Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable

The Awakening of India

1905…. It was the time when the resplendent sun of India’s destiny seemed to have been eclipsed by the dark demon of imperialism, a time when the smile of the beloved Mother, the presiding Spirit of India, seemed to disappear for ever. Despair and dejection, fear and inertia, subjugation and slavery marked the character of the multitudes who were her children. Again and again, She looked up to them with hope, with expectation, but in vain. It appeared that the gloomy night of the nation would never see the dawn of freedom — She seemed prone to lose Herself and Her Soul.

Then came Sri Aurobindo, the first son of Mother India to call for her unqualified freedom. He awakened the nation by launching a new movement of Passive Resistance, Boycott, Self-arbitration Courts, National Education etc. He reached the heart of the people through his powerful speeches and articles.

Following are a few of the passages which inspired the youth of India to abandon their families, their positions, their careers, in fact their everything, and join this movement to free their Motherland.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The sun of India’s destiny would rise and fill all India with its light and overflow India and overflow Asia and overflow the world. Every hour, every moment could only bring them nearer to the brightness of the day that God had decreed.

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What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhavani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhavani Bharati is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people; but She is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons.

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Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity — this is the spirit of Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity: “The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India are essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity,… that she should wholly establish her claim.”

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God is doing everything. We are not doing anything. When he bids us suffer, we suffer because the suffering is necessary to give others strength… this is a work God has asked us to do,… He himself is behind us, He himself is the worker and the work.

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We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India’s work, God’s work: “You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First, therefore, become Indians.

Recover the patrimony of our forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and she waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual pre-eminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.”

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There are times in a nation’s history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer than her service, when everything else is to be directed to that end.

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INVITATION

With wind and the weather beating round me
Up to the hill and the moorland I go.
Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?
Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?

Not in the petty circle of cities
Cramped by your doors and your wall I dwell;
Over me God is blue in the Welkin,
Against me the wind and the storm rebel.

I sport with solitude here in my regions
Of misadventures have made me a friend.
Who would live largely? Who would live freely?
Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.

I am the Lord of tempest and mountain,
I am the Spirit of freedom and pride,
Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger
Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.

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I know I have the strength to deliver this fallen race… This feeling is not new in me, it is not of today. I was born with it, it is in my very marrow. God sent me to earth to accomplish this great mission.

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I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore Her, I worship Her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon sat on his mother’s breast and started sucking her blood? Would he quietly sit down to his dinner, amuse himself with his wife and children, or would he rush out to deliver his mother?

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When, therefore, you ask who is Bhawani the Mother, She herself answers you, “I am the Infinite Energy which streams forth from the Eternal in the world and the Eternal in your­selves. I am the Mother of the Universe, the Mother of the worlds, and for you who are children of the Sacred Land, Aryabhumi, made of her clay and reared by her sun and winds, I am Bhawani Bharati, Mother of India.”

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Come then, hearken to the call of the Mother. She is already in our hearts waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be worshipped….

Sri Aurobindo at Uttarpara

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You who feel Her stirring within you, fling off the black veil of self, break down the imprisoning wall of indolence, help her each as you feel impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your speech or with your wealth or with your prayers and worship, each man according to his capacity. Draw not back, for against those who were called and heard Her not She may well be wroth in the day of Her coming; but to those who help her advent even a little, how radiant with beauty and kindness will be the face of their Mother.

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The Mother asks for no schemes, no plans, no methods, She herself will provide the schemes, the plans, the methods better than any we can devise. She asks for our hearts, our lives, nothing less, nothing more…. Self-abandonment is the demand made upon us. She asks of us, ‘How many will live for me? How many will die for me?’ and awaits our answer.

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Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world,… who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal….

It is with a confident trust in the spirit that inspires us that we take our place among the standard bearers of the new humanity that is struggling to be born amidst the chaos of a world in dissolution, and of the future India, the greater India of the rebirth that is to rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient Mother.

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The young men of Bengal who had rushed forward in the frenzy of the moment, in the inspiration of the new gospel they had received, rushed forward rejoicing in the newfound strength and expecting to bear down all obstacles that came in their way, were not called upon to suffer. They were called upon to bear the crown, not of victory, but of martyrdom…. It was not their own strength, but it was the force which was working through them, and they had to learn to be the instruments of that force.