Ghose, K.D. : Dr Krishna Dhan Ghose (1844-92), father of Sri Aurobindo, was a successful & popular physician in the Bengal Civil Medical Service. Manmohan to Laurence Binyon on 28 July, 1887: “We have no family relation to Lalmohan Ghose whatever, but his brother, who bears the same name as myself is a great friend of my father’. All the Ghoses came originally from the Punjab on the Afghan border. The word means ‘fame’, & they were a tribe of the proud warrior caste. But our family has sadly come down; the family house or palace, a very noble building, I believe, not far from Calcutta, is quite in ruins. My father when a boy, was very poor, living almost entirely by the charity of friends; & it is only thro’ his superhuman perseverance that we have to some degree retrieved ourselves.” [The Life of Sri Aurobindo, “Childhood & Education”, 1958, p.11-12] ― Krishnadhan had a meritorious school & college career. He passed the Entrance Examination of the Calcutta University from the local school in 1858 & then proceeded to the Calcutta Medical College. In 1864 he married Swarnalata, eldest daughter of Rishi Rajnarayan Bose; went to UK in 1869 & returned in 1871 with a further degree in Medicine from Aberdeen University (see Scotland) & with the conviction that India could transform herself overnight if possible into another Britain. ― “The majority of Britons at home have very little appreciation of what that intangible yet amazingly real & valuable export – the British Way of Life – means to colonial people; & they seem to give little thought to the fantastic phenomenon of races so very different from themselves in pigmentation, & widely scattered geographically, assiduously identifying themselves with British loyalties, beliefs & traditions…. The ties which bind the coloured Colonies to Britain are strong…. By dint of careful saving or through hard-won scholarships many of them arrive in Britain to be educated in the Arts & Sciences & the varied processes of legislative & administrative government. They come, bolstered by a firm, conditioned belief that Britain & the British stand for all that is best in both Christian & Democratic terms; in their naïveté they ascribe these high principles to all Britons, without exception.” [E.R. Braithwaite, “To Sir, With Love”, Penguin, New York, 1987, pp.39-41] Appointed Civil Medical Officer of Rungpur, Dr Ghose proved a sympathetic & effective physician & health officer, a selfless philanthropist extremely generous to the poor & earned the love & respect of the people as well as the esteem of the local officials due to which he could take a prominent part in Rungpur’s civic life. In 1883, vexed & alarmed at his immense popularity & indispensable assistance, the new magistrate had him transferred to Bankura & within a year again to Khulna, where he spent the rest of his life. Neither his wife’s madness, nor seclusion from neighbours & relatives, nor the inevitable betrayal by British ‘friends’ who had imparted their habit of solace in drink, were the root cause of his death. Brajendranath De, the Magistrate-Collector of Khulna & a close friend of Dr. Ghose writes: “He believed up to the very end that his son had been admitted into the ICS, & was in fact coming out to India. He, in fact, took a month’s leave (4th September to 25th October) to go & meet him in Bombay & bring him back in triumph, but he could not get any definite news as to when he was coming out & returned from Bombay in a very depressed frame of mind. Sometime after he returned to Khulna, he was informed by his bankers, the Grindlay & Co., that Sri Aurobindo was arriving on S.S. Roumania which was to leave Liverpool in October from England in 1892. Early in December, the doctor sent a cable asking Grindlay’s when the ship was to berth at Bombay. However, the Roumania was wrecked on 27th October in heavy weather off the coast of Portugal with hardly any survivors. Dr. Ghose, misinformed by the Grindlay that Sri Aurobindo was on board, died on hearing the news. It was after getting a reply telegram from Grindlay of this disaster that he expired with the name “Arā” on his lips. According to Sarojini, he was on the point of getting into his tandem one evening when the reply telegram arrived. After reading the message he put one foot on the footboard &, while raising his other foot, fell down. He was carried indoors & placed on his bed. .... I had to take the body to the cremation grounds. The whole town poured in at the cremation ground to have a last look at its beloved doctor.” On 15th December, Amrita Bazar Patrika published a detailed obituary. On the 17th, Sir S.N. Banerjee’s The Bengalee published its obituary: “...If Rungpur is a healthier place now than it was twenty years ago, the result is due in no small degree to the efforts of the late Dr. Ghose. He was at one time a candidate for the Health Officership of Calcutta & would have been appointed to that office, but that his dark skin was against him.” In 1909, B.C. Pal offered his homage: “The rich blamed him for his reckless¬ness; the man of the world condemned him for his absolute lack of prudence.... But the poor, the widow, & the orphan loved him for his selfless pity, & his soulful benevolence.”
... story. Sri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872, the third son of Krishna Dhan Ghose and Swarnalata. Krishna Dhan, known in his lifetime as Dr. K.D. Ghose, was then posted as Civil Surgeon at Khulna. Sri Aurobindo was born at Calcutta in the house of Mono Mohun Ghose, a well-known barrister and a great friend of Dr. Ghose. Just as they were friends, so were their wives who had the same name, Swarnalata... field, has paid a remarkable tribute to Dr. K.D. Ghose in his book, Indian Nationalism: Its Principles and Personalities. He writes: 'Keen of intellect, tender of heart, impulsive and generous almost to recklessness, regardless of his own hurts, but sensitive to the sufferings of others — this was the inventory of the character of Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose.' As a child Sri Aurobindo grew up in the... borne by anyone else. The word in Sanskrit means lotus and its spiritual significance is that it symbolises divine consciousness — a singularly appropriate and prophetic name for the child. Dr. K.D. Ghose was a remarkable person, a spirited man who was in many ways in advance of his time. After graduating from the Calcutta Medical College he went, in the year 1869, to Aberdeen in Scotland for further ...
... Aphorisms (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1982). Page 440 36. TP: Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), Talks on Poetry (Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, 1989). 37. TPL: Sri Aurobindo, Tales of Prison Life. Translated from the original Bengali by Sisirkumar Ghose (Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir, Calcutta, 1979). 38. TY: Nirodbaran, Twelve Years with Sri... Editor: K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran), Life-Literature-Yoga: Some Letters of Sri Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1967). 24. L-P: A.B.Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1978). 25. LSM: Morris R. Cohen and Ernest Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (Allied Publishers Private Ltd., New Delhi, 1968). 26. PG: K.D. Sethna... as given in the Reference Lists mentioned above. When a particular book has been referred to only once or twice, its full name has been indicated in the Reference List itself. 1. AA: K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran), The Adventure of the Apocalypse (Sri Aurobindo Circle, Bombay, 1949). 2. AG: Dilip Kumar Roy, Among the Great (Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1950). 3. AR: Sri Aurobindo ...
