Out of the ruins of the West 


INDIA’S 



SRI AUROBINDO 








INDIA’S REBIRTH 


“I write, not for the orthodox, nor for those 
who have discovered a new orthodoxy, 
Samaj or Panth, nor for the unbeliever. I 
write for those who acknowledge reason 
but do not identify reason with Western 
Materialism; who are sceptics but not 
unbelievers; who, admitting the claims of 
modern thought, still believe in India, her 
mission, her gospel, her immortal life and 
her eternal rebirth.” 


Sri Aurobindo 
(c. 1911) 












Out of the ruins of the West... 


INDIA'S 

REBIRTH 


A selection from Sri Aurobindo’s 
writings, talks and speeches 


INSTITUT DE RECHERCHES EVOLUTIVES, Paris 
& MIRA ADITI, Mysore 





This book was prepared by a team of researchers under the direction 
of Sujata Nahar. Any profits arising from its sale will be entirely 
devoted to the spread of Sri Aurobindo’s vision of India and her 
future evolution. 

The publisher of this book, the Institut de Recherches Evolutives 
(" Institute for Evolutionary Research”), has published in France 
the 13 volumes of L'Agenda de Mere (Mother’s Agenda) and looks 
after the worldwide diffusion of Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's 
evolutionary experience. The co-publisher, Mira Aditi, looks after 
the same work in India and Asia. 

This selection was prepared from Sri Aurobindo’s works published 
by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India. 


Information addresses: 

— for Asia: 

Mira Aditi Centre 
62 ’Sriranga', 2 nd Main, I s * Cross 
T. K. Layout, Saraswatipuram 
Mysore 570 009, India 

— for America: _ 

Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Canada 
CP 41 Chambly 
QC 

J3L4B1 Canada 

— for Europe: 

Institut de Recherches Evolutives 
142, boulevard du Montparnasse 
75014 Paris, France 


Printed at Thomson Press, Faridabad, India 
ISBN 2-902776-47-0 & 81-85137-27-7 
First edition, August 1993 

SECOND EDITION, revised and enlarged, January 1997 



To India, 

the ancient Mother 


to Sri Aurobindo, 

who saw her reborn 


Editors' Note 


This book presents Sri Aurobindo's vision of India as it 
grew from his return from England in 1893, more than a hun¬ 
dred years ago, to his political days in the first decade of the 
century and finally to his forty-year-long withdrawal from 
public view during which he plunged into his "real work" of 
evolutionary action. 

This brief chronological selection from all that Sri Aurobindo 
said or wrote on India, her soul and her destiny, is by no means 
integral, but we trust it offers a sufficiently wide view of the 
lines of development Sri Aurobindo wished India to follow if 
she was to overcome the deep-rooted obstacles standing in the 
way of her rebirth. 

A few notes have been added to help put the excerpts into 
historical perspective, and a Chronology, list of references and 
Index have been provided at the end of the book. 

This second edition has been revised and enlarged. 



CONTENTS 


Editors’ Note . 5 

I. 1893—1910: Revolutionary Writings .... 7 

II. 1910—1922: Essays, Letters & Articles ... 83 

III. 1923-1926: Talks (1 st series) . 163 

IV. 1929-1938: Letters . 187 

V. 1938-1940: Talks (2 nd series) . 211 

VI. 1940—1950: Letters & Messages . 233 

Chronology . 256 

References . 260 

Index 


263 











I 


1893-1910 



(After thirteen years in England where he received a 
thoroughly Western education, Sri Aurobindo returned 
to India on February 6, 1893, at the age of twenty. 

Bankim Chatterji's Anandamath, which contained 
"Bande Mataram,” the hymn to the Motherland, had 
been published eleven years earlier. Swami Vivekananda 
had just come to the end of his first pilgrimage round 
India, and was preparing to sail for America. But it was 
going to take another dozen years for their call to their 
countrymen to find expression in the political field. For 
the present, the eight-year-old Indian National Congress, 
whose members were mostly drawn from the Anglicized 
upper classes of society, had full faith in British fair- 
mindedness and the "providential character” of British 
rule in India, and year after year swore its "unswerving 
allegiance to the British crown"; it was content with 
submitting petitions which were simply ignored by the 
Colonial rulers. There was another twelve years to go 
before the start of the open struggle for freedom in 1905, 
and twenty-five years before Mahatma Gandhi’s entry on 
the political scene in 1918. 

Sri Aurobindo was twenty-one when he wrote a series of 
nine articles, New Lamps for Old," in the Indu Prakash, 
a Marathi-English Bombay daily; in these articles, which 
had to be stopped following pressures on the newspaper’s 
editor, Sri Aurobindo took stock of the prevailing situa¬ 
tion and launched into a detailed and forceful criticism 
of the "mendicant policy"of the Congress. A few extracts:) 


August 7, 1893 

We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a 
fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our 
own machinery. 

* 

★ * 


9 



India’s Rebirth 


August 21, 1893 

Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, 
but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfish¬ 
ness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism. 

* 

* * 

August 28, 1893 

I say, of the Congress, then, this—that its aims are mistaken, 
that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplish¬ 
ment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and 
that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and 
the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be 
leaders;—in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not 
by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed. 

* 

* * 

December 4, 1893 

To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with 
grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are 
playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simul¬ 
taneous Examinations, * our ingenious schemes for separating 
the judicial from the executive functions,—while we, I say, are 
finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being 
stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which 
our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of 
convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated. 

* 

* * 


* References to two largely meaningless reforms that the Congress was at 
the time begging from the British rulers. 


10 



1900 


(On his return to India, Sri Aurobindo joined the 
Baroda State Service; from 1897 to early 1906 he 
taught French and English at the Baroda College, 
eventually becoming its principal. These years gave 
him a first-hand experience of the dismal condition of 
education in India and made him feel an acute need 
for a true national education.) 


Early 1900s (?) 

If the physical training it [the Indian University system] 
provides is contemptible and the moral training nil, the 
mental training is also meagre in quantity and worthless in 
quality.... In order for a student to get a degree let us make 
it absolutely necessary that he shall have a good education. 
If a worthless education is sufficient in order to secure this 
object and a good education quite unessential, it is obvious 
that the student will not incur great trouble and diversion of 
energy in order to acquire what he feels to be unnecessary. 
But change this state of things, make culture and true science 
essential and the same interested motive which now makes 
him content with a bad education will then compel him to 

strive after culture and true science_We in India have 

become so barbarous that we send our children to school 
with the grossest utilitarian motive unmixed with any disin¬ 
terested desire for knowledge; but the education we receive 
is itself responsible for this.... 

It is a fundamental and deplorable error by which we in 
this country have confused education with the acquisition of 
knowledge.... Amount of knowledge is in itself not of first 
importance, but to make the best use of what we know. The 
easy assumption of our educationists that we have only to 
supply the mind with a smattering of facts in each depart¬ 
ment of knowledge and the mind can be trusted to develop 
itself and take its own suitable road is contrary to science, 


11 




India's Rebirth 


contrary to human experience.... Much as we have lost as a 
nation, we have always preserved our intellectual alertness, 
quickness and originality; but even this last gift is threatened 
by our University system, and if it goes, it will be the begin¬ 
ning of irretrievable degradation and final extinction. 

The very first step in reform must therefore be to revolu¬ 
tionise the whole aim and method of our education. 1 * 

* 


Indian scholarship ... must clearly have one advantage 
[over the European], an intimate feeling of the language, a 
sensitiveness ... which the European cannot hope to possess 
unless he sacrifices his sense of racial superiority.... For to 
the European Sanskrit words are no more than dead counters 
which he can play with and throw as he likes into places the 
most unnatural or combinations the most monstrous; to the 
Hindu they are living things the very soul of whose tempera¬ 
ment he understands and whose possibilities he can judge to 
a hair. That with these advantages Indian scholars have not 
been able to form themselves into a great and independent 
school of learning is due to two causes, the miserable scanti¬ 
ness of the mastery in Sanskrit provided by our universities, 
crippling to all but born scholars, and their lack of a sturdy 
independence which makes us over-ready to defer to Euro¬ 
pean authority . 2 

* 

★ * 


* See references at the end of the book. 


12 



1905 


(From 1900 onward, Sri Aurobindo began contacting 
revolutionary groups in Maharashtra and Bengal, and 
tried to coordinate their action with the help of his 
brother, Barindra Kumar Ghose, and Jatindranath 
Banerjee; at Sri Aurobindo’s initiative, P. Mitter, 
Surendranath Tagore, Chittaranjan Das and Sister 
Nivedita soon formed the first secret council for revo¬ 
lutionary activities in Bengal. Although an effective 
coordination between the various groups remained 
elusive, some of them, such as P. Miner’s Anusilan 
Samiti, played a considerable part in spreading the 
Nationalist ideal. Their chief weapon was the estab¬ 
lishment of centres in numerous towns and villages, 
where young men were given intellectual, moral and 
physical training, and were inspired to work for India’s 
liberation. 

Around this time, Sri Aurobindo wrote Bhawani 
Mandir, a pamphlet "for, the revolutionary prepara¬ 
tion of the country." Thousands of copies of it were 
distributed clandestinely. A few excerpts:) 


1905 

India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, 
striving with agony and tears, but she strives in vain. What 
ails her, she who is after all so vast and might be so strong? 
There is surely some enormous defect, something vital is 
wanting in us, nor is it difficult to lay our finger on the spot. 
We have all things else, but we are empty of strength, void of 
energy. We have abandoned Shakti and are therefore aban¬ 
doned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts, in our 
brains, in our arms. 

The wish to be reborn we have in abundance, there is no 
deficiency there. How many attempts have been made, how 
many movements have been begun, in religion, in society, in 


13 



India’s Rebirth 


politics! But the same fate has overtaken or is preparing to 
overtake them all. They flourish for a moment, then the im¬ 
pulse wanes, the fire dies out, and if they endure, it is only as 
empty shells, forms from which the Brahma has gone or in 
which it lies overpowered with Tamas and inert. Our begin¬ 
nings are mighty, but they have neither sequel nor fruit. 

Now we are beginning in another direction; we have started 
a great industrial movement which is to enrich and regener¬ 
ate an impoverished land. Untaught by experience, we do not 
perceive that this movement must go the way of all the others, 
unless we first seek the one essential thing, unless we acquire 
strength. 

Is it knowledge that is wanting? We Indians, bom and bred 
in a country where Jnana has been stored and accumulated 
since the race began, bear about in us the inherited gains of 

many thousands of years_But it is a dead knowledge, a 

burden under which we are bowed, a poison which is corrod¬ 
ing us, rather than as it should be a staff to support our feet 
and a weapon in our hands; for this is the nature of all great 
things that when they are not used or are ill used, they turn 
upon the bearer and destroy him.... 

Is it love, enthusiasm, Bhakti that is wanting? These are 
ingrained in the Indian nature, but in the absence of Shakti 
we cannot concentrate, we cannot direct, we cannot even 
preserve it. Bhakti is the leaping flame, Shakti is the fuel. If 
the fuel is scanty how long can the fire endure?... 

The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that 
the one thing wanting, which we must strive to acquire 
before all others, is strength—strength physical, strength 
mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual 
which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all 
the others. If we have strength everything else will be added 
to us easily and naturally. In the absence of strength we are 
like men in a dream who have hands but cannot seize or 
strike, who have feet but cannot run.... 

If India is to survive, she must be made young again. Rushing 


14 



1905 


and billowing streams of energy must be poured into her; 
her soul must become, as it was in the old times, like the 
surges, vast, puissant, calm or turbulent at will, an ocean of 
action or of force. 

Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy 
demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, 
that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to 
recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish 
and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he 
chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately 
chooses extinction. 

For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is 
not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of 
the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of 
all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as 
Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti 
of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and 
welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, 
is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million 
people,* but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle 
of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her 
sons.... 

We have to create strength where it did not exist before; 
we have to change our natures, and become new men with 
new hearts, to be born again.... We need a nucleus of men 
in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in 
whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to 
fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their 
hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every 
nook and cranny of our land. 


* 


* * 


* The population of India, which at the time included present-day Pakistan 
and Bangladesh. 


15 



India’s Rebirth 


(From a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote in Bengali to his 
wife, Mrinalini Devi, in which he tried to explain to 
her the call he felt to work for his country’s freedom; 
this letter was seized by the police a few years later 
and produced as evidence in the Alipore Bomb Case.) 


August 30, 1905 

While others look upon their country as an inert piece of 
matter—a few meadows and fields, forests and hills and 
rivers—I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore Her, I 
worship Her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon 
sat on his mother’s breast and started sucking her blood?... 
I know I have the strength to deliver this fallen race. It is not 
physical strength—I am not going to fight with sword or gun 
—but the strength of knowledge_ 3 



1906 


(Alarmed by the rising force of Bengali feeling against British 
rule, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, partitioned Bengal in 1905. 
This faithful application of the "divide-and-rule" policy aimed 
both at breaking the growing political agitation in Bengal and 
at using the Muslim-dominated East Bengal as the thin end of 
a wedge between Hindus and Muslims—a policy that was to 
culminate in the partition of India forty years later. 

Bengal responded to its partition by massive and unanimous 
protests, in which many personalities took part, such as Rabin¬ 
dranath Tagore, Surendranath Banerji, Bepin Chandra Pal, 
Ashwini Kumar Dutt.... The ideal of Swadeshi, which called 
for the boycott of British goods, spread widely. 

In March, 1906, Barin Ghose with a few others started the 
fiery Bengali weekly, the Yugantar, to which Sri Aurobindo 
contributed several articles. In August, B. C. Pal launched the 
famous English daily, the Bande Mataram; Sri Aurobindo 
joined it and soon took up its editorship, side by side with his 
behind-the-scenes activities with, among others, Bal Gangadhar 
Tilak and Lola Lajpat Rai. 

Day after day till May, 1908, Sri Aurobindo used the pages 
of the Bande Mataram to breathe inspiration, force and clarity 
of purpose into the nascent Nationalist movement; his first 
preoccupation, in the face of fierce opposition from the British 
authorities, the self-righteous Anglo-Indian press and most of 
the Congress Moderates, was in his own words "to declare 
openly for complete and absolute independence as the aim of 
political action in India and to insist on this persistently in the 
pages of the journal; [Sri Aurobindo] was the first politician 
in India who had the courage to do this in public and he was 
immediately successful. The [Nationalist] party took up the 
word Swaraj to express its own ideal of independence and it 
soon spread everywhere.... The greatest thing done in those 
years was the creation of a new spirit in the country.” 4 The 
following passages are from the Bande Mataram.,) 


17 




India’s Rebirth 


September 1, 1906 

The true policy of the Congress movement should have 
been from the beginning to gather together under its flag all 
the elements of strength that exist in this huge country. The 
Brahman Pandit and the Mahomedan Maulavi, the caste organ¬ 
isation and the trade-union, the labourer and the artisan, the 
coolie at his work and the peasant in his field, none of these 
should have been left out of the sphere of our activities. For 
each is a strength, a unit of force; and in politics the victory 
is to the side which can marshal the largest and most closely 
serried number of such units and handle them most skilfully, 
not to those who can bring forward the best arguments or 
talk the most eloquently. 

But the Congress started from the beginning with a miscon¬ 
ception of the most elementary facts of politics and with its 
eyes turned towards the British Government and away from 
the people. 

