Social reform : Sri Aurobindo: Reform is not an excellent thing in itself as many Europeanised intellects imagine; neither is it always safe & good to stand unmoved in the ancient paths as the orthodox obstinately believe. Reform is sometimes the first step to the abyss, but immobility is the most perfect way to stagnate & to putrefy. Neither is moderation always the wisest counsel: the mean is not always golden. It is often an euphemism for purblindness, for a tepid indifference or for a cowardly inefficiency. Men call themselves moderates, conservatives or extremists & manage their conduct & opinions in accordance with a formula. We like to think by systems & parties & forget that truth is the only standard. Systems are merely convenient cases for keeping arranged knowledge, parties a useful machinery for combined action; but we make of them an excuse for avoiding the trouble of thought. . . . One is repelled by the ignorant enthusiasm of [Hindu] social reformers. Their minds are usually a strange jumble of ill-digested European notions. Very few of them know anything about Europe, & even those who have visited it know it badly. But they will not allow things or ideas contrary to European notions to be anything but superstitious, barbarous, harmful & benighted, they will not suffer what is praised & practised in Europe to be anything but rational & enlightened. They are more appreciative than Occidentals themselves of the strength, knowledge & enjoyment of Europe; they are blinder than the blindest & most self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon to its weakness, ignorance & misery. . . . The social reformer repeats certain stock arguments like shibboleths. For these antiquities he is a fanatic or a crusader. Usually he does not act up to his ideas, but in all sincerity he loves them & fights for them. He pursues his nostrums as panaceas; it would be infidelity to question or examine their efficacy. His European doctors have told him that early marriage injures the physique of a nation, & that to him is the gospel. It is not convenient to remember that physical deterioration is a modern phenomenon in India & that our grandparents were strong, vigorous & beautiful. He hastens to abolish the already disappearing nautchgirl, but it does not seem to concern him that the prostitute multiplies. Possibly some may think it a gain that the European form of the malady is replacing the Indian! . . . . At the present moment all societies are in need of reform, the Parsi, Mahomedan & Christian not a whit less than the Hindu which alone seems to feel the need of radical reformation. . . . Unknown to men the social revolution prepares itself, & it is not in the direction they think, for it embraces the world, not India only. Whether we like it or not, He will sweep out the refuse…. But the broom is not always sufficient; sometimes He uses the sword in preference. It seems probable that it will be used, for the world does not mend itself quickly, & therefore it will have violently to be mended. . . . But…how shall we determine the principles that are particular to the nature of the community & the nature of the Age? There is such a thing as yugadharma, the right institutions & modes of action for the age in which we live. For action depends indeed on the force of knowledge or will that is to be used, but it depends, too, on the time, the place & the vessel. Institutions that are right in one age are not right in another. Replacing social system by social system, religion by religion, civilisation by civilisation God is perpetually leading man onwards to loftier & more embracing manifestations of our human perfectibility…. [CWSA Vol.12: 50-55; s/a The Yuga(s)]
... that the Moderate programme needs revision. Moderation is defined by this authority as a desire to preserve the British Raj until social reform has Page 370 accomplished itself, for the reason that an indigenous Government is not likely to favour social reform so much as the present rulers do. The Reformer would therefore like the Moderate programme to be modified in order to tally with... a free nation at present. Nor can we believe that the present system is favourable to social reconstruction or that self-government would be fatal to it. The reverse is the case. Of course, if social reform means the destruction of everything old or Hindu because it is old or Hindu, the continuance of the present political and mental dependence on England and English ideals is much to be desired by ...
... decide and act; He determines the fruit, and whatever He determines is good. He is already determining it. Men have long been troubling themselves about social reform and blameless orthodoxy, and orthodoxy has crumbled without social reform being effected. But all the time God has been going about India getting His work done in spite of the talking. Unknown to men the social revolution prepares... 1910-1913 Essays Divine and Human Social Reform Reform is not an excellent thing in itself as many Europeanised intellects imagine; neither is it always safe and good to stand unmoved in the ancient paths as the orthodox obstinately believe. Reform is sometimes the first step to the abyss, but immobility is the most perfect way to stagnate and ...
... words, "The art of Italy will flourish on our graves." No great work can be done by a community which is diseased at the centre or deprived of a centre. The hope of social reform divorced from political freedom, unless by social reform we mean the aping of European habits of life and social ideas, is an illogical hope which ignores the nature of social life and the conditions of its well-being. All... regeneration. This is a truism which we have been obliged to dwell on because there are still remnants of the first delusive teachings which have done so much harm to India by trying to realise social reform without providing the element in which alone any reform is possible. To recover possession of the State is therefore the first business of the awakened Indian consciousness. If this is so, then... be done now. It is the first condition of life which must be satisfied if the nation is to survive. On this the whole energies of the people must be concentrated and no other will-o'-the-wisp of social reform, moral regeneration, educational improvement ought to be allowed to interfere with the stupendous, single-souled effort which can alone effect the political salvation of the country. No reasonable ...
... intellect. If these greater things are decided, as they must be, the smaller will arrange themselves____ Men have long been troubling themselves about social reform and blameless orthodoxy, and orthodoxy has crumbled without social reform being effected. But all the time God has been going about India getting His work done in spite of the talking. Unknown to men the social revolution prepares ...
... one ought to be able to extract beauty equally well out of morality or social reform or a political caucus or allow at least that all these things can, if he wills, become legitimate subjects for the artist. Here, too, one cannot say that it is on condition he thinks of beauty only and does not make moralising or social reform or a political idea his main object. For if with that idea foremost in ...