... acquainted with Khaserao two or three years after his arrival in Baroda, through Khaserao's brother, Lieutenant Madhavrao Jadhav. [It was] 1 James Cotton, brother of Sir Henry (who was a friend of Dṛ K.D. Ghose) who introduced Sri Aurobindo to the Gaekwar. Cotton became secretary of the South Kensington Liberal Club where two of the brothers were living; Benoybhusan was doing some clerical work for the ...
... revolt of 1857 the Indian populace had accepted the situation practically without exception, continuing their traditional way of living under the watchful eye of the haughty white masters. Dr K.D. Ghose had done his medical studies in England; he was ‘a terrible atheist’ and a fervent admirer of all things British. It was his ambition that his children would become the best of the best, ‘beacons... be difficult to follow. Besides, a brief glimpse of their lives will provide readers who have no idea of who they were with some points of reference. Aurobindo Akroyd Ghose, the third son of a medical doctor, Kristo Dhan Ghose, was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. (Afterwards the family would be expanded by a girl and another boy.) His father, ‘a thoroughly anglicized Bengali,’ demanded that... atmosphere took hold of those who entered it and wrought a comprehensive change.’ 4 Aurobindo Ghose became an exceptional classical scholar and was soon also generally known as a master of the English language. An Englishman in later years travelling in India asked: ‘Do you know where Ghose is now, the classical scholar of Cambridge, who has come away to India to waste his future?’ 5 All ...
... friendly with the magistrate there. We went to his cousin's place in England afterwards, the Drewettes. It was always the doctor (i.e. K.D. Ghose) who got things done at Rangpur. When the new magistrate came he found that nothing could be done without Dr. K.D. Ghose. So he asked the Government to remove him and he was transferred to Khulna. It was since that time that he became a politician. That is ...
... His God Hitler and His God 14. Sri Aurobindo’s Vision Hitler and his God Scholar and Revolutionary Aravinda Akroyd Ghose was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. His father, Civil Surgeon K.D. Ghose, was an anglophile who saw to it that in his house no Bengali but only English and a smattering of Hindustani were spoken. He had great ambitions for his sons... dangerous man the politician Aurobindo Ghose was and they were looking for an occasion to get rid of him. This occasion came when, on 30 April 1908, Barin and his group of young militant patriots, of whom Aurobindo was the secret leader, bungled another of their bombing attempts. This time the colonial authorities came down with a heavy hand. Aurobindo Ghose was one of the first to be arrested. His... Aravinda took the scholarship examination for King’s College at Cambridge University; he was elected to the first vacant open scholarship, which means that he was the best candidate. Known as A.A. Ghose, Aravinda studied at King’s College from October 1890 to October 1892. The time of direst poverty was now over thanks to the scholarship. “As the recipient of a scholarship he had to prepare for the ...
... Sethna, K.D. Glimpses of the Mother vol.1 (1978), vol.2 (1980) Gokak, V.K. and Reddy, Madhusudan The Flame of Truth (1968) Huta (Hindocha) White Roses (complete ed. 1982) Madan, P.K. Towards Divine Living (1974) Poddar, Vijay On Women (5th imp. 1990) Sahana Some letters from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (1989) Sethna, K.D. L... Rishabhchand Rishabhchand and Shyam Sunder Romen Palit Roy, Dilip Kumar Roy, D.K. and Indira Devi Sahana Devi Sarkar, Mona Sastry, Kapali Satprem Sethna, K.D. (Amal Kiran) Sethna, K.D. and Nirodbaran 12 vols. (1977 to 1992) Breath of Grace (1973) Champaklal Speaks (2d imp. 1976) Champaklal's Treasures (1976) The Message of Sri Aurobindo... . Only some of the more important journals are mentioned below, many of them issuing from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. Arya A Monthly Philosophical Review, edited by Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Paul and Mirra Richard, (1914-21). Photographically reproduced in 7 volumes by All India Press, Pondicherry, 1990 Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, Calcutta, since 1942 The Advent (Quarterly) ...
... , that is about twenty-four minutes before sunrise, on 15 August 1872. His birth took place in the house of Barrister Monmohun Ghose, in Calcutta.! The name of Monmohun Ghose's wife was Swarnalata, just as it was the name of K.D. Ghose's wife. Dr. Ghose and Monmohun Ghose were very great friends and so were the Swarnalatas. Between 1872 and 1877 Aurobindo apparently stayed at Rangpur, where his... Dr. Ghose, who was then thirty-four, Swarnalata, who was twenty-seven, and the four children, Benoybhushan, Manmohan, Aurobindo and Sarojini. In 1880 Dr. K.D. Ghose returned alone from England to rejoin his service. He left Swarnalata and the children in England. On January 5, a son, Barindra Kumar, was born at Croydon, England. His name is listed in the birth register as "Emmanuel Ghose"! Swarnalata... London, from October 1892 to January 1893. During vacations Aurobindo used to go outside London and Cambridge whenever economic conditions permitted. Dr. K.D. Ghose was very friendly with Mr. Glazier, a magistrate at Rangpur, and when Dr. Ghose decided to send his three sons to England for studies, he arranged to leave them with Rev. William H. Drewett, a cousin of Mr. Glazier, who lived in Manchester ...
... that I had a thought that I would dedicate my life to a similar World-change and take part in it.’ 8 But the Drewetts emigrated to Australia, travelling via Calcutta to collect the arrears K.D. Ghose owed them for the boarding, lodging and education of his sons. The three brothers, under the tutelage of grandmother Drewett, moved to London. There, in September 1884, Manmohan and Aravinda were... a week to assist him in his job as Secretary of the South Kensington Liberal Club. He also allowed the brothers to stay at the Club in a room under the roof. They were now living in poverty, for K.D. Ghose sent his sons hardly any money. ‘When they outgrew their old overcoats they could not buy new ones. At home there was no coal for the fire and hardly any food. During a whole year Aurobindo and ... morning and in the evening a penny saveloy [a kind of sausage]” … Manmohan by this time had gone up to Oxford and was receiving most of the scanty resources that their father was sending.’ 12 K.D. Ghose’s reasons for withholding their allowances are not clear. Sri Aurobindo would later say that when his father was in Rangpur, he was on friendly terms with the Magistrate (the highest British authority ...
