained you into men, and strove to give you such social life as might fit you for the world. And finally I would ask you not to sever yourselves in after days from it, but if you are far, to welcome its alumni when you meet them with brotherly feelings and if you are near to keep up connection with it, not to regard the difference of

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age between yourselves and its future students but associate with them, be present at such occasions as this social gathering and evince by your acts your gratitude for all that it did for you in the past.

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APPENDIX IV

Data on Birthplace

It is well known that it was in the house of Monmohun Ghose that Sri Aurobindo was born on 15 August 1872. Some say that the house was on Lower Circular Road; others say that it was on Theatre Road. It is understood that Sri Aurobindo used to refer to a house on Theatre Road. On making enquiries, we find that in the old directories there is no mention of Barrister Monmohan Ghose as a resident of any house on Theatre Road between 1871 and 1878, but rather that he is mentioned as a resident of 12, Lower Circular Road. At that time. Circular Road was not only divided into "Upper" and "Lower", but its numbers were grouped also under the series, "Town Side" and "24 Parganas Side". That is to say, the side adjoining the city of Calcutta was the "Town Side", and the south and the east were called the "24 Parganas Side", each bearing the same numbers in a consecutive series. Barrister Monmohan lived in number 12 on the "24 Parganas Side". We gather from hearsay that this particular house was later purchased by Barrister Byomkesh Chakraborti, and afterwards it became the "Ranjani" of Naliniranjan Sircar. (Translated from the Bengali) ¹

11 June 1956

Sree Aurobindo Ghose was born in my father's house at 237, Lower Circular Road.

In or about 1879 my father moved to 4, Theatre Road. Subsequently Mr. Byomkesh Chakraborti, Bar-at-Law occupied 237, Lower Circular Road and I believe it was purchased by him. Later on late Mr. Nalini Ranjan Sircar purchased the property

¹ Sanibarer Chitti, Sajanikanta Das, Ed., Magh 1361 (January-February 1955), pp. 440-41.

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and put up the new structure after demolishing the old. It is now occupied by the Chinese Consul General.

Showlota Das

(Mrs. Banbihari Das)

Youngest daughter of the

Late Mr. Manomohan Ghose,

Barrister-at-Law.

No record could be traced for 1872. First available records date from 1881 and we find that No.12, Lower Circular Road was changed into 237, Lower Circular Road in 1885. That the then 237, Lower Circular Road corresponds with the present 237, Lower Circular Road, is corroborated by the following change of ownership:

1881-1885 Coomar Kali Kristo Roy (owner)

1900-1905 Coomar Kali Kristo Roy (owner)

1906-1909 Coomar Kali Kristo Roy (owner)

1927-1934 B. Chakraborti, the official receiver of the High Court

1934-1940 The official receiver of the High Court, Hindusthan Cooperative Insurance Society, Ltd.

(With thanks to Mihir Mukherji, Calcutta)

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APPENDIX V

Correspondence Relating to Sri Aurobindo's I. C. S. Examination ¹

24 August 1892

Sir,

I am directed by the Civil Service Commissioners to transmit herewith, for the information of the Secretary of State for India in Council, a list containing the names of the candidates selected for the Civil Service of India in 1890, who have shown a competent knowledge of the subjects prescribed for the Final Examination, together with a statement of the Prizes awarded upon the results of that examination.

Of these candidates, Messrs Maclver and A. A. Ghose have still to satisfy the Commissioners of their eligibility in respect
of health and the latter gentleman has still to pass in Riding. The remaining candidates, Messrs Thomas and Laurie, have failed to pass the Final Examination.

I am at the same time to forward the University certificates which have been sent in by these candidates, with the exception of Messrs A. A. Ghose and M. Ghose.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

B. Lockhart

The Under Secretary of State

India Office

4 Nov. 1892

My dear Trevor

I think Mr Ghose's case will be settled very shortly. He has passed his medical Examination and we expect to hear the result of his riding Examination soon.

¹. The author is indebted to the India Office Library in London and especially to Mr. S. C. Sutton, the Librarian, for the kindness and prompt help he gave in providing this material.

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All the other points seem to be disposed of.

I am

Very truly yours

E. A. Collier

P. S. You have doubtless seen in the papers that a vacancy has arisen among the 90 men by the drowning of poor young little-wood in the Roumania disaster.

III

14 Nov. 1892

My dear Trevor

Mr Ghose has given us a good deal of trouble and there are some points in his case as to which I must ask my colleague Howlett who is away now, but will be here tomorrow.

Meanwhile I may mention that the Riding Examination is fixed for tomorrow I will write again as soon as I can add anything to the foregoing.

Very truly yours

E. A. Collier

CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION,

WESTMINSTER.

Case of Mr Arvinda A. Ghose

Memorandum by the Senior Examiner, Civil Service

Commission respecting the Examination in Riding.

Ordered to be examined with the other probationers on August 9^th. Did not attend. Sent medical certificate on August 11^th to explain why. Was asked on 15th August to say when he would be ready to be examined. Question repeated on 30th August, as no answer had been received. Question repeated a third time on 17th October, answer requested by return of post. Answer received dated 18th October saying he would prefer the following Tuesday or Wednesday. Colonel Brough fixed the Wednesday (October 26th) at 12.30 at Woolwich. Ghose was ordered by

Page 322

letter on 22nd to attend at that time: the letter was sent to same address as that of 17th October. On 26th October, Colonel Brough wrote to say the candidate had not appeared. A messenger was sent to Ghose (same address) and asked to bring back an answer: the answer was that Ghose had not received the letter making the appointment. Ghose was directed to attend here in person on Monday 31st October at 12 noon. He came at 12.40 and repeated his statement that the letter above-mentioned had never reached him. I gave him a letter to Colonel Brough asking the latter to arrange with Ghose a date for his Examination and told Ghose to lose no time in going down to Woolwich and presenting the letter in person: to go down that afternoon if he had no other engagement. I also wrote a line to Colonel Brough teling him of this. Colonel Brough wrote on 5th November saying Ghose had never appeared, and returning the Marking Form supplied for this report. Colonel Brough added that he would prefer not to examine Ghose. After a note from me, he agreed however, to do so, if some one from this Office were present (Nov. 9th). Ghose ordered to call here at noon on the 10th. He came at ten minutes to one. He explained (as also in his letter of the 9th instant received on 10th) that he had twice been to see Colonel Brough but had not found him. I asked him whether he went to the Office of the Riding Establishment. He said "No – to Colonel's house" (this is close by). He posted the letter I gave him, to Colonel Brough, instead of leaving it for him. Colonel Brough has returned this letter to me, together with Ghose's undated letter accompanying it. I then showed Ghose Colonel Brough's latest letter fixing the 15th November for the Examination, and naming the train 2.22 from Charing Cross. I also copied this on a slip of paper, which I gave into Ghose's hand, and told him to meet me, without fail, at 2.15 on the platform at Charing Cross Station. I explained to him that if he again failed us, the Commissioners would not be able to give another chance, as this state of things could not be allowed to continue. He took away the memorandum and also promised verbally to meet me on the following Tuesday the 15th November. I went there yesterday and kept a look-out, but no Ghose appeared. I went on to Woolwich by the 2.22 train, in case Ghose should be going from any other station or by a different train. But he was not at the Riding

Page 323

Establishment. Colonel Brough and I waited from 20 minutes to half an hour, and then I returned. While waiting at Charing Cross station, I had sent a message to Mr Bonar, saying the candidate had not yet appeared and asking him to send a messenger round to his house to enquire. Mr Bonar did this, sending also a note to ask Ghose to go down to Woolwich and be examined. The messenger brought word that Ghose was out and was not expected till 6 p.m.

Colonel Brough's servant says no one called as Ghose had asserted: he would have noticed an Indian gentleman – none such had appeared at Colonel Brough's house on any of the days named.

16th November, 1892

17th Nov. 92

My dear Trevor

Mr Ghose will be rejected. The official letter may reach you tomorrow, but as Friday is mail day you may like to act on this information.

I am very truly yours

E. A. Collier

F. Trevor Esq.

CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION,

17th November 1892

Sir,

With reference to Mr Lockhart's letter of the 24th August last,

I am directed by the Civil Service Commissioners to acquaint you for the information of the Secretary of State for India in Council, that although several opportunities have been offered to Mr A. A. Ghose of attending for examination in Riding, with a view to proving himself qualified in that respect, he has repeatedly failed to attend at the time appointed, and that the Commissioners

Page 324

are consequently unable to certify that he is qualified to be appointed to the Civil Service of India.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your obedient servant,

John Hennell

The Under Secretary of State,

India Office

VII

Minute Paper. J & P Public Department.

Letter from C. S. Commissioners Dated 17 Nov.

1892

Received 18 Nov.

	Date	Initials	SUBJECT
Under Secretary	18th Nov.	F.T.
Secretary of State	18	A.G.	Civil Service of
Committee	19	K	India: rejection of
Under Secretary			Mr A. A. Ghose
Secretary of State			Selected in 1890
Council.....................

