Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

27

The National Mantra

The Vindhyas, where Barin had gone in search of a temple site, are a chain of mountains that roughly divides India into North and South.

Legend has it that once upon a time the mountain began to grow and grow. It grew till it pierced the sky. And then the Sun could not cross it. At a standstill in the northern sky, the sun beat fiercely down on the earth there and burned all creatures great and small. A perpetual day in the North. In the South it was perpetual night. Consternation! Everybody prayed to Rishi Agastya to come to the rescue. As Vishnu always came to the rescue of the heavenly gods, so did Agastya come —time and time again —to the rescue of earthly men. Had he not drunk the ocean to its last drop to expose the demons hiding in its waters ? Only ... by the time the demons were killed Agastya had already digested all the water he had drunk! At any rate, this time too he accepted to extricate the people from the peculiar state of things. Agastya decided to go down south. As he approached, Vindhya bowed his head, as the Rishi was his Guru. Rishi Agastya blessed his disciple,

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and said to him: "Son, keep your head bowed as you are, till the time I return." And Agastya never returned.

The extreme eastern part of the Vindhyas is called Mekhala or Maikal range. There lies the plateau of Amarkantak. Several great Indian rivers have their sources on this plateau of Amarkantak: Narmada, Sone and Mahanadi. It may interest the Reader to know that some geophysicists believe the fifty-to-sixty-kilometre wide Narmada rift which starts at Amarkantak and its entire length of 1,312 kilometres to be a highly earthquake-prone zone, which one day may split India into two.

The basic idea of the Bhawani Mandir was in all likelihood derived from Bankim Chandra Chatterji's revolutionary novel, Anandamath.¹ Its central theme was actually based on a revolt of North Indian Sannyasins against the British rule. These Sannyasins were here, there and everywhere, like seeds sown by the wind. For several years they kept engaging British troops in guerilla warfare. In 1763 they suddenly appeared in Dacca, then as suddenly reappeared in Coochbehar where they worsted the British soldiers in a skirmish. In 1767 five thousand of them fought openly against a contingent of sepoys in the Saran district of Bihar, killed many of them and put the rest to flight. In 1770 they were found in Dinajpur, then in Dacca, then in Rajshahi. Fighting a regular battle, some fifteen hundred Sannyasins, joined by peasants, defeated the British troops led

1. Bankim seems to have been deeply stirred by the exploits of the Sannyasins. In another of his novels —Dew' Choudhurani — he weaves his tale on real-life folk heroes, Devi Choudhurani and her guru Bhavani Pathak, some of whose deeds were chronicled by men of the East India Company.

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by Capt. Thomas in 1772 near Rangpur, leaving only a few survivors. Warren Hastings, the then Governor General of India, extolled (!) them. "These Sannyasis appear so suddenly in towns or villages that one would think they had dropped from the blue. They are strong, brave, and energetic beyond belief."

It was to those saffron-clad men that Sri Aurobindo alluded in his poem The Mother Awakes, which he wrote in Bengali c. 1903:

"With a grieving heaving heart was there none awake

In the darkest of night for the sake of the Mother?

A few only with saffron robes covering their bodies

Sat in the temple with the bare sword in hand,

Devotees of the terrible Mother,

To anoint with their own blood

The Mother's feet, wakeful they passed the night.

Hence rose the Mother:

With a mighty thirst, in wrath awoke the Mother;

With a lion's roar filling the universe awoke the Mother

To awaken the world."

Barin, in a statement on 12 June 1943, recalled how Bhawani Mandir was printed. "I came to Calcutta from Baroda, with the ms. of Bhawani Mandir, written by Sri Aurobindo in English. It was printed secretly at night in D. Gupta's Press at Kalitola under the supervision of Sudhir Sarkar of Khulna, Joshi (a Mahratta) and myself in pamphlet form. The pamphlet was fifteen to sixteen pages, and in it there was a scheme for the establishment of a temple to Bhawani, to be erected in some inaccessible hilly region of India. Though the region was not mentioned, the site had been selected near the Sone River......"

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But Sri Aurobindo was never told of any definite selection of site.

"In this temple," Barin stated, "devotees were to receive initiation both spiritually and politically for the delivrance of India from foreign rule. The scheme undoubtedly owed its origin to Anandamath of Bankim Chandra Chatterji."

It was in 1872 that Bankim Chandra started his monthly journal Bangadarshan and, again, it was in 1872 that he started writing Anandamath beginning with the 'Bande Mataram' mantra. But it was only during the Swadeshi days that the song became the National Anthem. It was sung across the length and breadth of India, and sung fervently. Sri Aurobindo translated the song into English, spoke about it and wrote about it.

