Follows Sri Aurobindo from his return to India till he left it all behind in 1910, after a decade of dangerous revolutionary action which awakened the country. But through it all something else was growing within him ; a greater task now awaited the Revolutionary.
The Mother : Biography
THEME/S
12 Lotus and Lotus
12
Dinendra Kumar Roy remarked that in 1900 "Aurobindo was eager to get married." In fact, Sri Aurobindo advertised in Calcutta newspapers for a bride. He was twenty-nine years old and he selected a girl of fourteen for his bride. Her name was Mrinalini Bose. Curiously enough 'Mrinalini' and 'Aurobindo' both mean 'Lotus.' Now olden Hindu traditions say that a wife is the partner in her husband's spiritual life, and helper in the execution of his chosen Dharma. They are companions who walk the same road in life. There is a fullness of sharing between them. Remarkably this couple shared even their names! Aurobindo and Mrinalini. LOTUS and LOTUS.
They were married on 30 April 1901.
Mrinalini Ghose's brother Sisir Bose and their father Bhupal Chandra Bose recorded statements concerning Mrinalini and her marriage.
From Ranchi, Bihar, Sisir Bose wrote to a relation of his. That was on 25 November 1941.
"1. Sri Arabindo1 advertised in newspapers for a bride.
1. The Reader will come across at least half a dozen, if not a dozen, different ways of spelling Sri Aurobindo's name. We present them as we found them. The same applies to a few other Indian names too.
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My father's lifelong friend late Principal Girish Ch. Bose of Bangabasi College negotiated the marriage. Sri Arabindo saw my sister in Girish Babu's house personally and selected his bride.
"2. Marriage ceremony was performed according to strict Hindu rites. Sri Arabindo being a Brahmo and my sister being the daughter of an England-returned Hindu, both of them had to be purified by Prayaschitya before marriage. My uncle gave away the bride.
"3. Principal guests at the marriage were late Lord Sinha, Byomkesh Chakravarty, Principal G. C. Bose, late J. C. Bose and others.
"4. Location of the marriage —in a rented house in Baithak-Khana Road, Calcutta."
"5. Date of marriage of Sri Arabindo 16th Baisakh 1308. My sister at the time of her marriage had just completed her fourteenth year. Sister's birthday was 6th March 1887.
"6. Soon after marriage Sri Arabindo returned to Baroda with his wife via Deoghur and Nainital. The popular photograph in which Sri Arabindo is seen with his wife was taken at Nainital."
From Nainital Sri Aurobindo dropped a postcard to one Bhuvan Chakrabarty.
"Dear Bhuvan Babu, I have been here at Naini Tal with my wife and sister since the 29th of May. The place is a beautiful one, but not half so cold as I expected. In fact, in daytime it is only a shade less hot than Baroda except when it has been raining. The Maharaja will probably be leaving here
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on the 24th,—if there has been rain at Baroda, but as he will stop at Agra, Mathura and Mhow he will not reach Baroda before the beginning of July. I shall probably be going separately and may also reach on the 1st of July. If you like, you might go there a little before and put up with Deshpande. I have asked Madhavrao to get my new house furnished but I don't know what he is doing in that direction.
Yours sincerely,
Aurobindo Ghose"
The Kumaon hills cradle Nainital. It is a picturesque spot with a natural lake where seven peaks see their reflections in its water. Tal means lake in local dialect. The lake itself, according to a legend, was formed when one of Sati's emerald-green eyes fell to the ground while Lord Shiva was carrying her dead body. Knowing Sri Aurobindo's love for long walks I wondered whether our party went afield for treks. Did they go to Bhimtal which is twenty-two kilometres from Nainital? Bhimtal is a 260-metre long lake. And just four kilometres away is Nao-kuchia lake. 'Nao-kuchia' to the locals means nine-sided. They say that if someone standing on one of its sides is able to see the other eight, then that person is sure to achieve worldwide fame. Did Sri Aurobindo? Who knows! But there is a legend attached to this lake and people hold Naokuchia lake in great esteem: nobody has ever drowned in this lake, not even children or women who could not swim. Sinking in the water of the lake they would find themselves back on land they knew not how. Local people say that the Spirit of the Lake
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always returns to the Earth what belongs to her.
From Bhupal Chandra Bose —a graduate from the Calcutta University, a State Agricultural Officer, and co-founder with Girish C. Bose of the Bangabasi College —we have a simple biography of his eldest child. This statement was also made from Ranchi, but ten years earlier than his son's, on 26 August 1931.