* 

★ * 


September 4, 1906 

We objected so strongly to this measure [Bengal’s Parti¬ 
tion] because it was calculated to strike a serious blow at the 
political power of the Bengalee-speaking race. Our second 
objection was that it was professedly wanted by the Govern¬ 
ment to create a Mahomedan province with Dacca as its 
capital, and the evident object of it was to sow discord 
between the Hindus and the Mahomedans in a Province that 
had never known it in the whole history of the present 
British connection.... There is in [the present] agitation a 
consciousness of a new strength, the quickening of a new 
life, the inspiration of a new ideal. This agitation is not an 
agitation merely against Partition or against any other parti¬ 
cular measure of the Government_ The attainment of 


18 



1906 


absolute national autonomy,—it is this alone that will settle 
down this movement.... * 

The idea that by encouraging Mahomedan rowdyism, the 
present agitation may be put down, is preposterous; and 
those who cherish this notion forget that the bully is neither 
the strongest nor the bravest of men; and [they think] that 
because the self-restraint of the Hindu, miscalled cowardice, 
has been a prominent feature of his national character, he is 
absolutely incapable of striking straight and striking hard 
when any sacred situation demands this. Nor has it been 
proved even in recent British-concocted disputes between 
Hindus and Mahomedans in different parts of India, that 
the mild Hindu is so absolutely helpless and incapable of 
defending his rights and liberties as he is painted to be by his 
foreign enemies. 

* 

* * 


September 13, 1906 

The idea that the election of a Mahomedan President will 
conciliate the anti-Congress Mahomedans is a futility which 
has been repeatedly exposed by experience. 

* 


Ever since the birth of the Congress, those who have been 
in the leadership of this great National Movement have persis¬ 
tently denied the general public in the country the right of 
determining what shall and what shall not be said or done on 
their behalf and in their name. The delegates have been gath¬ 
ered from all parts of the country, not to deliberate upon 
public matters, but simply to lend their support to the deci¬ 
sions that had already been arrived at by secret conclaves of 
half a dozen men. 

* 


* This is one of the first times, if not the first, that an Indian had the 
courage to publicly call for India's complete independence. 


19 




India’s Rebirth 


December 31, 1906 

The leaders can only deserve reverence by acting in the 
spirit of the chief servants of their country and not in the 
spirit of masters and dictators. 

* 

* * 

April 5, 1907 

Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of 
the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for 
freedom. 

* 

* * 


April 8, 1907 

We reiterate with all the emphasis we can command that 
the Kshatriya of old must again take his rightful position in 
our social polity to discharge the first and foremost duty of 
defending its interests. The brain is impotent without the 
right arm of strength. 


April 13, 1907 

We should be absolutely unsparing in our attack on what¬ 
ever obstructs the growth of the nation, and never be afraid 
to call a spade a spade. Excessive good nature, chakshu lajja 
[the desire to be always pleasant and polite], will never do in 
serious politics. Respect of persons must always give place 
to truth and conscience; and the demand that we should be 
silent because of the age or past services of our opponents, 
is politically immoral and unsound. Open attack, unsparing 
criticism, the severest satire, the most wounding irony, are 
all methods perfectly justifiable and indispensable in politics. 


20 



1907 


We have strong things to say; let us say them strongly; we 
have stern things to do; let us do them sternly. But there is 
always a danger of strength degenerating into violence and 
sternness into ferocity, and that should be avoided so far as 
it is humanly possible. 


* 

* * 

April 16, 1907 

There are periods in the history of the world when the 
unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with 
a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of 
the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to 
take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These 
are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled 
with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the 
crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent 
revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and 
comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are 
periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the 
prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock_ 


The supreme service of Bankim [Chandra Chatterji] to his 
nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother.... It is 
not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind 
as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of indi¬ 
viduals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and 
Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the 
mind and seize the heart that ... the patriotism that works 
miracles and saves a doomed nation is born.... 

It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great 
song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening 
from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for 


21 




India’s Rebirth 


the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande 
Mataram. The Mantra had been given and in a single day a 
whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. 
The Mother had revealed herself. 


April 23, 1907 

Each nation must practise the political creed which is the 
most suited to its temperament and circumstances; for that 
is the best for it which leads most surely and completely to 
national liberty and national self-realisation. 


May 11, 1907 

In this grave crisis of our destinies let not our people lose 
their fortitude or suffer stupefaction and depression to seize 
upon and unnerve their souls. The fight in which we are 
engaged is not like the wars of old in which when the king or 
leader fell, the army fled. The King whom we follow to the 
wars today, is our own Motherland, the sacred and imperish¬ 
able; the leader of our onward march is the Almighty Himself, 
that element within and without us whom sword cannot slay, 
nor water drown, nor fire burn, nor exile divide from us, nor 
a prison confine. 

Let there be no fainting of heart and no depression, and 
also let there be no unforeseeing fury, no blindly-striking 
madness. We are at the beginning of a time of terrible trial. 
The passage is not to be easy, the crown is not to be cheaply 
earned. India is going down into the valley of the shadow of 
death, into a great horror of darkness and suffering. Let us 
realise that what we are now suffering, is a small part of 


22 



1907 


what we shall have to suffer, and work in that knowledge, 

with resolution, without hysteria_The first need at the 

present moment is courage, a courage which knows not how 
to flinch or shrink. 


* 


* * 


May 23, 1907 

Where the will of a higher Power is active in a great 
upheaval, no individual is indispensable. 

* 

* * 

May 28, 1907 

We have to fill the minds of our boys from childhood with 
the idea of the country, and present them with that idea at 
every turn and make their whole young life a lesson in the 
practice of the virtues which afterwards go to make the patriot 
and the citizen. If we do not attempt this, we may as well give 
up our desire to create an Indian nation altogether; for with¬ 
out such a discipline nationalism, patriotism, regeneration 
are mere words and ideas which can never become a part of 
the very soul of the nation and never therefore a great realised 
fact. Mere academical teaching of patriotism is of no avail. 

* 

* * 

June 7, 1907 

What India needs especially at this moment is the aggres¬ 
sive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, 
fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the passive tamasic 
spirit of inertia we have already too much. We need to culti¬ 
vate another training and temperament, another habit of 


23 



India’s Rebirth 


mind. We would apply to the present situation the vigourous 
motto of Danton, that what we need, what we should learn 
above all things is to dare and again to dare and still to dare. 


June 19, 1907 

Apart from the natural attachment which every man has 
to his country, its literature, its traditions, its customs and 
usages, patriotism has an additional stimulus in the acknowl¬ 
edged excellence of a national civilisation. If Britons love 
England with all her faults, why should we fail to love India 
whose faults were whittled down to an irreducible minimum 
till foreign conquests threw the whole society out of gear? 
But instead of being dominated by the natural ambition of 
carrying the banner of such a civilisation all over the world, 
we are unable to maintain its integrity in its own native 
home. This is betraying a trust. This is unworthiness of the 
worst type. We have not been able to add anything to this 
precious bequest; on the contrary we have been keeping 
ourselves and generations yet unborn from a full enjoyment 
of their lawful heritage.... 

According to Sidgwick,* physical expansion proceeds from 
a desire for spiritual expansion and history also supports the 
assertion. But why should not India then be the first power 
in the world? Who else has the undisputed right to extend 
spiritual sway over the world? This was Swami Vivekananda’s 
plan of campaign. India can once more be made conscious of 
her greatness by an overmastering sense of the greatness of 
her spirituality. This sense of greatness is the main feeder of 


* A writer who, defending British imperialism, spoke of "the justifiable pride 
which the cultivated members of a civilised community feel in the beneficent 
exercise of dominion and in the performance by their nation of the noble task 
of spreading the highest kind of civilisation [sic!]." 


24 




1907 


all patriotism. This only can put an end to all self-depreciation 
and generate a burning desire to recover the lost ground. 

* 

* * 


June 22, 1907 

He [a leader in Bengal] has not the qualities of a politician 
—robustness, backbone, the ability to will a certain course 

of action and the courage to carry it out_No man who 

shrinks from struggle or is appalled by the thought of aggres¬ 
sion can hope to seize and lead the wild forces that are rising 
to the surface in twentieth-century India. 

* 

* * 


July 3, 1907 

The East is more ancient by many thousands of years than 
the West, but a greater length of years does not necessarily 

imply a more advanced age_Asia is long-lived, Europe brief, 

ephemeral. Asia is in everything hugely mapped, immense and 
grandiose in its motions, and its life-periods are measured 
accordingly. Europe lives by centuries, Asia by millenniums. 
Europe is parcelled out in nations, Asia in civilisations. The 
whole of Europe forms only one civilisation with a common, 
derived and largely second-hand culture; Asia supports three 
civilisations, each of them original and of the soil. Everything 
in Europe is small, rapid and short-lived; she has not the 
secret of immortality. 

★ 

★ * 


July 25, 1907 

Spiritual power in the present creates material power in 
the future and for this reason we always find that if it is 


25 



India's Rebirth 


material force which dominates the present, it is spiritual 
which moulds and takes possession of the future.... 

Since the spiritual life of India is the first necessity of the 
world’s future, we fight not only for our own political and 
spiritual freedom but for the spiritual emancipation of the 

human race_For it is not among an enslaved, degraded 

and perishing people that the Rishis and great spirits can 

continue to be bom. 

\ 

* 

* * 



1907 


(On August 15, 1906, a few days after the start of the 
Bande Mataram, the Bengal National College had 
opened in Calcutta with Sri Aurobindo as its Princi¬ 
pal; it was one of the first experiments in the search 
for a true national education. Its foundation had been 
made possible by the generous financial assistance of 
Subodh Mullick, one of Sri Aurobindo's collaborators 
in his secret action. In spite of his charge of the Bande 
Mataram, Sri Aurobindo found time to teach Indian 
history and geography, English history, political 
science, as well as French, German and English.... 

A year later, on August 16, 1907, the British govern¬ 
ment, alarmed by the spread and impact of the Bande 
Mataram, arrested Sri Aurobindo under a sedition law; 
he had turned thirty-five the day before. He owed his 
acquittal a month later to the government's failure to 
prove that he was the editor of the dreaded journal. It 
was then that Rabindranath Tagore wrote his famous 
poem to Sri Aurobindo, whom he saluted as "the voice 
incarnate, free, of India’s soul." 

A few days after his arrest, Sri Aurobindo, released 
on bail, resigned his post of Principal of the Bengal 
National College. A few excerpts from a speech he 
delivered before the students and teachers, who had 

assembled to express their "heart-felt sympathy.") 


August 23, 1907 

When we established this college and left other occupa¬ 
tions, other chances of life, to devote our lives to this institu¬ 
tion, we did so because we hoped to see in it the foundation, 
the nucleus of a nation, of the new India which is to begin its 
career after this night of sorrow and trouble, on that day of 
glory and greatness when India will work for the world. What 


27 



India's Rebirth 


we want here is not merely to give you a little information, 
not merely to open to you careers for earning a livelihood, 
but to build up sons for the Motherland to work and to suffer 
for her. That is why we started this college and that is the 
work to which I want you to devote yourselves in future. 
What has been insufficiently and imperfectly begun by us, it 
is for you to complete and lead to perfection. When I come 
back I wish to see some of you becoming rich, rich not for 
yourselves but that you may enrich the Mother with your 
riches. I wish to see some of you becoming great, great not 
for your own sakes, not that you may satisfy your own vanity, 
but great for her, to make India great, to enable her to stand 
up with head erect among the nations of the earth, as she did 
in days of yore when the world looked up to her for light. 
Even those who will remain poor and obscure, I want to see 
their very poverty and obscurity devoted to the Motherland. 
There are times in a nation’s history when Providence places 
before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, how¬ 
ever high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time 
has now arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer 
than her service, when everything else is to be directed to 

that end_Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may 

rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice. 

* 

* * 


September 22, 1907 

Caste was originally an arrangement for the distribution of 
functions in society, just as much as class in Europe, but the 
principle on which the distribution was based in India was 
peculiar to this country.... A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by 
mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving 
the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he 
had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the 
spiritual training which could alone qualify him for the task. 


28 


1907 


The Kshatriya was a Kshatriya not merely because he was 
the son of warriors and princes, but because he discharged 
the duty of protecting the country and preserving the high 
courage and manhood of the nation, and he had to cultivate 
the princely temperament and acquire the strong and lofty 
Samurai training which alone fitted him for his duties. So it 
was with the Vaishya whose function was to amass wealth 
for the race and the Sudra who discharged the humbler duties 
of service without which the other castes could not perform 
their share of labour for the common good.... Essentially 
there was, between the devout Brahmin and the devout Sudra, 
no inequality in the single virat purusa [Cosmic Spirit] of 
which each was a necessary part. Chokha Mela, the Maratha 
Pariah, became the Guru of Brahmins proud of their caste 
purity; the Chandala taught Shankaracharya; for the Brahman 
was revealed in the body of the Pariah and in the Chandala 
there was the utter presence of Shiva the Almighty.... 

Caste therefore was not only an institution which ought to 
be immune from the cheap second-hand denunciations so long 
in fashion, but a supreme necessity without which Hindu 
civilisation could not have developed its distinctive character 
or worked out its unique mission. 

But to recognise this is not to debar ourselves from pointing 
out its later perversions and desiring its transformation. It is 
the nature of human institutions to degenerate, to lose their 
vitality, and decay, and the first sign of decay is the loss of 
flexibility and oblivion of the essential spirit in which they 
were conceived. The spirit is permanent, the body changes; 
and a body which refuses to change must die. The spirit 
expresses itself in many ways while itself remaining essen¬ 
tially the same but the body must change to suit its changing 
environments if it wishes to live. There is no doubt that the 
institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined 
by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now 
come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined 
by the purely material tests of occupation and birth. By this 


29 



India’s Rebirth 


change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of 
Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate 
the material and thus lost most of its meaning. The spirit of 
caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to domi¬ 
nate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened 
the nation and helped to reduce us to our present conditions. 

★ 

* * 


October 7, 1907 

This great and ancient nation was once the fountain of 
human light, the apex of human civilisation, the examplar of 
courage and humanity, the perfection of good Government 
and settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of 
all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands 
of inferior civilisations and more savage peoples; it has gone 
down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitter¬ 
ness of death. Its pride has been trampled into the dust and 
its glory has departed. Hunger and misery and despair have 
become the masters of this fair soil, these noble hills, these 
ancient rivers, these cities whose life story goes back into pre¬ 
historic night. But do you think that therefore God has utterly 
abandoned us and given us up for ever to be a mere conven¬ 
ience for the West, the helots of its commerce, and the feeders 
of its luxury and pride ? We are still God’s chosen people and 
all our calamities have been but a discipline of suffering, 
because for the great mission before us prosperity was not 
sufficient, adversity had also its training; to taste the glory of 
power and beneficence and joy was not sufficient, the knowl¬ 
edge of weakness and torture and humiliation was also needed; 
it was not enough that we should be able to fill the role of the 
merciful sage and the beneficent king, we had also to experi¬ 
ence in our own persons the feelings of the outcaste and the 
slave. 

* 

★ * 


30 




1907 


October 23, 1907 

There is a cant phrase which is always on our lips in season 
and out of season, and it is the cry for unity. We call it a cant 
phrase because those who use it, have not the slightest concep¬ 
tion of what they mean when they use it, but simply employ it 
as an effective formula to discourage independence in thought 
and progressiveness in action. It is not the reality of united 
thought and action which they desire, it is merely the appear¬ 
ance of unity. ... It is a habit of mind born of the spirit of 
dependence and weakness. It is a fosterer of falsehood and 
encourages cowardice and insincerity. "Be your views what 
they may, suppress them, for they will spoil our unity; swallow 
your principles, they will spoil our unity; do not battle for 
what you think to be the right, it will spoil our unity; leave 
necessary things undone, for the attempt to do them will spoil 
our unity;” this is the cry. The prevalence of a dead and life¬ 
less unity is the true index of national degradation, quite as 
much as the prevalence of a living unity is the index of national 
greatness. 