After the Surat Congress, Sri Aurobindo had to give lectures wherever he went. On Wednesday 29 January 1908 he delivered one in the Grand Square of the National School, at Amraoti, in Berar. The meeting had commenced with the singing of Bande Mataram. He made it the subject of his speech. We quote a little from a summary printed in the newspaper Bande Mataram. "The song, he said, was not only a national anthem to be looked on as the European nations look upon their own, but one replete with mighty power, being a sacred mantra, revealed to us by the author of Ananda Math, who might be called an inspired Rishi. He described the manner in which the mantra had been revealed to Bankim Chandra, probably by a Sannyasi under whose teaching he was. He said that the mantra was not an invention, but a revivification of the old mantra which had become extinct, so to speak, by the treachery of one Navakishan."

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Mahakali at Lalgola's temple

Now, by a strange coincidence, a newspaper article¹ came into my hands, which describes how Bankim and the Raja of Lalgola (in the district of Murshidabad, Bengal) became close friends. The Raja, Jogindra Narayan Roy, invited Bankim to come on a visit to Lalgola, on the bank of the Kalkali river. There were dense forests in those days. In the forest by the river, Bankim was "surprised to find there three temples honouring Jagaddhatri, Mahakali, and Dashabhuja Durga. Bankim in fact stayed on the first floor of the Mahakali temple for some time, writing major portions of Anandamath. He wore saffron like a sannyasi.... Bankim heard a centenarian tantrik chant Bande Bandini Matarang [I salute the shackled Mother]. By deleting 'Bandini' Bankim coined the immortal Bande Mataram."

How did Sri Aurobindo know all that, and in such detail ?

The summary of Sri Aurobindo's speech continued. "The mantra of Bankim Chandra was not appreciated in his own day, / and he predicted that there would come a time when the whole of India would resound with the singing of the song, and the word of the prophet was miraculously fulfilled. The meaning of the song was not understood then because there was no patriotism except such as consisted in making India the shadow of England and other countries which dazzled the sight of the sons of this our Motherland with their glory and opulence. The

1. 'The Making of Anandamath,' by Kishanchand Bhakat (The Statesman, 9 April 1994).

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so-called patriots of that time might have been the well-wishers of India but not men who loved her. One who loved his mother never looked to her defects, never disregarded her as an ignorant, superstitious, degraded and decrepit woman."

Soon after that speech, Sri Aurobindo wrote on the same subject in the journal Bande Mataram. "When a great people rises from the dust," he said on 19 February 1908, "what mantra is the sanjivani mantra or what power is the resurrecting force of its resurgence? In India there are two great mantras, the mantra of 'Bande Mataram' which is the public and universal cry of awakened love of Motherland, and there is another more secret and mystic which is not yet revealed. The mantra of 'Bande Mataram' is a mantra once before given to the world by the Sannyasins of the Vindhya hills. It was lost by the treachery of our own countrymen because the nation was not then ripe for resurgence and a premature awakening would have brought about a speedy downfall. But when in the great earthquake of 1897 there was a voice heard by the Sannyasins, and they were conscious of the decree of God that India should rise again, the mantra was again revealed to the world. It was echoed in the hearts of the people, and when the cry had ripened in silence in a few great hearts, the whole nation became conscious of the revelation."

And here is a bit of the song as translated by Sri Aurobindo.

"Mother, I bow to thee !

Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams

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Cool with thy winds of delight,

Dark fields waving, Mother of might,

Mother free.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,

When the swords flash out in seventy million hands

And seventy million voices roar

Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?

With many strengths who art mighty and stored,

To thee I call, Mother and Lord !

Thou who savest, arise and save !

To her I cry who ever her foemen drave

Back from plain and sea

And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,

Thou our heart, our soul, our breath,

Thou the love divine, the awe

In our hearts that conquers death.

Thine the strength that nerves the arm,

Thine the beauty, thine the charm...."

*

* *

Years later, in 1920, Sri Aurobindo wrote again: "We used the Mantra Bande Mataram with all our heart and soul, and so long as we used and lived it, relied upon its strength to overbear all difficulties, we prospered. But. suddenly the faith and the courage failed us, the cry of the Mantra began to sink and as it rang feebly, the strength began to fade out of the

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country. It was God, who made it fade out and falter, for it had done its work. A greater Mantra than Bande Mataram has to come. Bankim was not the ultimate seer of Indian awakening. He gave only the term of the initial and public worship, not the formula and the ritual of the inner secret upāsanā [worship]. For the greatest Mantras are those which are uttered within, and which the seer whispers or gives in dream or vision to his disciples. When the ultimate Mantra is practised even by two or three, then the closed Hand of God will begin to open; when the upāsanā is numerously followed the closed Hand will open absolutely."

This Mantra was revealed to Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

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