Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique

Sri Aurobindo

His Life Unique

Publisher's Note

Rishabhchand, the author of this book, has to his credit a number of other books, all of them shot through and through with the Light and Presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. One cannot fail to perceive in them an unusual harmony of the intellect's clear thinking, intuition's deep penetration and the spirit's permeating suffusion. They stand out impressively against the background of innate humility and colour gracefully the flow of his style and language. He wrote it indeed as one inspired by the Mother and the very fact of its serial publication in the "Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education" (from August 1960 to February 1971) carries in it Her seal and sanction. The author had a vaster plan in his mind but that was not probably in the plan of the Divine and so remained short of execution.

Introduction

"Whenever there is the fading of the Dharma

and the uprising of the Adharma, I loose myself

forth into birth.”

— The Gita, Chapt. IV. 7

"There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty.

Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction.

In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to

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pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected."

— SRI AUROBINDO

Parentage, birth and early childhood

Sri Aurobindo was born on the 15th August, 1872. The world was then in the melting pot. Science had just begun losing its long-held ground. The Promised Land to which it had boasted of leading humanity was receding into the mist of the future, for Matter itself was ceasing to be real and concrete. The supremacy of human reason was being challenged by the development of psychology and the new philosophies of Kierkegaard, Bergson and others. It was an age of problems, paradoxes and growing perplexities, a welter of idea-forces never known before in the whole history of the human race. The ideals of unity, freedom and individualism had emerged into the active thought of mankind and were pressing for recognition and realisation. But a phenomenal advance of technology, geared to industrialism and commercial greed, was posing a menace to the higher values of human culture. Clouds were gathering in the sky foreboding a disruption of the very bases of materialistic civilisation. Deep down in the heart of suffering humanity, there was a prayer for a change, for the birth of a new age, a new world-order.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta. His father's name was Krishna Dhan Ghosh, who came of noble parents be- longing to the distinguished Ghosh family of Konnagar, a small village in the district of Hoogly, which had already produced remarkable leaders of religious and social movements. Krishna Dhan passed the Entrance Examination of the Calcutta University from the local school and was admitted into the Calcutta Medical College. When he was nineteen years old and still studying in the Medical College, he married Srimati Swarnalata Devi, the eldest daughter of

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Rishi Rajnarayan Bose who, to quote the Karmayogin,¹ "represented the high water-mark of the composite culture of the country - Vedantic, Islamic and European." He was a saintly man of high attainments, synthesising in himself the cultures of both the East and the West, and widely known in Bengal as a leader of the Adi Brahmo Samaj and as "the grandfather of Indian nationalism".² The marriage was performed according to the rites of the Brahmo Samaj to which Krishna Dhan then belonged.

After taking his degree from the Medical College of the Calcutta University, Krishna Dhan proceeded to England for an advanced course of medical studies. He was one of the first Indians to go to England from Bengal, defying the ban of his orthodox society. His father-in-law, Rajnarayan Bose, strongly advised him to steer clear of the baneful influences of the sceptical and materialistic civilisation of the West. Krishna Dhan took his M.D. from the Aberdeen University and returned to India in 1871. But he returned a changed man. He was completely anglicised. His outlook and manners had undergone a sea-change. He loved everything English, and felt a great admiration for the culture and civilisation of the West - its material glamour, its vigorous, energetic life- force, and its sound, rational, practical utilitarianism. He had almost turned an atheist. On his return home, he encountered the opposition of his society, which threatened to outcaste him unless he performed the prayaschitta or expiatory ceremony. But Krishna Dhan was made of sterner stuff than his society thought. He would break rather than bend to an unjust authority. He refused to perform the prayaschitta, and, selling away his property at a nominal price, left his native village for good and all. He was posted as a Civil Surgeon successively at Bhagalpur, Rangpur and

1. The Karmayogin - 7th and a few subsequent issues of the paper.

2. "Aurobindo’s maternal grandfather, Rajnarayan Bose, formed once a secret society of which Tagore, then a very young man, became a member, and also set up an institution for national and revolutionary propaganda, but this finally came to nothing." - Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother.