Minute

In August last the C. S. Commissioners reported that Mr Ghose, a native of India and allotted to the Lower Provinces of Bengal and Assam, who had passed his Final Examination, had still to satisfy the Commission in respect of Health and Riding. He has passed the medical examination (see note of 4th Nov.) and the Commission now report that they are unable to certify that he is qualified to be appointed to the Civil Service of India because he has repeatedly failed to attend several opportunities offered to him of attending the Riding Examination. In all probability Mr Ghose will address the Secretary of State. His case can then be considered if necessary. He did not furnish any University

Page 325

Certificate on the last occasion and consequently has not received the allowance of £150 payable after the Final Examination. He was an undergraduate of King's College, Cambridge and that College, if applied to, might state why the certificate was not granted. Mr Ghose obtained the 11th place at the Open Competition of 1890 – was No. 23 in the First Periodical Examination – No.19 in the Second Periodical and No. 37 in the Final last August.

Circulated for information.

VIII

Nov. 19/92

107 Abingdon Road

Kensington. W.

Dear Sir Arthur

Though I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, I venture to think that my name may be known to you through Mr Whitley Stokes, or through my brother in the Bengal Secretariat.

My present object in addressing you is to endeavour to arouse your good will on behalf of Mr A. A. Ghose, who has been rejected by the Civil Service Commissioners as a probationary candidate for the Indian Civil Service. I went this morning to the office of the Commission, where I was confidentially informed of the circumstances of the case (which did not materially differ from the story he had already told me), and was also informed that his only possible hope lay in an appeal to the Secretary of State.

I have therefore instructed him to present a petition without delay to Lord Kimberley, setting out all the circumstances, acknowledging the justice of his rejection, and begging that, if possible, he may be allowed yet one more chance.

As you may know, Mr Ghose was disqualified for failing to pass his examination in riding, or perhaps I should say, for failing to keep the appointment made for him by the examiner, after he had previously shown similar want of punctuality and disregard for the requirements of the examiner.

His excuse (such as it is) is that want of money prevented him from taking the needful lessons in riding, and that, at the last, anxiety and moral cowardice made him lose his head. He tells me that he did turn up at Woolwich for the examination, half an hour late.

Page 326

It happens that I have known Mr A. A. Ghose and his two brothers for the past five years, and that I have been a witness of the pitiable straits to which they have all three been reduced through the failure of their father, a Civil Surgeon in Bengal and (I believe) a most respectable man, to supply them with adequate resources. In addition, they have lived an isolated life, without any Englishman to take care of them or advise them.

I could tell you a great deal more if you would care to give me a personal interview – I must content myself now with stating that, should the Secretary of State feel himself able to give Mr Ghose one more chance, I undertake to provide the necessary expenses of riding lessons, journeys to Woolwich etc., and further to do my best to see that his conduct to the Commissioners is regular and becoming.

I am

Yours faithfully

Jas. S. Cotton.

Sir A.G. Macpherson K.C.I. E.

King'sCollege,

Cambridge,

20 Nov. 1892

Dear Sir,

I am very sorry to hear what you tell me about Ghose, that he has been rejected in his final I. C. S. Examination for failure in riding. His conduct throughout his two years here was most exemplary. He held a foundation scholarship, which he obtained (before passing his first I.C.S. Examination) by open competition, in classics. His pecuniary circumstances prevented him from resigning this, when he became a Selected Candidate, and the regulations of the scholarship obliged him to devote a great part of his time to classics, of course to some extent to the disadvantage of his I.C.S. studies. He performed his part of the bargain, as regards the College, most honourably, and took a high place in the 1st class of the Classical Tripos at the end of the second year of his residence. He also obtained certain college prizes, showing command of English and literary ability. That a man should have been able to do this (which alone is quite enough

Page 327

for most undergraduates), and at the same time to keep up his I. C. S. work, proves very unusual industry and capacity. Besides his classical scholarship he possessed a knowledge of English Literature far beyond the average of undergraduates, and wrote a much better English style than most young Englishmen. That a man of this calibre should be lost to the Indian Government merely because he failed in sitting on a horse or did not keep an appointment appears to me, I confess, a piece of official short-sightedness which it would be hard to beat.

Moreover the man has not only ability but character. He has had a very hard and anxious time of it for the last two years. Supplies from home have almost entirely failed, and he has had to keep his two brothers as well as himself, and yet his courage and perseverance have never failed. I have several times written to his father on his behalf, but for the most part unsuccessfully. It is only lately that I managed to extract from him enough to pay some tradesmen who would otherwise have put his son into the County Court. I am quite sure that these pecuniary difficulties were not due to any extravagance on Ghose's part: his whole way of life, which was simple and penurious in the extreme, is against this: they were due entirely to circumstances beyond his control. But they must have hampered him in many ways, and probably prevented him from spending enough on horses to enable him to learn to ride. I can fully believe that his inability to keep his appointment at Woolwich was due to the want of cash.

In conclusion, I hope sincerely that your efforts to re-instate him as a Selected Candidate will prove successful, for I think, if he is finally turned out, it will be, however legally justifiable, a moral injustice to him, and a very real loss to the Indian Government. It may also perhaps be suggested that to reject so able a Hindoo because he cannot ride is likely to give rise to serious misunderstanding in India, and to open the door to a charge of partiality, which is of course absolutely untenable, but which might be put forward by natives with some plausibility.

Yours truly,

G.W.Prothero

Page 328

To the Right. Hon. the Earl of Kimberley,

Secretary of State for India.

6 Burlington Rd.

Bayswater W.

Monday. Nov. 21.1892

May it please your Lordship

I was selected as a probationer for the Indian Civil Service in 1890, and after the two years probation required, have been rejected on the ground that I failed to attend the Examination in Riding.

I humbly petition your Lordship that a further consideration may, if possible, be given to my case.

I admit that the Commissioners have been very indulgent to me in the matter, and that my conduct has been as would naturally lead them to suppose me negligent of their instructions; but I hope your Lordship will allow me to lay before you certain circumstances that may tend to extenuate it.

I was sent over to England, when seven years of age, with my two elder brothers and for the last eight years we have been thrown on our own resources without any English friend to help or advise us. Our father, Dr K. D. Ghose of Khulna, has been unable to provide the three of us with sufficient for the most necessary wants, and we have long been in an embarrassed position.

It was owing to want of money that I was unable always to report cases in London at the times required by the Commissioners, and to supply myself with sufficiently constant practice in Riding. At the last I was thrown wholly on borrowed resources and even these were exhausted.

It was owing to difficulty in procuring the necessary money, that I was late at my appointment on Tuesday Nov.15. I admit that I did not observe the exact terms of the appointment; however I went on to Woolwich by the next train, but found that the Examiner had gone back to London.

If your Lordship should grant me another chance, an English gentleman, Mr Cotton, (editor of the Academy) of 107 Abingdon Road, Kensington W. has undertaken that want of money shall not prevent me from fulfilling the exact instructions of the Commissioners.

Page 329

If your Lordship should obtain this for me, it will be the object of my life to remember it in the faithful performance of my duties in the Civil Service of India.

I am

Your Lordship's obedient servant

Aravinda. Acroyd. Ghose

Minute Paper J & P. 1926 / 1892 Public Department.

Letter from Mr A. A. Ghose Dated 21. Nov,

1892

Received 23.Nov,

Date Initials SUBJECT

Under Secretary ..... 24 Nov F. T. Civil Service of India:

Secretary of State.....

Committee ............... Case of Mr A. A. Ghose

Under Secretary ....... .

Secretary of State.....

Council ;...................

Minute

Mr Ghose has now appealed to the Secretary of State to give him another chance for passing his Riding Examination and Mr James Sutherland Cotton, to whom Mr Ghose refers, has written the annexed letter to Sir Arthur Macpherson. Poverty apparently has been a great misfortune to Mr Ghose. Unless the C. S. Commissioners certificate Mr Ghose as qualified for the I. C. S. the Secretary of State cannot appoint him to the Service. But in the circumstances it is submitted that a copy of Mr Ghose's memorial should be sent for the consideration of the Commissioners. It should not be forgotten that Mr Ghose has passed all his examinations and that no selected candidate has yet been

Page 330

rejected on account of the Riding Examination. It may be well to enquire of Mr William Chawner, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, (who in June last succeeded Sir Roland Wilson as Secretary to the Board of Indian Civil Service Studies at Cambridge) how Mr Ghose conducted himself at the University previous to his Final Examination. This suggestion is made because Mr Ghose has not produced the necessary University Certificate and consequently has not received the allowance of £150.

XII

I. 0.

25 Nov. 1892

Sir,

With reference to Mr Hennell's letter of the 17th instant, I am directed etc. to transmit for the consideration of the C. S. Commissioners a Memorial from Mr A. A. Ghose which should have been addressed to the Commissioners, inasmuch as the decision of the matter to which it refers rests with them.

Horace Walpole

The Secretary

Civil Service Commission.

XIII

Mr Godley,

Mr J. S. Cotton called on me this morning and left the enclosed letter to him from Mr Ghose's Tutor at King's College Cambridge. He asked me to give it to you. Mr Cotton says that Ghose will be ready (if the C. S. Commission will consent) to attend the Riding Examination in a very short time.

F. Trevor

25/11/92

XIV

Mr Trevor

Please send this letter privately to the C. S. Commission.

An official letter should go to Mr Ghose telling him that the

Page 331

decision rests with the C. S. Commission to whom his memorial has accordingly been forwarded.