"Her father and mother both belong to the Jessore district. The ancestral home of the Basu family is situated in a village named Maherpore on the left bank of the Kapadaka river, 24 miles to the south of the district town of Jessore ....
"Mrinalini spent her early childhood in Calcutta. She was at first educated under a private teacher, and soon after her father's transfer to Shillong, she was sent down to Calcutta and lived as a boarder for nearly three years at the Brahmo Girls' School until the time of her marriage in April 1901. She evinced no exceptional abilities or tendencies at this age, indeed at no stage of her life.
"There was nothing remarkable about her short school career. She however contracted two notable friendships during this time. One of the two was Miss Swarnalata Das, M. A.... Mrinalini's second friend was Miss Sudhira Bose , a classmate of hers with whom she lived in closest intimacy till the day of her death. Sudhira was a younger sister of late Debabrata Bose, an associate of Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case, who after his acquittal at the trial , turned a Sannyasin1 and joined
1. Taking the name of Swami Prajnananda.
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the Ramakrishna Mission. Miss Sudhira too joined the same Mission and worked as a teacher of the Sister Nivedita School, of which, after Sister Christine left for America shortly before the war, she became the head. Sudhira too was not destined to live long. She fell a victim to a sad railway accident at Benares in December 1920, thus surviving her friend by exactly two years.
"Mrinalini, though she was surrounded by Brahmo friends and was a boarder in a Brahmo School never evinced any special interest in the Brahmo movement nor in any of the reforms associated with that movement. The whole religious bent of the later years of her life was in the direction of the Hindu revival movement inspired by Paramhansa Ramakrishna and his great disciple Swami Vivekananda.
"There was no relationship, nor even acquaintance between the Boses and the Ghose family, except that Mrinalini's father once came in contact with Sri Aurobindo's father, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose, while he was stationed as Civil Surgeon at Khulna. It must have been about the year 1890........
"Sri Aurobindo first met Mrinalini at the house of her uncle Sj. Girish Chandra Bose in Calcutta in the course of his search for a mate to share his life, and chose her at first sight as his destined wife. Their marriage took place shortly afterwards in April 1901. It is not possible for the writer or for anybody else to say what psychical affinity existed between the two, but certain it is that as soon as he saw the girl, he made up his mind to marry her. The customary negotiations were carried on by Girish Babu on the bride's side.........
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"The writer knows next to nothing about the married life of the couple at Baroda. After Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal and during the stormy years that followed, Mrinalini had little or no opportunity of living a householder's life in the quiet company of her husband. Her life during this period was one of continuous strain and suffering which she bore with the utmost patience and quietude. She spent the greater period of the time either with Sri Aurobindo's maternal relatives at Deoghar or with her parents at Shillong. She was present with her husband at the time of his arrest at 48, Grey Street in May 1908 and received a frightful mental shock of which the writer and others saw a most painful evidence in the delirium of her last illness ten years later.
"The writer is unable to say from his own knowledge how far Mrinalini agreed with and helped her husband in his public activities, but he can say this much for certain that she never stood in the way of his work. She never evinced any aspiration for public work.........
"The writer cannot throw any light on the mutual relations between Mrinalini and her husband, except that they were characterised by a sincere though quiet affection on the side of the husband and a never questioning obedience from the wife. One can gather much in this respect from Sri Aurobindo's published letters. After Sri Aurobindo left Bengal, the two never met again, but all who knew her could see how deeply she was attached to her husband and how she longed to join him at Pondicherry. The fates however decreed it otherwise........
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"There was no issue of the marriage. During Sri Aurobindo's trial at Alipore which lasted a full twelve months Mrinalini lived with her parents at Shillong or with her uncle Girish Babu in Calcutta. She paid several visits to her husband at Alipore Central Jail in the company of her father. She never evinced any visible agitation during those exciting times, but kept quiet and firm throughout.
"Sri Aurobindo disappeared from Calcutta at the end of February or beginning of March 1910. Mrinalini was living at the time in Calcutta. We did not know his whereabouts, until several weeks later it was announced in the papers that he had escaped to Pondicherry to get out of the reach of the British Courts....
"These long years of separation (1910-18) she spent with her parents at Shillong and Ranchi, paying occasional visits to Calcutta. She devoted these years almost exclusively to meditation and the reading of religious literatures which consisted for the most part of the writings of Swami Vivekananda and the teaching of his Great Master.
"The writer believes she perused all the published writings of the Swami and all the publications of the Udbodhan Office. Of these she has left behind an almost complete collection.