... Future Poetry, The 42, 293, 344,359,459 Gandhi, M.K. 17,19,25,28,30 Gayley, CM. 374 Ghose, Barindra Kumar 6 Ghose, Benoy Bhushan 6-7 Ghose, Krishnadhan 6 Ghose, Lotika 53 Ghose, Manomohan 6-7 Ghose, Swarnalata 6 Gide, Andre 267-268 Giradoux, Jean 268 Goethe 40,273,377,425-427 Gokhale,G.K.10... word-combinations in, 455-456; Savitri as the fulfilment of Sri Aurobindo's life's work, 457-458; Savitri as a new revelation for a greater Dawn, 464. Schopenhauer 13 Sethna, K.D. 319,357,423,440 Shakespeare, William 7, 50, 309, 311, 312, 341,366,371,395,412,419,425,458 Page 496 Shankara 30 ...
... Spirit: Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K.D. Sethna, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1986. Also see, Indian Poets and English Poetry: Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K.D. Sethna , Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1994. 3 . A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo: Correspondence between Bede Griffiths and K.D. Sethna , Pondicherry: 1996, reprinted Clear Ray... background." 16 13. Letter from Aldous Huxley to K.D. Sethna, 29.1.1949. Sethna's Papers. 14. Letter from Kimon Friar, Editor of Greek Heritage to K.D. Sethna, 14.7.1965. Sethna's Papers. Also see the book Sri Aurobindo and Greece , Waterford, U.S.A.: The Integral Life Foundation, 1998. 15. Letter from K.D. Sethna to Sushil Mittal, 19.121993. Sethna's Papers. 16. Letter... of them, in order that I might subscribe to it. 9 9. Letter from Paul Brunton to K.D. Sethna, 19.9.1946. Sethna's Papers. Page xxv An identical warmth of admiration is noticed in Brunton's review of The Secret Splendour in a Bangalore periodical in 1941: K.D. Sethna is a rising star in the Indian literary firmament who is well worth watching. With this ...
... Jurisprudence, Political Economy, Indian History and some Sanskrit. He had also to show a knowledge of his mother tongue, Bengali (which he did not know at all), and learn a little Hindustani because Dr. K.D. Ghose, delighted at his son's success in the ICS examination, had arranged with the help of Sir Henry Cotton to get a posting for Sri Aurobindo at Arrah in Bihar on completion of his probationership. Sri... official duties Dr. Ghose came across many instances of injustice and harshness to Indians from their English masters. Such treatment was intolerable to his independent character. In one instance, there was an open clash with the English Magistrate of the district in which the doctor was serving. Sometimes reports of misbehaviour and arrogance were published in local newspapers and Dr. Ghose would send the... and decided to intercede with the Civil Service Commission, the final authority for selecting the candidates. In a letter to Cotton, Prothero wrote: 'I am very sorry to hear what you tell me about Ghose, that he has been rejected in his final ICS examination for failure in riding. His conduct throughout his two years here was most exemplary.... He performed his part of the bargain, as regards the College ...
... remittances, food scarce. In this crisis they were fortunate in finding a timely benefactor in James Cotton, brother of Sir Henry Cotton, who was a well-known figure in India and a friend of Dr. K.D. Ghose. James Cotton was then Secretary of the South Kensington Liberal Club which had its office at 128, Cromwell Road. The boys went and saw him and, realising their predicament, he engaged Benoybhusan... intellectual capacity. You may think that since Dr. Ghose was very well placed in life and had himself taken his sons to England for their education, they would not have to face financial difficulties during their stay there. In actual fact, the situation was very different. It is true that initially they had a fairly easy time at Manchester, for Dr. Ghose used to send £360 a year for them, a sum sufficient... Manchester and St. Paul’s School, London (1879-1890) AT MANCHESTER, the boys were readily given shelter by the Drewett family: Rev. Drewett, his wife and his elderly mother. Before he left, Dr. Ghose gave strict instructions that his sons should not be allowed to make the acquaintance of any Indians or to undergo any Indian influence. Sri Aurobindo was to stay in England for the next fourteen ...
... × K.D. Sethna, op. cit., 7 × Savitri, 315 × K.D. Sethna, op. cit., 2 ... for they knew her as Madame Richard, and although Sri Aurobindo had made them understand that she was far advanced in occultism and spirituality, to them she was a twice-married woman nevertheless. As K.D. Sethna writes: ‘Even in regard to the Mother a group of sadhaks in the twenties, when she returned to India for permanent stay near Sri Aurobindo, was averse to accept her as an incarnation of the... in his Reminiscences. 27 Amrita too, a Tamil from Pondicherry who had been one of the first to join the small ‘group of Bengalis, is quoted as a source in this connection. ‘He told me,’ writes K.D. Sethna, ‘that after the Mother’s arrival in Pondicherry Sri Aurobindo declared to the young men with him at the time, of whom Amrita was one: “I never knew the meaning of ‘surrender’ until Mirra surrendered ...
... so far. Perhaps the boldness inculcated by his father was responsible in making K.D. Sethna what he is today. It is quite clear from the 2. In the Press. - Editors Page 360 arguments and counter-arguments that we read in the works that it is dangerous to match wits with K.D. Sethna. Boswell’s remark (about Dr Johnson may be true of him if modified a little... equal stress on the ground. Mine do not on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress; I am an anapaestic fellow," said K.D. Sethna in his very first lecture on Poetry given to a group of students starting their university career. No reader of these lines could ever miss the Joke the author has cracked on his own infirmity... admirers, students and writers, who seek his help in one way or another - invariably say "When is it not a party when we are around Amal ?" It was Sri Aurobindo, the Yogis' Yogi, who renamed K.D. Sethna Amal Kiran, meaning "The Clear Ray". A Parsi Bombayite by birth, Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna, was born on November 25, 1904. Son of a well-to-do physician, who spent much of his ...
... enabling a direct reciprocal action between the humans and the incarnated gods, leading up to a world perhaps resembling Sri Krishna’s goloka , in other words a heaven on earth. Later the Mother said to K.D. Sethna that at that time she had got “the Word of Creation.” “When I looked a little puzzled,” remembered Sethna, “she added: ‘You know that Brahma is said to create by his Word. In the same way whatever... direct participation of the gods, some of them incarnated in terrestrial bodies, a new religion would have been founded with a force and a lustre beyond our imagination. Now nobody knows about it. As K.D. Sethna reflects: “This was surely the mightiest act of renunciation in spiritual history.” No New Edition of the Old Fiasco Of Sri Aurobindo’s battle in the following years to establish the... × Kireet Joshi: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother , pp. 89-90. × K.D. Sethna: Aspects of Sri Aurobindo , p. 97. × The Mother: Questions and Answers 1957-58 , pp. 147-148 ...
... Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic K.D. Sethna's Concept of Love and Beauty A Master lying like a Hidden Treasure K.D. SETHNA has been the most important literary figure in the post-Aurobindo Indo-Anglian scene. It is a surprise that he is still quite unknown outside a particular circle. But the few who have probed sensitively into... knows. With the misconception that Sri Aurobindo is a monk, there has grown up another wrong belief that he is a platonic love-poet. In fact love is a many-branching mood in his poetry. K.D. Sethna, Captain of the Aurobindonian School, starts from the mature Sri Aurobindo. He too depends on the sap of the earth and he too believes like his master that love cannot live by heavenly... to walk ahead. GOUTAM GHOSAL Page 218 References 1. Amal Kiran, Altar and Flame, Aspiration, Chariottesville, Virginia 1975, p. 1. 2. K.D. Sethna, Overhead poetry , Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, 1972, Quoted at p. 16. 3. Amal Kiran, Altar and flame, p. 14 ("Fragments"), 4. Ibid., p ...
... Motibabu that Sri Aurobindo Ghose appears to move very near to Shankaracharya. Sri Aurobindo Ghose told him when he (the Sadhak) was at Pondicherry on 15th August, 1923 that we should not accept ignorance of life and as ordinary life is full of ignorance, the only possible solution is to reject ordinary life and as this doctrine is preached by Shankaracharya, so Sri Aurobindo Ghose is near to Shankaracharya... to find for a man of higher ideal, they generally remain single. Some of them find their mate late in life like Mustafa Kamal. Some are fortunate like Browning and are very happy all their life. K.D: What about Napoleon and Josephine? Isn't that relation psychic? Sri Aurobindo: Not entirely; it is half and half. Something in Josephine's luck helped Napolean. Josephine had a better chance of... easily imagine how difficult it will be for Sri Aurobindo to give you any clear-cut answer. With these data before you you must decide for yourself. (FURTHER POINTS ELICITED IN 2ND CONVERSATION) K.D: How can one know when he meets his psychic mate? Sri Aurobindo: How do you know a spiritual experience? How do you know when you have the right leader? It is all a matter of feeling and inner perception ...
... A Centenary Tribute Amal Kiran: A Profile P. Raja It was Sri Aurobindo, the Yogis' Yogi, who renamed K.D. Sethna Amal Kiran, meaning "The Clear Ray". A Parsi Bombayite by birth, Kaikhushru Dhunjibhoy Sethna, was born on November 25,1904. Son of a well-to-do physician, who spent much of his leisure in his personal library, Sethna had the privilege... Studies based in Ottawa, Canada, gave him the Devavrata Bhishma Award for 1994 for this work. In her letter dated 5.8.1961, Ms. Kathleen Raine after making general remarks on the poems of K.D. Sethna, concludes thus: "Only one thing troubles me: why do you write in English?... Have you not, in using English, exiled your poetic genius from India, to which it must belong, without making it... his purchase home and as soon as he took off the string, the newspaper sheet fell open in front of him. A headline in very bold type attracted his attention. It read: "The Ashram of Sri Aurobindo Ghose." To Sethna, it looked like a Divine Call. At once he read the article and felt that Sri Aurobindo's Ashram in Pondicherry was the place for him because life was not denied there. Everything possible ...
... eminent Sanskrit scholar. The Ghoses of Konnagar were a no less distinguished family than the Mitras. Perhaps all the Ghoses "came originally from the Punjab on the Afghan border. The word means 'fame', and they were a tribe of the proud warrior caste". 1 Krishnadhan Ghose was born in this family about the year 1845, his parents being Kaliprasad Ghose and Kailasabasini Devi, a lady known... darkly lurks... 5 When Krishnadhan Ghose left Calcutta for Great Britain in 1869 to undergo a course of advanced medical studies, it was his father-in-law's earnest wish that the young sojourner in the West would not allow himself to be too easily dazzled and denationalised by the civilisation of the Occident † Nevertheless, when Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose returned to India in 1871 with a further... won in July 1890. There, however, remained one or two more hurdles. On 24 August 1892, Mr. Lockhart, Secretary to the Civil Service Commissioners, reported to the India Office that A. A. Ghose (Aravinda Ackroyd Ghose) was still to satisfy the Commissioners in respect of health and riding proficiency. He passed his medical examination in due course, but even as late as 4 November 1892, Sri Aurobindo ...
... of Sri Aurobindo and the New Age (1965) Garratt, G. T. An Indian Commentary (1928) Ghose, Jyotish Chandra. Sri Aurobindo (1929) Ghose, Lotika. Indian Writers of English Verse (1933) Ghose, P. C. The Development of the Indian National Congress: 1892-1909 (1960) Ghose, Sisir Kumar. The Poetry of Sri Aurobindo (1969) Gokak, V. K. and V. Madhusudan Reddy (Eds... present study are too numerous to be exhaustively listed here, and hence only the more important books in English art given below, arranged in the alphabetical order of the authors' names. Acharya, K.D. A Guide to Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy (1968) Archer, William. India and the Future (1917) Argov, Daniel. Moderates and Extremists in the Indian Nationalist Movement: 1883-1920 ...
... children of the Divine, and were meant to manifest the unity of this origin upon the earth. 3 Again, when on 25 June 1950, communist North Korea crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, K.D. Sethna the editor of Mother India (then coming out as a fortnightly from Bombay), asked for Sri Aurobindo's guidelines for his editorial comment on the subject. Sri Aurobindo replied on 28 June in... the Mother had spoken of, the Mother placed her hand on his head, and now he could see too: "There He was - with a luminous mantle of bluish golden hue around him." Rushing to Pondicherry from Bombay, K.D. Sethna found the recumbent body "spiritually imperial", and "the atmosphere of the room was vibrant with a sacred power to cleanse and illumine". An unending mass of humanity streamed past and had their... intervene effectively and save the situation, and indeed that is what he did, and North Korean forces were driven to vacate the aggression. When, years later, President Kennedy was shown by Sudhir Ghose a typed copy of Sri Aurobindo's letter of 28 June 1950 (widely publicised in India in August 1950), the President is reported to have remarked: Surely, there is a typing mistake here. The date ...