A.G.

25 Nov. 92

I. 0.

26 Nov. 1892

Sir,

I am directed by the Earl of Kimberley to acknowledge the receipt of your Memorial of the 21st inst. and, in reply, to inform you that it has been transmitted to the Civil Service Commissioners whose duty it is to decide upon the matter to which it relates.

Horace Walpole

A. A. Ghose Esq.

6, Burlington Road,

Bayswater. W.

XVI

Minute Paper. J & P 1966 / 1892 Public Department.

Letter from C. S. Commissioner Dated 29 Nov.

1892.

Received 30 Nov.

Date. Initials. SUBJECT.

Under Secretary ....... 30 Nov. F. T.

Secretary of State ..... 30 A. G.

Committee ............... Civil Service of India:

Under Secretary .......

Secretary of State ....

Council.................... Case of Mr A. A. Ghose

Page 332

Minute

For the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum the Civil Service Commissioners are not disposed to afford Mr
Ghose further facilities for undergoing the Examination in Riding. This is very unfortunate considering Mr Ghose's career at Cambridge where he secured a first class in the classical tripos. See Mr Prothero's letter to Mr Cotton which was sent to the C. S.Commissioners for information. As the Commissioners have returned to this office Mr Ghose's memorial, it is presumed that the Secretary of State will now inform that gentleman that, in the absence of the Statutory Certificate, he cannot interfere – unless he is disposed to ask the Commissioners as a matter of grace to give Mr Ghose a further chance.

Orders are solicited.

Lord Kimberley,

I do not think that it would be at all advisable to attempt to interfere with the discretion of the Civil Service Commission in the matter of this certificate. It is for them to award it or refuse it, and I am unable to see why the Secretary of State should assume any responsibility. The impression which Mr Ghose has made on the minds of the Commission is by no means a favourable one, and I think that a perusal of the memorandum by the Senior Examiner tends to confirm their view of his character. I would inform Mr Ghose that his memorial has been forwarded to the C. S. Commission: that they decline to comply with his request: and that in the absence of the statutory certificate from them the S. of S. is unable to appoint him to the Service.

A. G.

30 Nov. 92

I agree

proceed accordingly

K Dec. 5

Page 333

Correspondence Relating to Sri Aurobindo's I. C. S. Examination ¹

XVII

CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION,
WESTMINSTER.

29th November 1892

Sir,

I am directed by the Civil Service Commissioners to acknowledge the receipt of your letter (J & P 1926) of the 25th instant, transmitting for their consideration a Memorial from Mr A. A. Ghose, and in reply, I am to acquaint you, for the Information of the Secretary of State for India in Council, that in view of the circumstances stated in the accompanying Memorandum, which was submitted to them by their Senior Examiner before they arrived at the decision communicated to you by Mr Hennell's letter of the 17th November, they are not themselves disposed to afford Mr Ghose further facilities for undergoing the Examination in Riding.

Mr Ghose's Memorial is herewith returned.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your obedient servant,

John faennell

The Under Secretary of State

India Office

XVIII

30 Nov.' 92

Ghose

Dear Trevor

I return Mr Prothero's letter.

We are going to notify to Mr Ghose that no further facilities will be afforded to him unless indeed further communications should pass between your Board and ours tending to a different result. I am rather in the dark on the point. If I can write more definitely in the course of the day I will do so.

Very truly yours

E. A. Collier

Page 334

XIX

Lord Kimberley,

You know that I fully share your views as to the importance of Riding. In this case, I should give the candidate another chance of qualifying. The Commissioners are not very emphatic against it. They only say that "they are not themselves disposed" to grant it.

They might be perfectly willing to grant it on a hint from you. The candidate seems to me a remarkably deserving man, and I can quite believe that poverty was the cause of his failures to appear.

I know Mr Cotton to whom he refers, and could, if you approved, tell him that his friend was allowed another chance on the score of poverty but that he must make no more excuses.

G.W.E.R.
[George W. E. Russell]

Dec. 1

I am sorry that I cannot take a compassionate view as Mr Russell suggests of this case. I agree entirely with Mr Godley that the responsibility of refusing or granting a certificate rests with the Commissioners, and not with the Secretary of State. If the Secretary of State sets a precedent of interfering with the Commissioners' discretion nothing but confusion can result. I rest my decision solely on this ground.

I must add however as an 'obiter dictum' that I should much doubt whether Mr Ghose would be a desirable addition to the Service – and if Mr Prothero or any one else is under the impression that a Hindoo ought to have a special exemption from the the requirement of being able to ride, the sooner he is disabused of such an absurd notion the better.

K [Kimberley]

Dec. 2/92

Page 335

XXI

I. 0.

7 Dec. 1892

Sir,

With reference to Sir Horace Walpole's letter of the 26th ultimo, I am directed to inform you that the Civil Service Commissioners decline to afford you further facilities for undergoing the examination in Riding and that, in the absence of the Statutory Certificate from the Commissioners stating that you are qualified to be appointed to the Civil Service of India, the Earl of Kimberley is unable to appoint you to that Service.

George W. E. Russell

A. A. Ghose Esq.

6 Burlington Road

Bayswater W.

XXII

I. 0. 7 December 1892

Sir.

I am directed by the Earl of Kimberley to acknowledge the receipt of Mr Hennell's letter of the 29th ultimo respecting Mr A. A. Ghose and, in reply, to transmit for the information of the Civil Service Commissioners copy of the reply sent to that gentleman in answer to his Memorial –

George W. E. Russell

The Secretary

Civil Service Commission.

XXIII

6 Burlington Rd

Bayswater W

Monday Dec. 12 1892

May it please your Lordship

As the Civil Service Commissioners have decided that they cannot give me a Certificate of qualification for an appointment to the Civil Service of India, I beg to apply to your Lordship

Page 336

for the remainder of the allowance that would have been due to me as a Probationer.

I am fully aware that I have really forfeited this sum by my failure in the Final Examination but in consideration of my bad pecuniary circumstances, I hope your Lordship will kindly listen to my petition.

I enclose the required Certificate as to residence and character at the University.

I am

Your Lordship's obedient servant

A. A. Ghose

XXIV

Minute Paper. J. & P. 2035 / 1892

Public Department.

Letter from Mr A. A. Ghose Dated 12 Dec

1892

Received 13 Dec

Date Initials. SUBJECT

Unmder Secretary ..... 13 Dec. F.T. Civil service of India

Secretary; ofstate ..... 14 Dec. G.W.E.R. Candidate selected in

Com;mi;ttee ... ... ... 16 K 1890

Under secretary ... ... 19 F.T.

Secretary of state ... ... . Mr. A.A. Ghose's allowance.

Council ... ... ... ... 19 H.W

Minute

Mr Ghose now sends his University Certificate and prays for the payment of the allowance of £150, although he has lost his appointment owing to not passing his Riding Examination. [N. B. Mr J. S. Cotton informs me that he has grounds for hoping that Mr G. will obtain at once an appointment in the service of the Gaekwar of Baroda.]

As this is the first case of a candidate rejected after passing his Periodical and Final examinations on account of failing to

Page 337

pass his Riding Examination it is submitted that the allowance of £150 be paid to Mr A. A. Ghose, on the ground that candidates, who in past years (see list annexed) have lost their appointments through not qualifying in passing the Medical examination, have been allowed to receive the sums due on passing the Final Examination.

There is, in my opinion, no doubt whatever as to the propriety of paying this sum to Mr Ghose. He went to Cambridge in the faith that he would receive his allowance, provided he behaved well, to defray the expenses of his residence in the University, and the fact that he has failed to pass in riding does not affect the obligation of the Secretary of State.

A.G.

14 Dec. 92

I. 0. London.
20 Dec. 1892

Sir

I am directed, etc., to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 12th instant and, in reply, to inform you that the Earl of Kimberley authorizes the payment to you of the sum of £150.

Horace Walpole

A. A Ghose Esq.

6, Burlington Road

Bayswater W.

Page 338

XXV

Reference Paper J. & P. 2035 Public Department.

1892

Letter to Mr A. A. Ghose Dated 20 Dec. 1892.

Received ....

Referred to the Accountant General 21 Dec. 1892.

With a request that he will
remit to Mr A. A, Ghose
the sum of £150.
F. Trevor

Passed for payment less
Income Tax. University
Certificate retained

Thos.W.Keith
22 Dec. 92

NOTES ON THE CORRESPONDENCE

Letter dated 24 August 1892

(From Mr. Lackhart, Secretary to the Civil Service Commissioners to the Under Secretary of State, India Office.)

Reports that "Messrs. Maclver and A. A. Ghose have still to satisfy the Commissioners of their eligibility in respect of health and the latter gentleman has still to pass in Riding."

Letter dated 4 November 1892

(From Mr. E. A. Collier, Senior Officer of the C. S.Commission to Mr. Trevor, Asst. Secretary, Judicial and Public Dept., India Office.)

A private note stating that Aurobindo "has passed his medical

Page 339

Examination and we expect to hear the result of his riding Examination soon."

So, until 4 November, there is no sign that Aurobindo would be rejected.

III

Letter dated 14 November 1892

(From Mr. E. A. Collier to Mr. Trevor)

"Mr. Ghose has given us a good deal of trouble and there are some points in his case as to which I must ask my colleague Hewlett who is away now, but will be here tomorrow."