"Mrinalini often visited Sri Ma1 (widow of Paramhansa Dev) at the Udbodhan Office in Bagbazar, who treated her with great affection, calling her Baup-Ma (the normal Bengali appellation for daughter-in-law) in consideration of the fact
1. Sri Saradamoni Devi, wife of Sri Ramakrishna.
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that the Holy Mother regarded Sri Aurobindo as her son.
"Mrinalini desired at one time to receive diksha from one of the Sannyasins of the Ramakrishna Mission. Her father wrote to Sri Aurobindo for the necessary permission but the latter in reply advised her not to receive initiation from any one and he assured her that he would send her all the spiritual help she needed. She was content therefore to remain without any outward initiation.
"Mrinalini passed away in Calcutta in the 32nd year of her life on the 17th of December 1918, a victim of the fell scourge of influenza which swept over India in that dreaded year.
"There was nothing notable about her death. In fact but for the fate which united her for a part of her short life to one of the most remarkable and forceful personalities of the age, her life had nothing extraordinary about it.
"Nothing happens in the world without serving some purpose of the Divine Mother, and no doubt she came and lived to fulfil a Divine purpose which we may guess but can never know.
"For some time before she passed away, she had been selling her ornaments and giving away the proceeds in charity and what remained unsold, she left with her friend Miss Sudhira Bose, at the time Lady Superintendent of the Sister Nivedita School. Soon after her death Sudhira sold off the ornaments and the whole of the proceeds, some two thousand rupees was, with Sri Aurobindo's permission, made over to the Ramakrishna Mission and constituted into an endowment named
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after Mrinalini, out of the interest of which a girl student is maintained at the Sister Nivedita School."
Contrary to Bhupal C. Bose's statement Sri Aurobindo had quite another understanding on the matter of his wife's diksha or initiation. "I did not take my wife for initiation to Saradeshwari Devi," he stated. "I was given to understand that she was taken there by Sudhira Bose, Debabrata's sister. I heard of it a considerable time afterwards in Pondicherry. I was glad to know that she had found so great a spiritual refuge, but I had no hand in bringing it about."
Sri Aurobindo wrote a most touching letter to his father-in-law after the demise of his wife.
Pondicherry
19 February 1919
"My dear father-in-law,
"I have not written to you with regard to this fatal event in both our lives; words are useless in face of the feelings it has caused, if even they can ever express our deepest emotions. God has seen good to lay upon me the one sorrow that could still touch me to the centre. He knows better than ourselves what is best for each of us, and now that the first sense of the irreparable has passed, I can bow with submission to His divine purpose. The physical tie between us is, as you say, severed; but the tie of affection subsists for me. Where I have once loved, I do not cease from loving. Besides she who was the cause of it, still is near though not visible to our physical vision.
"It is needless to say much about matters of which you
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write in your letter. I approve of everything that you propose. Whatever Mrinalini would have desired, should be done, and I have no doubt this is what she would have approved of. I consent to the chudis [bangles] being kept by her mother; but I should be glad if you would send me two or three of her books, especially if there are any in which her name is written. I have only of her her letters and a photograph.
Aurobindo"
Even after Mrinalini Devi's death her family—sister and father —kept up a correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. Once Bhupal Bose even came to Pondicherry.1 He was deeply moved by the loving care Mother took of him—just as though she were his daughter.
We conclude with a letter (27 April 1936) of Nirod's and Sri Aurobindo's answers that may shed some light on a point which some people seem to find 'puzzling.' .
Nirod: "Somebody writing the biography of Confucius in Bengali says: 'Why do the Dharmagurus marry, we can't understand. ...' He goes on: 'Sri Aurobindo, though not Dharmaguru, has done it too, and can be called dharma pagal. '2 Well, Sir?"
Sri Aurobindo: "Well, it is better to be dharma pagal than to be a sententious ass and pronounce on what one does not understand."
1.Moni (in Smritikatha) recalls that it was nine or ten years aft er his meeting B.C. Bose at Ranchi in 1921: that the latter came to Pondicherry,and th en followed it up with more visits.
2.Mad about religion.
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Nirod, quoting the Bengali book: "If married life is an obstacle to spirituality, then they might as well not marry."
Sri Aurobindo: "No doubt. But then when they marry, there is not an omniscient ass like this biographer to tell them that they were going to be dharma guru or dharma pagal or in any way concerned with any other dharma than the biographer's."
Nirod: "So according to this biographer, all of you, except Christ, showed a lack of wisdom by marrying!... I touch upon a delicate subject, but it is a puzzle."
Sri Aurobindo: "Why delicate ? and why a puzzle ? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life —when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it nothing puzzling in that."
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