... Page 644 its past; it worked by a more strenuous and popular propaganda which reached its height in the organisation of the Shivaji and the Ganapati festivals. His separation from the social reform leader, Agarkar, had opened the way for the peculiar role which he has played as a trusted and accredited leader of conservative and religious India in the paths of democratic politics. It was this... to break existing institutions and get a clear field for innovations which is the natural delight of the revolutionary temperament. This character of Mr. Tilak's mind explains his attitude in social reform. He is no dogmatic reactionary. The Maratha people are incapable of either the unreasoning or too reasoning rigid conservatism or of the fiery iconoclasm which can exist side by side,—they are often... the clear perception that the political movement could not afford to cut itself off from the great mass of the nation or split itself up into warring factions by a premature association of the social reform question with politics. The proper time for Page 650 that, a politician would naturally feel, is when the country has a free assembly of its own which can consult the needs or carry ...
... Social Reform. Circa 1912. The first nine paragraphs were typewritten. Sri Aurobindo subsequently added five handwritten paragraphs to the last typed sheet. (These paragraphs are difficult to read and parts have been lost through mutilation of the manuscript.) The passage beginning "We are Hindus" was written separately and headed "For Social Reform'". Sri Aurobindo left no... Section Two (1910-1913) Manuscripts of six of these essays —"The Sources of Poetry", "The Interpretation of Scripture", "On Original Thinking", "The Balance of Justice", "Social Reform" and "The Claims of Theosophy"—were typed in or around 1912 using the same typewriter and the same sort of paper. The other seven essays are related to the typed ones by subject or date or both ...
... married before puberty, imprisoned in purdah, and murdered at widowhood by a barbaric custom of immolation known as sati. One has only to read Page 26 Rammohun's works on social reform to realize that most of it deals with one aspect or another of man's inhumanity towards women in Bengal. The conclusion is that only by freeing women and by treating them as human beings could Indian... he set up his own press at Rajahmundry. He launched Satihitabobhini, a special magazine for women. Through it, he enlightened women about their rights. He organised the Rajahmundry Social Reform Association in 1878. Initially, it concentrated on the anti-nautch movement to discourage the hire of nautch girls for celebration, but later concentrated on widow remarriage. He organised... Kandukuri Veeraselingam Pantulu: 'He constructed the first Brahmo Mandir in the Andhra country at Rajahmundry in 1887, he constructed a Widows' Home, a two storied building and a similar one for the Social Reform Association at Madras; he started the first theistic high school, the Hithakarini School at Rajahmundry in 1908; during the same year he willed away all his property for the benefit of Rajahmundry ...
... for urgent social reform (like the abolition of sati), his founding of the Brahmo Samaj, and his success in starting a dialogue with the British ruling class — a dialogue conducted with authority and responsibility as well as mutual esteem and regard. Rammohan was truly an Olympian figure, and he inaugurated, in Mahendranath Sircar's words, "a new revival in culture, in social reform and in religious... the English course to counteract their influence. 30 Page 14 Vidvasagar was a giant among men, and his burning humanism shot out in many directions of religious, educational and social reform. But his formula of enlightenment plus unorthodoxy was not capable of easy realisation, not certainly in mid-nineteenth century. Study in missionary schools often led to conversion, and the ...
... extension one ought to be able to extract beauty equally well out of morality or social reform or a political caucus or allow at least that all these things can, if he wills, become legitimate subjects for the artist. Here too one cannot say that it is on condition he thinks of beauty only and does not make moralising or social reform or a political idea his main object. For if with that idea foremost in his ...
... of the Britisher, who was inclined to treat us as untouchables. "Fail in this moral and humane duty," said Gandhi in effect, "and you do not merit to be set free. Social reform must go hand in hand with work for Swaraj: without social reform Swaraj is not worth a straw!" Can Non-violence be the Master Ideal? Nor is the attack on the pariah system the sole distinguishing mark of Gandhi ...
... was enjoying every word that he was speaking and learning something very useful. He continued: "Just as there is no profession of thinking in our society, even so there is no profession of social reform either. If you become a social reformer, as some must, you have to consent to the life of poverty and starvation. That's a pity, but that is how our society is structured. In any case, I had begun... action?" "Very interesting. Tell me a little more about your questions," said Balwant. Page 84 "But I want to hear you first. You were telling me about your Ph.D., your love for social reform, your diagnosis of world problems, your solutions, and your determination to work on children. All this is extremely interesting. Tell me all about your work and then about your meeting with Gurudev ...
... the English poets. And last of all came the generation formed in the schools of Keshab Chandra Sen and Kristo Das Pal, with its religious shallowness, its literary sterility and its madness in social reform. Servile imitators of the English, politicians without wisdom and scholars without learning, they have no pretensions to greatness or originality. Before they came the first mighty impulse had spent ...
... but are now under the auspices of Western civilisation almost entirely replaced by a growing class of professional prostitutes, an inevitable consummation which it seems hardly worth while to dub social reform & accelerate by an active crusade. The Opsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers & actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous & worldlong struggle of the Gods ...
... before any of these undertakings and enterprises, which I have mentioned, can succeed, India must be thoroughly awakened. Understand what this means. It means action. There is no reality in our social reform, our political progress, our industrial revival, because, as you know, there is scarcely one of us who dares to act even in his own household. You complain of an over-centralised Government, ...
... will, all your resolution, all your aspiration and intensity, it will surely come. But it is not merely a matter of ameliorating the world. There are people who clamour for change of government, social reform and philanthropic work, believing that they can thereby make the world better. We want a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must be—and the sooner ...
... will, all your resolution, all your aspiration and intensity, it will surely come. But it is not merely a matter of ameliorating the world. There are people who clamour for change of government, social reform and philanthropic work, believing that they can thereby make the world better. We want a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth Consciousness. And it will be, it must be—and the sooner ...
... starving us to death as a nation. We professed notions of equality, and separated ourselves from the people, of democracy, and were the servants of absolutism. We pattered off speeches & essays about social reform, yet had no idea of the nature of a society. We looked to sources of strength and inspiration we could not reach and left those untapped which were ours by possession and inheritance. We knew so ...
