Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

35

Professor Extraordinary

"The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide." Sri Aurobindo had written a series of introductory essays on a sound system of teaching applicable to national education in any country; they were published in the weekly Karmayogin between February and April 1910.

The National College was first located at 191/1 Bow-bazar Street. Students came—not only those rusticated from Government Colleges. They were attracted by the Principal's method of teaching, and his personality. Their love and adoration for Sri Aurobindo was not a degree less than the devotion he was accorded by his students at Baroda College. "When he would lecture in the class," wrote Rishabhchand,¹ "they would hang upon his lips —it is said even many professors came in to listen —and they found in his informal, unacademic way of teaching something which gripped their hearts, illumined their intelligence, and fired their imagination. He taught most by

1. Sri Aurobindo—His Life Unique.

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appearing to teach the least. His presence was an irresistible inspiration, and his soft, warm words, shot with flashes of intuition and insight, were evocative and quickening."

Balai Dev Sharma, a Bengali writer, was one of the students at the National College. He describes his first experience in the class.¹ "When I reached there, I saw in the middle hall a young man of placid appearance. He was clad in a shirt and a chaddar [cotton wrapper]. If I remember right my impression of about forty years ago, I seem to recall his eyes, which were withdrawn from the outer world and concentrated on the inner spaces of his consciousness. On that day Sri Aurobindo addressed both the teachers and the students together. But the subject of his talk was not an educational one. He spoke of a sad accident that had happened. A student of the Calcutta University had fallen from the verandah of the first floor of a University Building and lost his consciousness. A crowd immediately collected there, but all they could do was to look on helplessly and wring their hands. None thought of rendering any active help. Just at that time, an Englishman was driving by. He noticed the boy, lying unconscious, picked him up in his car, and took him straight to the Campbell Medical College for first aid. Relating the accident, Sri Aurobindo compared the character of the Indians with that of the Europeans and observed that it was their devotion to duty which had made the Europeans masters of the world. When that titanic power of practical work

1. Article in the Bengali magazine Galpa Bharati, Paus 1357. We have taken the English rendering done by Rishabhchand.

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would be united with the spirituality of India, our national character would evolve such a type as would be incomparable in the world."

In his speech at the Panti's Math meeting a few months earlier, Subodh Mullick had said:

"Brother-students and Gentlemen,

At the outset I must ask your indulgence for addressing you in English. I am ashamed to own that I am one of the products of the present denationalised system of education, who can better express themselves in the foreign tongue than in their own....

"I have known our own bastard system of education as well as the natural type of it in the West. It is a matter of great rejoicing that a great truth has at last dawned upon us today in all its glory....... The attitude of the Government towards the students with regard to the present movement has been an eye-opener to us. We have seen what a dangerous weapon they can make of this control over education and, secure career of national progress will be impossible for us unless we take the same away from their hands.

"The freedom that we desire is freedom from the trammels which have so long hindered our national growth----Ideas of nationality, self-respect and the higher attributes which ennoble a man have had no place in [our education]. With the pulsation of a national sentiment throbbing in our breast our first care should be to put education on a sound basis What in the world is there in the way of starting a National University?... We have heard of able and learned

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men in the lucrative professions promising to give up their prospects for this great national cause. Why then do we halt and falter?... Let us make a beginning here today. The students are already stinting themselves of their comforts in order to contribute their humble mite to the National University Fund. Their example has not been lost and is bound to evoke universal response. For my part, to show my sympathy with their laudable efforts, I most humbly beg to place at the disposal of the promoters of this cause my humble contribution of a lakh of rupees. I am not, gentlemen, a wealthy man. I can ill afford the luxury of making such a gift. But the call of the Mother is clear, and respond we must, be we great or small."