* 

* * 

December 6, 1907 

[The British] began of course long ago, the attempt to make 
capital of the religious diversities of Indian society and recently 
the policy of setting the Mahomedans as a counterpoise to the 
Hindus has been openly adopted.* In the new Legislative 
Councils the Mahomedans are to have representation not as 
children of the soil, an integral portion of one Indian people, 
but as a politically distinct and hostile interest which will, it is 
hoped, outweigh or at least nullify the Hindus.... The Hindus 
have become self-conscious, they have heard a voice that cries 


* This policy led two years later to the Morley-Minto reforms (see pp. 62 & 
64). The first meeting of the Muslim League was held at Karachi on 
December 29, 1907. 


31 



India’s Rebirth 


to them, "Arise from the dead, live and follow me,” and they are 
irresistibly growing into a living and powerful political force. 

The latest brilliant device [of the British bureaucracy] is an 
attempt to reshuffle the constituent elements of Indian politics 
and sort them out afresh on the basis not only of creed, but of 
caste.... [Caste] has not and should not be allowed to have any 
political meaning. 

* 

* * 

December 17, 1907 

When the word of the Eternal has gone abroad, when the 
spirit moves over the waters and the waters stir and life 
begins to form, then it is a law that all energies are forced to 
direct themselves, consciously or unconsciously, willingly or 
against their will, to the one supreme work of the time, the 
formation of the new manifest and organised life which is in 
process of creation.... 

Nationalism* depends for its success on the awakening and 
organising of the whole strength of the nation; it is therefore 
vitally important for Nationalism that the politically backward 
classes should be awakened and brought into the current of 
political life; the great mass of orthodox Hinduism which 
was hardly even touched by the old Congress movement, the 
great slumbering mass of Islam which has remained politi¬ 
cally inert throughout the last century, the shopkeepers, the 
artisan class, the immense body of illiterate and ignorant 
peasantry, the submerged classes, even the wild tribes and 
races still outside the pale of Hindu civilisation. Nationalism 
can afford to neglect and omit none.... 

What Nationalism asks is for life first and above all things; 


* Sri Aurobindo seldom used the words "Extremism" or "Extremist Party," 
which were the British government's and the Congress Moderates' 
derogatory designation of the Nationalist movement. 


32 



1907 


life, and still more life, is its cry. Let us by every means get 
rid of the pall of death which stifled us, let us dispel first the 
passivity, quiescence, the unspeakable oppression of inertia 
which has so long been our curse; that is the first and imper¬ 
ative need. 








1908 


(On December 27, 1907, the Nationalist party, with Sri 
Aurobindo presiding over its conference, broke away 
from the Congress Moderates at the tumultuous Surat 
session over the latter's refusal to reaffirm the demands 
of Swaraj, Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education, 
which had been adopted at the previous Calcutta 
session under the presidentship of Dadabhai Naoroji. 
It was going to take the Congress another twenty-two 
years to declare complete independence for its goal.) 


January 19, 1908 

(A few days after the Surat events, Sri Aurobindo had 
in Baroda a first decisive experience, that of Nirvana 
or the Brahman consciousness. Henceforth all his 
activities, including his speeches and writings, flowed 
from an "absolute silence of the mind." 

On his way back to Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo was 
asked to speak at many places. A few excerpts from a 
speech he gave before a large gathering at the Mahajan 
Wadi in Bombay:) 

Belief is not a merely intellectual process, belief is not a 
mere persuasion of the mind, belief is something that is in 
our heart, and what you believe, you must do, because belief 
is from God. It is to the heart that God speaks, it is in the 
heart that God resides.... Here is a work that you have 
undertaken, a work so gigantic, so stupendous, the means for 
which are so poor, the resistance to which will be so strong, 
so organised ... and what means have you with which to 
carry out this tremendous work of yours? If you look at it 
intellectually, it is hopeless.... This intellectual process, if it 
is used honestly, if it is followed to the very end, leads you to 
despair. It leads you to death. 


35 



India’s Rebirth 


What is the one thing needful? What is it that has helped 
the older men [of the Nationalist movement] who have gone 
to prison ?... They have had one and all of them consciously 
or unconsciously one over-mastering idea, one idea which 
nothing can shake, and this was the idea that there is a great 
Power at work to help India, and that we are doing what it 
bids us_They have this conviction within, not in the intel¬ 

lect but in the heart, that the Power that is guiding them is 
invincible, that it is Almighty, that it is immortal and irresis¬ 
tible and that it will do its work. They have nothing to do. 
They have simply to obey that Power. They have simply to go 
where it leads them. They have only to speak the words that 
it tells them to speak, and to do the thing that it tells them to 

do_He himself is behind us. He himself is the worker and 

the work. He is immortal in the hearts of his people_ 

When you believe in God, when you believe that God is 
guiding you, believe that God is doing all and that you are 
doing nothing,—what is there to fear?... There is nothing to 
fear.... What can all these tribunals, what can all the powers 
of the world do to That which is within you, that Immortal, 
that Unborn and Undying One, whom the sword cannot pierce, 
whom the fire cannot burn, and whom the water cannot 
drown? Him the jail cannot confine and the gallows cannot 
end. What is there that you can fear when you are conscious 
of Him who is within you ? Courage is then a necessity, cour¬ 
age is natural and courage is inevitable.... You are protected 
through life and death by One who survives in the very hour 
of death, you feel your immortality in the hour of your worst 
sufferings, you feel you are invincible.... 

Try to realise the strength within you, try to bring it for¬ 
ward, so that everything you do may be not your own doing, 
but the doing of that Truth within you. Try so that every hour 
that you live shall be enlightened by that presence, that every 
thought of yours shall be inspired from that one fountain 
of inspiration, that every faculty and quality in you may be 


36 



1908 


placed at the service of that immortal Power within you_ 

The leader is within yourselves. 


February 19, 1908 

When a great people rises from the dust, what mantra is 
the sanjivani mantra* or what power is the resurrecting 
force of its resurgence? In India there are two great mantras, 
the mantra of "Bande Mataram” which is the public and 
universal cry of awakened love of Motherland, and there is 
another more secret and mystic which is not yet revealed. 

★ 

* * 

February 20, 1908 

Truth is the rock on which the world is built. Satyena 
tisthate jagat. Falsehood can never be the true source of 
strength. When falsehood is at the root of a movement, that 
movement is doomed to failure. Diplomacy can only help a 
movement if the movement proceeds upon truth. To make 
diplomacy the root-principle is to contravene the laws of 
existence. 

* 

* * 

February 22, 1908 

Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless 
when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full 
of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a 
revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and 
how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of 

* A mantra capable of bringing a dead man back to life. 


37 




India's Rebirth 


His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances 
of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart 
pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of 
life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the 
will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then 
circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer 
finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected. 

* 

★ * 

February 24, 1908 

National education cannot be defined briefly in one or two 
sentences, but we may describe it tentatively as the educa¬ 
tion which starting with the past and making full use of the 
present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off 
the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. 
Whoever fails to take advantage of the present is losing us 
the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that 
she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought 
in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best 
knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her 
own peculiar type of national temperament. We must intro¬ 
duce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, 
whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmo¬ 
nise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit 
of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines_ 

* 

* * 


March 5, 1908 

India is the guru of the nations, the physician of the human 
soul in its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to 
new-mould the life of the world.... 

* 

* * 


38 



1908 


March 6, 1908 

When the poison of Western education was first poured into 
our veins, it had its immediate effect, and the Hindus [of Ben¬ 
gal ], who were then the majority of the Bengali-speaking popu¬ 
lation, began to stream away from the village to the town.... 

Only the race which does not sacrifice the soundness of its 
rural root of life to the urban brilliance of its foliage and 
flowering, is in a sound condition and certain of perma¬ 
nence .... We must now turn to the one field of work in this 
direction which we have most neglected, the field of agricul¬ 
ture. The return to the land is as essential to our salvation as 
the development of Swadeshi or the fight against famine. If 
we train our young men to go back to the fields, they will be 
able to become mentors, leaders and examples to the village 
population.... The problem is urgent in its call for a solution, 
and the mere organisation of village associations will be only 
partially effective if it is not backed up by a system of instruc¬ 
tion which will bring the educated Hindu back to the soil as a 
farmer himself and a local leader of the peasantry of the race. 

* 

★ * 

March 16, 1908 

It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of 
man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand 
on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are Euro¬ 
pean ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights 
and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of 
the world which makes selfishness the root of action, and 
regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of 
democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the 
distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe. 

* 

* * 


39 



India’s Rebirth 


March 28, 1908 

We are Hindus and naturally spiritual in our tempera¬ 
ment, because the work which we have to do for humanity is 
a work which no other nation can accomplish.... The grand 
workshop of spiritual experiment, the laboratory of the soul 
has been India.... 


March 31, 1908 

The increasing poverty of the masses has been the subject 
of innumerable pamphlets, speeches and newspaper articles, 
but we are apt to think our duty done when we have proved 
that the poverty problem is there; we leave the solution to 
the future and forget that by the time the solution comes, the 
masses will have sunk into a condition of decay from which 
it will take the nation many decades to recover. We have 
been accustomed to deal only with the economical side of this 
poverty, but there is a moral side which is even more impor¬ 
tant. The Indian peasantry have always been distinguished 
from the less civilised masses of Europe by their superior 
piety, gentleness, sobriety, purity, thrift and native intelli¬ 
gence. They are now being brutalised by unexampled oppres¬ 
sion;* attracted to the liquor shops which a benevolent 
Government liberally supplies, bestialised by the example of 
an increasingly immoral aristocracy and gradually driven to 
the same habits of looseness and brutality which disgrace 
the European proletariats. This degeneration is proceeding 


* Sri Aurobindo is referring not only to the exactions of the Zamindars, but 
also to the British planters' cruel treatment of the peasantry and the 
ruthless imposition of high taxes which greatly impoverished it, often 
resulting in recurring famines. The huge drain of wealth to Britain from all 
fields of India’s economic life was well documented at the time in Dadabhai 
Naoroji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1876), in Romesh Dutt’s 
Economic History of India (1901), and in Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar's Desher 
Katha (1904); the last two books, in particular, had a great influence on the 
birth of the Swadeshi movement. 


40 


1908 


with an alarming rapidity. In some parts of the country it has 
gone so far that recovery seems impossible.... We have heard 
of villages where the liquor shop and the prostitute, institu¬ 
tions unknown twenty-five years ago, have now the mastery of 
the poorest villagers. Many of the villages in West Bengal are 
now well supplied with these essentials of Western civilisa¬ 
tion .... These conditions of the worst districts tend to become 
general and unless something is done to stem the tide of evil, 
it will sweep away the soul of India in its turbid current and 
leave only a shapeless monstrosity of all that is worst in 
human nature. 

* 

* * 

April 11, 1908 

The Mother’s feet are on the threshold, but she waits to 
hear the true cry, the cry that rushes out from the heart, 
before she will enter.... The Mother asks us for no schemes, 
no plans, no methods. She herself will provide the schemes, 
the plans, the methods better than any we can devise. She 
asks us for our hearts, our lives, nothing less, nothing more. 

Regeneration is literally re-birth, and re-birth comes not by 
the intellect, not by the fullness of the purse, not by policy, 
not by change of machinery, but by the getting of a new heart, 
by throwing away all that we were into the fire of sacrifice 
and being reborn in the Mother. Self-abandonment is the 
demand made upon us. She asks of us, "How many will live 
for me? How many will die for me?” and awaits our answer. 


April 12, 1908 

Do not be afraid of obstacles in your path, it does not matter 
how great the forces are that stand in your way.... Do not 


41 


India’s Rebirth 


think that anything is impossible when miracles are being 
worked on every side. If you are true to yourself there is 
nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing unattainable by 
truth, love and faith. This is your whole gospel which will 
work out miracles. 

* 

* * 

April 14, 1908 

Distrust is the atmosphere of modern politics, mutual 
suspicion and hatred the secret spring of action. Under the 
fair outside of its material civilisation, a deep-seated moral 
disease is at work eating into the vitals of European society 
of which a thousand symptoms strike the eye.... If India 
follows in the footsteps of Europe, accepts her political ideals, 
social system, economic principles, she will be overcome with 
the same maladies. Such a consummation is neither for the 
good of India nor for the good of Europe. If India becomes 
an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to 
her natural greatness or fulfil the possibilities within her. 
Paradharmah bhayavahah, to accept the dharma of another 
is perilous; it deprives the man or the nation of its secret of 
life and vitality and substitutes an unnatural and stunted 
growth for the free, large and organic development of Nature. 
Whenever a nation has given up the purpose of its existence, it 
has been at the cost of its growth. India must remain India if 
she is to fulfil her destiny. Nor will Europe profit by grafting 
her civilisation on India, for if India, who is the distinct physi¬ 
cian of Europe’s maladies, herself falls into the clutches of the 
disease, the disease will remain uncured and uncurable and 
European civilisation will perish as it perished when Rome 
declined, first by dry rot within itself and last by irruption 
from without. 

* 

* * 


42 



1908 


April (?), 1908 

We knew so little of life that we expected others who lived 
on our service to prepare our freedom, so little of history that 
we thought reform could precede liberty, so little of science 
that we believed an organism could be reshaped from outside. 
We were ruled by shopkeepers and consented enthusiastically 
to think of them as angels. We affected virtues we were given 
no opportunity of assimilating and lost those our fathers had 
handed down to us. All this in perfect good faith, in the full 
belief that we were Europeanising ourselves and moving 
rapidly toward political, social, economical, moral, intellectual 
progress. The consummation of our political progress was a 
Congress which yearly passed resolutions it had no power to 
put in practice, statesmen whose highest function was to ask 
questions which need not even be answered, councillors who 
would have been surprised if they had been consulted, politi¬ 
cians who did not even know that a Right never lives until it 
has a Might to support it. Socially we have initiated by a few 
petty mechanical changes a feeble attempt to revivify the very 
basis of our society, which [failed to] be equal to so high a task; 
a spiritual renovation was hardly even attempted; economic¬ 
ally, we attained great success in destroying our industries 
and enslaving ourselves to the British trader; morally, we 
successfully compassed the disintegration of the old moral 
ideas and habits and substituted for them a superficial respect¬ 
ability; intellectually, we prided ourselves on the tricking out 
of our minds in a few leavings, scraps and strays of European 
thought at the sacrifice of an immense and eternal heritage. 
Never was an education more remote from all that education 
truly denotes_ 

British rule, Britain’s civilising mission in India has been 
the record success in history in the hypnosis of a nation. It 
persuaded us to live in a death of the will and its activities, 
taking a series of hallucinations for real things and creating 
in ourselves the condition of morbid weakness the hypnotist 


43 



India’s Rebirth 


desired, until the Master of a mightier hypnosis laid His finger 
on India’s eyes and cried, "Awake.” Then only the spell was 
broken, the slumbering mind realised itself and the dead 
soul lived again.* 

The new [Nationalism] overleaps every barrier; it calls to 
the clerk at his counter, the trader in his shop, the peasant at 
his plough; it summons the Brahmin from his temple and 
takes the hand of the Chandala in his degradation; it seeks 
out the student in his College, the schoolboy at his book, it 
touches the very child in its mother’s arms; and the secluded 
zenana has thrilled to its voice; its eye searches the jungle 
for the Santal and travels the hills for the wild tribes of the 
mountains. It cares nothing for age or sex or caste or wealth 
or education or respectability; it mocks at the talk of a stake 
in the country; it spurns aside the demand for a property 
qualification or a certificate of literacy. It speaks to the illit¬ 
erate or the man in the street in such rude vigorous language 
as he best understands, to youth and the enthusiast in accents 
of poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of 
philosophy and logic, to the Hindu it repeats the name of 
Kali, the Mahomedan it spurs to action for the glory of Islam. 
It cries to all to come forth, to help in God’s work and remake 
a nation, each.with what his creed or his culture, his strength, 
his manhood or his genius can give to the new nationality. 
The only qualification it asks for is a body made in the womb 
of an Indian mother, a heart that can feel for India, a brain that 
can think and plan for her greatness, a tongue that can adore 
her name or hands that can fight in her quarrel.... [The new 
Nationalism] is the rebirth in India of the Kshatriya, the 
Samurai . 5 


Man is of a less terrestrial mould than some would have 


* An allusion to the 1905 awakening. 