So, between 4 November and 14 November, something happened which made Mr. Collier change his mind. It is evident that Mr. Trevor was trying to get Aurobindo selected.

Memorandum dated 16 November 1892

(From the Senior Examiner, Civil Service Commission, regarding. the case of Mr. Aravinda A. Ghose.)

(a) Ordered to be examined on 9 August.

Did not attend. Sent medical certificate on August 11.

(b) On 15 August was asked when he would be ready to be examined.

No reply.

Question repeated on 30 August.

Question repeated a third time on 17 October.

(c) Answer dated 18 October–stating he would prefer 25 or 26 October. "Colonel Brough fixed the Wednesday (October 26) at 12.30 at Woolwich. Ghose was ordered by letter on 22nd to attend at that time."

(d) "On 26th October, Colonel Brough wrote to say the candidate had not appeared. A messenger was sent to Ghose (same address) and asked to bring back an answer: the answer was that Ghose had not received the letter making the appointment."

Page 340

(e) "Directed to attend here in person on Monday 31^st October. ...

"I gave him a letter to Colonel Brough asking the latter to arrange with Ghose a date for his Examination and told Ghose to lose no time in going down to Woolwich and presenting the letter in person: to go down that afternoon if he had no other engagement. . . . Colonel Brough wrote on 5th November saying Ghose had never appeared. . . . Colonel Brough added that he would prefer not to examine Ghose."

(f) Colonel Brough, however, agreed to examine him "if some one from this Office were present". (9 Nov.)

"Ghose ordered to call here at noon on the 10th. He came at ten minutes to one. ... I then showed Ghose Colonel Brough's latest letter fixing the 15th November for the Examination, and naming the train 2.22 from Charing Cross. I... told him to meet me, without fail, at 2.15 on the platform at Charing Cross Station. ... I went there yesterday [15 Nov.] and kept a look-out, but no Ghose appeared. I went on to Woolwich by the 2.22 train, in case Ghose should be going from any other station or by a different train. But he was not at the Riding Establishment. . . . While waiting at Charing Cross Station, I had sent a message to Mr. Bonar. . . asking him to send a messenger round to his house to enquire. . . . The messenger brought word that Ghose was out and was not expected till 6 p.m."

It is clear that Sri Aurobindo could have appeared on (1) 9 August, (2) 26 October, (3) 5 November, (4) 15 November. That he did not do so is a fact, and it conclusively proves that he did not want to appear for the Riding Test.

The question may be asked: "Why did he not want to appear, specially when he had passed the Examination in writing?" There are several possible answers. He told us in his evening talks during his early years at Pondicherry that he did not want to join the I. C. S. and yet he did not want to tell his father about it. So he managed to get rejected.) ¹

¹ Sri Aurobindo has himself very explicitly stated the reason for his not appearing for the riding test in the following note given by him while reading the manuscript of one of his biographers submitted to him for verification and approval

Page 341

Of course, he also was hard up for money and had to prepare for the I. C. S. examination without a tutor. He could not afford the expenses of frequent riding lessons.

That the final rejection of Mr. Cotton's offer (see VIII) and his own memorial (see X) was influenced by Lord Kimberley's "obiter dictum" (see XX) which might have been influenced by reports from the Cambridge Majlis in which a future civil servant was represented as ventilating revolutionary views about Indian freedom, seems quite evident.

Sri Aurobindo's advocacy of Indian political freedom in the Majlis at Cambridge was not the unripe eloquence of a raw undergraduate. It was something that came from a deep conviction of his soul. That this was so is amply borne out by the fact of his plunging into Indian politics immediately on his return to India. He wrote the famous series of articles "New Lamps for Old" in the Induprakash in 1893.

Letter dated 17 November 1892

(From the Civil Service Commission to the Under Secretary of State, India Office)

This conveys to the Secretary of State the C. S. Commissioners' rejection of Sri Aurobindo. It says: "although several opportunities have been offered to Mr. A. A. Ghose of attending for examination in Riding ... he has repeatedly failed to attend at the time appointed, and that the Commissioners are consequently unable to certify that he is qualified to be appointed to the Civil Service of India."

--------------

a few years before his passing away in 1950: "Nothing detained him in his room. He felt no call for the l.C.S. and was seeking some way to escape from that bondage. By certain manoeuvres he managed to get himself disqualified for riding without himself rejecting the Service, which his family would not have allowed him to do." (Sri Aurobindo, On Himself [Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972], p,3.)

Page 342

VII

Minute dated 17 November '1892

(This is a minute on the C. S. Commissioners' letter prepared-in the office of the Secretary of State for circulation "for information" to the Under Secretary, the Secretary of State and to the Committee.)

From it we get the following: "Mr. Ghose obtained the llth place at the Open Competition of 1890 — was No. 23 in the First Periodical Examination — No. 19 in the Second Periodical and No. 37 in the Final last August."

VIII and IX

Letter dated 19 November 1892

(From Mr. James S. Cotton to Sir Arthur Macpherson. Secretary, Judicial and Public Dept. India Office.)

Letter dated 20 November 1892

(From Mr. G. W. Prothero to Mr. J. S. Cotton; sent by Cotton to the C. S. Commissioners)

When the rejection seemed final two Englishmen – Mr. Cotton and Mr. Prothero – took up Aurobindo's cause. The reader will find the implacability of red-tape relieved by the gust of sympathy and warm-hearted support of these two gentlemen who represented the real culture of England.

Mr. James S. Cotton of the South Kensington Liberal Club was one of the editors of the Academy. He was born in India, at Coonoor, and was a brother of Sir Henry Cotton, I.C.S.,' who took a prominent part in starting the Indian National Congress.

Mr. G. M. Prothero was a senior tutor at Cambridge. He became a prominent historian and was knighted. This testimony coming as it does unsolicited from a University man throws a unique light on Sri Aurobindo as a student at Cambridge. The

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tribute paid by Mr. Prothero to Sri Aurobindo, not only as an intellectual, but as a man of character, is highly significant. These letters require no comment as they speak for themselves.

Letter dated 2-1 November 1892

(A Memorial from Sri Aurobindo to the Earl of Kimberley, the Secretary of State for India.)

It is evident that Sri Aurobindo wrote this unwillingly because of his elder brother Benoybhushan's persuasion and the moral pressure of Mr. James S. Cotton. Mr. Cotton writes in his letter: "I have therefore instructed him to present a petition without delay to Lord Kimberley. ..."

In this memorial is found the autobiographical note relating to Sri Aurobindo's financial condition during those years, which has been quoted by us above. This note of deep pathos is proof that Sri Aurobindo had drunk deep of the bitter cup of poverty from his childhood.

XI-XII-XV

Minute dated 21 November 1892

(A Minute from the office of the Secretary of, State relating to Mr. A. A. Ghose's letter.)

Based on this Minute (XI), a note to the Civil Service Commissioners (XII) was drafted on 25 November 1892 transmitting Sri Aurobindo's memorial to the C.S. Commissioners. It shifts the responsibility from the Secretary of State for India to the Indian Civil Service Commissioner.

A draft of the reply sent to Sri Aurobindo on 26 November (XV) accompanies this Minute.

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XVI

Minute dated 29 November 1892

(A Minute on the Civil Service Commissioners'letter prepared in the office of the Secretary of .State for India.)

This contains the views of the members of the Committee of the Secretary of State for India.

XVII

Letter dated 29 November 1892

(From the Civil Service Commission to the Under Secretary of State, India Office.)

This conveys to the Secretary of State the final rejection by the Civil Service Commission of the memorial sent by Sri

Aurobindo on 21 November and returns the memorial to the Secretary of State.

XIX -XX

Minutes dated 1 and 2 December 1892

(Notes of Mr. G. W. Russell, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for India and of Lord Kimberley)

The Secretary of State throws the responsibility of deciding Aurobindo's case on the Civil Service Commission. The note by Mr. Russell dated 1 December 1892, recommends Aurobindo's case for reconsideration. He says: "In this case, I should give the candidate another chance of qualifying. The Commissioners are not very emphatic against it. They only say that 'they are not themselves disposed' to grant it. They might be perfectly willing to grant it on a hint from you." Mr. Russell could not have pressed Aurobindo's case to Lord Kimberley in a more emphatic way. He says: "The candidate seems to me a remarkably

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deserving man, and I can quite believe that poverty was the cause of his failures to appear."

But Lord Kimberley's mind was already made up. He says:

"I am sorry that I cannot take a compassionate view as Mr. Russell suggests of this case." And he even goes out of his way to add an "obiter dictum": "I must add however as an 'obiter dictum' that I should much doubt whether Mr. Ghose would be a desirable addition to the Service. ..."

Lord Kimberley seems to have been particularly piqued by Mr. Prothero's strongly-worded letter.

It is also evident that Mr. Russell's pleading must have been the result of Mr. James Cotton's strong influence.

XXI

Letter dated 7 December 1892

(From the Secretary of State's Office to Mr. A. A. Ghose)

This is the final rejection by the Secretary of State for India.

It may be added that there were cases in which candidates who had not passed the Riding Test were still appointed to the I.C.S. and passed their Riding Examination while serving in India. That course was open to the C. S. Commissioners and to the Secretary of State for India.