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Khulna districts. Though a confirmed anglophile and an uncompromising non-conformist, his heart was full of the milk of human kindness. He was generous to a fault, and almost reckless in charity, for which even his own sons had to suffer in England, as we shall see later. Wherever he worked, he was not only respected and honoured, but loved; for he had the gift of identifying himself with the needs and aspirations of the people, and making their cause his own. Wherever he worked, he left the imprint of his benevolent personality, and the place the better for his having worked there - the tone of its civic life improved, its social relations sweetened, and its material amenities enriched. At Khulna where he passed the later portion of his life, his was a name to conjure with, thanks to his generous nature and unfailing public spirit.

Sri Aurobindo's mother, Swamalata Devi, was an educated lady of parts. She could write stories and dramas. She was of a sweet and amiable nature, and, unlike her husband, orthodox in her religious leanings. On account of her personal charm and cultured bearing, she was known as the "rose of Rangpur". But, unfortunately, she fell a prey to her family disease, hysteria, which rendered her husband's life as well as her own rather unhappy.

Sri Aurobindo was the third son of his father. Benoy Bhusan and Manmohan were his elder brothers. Aurobindo means lotus. It was an uncommon name in those days, and that was why his father chose it for his third son, little suspecting that, in occult language, Aurobindo signifies the Divine Consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo grew up in an English atmosphere at home, ignorant of his mother tongue, and surrounded by servants v/ho spoke either broken English or Hindusthani. When he was five years old, he was sent, along with his two elder brothers, to the Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling, run by an Irish nun. There the three brothers had only European boys for friends and companions, for it was a school meant only for European children.

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Sri Aurobindo (seated right) with his parents, brothers and sister at Manchester, 1879

Sri Aurobindo in England

Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghosh, who "was determined that his children should receive an entirely European upbringing", took his three sons ³ to England, and "placed them with an English clergyman and his wife (Mr. & Mrs. Drewett) with strict instructions that they should not be allowed to make the acquaintance of any Indian or undergo any Indian influence. These instructions were carried out to the letter" and Sri Aurobindo "grew up in entire ignorance of India, her people, her religion and her culture."4

Sri Aurobindo's elder brothers, Benoy Bhusan and Manmohan, were sent to Manchester Grammar School, while Sri Aurobindo, being too young, was "educated privately by Mr.and Mrs. Drewett." "Drewett was an accomplished Latin scholar". He taught Sri Aurobindo Latin and English, while Mrs. Drewett taught him history, geography, arithmetic and French. Besides these subjects, Sri Aurobindo read himself the Bible, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, etc. Mr. Drewett grounded Sri Aurobindo so well in Latin that when Sri Aurobindo went to St. Paul's School in London, the headmaster of that school "took him up to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school."

When Sri Aurobindo was eleven years old, he had a sort of premonition that great revolutions were going to take place in the future and that he had a part to play in some of them. Not a mental idea, but a kind of inner feeling was growing within him that he had some great work to do, a mission to fulfil.

Sri Aurobindo "gave his attention to the classics at Manchester and at St. Paul's; but even at St. Paul's in the last three years he simply went through his school course and

3. The whole family went to England - Dr. Ghosh, Mrs. Ghosh, and their three sons and daughter Sarojini. Barindra, the fourth son was born in England.

4. Unless otherwise stated, the quotations are from "Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother”, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

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spent most of his spare time in general reading, especially English poetry, literature and fiction, French literature and the history of ancient, mediaeval and modern Europe. He spent some time also over learning Italian, some German and a little Spanish. He spent much time too in writing poetry. The school studies during this period engaged very little of his time; he was already at ease in them and did not think it necessary to labour over them any longer."