44 



1908 


him to be. He has an element of the divine which the practi¬ 
cal politician ignores. The practical politician looks to the 
position at the moment and imagines that he has taken every¬ 
thing into consideration. He has indeed studied the surface 
and the immediate surroundings, but he has missed what lies 
beyond material vision. He has left out of account the divine, 
the incalculable in man, that element which upsets the 
calculations of the schemer and disconcerts the wisdom of 
the diplomat . 6 

* 


The Nationalist never loses sight of the truth that law was 
made for man and not man for the law. Its chief function and 
reason for existence is to safeguard and foster the growth 
and happy flowering into strength and health of national life 
and a law which does not subserve this end or which opposes 
and contradicts this end, however rigidly it may enforce 
peace, order and security, forfeits its claim to respect and 
obedience. Nationalism refuses to accept Law as a fetish or 
peace and security as an aim in themselves.... It will not 
prefer violent or strenuous methods simply because they are 
violent or strenuous, but neither will it cling to mild and 
peaceful methods simply because they are mild and peaceful. 
It asks of a method whether it is effective for its purpose, 
whether it is worthy of a great people struggling to be, 
whether it is educative of national strength and activity, and 
these things ascertained, it asks nothing farther . 7 


A certain class of minds shrink from aggressiveness as if it 
were a sin. Their temperament forbids them to feel the delight 
of battle and they look on what they cannot understand as 
something monstrous and sinful. "Heal hate by love, drive 
out injustice by justice, slay sin by righteousness” is their 
cry. Love is a sacred name, but it is easier to speak of love 


45 




India's Rebirth 


than to love.... The Gita is the best answer to those who 
shrink from battle as a sin and aggression as a lowering of 
morality. 

It is a barren philosophy which applies a mechanical rule 
to all actions, or takes a word and tries to fit all human life 
into it. The sword of the warrior is as necessary to the fulfil¬ 
ment of justice and righteousness as the holiness of the saint. 
Ramdas is not complete without Shivaji. To maintain justice 
and prevent the strong from despoiling and the weak from 
being oppressed is the function for which the Kshatriya was 
created. Therefore, says Sri Krishna in the Mahabharat, God 
created battle and armour, the sword, the bow and the 
dagger. 8 * 

* 

* * 


* This passage and the preceding one are from unpublished articles which 
the police seized at the time of Sri Aurobindo's arrest in May, 1908. These 
two articles were produced as evidence in the Alipore Bomb case, as the pro¬ 
secution hoped to show that they were seditious and advocated violence to 
overthrow British rule in India. 


46 




1909 


(On May 2, 1908, following a failed assassination attempt 
on a British fudge by revolutionaries belonging to 
Barin's secret society, Sri Aurobindo was arrested. 
The British were now confident of having a chance to 
silence forever "the most dangerous man we have to 
deal with at present."* While the famous Alipore 
Bomb trial went on, Sri Aurobindo, defended by Chit- 
taranjan Das, spent a year in jail, during which he 
had crucial experiences and revelations; as he wrote 
later, "Now the inner spiritual life and realisation 
which had continually been increasing in magnitude 
and universality and assuming a larger place took 
him up entirely and his work became a part and 
result of it and besides far exceeded the service and 
liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, 
previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in 
its bearing and concerned with the whole future of 
humanity."" 

When after his acquittal on May 6, 1909, Sri Aurobindo 
came out of the "Alipore ashram," as he called it, the 
Bande Mataram had been stopped by the British, most 
of the Nationalist leaders jailed, deported or in self- 
imposed exile, and the few who remained were dispirited 
—the Nationalist movement was at a low ebb. Sri 
Aurobindo set about pouring fresh life into it, giving 
many speeches and starting a new English weekly, the 
Karmayogin, as well as a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. 

The following excerpts are from the Karmayogin J 


* Thus wrote Lord Minto, the then Viceroy of India, on Sri Aurobindo. 9 Sir 
Edward Baker, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, concurred: "I attribute the 
spread of seditious doctrines to him personally in a greater degree than to 
any other single individual in Bengal, or possibly in India.” 10 


47 



India’s Rebirth 


May 30, 1909 

(Extracts from the famous Uttarpara speech.) 

When I approached God at that time [after Sri Aurobindo’s 
return from England], I hardly had a living faith in Him. The 
agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in 
me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. 
I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the 
truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu 
religion.* I felt there must be a mighty truth somewhere in this 
Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the Vedanta. 
So when I turned to the Yoga and resolved to practise it and 
find out if my idea was right, I did it in this spirit and with 
this prayer to Him, "If Thou art, then Thou knowest my 
heart. Thou knowest that I do not ask for Mukti, I do not ask 
for anything which others ask for. I ask only for strength to 
uplift this nation, I ask only to be allowed to live and work 
for this people whom I love and to whom I pray that I may 
devote my life.” I strove long for the realisation of Yoga and 
at last to some extent I had it, but in what I most desired I 
was not satisfied. Then in the seclusion of the jail, of the 
solitary cell I asked for it again, I said, "Give me Thy Adesh. I 
do not know what work to do or how to do it. Give me a 
message.” In the communion of Yoga two messages came. 
The first message said, "I have given you a work and it is to 
help to uplift this nation. Before long the time will come 
when you will have to go out of jail; for it is not my will that 
this time either you should be convicted or that you should 
pass the time, as others have to do, in suffering for their 
country. I have called you to work, and that is the Adesh for 
which you have asked. I give you the Adesh to go forth and 


* It is important to note that Sri Aurobindo, in the Indian context, uses the 
word "religion” not in a narrow dogmatic sense, but always in the broader 
Hindu view of dharma (see for instance pp. 50 and 69). 


48 



1909 


do my work.” The second message came and it said, "Some¬ 
thing has been shown to you in this year of seclusion, some¬ 
thing about which you had your doubts and it is the truth of 
the Hindu religion. It is this religion that I am raising up 
before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed 
through the Rishis, saints and Avatars, and now it is going 
forth to do my work among the nations. I am raising up this 
nation to send forth my word.... When therefore it is said 
that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall rise. 
When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanatan 
Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall 
expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that 
shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the 

Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists_" 

But what is the Hindu religion ? What is this religion which 
we call Sanatan, eternal ? It is the Hindu religion only because 
the Hindu nation has kept it, because in this Peninsula it grew 
up in the seclusion of the sea and the Himalayas, because in 
this sacred and ancient land it was given as a charge to the 
Aryan race to preserve through the ages.* But it is not circum¬ 
scribed by the confines of a single country, it does not belong 
peculiarly and for ever to a bounded part of the world. That 
which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, 
because it is the universal religion which embraces all others. 
If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow 
religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live 
only for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the one 
religion that can triumph over materialism by including and 
anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations 
of philosophy. It is the one religion which impresses on man¬ 
kind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass 


* Sri Aurobindo never subscribed to the absurd division between Aryans 
and Dravidians: "I regard the so-called Aryans and Dravidians as one 
homogeneous race," he wrote later in The Secret of the Veda. This point will 
be developed in further passages. 


49 




India’s Rebirth 


all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is 
the one religion which insists every moment on the truth 
which all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all 
things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the 
one religion which enables us not only to understand and 
believe this truth but to realise it with every part of our being. 
It is the one religion which shows the world what the world is, 
that it is the Lila of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which 
shows us how we can best play our part in that Lila, its sub¬ 
tlest laws and its noblest rules. It is the one religion which 
does not separate life in any smallest detail from religion, 
which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed 
from us the reality of death.... 

I said [last year] that this movement is not a political move¬ 
ment and that nationalism is not politics but a religion, a 
creed, a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another 
way. I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a 
faith; I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is 

nationalism_ The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism. 

This is the message that I have to speak to you. 

* 

★ * 


June 19, 1909 

We have said that brahmateja is the thing we need most of 
all and first of all. In one sense, that means the pre-eminence 
of religion; but after all, what the Europeans mean by reli¬ 
gion is not brahmateja which is rather spirituality, the force 
and energy of thought and action arising from communion 
with or self-surrender to that within us which rules the world. 
In that sense we shall use it. This force and energy can be 
directed to any purpose God desires for us; it is sufficient to 
knowledge, love or service; it is good for the liberation of an 
individual soul, the building of a nation or the turning of a 
tool. It works from within, it works in the power of God, it 


50 



1909 


works with superhuman energy. The reawakening of that 
force in three hundred millions of men by the means which 
our past has placed in our hands, that is our object. 

The European is proud of his success in divorcing religion 
from life. Religion, he says, is all very well in its place, but it 
has nothing to do with politics or science or commerce, 
which it spoils by its intrusion; it is meant only for Sundays 
when, if one is English, one puts on black clothes and tries to 
feel good, and if one is continental, one puts the rest of the 
week away and amuses oneself.... But after all God does 
exist and if He exists, you cannot shove Him into a corner 
and say, "That is your place and as for the world and life it 
belongs to us.” He pervades and returns. Every age of denial 
is only a preparation for a larger and more comprehensive 
affirmation. 


It is an error, we repeat, to think that spirituality is a thing 
divorced from life.... It is an error to think that the heights 
of religion are above the struggles of this world. The recur¬ 
rent cry of Sri Krishna to Arjuna insists on the struggle; 
"Fight and overthrow thy opponents!”, "Remember me and 
fight!”, "Give up all thy works to me with a heart full of 
spirituality, and free from craving, free from selfish claims, 
fight! Let the fever of thy soul pass from thee.” 

* 


There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human 
evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of 
which India has always been destined to be guardian, exem¬ 
plar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma _ 

The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to 
renovate humanity by schemes of society and systems of gov¬ 
ernment; he hopes to bring about the millennium by an act 
of Parliament. Machinery is of great importance, but only as 


51 


India’s Rebirth 


a working means for the spirit within, the force behind. The 
nineteenth century in India aspired to political emancipation, 
social renovation, religious vision and rebirth, but it failed 
because it adopted Western motives and methods, ignored 
the spirit, history and destiny of our race and thought that 
by taking over European education, European machinery, 
European organisation and equipment we should reproduce 
in ourselves European prosperity, energy and progress. We 
of the twentieth century reject the aims, ideals and methods 
of the anglicised nineteenth, precisely because we accept its 
experience. We refuse to make an idol of the present; we 
look before and after, backward to the mighty history of our 
race, forward to the grandiose history for which that destiny 
has prepared it.... 

We say to the nation: "It is God’s will that we should be 
ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by 
following the law of another being than our own. We must 
return and seek the sources of life and strength within our¬ 
selves. We must know our past and recover it for the purpose 
of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and 
to mould everything to the law of India’s eternal life and 
nature....” 

We say to the individual and especially to the young who 
are now arising to do India’s work, the world's work, God’s 
work: "You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you 
fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or 
look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are 
nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian 
who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice every¬ 
thing. First, therefore, become Indians. Recover the patri¬ 
mony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the 
Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. 
Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not 
only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives.... Difficulty 
and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it 
is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back 


52 



1909 


the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can 
win back your outer empire.... Recover the source of all 
strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social 
soundness, intellectual pre-eminence, political freedom, the 
mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.” 

* 


We do not fear Mahomedan opposition; so long as it is the 
honest Swadeshi article and not manufactured in Shillong or 
Simla,* we welcome it as a sign of life and aspiration. We do 
not shun, we desire the awakening of Islam in India even if 
its first crude efforts are misdirected against ourselves; for 
all strength, all energy, all action is grist to the mill of the 
nation-builder. In that faith we are ready, when the time 
comes for us to meet in the political field, to exchange with 
the Musulman, just as he chooses, the firm clasp of the 
brother or the resolute grip of the wrestler.... 

Of one thing we may be certain, that Hindu-Mahomedan 
unity cannot be effected by political adjustments or Congress 
flatteries. It must be sought deeper down, in the heart and in 
the mind, for where the causes of disunion are, there the 
remedies must be sought. We shall do well in trying to solve 
the problem to remember that misunderstanding is the most 
fruitful cause of our differences, that love compels love and 
that strength conciliates the strong. We must strive to remove 
the causes of misunderstanding by a better mutual knowl¬ 
edge and sympathy; we must extend the unfaltering love of 
the patriot to our Musulman brother, remembering always 
that in him too Narayana dwells and to him too our Mother 
has given a permanent place in her bosom; but we must 
cease to approach him falsely or flatter out of a selfish weak¬ 
ness and cowardice. We believe this to be the only practical 
way of dealing with the difficulty. As a political question the 


* Seats of the British colonial government in India. 


53 



India's Rebirth 


Hindu-Mahomedan problem does not interest us at all, as a 
national problem it is of supreme importance. 

* 

We shall never lose our fortitude, our courage, our endur¬ 
ance. There are some who think that by lowering our heads 
the country will escape repression.* That is not my opinion. 
It is by looking the storm in the face and meeting it with a 
high courage, fortitude and endurance that the nation can be 
saved. It is that which the Mother demands from us,—which 
God demands from us. 

★ 

* it 


June 23, 1909 


(From a speech at Bakergunj.) 

There are times of great change, times when old landmarks 
are being upset, when submerged forces are rising, and just 
as we deal promptly or linger over the solution of these pro¬ 
blems, our progress will be rapid or slow, sound or broken.... 
The problem is put to us one by one, to each nation one by 
one.... He has shown us the possibility of strength within us, 
and then He has shown us where the danger, the weakness 
lies. He is pointing out to us how is it that we may become 
strong. On us it lies ... to answer the question which God has 
put to us, and according as we answer on it depends how this 
movement will progress, what route it will take, and whether 
it will lead to a swift and sudden salvation, or whether, after 
so many centuries of tribulation and sufferings there is still 
a long period of tribulation and suffering before us. God has 
put the question to us and with us entirely it lies to answer. 

* 

* * 


* Since the uprising that followed the partition of Bengal, the Colonial 
government's repression had become particularly cunning and ruthless. 


54 



1909 


June 25, 1909 


(From a speech at Khulna.) 

The virtue of the Brahmin is a great virtue. You shall not 
kill. This is what Ahimsa means. If the virtue of Ahimsa 
comes to the Kshatriya, if you say, "I will not kill,” there is 
no one to protect the country. The happiness of the people 
will be broken down. Injustice and lawlessness will reign. 
The virtue becomes a source of misery, and you become 
instrumental in bringing misery and conflict to the people. 

* 

* * 


July 3, 1909 

When confronted with the truths of Hinduism, the experi¬ 
ence of deep thinkers and the choice spirits of the race 
through thousands of years, [the rationalist] shouts "Mysti¬ 
cism, mysticism!” and thinks he has conquered. To him 
there is order, development, progress, evolution, enlighten¬ 
ment in the history of Europe, but the past of India is an 
unsightly mass of superstition and ignorance best tom out 
of the book of human life. These thousands of years of our 
thought and aspiration are a period of the least importance 
to us and the true history of our progress only begins with 
the advent of European education! 