... experience, perceive the limitations of this weapon and, if not for the possible evil consequence of creating still greater disaffection, yet for its barren inutility, renounce its excessive use. Social Reform and Politics There are two methods of progress, two impelling motives from which great changes and far-reaching reforms can be effected. One is the struggle of selfish interests between man and ...
... came back, for even so high-caste a Brahmin as Purun Dass lost caste by cross-ing the black sea. He was given honorary degrees by learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of Hindu social reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all Lon-don cried, "This is the most fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since cloths were first laid!' Page 20 When he returned ...
... school, at least in regard to subjects which interested him. He grew into a young man with radical views who joined with other young men of Zurich in a "society " advocating widespread political and social reform. (It should be remembered that Zurich was a city-state at the time, strictly controlled by a few dominant families where a large number of inhabitants were deprived of political rights.) Pestalozzi ...
... live. First, therefore, the care of the body, time enough for the soul afterwards. First this world, then the rest." "Why not a little division of labour?" I told the group. "You keep to your social reform or revolution, if you please; your physical culture and your secular pursuits. Spare us from these. Why not leave us to go ahead with another kind of aim and work? After all, we do not mind your ...
... better use of your keen talents? Write constructively. For example, you could give suggestions for improving the lamentable Page 96 conditions of our jails, or other similar themes of social reform.' What a piece of advice! But indeed I have often been given advice such as this by our Moderate leaders. Some of them used bitter or sarcastic language, others a sweeter turn of phrase - but the ...
... express better and better the Divine's Will and the splendour of its purpose on earth. "It is not merely a matter of ameliorating the world. There are people who clomour for change of government, social reform and philanthropic work, believing that they can thereby make the world better. We want a new world, a true world, an expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must be—and the sooner ...
... ors' —the charge of any conspiracy to murder Mr. Ashe, be it noted, broke down in the course of the trial and was abandoned by the Government—had with them copies of a harmless love poem and a social reform novelette written by me. It must also be mentioned that the particular men in whose possession these books were found were acquitted by the Court as nothing could be found to connect them with even ...
... several books of her father's work. Page 93 Book 1882 has this to report: "After Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose had joined the Bhagalpur Brahmo Samaj it received a strong impetus to work social reform. This was mainly directed towards the improvement of women.... In fact such was the attention bestowed by the Bhagalpur Brahmika Society to the improvement of ladies that in some quarters their ...
... nevertheless only begun its work and has many more fields to conquer. Calcutta is yet a stronghold of the Philistines; officialdom is honeycombed with the antinational tradition: in politics and social reform the workings of the new movement are yet obscure. The Anglicised Babu sits in the high place and rules the earth for a season. It is he who perorates on the Congress, who frolics in the abysmal ...
... not therefore expect immunity for the actions which render him a danger to the State. Now, Lajpat Rai devoted himself to politics in the very same spirit as he devoted himself to religious and social reform. His Page 551 whole aim was to assist the healthy and free development of this ancient nation and its distinctive civilization. If he subordinated his social and religious activity for ...
... development, for a time only; but the nation instead of progressing, sank into a very slough of weakness, helplessness and despondency. Political freedom is the life-breath of a nation; to attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming first and foremost at political freedom, is the very height of ignorance and futility. Such attempts are ...
... nor British peace, nor railways, nor telegraphs, nor anything else that God can give or man bestow can compensate for the loss of the very basis of individual and national strength and character. Social reform? What reform can there be of a society of lay figures who pretend to be men? Industrial progress? What will be the use of riches which may be taken from us at any Page 378 time by the ...
... pursued us into our relations with our own countrymen. The same dry rot of insincerity vitiated all our public action and even our private lives, making a farce of our politics, a comedy of our social reform, and turning us from men into masks. The strenuous attempt to live what we believed, which was the result of the ancient Indian discipline, left the educated class altogether and a gulf was placed ...
... life is a growth of the soul out of the darkness towards the Light. But our attitude is that humanity cannot grow out of its limitations by the ordinary means adopted by the human mind, politics, social reform, philanthropy, etc.,—these can only be temporary or local palliatives. The only true escape is a change of consciousness, a change into a greater, wider and purer way of being, and a life and action ...
... national life. And, therefore, if you succeed Page 243 in the attempt to throw off your religion and take up either politics or society, the result will be that you will become extinct. Social reform and politics have to be preached through the vitality of your religion... Every man has to make his own choice; so has every nation. We made our choice ages ago. And it is the faith in an Immortal ...
... scientific investigation and looked forward with an enthusiastic optimism to a coming era of wonderful achievement in the mechanic art, technology, medicine, as well as in the field of political and social reform. Page 232 Modern philosophy, in its beginnings, breathed the spirit of the modem times, the characteristic of which we have endeavoured to describe. It was independent in its search ...
... musicians in the Ashram. (Laughter) PURANI: Professor Indra Sen, who has come for the Philosophical Conference at Madras, says that nowadays anybody who has written on any subject, economics, social reform, is being called a philosopher. Gandhi and Tagore are being called philosophers. SRI AUROBINDO: Karl Marx is also a philosopher and all the communists too. PURANI: Yes. Indra Sen is asking ...
... the germ of which was very much in Tilak's ideology, VOC's politics kept clear of it. He continued to play a part in the nationalist movement, labour movement, the non-Brahmin movement and the social reform movements. When VOC died 18 November 1936 no obituary or tribute failed to mention his closeness to Tilak. AR Venkatachalapathy is a historian and Tamil writer. chalapathy@mids ...