XXIII

Letter dated 12 December 1892

(A second memorial from Sri Aurobindo to the Secretary of State.)

It asks for the payment of £150 due to be paid to him as a probationer for the I.C.S.

Evidently, James S. Cotton and Benoybhushan had pressed him to make this request. Though, in fact, it was a legitimate claim, he himself was not inclined to make it.

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XXIV

Minute dated 12 December 1892

(A Minute on Mr. A. A. Ghose's letter prepared in the office of the Secretary of State)

The memorial was circulated and the opinion was in favour of giving the £150.

Here is the first mention of the Service at Baroda: "N. B. Mr. J. S. Cotton informs me that he has grounds for hoping that Mr. Ghose will obtain at once an appointment in the service of the Gaekwar of Baroda."

The Minute states: "As this is the first case of a candidate rejected after passing his Periodical and Final examinations on account of failing to pass his Riding Examination, it is submitted that the allowance of £150 be paid to Mr. A. A. Ghose, on the ground that candidates, who in past years ... have lost their appointments through not qualifying in passing the Medical examination, have been allowed to receive the sums due on passing the Final Examination."

The payment was authorised and paid on 22 December 1892.

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Houses in England

A period of nearly eighty years having intervened, it was thought proper to get assurance about the identity of the houses Sri Aurobindo occupied in England. Here are reproduced the replies of the various County Councils:

Townhall,

49, Stephens Avenue,

Hammersmith, W. 6.

30th December, 1955.

To the best of my belief this is the same house that stood there in 1884. I have confirmed that a certain amount of renumbering took place in this road late in the 19th Century, but this house was definitely not affected.

Yours faithfully,
sd. V. H. Honeyhall,
Community Recreation and
Information Office

London Country Council,

Westminster Bridge,

London S. E.
17th January, 1956.

The only change to have taken place since 1879 is that No. 6, Burlington Road became No. 68, St. Stephen's Garden, W.2, with effect from 1.1.1938.

The four areas you mention were extensively developed in the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign. It appears from maps and Post Office Directories that the house in Cromwell Road was built in 1877. Much of Kempsford Gardens was built during the 1860's although No. 28 appears to have been built between 1875 and 1880. Burlington Road appears for the first time in Post Office Directory for 1865. St. Stephen's Avenue seems to have been built after 1866.

yours faithfully,

sd.T Darlington,

Archivist and Librarian.

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H. J. W. Wilson, A. L. A.

Metropolitan Borough of Paddington,

Central Public Library,

Porchester Road, W. 2

29th December, 1955.

In reply to your letter to the Town Clerk, of 19th December 1955, 6, Burlington Road became 68, St. Stephen's Garden with effect from 1st January, 1938. The proprietor of the house in 1892, when Sri Aurobindo was living there, was Mrs. Lloyd Ellis, but we have no further information about it. Buses 7, 7A, 28, 31 and 46 pass along Chepstow Road, W. 2, which is crossed by St. Stephen's Gardens.

Yours sincerely,
sd. H.J.W. Wilson,
Librarian.

The Royal Borough of Kensington,
Public Libraries and Leighton House,
Chief Librarian H. G. Massey, A.L.A,,

A.M.A.,

17th January, 1956.

Cromwell Road was constructed after the International Exhibition of 1862. Prior to this date, it was nothing more than a muddy lane. Hogarth Road was named in 1873, and Kempsford Gardens about the same period. Our records do not show that any re-numbering of the premises mentioned in your letter has taken place since 1880.

Yours faithfully,
sd. H. G. Massey,
Chief Librarian.

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APPENDIX VII

Houses in Baroda

1. Khaserao Jadhav's house. Bungalow 15, Dandia Bazar.

2. In the camp near the Bazar.

3. Kiledar's wadi, on the way to Makarpura Palace. (Sri Aurobindo seems to have lived here during the first outbreak of plague in Baroda [1896-97?].)

4. Mir Bakarali's wada, near Shiapura.

5. Behind the college on the way to Camp (Government quarters).

APPENDIX VIII

Houses Sri Aurobindo Lived in and Offices He Was Connected with in Calcutta

1. Subodh Mullick's house, 12, Wellington Street.

2. Bhupal Chandra Bose's house in Serpentine Lane.

3. 23, Scott's Lane.

4. 48, Grey Street (1st floor).

5. Alipore jail.

6. 6, College Square (Krishna K-umar Mitra's house and office of the Sanjivani).

7. 4, Shyam Pukur Lane (Karmayogin office).

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Biography of Sri Aurobindo by Kulkarni – A Criticism

P. B. Kulkami, Yogi Aurobindo Ghose, with a preface by K. G. Deshpande (Bombay: Kashinath Mahadev Jamhankar, Prakishya Kacheri, 1935), 225 pages.

This is a biography of Sri Aurobindo, the only one of its kind, I believe, in the Marathi language. Mr. Kulkarni has done his work very conscientiously. He has tried to give as many details as he could get from various sources. He has not been content to give Sri Aurobindo's biography only up to his political career but has led it up to his residence at Pondicherry and has even taken pains to give an idea of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and the Ashram. Like some biographers he has not lamented the retirement of Sri Aurobindo from the field of politics, but has tried to understand and appreciate his spiritual urge and the importance of his work in that field. In this respect Mr. Kulkarni's effort is superior to some others by persons incapable of understanding spirituality. If spiritual life, if Yoga and the realisation of God have to be left out from or minimised in the life of Sri Aurobindo, then the effort of writing the biography may as well be given up. But Mr. Kulkarni's book suffers from many factual inaccuracies and at places one finds in it an effort to represent Sri Aurobindo as the author would like to see a budding Yogi. Even the preface written by Shri K. G. Deshpande is not free from these errors. Some of these inaccuracies may be pointed out here.

1. Mr. Kulkarni says that Sri Aurobindo's father was a religious-minded man which is not quite true. It is certain that Dr. K. D. Ghose was a very generous man and that he had rare capacities of head and qualities of heart. Also he ruled like an uncrowned king both at Rangpur and Khulna, where he served as the District Medical Officer. Dr. K. D. Ghose had leanings towards the Brahmo Samaj before he went to Europe, but after his return he was an atheist and an agnostic.

2. Mr. Kulkami speaks of Sri Aurobindo's residence in England as if it was a period of very serious life befitting the preparation of a future Yogi. This part of the biography is more conjectural

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than real. Sri Aurobindo was very busy with himself, perhaps, and took a lot of interest in many things. But the fact is that Sri Aurobindo had no active spiritual tendency during his stay in England.

3. Mr. Kulkami attributes Sri Aurobindo's political views to his connection with the Fabian Society. But it is definite that Sri Aurobindo had no connection with the Fabian Society and that it played no part whatever in the formation of his political views, which he had arrived at independently. Not that he did not know about the existence of the Fabian Society or about the Irish movement, but he did not owe his inspiration for Indian political freedom to either of these things.

4. Mr. Kulkami says that Sri Aurobindo was introduced to the Gaekwar by Mr. Henry Cotton. In fact, it was Henry Cotton's brother, James Cotton, who knew Sri Aurobindo's eldest brother, Binoy Bhushan Ghose, who introduced Sri Aurobindo to the Gaekwar.

5. Mr. Kulkami says that it was one Swami Hamsa that gave Sri Aurobindo the first introduction to the practice of Yoga especially that of Pranayama. It is true that one Swami Hamsa came to Baroda and was giving lectures on Dharma. But Sri Aurobindo heard his lectures in the Baroda Palace where he went on invitation. He never went to the Swami's place to consult him, nor did he take any information or instruction from him about Pranayama. Sri Aurobindo at that time was not interested in Yoga. Also he was not impressed by the Swami.

6. Mr. Kulkami seems to suggest that Sri Aurobindo was seeking Satsang [good and holy company] at Baroda and that on his return from England he was buried in religious books like the Veda, the Upanishads and the Shastras in general. This is not true. He was reading all kinds of books at Baroda, among them books on ancient Indian culture. He was not specially seeking out good company. His circle of friends at Baroda was rather limited. He was not a man of society.

I believe some of these errors of Mr. Kulkami are due to his placing an unquestioning reliance on Mr. K. G. Deshpande's information. It is true that Sri Aurobindo knew Mr. Deshpande in England as a student, though he was not intimate with him. He subsequently met him at Baroda where both were servingv But in the details concerning Sri Aurobindo's life Mr. Deshpande

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has been unconsciously inaccurate at several places.

I shall point out here some inaccuracies from the Preface of Mr. Deshpande:

1. He says that Sri Aurobindo attended a grammar school at Manchester. He never went to any such school.

2. He says that Sri Aurobindo learnt Sanskrit from one Bhasker Shashtri Joshi. In fact Sri Aurobindo began Sanskrit in England and continued his studies at Baroda where he read the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, works of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti by himself. If he talked with anyone on the subject it was to get information and compare notes – not to learn the language.

3. He mentions Mohanpuri Goswami as one who gave Sri Aurobindo the Devi Upasana. This Devi Upasana was not taken for a spiritual purpose by Sri Aurobindo. It was with a political purpose that he took the Shakti Mantra from Mohanpuri – not for his own Yoga.