July 17, 1909 

There are particular movements in particular epochs in 
which the Divine Force manifests itself with supreme power 
shattering all human calculations, making a mock of the pru¬ 
dence of the careful statesman and the scheming politician, 


55 




India’s Rebirth 


falsifying the prognostications of the scientific analyser and 
advancing with a vehemence and velocity which is obviously 
the manifestation of a higher than human force. The intellec¬ 
tual man afterwards tries to trace the reasons for the move¬ 
ment and lay bare the forces that made it possible, but at the 
time he is utterly at fault, his wisdom is falsified at every step 
and his science serves him not. These are the times when we 
say God is in the movement, He is its leader and it must fulfil 
itself however impossible it may be for man to see the means 
by which it will succeed. 

* 

* * 

July 24, 1909 

Terrorism thrives on administrative violence and injustice; 
that is the only atmosphere in which it can thrive and grow. 
It sometimes follows the example of indiscriminate violence 
from above; it sometimes, though very rarely, sets it from 
below. But the power above which follows the example from 
below is on the way to committing suicide. 

* 


July 31, 1909 

Our ideal is that of Swaraj or absolute autonomy free from 
foreign control. We claim the right of every nation to live its 
own life by its own energies according to its own nature and 
ideals. We reject the claim of aliens to force upon us a civilis¬ 
ation inferior to our own or to keep us out of our inheritance 
on the untenable ground of a superior fitness. While admit¬ 
ting the stains and defects which long subjection has induced 
upon our native capacity and energy, we are conscious of 
that capacity and energy reviving in us. 

* 

* * 


56 




1909 


August 7, 1909 

The future belongs to the young. It is a young and new 
world which is now under process of development and it is 
the young who must create it. But it is also a world of truth, 
courage, justice, lofty aspiration and straightforward fulfil¬ 
ment which we seek to create. For the coward, for the self- 
seeker, for the talker who goes forward at the beginning and 
afterwards leaves his fellows in the lurch there is no place in 
the future of this movement. A brave, frank, clean-hearted, 
courageous and aspiring youth is the only foundation on 
which the future nation can be built.... God does not want 
falterers and flinchers for his work, nor does he want unstable 
enthusiasts who cannot maintain the energy of their first 
movements. 

* 


August 21, 1909 

The spiritual force within not only creates the future but 
creates the materials for the future. It is not limited to the 
existing materials either in their nature or in their quantity. 
It can transform bad material into good material, insufficient 
means into abundant means. It was a deep consciousness of 
this great truth that gave Mazzini the strength to create 
modern Italy.... 

It is our hope that ... not only the political circumstances 
of India be changed but her deeper disease be cured and by a 
full evocation of her immense stores of moral and spiritual 
strength that be accomplished for India which Mazzini could 
not accomplish for Italy, to place her in the head and fore¬ 
front of the new world whose birth-throes are now beginning 
to convulse the Earth. 


57 



India’s Rebirth 


August 28, 1909 

Strength attracts strength; firm and clear-minded courage 
commands success and respect; strong and straight dealing 
can dispense with the methods of dissimulation and intrigue. 
All these are signs of character and it is only character that 
can give freedom and greatness to nations. 


We suppose in a bureaucracy it is inevitable that officials 
should be masters and be able to inflict inconvenience and 
loss on the citizen without any means of redress_If offi¬ 

cialdom were to acquire a common sense, the laws of Nature 
would be sadly contravened. 


* 

★ * 


September 4, 1909 

Every action for instance which may be objectionable to a 
number of Mahomedans is now liable to be forbidden because 
it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace, and one is dimly 
beginning to wonder whether the day may not come when 
worship in Hindu temples may be forbidden on that valid 
ground. 

* 

★ ★ 


September 11, 1909 

Action solves the difficulties which action creates. Inaction 
can only paralyse and slay.... The errors of life and progress 
are more exuberant and striking but less fatal than the errors 
of decay and reaction. 

* 

* * 


58 



1909 


September 18, 1909 

The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a 
powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolu¬ 
tion _The law is the same for the mass as for the individual. 

The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of 
inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and 
the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, 
pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant- in 
humanity, they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of 
religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such 
as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly 
replaced, partly put under control. As is the law of such 
things, they have always reverted again with greater or less 
virulence and sought with more or less success to re-establish 
themselves. Finally, in the nineteenth century it seemed for 
a time as if some of these forces had, for the time at least, 
exhausted themselves and the hour for samyama [rejection] 
and gradual dismissal from the evolution had really arrived. 
Such hopes always recur and in the end they are likely to 
bring about their own fulfilment, but before that happens 
another recoil is inevitable. We see plenty of signs of it in the 
reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe 
and America behind the fair outside of Science, progress, civ¬ 
ilisation and humanitarianism, and we are likely to see more 
signs of it in the era that is coming upon us. 

★ 

* * 


September 25, 1909 

The debasement of our mind, character and tastes by a 
grossly commercial, materialistic and insufficient European 
education is a fact on which the young Nationalism has 
always insisted. The practical destruction of our artistic per¬ 
ceptions and the plastic skill and fineness of eye and hand 


59 



India’s Rebirth 


which once gave our productions pre-eminence, distinction 
and mastery of the European markets, is also a thing accom¬ 
plished. Most vital of all, the spiritual and intellectual divorce 
from the past which the present schools and universities 
have effected, has beggared the nation of the originality, high 
aspiration and forceful energy which can alone make a nation 
free and great. To reverse the process and recover what we 
have lost, is undoubtedly the first object to which we ought 
to devote ourselves. And as the loss of originality, aspiration 
and energy was the most vital of all these losses, so their 
recovery should be our first and most important objective. 
The primary aim of the prophets of Nationalism was to rid 
the nation of the idea that the future was limited by the cir¬ 
cumstances of the present, that because temporary causes 
had brought us low and made us weak, low therefore must 
be our aims and weak our methods. They pointed the mind of 
the people to a great and splendid destiny, not in some dis¬ 
tant millennium but in the comparatively near future.... To 
raise the mind, character and tastes of the people, to recover 
the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan character 
and the high Aryan outlook, the perceptions which made 
earthly life beautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent 
spiritual experiences, realisations and aspirations which 
made us the deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted and most 
delicately profound in life of all the peoples of the earth, is 
the task next in importance and urgency. . . . 

We must remember also why the degradation and dena¬ 
tionalisation, "the mighty evil in our souls” of which the 
writer* complains, came into being. A painful but necessary 
work had to be done, and because the English nation were 
the fittest instrument for his purpose, God led them all over 
those thousands of miles of alien Ocean, gave strength to 
their hearts and subtlety to their brains, and set them up in 


* Sri Aurobindo is referring to "The Message of the East,” an article 
written by A. K. Coomaraswamy in The Modem Review. 


60 


1909 


India to do His work, which they have been doing faithfully, 
if blindly, ever since and are doing at the present moment. 
The spirit and ideals of India had come to be confined in a 
mould which, however beautiful, was too narrow and slender 
to bear the mighty burden of our future. When that happens, 
the mould has to be broken and even the ideal lost for a 
while, in order to be recovered free of constraint and limita¬ 
tion .... We must not cabin the expanding and aggressive 
spirit of India in temporary forms which are the creation of 
the last few hundred years. That would be a vain and 
disastrous endeavour. The mould is broken; we must remould 
in larger outlines and with a richer content. For the work of 
destruction England was best fitted by her stubborn individu¬ 
ality and by that very commercialism and materialism which 
made her the anti-type in temper and culture of the race she 
governed. She was chosen too for the unrivalled efficiency 
and skill with which she has organised an individualistic and 
materialistic democracy. We had to come to close quarters 
with that democratic organisation, draw it into ourselves and 
absorb the democratic spirit and methods so that we might 
rise beyond them.... We have to throw away the individual¬ 
ism and materialism and keep the democracy. We have to 
solve for the human race the problem of harmonising and 
spiritualising its impulses towards liberty, equality and 
fraternity. 

* 

* * 


October 2, 1909 

An imitation of the forms and workings of the old Congress 
is also inadvisable. We were never satisfied with those forms 
and that working. The three days’ show [i.e. the Congress 
sessions], the excessively festal aspect of the occasion, the mon¬ 
strous preponderance of speech and resolution-passing over 
action and work, the want of true democratic rule and order, 
the weary waste of formal oratory without any practical 


61 




India’s Rebirth 


use or object, the incapacity of the assembly for grappling 
with the real problems of our national existence and pro¬ 
gress, the anxiety to avoid public discussion which is the life- 
breath of democratic politics, these and many other defects 
made the Congress in our view an instrument ill-made, 
wasteful of money and energy, and the centre of a false con¬ 
ception of political deliberation and action. If we imitate the 
Congress, we shall contract all the faults of the Congress. 

★ 

* * 


November 6, 1909 

(In 1909, the Morley-Minto Reform Scheme gave 
Indian Muslims a separate electorate to "reformed" 
legislative councils, in effect encouraging them to 
assert their separate identity.) 

The question of separate representation for the Mahomedan 
community is one of those momentous issues raised in haste 
by a statesman unable to appreciate the forces with which he 
is dealing, which bear fruit no man expected and least of all 
the ill-advised Frankenstein who was first responsible for its 
creation. The common belief among Hindus is that the Gov¬ 
ernment have decided to depress the Hindu element in the 
Indian people by raising the Mahomedan element, and ensure 
a perpetual preponderance in their own favour by leaning on 
a Mahomedan vote purchased by a system of preference. The 
denials of high-placed officials, who declare that it is only 
out of a careful consideration for the rights and interests of 
minorities that they have made special Mahomedan represen¬ 
tation an essential feature of the Reform Scheme, have not 
convinced a single Hindu mind; for the obvious retort is that 
it is only one minority which is specially cared for and this 
special care is extended to it even in provinces where it is in a 
large majority. No provision at all has been made for the safe- 


62 



1909 


guarding of Hindu minorities, for the Parsis, the Sikhs, the 
Christians and other sections which may reasonably declare 
that they too are Indians and citizens of the Empire no less 
than the Mahomedans.... 

Our own attitude is clear. We will have no part or lot in 
reforms which give no popular majority, no substantive con¬ 
trol, no opportunity for Indian capacity and statesmanship, 
no seed of democratic expansion. We will not for a moment 
accept separate electorates or separate representation, not 
because we are opposed to a large Mahomedan influence in 
popular assemblies when they come but because we will be 
no party to a distinction which recognises Hindu and Maho¬ 
medan as permanently separate political units and thus 
precludes the growth of a single and indivisible Indian 
nation. We oppose any such attempt at division whether it 
comes from an embarassed Government seeking for political 
support or from an embittered Hindu community allowing 
the passions of the moment to obscure their vision of the 
future. 

★ 


Dr. U. N. Mukherji recently published a very interesting 
brochure in which he tried to prove that the Hindus were a 
dying race and would do well to imitate the social freedom 
and equality of the still increasing Mahomedans.... 

The real truth is that, owing to an immense transition 
being effected under peculiarly unfavourable conditions, 
both communities, but chiefly the more progressive Hindu, 
are in a critical stage in which various deep-seated maladies 
have come to the surface, with effects of an inevitable though 
lamentable character. None of these maladies is mortal and 
the race is not dying. But the knife of the surgeon is needed 
and it is to the remedy rather than the diagnosis that atten¬ 
tion should be pointedly directed. The mere decline in the 
rate of increase is in itself nothing. It is a phenomenon which 
one now sees becoming more and more marked all the world 


63 


India’s Rebirth 


over and it is only countries backward in development and 
education which keep up the old rate of increase. The unfit 
tend to multiply, the fit to be limited in propagation. This is 
an abnormal state of things which indicates something wrong 
in modern civilisation. But, whatever the malady is, it is not 
peculiar to Hindus or to India, but a world-wide disease. 

* 


The Mahomedans base their separateness and their refusal 
to regard themselves as Indians first and Mahomedans after¬ 
wards on the existence of great Mahomedan nations to which 
they feel themselves more akin, in spite of our common birth 
and blood, than to us. Hindus have no such resource. For 
good or evil, they are bound to the soil and to the soil alone. 
They cannot deny their Mother, neither can they mutilate 
her. Our ideal therefore is an Indian Nationalism, largely 
Hindu in its spirit and traditions, because the Hindu made 
the land and the people and persists, by the greatness of his 
past, his civilisation and his culture and his invincible virility, 
in holding it, but wide enough also to include the Moslem 
and his culture and traditions and absorb them into itself. 

* 

★ * 


November 20, 1909 

Not only class, as was formerly the case, but creed has been 
made the basis of representation [in the Morley-Minto reforms] 
and, therefore, unless the Hindus have the strength of mind to 
boycott a system which creates a distinction insulting as well 
as injurious to the community, this measure, while giving us 
not an atom of self-government, will be a potent engine for 
dividing the nation into two hostile interests and barring the 
way towards the unity of India. Formerly, there were only 
two classes in India, the superior European and the inferior 
Indian; now there will be three, the supreme European, the 


64 



1909 


superior Mahomedan and the inferior Hindu. This is loss 
number one, and it is no small one, to the Mahomedan no 
less than the Hindu. The official of course gains. 

* 


In India ... we have been cut off by a mercenary and 
soulless education from all our ancient roots of culture and 
tradition.... 

The value attached by ancients to music, art and poetry 
has become almost unintelligible to an age bent on depriving 
life of its meaning by turning earth into a sort of glorified 
ant-heap or beehive. 

The future is mightier than the past and evolution pro¬ 
ceeds relentlessly in its course trampling to pieces all that it 
no longer needs. Those who fight against her fight against 
the will of God, against a decree written from of old, and are 
already defeated and slain in the karanajagat, the world of 
types and causes where Nature fixes everything before she 
works it out in the visible world. 

* 

★ * 


November 27, 1909 

A purely scientific education tends to make thought keen 
and clear-sighted within certain limits, but narrow, hard and 
cold.... Man intellectually developed, mighty in scientific 
knowledge and the mastery of the gross and subtle nature, 
using the elements as his servants and the world as his foot¬ 
stool, but underdeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only 
an inferior kind of asura using the powers of a demigod to 
satisfy the nature of an animal. 

* 

* * 


65 




India’s Rebirth 


December 11, 1909 

Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education 
for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified, 
self-controlled, deep and harmonious. These, therefore, are 
agents which cannot profitably be neglected by humanity on 
its onward march or degraded to the mere satisfaction of 
sensuous pleasure which will disintegrate rather than build 
the character. They are, when properly used, great educating, 
edifying and civilising forces. 

★ 

* * 


December 25, 1909 

The system of education which, instead of keeping artistic 
training apart as a privilege for a few specialists frankly 
introduces it as a part of culture no less necessary than liter¬ 
ature or science, will have taken a great step forward in the 
perfection of national education and the general diffusion of 
a broad-based human culture. It is not necessary that every 
man should be an artist. It is necessary that every man should 
have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense 
of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is 
expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct 
and sensitive. It is necessary that those who create, whether 
in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces 
of art and genius or in the small common things of use that 
surround a man’s daily life, should be habituated to produce 
and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in prefer¬ 
ence to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine 
in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to 
the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beaufiful, noble, 
fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to 
contemplate and realises the fullness of the expanding Spirit 
in itself.... 


66 



1909 


In India the revival of a truly national Art is already an 
accomplished fact and the masterpieces of the school can 
already .challenge comparison with the best work of other 
countries.* Under such circumstances it is unpardonable that 
the crude formal teaching of English schools and the vulgar 
commercial aims and methods of the West should subsist in 
our midst. The country has yet to evolve a system of education 
which shall be really national. The taint of Occidental ideals 
and alien and unsuitable methods has to be purged out of our 
minds, and nowhere more than in the teaching which should 
be the foundation of intellectual and aesthetic renovation. 
The spirit of old Indian Art must be revived, the inspiration 
and directness of vision which even now subsists among the 
possessors of the ancient traditions, the inborn skill and taste 
of the race, the dexterity of the Indian hand and the intuitive 
gaze of the Indian eye must be recovered and the whole nation 
lifted again to the high level of the ancient culture—and 
higher. 