The foremost among the 'able and learned men' to give up his 'lucrative profession' was Sri Aurobindo. Not only was he the Principal of the National College, he taught various subjects also: French, German and of course, English; Indian History and Geography; English History; and Political Science (Western). He also set examination papers, for instance, Fifth and Seventh Standard papers in History were set by him. Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar taught Bengali at the College. And if we don't speak of Satish Chandra Mukherji, the founder of the Dawn Society, it will be unpardonable. He was the Superintendent of the Bengal National College. Sri Aurobindo said about him in a speech he delivered at Bombay in 1908: "I spoke to you the other day about National Education and I spoke of a man who had given his life to that work, the man who really organised the National College in Calcutta, and that man also is a disciple of a Sannyasin, that man also,

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though he lives in the world, lives like a Sannyasin."

The first lot of teachers tried to place before their pupils great ideals which they themselves practised in their personal lives. No sermonising. No. But daily converse and books that contained lofty examples of the past as things of supreme human interest, the great thoughts of great souls, the records of history and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, the passages of literature which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspiration. And personal example.

What did the teachers at the National College feel about Sri Aurobindo? Perhaps the Reader may welcome a reminiscence or two from them ?

There was Pramathanath Mukhopadhyay, who later became a sannyasin, under the name of Swami Pratyagatma-nanda.¹ "In the beginning I sought to recognize in Sri Aurobindo the Vedic Agni in its dual aspect —the blazing force of Rudra and the serene force of the Brahmic consciousness, radiant with supernal knowledge. When he started his work in the heaving politics of Bengal, it was the blazing, fiery aspect of Rudra that stood out in front. But those who associated with him in the National College saw his serene figure, glowing with a mellow lustre. These two aspects were fused into one in Sri Aurobindo as in the third eye of Shiva.

1. An acknowledged authority on Tantra, the Swami had collaborated with Sir John Woodroffe in his exposition on Tantric sadhana. Our text is derived from Rishabhchand.

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"From among the days when I came into close contact with Sri Aurobindo, I can single out two in my memory: One day there was a meeting of the teachers of the National College. Sri Aurobindo was in the chair, his body framed in august silence. We always knew him to be reticent and reserved in speech. The subject discussed in the meeting was: which should be the days of national festival ? Somebody proposed that Bankim Day should be one of them, and all of us gave it an enthusiastic support. But the support which came from Sri Aurobindo had the benign vibrant blare of the trumpet of Shiva.

"Another day. It was Saraswati Puja. We were all squatting in the courtyard. Sri Aurobindo sat next to me, his heavenly body almost touching mine. The Vaishnavic music of Kirtan was playing. It moved me so profoundly that I could not restrain my tears —they flowed in an incessant stream of ecstasy. But Sri Aurobindo sat, silent and immobile, like Shiva in trance. Even now when I shut my eyes, his gracious, tranquil, luminous face swims up into my vision."

One of our great historians, Dr. Radha Kumud Mukhopadhyay (1881-1963), was Professor of History at the College. "I happened perhaps to be one of the very few," said Dr . Radha Kumud, "who had the rare good fortune of corning into direct touch with Sri Aurobindo as a youth in the full bloom of his life and power when he was pleased to take over the appointment of the Principalship of the Bengal National College at which 1 was appointed Professor of History directly working under him. 1 recall my personal anecdotes about his life and

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work in those stirring times when the country, especially Bengal, was thrown into a whirlwind agitation over the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon.

"At that time Sri Aurobindo took up the personal leadership of the Revolution which ushered in the nation's battle for freedom. Every day he would go from the Bengal National College to the evening gathering at the house of one of India's patriotic martyrs Raja Subodh Chandra Mullick in Wellington Square. The gathering, by its thought and inspiration, resembled that of the French Encyclopaedists, the intellectuals who paved the way of the French Revolution. That was before Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted in the Alipore Bomb Case and before his historic 'flight' to Pondicherry.

"At home, in the domestic sphere, at the college, I had rare glimpses of his innate spirituality which made him always keep calm and reticent. I used to sit by him and had the natural advantage of studying some of the remarkable traits of his spiritual life at close quarters."