4. He says that Sri Aurobindo resigned from the National College because he had differences with the National Council of Education. This is not quite true. There was a difference of viewpoint but no clash of policy with regard to the National College. When the first Bande Mataram trial began, Sri Aurobindo himself sent in his resignation in order not to embarrass the Council of Education. They re-appointed him on his acquittal. It was when the Alipore trial began that they were obliged to ask for his resignation.

These are some of the important corrections. It is a matter of great regret that Mr. Deshpande has since died. Had he been alive I am sure I would have found it very easy to get these corrections accepted by him.

I do hope that Mr. Kulkami will make these corrections in the next edition of biography.

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APPENDIX X

Biography of Sri Aurobindo by Girija Shankar Roy Chowdhury – A Criticism

Girija Shankar Roy Chowdhury, "Sri Aurobindo", Udbodhan, Vol.42, No. 4 to Vol. 48, No. 6 (Vaisak 1347-Ashadh 1352).

The sources Girija draws upon are not accurate and therefore his conclusions, opinions and judgments are naturally falsified. For example:

. 1. He draws upon Hem Chandra Kanungo's book, Banglay Biplava Pracheshta, and takes it for granted that Hem Chandra's versions, information, etc. are accurate. But they are not. One instance will suffice, – Hem actually believes that the Bhawani Mandir pamphlet was written by Devavrat! Everyone knows it was written by Sri Aurobindo.

More staggering is the principle which Girija enunciates, "The account given by Hem being not contradicted has now become history." This would mean that if anyone circulates or prints a number of lies, or inaccuracies either about a great person, or a movement, or a cause and if no one cares to contradict them in writing, all that stuff attains the dignity of history! The first task of one who claims to write objectively should be to sift and critically examine his data, his sources. Girija does not do this and therefore his account is neither accurate nor dependable.

2. Girija relies, in the second instance, on personal talks, reports and impressions of certain relatives of Sri Aurobindo;

for example, he often quotes Barindra and Sarojini. Here also he is relying on slender evidence, because Barin in his autobiography actually admits that his "memory is unreliable" and the remarkable thing about his autobiography is that at no place does he give any dates or even the year!

3. The greatest drawback of the book is that Girija does not seem to be an impersonal seeker of the truth of Sri Aurobindo's life. He is already a partisan even when he begins his so-called biography.

He admits that "events and facts are not explicable" and yet claims to explain genius and personality.

From the very beginning he seems to be a pleader trying to

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use and search for materials to support his opinions and conclusions.

One such illustration is furnished by Girija's speech at Tangail (Udbodhan). He has tried to show that Sri Aurobindo was not only influenced in his mind by Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Vivekananda – in fact most educated Indians have been for the last forty years, – but that he owes his Yoga and spirituality to them, which is not true at all.

In his enthusiasm to prove the prabhava [influence] of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, Girija forgets that one of the quotations he gives from Dharma actually refers to a celebration at Belur in March 1910 – when Sri Aurobindo was at Chandernagore! How could he have come to Calcutta without being recognised? And how could he have written the article before the actual celebration took place?

Girija has been led into this error by his hasty and unwarranted assumption that "all that has appeared in the Dharma was written by Sri Aurobindo." The fact is that all that he quotes from Dharma in his speech as having been written by Sri Aurobindo is not his. I have ascertained the authorship of the articles quoted by Girija and I can state on definite authority that these are not Sri Aurobindo's articles. It is known beyond doubt that they were written by one Ramchandra.

I have already indicated that Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda influenced, and are influencing, the intellectual outlook of a very great section of educated Indians and we can go further and gladly admit that the inquiring mind of seeking humanity today has not remained untouched by their influence.

But if Girija wants to prove that the life and method of Sadhana – not the mental outlook – of Sri Aurobindo were influenced by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, I think this is not a tenable proposition. If Sri Aurobindo was so influenced and owed his spirituality entirely to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, the most natural thing for him would have been to join the Ramakrishna Mission. Besides, one cannot always make much even of spiritual help and influence which, after all, is bound to take place in life based on interchange and mutual exchange of influences. The only living person from whom Sri Aurobindo received direct spiritual help and guidance was the late Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. Their connection as Guru and disciple

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seems to have lasted three months and it terminated with a clear understanding on both sides. The fact that Ramakrishna was under the guidance of Bharati for eleven years doing Tantric Sadhana under her and under that of Totapuri for one year for Vedantic Sadhana need not detract in the least from his own greatness. A great personality, even when it accepts an alien influence, succeeds in creating out of it something unique. Here the articles supposed to be written by Sri Aurobindo are all topical and refer to occasions like birthday celebrations at some of which their author is supposed to have been present. It is very well known that Sri Aurobindo at this time was at Chandernagore and could not have been present at the festivals. The line of argument which Mr. Roy Chowdhury adopts can be turned to absurdity if one argues for instance that because Sri Aurobindo wrote Gitar Bhumika in the Dharma, it shows that he was under the influence of the Gita. Equally it can be even maintained that since he spoke about Sri Krishna in the Uttarpara Speech he was very much influenced by Sri Krishna. He translated the Kena and the Katha Upanishads at this time, therefore he was greatly influenced by these Upanishads. Well, this is a wrong way of explaining or understanding, or rather misunderstanding a great personality. With all his anxiety "to prove"–pramān karivār – he writer has not been able to convince us in what exact way was Sri Aurobindo influenced by Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda except that he had great admiration for them. The fact is that a genius assimilates all influences and stimulating forces and creates out of himself the miracle of his personality which has not yet been explained by known processes of psychology.

Points of criticism:

1. Too much extraneous material introduced, very little material dealing with Sri Aurobindo's life.

2. Girija claims to reproduce the environment and atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo's life. But this is not possible, because the writer is bound to reproduce his own selection from the milieu and not emphasise those elements which may have played a part in Sri Aurobindo's life. Therefore the picture of the environment and the atmosphere tends to become out of focus and unconvincing. It appears more or less the guesswork of the writer. It is the

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individual concerned who can say what part the known and the unknown elements of his surroundings played in the formation of his personality. An outsider, or an observer, cannot know this.

3. Girija claims to explain Sri Aurobindo's genius and personality, but all his explanations are inferences and guesses.

One illustration can be given. If heredity and environment are sufficient to explain personality and genius how does Girija explain the difference in the growth and life of the three brothers who had the same parents, went through the same environment and were educated in England together? And why is it that Tagore's son has not become a world-famous poet? So, there are factual errors, inferential errors and errors based on wrong sources.

4. In the last issue of the Udbodhan, recently printed, Girija has committed a great error when he states that the series of articles on passive resistance in the Bande Mataram were written by Bepin Pal! We know on unimpeachable authority that it was written entirely by Sri Aurobindo.

Detailed examination of Udbodhan:

1. In the issue of Vaishakh 1347, Girija says that Sri Aurobindo attended a grammar school in Manchester between 1880-1884.

This is not true. He never attended any school at Manchester.

2. K. D. Ghose sent his sons to England. That, according to to Girija, is responsible for Sri Aurobindo's greatness. He forgets that many fathers sent their sons to England, but did not succeed by this in making them great. Girija holds heredity responsible for Sri Aurobindo's greatness. This also is wrong and unconvincing. In this case genius seems to be drawn from the skies, otherwise how would Girija explain Ramakrishna Paramahansa or Shelley or Keats whose greatness could not be attributed to heredity.

3. His explanation of Sri Aurobindo's failure in the riding test is probably based on Sarojini's memory. But this is not a reliable source. Sri Aurobindo was not playing cards at that time.

4. The speeches of the Congress presidents are reproduced unnecessarily in this so-called biography, because Sri Aurobindo never took any notice of these speeches.

5. It is misleading to use poems as materials for biography,

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unless the poem is expressly known to be autobiographical.

6. Girija's inference based on Brajendranath Seal's supposed criticism that Sri Aurobindo's politics was influenced by Greek culture, is not true.

7. Girija's statement that Sri Aurobindo has not written a drama is not true. He has written many dramas.

8. Girija's inference that Nivedita was responsible for Sri Aurobindo's decision to go to Chandernagore is not true. Again, they did not exchange ideas on spirituality. They only met in the political arena because they held identical views and were both revolutionaries. It is true that Nivedita told Sri Aurobindo about the futility of giving himself up to the government for arrest at any time. Sri Aurobindo felt at that time that he would be able to prevent his arrest. He wrote thereafter an open letter to his countrymen and the government did not accept his challenge. It is not true that Nivedita came to see him off on board the boat.

9. Girija infers that Sri Aurobindo must have read the works of Ram Mohan Roy. But the fact is that he did not read his works. For a young man in England at that time to have sympathy for Ireland, it was not necessary to read Ram Mohan Roy. Many people hold high ideals of humanity, brotherhood, etc. It does not follow that they derive these ideas from one another. The fact only shows that there is a permanent pull towards idealism in human nature.

10. Girija calls Sri Aurobindo the "private secretary" of H. H. the Gaekwar. He was never a private secretary except for a few months during the Kashmir tour in 1903.

11. Girija speaks of Sri Aurobindo's studies in Baroda as if Sri Aurobindo was a follower of orthodox Hinduism. This is not a fact. He was not interested in the Shastras in the way in which orthodox Hindus are. It was Yoga, the practical side of Hindu religion, which attracted him.