* 

* * 


Undated 

We of today have been overpowered by the European tradi¬ 
tion as interpreted by the English, the least artistic of civilised 
nations. We have therefore come to make on a picture the 
same demand as on a photograph,—the reproduction of the 
thing as the eye sees it.... The conception that Art exists not 
to copy, but for the sake of a deeper truth and vision, and we 
must seek in it not the object but God in the object, not things 
but the soul of things, seems to have vanished for a while 
from the Indian consciousness.... 


* Sri Aurobindo is referring in particular to the remarkable artistic 
awakening which Bengal witnessed at the end of the nineteenth century, 
with the Tagore family providing its most talented leaders. This revival, 
however, could not resist the utilitarian onslaught and started fading away 
in the 1930s. 


67 




India’s Rebirth 


Indian Art demands of the artist the power of communion 
with the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking prece¬ 
dence of the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper 
vision within.... 


January 1, 1910 

It is foolish to expect men to make great sacrifices while 
discouraging their hope and enthusiasm. It is not intellectual 
recognition of duty that compels sustained self-sacrifice in 
masses of men; it is hope, it is the lofty ardour of a great 
cause, it is the enthusiasm of a noble and courageous effort. 

★ 

* * 

January 15, 1910 

A bureaucracy is always inclined to be arrogant, self- 
sufficient, self-righteous and unsympathetic, to ignore the 
abuses with which it abounds.... 

* 

* * 

Early 1910 

There is no word so plastic and uncertain in its meaning as 

the word religion. The word is European_ The average 

Christian believes that the Bible is God’s book, but ordinarily 
he does not consider anything in God's book binding on him 
in practice except to believe in God and go to Church once a 
week; the rest is only meant for the exceptionally pious. On 
the whole, therefore, to believe in God, to believe that He 
wrote a book,—only one book in all these ages,—and to go to 
Church on Sunday is the minimum of religion in Europe; on 
these essentials piety and morality may supervene and deepen 
the meaning. 


68 




1910 


Religion in India is a still more plastic term and may mean 
anything from the heights of Yoga to strangling your fellow- 
man and relieving him of the worldly goods he may happen 
to be carrying with him. It would therefore take too long 
to enumerate everything that can be included in Indian reli¬ 
gion. Briefly, however, it is dharma or living religiously, the 
whole life being governed by religion. But again what is living 
religiously? It means, in ordinary practice, living according to 
authority. The authority generally accepted is the Shastra; 
but when one studies the Shastra and Indian life side by side, 
one finds that the two have very little to do with each other; 
the Indian governs his life not by the Shastra but by custom 
and the opinion of the nearest Brahmin. In practice this 
resolves itself into certain observances and social customs of 
which he understands neither the spiritual meaning nor the 
practical utility. To venerate the Scriptures without knowing 
them and to obey custom in their place; to reverence all 
Brahmins whether they are venerable or despicable; to eat 
nothing cooked by a social inferior; to marry one’s daughter 
before puberty and one’s son as soon as possible after it; to 
keep women ignorant and domestically useful; to bathe scru¬ 
pulously and go through certain fixed ablutions; to eat on 
the floor and not at a table; to do one’s devotions twice a day 
without understanding them; to observe a host of meaning¬ 
less minutiae in one's daily conduct; to keep the Hindu holi¬ 
days, when an image is set up, worshipped and thrown away, 
—this in India is the minimum of religion. This is glorified as 
Hinduism and the Sanatana Dharma. If, in addition, a man 
has emotional or ecstatic piety, he is a Bhakta; if he can talk 
fluently about the Veda, Upanishads, Darshanas and Puranas, 
he is a Jnani. If he puts on a yellow robe and does nothing, he 
is a tyagi or sannyasin. The latter is liberated from the ordi¬ 
nary dharma, but only if he does nothing but beg and vegetate. 
All work must be according to custom and the Brahmin. The 
one superiority of average Indian religion is that it does really 
reverence the genuine Bhakta or Sannyasin provided he does 


69 



India's Rebirth 


not come with too strange a garb or too revolutionary an 
aspect. The European almost invariably sets him down as a 
charlatan, professional religionist, idle drone or religious 
maniac. 

The average Hindu is right in his conception of religion as 
dharma, to live according to holy rule; but the holy rule is not 
a mass of fugitive and temporary customs, but this, to live for 
God in oneself and others and not for oneself only, to make 
the whole life a sadhana the object of which is to realise the 
Divine in the world by work, love and knowledge. 12 




1910 


(Early in 1910, the Colonial government took advan¬ 
tage of a few terrorist acts to stamp out all opposition, 
arrest and deport Nationalist leaders and pass increas¬ 
ingly tyrannical laws. There remained in the field the 
impotent Moderates on the one hand, and on the other 
fruitless and directionless violence. Simultaneously, 
there were more pressing portents that the government 
had finally decided to arrest Sri Aurobindo again, 
deport him under its draconian laws, and silence the 
Karmayogin. In mid-February, following news of an 
impending arrest, Sri Aurobindo received an Adesh to 
go to Chandemagore, then under French government. 
Leaving the Karmayogin office at once, he reached 
Chandemagore the next morning, where he remained 
for a month and a half, immersed in sadhana. Most of 
the following extracts are from articles he had written 
before leaving, or perhaps sent from Chandemagore 
to the Karmayogin, which he had left in the charge of 
Sister Nivedita. At the end of March, he received a 
second Adesh to go to Pondicherry. The last issue of 
the Karmayogin came out on April 2, 1910.) 


February 19, 1910 

Life creates institutions; institutions do not create, but 
express and preserve life. This is a truth we are too apt to 
forget. The Europeans and especially our Gurus, the English, 
attach an exaggerated importance to machinery, because 
their own machinery has been so successful, their organisa¬ 
tion so strong and triumphant. In the conceit of this success 
they imagine that their machinery is the only machinery and 
that the adoption of their organisation by foreign peoples is 
all that is needed for perfect social and political felicity.... 
To take over those institutions and think that they will 
magically develop European virtues, force and robustness, 


71 




India’s Rebirth 


or the vivid and vigorous life of Europe, is as if a man were 
to steal another's coat and think to take over with it his 
character. Have not indeed many of us thought by masquer¬ 
ading in the amazing garb which nineteenth century Europe 
developed, to become so many brown Englishmen? This 
curious conjuring trick did not work; hatted, coated and 
pantalooned, we still kept the Chaddar and the Dhoty in our 
characters. The fond attempt to become great, enlightened 
and civilised by borrowing European institutions will be an 
equally disastrous failure. 

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 to solve the problems which 
are threatening to hammer Governments, creeds, societies 
into pieces all the world over, will lead the world in the age 
that is coming. It is our ambition that India should be that 
nation. But in order that she should be what we wish, it is 
necessary that she should be capable of unsparing revolu¬ 
tion. She must have the courage of her past knowledge and 
the immensity of soul that will measure itself with her 
future. 


Men see the waves, they hear the rumour and the thousand 
voices and by these they judge the course of the future and 
the heart of God’s intention; but in nine cases out of ten they 
misjudge. Therefore it is said that in history it is always the 
unexpected that happens. But it would not be the unexpected 
if men could turn their eyes from superficies and look into 
substance, if they accustomed themselves to put aside 
appearances and penetrate beyond them to the secret and 
disguised reality, if they ceased listening to the noise of life 
and listened rather to its silence. 



1910 


February 26, 1910 

The attempt to make boys moral and religious by the 
teaching of moral and religious text-books is a vanity and a 
delusion, precisely because the heart is not the mind and to 
instruct the mind does not necessarily improve the heart.... 
The danger of moral text-books is that they make the thinking 
of high things mechanical and artificial, and whatever is 
mechanical and artificial is inoperative for good.... 

You can impose a certain discipline on children, dress 
them into a certain mould, lash them into a desired path, but 
unless you can get their hearts and natures on your side the 
conformity to this imposed rule becomes a hypocritical and 
heartless, a conventional, often a cowardly compliance_ 

The first rule of moral training is to suggest and invite, not 
command or impose. The best method of suggestion is by 
personal example, daily converse and the books read from 
day to day. These books should contain, for the younger 
student, the lofty example of the past given, not as moral 
lessons, but as things of supreme human interest, and, for 
the elder student, the great thoughts of great souls, the pas¬ 
sages of literature which set fire to the highest emotions and 
prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, the records of 
history and biography which exemplify the living of those 
great thoughts, noble emotions and aspiring ideals. This is a 
kind of good company, satsanga, which can seldom fail to 
have effect so long as sententious sermonising is avoided, 
and becomes of the highest effect if the personal life of the 
teacher is itself moulded by the great things he places before 
his pupils. It cannot, however, have full force unless the 
young life is given opportunity, within its limited sphere, of 
embodying in action the moral impulses which rise within it. 


The events that sway the world are often the results of 
trivial circumstances. When immense changes and irresistible 


73 



India's Rebirth 


movements are in progress, it is astonishing how a single 
event, often a chance event, will lead to a train of circum¬ 
stances that alter the face of a country or the world. At such 
times a slight turn this way or that produces results out of all 
proportion to the cause. It is on such occasions that we feel 
most vividly the reality of a Power which disposes of events 
and defeats the calculations of men. The end of many things is 
brought about by the sudden act of a single individual. A world 
vanishes, another is created almost at a touch. Certainty disap¬ 
pears and we begin to realise what the pralaya of the Hindus, 
the passage from one age to another, really means and how 
true is the idea that it is by rapid transitions long-prepared 
changes are induced. Such a change now impends all over 
the world, and in almost all countries events are happening, 
the final results of which the actors do not foresee. Small 
incidents pass across the surface of great countries and some 
of them pass and are forgotten, others precipitate the future. 

fe 

•k rk 

March 5, 1910 

A very remarkable feature of modern training which has 
been subjected in India to a reductio ad absurdum is the 
practice of teaching by snippets. A subject is taught a little at 
a time, in conjunction with a host of others, with the result 
that what might be well learnt in a single year is badly learned 
in seven and the boy goes out ill-equipped, served with 
imperfect parcels of knowledge, master of none of the great 
departments of human knowledge.... 

The old system was to teach one or two subjects well and 
thoroughly and then proceed to others, and certainly it was a 
more rational system than the modern. If it did not impart so 
much varied information, it built up a deeper, nobler and 
more real culture. Much of the shallowness, discursive light¬ 
ness and fickle mutability of the average modern mind is due 


74 



1910 


to the vicious principle of teaching by snippets. The one defect 
that can be alleged against the old system was that the subject 
earliest learned might fade from the mind of the student 
while he was mastering his later studies. But the excellent 
training given to the memory by the ancients obviated the 
incidence of this defect. In the future education we need not 
bind ourselves either by the ancient or the modern system, 
but select only the most perfect and rapid means of mastering 
knowledge. 

In defence of the modern system it is alleged that the atten¬ 
tion of children is easily tired and cannot be subjected to the 
strain of long application to a single subject. The frequent 
change of subject gives rest to the mind. The question natu¬ 
rally arises: are the children of modern times then so differ¬ 
ent from the ancients, and, if so, have we not made them so 
by discouraging prolonged concentration ? ... A child of seven 
or eight, and that is the earliest permissible age for the com¬ 
mencement of any regular kind of study, is capable of a good 
deal of concentration if he is interested. Interest is, after all, 
the basis of concentration. We make his lessons supremely 
uninteresting and repellent to the child, a harsh compulsion 
the basis of teaching and then complain of his restless inat¬ 
tention ! The substitution of a natural self-education by the 
child for the present unnatural system will remove this objec¬ 
tion of inability. A child, like a man, if he is interested, much 
prefers to get to the end of his subject rather than leave it 
unfinished. To lead him on step by step, interesting and 
absorbing him in each as it comes, until he has mastered his 
subject is the true art of teaching. 

The mother-tongue is the proper medium of education and 
therefore the first energies of the child should be directed to 
the thorough mastering of the medium. Almost every child 
has an imagination, an instinct for words, a dramatic faculty, 
a wealth of idea and fancy. These should be interested in the 
literature and history of the nation. Instead of stupid and 


75 



India’s Rebirth 


dry spelling and reading books, looked on as a dreary and 
ungrateful task, he should be introduced by rapidly progres¬ 
sive stages to the most interesting parts of his own literature 
and the life around him and behind him, and they should be 
put before him in such a way as to attract and appeal to the 
qualities of which I have spoken. All other study at this 
period should be devoted to the perfection of the mental 
functions and the moral character. A foundation should be 
laid at this time for the study of history, science, philosophy, 
art, but not in an obtrusive and formal manner. Every child 
is a lover of interesting narrative, a hero-worshipper and a 
patriot. Appeal to these qualities in him and through them let 
him master without knowing it the living and human parts of 
his nation’s history. Every child is an inquirer, an investigator, 
analyser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to those qualities in 
him and let him acquire without knowing it the right temper 
and the necessary fundamental knowledge of the scientist. 
Every child has an insatiable intellectual curiosity and turn 
for metaphysical enquiry. Use it to draw him on slowly to an 
understanding of the world and himself. Every child has the 
gift of imitation and a touch of imaginative power. Use it to 

give him the ground-work of the faculty of the artist_ 

Teaching by snippets must be relegated to the lumber-room 
of dead sorrows. 

* 

"k * 


March 26, 1910 

The work that was begun at Dakshineshwar is far from 
finished, it is not even understood. That which Vivekananda 
received and strove to develop, has not yet materialised. The 
truth of the future that Bijoy Goswami hid within himself, 
has not yet been revealed utterly to his disciples. A less 
discrete revelation prepares, a more concrete force manifests, 
but where it comes, when it comes, none knoweth. 

•k 

■k * 


76 



1910 


(The following extracts are from Epistles from Abroad, 
written to an imaginary correspondent in India. Sri 
Aurobindo wrote these Epistles early in 1910 and 
probably intended to publish them in the Karmayogin, 
but could not owing to his abrupt departure from 
Calcutta. Some of the last extracts are from Epistles 
he wrote shortly after his arrival at Pondicherry.) 


Dearly beloved, 

Was life always so trivial, always so vulgar, always so love¬ 
less, pale and awkward as the Europeans have made it? This 
well-appointed comfort oppresses me, this perfection of 
machinery will not allow the soul to remember that it is not 
itself a machine. 

Is this then the end of the long march of human civilisation, 
this spiritual suicide, this quiet petrifaction of the soul into 
matter? Was the successful businessman that grand culmina¬ 
tion of manhood toward which evolution was striving? After 
all, if the scientific view is correct, why not ? An evolution that 
started with the protoplasm and flowered in the ourang-outang 
and the chimpanzee, may well rest satisfied with having 
created hat, coat and trousers, the British Aristocrat, the 
American Capitalist and the Parisian Apache. For these, I 
believe, are the chief triumphs of the European enlighten¬ 
ment to which we bow our heads. For these Augustus created 
Europe, Charlemagne refounded civilisation, Louis XIV regu¬ 
lated society, Napoleon systematised the French Revolution. 
For these Goethe thought, Shakespeare imagined and created, 
St. Francis loved, Christ was crucified. What a bankruptcy! 
What a beggary of things that were rich and noble! 