... Rachel Mirra. Everybody called her Mirra. Only in 1890, twelve years after Mirra’s birth, was Maurice Alfassa to become a naturalized Frenchman. Mirra, age 11 Mathilde wanted, just like Dr K.D. Ghose, that her children would grow up to be the best in the world. Long after she was known as the Mother, Mirra Alfassa once characterized Mathilde as ‘an ascetic, stoical mother, like an iron rod.’... Part One: Aurobindo Ghose and Mirra Alfassa Beyond Man Chapter Four: Of Painters and Occultists Mathilde Ismaloun was born in Alexandria, at one time the crossroads of the world, and her husband Maurice Alfassa came from Adrianople, now the Turkish town of Edirne. ‘He had the skin of the people of the Middle-East, just like mine,’ the Mother would say... Egypt and the East this line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour,’ 10 writes Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine. To build up their worldwide synthesis, Aurobindo Ghose would test out on his own person everything the hidden Eastern knowledge had to offer, and Mirra Alfassa would contribute the best of what the West had discovered and what Max Théon and Alma, better ...
... unsatisfied. Then - of all persons - a Theosophist broke the name of Sri Aurobindo to me. That I should bump into a Theosophist * From: The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo by K.D. Sethna, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1968; second revised and enlarged edition 1992, pp. 136-41. Page 451 who should speak of what he termed Sri Aurobindo's Cosmic Consciousness... shopman wrapped the box up in a newspaper sheet. When, at home, I unwrapped it, the part of the sheet that fell over right in front of me bore the headline in bold type: "The Ashram of Sri Aurobindo Ghose." It was like a sun-burst. A visitor had written a long article. I devoured it and when I got to the end and understood how the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga stood for a new life not rejecting but ...
... on in the Kremlin creating an unstable situation with great dangers for the country and the world. China and the Soviet-Union still acted in unison. The nuclear race was in full swing. We read in K.D. Sethna: ‘When she concluded her talk on 5 January 1955, a few questions were put to her by one of the brightest students of our Education Centre, Manoj Dasgupta. He asked: “You have said that in 1955... which do not share in its vibration be incapable of perceiving it.’ 44 There were some who had felt the new Force, she hastened to add. Not many — a handful. All in all, five. One of them was K.D. Sethna, who has related his experience to students and teachers of the Ashram school. In the evening of that 29 February he had seen the Mother in his compartment of the night train from Madras to Bombay... pure hell, as we will see further on, so that our hell in this and future lives might be changed into ‘a joyful pilgrimage’ towards That which is worth being experienced like nothing else. From K.D. Sethna is the reflection: ‘I wonder when the world will realise that in 1956 the greatest event in its history took place.’ 50 The Mother called 29 February ‘the Golden Day.’ ...
... 1872 Born at 4.50 A.M. on August I5, in Calcutta at the house of his father's friend Monmohan Ghose, a barrister and a public man of the time. Father, Dr. K.D. Ghose, I.M.S., belonged to the well-known Ghoses of Konnagar, Dist. Hooghly, Bengal. Mother, Srimati Swarnalata, daughter of Rishi Rajnarayan Basu, 'the grandfather of Indian Nationalism.* ...
... Khulna to found a National School; there he was given a warm welcome. 'I received here a royal reception,' he says, 'not for being a leader of the nation, but because I happened to be the son of Dr. K.D. Ghose.' The heart of Khulna was still bound in gratitude to the good doctor who had ministered to the needy and the poor without thought or care for himself. Late in April, 1907, news reached the Bande... Bejoy Krishna Chatterjee and Hemendra Prasad Ghose were writers of exceptional ability but, as the historian J.L. Banerji wrote at the time: 'Whoever the actual contributor to the Bande Mataram might be — the soul, the genius of the paper was Arabinda. The pen might be that of Shyam Sundar or whoever else, but the voice was the voice of Arabinda Ghose.' And later, Bepin Pal was to write a moving... supporters. A company was projected and formed, but the paper was financed and kept up meanwhile by Subodh. Bepin Pal who was strongly supported by C.R. Das and others remained as editor. Hemendra Prasad Ghose and Shyam Sundar joined the editorial staff but they could not get on with Bepin Babu and were supported by the Mullicks. Finally, Bepin Pal had to retire, I don't remember whether in November or December ...
... shattered all its calcified and no longer meaningful habits and traditions, but that, being a French subject, she had to watch her step. A couple of representative quotations in this context may suffice. K.D. Sethna wrote somewhere in 1978: ‘Two generations ago Tagore said that although India was lying in the dust, the very dust in which she lay was holy. Obviously it was in his mind that this dust had been... you change your shirt,’ the Mother said. The Lord of the Nations did everything possible to redeem his threatening promise to her. In June 1950 Sri Aurobindo therefore wrote about the Korean War to K.D. Sethna, chief editor of Mother India, the periodical regarded by Sri Aurobindo as a vehicle for his thought: ‘The whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the first move in the Communist plan... × Arya, vol. V, 424 × K.D. Sethna, Our Light and Delight, 174 × Evening Talks (recorded by A.B. Purani), 285 ...
... resigned from the Indian Administrative Service to become a sadhak, was the young and energetic Registrar, and among the senior teachers were Noren Das Gupta, Ambalal Purani, Sisir Kumar Mitra, Indra Sen, K.D. Sethna, Nirodbaran and Kishor Gandhi. The Centre of Education was guided by the seminal thoughts in the writings or utterances of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. From time to time, the fear was expressed... was the name the Mother gave Keshav Dev Poddar, a prominent Bombay businessman, who had organised the "Sri Aurobindo Circle" at Bombay in 1943 and later launched the fortnightly Mother India with K.D. Sethna as editor. The Mother knew that Navajata was born for her work, and so she had permitted him to wind up his business interests and join the Ashram. Under his intrepid leadership, the Sri Aurobindo... problem and canvass active support for the idea of an organisation called "World Union". After the necessary preliminary work, the first committee met in 1960 under the chairmanship of Surendra Mohan Ghose, and since then World Union has established numerous branches in India and abroad, and held several triennial world conferences. While the Mother as Founder-President was the soul of the World Union ...