Sri Aurobindo mastered French and learnt enough of Italian and German to be able to read Dante and Goethe in the original. His studies in the Classics, English and French literatures, and the entire history of Europe was not only extensive, but extraordinarily deep, ample evidence of which is found in his later voluminous writings, literary, historical, philosophical, political, cultural and sociological. His writings abound in such subtle and penetrating allusions and references that, unless one is very deeply read in those subjects, it becomes difficult to grasp the full import and catch the significant implications of his statements. He was a scholar possessing a wonderful memory, a revealing insight into the fundamentals of every subject, and a rare capacity for taking a synthetic and total view of the different aspects and the divergent provinces of knowledge - an integrating and harmonising faculty, global in its sweep and unfailing in its action. But, first and foremost, he was a poet, and a passionate lover of poetry - a seer-poet in the making, whose full-orbed splendour dazzles our eyes and thrills and illumines our soul in his later poetic creations, and particularly in his monumental epic, Savitri.

Mrs. Drewett, Mr. Drewett's mother, wished to convert the three brothers to Christianity, but Mr. Drewett, who was a man of strong common sense, objected to it, and Mrs. Drewett had to give up her benevolent idea. In 1885 the Drewetts had left for Australia, and "the three brothers lived in London for some time with the mother of Mr. Drewett, but she left them after a quarrel between her and Manmohan about religion. The old Mrs. Drewett was fervently evangelical

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and she said she would not live with an atheist as the house might fall down on her."

Sri Aurobindo's name was registered at St. Paul's and at Cambridge as Aravinda Ackroyd Ghosh, because when he was born, one Miss Annette Ackroyd, who later married Henry Beveridge, the then Officiating District and Sessions Judge of Rangpur, happened to be present at the christening ceremony, and was requested by Dr. K.D. Ghosh to give the child an English name. She gave her father's name as that of the godfather of the child. But Sri Aurobindo "dropped the 'Ackroyd' from his name before he left England and never used it again."

Regarding 'Ackroyd' having been tacked on to his name, which gave rise to a rumour that he had been converted into Christianity, and Mrs. Drewett's pious solicitude for saving his soul, Sri Aurobindo once said: "There was once a meeting of non-conformist ministers at Cumberland when we were in England. The old lady in whose house we dwelt, i.e. Mrs. Drewett, took me there. After the prayers were over, all nearly dispersed but devout people remained a little longer and it was at that time that conversions were made. I was feeling completely bored. Then a minister approached me and asked me some questions. I did not give any reply. Then they all shouted, 'He is saved, he is saved', and began to pray for me and offer thanks to God. I did not know what it was all about. Then the minister came to me and asked me to pray. I was not in the habit of praying. But somehow I did it in the manner in which children recite their prayers before going to sleep in order to keep up an appearance. That was the only thing that happened. I did not attend the Church regularly. I was about ten at that time".5

After his brother's quarrel with Mrs. Drewett, Sri Aurobindo and his eldest brother, Benoy Bhusan, "occupied a room in the South Kensington Liberal Club where Mr. J.S. Cotton, brother of Sir Henry Cotton, for some time

5. Life of Sri Aurobindo by Purani.

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Lt. Governor of Bengal, was the secretary, and Benoy assisted him in his work. Manmohan went into lodgings. This was the time of the greatest suffering and poverty." "During a whole year a slice or two of sandwich, bread and butter and a cup of tea in the morning, and in the evening a penny saveloy formed the only food". This hardship was due to his father's irregularity in sending them remittances from India. But Sri Aurobindo, neither in his youth nor ever afterwards, knew how to complain. Immersed in his studies, he took all privations and hardships in his stride with an unruffled calm. Subsequently Sri Aurobindo also "went separately into lodgings until he took up residence at Cambridge".