Europe boasts of her science and its marvels. But an Indian 
cannot content himself with asking like Voltaire, as the 
supreme question, "What have you invented?” His glance is 


77 



India’s Rebirth 


at the soul; it is that into which he is accustomed to enquire. 
To the braggart intellect of Europe he is bound to reply, "I 
am not interested in what you know, I am interested in what 
you are. With all your discoveries and inventions, what have 
you become? Your enlightenment is great,—but what are 
these strange creatures that move about in the electric light 
you have installed and imagine that they are human?” Is it a 
great gain for the human intellect to have grown more acute 
and discerning, if the human soul dwindles ? 

But Science does not admit the existence of soul. The soul, 
it says, is only an organised republic of animalcules, and it is 
in the mould of that idea Europe has recast herself;—that is 
what the European nations are becoming, organised republics 
of animalcules,—very intelligent, very methodical, very won¬ 
derful talking and reasoning animalcules but still animal¬ 
cules. Not what the race set out to be, creatures made in the 
image of the Almighty, gods that having fallen from heaven 
remember and strive to recover their heritage. Man in Europe 
is descending steadily from the human level and approximat¬ 
ing to the ant and the hornet. The process is not complete but 
it is progressing apace, and if nothing stops the debacle, we 
may hope to see its culmination in this twentieth century. 
After all our superstitions were better than this enlighten¬ 
ment, our social abuses less murderous to the hopes of the 
race than this social perfection. 

It is a very pleasant inferno they have created in Europe, a 
hell not of torments but of pleasures, of lights and carriages, 
of balls and dances and suppers, of theatres and cafes and 
music-halls, of libraries and clubs and Academies, of National 
Galleries and Exhibitions, of factories, shops, banks and 
Stock Exchanges. But it is hell all the same, not the heaven of 
which the saints and the poets dreamed, the new Jerusalem, 
the golden city. London and New York are the holy cities of 
the new religion, Paris its golden Paradise of Pleasure. 

It is not with impunity that men decide to believe that they 
are animals and God does not exist. For what we believe, that 


78 




1910 


we become. The animal lives by a routine arranged for him 
by Nature; his life is devoted to the satisfaction of his instincts 
bodily, vital and emotional, and he satisfies himself mechanic¬ 
ally, by a regular response to the working of those instincts. 
Nature has regularised everything for him and provided the 
machinery. Man in Europe arranges his own routine, invents 
his own machinery, and adds to the needs of which he is a slave, 
the intellectual. But there will soon be no other difference. 

System, organisation, machinery have attained their perfec¬ 
tion. Bondage has been carried to its highest expression, and 
from a passion for organising external liberty Europe is slay¬ 
ing her spiritual freedom. When the inner freedom is gone, 
the external liberty will follow it, and a social tyranny more 
terrible, inquisitorial and relentless than any that caste ever 
organised in India, will take its place. The process has 
already begun. The shell of external liberty remains, the core 
is already being eaten away. Because he is still free to gratify 
his senses and enjoy himself, the European thinks himself 
free. He does not know what teeth are gnawing into the heart 
of his liberty . 13 


It will be well when every Indian, instead of taking a waxlike 
stamp from his foreign surroundings, is able to carry India 
with him wherever he goes. For that will mean that India is 
destined to conquer and place her stamp upon the whole 
world . 14 

* 


For my part I see failure written large over all the splendid 
and ostentatious achievements of Europe. Her costliest expe¬ 
riments, her greatest expenditure of intellectual and moral 
force have led to the swiftest exhaustion of creative activity, 
the completest bankruptcy of moral elevation and discourag¬ 
ing of man’s once infinite hope. When one considers how 


79 




India’s Rebirth 


many and swift her bankruptcies have been, the imagination 
is appalled by the swiftness of this motor ride to ruin. The 
bankruptcy of the ideas of the French Revolution, the bank¬ 
ruptcy of utilitarian Liberalism, the bankruptcy of national 
altruism, the bankruptcy of humanitarianism, the bankruptcy 
of religious faith, the bankruptcy of political sincerity, the 
bankruptcy of true commercial honesty, the bankruptcy of 
the personal sense of honour, how swiftly they have all 
followed on each other or raced with each other for preced¬ 
ence and kept at least admirable pace. Only her many-sided 
science with its great critical and analytical power and all 
the contrivances that come of analysis, is still living and 
keeps her erect. There remains that last bankruptcy yet to 
come and when that is once over, what will be left? Already I 
see a dry rot begun in this its most sapful and energetic part. 
The firm materialism which was its life and protection, is 
beginning also to go bankrupt, and one sees nothing but craze 
and fantasy ready to take its place. 

A thousand newspapers vulgarise knowledge, debase 
aesthetical appreciation, democratise success and make 
impossible all that was once unusual and noble. The man of 
letters has become a panderer to the intellectual appetites of 
a mob or stands aloof in the narrowness of a coterie. There is 
plenty of brilliance everywhere, but one searches in vain for 
a firm foundation, the power or the solidity of knowledge. 
The select seek paradox in order to distinguish themselves 
from the herd; a perpetual reiteration of some startling 
novelty can alone please the crowd.... Of all literary forms 
the novel only has still some genius and even that is perish¬ 
ing of the modern curse of overproduction. 

Learning and scholarship are unendingly active over the 
dead corpse of creative power as in Alexandria and with the 
later Romans before the great darkness_Yesterday’s opin¬ 

ion is today exploded and discarded, new fireworks of theory, 
generalisation and speculation take the place of the old, and 


80 



1910 


to this pyrotechnic rushing in a circle they give the name of 
progress.... 

In a word, the whole of Europe is now a magnified Alexan¬ 
dria, brilliant forms with a perishing soul in imitation of the 
forms of health, feverish activity with no capital but the 
energy of the sickbed. One has to concede however that it is 
not altogether sterile, for all Europe and America pullulate 
with ever multiplying machinery . 15 


These hollow worm-eaten outsides of Hinduism crumbling 
so sluggishly, so fatally to some sudden and astonishing 
dissolution, do not frighten me. Within them I find the soul 
of a civilisation alive, though sleeping. I see upon it the con¬ 
soling sentence of God, "Because thou hast believed in me, 
therefore thou shah live and not perish." Also, I look through 
the garnished outsides, gaudy, not beautiful, pretentious, not 
great, boastful, not secure, of this vaunting, aggressive, 
dominant Europe and I have seen written on the heart of its 
civilisation a sentence of death and mounting already from 
the heart to the brain an image of annihilation.... 

It is not in noble figures that she presents herself to my 
imagination, this sole enlightened continent, it is not fear or 
respect that they awaken in my mind, these civilised superior 
nations. I see a little girl wearing a new frock and showing 
herself off to Mamma and all the world, unable to conceal 
her pride and delight in the thought that never was a frock so 
new and nice or a little girl so pretty,—never was and never 
will be! I think of a very small boy to whom somebody has 
given a very big cane—one can see him brandishing it, execut¬ 
ing now and then an exultant war-dance, tormenting, tyran¬ 
nising over and plundering of their little belongings all the 
smaller boys he can get within his cane’s reach, not displeased 
if they show a little fight so that he can exhibit his heroic 
strength of arm by punishing them. And then he adorns himself 


81 




India's Rebirth 


with glittering Victoria crosses and calls on all his associates 
to admire his gallant and his daredevil courage. Sometimes it 
reminds me of an old man, a man very early old, still strong 
in his decrepitude, garrulous, well-informed, luxurious, arro¬ 
gant, intelligent, still busy toddling actively from place to 
place, looking into this, meddling in that, laying down the 
law dogmatically on every point under the sun; and through 
it all the clutch already nearing the brain, the shaking of the 
palsy already foreshadowed in tremulous movement and 
uncertain nerve. Very true, Europe, your frock is the clean¬ 
est and newest, for the present, your stick the biggest, your 
war-dance a very frightening spectacle,—frightening even to 
yourselves—with Krupp and Mauser and machine gun what 
else should it be, you are indeed for a while the robust, 
enlightened oldster you seem. But afterwards. Well, after¬ 
wards there will be a newer frock, a bigger stick, a war- 
dance much more terrible and a real Titan grasping at the 
earth for his own instead of the sham . 16 


* 


* * 


82 



1910-1922 


(On April 4, 1910, Sri Aurobindo, still wanted by the British, 
reached Pondicherry clandestinely. A third charge of sedition 
against him, for an article in the Karmayogin, failed in his 
absence. For several years he was going to live in this French 
colony as a fugitive, with spies and rumours hovering about 
him and his small group of companions. 

For some time Sri Aurobindo thought of returning to British 
India, but he soon saw that "enough had been done to change 
the whole face of Indian politics and the whole spirit of the 
Indian people to make independence its aim, ” as he wrote 
later. "His own personal intervention in politics would there¬ 
fore no longer be indispensable. Apart from all this, the magni¬ 
tude of the spiritual work set before him became more and 
more clear to him, and he saw that the concentration of all 
his energies on it was necessary." But Sri Aurobindo's retire¬ 
ment from political activity "did not mean, as most people 
supposed, that he had retired into some height of spiritual 
experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in 
the fate of India. " n 

The following excerpts are from letters, articles and essays; 
many of the latter appeared in the Arya, an English monthly 
Sri Aurobindo published from 1914 to 1921, in which he wrote 
most of his important works.) 



1910-1912 


We have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this 
dolorous phenomenon [of the decline of Indian, civilisation]. 
The patriot attributes our decline to the ravages of foreign 
invasion and the benumbing influences of foreign rule; the 
disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy, the 
evil, the fount and origin of all our ills, in our religion and its 
time-honoured social self-expression. Such explanations, like 
most human thoughts, have their bright side of truth as well 
as their obscure side of error; but they are not, in any case, 
the result of impartial thinking. Man may be, as he has been 
defined, a reasoning animal, but it is necessary to add that he 
is, for the most part, a very badly reasoning animal. He does 
not ordinarily think for the sake of finding out the truth, but 
much more for the satisfaction of his mental preferences and 
emotional tendencies; his conclusions spring from his prefer¬ 
ences, prejudices and passions; and his reasoning and logic 
paraded to justify them are only a specious process or a 
formal mask for his covert approach to an upshot previously 
necessitated by his heart or by his temperament. When we 
are awakened from our modem illusions, as we have been 
awakened from our mediaeval superstitions, we shall find 
that the intellectual conclusions of the rationalist, for all 
their pomp and protest of scrupulous enquiry, were as much 
dogmas as those former dicta of Pope and theologian, which 
confessed without shame their simple basis in the negation 
of reason.... It is always best, therefore, to scrutinise very 
narrowly those bare, trenchant explanations which so easily 
satisfy the pugnacious animal in our intellect; when we have 
admitted that small part of the truth on which they seize, we 
should always look for the large part which they have missed. 

Few societies have been so tamasic, so full of inertia and 
contentment in increasing narrowness as Indian society in 
later times; few have been so eager to preserve themselves in 


85 



India’s Rebirth 


inertia. Few therefore have attached so great an importance 
to authority. Every detail of our life has been fixed for us by 
Shastra and custom, every detail of our thought by Scripture 
and its commentators,—but much oftener by the comment¬ 
ators than by Scripture. Only in one field, that of individual 
spiritual experience, have we cherished the ancient freedom 
and originality out of which our past greatness sprang; it is 
from some new movement in this inexhaustible source that 
every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has arisen. 
Otherwise we should long ago have been in the grave where 
dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars, with 

Esarhaddon* and the Chosroes**_ 

The result of this well-meaning bondage [to the outer 
forms of Hinduism] has been an increasing impoverishment 
of the Indian intellect, once the most gigantic and original in 
the world. Hence a certain incapacity, atrophy, impotence 
have marked our later activities even at their best. The most 
striking instance is our continued helplessness in the face 
of the new conditions and new knowledge imposed on us by 
recent European contact. We have tried to assimilate, we have 
tried to reject, we have tried to select; but we have not been 
able to do any of these things successfully. Successful assimi¬ 
lation depends on mastery; but we have not mastered Euro¬ 
pean conditions and knowledge, rather we have been seized, 
subjected and enslaved by them. Successful rejection is 
possible only if we have intelligent possession of that which 
we wish to keep. Our rejection too must be an intelligent 
rejection; we must reject because we have understood, not 
because we have failed to understand. But our Hinduism, 
our old culture are precisely the possessions we have cher¬ 
ished with the least intelligence; throughout the whole range 
of our life we do things without knowing why we do them, 

* One of the last Assyrian kings in the seventh century bc. 

** Members of the last dynasty of native rulers of Persia, the Sassanids, 
who ruled from the third to the seventh century ad, until the Mahomedan 
conquests engulfed Persia. 


86 




1910-1912 


we believe things without knowing why we believe them, we 
assert things without knowing what right we have to assert 
them,—or, at most, it is because some book or some Brahmin 
enjoins it, because Shankara thinks it, or because someone 
has so interpreted something that he asserts to be a funda¬ 
mental Scripture of our religion. Nothing is our own, nothing 
native to our intelligence, all is derived. As little have we 
understood the new knowledge; we have only understood 
what the Europeans want us to think about themselves and 
their modern civilisation. Our English culture—if culture it 
can be called—has increased tenfold the evil of our depend¬ 
ence instead of remedying it. 

How shall we recover our 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 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 dogma¬ 
tism 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 break our chains, venerable as they are, but let it be in 
order to be free,—in the name of truth, not in the name of 
Europe. It would be a poor bargain to exchange our old 
Indian illuminations, however dark they may have grown to 
us, for a derivative European enlightenment or replace the 
superstitions of popular Hinduism by the superstitions of 
materialistic Science. 

Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed 
work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to 


87 




India’s Rebirth 


think,—to think on all subjects, to think independently, 
fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their 
surface, free of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice 
asunder as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of 
all kinds as with the mace of Bhima.... 

Let us not, either, select at random, make a nameless 
hotchpotch and then triumphantly call it the assimilation of 
East and West. We must begin by accepting nothing on trust 
from any source whatsoever, by questioning everything and 
forming our own conclusions. We need not fear that we shall 
by that process cease to be Indians or fall into the danger of 
abandoning Hinduism. India can never cease to be India or 
Hinduism to be Hinduism, if we really think for ourselves. It 
is only if we allow Europe to think for us that India is in 
danger of becoming an ill-executed and foolish copy of 

Europe_We must ... take our stand on that which is true 

and lasting. But in order to find out what in our conceptions 
is true and lasting, we must question all alike rigorously and 
impartially. The necessity of such a process not for India, 
but for all humanity has been recognised by leading Euro¬ 
pean thinkers. It was what Carlyle meant when he spoke of 
swallowing all formulas. It was the process by which Goethe 
helped to reinvigorate European thinking. But ... Europe has 
for some time ceased to produce original thinkers, though it 
still produces original mechanicians.... China, Japan and 
the Mussulman states are sliding into a blind European imi¬ 
tativeness. In India alone there is self-contained, dormant, 
the energy and the invincible spiritual individuality which 
can yet arise and break her own and the world’s fetters . 18 


Even causes hopelessly lost and deserving to be lost will 
find their defenders and unworthy altars do not lack incense . 19 


* 


88 




1910-1912 


Reform is not an excellent thing in itself as many Europe¬ 
anised intellects imagine; neither is it always safe and good 
to stand unmoved in the ancient paths as the orthodox obsti¬ 
nately believe. Reform is sometimes the first step to the abyss, 
but immobility is the most perfect way to stagnate and 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 inef¬ 
ficiency. Men call themselves moderates, conservatives or 
extremists and manage their conduct and opinions in accord¬ 
ance with a formula. We like to think by systems and parties 
and 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 astonished at the position of the orthodox. They 
labour to deify everything that exists. Hindu society has cer¬ 
tain arrangements and habits which are merely customary. 
There is no proof that they existed in ancient times nor any 
reason why they should last into the future_Neither anti¬ 

quity nor modernity can be the test of truth or the test of 
usefulness. All the Rishis do not belong to the past; the 
Avatars still come; revelation still continues.... To recreate 
Manu entire in modern society is to ask Ganges to flow back 
to the Himalayas. Manu is no doubt national, but so is the 
animal sacrifice and the burnt offering. Because a thing is 
national of the past, it need not follow that it must be national 

of the future. It is stupid not to recognise altered conditions_ 

To all things there is a date and a limit. All long-continued 
customs have been sovereignly useful in their time, even 
totemism and polyandry. We must not ignore the usefulness 
of the past, but we seek in preference a present and a future 
utility. 