12. In the issue of Chaitra 1348, with reference to the year 1895, Girija writes: "Many causes combine to produce an event. We cannot know all the causes, hence we resort to false imagination of various kinds about the causes." As this is the confession of Girija himself I do not see why he insists on explaining the inexplicable.

13. It is not true that Sri Aurobindo was an opponent of

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Mayavada from the beginning, i.e. from 1896.

14. In the issue of Vaisakh 1348, Girija refers to the murder of Rand and Ayerst. It must be stated that this had nothing to do with Sri Aurobindo. It is wrong to proceed on the assumption that because an event occurred in his lifetime it is bound to have exercised a tremendous influence on him.

15. In the issue of Vaisakh 1348, he writes: "To young Sri Aurobindo, Congress was not a great thing even from its fifth year." If this is so,according to Girija himself, why does he go on describing at length the substance of the presidential addresses and the speeches of the chairmen of the reception committees?

16. Another instance of Girija's wrong inference is his conclusion based on the meeting of Vivekananda and Rajnarayan Bose on 3 January 1898. He infers from this fact that Rajnarayan must have talked about it to Sri Aurobindo. This is wrong. They had no talk about Vivekananda at all. Sri Aurobindo never read Ram Mohan's Vedanta and according to him Vivekananda is not a Mayavadin. What Vivekananda preached according to him is the universality of the Brahman. With this idea of Vivekananda Sri Aurobindo is in full agreement.

As for Sitanath Tatvabhushan, Devendra Nath Tagore and Rajnarayan Bose, Sri Aurobindo never thought that they had any Vedanta worth noticing.

17. Girija says that Sri Aurobindo must have participated in Dadabhai Naoroji's election to the British Parliament. He did not.

18. Girija says that C. R. Das met Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge. He did not.

19. Girija infers that Sri Aurobindo must have read the speeches of Phirozshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee at Cambridge. He did not get Indian papers in England and these speeches never attracted his attention. His patriotism was quite independent of these speakers.

20. In the issue of Ashadh 1348, Girija tries to conclude that Sri Aurobindo's idea of the need of the amelioration of the proletariat must have been derived from Marx. This is not correct and not inevitable. Would he explain how Vivekananda got the

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idea of Daridranarayan? Was it from Marx? Such ideas come to great leaders by intuition. Girija's explanation is not only false but his method, in most cases, is bound to lead to false conclusions.

21. In the issue of Agrahayan 1348, Girija's idea about Vivekananda changing from Vedanta to Kali worship and Sri Aurobindo from Shakti worship to Vedanta is fantastic. Vivekananda's instruction to Sister Nivedita does not constitute a proof that he had converted from Vedanta to Tantra. One cannot lose sight of the fact that Vivekananda was the chief disciple of one who was a lifelong devotee of Kali. Besides, Vedanta does not bar Kali worship.

22. Girija surmises that Sri Aurobindo must have met Devendra Nath Tagore. There is no proof that he met him – as a matter of fact he did not see Devendra Nath Tagore.

23. Girija says that before marriage Sri Aurobindo went through śuddhi by taking cowdung etc. The fact seems to be that there was no shaving of the head, nor taking of the cowdung, nor anything of the sort, because Sri Aurobindo refused to go through śuddhi. The accommodating Brahmin was perhaps satisfied with a certain sum of money paid as Dakshina and must have been pleased to make the concession.

24. In the issue dealing with the year 1900, Girija alleges that there was a revolutionary samiti in Gujarat. From inquiries it can be definitely stated that there was no such samiti at the time. Barin's memory in this respect is absolutely mistaken.

25. In the issue dealing with the year 1902, Girija says that Sarala Devi had gone to Baroda and therefore must have met Sri Aurobindo. This is not a way to arrive at correct facts, because persons who happen to be in the same city do not always meet. He met Sarala Devi long after in Bengal.

26. The quotation from Barin's autobiography in the Jyaistha 1349 issue is not authentic.

27. Girija quotes Surendranath Halder's opinion about Sister Nivedita's being a nihilist. But Halder can hardly be taken as an authority on Sister Nivedita.

28. In an issue dealing with 1906, Girija tries to show that Sri Aurobindo's nationalism might have been derived from Bankim, and that even the idea of a secret society was taken from him. This is not true, because it is very well known that

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Sri Aurobindo's father had strictly forbidden his children to mix with Indians while they were in England. So there is no question of Dr. K .D. Ghose writing to England about Bankim's death. Thus it is proved that Sri Aurobindo got the idea of a secret society before reading Bankim. One can be a patriot without reading Bankim. Sri Aurobindo's political ideas were formed even when he was in England.

29. In the issue dealing with 1906, Girija says that Sri Aurobindo performed the Bagala Devi Puja by standing on one foot and repeating the mantra. Sri Aurobindo never did the Bagala Sadhana and it is a lie to go on constantly representing him as an orthodox Hindu which he never was.

30. Girija has introduced Girish Chandra Ghose in Sri Aurobindo's biography. What Girish Chandra Ghose had to do with Sri Aurobindo's biography is known only to Girija!

31. Girija quotes the confession before the Magistrate of some of the revolutionaries in support of certain inferences and of some facts. This is not a reliable process, because confessions of such people have value for the defence, as mostly they are prepared by pleaders with a view to extricate the accused. They are hardly written to tell the truth or represent a fact. It is a wonder that Girija, being a pleader, fails to know this!

32. Girija says that a place on the Shone River was selected by Sri Aurobindo as a centre for the Bhawani Mandir scheme. The fact is, it was Barin who went to select the place and not Sri Aurobindo. Barin had also gone to the Vindhya mountains to select a centre for the Bhawani Mandir, but he returned to Baroda with hill-fever. It must be remembered that Sri Aurobindo gave Diksha for the revolutionary work not only to Barin but to Hemchandra Kanungo, Priya Mitra and others.

33. In the issue of Asvin 1350, Girija says, "Getting rid of infatuation of Western education, his mind was attracted towards Swadeshi things from the beginning." This is not true because there was no infatuation for Western education according to Girija's own statement in the previous issue. In the same issue he says, "It was seen that the two brothers' ways of looking at things was different from the very beginning." But the question is, why? Why is it that two brothers of the same parentage, of equal upbringing, in the same environment, should be or become so different. If heredity and circumstances, as Girija puts in the

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beginning, can explain personality, then these two at least should have been very similar.

34. In the issue of Asvin 1350, Girija quotes a talk or a letter from Barin dated 16.7.1943. This shows that Barin and Priya

Mitra were together till 1905. Therefore Girija's contention in the previous issues that Priya Mitra drifted away from Sri Aurobindo on account of Sri Aurobindo's partiality towards Barin in the quarrel between Jatin Banerji and Barin is not borne out by facts.

35. Another instance of wrong inference based on false evidence is furnished by several people ascribing the authorship of the Bhawani Mandir scheme to different persons. Some have ascribed the authorship to Devavrata and some to Barin.

If a wrong statement like this remains uncontradicted, is it to be accepted as true? If this is the case, as Girija says, it is a very strange doctrine.

36. In the Jyaistha 1351 issue, Girija contends that there was a difference in the standard adopted in the Bande Mataram and the Yugantar cases. He suggests, without affirming, that Sri Aurobindo advised Bhupen Dutt to suffer imprisonment while he offered defence in the Bande Mataram prosecution. Hence Sri Aurobindo was not consistent. This is not true. First of all, Bande Mataram was not a mouthpiece of the revolutionary party. It was a political paper with a programme of national reconstruction, passive resistance and self-reliance. It could not be expected to act like a revolutionary paper. For a paper like
the Yugantar, avowedly revolutionary, it would have been most inconsistent to offer defence. For Bande Mataram it was natural that it should take all the advantage that law could give to defend its liberty.

37. It is not certain whether, as Girija alleges, Barin gave his confession on Sri Aurobindo's advice. The fact is that Barin gave his confession almost immediately on his arrest at Maniktola; so Girija's representation here is quite wrong.

38. One cannot understand why Girija quotes Moriey's and Balfour's speeches in Sri Aurobindo's biography and also one cannot understand why he brings in the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha.

39. Girija argues that independence is a mundane affair and spiritual and religious considerations are irrelevant to it. This

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view is debatable. What does he mean by "mundane considerations"? Do not psychological factors count? And among the psychological factors do not spiritual and religious factors act the most potently? Was not the rise of the Maratha empire and of the Sikhs in the Punjab primarily due to factors which might be called religious? Is no change of psychology necessary before an enslaved people can attain freedom?

40. It is wrong on the part of Girija to say that Sri Aurobindo preached the doctrine of Deva-Devi grace in politics. He invokes the inherent spiritual reservoir of energy in each individual. He says, in fact, what was said long ago by the Upanishads and the Gita. It is not a cult of worship of little gods and goddesses but the general dependence on the inner spirit, on the Divine Shakti, Bhawani, that is in the race.

41. Girija says also that in modern times people do not believe in religion and in the miracles of spirituality. He forgets that the 20th century is not devoid of its own way of belief in the miraculous. It is in the Duces and Fuehrers that the most enlightened nations seems to put what Girija might call blind faith. And Girija cannot say that this blind faith of the modern does not lead to power.