... steadfast in considering itself as a separate unit. Surendranath Banerjea was president of the Indian National Congress twice, in 1895 and 1902. He was an ardent advocate of social reform including widow remarriage and the raising of the age of marriage of girls. Born on 19 November 1848, Surendranath Banerjea had his early education in Calcutta. He appeared for the Indian ...
... situation in the post-1857 period was modern education. As already seen, he founded the college at Aligarh and schools at various places; he launched the Tahzib al Akhlaq to bring about moral and social reform; he fought against the prevalent feeling of despondency and resignation. And, "Aligarh, with all the forces it organized", to quote Kraemer, became "the starting point of a slow awakening of the ...
... h Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, and a few others evoked various powers of the soul of India and considerably helped the expansion and enrichment of her culture. In the field of politics and social reform, there came a glorious band of dynamic personalities, all impelled by the overmastering urge to serve the motherland and raise the nation to the manifold greatness of its destiny. And yet, when ...
... First, therefore, the care of the body, time enough for the soul afterwards. First this world, then the rest." "Why not a little division of labour?" I told the group. "You keep to your social reform or revolution, if you please. Your physical culture and your secular pursuits. Spare us from these. Why not leave us to go ahead with another kind of aim and work? After all, we do not mind your ...
... the last century, when he was serving in the Baroda State, was of the "prevailing mood of apathy and despair". Except for the anglomaniacs who peacock about in borrowed feathers and tinkered at social reform, and the Congress Moderates with their goodly begging bowls, Bengal was sunk in tamas. It lay supine under the heels of the British Raj. Sri Aurobindo wanted to rouse it into activity, to infuse ...
... for example in a passage like the following: Page 184 Calcutta is yet a stronghold of the Philistines; officialdom is honey-combed with the antinational tradition: in politics and social reform the workings of the new movement are yet obscure... [but] already we see the embryo of a new generation soon to be with us, whose imagination Bankim has caught and who care not for Keshab Chandra ...
... quite agree with you that our social fabric will have to be considerably altered before long. We shall have, of course, to enlarge our family and social life, not in the petty spirit of present-day Social Reform, hammering at small details and belittling our immediate past, but with a larger idea and more generous impulses. Our past with all its faults and defects should be sacred to us. But the claims ...
... will, all your resolution, all your aspiration and intensity, it will surely come. But it is not merely a matter of ameliorating the world. There are people who clamour for change of government, social reform and philanthropic work, believing that they can thereby make the world better: We want a new world, a true world, and expression of the Truth-Consciousness. And it will be, it must be,—and ...
... are only three or four. But the supreme dramatic genius has found out this secret of femineity. Shakespeare had it to any degree, and in our own century Meredith, and among ourselves Bankim. The social reformer, gazing, of course, through that admirable pair of spectacles given to him by the Calcutta University, can find nothing excellent in Hindu life, except its cheapness, or in Hindu woman, except... heart of emotion, her steadfastness, tenderness and lovableness, in fact, her woman's soul; and all this we find burning in his pages and made diviner by the touch of a poet and an artist. Our social reformers might learn something from Bankim. Their zeal at present is too little ruled by discretion. They are like bad tailors very clever at spoiling the rich stuffs given over to their shaping but quite... defects, had in it some supreme possibilities, they have turned out a soulless and superficial being fit only for flirtation, match-making and playing on the piano. They seem to have a passion for reforming every good thing out of existence. It is about time this miserable bungling should stop. Surely it would be possible, without spoiling that divine nobleness of soul, to give it a wider culture and ...
... minority of Anglophiles the whole of India has learned to honour the name of the great Mahratta leader and patriot. His social and religious views may not agree with those of the "enlightened", but we have yet to learn that the Congress platform is sacred to advanced social reformers, that the profession of the Hindu religion is a bar to leadership in its ranks. Mr. Tilak's only other offence is the ...
... he would far rather that Hinduism died than that Untouchability lived! Here is an hysterical rushing to extremes by a conscience hypersensitive to social inequalities. Here is deplorable forgetfulness of the truth that, though social reformism is a fine passion, it cannot be the centre and core of man's upward endeavour. The main purpose of true religion is a change of the merely human c... divine consciousness by a progressive practice of the presence of God. Only when that presence is inwardly realised can social pestilences like Untouchability be radically removed. Till then, sincere efforts must certainly be made to abolish them by means of brotherly social behaviour, but to believe that a sore like Untouchability renders all Hinduism corrupt and futile and that, without the... the help of the fundamental transformation of consciousness that is Yoga, the root and not only one or another outward form of social iniquity can be plucked out is to confuse morality with religion and to prove clearly that one lacks the burning essence of not only the Hindu religion but also of all religion - the mystical cry for the Eternal and the Infinite. Page 96 ...
... petulant upstarts who delight in wrecking and breaking for its own sake. The Bengalee calls upon the people to repudiate these traitors, and the Tribune of Lahore, the Indu Prakash and Social Reformer of Bombay, the Indian People of Allahabad have by this time swelled that cry. The principle that underlay our attempt to get Lajpat elected to the Presidential chair has not been appreciated ...
... rigidified into its present form. From historical times we have had religious reformers. Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc. do not care for castes. It was only under the impact of Western ideas that India began to have social reformers. From the time of Raja Rammohan Roy the Hindu society has had numerous social reformers. A few were great, many were not so great. The greater ones had to Page 375... December 1907. "Rich, poor, Brahmin, businessman, Shudra, Bengali, Mahratta, Punjabi, Gujarati, we all stayed, slept, ate together with a wonderful feeling of brotherhood." There is the secret of all social reforms: to evoke a feeling of brotherhood. Among the Madrasi Brahmins was the poet-cumjournalist Bharati. We have already seen that from his Benares days Bharati had rebelled against the way women... society. They looked closely at the myriad 'age-old' customs clogging the river of life. Were they really 'age-old' ? Did they really exist from the very beginning? The Reformers waded upstream to find out. They came to the source of social beginnings. And in our own time India had Sri Aurobindo. He found out. He saw. The originator of chaturvarna, or the four castes as it has come to be ...
