Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

57

Time to Leave

"All the Indians are rejoicing at the acquittal of Babu Aurobindo, as God protects his devotees at last," wrote a paper of Bihar.

All Indians? Not quite. Not the loyalists, and certainly not the Anglo-Indian papers. "From that very day that Srijut Arabindo came out of prison," wrote the Samaj Darpan on 4 August 1909, "the Englishman, Capital, and the Anglo-Indian newspapers of Calcutta have set themselves against him. The manner in which they are conducting themselves have led many people to fear lest something should happen to Arabindo again."

Already on 28 May the Samaj had expressed its apprehension that "it is not at all improbable that this good and highly educated man may be arrested and harassed on the same charge on which he has already been prosecuted twice for serving the country."

The Government continued to look upon him with suspicion, and the police kept him under strict surveillance. His acquittal had in no way allayed their fear. Sir Andrew

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Fraser, the Lt. Governor of Bengal, went on pestering Lord Minto, the Viceroy to again deport Arabindo Ghose. The information gleaned from British intelligence reports, he claimed, had revealed that Arabindo Ghose had been the 'ring-leader' of a band of anarchists as early as 1900, if not earlier; the man was the 'principal advisor' of the revolutionary party. "It is of utmost importance," urged Sir Andrew, "to arrest his potential for mischief, for he is the prime mover, and can easily get tools, one to replace another." Already, on 19 May 1908, just after the arrests, he had written to Minto, "There is one matter which I desire to press very strongly on Your Excellency's earnest attention : viz., the necessity for deporting Arabindo Ghose. He is the ring-leader. He is able, cunning, fanatical.... I earnestly trust that no sentiments will be allowed to prevent this.... See what the man has done; see the length to which he is prepared to go; see the skill with which he has used his human tools and kept himself in the background. It would be deplorable to set him free to recommence operations. Tools are easily got. It is a grave responsibility to set free against society a man who can get them as easily and use them as effectively as Arabindo Ghose." But in the end, they could not gather enough evidence against him that would have secured his conviction in a court of law.

When the Sessions Judge set him free, the Government found itself on the horns of a dilemma. They considered two courses of procedure against him : deportation or prosecution in accordance with law. At first the Government did, indeed, contemplate an appeal against his acquittal; but decided against it as they could not be sure of the machinery of the law. As the

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Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal reported, "If there were a good prospect of obtaining a conviction, he [Sir Edward Baker, the Lieutenant-Governor] would have been ready to prefer an appeal. Such a course would, however, certainly cause a revival of public feeling against Government and in favour of the accused, a feeling which at present shows signs of dying out; and, if the appeal should fail, that price would have been paid for nothing." So, was it not surer, argued the bureaucrats, to arrest and deport him ... to the Andamans where his brother and colleagues in revolution were rotting? By that time Sir Edward Baker had replaced Sir Andrew as the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. The new incumbent began giving his most close and careful attention to the situation. He was convinced that after his release, Arabindo Ghose was again on the warpath. His Majesty's Government was ready to pounce on him at the flimsiest excuse. The Detective Department of the Police set a round-the-clock watch at N°6 College Square, as well as at the Karmayogin Office at Shyampukur. Letters to Arabindo Babu were regularly intercepted and often the Post Office neglected to deliver them to him. But no. No evidence worth the name could the police turn up for the Bengal Government.

Now that he was at large, the Government was afraid of a recrudescence of the unrest and violence that had preceded Sri Aurobindo's arrest. And some acts of violence were indeed taking place. Stray assassination attempts—successful now and then — were made by small groups driven underground by the repressive policies of the Government. "They are the rank and noxious

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fruit of a rank and noxious policy" wrote the Karmayogin on 31 July 1909, "and until the authors of that policy turn from their errors, no human power can prevent the poison-tree from bearing according to its kind."

Other poison-seeds planted by the rulers had not escaped the eyes of the 'irreconcilable opponent to British rule in India.' Those seeds were soon to blossom into luxuriant flower, leading to the partition of India. That seemed a logical conclusion from the partition of Bengal. From then onward the colonial rulers had done all they could to separate Hindus and Muslims as if both were not Indians, but two distinct species. The Muslims succumbed to the temptation of the carrot the Government dangled before them. They forgot that 90% of them were descendants of converted Hindus and that they, the Indian Muslims, belonged as much to the Indian Nation as the Hindus.

Maybe, left to themselves Hindus and Muslims could have united and grown as a single nation. Obviously, it was not in British interest to let them be. The Morley-Minto Reform cunningly introduced a separate electorate and a separate representation for ... Muslims only. Mind you, no safeguards were incorporated in these reforms for Parsis, for Christians, for Buddhists and other minority sections. There was a danger there in these reforms. "We will be no party," stated Sri Aurobindo, "to a distinction which recognises Hindu and Mohammedan as permanently separate political units and thus precludes the growth of a single and indivisible Indian nation." It is given to few to be able to tear off a mask and see the real face. The Nationalists saw the face. What to say of the notorious

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self-serving Congress moderates, when even Tilak fell into the trap? The 1916 Luck now Pact with Jinnah made the Muslims 'permanently a separate political entity in India.' But Gandhi's Khilafat affair made that entity, 'an organised separate political power.' India is still paying the price.