... years of his yogic correspondence.’ We are indebted to those years for the 4,000 letters to Dilip Kumar Roy, the three volumes of correspondence with Nagin Doshi and the ample exchange of letters with K.D. Sethna, as well as for the numerous letters to so many others. The Letters on Yoga in Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Works comprise 1,774 pages. This extensive written exchange between Master and disciples... cripple who threw away his crutches and started running’ since he wrote under Sri Aurobindo’s guidance and inspiration; Arjava, the Sanskrit name of the British mathematician John Chadwick; Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), according to Sri Aurobindo a poet of international stature, whose collected poems have been published in 1993 under the title The Secret Splendour ; Jyotirmoyee, Harindranath Chattopadyaya... and unapproachable, showed a scintillating sense of humour and suddenly started writing in an unusual confidential tone to the amazement of his correspondent. Nirodbaran, probably awed by D.K. Roy, K.D. Sethna and others, developed literary and more specifically poetical ambitions. But he was, in Sri Aurobindo’s words, ‘not a born poet’, and his literary English was old-fashioned and stilted. Under ...
... expect me to say "in my mind" - and indeed I have drawn a lot of joy and strength from Greece's "foundations" in "thought and its eternity", but my sense of her 5. From a letter to K.D. Sethna, dated 15.4.1989. Page 173 has been much more than intellectual. Even to get fully at her thought in its characteristic movement of beauty, shouldn't we combine the heart... would lead us all to meditate upon life and literature. After commending Amal Kiran's poems and expressing, her desire to be born in India in a future life, Raine remarks: 6. Sethna, K.D., The English Language and The Indian Spirit, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1986, p. 1. 7. Ibid ., p. 5. Page 174 Only one thing troubles me: why do you write in English... his arguments and there comes a moment when there is a direct thrust: "But what exactly is meant by writing as if in a foreign idiom? Is the English at fault?" How about Sri Aurobindo and Manomohan Ghose who had learnt English from their childhood? The rapier takes a sharper fling: "Or would you go so far as to assert that one who has English blood in his veins can alone have that literary inwardness ...
... affinity in a silent gaze. A moment passed that was eternity's ray, An hour began, the matrix of new Time. 31 There was hardly any conversation between them; indeed, there was no need. In K.D. Sethna's words: Before meeting Sri Aurobindo she used to find for her various spiritual experiences and realisations a poise for life-work by giving them a mould with the enlightened mind. ... when Sri Aurobindo and Mirra met on 29 March 1914, what passed between them was rather more of a wordless communion than any formal or detailed conversation. Writing with the available hindsight, K.D. Sethna comments on it as follows: The meeting of the two represents the coming together of the necessary creative powers by whom a new age would be born. And it is to be noted that both Sri Aurobindo... writ and beyond recall; the pages of the future are blank but rich with promise. Four years earlier, Paul Richard had returned from a visit to India and told her of his meetings with Sri Aurobindo Ghose at Pondicherry. But between Sri Aurobindo and her there had already been established occult links of deep understanding regarding their future mission on the earth. Paul Richard had decided that he ...
... field of action, the concentration of Asuric forces at any particular point or in the individual or group against whom the force was being directed. As he explained later (July 1947) in a letter to K.D. Sethna: ...the spiritual force I have been putting on human affairs such as the War is not the supramental but the Overmind force, and that when it acts in the material world is so inextricably... Aurobindo Circle came out from Bombay, rather on the lines of the Calcutta Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual. A bolder step was the launching of Mother India, a fortnightly from Bombay, edited by K.D. Sethna. It had a wider coverage in theme and aimed at a more popular presentation of views than the Advent and the two Annuals. The war meant, among other developments, the coming of... 25 June 1950, North Korea - a Communist stronghold in Asia - crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, whose president, Syngman Rhee, at once appealed to President Truman for help. When K.D. Sethna wanted Sri Aurobindo's guidelines for an article in Mother India on the Korean crisis, he wrote on 28 June: .. .the whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the first move ...
... Stalin, Joseph 395 Standard Bearer, The 79, 205 Still-sitting movement 153, 175-6, 194, 221, 302 Subbarao, G. V. 222 Subramaniam, C. 716 Sudhir Ghose 488 Sundaram (Tribhuvandas Luhar) 691 Sunil Bhattacharya 681, 700, 718, 734-5 Surendra Mohan Ghose 251, 450, 534, 571-2, 595, 686 Surendra Nath Jauhar 165, 288, 417, 507, 538, 624, 689, 709, 733, 747, 797, 817 Suvrata (Mme Yvonne Gaebele) 321... 40ff, 50 A.B. Patel 573, 686 Agastya, Rishi 133 Aiyar, V.V.S. 85, 132 Alfassa, Mathilde 3-4, 833 Alfassa, Matteo 132, 833 Alfassa, Maurice 3, 833 Alfassa, Mirra see MOTHER, THE Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) 86-7, 244, 253, 261, 264-5, 287, 290, 296-7, 319, 321, 325, 327-9, 341, 354, 358, 372, 387, 402,488,495, 504, 549-50, 573, 590, 604, 618, 686, 691 Ambalal Purani 136, 143, 151, 211-2, 214... 786 qualities needed 756, 777, 788 administration 757, 787 Matrimandir 726, 763, 791-4, 803 Baha Ullah 40-1 'Bangavani' 679 Bapat, Senapati 682 Baptista, Joseph 199 Barindra Ghose 200, 209, 215-6, 235, 241, 247, 339 Baron, C.F. 571, 662 Page 898 Becharlal Bhatt, Dr 400 Beethoven 304 Bejoy Nag 91, 131, 201, 211, 213, 217, 233 Bhakti Sutras 32 Bhagavad ...
... the days to come — her recognition of his absolute mastery over her life and of the beginning of a new epoch of ¹ Glimpses of the Mother's Life, Compiled by Nilima Das and edited by K.D. Sethna (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Mother India, Pondicherry, 1978), p. 253. Page 7 spirituality even for so extraordinary and so richly experienced a Truth-seeker as she. What... between 1915 and 1920 when I was writing the Arya, but the sadhana and the work were waiting ¹ Mother India, December 5, 1970, p. 613. ² The abbreviation for Aurobindo Ghose, which the disciples used at that time. ³ Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1953), p. 366. Page 5 for the Mother's coming... him at the time, of whom Amrita was one: "I never knew the meaning of 'surrender' until Mirra surrendered herself to me." The extremism of this declaration is confirmed by Barindra Kumar Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's youngest brother. When he had just come back from the Andamans, to which he had been banished for implication in the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy, he asked Sri Aurobindo: "the Mother ...