He also mentions meeting Poet Manmohan Ghose at Subodh Mullick's house. Manmohan was often accompanied by one of his students, Sailendranath Mitra. The latter was wonderstruck to see how even in the thick of Sri Aurobindo's political activities the two brothers would happily read and discuss Greek poetry "entirely lost to a sense of time."

The nature of fire is not only to burn but to set aflame all that comes into contact with it. When Sri Aurobindo was arrested on 16 August 1907 on a charge of sedition in the Bande Mataram Sedition case, he had already, on 2 August,

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resigned from the Principalship of the National College. In June the College premises had been changed to 164/166 Bowbazar Street. It was there that on 23 August, released on bail, he delivered an impromptu address, pressed by the assembled students and teachers of the College. That was another stirring speech, sure to ignite a patriotic fire in the hearts of students.

"I have been told that you wish me to speak a few words of advice to you. But in these days I feel that young men can very often give better advice than we older people can give. Nor must you ask me to express the feelings which your actions, the way in which you have shown your affection towards me, have given rise to in my breast. It is impossible to express them. You all know that I have resigned my post. In the meeting you held yesterday I see that you expressed sympathy with me in what you call my present troubles. I don't know whether I should call them troubles at all, for the experience that I am going to undergo was long foreseen as inevitable in the discharge of the mission that I have taken up from my childhood, and I am approaching it without regret. What I want to be assured of is not so much that you feel sympathy for me in my troubles but that you have sympathy for the cause, in serving which I have to undergo what you call my troubles. If I know that the rising generation has taken up this cause, that wherever I go, I go leaving behind others to carry on my work, I shall go without the least regret. I take it that whatever respect you have shown to me today was shown not to me, not merely even to the Principal, but to your country, to the

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Mother in me, because what little I have done has been done for her, and the slight suffering that I am going to endure will be endured for her sake. Taking your sympathy in that light I can feel that if I am incapacitated from carrying on my work, there will be so many others left behind me. One other cause of rejoicing for me is to find that practically all my countrymen have the same fellow-feeling for me and for the same reason as yourselves. The unanimity with which all classes have expressed their sympathy for me and even offered help at the moment of my trial, is a cause for rejoicing, and for the same reason. For I am nothing, what I have done is nothing. I have earned this fellow-feeling because of serving the cause which all my countrymen have at heart.

"The only piece of advice that I can give you now is — carry on the work, the mission, for which this college was created. I have no doubt that all of you have realised by this time what this mission means. When we established this college and left other occupations, other chances of life, to devote our lives to this institution, we did so because we hoped to see in it the foundation, the nucleus of a nation, of the new India which is to begin its career after this night of sorrow and trouble, on that day of glory and greatness when India will work for the world. What we want here is not merely to give you a little information, not merely to open to you careers for earning a livelihood, but to build up sons for the Motherland to work and to suffer for her. That is why we started this college and that is the work to which I want you to devote yourselves in future. What has been insufficiently and imperfectly begun by

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Sri Aurobindo on 23 August 1907, about to

address the students of the Bengal National College

us, it is for you to complete and lead to perfection. When I come back I wish to see some of you becoming rich, rich not for yourselves but that you may enrich the Mother with your riches. I wish to see some of you becoming great, great not for your own sakes, not that you may satisfy your own vanity, but great for her, to make India great, to enable her to stand up with head erect among the nations of the earth, as she did in days of yore when the world looked up to her for light. Even those who will remain poor and obscure, I want to see their very poverty and obscurity devoted to the Motherland. 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. If you will study, study for her sake; train yourselves body and mind and soul for her service. You will earn your living that you may live for her sake. You will go abroad to foreign lands that you may bring back knowledge with which you may do service to her. Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice. My last word to you is that if you have sympathy for me, I hope to see it not merely as a personal feeling, but as a sympathy with what I am working for. I want to see this sympathy translated into work so that when in future I shall look upon your career of glorious activity, I may have the pride of remembering that I did something to prepare and begin it."

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