... of knowledge) is really applicable to any one, it is justly applicable to him and him alone in the' whole range of human history. While our economists and politicians and educationists and social reformers like those of other countries of the world are groping in the dark for finding a solution to age-long human problems and have failed and are failing to find any solution, he had in a single line ...
... 23-October-1907 The Nagpur Nationalists are now being run down in every quarter for having failed to work in unison with the Moderates. The cause of rupture as disclosed by the Indian Social Reformer , a hostile critic of the Nationalist party, will convince every right-thinking man that the Nationalists had ample provocation for what is being denounced as a highly reprehensible conduct on ...
... The value of the evidence which so easily satisfied Mr. Swinhoe may be judged from its inaccuracy and triviality. Pandit Bhoje Dutt is not a political agitator, but a religious preacher and social reformer; the proposed lecture had nothing to do with the Mahomedans and was upon the Hindu Puranas, and there was no breach of peace or any approach to a breach of the peace at Monghyr. So much for the ...
... attitude seems to be that we must be either entirely for caste as it at present exists or entirely against the institution and condemn it root and branch in the style of the ordinary unthinking social reformer. Because on the one hand we protested against the ignorant abuse of the institution often indulged in simply because it is different in form and spirit from European institutions, and on the other... without which the other castes could not perform their share of labour for the common good. This was what we meant when we said that caste was a socialistic institution. No doubt there was a gradation of social respect which placed the function of the Brahmin at the summit and the function of the Sudra at the base, but this inequality was accidental, external, vyavaharika . Essentially there was, between... see set right. The institution must transform itself so as to fulfil its essential and permanent object under the changed conditions of modern times. If it refuses to change, it will become a mere social survival and crumble to pieces. If it transforms itself, it will yet play a great part in the fulfilment of civilisation. Our correspondent accuses us of attempting to corrupt society with the intrusion ...
... the European nations, the process of unification among whom took place at a much earlier and comparatively more nebular stage of their growth. This is a fact which our old school politicians and social reformers do not seem as yet to have had any time to think of, and we are not hopeful that even now, after it is pointed out to them, in the plainest language possible, they will have the Page 168 ... under the Editorship of Bipin Chandra Pal 6.Aug-15.Oct.1906 Bande Mataram Last Friday's Folly 17-September-1906 Even at the risk of being branded as social reactionaries, we must, we feel, enter our protest against the notions and ideals that lay, evidently, under the so-called national dinner, celebrated at the Albert Hall on Friday last. The function... notice of it. The folly of it lay in the idea that interdining was a necessary condition of nation building in India; and it deserves condemnation for propounding the foolish and suicidal ideal that social and religious differences must first of all be destroyed before India can ever hope to realise her own true civic life. Page 167 This is the Anglo-Indian and the British idea. It is the ...
... continue it till after midnight. And when I was in their midst the conversation would prolong itself much later than midnight. This discussion would embrace diverse subjects such as philosophy, social reforms, the changes that ought to take place in the manners and customs of Indian life, various yogic practices, the characteristic difference between Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and the traditional ones, etc ...
... made him a well-known figure all over India. These activities embraced a variety of spheres: education, literature, collections of all kinds, from matchbox labels to sculptures. He was also a social reformer. But above all, he was a devout Jain. My father, P. S. Nahar, was his fifth child of nine. My father wanted his children —we were eight —to have a broader education. To that end we were taken to ...
... girls were the most beautiful I have ever seen and all the children were remarkable specimens of humanity. You know the story of Akshay Maitra? NIRODBARAN: No. SRI AUROBINDO: He was a great social reformer. Once at a meeting he was holding forth against early marriage. After his speech, his father who was present got up and said, "The lecture was very interesting, but the lecturer is my son and was ...
... they were changing. The Hindu advanced more slowly because he was an Asiatic in a period of contraction, the Englishman more quickly because he was a European in a period of expansion. If our social reformers had understood this Indian characteristic, they might have revolutionised our society with comparatively small friction, but the parade of revolution which they made hampered their cause. Even... India the sanction is religious, in Europe it is social. In India a man dreaded spiritual impurity, in Europe he shrinks from the sneers and dislike of his class or his fellows. Social excommunication is always the ultimate penalty. Revolution But in Europe and India alike we seem to stand on the threshold of a vast revolution, political, social and religious. Whatever nation now is the first... Manu has disintegrated. What will replace it, is another matter. Samaj and Shastra Every Samaj must have its Shastra, written or unwritten. Where there is no Social Scripture, there is none the less a minute and rigid code of social laws binding men in their minutest actions. The etiquette of the European is no less binding than the minute scrupulosities of Manu or Raghunandan, and it is even ...
... Dhirendra Narayan Rao of Lalgola, Murshidabad, Bengal, and poet and friend of Dilipda. 42 . Keshav Chandra Sen (1838-1884) joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1857 and launched a dynamic program of social reforms. He was given the title of ‘Acharya’ in 1862 by Devendranath Tagore. He went on to form the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1878. 43 . King Antigonus (382 BCE-301 BCE), son of Philip and... constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such a revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social. 46 . Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934), an English clergyman, author, clairvoyant and prominent member of the Theosophical Society. 47 . Annie Besant (1847-1933), a prominent ...
... ourselves. We do not believe that by changing the machinery so as to make our society the ape of Europe we shall effect social renovation. Widow-remarriage, substitution of class for caste, adult marriage, intermarriages, interdining and the other nostrums of the social reformer are mechanical changes which, whatever their merits or demerits, cannot by themselves save the soul of the nation alive or... deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge,—that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced turning it to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism we find... spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma , the national religion ...