... graced to know of his experiences with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, which brought me ever closer to them in this very personal and intimate sharing. From The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems of K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) , pp. 70-71, 77-78. This Errant Life This errant life is dear although it dies; And human lips are sweet though they but sing Of stars estranged from us; and youth’s emprise... buy a pair of shoes. Upon his return home he took notice of the newspaper in which the shoes were wrapped. He opened up the paper and there before him was an article entitled “A Visit with Aurobindo Ghose”. He avidly read the article and said, “this is the kind of yoga I’d like to do…under a master yogi like Sri Aurobindo who can read in six different languages and appear in more than one place at a ...
... a big religion or a vast organisation. Page 243 But the real work would have been left unattempted and unachieved. " 12 It was a period of "spectacular spiritual events", says K.D. Sethna. "All who were .present have testified that miracles were the order of the day .... Those which were common occurrences 10 those six* months were the most strikingly miraculous and, if... then supported by the Force, and may even be fully filled with it - the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or after. 35 The intellectual and poet, K.D. Sethna, was first asked to take charge of Ashram's stock of furniture. This brought him daily in contact with the Mother to take her signature on the requisition slips. "There was no other job... a sadhak in January 1929, "he ceases to belong to any creed or caste or race; he is one of Sri Aurobindo's disciples and nothing else. " 26 Many years later, Sri Aurobindo told Surendra Mohan Ghose that the Mother's choice of sadhaks was not exclusively governed by their spiritual advancement or intellectual brilliance: "She selects different types .... shi wants to observe how the Divine ...
... Chattopadhyay. 19. aksaravrtta: system of versification in which the number of letters and not the sounds is taken into account. 20. Vairagya: disgust or distaste for the worldly life. 21 K.D. Sethna (1904), a Parsi poet and critic. 22. Parichay: a Bengali magazine. 23. mātrā-vrtta: system of metrical measure depending on differentiating alphabetical letters into long and short... personal relationship with Dilip Kumar Roy and they exchanged letters. He spent the last years of his life in Mata Anandamayi's ashram at Bhadaini on the banks of the Ganges. 67. Barindra Kumar Ghose: Sri Aurobindo's younger brother, a revolutionary who was interned at the Andaman islands for about a decade, in the famous Alipore Bomb Case. Then lived for a few years in Pondicherry with Sri Aurobindo ...
... resumption of action after having entered the silence of the Brahman was, in our opinion, the principal turning-point in his life. A yogin who realizes Brahman has no need to proceed further.’ 44 K.D. Sethna probably supposes that Sri Aurobindo’s realization of the Parabrahman must have happened some time earlier, for he writes: ‘This means that by 1910 — the year in which he [Sri Aurobindo] came... Part One: Aurobindo Ghose and Mirra Alfassa Beyond Man Chapter Eleven: All Life is Yoga In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. 1 — Sri Aurobindo In our story we have now arrived at 1926, the year Sri Aurobindo withdrew in seclusion for the rest of his life and put the Mother... to be the best of the best. Their parents were atheists, and in their youth Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves had been atheists (the Mother: ‘I was a convinced atheist’). The yoga of Aurobindo Ghose began with an intensive practice of pranayama in Baroda, in 1905; about the same time Mirra Alfassa stumbled upon the Revue cosmique which put her into contact with Théon’s teachings and the Divine ...
... Nainital where the Gaekwad was holidaying at the time. About this time Sri Aurobindo's youngest brother, Barin, also joined him at Baroda. Because of his mother's illness and the untimely death of Dr. K.D. Chose, Barin's education had suffered, but he had managed to pass the entrance examination, then tried various occupations, including running a tea-shop (then a most novel undertaking) at Patna; eventually... So you can easily see that Indians had hardly any voice in the government of their own country. There can be no doubt that it was the painful recognition of this fact that prompted Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose to send all his three sons at such a tender age to England so that they could be equipped to compete with Englishmen in every way. During the nineteenth century there were two parallel move ments... had an interview with the Maharaja at which Sri Aurobindo was present. She tried to persuade the Maharaja to support the revolutionary movement but he merely said he would send his reply through Mr. Ghose. Of course he had no intention of joining the movement; but he seemed a little surprised that Sri Aurobindo was taking such a keen interest in it. Sri Aurobindo had great admiration and respect for ...
... the younger poets could not or would not see anything in Savitri, the epic nevertheless found more and more readers, and scholars like Nolini Kanta Gupta, K.D. Sethna, V.K. Gokak, Prema Nandakumar, M.P. Pandit, Rameshwar Gupta, Sisirkumar Ghose and Ravindra Khanna - steadily extended the frontiers of Savitri studies, and many a leading poet in the regional languages has gratefully acknowledged his... contrivance in something so unpredictable as poetry? "The two agents are sight and call," Sri Aurobindo wrote; "Also feeling - the solar plexus has to be satisfied.. ." 6 In the course of 1936, K.D. Sethna was able to persuade Sri Aurobindo to send him a passage of 16 lines from the Exordium, both as a specimen of poetry with an Overmind influence and as a foretaste of the finished Savitri.... almost final form. Of the remaining two Parts, two Books were ready, while the others had to be revised and finalised or yet to be written. "In the new form, " Sri Aurobindo explained in a letter to K.D. Sethna, "it will be a sort of poetic philosophy of the Spirit and of Life much profounder in its substance and vaster in its scope than was intended in the original poem." 11 Already, in his ...
... here. I am afraid Ghose's impressive and valuable speculations apropos of the piece and his rhetorical summoning of Holderlin and Rimbaud and Rilke have led you astray in pronouncing : "The poem is neither question nor answer, but resonates, like Blake's 'The Tyger', with 'fathomless suggestions'." Indeed the theme is profound and has evoked a fine philosophical vision from Ghose: the triviality lies... for ever jetting around the world but it's now a long time since he called in on London. I hope the book is a great success and widely read. (5.1.1987) Page 2 From K.D. Sethna I was delighted to get your letter and to feel the warmth of it as well as the old idealism running through its words. An added joy was the immediacy of your response and the unusual... is absent, where is the 'poetry'? What did Blake say? 'One thing alone makes a poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision'. I will write at length when I can. (20.10.1987) From K.D. Sethna Thank you for your acknowledgment of my elephant of a letter which I hope hasn't quite failed to be chryselephantine. From the generous bits of appreciation of some points in it ...