42. Repression would crush the nation, thought Bepin Pal Ram Mohan also thought the same way. Sri Aurobindo thought differently. He thought that repression would awaken the nation. This is a matter of opinion.

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APPENDIX XI

Hemchandra Kanungo's Work - A Criticism

Hemchandra Kanungo, Banglay Biplav Prachesta (Calcutta: Manabbandhu Kanungo, 1928).

1. In this book Hemchandra Kanungo certainly has repeated himself endlessly on orthodoxy, religion, spirituality and caste.

2. As a document it is unreliable; there is neither exactness in dating, nor impartiality, nor an impersonal approach. It is based on a partial view of the movement and is therefore not a true picture because it is not the whole picture.

3. In his blind anger against Barin and his prejudice against Sri Aurobindo he forgets that there were other organisations parallel to those run by these leaders and they did not fare better, — they did not succeed, i.e., they could not bring about the intended revolution and Hemchandra must know they had no ' spirituality to hamper their work or success.

It was reserved for Mr. Hemchandra Kanungo to announce that the revolution could not succeed, that India could not progress because of the caste system. We know very well the evils of the caste system and its responsibility for many social and economic ills of India. But it was for Mr. Hemchandra to tell us that a revolutionary secret society in Bengal failed because of the caste system, religion and spirituality.

Evidently Mr. Hemchandra holds India's religion and spirituality in contempt. He even complains of Swami Vivekananda's inspiring the Indian youths with pride in their past glory and achievements. He is welcome to his own opinion but I am afraid his generalisations are too sweeping to need any detailed refutation. He does not seem to grant any practical ground for religious experience and spiritual discipline. To him Chaitanya and Ramakrishna seem to have not only lived in vain but harmed India by inculcating the truth of religions and spiritual experience. Mr. Hemchandra does not know any difference between orthodoxy and spirituality. To him even Sri Aurobindo is orthodox; and. Sanatan Dharma to Hemchandra means only injunctions of Brahminical Smritis which outrage his sense of social justice.

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He conveniently forgets, first, that the Smritis are not being followed today in practice, secondly, that Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, and the Congress and many other all-India organisations have been trying to carry into practice many social reforms, and thirdly, that Mahatma Gandhi has done more as a single leader than many organisations for the uplift of the untouchables. But there is a saying, "none so blind as those that will not see." To call Sri Ramakrishna orthodox is also more than an innovation for he practised not only Hinduism but tried Islam and Christianity too. He came to the conclusion that all religions, if followed sincerely as paths for the realisation of God, lead ultimately to the same experience. This is not "Hindu Godami", by any stretch of imagination. Nor can the definition of Eternal Dharma' – sanatoria dharma – given by Sri Aurobindo in his Uttarpara speech be dubbed orthodox by anyone except the purblind.

The author holds religion responsible for the failure of the revolutionary movement! He even asserts that religion is of no help in the regeneration of India. If he wants to maintain thereby that politics should be secular to suit modern conditions of humanity we should all agree. But it is not true as an axiom of political science which Mr. Hemchandra seems to proclaim. The Maratha Empire which was brought into existence by Shivaji owed its origin to religious inspiration. So was Sikhism responsible for the power of the Khalsa in the Punjab. All students of world history will certainly remember how the Islamic political power that spread over Asia, Africa and Europe owed its inspiration to religion.

Mr. Hemchandra is very discursive; instead of giving us a matter-of-fact narration of the secret society organisation, he breaks off into sermons on how the work should have been done, how the leaders should have led and the followers followed! It is a pity Mr. Hemchandra is not being listened to by those to whom he addressed his sermons. Thus the narrative suffers from the same defects from which all the other accounts of the revolutionary workers suffer, by concentrating on a very narrow portion of a vast background, the whole of which was not known to any of them. Thus when each describes, discusses and generalises on the basis of his own experience about the whole movement, naturally most of the labour seems wasted. We have to remember

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that the organisation was a secret one and it is not correct to expect that each one would be and must be told everything. This is not only not possible but absolutely undesirable if a secret movement is justified and necessary. To say naively, as Mr. Hemchandra does, that the whole country should have been given a clear conception of the shape of things that would follow a successful revolution, is, in my opinion, only too childish, and would be putting the cart before the horse. Let Mr. Hemchandra remember that the French Revolution did not give the French people the ghost of an idea as to what exactly was to follow the revolution, and that the Italian Revolution was no more clear about its shape before it succeeded. These things a living nation goes on learning and achieving at the same time. What did the Americans know about the Federal Court when they declared war against England?

I will show where and how Mr. Hemchandra is incorrect and unreliable and where he contradicts himself.

1. He attributes the Bhawani Mandir scheme to Barin.

2. He asserts that spiritual discipline was imposed on members of the revolutionary party, which obviously is not true. It is also surprising to find that Barin was anxious to have him in the organisation after his return from Europe. Why should he be anxious if spirituality was the necessary qualification?

Where is the proof that people who wanted to join the secret society were compelled to practise meditation? That he was admitted shows there was no compulsion.

3. If some of the members of the secret society like Devavrata, Barin etc. had a spiritual tendency and if they practised meditation, how could any objection be taken to it? Men like Barin, Devarata and Ullas were free to follow their own bent.

4. Hemchandra is not correct in reporting his meeting with "C" Babu, i.e., Charu Chandra Dutt, after his return from Europe. I had occasion to meet Mr. Dutt on this point and I can say on his authority that Hemchandra Kanungo's report is far from accurate.

5. His account of the differences between Barin and Jatin Banerji is not reliable. Firstly, he could not have known everything because he had been only recently recruited at Midnapore and the whole incident took place at Calcutta. The work was in a very early stage, and Hemchandra could only have heard reports in circulation afterwards. He did not have the impartial

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attitude necessary to come to a correct decision.

6. Hemchandra's explanation about the working of plague regulations at Poona is very poor. It shows he does not know the real reasons behind the action of the Chapekar brothers.

(Mr. Girijashanker while writing Sri Aurobindo's biography has relied on these very undependable sources and he has not only erred in regard to facts, but has even accepted the personal opinions of others as impartial judgments on mere events and has, in my opinion, very often gone off the track.)

7. It was up to Hemchandra to give the lead if he found the other leaders were not up to the mark. What about those leaders he does not speak about? No one put up the worship of P. Mitra and other leaders of the Anushilan Samity? The story of their work does not figure at all in Hemchandra's work. Why did that branch with its thousands of members not succeed? Whereas this one lead by Barin and Sri Aurobindo was small in size; it had only fifty members. Hemchandra is not right in saying that the work of Barin constituted the whole of the revolutionary movement.

In any great national movement there is certainly a chance that the leaders may so act that the movement, although having all the chances of success, might come to nothing. But there is another alternative also which Hemchandra has not even noticed – that the nation may not be capable of more than it achieves at a certain stage of its development. Let Hemchandra imagine or consider Bengal as she was before 1900 and let him then measure the change that has been brought about by political events and by leadership.

One would not think of taking Mr. Hemchandra's book seriously and criticising it. But we find that Mr. Girijashanker in his so-called biography of Sri Aurobindo states Hemchandra's uncontradicted conclusions as authentic.

8. It is strange that Mr. Hemchandra, who writes so much against religion in the book, was not averse to using religious symbols while he was actually in the revolutionary movement.

The Alipore Bomb Trial ¹ says that witness No. 82, Debdas Karan,

¹ Bijoy Krishna Bose, Ed., The Alipore Bomb Trial (Calcutta: Butterworth & Co., 1922). p. 81.

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deposed that Medini Bandhava, a Midnapore paper, had the crest of the lion and the unicorn. This crest was "changed to the Jagaddhatri Goddess. Change was due to Hemchandra Das"! Note also that Alipore Exhibit No. 876 is a letter from Hemchandra to Debdas. So, it was not only Sri Aurobindo and other leaders who introduced Hindu symbols, it was also Mr.Hemchandra Kanungo!

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APPENDIX XII

Biography of Sri Aurobindo by Jyotish Chandra Ghosh

Jotish Chandra Ghosh, Life-Work of Sri Aurobindo (Calcutta: Atma-Shakti Library, 1929), 186 pages.

In refreshing contrast to the biographers that have not been able to grasp the significance of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual endeavour, Sj. Jotish Chandra Ghosh shows a remarkable understanding even in the year 1927 or 1928.

He writes in the Introduction: "The old Aurobindo in the new namesake of him is dead and to-day we sing not a song of brotherly congratulations simply because he has been permitted to add another year of successes and failures to his pile of years but an epiphany glorifying the life-passage of the Divine Purusha in his body." (p. vi)

". . . When a personality retires for yoga his career automatically comes to an end. . . . For, even if he comes back he would essentially be a different man from what he was formerly. . . . The man that will come out of his seclusion someday will not be our man in the narrow sense of the term, devoting his life to the fulfilment of our immediate needs of life, the petty gains of a circumscribed outlook, but a man whose only claim on life would be the fulfilment of his God-ordained mission on Earth – to bring down a pure atmosphere of Truth on Earth from which all irrespective of caste, colour and creed who may be spiritually fit to receive the new Light will 'derive the supreme benefit."

(pp. v-vi)

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