... Tamil, and Marathi which "he spoke better than Bengali," remarked his Bengali teacher Dinendra Kumar Roy. 1. Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar (1820-91), was an eminent educationist and social reformer. His Bengali prose works earned for him the title of father of Bengali prose literature. An orthodox Hindu, he refused to attend Government functions where his garb of dhoti, chaddar and slippers ...
... which holds that He has once for all manifested Himself in certain eternal and universal laws and has no other connection with the universe. This was the attitude definitely taken by the Indian Social Reformer when it ridiculed Sj. Aurobindo Ghose's Uttarpara speech. God does not speak to men through their inner selves in Yoga or otherwise, there is no way of communion between Him and humanity, there ...
... Posterity comes to crown with her praises the Makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a place-hunting politician nor on the narrow forehead of a noisy social reformer but on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali who never clamoured for place or for power, but did his work in silence for love of his work, even as nature does, and just because he had no aim... acting on the minds of the youths, exhorted me, from the moment I met him and for half an hour, to leave off such writing and take up some Congress work. He wished to entrust me with the work of jail reform. I was surprised and displeased at this unexpected demand and turned it down." Commented Dinendra K. Roy, "Justice Ranade failed to refute Sri Aurobindo's arguments." M. G. Ranade, a judge of the Bombay ...
... destroy. And destroy we must not unless we have a greater and more perfect thing to put in the place even of a crumbling and mouldering antiquity. To tear down Hindu society in the spirit of the social reformers or European society in the spirit of the philosophical or unphilosophical Anarchists would be to destroy order and substitute a licentious confusion. If we carefully remember these cautions, there... lost intellectual freedom and elasticity? By reversing, for a time at least, the process by which we lost it, by liberating our minds in all subjects from the thraldom to authority. That is not what reformers and the Anglicised require of us. They ask us, indeed, to abandon authority, to revolt against custom and superstition, to have free and enlightened minds. But they mean by these sounding recommendations... recommendations that we should renounce the authority of Sayana for the authority of Max Muller, the Monism of Shankara for the Monism of Haeckel, the written Shastra for the unwritten law of European social opinion, the dogmatism of Brahmin Pandits for the dogmatism of European scientists, thinkers and scholars. Such a foolish exchange of servitude can receive the assent of no self-respecting mind. Let us ...
... "selflessness", I must say! Instead of wandering away at night, becoming a beggar and an ascetic and spending six years aloof from suffering humanity, he would have set himself to introduce social reforms and build up charitable institutions and preach Wellsian Utopias. But Buddha wanted to heal the very heart of life's misery and not solely to patch up its external wounds. He wanted to ...
... strength. The aim of their labour lies beyond our ken and the methods they employ are inscrutable to our mind. We, who go by material performance and surface results, acclaim a scientist or a social reformer, a statesman or a political thinker, a religious preacher or an ethical teacher, whose achievements we can more or less assess and appreciate, but for those who work in union with the Master ...
... the annual Theosophical Convention met at Madras, seventeen Indian stalwarts of Page 32 national stature among its delegates had a conclave at the house of the great social reformer Raghunatha Rao and mooted the subject of a national forum. According to some, the idea of setting up a national body was mooted at an informal gathering among those assembled at Bombay to bid farewell... The First Revolts - Part 2 From 1844 onwards, the resistance to British supremacy manifested in the South in Madras Presidency at the political as well as social and religious levels. Of course this resistance was fitful. It was also moderate. Nevertheless, it was present. Newspapers and organizations like The Crescent, the Madras Native Association, ...
... way of writing. And what is this new paper, the Voice of India ? Disciple : It is edited by Natarajan who is also conducting the Social Reformer in Bombay. Page 19 Disciple : When he first started the Social Reformer he was called Nitrogen and therefore an inert, odourless and colourless gas ! Sri Aurobindo : Perhaps a very good description of him. ... the transferred departments also. These Reforms are very funny ! They can allow and withdraw whatever they like from the "transferred" subjects. It means they can do anything they like. Wonderful Reforms, Page 21 while the whole power is in the hands of Englishmen ! (Turning to Sri Aurobindo ) Do you remember what you said when the Reforms were proposed? You said : Everything given... give his opinion on the Montague Chelmsford Reforms. For a long time he avoided making any pronouncement. At last, when pressed again, he wrote an article in the New India on condition that his name should not be published. So the article appeared under the name of “an Indian Nationalist". In that article he said in effect : “the Reforms are like a Chinese-puzzle. Even a Chinese-puzzle ...
... better than what one is fitted for: besides, to help humanity one need not always be social-reformist. "Do you think," asks Rolland, "that the creative endeavours of art can't and don't prove a daily succour in our sorrows? A single symphony of Beethoven is certainly worth half a dozen social reforms... The first and paramount duty of the artist and the intellectual is to be true to his... above all keep the lamp burning in the shrine of inner perceptions — and must create whenever his daemon prompts him. This done, his surplus time and energy he may devote to the betterment of social conditions, as Goethe used to. He served society, but only during lulls in his creative inspiration... A man's duty is not done if he thinks only of his contemporaries - his neighbours: he has... drawn to her as iron to magnet. Her grace and charm and sweetness are necessary to our very existence." Elucidating the dissimilarity of the two sexes, Tagore declares that the personal and the social are more vividly real to the feminine nature, the masculine is inclined more towards impersonality and is in its dealing with the world more utilitarian than humanly intimate and understanding ...