Sri Aurobindo secured a senior classical scholarship of £.80 per annum when he joined the King's College, Cam- bridge. This lessened his hardship to a certain extent. At Cambridge, Sri Aurobindo attracted the attention of Oscar Browning, a well-known figure there. In regard to Browning's appreciation of his talent, Sri Aurobindo wrote to his father: "Last night I was invited to coffee with one of the dons and in his room I met the great O.B. otherwise Oscar Browning, who is the feature par excellence of King's. He was extremely flattering and passing from the subject of Cotillions to that of scholarship, he said to me: 'I suppose you know you passed an extraordinarily high examination. I have examined papers at thirteen examinations and I have never during that time seen such excellent papers as yours' (meaning my classical papers, at the scholarship examination). 'As for your essay, it was wonderful.' In this essay (a comparison between Shakespeare and Milton) I indulged in my oriental tastes to the top of their bent, it overflowed with rich and tropical imagery, it abounded in antitheses and epigrams and it expressed my real feelings without restraint or reservation. I thought myself it was the best thing I have ever done, but at school it would have been condemned as extraordinarily Asiatic and bombastic. The great O.B. afterwards asked me where my rooms were and when I had answered he said: 'that wretched hole!' (and) then turning to Mahaffy: 'How

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Sri Aurobindo at St. Paul's School, London, 1884

Sri Aurobindo at King's College, Cambridge, 1890 -92

rude we are to our scholars! We get great minds to come down here and then shut them up in that box. I suppose it is to keep their pride down.' "

Though Sri Aurobindo occupied himself mostly with extra-curricular studies, he was still able "to win all the prizes in King's College in one year for Greek and Latin verse, etc." Sri Aurobindo did not graduate at Cambridge. "He passed high in the First Part of the Tripos (first class); it is on passing this First Part that the degree of B.A. is usually given; but as he had only two years at his disposal, he had to pass it in his second year at Cambridge; and the First Part gives the degree only if it is taken in the third year; if one takes it in the second year one has to appear for the Second Part of the Tripos in the fourth year to qualify for the degree. He might have got the degree if he had made an application for it, but he did not care to do so. A degree in English is valuable only if one wants to take up an academical career."

At this time Sri Aurobindo began to take interest in Indian politics. His father, though an anglophile, was at heart a patriot who smarted under the predatory and repressive rule of the British Government in India. He began "sending The Bengali newspaper with passages marked relating cases of maltreatment of Indians by Englishmen and he wrote in his letters denouncing the British Government in India as a heartless Government." The feeling that had been haunting Sri Aurobindo that he had a part to play in some great movement was now "canalised into the idea of the liberation of his own country. But the 'firm decision' took full shape only towards the end of another four years. It had already been made when he went to Cambridge, and as a member and for some time secretary of the Indian Majlis at Cambridge he delivered many revolutionary speeches."

Dr. Ghosh wished that Sri Aurobindo should go in for the Indian Civil Service. In deference to his father's wish, Sri Aurobindo got admitted as a candidate for the I.C.S. even while he was at St. Paul's. He took up the Classics and some

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other subjects, and prepared for the competitive examination without the help of a tutor. This simultaneous study of a double course, one at St. Paul's and, later, at Cambridge, and the other for the I.C.S., must have proved a strain on him; but though he was getting an allowance for the I.C.S. probationership, he could not afford to engage a tutor. From his scholarship and meagre probationership allowance he had often to help his brothers. He passed the I.C.S. examination with distinction, securing very high marks in the Classics, but his heart was not in the Service. It was simply to comply with his father's wish that he had studied for it. His growing nationalistic feelings made him averse to it. "...He neglected his lessons in riding and failed in the last riding test. He was, as is often done, given another chance to pass, but avoided presenting himself in time for the test. He was on this pretext disqualified for the Service, although in similar cases successful probationers have been given a further chance to qualify themselves in India itself. He felt no call for the I.C.S. and was seeking some way to escape from that bondage. He thus deliberately disqualified himself with- out himself rejecting the Service, which his family would not have allowed him to do." The reason why the British Government did not give him another chance for passing in the riding test was, of course, the fact that his revolutionary speeches at the Indian Majlis "had their part in determining the authorities to exclude him from the Indian Civil Service...."

"Among the Indians in London he and his brothers formed a part of a small revolutionary group who rebelled habitually against the leadership of Dadabhai Naoroji and his moderate politics. During the last days of his stay in England he attended a private meeting of Indians in London at which there was formed a secret society with the romantic name of the 'Lotus and Dagger' in which all the members took the vow to adopt each some chosen part which would help in leading to the overthrow of foreign rule. But the society was stillborn and its members dispersed without meeting

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again...."6 Sri Aurobindo, however, kept to his vow.