... Wonder that is K D Sethna alias Amal Kiran The Wonder That is K. D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran A Peep into His Writings [K.D.S. is the abbreviation of 'K.D. Sethna' otherwise known as 'Amal Kiran' — a name given him by Sri Aurobindo, signifying 'The Clear Ray'. The seniors in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram refer to him as Sethna or Amal while the juniors address... Secret Splendour, (2) The Adventure of the Apocalypse, (3)Altar and Flame and (4) ^Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments. Only recently, in 1993, has come out (5) Collected Poems of K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran). It is a sumptuous volume of eight hundred pages containing almost six hundred poems. Here is a poem of Amal Kiran, being an example of a poetry seeking — in his own words —... as disparate in nature as The Beginning of History for Israel, Blake’s Tyger and Karpasa in Prehistoric India have issued forth from the pen of Page 12 one and the same author. K.D. S’s voluminous prose writings reveal him as a multi-splendoured Kavirmanishi (‘the ser and the thinker’) who has scattered aplenty gems of insight, acting in the variegated roles of a journalist, a ...
... Appendix, but I have the suspicion that it suggests Appendicitis to you... By the way I am bringing out in book form The English Language and The Indian Spirit: Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K.D. Sethna, 500 copies in paperback: This is my first - and almost certainly the last and sole - publishing venture with my own money. It will cost Rs. 6,500 at our Press. 1000 copies will cost 7,000.... and also because I got a bit of pleasure from pointing out his inconsistencies and the Stygian abysses of his mind. As for the variant adjectives from "Aurobindo", "Aurobindean" is Sisir Ghose's own coinage. Sri Aurobindo never used it. In one place he has used " Aurobindian" and in another "Aurobindonian". I have always plumped for the latter because of its grand sound. I believe Dilip first ...
... 5, p. 189 3. Ibid., p. 315 4. Ibid., p. 190 5. Ibid., p. 192 6. Ibid., p. 194 7. Ibid., pp. 195-96 8. Ibid., pp. 202-03 9. K.D. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo (1947), p. 27 10. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 5, p. 205 11. Ibid., p. 206 12. Ibid., p. 210 13. Ibid., p. 211 ... 94 14. Ibid., p. 134 15. Ibid., p. 150 16. Ibid., pp. 150-51 17. Ibid., pp. 157-58 18. Ibid., p. 173 19. Ibid., p. 180 20. K.D. Sethna, Sri Aurobindo — The Poet, p. 349 21. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 5, pp. 110-11 22. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 6, p. 197 23. Vide Prema Nandakumar's The Viziers of Bassora: ... January 1969, pp. 162-73 Chapter 7: Musa Spiritus 1. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 22, pp. 198-99 2. Ibid., p. 199 3. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 5, p. 63 4. Quoted in K.D. Sethna's Sri Aurobindo — The Poet, p. 352 5. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 5, p. 63 6. Ibid., pp. 49, 50 7. Ibid., p. 47 8. Ibid., p. 44 9. Ibid., p. 41 ...
... dance sequence, based on Rod's poem 'The Artist before Dawn and the Dream of Victory', as part of the celebration of the second anniversary of the Auroville inauguration. After witnessing the sequence, K.D. Sethna wrote: "I saw colour and sound and gesture and movement mingling with the creative energy of the West with the rapt insight of India to make a new form of man's evolutionary unfolding." Another... (as distinct from political) contacts with France. The Indian Government wouldn't agree to this at the time, but after Sri Aurobindo's passing, when the unhappy stalemate continued, Surendra Mohan Ghose was asked by C. Rajagopalachari, then Chief Minister of Madras, to meet the Mother and request her to use her good influence to bring about a settlement. According to Surendra Mohan's testimony: ... killings and other sanguinary riots during 1946-7, the Mother introduced physical education for adults as well. But behind these developments there were other germinating ideas too. Surendra Mohan Ghose has reported that Sri Aurobindo once told him (probably in 1939): The Mother is trying to develop this Ashram into a university, but not according to the common conception of a university. ...
... Indian Poets and English Poetry From K.D. Sethna I have been a little slack in replying to you, but the procrastination has brought me to a very important day on which to launch my letter. August 15 has for India two far-reaching significances to commemorate. There is the birth of Sri Aurobindo whose fight for freedom was seminal in many respects, not least... but even so. Therefore do not hesitate to ask for any of the back issues still in print. P.S. Jean Mambrino's address is, Etudes, 15 rue Monsitur 75007. Paris. (21.11.1988) From K.D. Sethna Your letter is full of hope for the future in spite of there being a great deal to despair about the present. In this you are an Aurobindonian without quite knowing it. I say "quite" because... May this year bring you the fulfilment of your wishes, and the collection of poems of which you spoke in your last letter. Please remember me to Mrs. Dyne. And to Arabinda Basu and Sisir Kumar Ghose if you see either of them. Sisir has fallen silent of late. I hope my christmas-poem reached you. I sent it a long time ago, knowing the uncertainty of Indian posts. Indeed our posts here are getting ...
... mankind was fought and won, but the end of the world war did not mean the end of the activities of the Lord of Falsehood. In June 1950, a few months before his departure, Sri Aurobindo wrote in a note to K.D. Sethna on the Korean War: “The whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts [including Korea]... seeking for the light.” 24 They were “the souls destined to the way of the integral yoga,” “the rare souls that were ripe,” “the pioneer few.” The Mother’s first question when she met Aurobindo Ghose for the first time, in 1914, had been: “Should you do your yoga, attain the goal, and then afterwards take up the work with others, or should you immediately let all those who have the same aspiration ...
... was Aurobindo Ghose, the revolutionary for whose capture the government had spread a net far and wide. It was ironical, wasn't it, that an Englishman should help me to escape that net just because I spoke with such a fine English accent!" (Laughter) "But didn't he recognise you by your name?" "Do you think I went up and introduced myself to him, saying - 'Here I am, Aurobindo Ghose!' Isn't such... first consulting my father. The people there called my Page 63 father 'the king of Rangpur'. He had a canal, several miles long, dug through the town to help the people. They called it the K.D. Canal. But when this Magistrate was replaced by another, the latter could not tolerate the fact that my father was so loved and admired, so he had him transferred. It was this sort of prejudiced behaviour... I brought it and said to Sri Aurobindo, "This one letter will be enough to describe your student days to the children, Sir." I began to read it aloud: 'I am sorry to hear what you tell. me about Ghose, that he has been rejected in his final I.C.S. Examination for failure in riding. His conduct throughout his two years here was most exemplary. He held a foundation scholarship, which he obtained by ...
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