... than what one is fitted for: besides, to help humanity one need not always be social-reformist. "Do you think," asks Page 169 Rolland, "that the creative endeavours of art can't and don't prove a daily succour in our sorrow? ,A single symphony of Beethoven is certainly worth half a dozen social reforms... The first and paramount duty of the artist and the intellectual is to be true... must above all keep the lamp burning in the shrine of inner perceptions - and must create whenever his daemon prompts him. This done, his surplus time and energy he may devote to the betterment of social conditions, as Goethe used to. He served society, but only during lulls in his creative inspiration... A man's duty is not done if he thinks only of his contemporaries - his neighbours: he has to take... is drawn to her as iron to magnet. Her grace and charm and sweetness are necessary to our very existence." Elucidating the dissimilarity of the two sexes, Tagore declares that the personal and the social are more vividly real to the feminine nature, the masculine is inclined more towards impersonality and is in its dealing with the world more utilitarian than humanly intimate and understanding. Another ...
... Bengali believed, if he believed at all—many do not believe—but if he believed at all, there was one thing about the Bengali, that he lived what he believed. If he was a Brahmo, or if he was a social reformer, no matter whether what he believed was true or not, but if he believed, he lived that belief. If he believed that one thing was necessary for the salvation of the country, if he believed that ...
... parallel move ments in India. On the one hand, there was an almost continuous growth of British power and domination in the political sphere. On the other, in the social, religious and cultural spheres there were far-reaching changes and reforms. Many a factor contributed to these changes but the most important was the impact of the new ideas and forces from the West as a result of the growth of education... Aurobindo's concluding assessment of Bankim Chandra: 'When Posterity comes to crown with her praises the Makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a noisy social reformer but on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali who never clamoured for place or for power but did his work in silence for love of his work even as nature does, and just because he had no aim but... work. He wanted me to take up the work of prison reform. I was astonished and unhappy at the unexpected suggestion and refused to undertake that work. I did not know then that this was a prelude to the distant future and that one day God himself would keep me in prison for a year and make me see the cruelty and futility of the system and the need for reform.' There was another remarkable series of articles ...
... Bengal. For, till then, he had had no opportunity to come into close contact with them. A fervent admirer of Bankim, he wrote in his essays on Bankim one year after his arrival in India: "The social reformer, gazing, of course, through that admirable pair of spectacles given to him by the Calcutta University, can find nothing excellent in Hindu life, except its cheapness, or in Hindu woman, except ...
... last century. There was not a single walk of life which did not have its giver of a new direction. Given the situation that prevailed in the country, most of these Pathfinders were reformers. Social reformer, religious reformer, scientist, educationist, industrialist and journalist, poet and artist, writer and politician . . . inexhaustible was India's power of life. Each Renovator was a man of various... ocean's heart after her long trek, came: — Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-91), the educationist. He was the great social reformer whose tireless effort made the Widow Marriage Act of 1856 possible. —Keshav Chandra Sen (1838-84) was a religious reformer. He founded the Brahmo Samaj. It was Kathiawar (Gujarat), that land of rocks and hills, whose fair and robust humanity... diplomats, born politicians, born fighters." -Mahadev Govind Ranade (1852-1904) was an economist, a reformer and an erudite scholar. He gave a new orientation to the country's reform movement. His wife, Ramabai Ranade (1862-1924) was a pioneer in promoting female education and social service by women. - Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1857-1920) embodied in himself, with a singular and eminent ...
... continue it till after midnighlt. And when I was in their midst the conversation would prolong itself much later than midnight. This discussion would embrace diverge subjects such as philosophy, social reforms, the changes that ought to take place in the manners and customs of Indian life, various yogic practices, the characteristic difference between Sri Aurobindo's yoga and the traditional ones, etc ...
... comes to crown with her praises the makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a place-hunting politician nor on the narrow forehead of a noisy social reformer but on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali [Bankim] who never clamoured for place or power, but did his work in silence for love of his work, even as nature does, and just because he had... neighbours, the French people have moved irresistibly towards a social and not a political development. 33 Sri Aurobindo then showed that if, like the British, we had laid the foundations of social collapse, we had also, like the French, learned to enact the drama of political incompetence. Our national effort, then, "must contract a social and popular tendency before it can hope to be great and fruitful... days if he meets with those who have studied with him he feels attracted towards them as to men with whom he has a natural brotherhood. This is the social effect I should like the Colleges and Universities of India also to exercise, to educate by social influences as well as those which are merely academical and to create the feeling among their pupils that they belong to the community, that they ...
... the spread of interests was commendably wide, it was nevertheless inevitable that the central accent should be on the developing political scene. Papers like the Bengalee and the Indian Social Reformer had chosen to ridicule Sri Aurobindo's Uttarpara speech and the tremendous revelations of his sadhana in prison. What could the Lord have appeared and spoken - actually spoken - to an under-trial... Swadeshi, and that was part of his religion! 13 As for the 'Minto-Morley' Reforms that were dangling in all their insubstantiality in the mid-air of political speculation, Sri Aurobindo had little doubt, with his intimate knowledge of the British people and the variety of their manufactures, that the Reforms belonged to the category of "Brummagem goods... a synonym for shoddy"; they would... the administration.... 15 But, then, there were the Moderates all agog with excitement in anticipation of the "coming Reforms". Any sporadic act of violence by an Indian - whether in England or in India - threw the Moderates into flutters of apprehension lest the Reforms should, after all, fail to materialise. Sri Aurobindo had thus to cross swords both with the bureaucracy and with the forces ...
... Arya Samaj. Dissatisfied with the watered-down Christianism of much of the mainly Bengali Brahmo Samaj and its offspring, he returned to the Vedas and the chief tenets of Hinduism, but kept the social reforms, so blatantly necessary for all to see, as part of his programme. The political and cultural situation at the time of Aravinda Ghose’s birth closely influenced the life of his parents. We know... find his opinion confirmed in Elisabeth Keesing’s biography of Inayat Khan, who hailed from Baroda: ‘This prince, Sayaji Rao III, reorganized the administration, even modernized his court, seriously reformed the system of justice, encouraged new industries, embellished the town with broad boulevards, and opened parks for his people from the suffocating alleys. For himself this maharajah built baroque-style... must also have been one of the first to sail through the recently opened Suez Canal]. To cross the ‘black waters’ in those days, in defiance of orthodox Hindu injunction, was to lose caste and invite social ostracism, but Krishna Dhan had no hesitation in running the risk … He came back to India a ‘pucca sahib’ [accomplished gentleman], determined to model himself on the British and throw away all Indian ...