To renounce the rosy prospects of the Indian Civil Service must have been considered an uncommon sacrifice by many, but to Sri Aurobindo it was a great relief, even though he was hard put to it to make both ends meet. He now began looking for a job, so that he might return to India. His heart and soul panted for the breath of his motherland. It is said that when Vivekananda was returning to India after his triumphal tour of Europe and America, somebody asked him: "Well, Swami, you have been so long in the midst of the pomp and glory of Western civilisation, and come in close contact with the progressive thought and energetic life of the scientific age; how do you feel now when you are going back to your land of chronic poverty and squalor, of illiteracy and ignorance, famine and pestilence ?" The Swami replied at once, his words burning with the fire of his soul: "India has always been my darling, my adored mother; but now that I return to her after a pretty long sojourn in foreign countries, I feel that her very dust is sacred to me." So might Sri Aurobindo say on the eve of his return to India. He had been in England for fourteen years - long years of budding life, devoted to intensive study and careful observation. He had drunk deep of the culture of the West. He had travelled in the wide realms of classical thought, and delighted in the epic grandeur of its poetry. He had enjoyed and admired the splendour and beauty of English poetry, the grace and charm of French literature, the sublimity of Dante's creation, and the giant sweep of Goethe's mind. He had studied the historical development of Western religion, thought and civilisation. He had been impressed by the intrepid spirit of adventure and inquiry which characterised the scientific research of his times. But the cruelty and oppression which he saw perpetrated in the name of civilisation and the heartless exploitation of man by man, filled him with a "strong hatred and disgust". He had formed no ties in England, and

6. "Sri Aurobindo and His Ashram”.

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had not made England his adopted country, as Manmohan had done for a time. "If there was attachment to a European land as a second country, it was intellectually and emotionally to one not seen or lived in in this life, not England, but France." This attachment to France was very significant. Was it the literature and culture of France that attached him to that country? Or, was it the epoch-making watchword of the French Revolution that might have struck a responsive chord in his heart? But the roots of the attachment lay deeper, as we shall see when we come to the later developments of his life-story. He now prepared to leave England. He felt attracted to India. "There was no... regret in leaving England, no attachment to the past or misgivings for the future. Few friendships were made in England 7 and none very intimate; the mental atmosphere was not found congenial."

The Gaekwar of the State of Baroda happened to be in England at that time. He was one of the most enlightened rulers of the Indian States of that period. James Cotton, brother of Sir Henry Cotton, who was well-acquainted with the Ghosh brothers, had been taking interest in them. He now negotiated with the Gaekwar in behalf of Sri Aurobindo. The result of the negotiation was that Sri Aurobindo "obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service...." The Gaekwar offered to pay him Rs.200/- per month, and, a shrewd man that he was, felt glad that he had been able to engage a brilliant young man of the I.C.S. calibre for such a paltry remuneration. But Sri Aurobindo was indifferent to money matters. He "knew nothing about life at that time."

Sri Aurobindo left England in the month of January, 1893. Though his father. Dr. Ghosh, had felt disappointed at Sri Aurobindo's failure to join the I.C.S., his spirits revived when he heard of his appointment in the Baroda State Service and his immediate return to India. Dr. Ghosh was particularly fond of Sri Aurobindo, and had high hopes of his

7. Among his Indian companions in England, mention may be made of K.G. Deshpande, Sir Harisingh Gaur and Chittaranjan Das.

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"Auro" 's brilliant future. But a cruel fate lay in wait for him. He was informed by Messrs. Grindlay & Co. that the steamer by which Sri Aurobindo was sailing had sunk off the coast of Portugal. The information was wrong, but it struck his father a fatal blow, and he succumbed to it with his beloved son's name on his lips. Sri Aurobindo, however, reached India safe by another steamer, and landed in Bombay in February, 1893.

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