After this long jump across time let us go back to our point of departure.

The Bengal Government, determined to get rid of Sri Aurobindo as the only considerable obstacle left to the success of their repressive policy, and failing to procure a conviction by ordinary law,' decided to deport him. This came to the knowledge of Sister Nivedita. In mid-July, Nivedita had returned to India after a two-year self-imposed exile. She had come back with Sir Jagadish Chandra and Lady Abala Bose, under the assumed name of Miss Margot, and disguised! As soon as she came to hear of the Government's decision to arrest and deport Sri Aurobindo she at once informed him when he visited her at Bagbazar. She also asked him to go into secrecy or to leave British India and work from outside so that his work would not be stopped or totally interrupted. Sri Aurobindo contented himself with publishing in the Karmayogin a signed article in which he spoke of the project of deportation: 'An Open Letter to My Countrymen' was dated 31 July 1909. He called it his 'Last Will and Testament.' He felt sure that this would kill the idea of deportation, and in fact it so turned out. Nivedita afterwards told Sri Aurobindo that it had served its purpose, and the Government had abandoned the idea of deportation.

He refused to have anything to do with the sham reforms

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which were all the government at that period cared to offer. He held up always the slogan of no compromise —'No control, no cooperation'— as he wrote in the 'Open Letter to My countrymen.'

To revive the national movement under the changed circumstances, Sri Aurobindo had toyed with the idea of falling back on a Home Rule movement which the Government could not repress —an idea later realised by Annie Besant and Tilak. But at the time it would have meant a falling back from the ideal of independence. "He looked also at the possibility of an intense and organised passive resistance movement in the manner afterwards adopted by Gandhi," wrote Sri Aurobindo later. But he decided that such movements were not for him and that he must go on with the movement of independence.

On 25 December Sri Aurobindo wrote a second signed article, 'To My Countrymen,' where he reviewed the political situation. Although the article was sufficiently moderate in its tone—later on the High Court refused to regard it as seditious — the government thought to have found the opening they were looking for. From January 1910 the menace of deportation again loomed large. Then came the startling assassination of Deputy Superintendent of Police, Shamsul Alam, in the precincts of the High Court, in daylight, under the eyes of many and in a crowded building. Shamsul Alam had been the right-hand man of Eardley Norton in the Alipore Bomb case. "As for the crime itself," wrote the Karmayogin of 29 January, "it is one of the boldest of the many acts of violence for which the Terrorists have been responsible.... The Indian Terrorist seems to be usually a man fanatical in his determination and daring, to prefer public places

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and crowded buildings for his field and to scorn secrecy and a fair chance of escape. It is this remarkable feature which has distinguished alike the crimes at Nasik, London, Calcutta, to say nothing of the assassination of Gossain in jail."

In the same issue of the Karmayogin, Sri Aurobindo wrote, "We are beginning to feel that Fate is more powerful than the strongest human effort. We feel the menace in the air from above and below and foresee the clash of iron and inexorable forces in whose collision all hope of a peaceful Nationalism will disappear, if not for ever, yet for a long, a disastrously long season."

He did not have the time to wait for the 'long season.' Time had come to leave politics and journalism behind. In January 1910 when Ramsay MacDonald, a future prime minister of Britain, came to Calcutta, he went to see Sri Aurobindo at College Square. "He himself practically told me when I saw him," MacDonald disclosed in the British House of Commons in April, "that he would not be very much longer in the affairs of the world and engaged in journalistic work."

Sri Aurobindo remained in Calcutta just long enough to see the return home of a freed Krishna Kumar Mitra and Shyam Sundar Chakraborty, in February 1910.

If we take August 1906 —when he joined the National College and began the Bande Mataram — zs the beginning of his open political career, then by February 1910 he had been three and a half years in the field. We may, however, deduct the year he spent in jail. That gives us two and a half years. In that span of thirty months, Sri Aurobindo had brought about a

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revolution, taking Indians at least fifty years forward. He had set an ideal before the nation. He had given a new shape to Indian politics. He had chalked out the broad lines that were to lead to India's freedom. And he knew from within before leaving that the ultimate triumph of the movement "I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence." Thirty-seven years it would be before India gained her Independence from the British.

He had to leave because his Yoga now claimed him entirely. He had work to do which none else could do. The submerged forces were rising. Black nesses threatened to engulf mankind. Where was the Light of God? He had to draw aside a veil, to lift a curtain. He was seeking the Veda, the truth about Brahman, about His manifestation. "I believe that Veda to be the foundation of the Sanatan Dharma; I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism.... I believe the future of India and the world to depend on its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to life in the world and among men."

His work would be to build a bridge "marrying the soil to the sky."

In 1926 (10 August), Sri Aurobindo said to a disciple, "There is a great and profound purpose behind this Yoga. It is not solely for India. It is for the whole world —although, India may be its starting-point."

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