... industrialists who had appointed me his adviser,—not for industrial enterprises, but for something else. He was Chairman of a number of charitable institutions, mostly devoted to education, health and social reforms. I was supposed to advise him on these matters. In that month of April, there was a Seminar at Geneva on "Modernising Management", and he was requested to preside over that Seminar. He had asked... have further advised that reason and will can be enlightened by the aid of two agencies : the agency of a greater and better mental knowledge and the agency of a new social machinery which will solve everything by the magic of the social machine cutting humanity into a better pattern. (iv) There is also a fourth set of advisers who believe that society can achieve cohesion only by means of one common... and this concerns the theme of this morning's argument," she said and began: Page 11 "That a fraction of the amounts that are going to be spent in 1967 on arms could finance economic, social, national and world programmes to an extent so far unimaginable is a notion within the grasp of the man in the street. Men, if they unite, are now capable of foreseeing and, to a certain point, determining ...
... continue it till after midnight. And when I was in their midst the conversation would prolong itself much later than midnight. This discussion would embrace diverse subjects such as philosophy, social reforms, the changes that ought to take place in the manners and customs of Indian life, various yogic practices, the characteristic difference between Sri Aurobindo's yoga and the traditional ones... This book Bejoykanta taught me. I did not consider him a teacher. The terms Guru, Acharya, teacher, instructor, preceptor were not current amongst us those days. All that we had been taught was social etiquette and hospitality, no one had given us any idea of modesty or humility or devotion. Amidst all these superficialities I approached the Mother with the help of Bejoykanta. My dumb heart... and carried on in the rush-light of the human mind. Sri Aurobindo had somehow put away from us all outer attractions, turned our gaze inwards and made it centre in him. Politics, patriotism and social welfare had no attraction for me. What can the outer activities express but only our inner imperfections so long as we do not change our consciousness and nature ? What use then being wholly absorbed ...
... continue it till after midnight. And when I was in their midst the conversation would prolong itself much later than midnight. This discussion would embrace diverge subjects such as philosophy, social reforms, the changes that ought to take place in the manners and customs of Indian life, various yogic practices, the characteristic difference between Sri Aurobindo's yoga and the traditional ones... house, This book Bejoykanta taught me. I did not consider him a teacher. The terms Guru, Acharya, teacher, instructor, preceptor were not current amongst us those days. All that we had been taught was social etiquette and hospitality; no one had given us any idea of modesty or humility or devotion. Amidst all these superficialities I approached the Mother with the help of Bejoykanta. My dumb heart at... and carried on in the rush-light of the human mind. Sri Aurobindo had somehow put away from us all outer attractions, turned our gaze inwards and made it centre in him. Politics, patriotism and social welfare had no attraction for me. What can the outer activities express but only our inner imperfections so long as we do not change our consciousness and nature? What use then being wholly absorbed ...
... সহবাসী আসামী ও কয়েদীদের প্রেমপূর্ণ আচরণে এবং রাজপুরুষদের এই সাম্যভাবে এই কারাবাসে হৃদয়ের মধ্যে সেই শুভদিনের পূর্ব্বাভাস লাভ করিয়া কতবার হর্ষান্বিত ও পুলকিত হইতাম ৷ সেদিন দেখিলাম পুনার “Indian Social Reformer” আমার একটী সহজ বােধগম্য উক্তি লইয়া বিদ্রূপ করিয়া বলিয়াছেন, “জেলে ভগবৎ-সান্নিধ্যের বড় ছড়াছড়ি হইল দেখিতেছি!” হায়, মানসম্ভ্রমান্বেষী অল্প বিদ্যায়, অল্প সদ্গুণে ৷ গর্ব্বিত মানুষের অহঙ্কার ...
... of Brahminical Smritis which outrage his sense of social justice. Page 364 He conveniently forgets, first, that the Smritis are not being followed today in practice, secondly, that Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, and the Congress and many other all-India organisations have been trying to carry into practice many social reforms, and thirdly, that Mahatma Gandhi has done more as a... opportunities for bringing out all the various intellectual and other energies which go to make up a man. And here is the side of collegiate institutions of which this Social Gathering especially reminds us, the force of the social life it provides in moulding the character and the mind. I think it will not be out of place, if in dwelling on this I revert to the great Universities of Oxford and... days if he meets with those who have studied with him he feels attracted towards them as to men with whom he has a natural brotherhood. This is the social effect 'I should like the Colleges and Universities of India also to exercise, to educate by social influences as well as those which are merely academicals and to create the feeling among their pupils that they belong to the community, that they ...
... nature is also directed from above, but the mental movement is not the chief one. What is the nature of Carpenter's illumination* ? *Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), English writer and social reformer whose later works express in particular a certain perception of the unity of all existence. It is difficult to say, I don't know him . But judging from his writing ... It does... would not be good that I should pay a visit to the Governor. He is said to be a kind man, with interest in theosophy. And I would like to say to him, diplomatically, that though he will not meet me in social gatherings my abstention only comes from the kind of studies I am pursuing. Let me consider that point. I will answer you later on. ( Later Barinda told me that I could go and visit the... Governor, who besides had asked for me. He received me quite sympathetically and asked me if I could possibly devote some time for giving lessons at the College. Not only does he excuse my abstention from social life but he approves of it. In short, interview successful. Saturday, August 28, 1926 I have been very busy outside with the examination; but, for the first time the contact with the ...
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