Custom and Law may then be altered. For each age its 
Shastra. But we cannot argue straight off that it must be 
altered, or even if alteration is necessary, that it must be 


89 



India’s Rebirth 


altered in a given direction. One is repelled by the ignorant 
enthusiasm of social reformers. Their minds are usually a 
strange jumble of ill-digested European notions. Very few of 
them know anything about Europe, and 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 supersti¬ 
tious, barbarous, harmful and benighted, they will not suffer 
what is praised and practised in Europe to be anything but 
rational and enlightened.... 

Almost every point that the social reformers raise could be 
settled one way or the other without effecting the permanent 
good of society. It is pitiful to see men labouring the point of 
marriage between subcastes and triumphing over an isolated 
instance. Whether the spirit as well as the body of caste should 
remain, is the modem question. Let Hindus remember that 
caste as it stands is merely fat, the trade guild sanctified but 
no longer working, it is not the eternal religion, it is not catur- 
vamya. I do not care whether widows marry or remain single; 
but it is of infinite importance to consider how woman shall 
be legally and socially related to man, as his inferior, equal 
or superior; for even the relation of superiority is no more 
impossible in the future than it was in the far-distant past. 
And the most important question of all is whether society 
shall be competitive or cooperative, individualistic or com¬ 
munistic. That we should talk so little about these things 
and be stormy over insignificant details, shows painfully the 
impoverishment of the average Indian 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 
itself, and it is not in the direction they think, for it embraces 
the world, not India only. Whether we like it or not, He will 


90 




1910-1912 


sweep out the refuse of the Indian past and the European 
present. 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, and 
therefore it will have violently to be mended.... 

Men cry out dismally and lament that all is perishing. But 
if they trust in God's Love and Wisdom, not preferring to it 
their conservative and narrow notions, they would rather 
insist that all is being reborn. 

So much depends on Time and God’s immediate purpose 
that it is more important to seek out His purpose than to attach 
ourselves to our own nostrums. The Kala Purusha, Zeitgeist 
and Death-Spirit, has risen to his dreadful work —lokaksayakrt 
pravrddhah, increasing to destroy a world [Gita, 11.32],—and 
who shall stay the terror and mightiness and irresistibility of 
Him ? But He is not only destroying the world that was, He is 
creating the world that shall be; it is therefore more profit¬ 
able for us to discover and help what He is building than to 
lament and hug in our arms what He is destroying.... Kali is 
the age for a destruction and rebirth, not for a desperate 
clinging to the old that can no longer be saved.... 

Has the time arrived for that destruction ? We think that it 
has. Listen to the crash of those waters, more formidable 
than the noise of assault,—mark that slow, sullen, remorse¬ 
less sapping,—watch pile after pile of our patched incoherent 
ramshackle structure corroding, creaking, shaking with the 
blows, breaking, sinking silently or with a splash, suddenly 
or little by little into the yeast of those billows. Has the time 
arrived for a new construction? We say it has. Mark the activ¬ 
ity, eagerness and hurrying to and fro of mankind, the rapid 
prospecting, seeking, digging, founding,—see the Avatars and 
great vibhutis coming, arising thickly, treading each close 
behind the other. Are not these the signs and do they not tell 
us that the great Avatar of all arrives to establish the first 
Satya Yuga of the Kali?... 

Yes, a new harmony, but not the scrannel pipes of European 


91 


India’s Rebirth 


materialism, not an Occidental foundation upon half truths 
and whole falsehoods. When there is destruction, it is the 
form that perishes, not the spirit—for the world and its ways 
are forms of one Truth which appears in this material world 
in ever new bodies.... In India, the chosen land, [that Truth] 
is preserved; in the soul of India it sleeps expectant on that 
soul’s awakening, the soul of India leonine, luminous, locked 
in the closed petals of the ancient lotus of love, strength and 
wisdom, not in her weak, soiled, transient and miserable 
externals. India alone can build the future of mankind. 20 


Ancient or pre-Buddhistic Hinduism sought Him both in the 
world and outside it; it took its stand on the strength and 
beauty and joy of the Veda, unlike modern or post-Buddhistic 
Hinduism which is oppressed with Buddha’s sense of univer¬ 
sal sorrow and Shankara’s sense of universal illusion,— 
Shankara who was the better able to destroy Buddhism 
because he was himself half a Buddhist. Ancient Hinduism 
aimed socially at our fulfilment in God in life, modern Hindu¬ 
ism at the escape from life to God. The more modern ideal is 
fruitful of a noble and ascetic spirituality, but has a chilling 
and hostile effect on social soundness and development; 
social life under its shadow stagnates for want of belief and 
delight, sraddha and ananda. If we are to make our society 
perfect and the nation is to live again, then we must revert to 
the earlier and fuller truth. 21 



1910-1912 


July 13, 1911 

(From a letter to a friend.) 

Be very careful to follow my instructions in avoiding the 
old kind of politics. Spirituality is India’s only politics, the 
fulfilment of the Sanatana Dharma its only Swaraj. I have no 
doubt we shall have to go through our Parliamentary period 
in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by 
seeing in practice how helpless it is to make nations blessed. 
India is passing really through the first stages of a sort of 
national Yoga. It was mastered in the inception by the inrush 
of divine force which came in 1905 and aroused it from its 
state of complete tamasic afnanam [ignorance]. But, as hap¬ 
pens also with individuals, all that was evil, all the wrong 
samskaras [imprints] and wrong emotions and mental and 
moral habits rose with it and misused the divine force. Hence 
all that orgy of political oratory, democratic fervour, meetings, 
processions, passive resistance, all ending in bombs, revolvers 

and Coercion laws_God has struck it all down,—Moderat- 

ism, the bastard child of English Liberalism; Nationalism, 
the mixed progeny of Europe and Asia; Terrorism, the abor¬ 
tive offspring of Bakunin and Mazzini.... It is only when this 
foolishness is done with that truth will have a chance, the 
sattwic mind in India emerge and a really strong spiritual 
movement begin as a prelude to India’s regeneration. No 
doubt, there will be plenty of trouble and error still to face, 
but we shall have a chance of putting our feet on the right 
path. In all I believe God to be guiding us, giving the neces¬ 
sary experiences, preparing the necessary conditions. 22 


* 


* * 


93 



India's Rebirth 


1910-1914 

(In the first years of his stay at Pondicherry, Sri 
Aurobindo made a deep study of the Veda and, struck 
by the light it threw on his own experiences, rediscov¬ 
ered its lost meaning. A series of extracts from early 
manuscripts on the Veda:) 

I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy, but Veda— 
the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality, 
but about His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the 
forest, but a light and a guide to joy and action in the world, 
the truth which is beyond opinion, the knowledge which all 
thought strives after— yasmin vijnate sarvam vijhatam [which 
being known, all is known], I believe that Veda to be the 
foundation of the Sanatan Dharma; I believe it to be the con¬ 
cealed divinity within Hinduism,—but a veil has to be drawn 
aside, a curtain has to be lifted. I believe it to be knowable 
and discoverable. I believe the future of India and the world 
to depend on its discovery and on its application, not to the 
renunciation of life, but to life in the"world and among men. 23 

* 


Men set up an authority and put it between themselves and 
knowledge. The orthodox are indignant that a mere modern 
should presume to differ from Shankara in interpreting the 
Vedanta or from Sayana in interpreting the Veda. They forget 
that Shankara and Sayana are themselves moderns, separated 
from ourselves by some hundreds of years only, but the Vedas 
are many thousands of years old. The commentator ought to 
be studied, but instead we put him in place of the text. Good 
commentaries are always helpful even when they are wrong, 
but the best cannot be allowed to fetter inquiry. Sayana’s 
commentary on the Veda helps me by showing what a man of 
great erudition some hundreds of years ago thought to be the 


94 



1910-1914 


sense of the Scripture. But I cannot forget that even at the 
time of the Brahmanas* the meaning of the Veda had become 

dark to the men of that prehistoric age_I find that Shan- 

kara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was 
dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not 
bound to exclude what he failed to realise. Aptavakyam, 
authority, is one kind of proof; it is not the only kind: 
pratyaksa [direct knowledge] is more important. 

The heterodox on the other hand swear by Max Muller and 
the Europeans.... The Europeans have seen in our Veda only 
the rude chants of an antique and primitive pastoral race 
sung in honour of the forces of Nature, and for many their 
opinion is conclusive of the significance of the mantras. All 
other interpretation is to them superstitious. But to me the 
ingenious guesses of foreign grammarians are of no more 
authority than the ingenious guesses of Sayana. It is irrele¬ 
vant to me what Max Muller thinks of the Veda or what 
Sayana thinks of the Veda. I should prefer to know what the 
Veda has to say for itself and, if there is any light there on 
the unknown or on the infinite, to follow the ray till I come 
face to face with that which it illumines. 24 


Europe has formed certain views about the Veda and the 
Vedanta, and succeeded in imposing them on the Indian intel¬ 
lect _When a hundred world-famous scholars cry out, "This 

is so,” it is hard indeed for the average mind, and even minds 
above the average but inexpert in these special subjects not 
to acquiesce.... 

Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will 
shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think 
or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its 
right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the 

* The Brahmanas are the part of the Veda consisting of commentaries on 
the Mantras, instructions for rituals, myths and legends, etc. 


95 



India's Rebirth 


meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes we shall, 
I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is 
based upon nothing more sound or true than a foundation of 
loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many estab¬ 
lished philological myths,—the legend, for instance, of an 
Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inim¬ 
ical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous 
philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homoge¬ 
nous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a "henotheistic” 
Vedic naturalism; the ingenious and brilliant extravagances 
of the modern sun and star myth weavers... . 25 


I will take this Puranic theory [of cycles of civilisation that 
preceded ours] as a working hypothesis and suppose at least 
that there was a great Vedic age of advanced civilisation 
broken afterwards by Time and circumstance and of which 
modern Hinduism presents us only some preserved, collected 
or redeveloped fragments.... We need not understand by an 
advanced civilisation a culture or a society at all resembling 
what our modern notions conceive to be the only model of a 
civilised society—the modern European; neither need or 
indeed can we suppose it to have been at all on the model of 
the modern Hindu. It is probable that this ancient culture 
had none of those material conveniences on which we vaunt 
ourselves,—but it may have had others of a higher, possibly 
even a more potent kind. 

I believe the Vedas to hold a sense which neither mediaeval 
India nor modern Europe has grasped, but which was per¬ 
fectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers. Max Muller has 
understood one thing by the Vedic mantras, Sayana has 
understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of 
their antique diction, but none of them understood what 
Yajnavalkya and Ajatashatrou understood.... It is because 


96 



1910-1914 


we do not understand the Vedas that three fourths of the 
Upanishads are a sealed book to us. Even of the little we 
think we can understand, much has been insecurely grasped 
and superficially comprehended.... For want of this key pro¬ 
found scholars have fumbled and for want of this guidance 
great thinkers gone astray,—Max Muller emitted his wonder¬ 
ful utterance about the "babblings of humanity’s nonage,’’* 
Shankara left so much of his text unexplained or put it by as 
inferior truth for the ignorant, Vivekananda found himself 
compelled to admit his non-comprehension of the Vedantin’s 
cosmological ideas and mention them doubtfully as curious 
speculations.... Only when we thoroughly know the great 
Vedic ideas in their totality shall we be able entirely to 
appreciate the profound harmonious and grandiose system 
of thought of our early forefathers. 26 

* 


Religious movements and revolutions have come and gone or 
left their mark but after all and through all the Veda remains 

to us our Rock of the Ages, our eternal foundation_The 

Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, 
arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and 
crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowl¬ 
edge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years 
at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas. 

I find in the Aryan and Dravidian tongues, the Aryan and 

* “What can be more tedious than the Veda?" he also asked. Most other 
nineteenth-century European scholars agreed: "The verses of the Veda 
appear singularly prosaic," says Wi Ison, "and at any rate their chief value lies 
not in their fancy [sic] but in their facts, social and religious." Monier- 
Williams finds them "to abound more in puerile ideas than in striking 
thoughts and lofty conceptions." Griffith is struck by the "intolerable 
monotony of a great number of the hymns," whose language and style, accor¬ 
ding to Cowell, "is singularly artificial." The last, however, concedes that "far 
wider and deeper study is needed to pierce to the real meaning of these old 
hymns." 


97 



India’s Rebirth 


Dravidian races not separate and unconnected families but two 
branches of a single stock. The legend of the Aryan invasion 
and settlement in the Panjab in Vedic times is, to me, a philol¬ 
ogical myth. 27 * 

* 

The Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; 
the Veda will remain its end. These compositions of an 
unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of the eternal 
Mother of knowledge from which our succeeding ages have 
all been fed.... 

The recovery of the perfect truth of the Veda is therefore not 

* And a most enduring one. Sri Aurobindo's luminously consistent and 
cogent exposition in The Secret of the Veda of its symbolic sense, which 
provided a detailed refutation of the "Aryan invasion theory," has been 
studiously ignored by most Western and Indian scholars, although of late 
some of the latter have begun to recognize the importance of Sri Aurobindo's 
discovery. Yet it is striking to note that this theory and its resulting contrived 
reconstruction of India's ancient history, still presented and taught—espe¬ 
cially in India—as a solid certainty, not only finds no confirmation of any sort 
in archaeology (which on the contrary clearly refutes it—see next footnote), 
but is also in head-on contradiction with two mainstays of Indian tradition: 
l.The one that regards the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as based on 
historical tradition (itihasa), considerably embellished, to be sure, but still 
with a kernel of historicity: we find depicted in these epics a highly developed 
civilization spanning several millennia, and a Great War waged around 3100 
bc, both of which are incompatible with the semiprimitive cattle-worshipping 
Aryans' coming into India around 1500 bc; the Great War is therefore, at best, 
the glorification of a "local feud" between two Aryan tribes. 2. The more 
central tradition which holds the Veda to be a book of divine and eternal 
knowledge: most scholars find none in it, which is hardly surprising since 
they decide to force their reading of history, geography and ethnology into 
the Veda and a priori rule out any deeper, symbolic content to it (and conse¬ 
quently any significant spiritual experience the Vedic Rishis might have 
had); they are also compelled to date the Veda about 1000 bc, a ridiculously 
late date. 

The result is the fallacy of a rigid break between Aryan and Dravidian races, 
languages, civilizations, even deities (Shiva is Dravidian, Vishnu is Aryan!). 
India, maimed in her spirit and her physical being, has also been maimed in 
her past. We await a broader, bolder and unblinkered scholarship, which will 
neither ignore the elements supplied by archaeology, nor close its eyes to 
what has been for millennia the source of India’s spiritual life and strength. 


98 



1910-1914 


merely a desideratum for our modern intellectual curiosity, 
but a practical necessity for the future of the human race. 
For I believe firmly that the secret concealed in the Veda, 
when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly 
that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the 
march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction 
of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return. 28 


It is a superstition of modern thought that the march of 
knowledge has in all its parts progressed always in a line of 
forward progress deviating from it, no doubt, in certain 
periods of obscuration, but always returning and in the sum 
constituting everywhere an advance and nowhere a retro¬ 
gression. Like all superstitions this belief is founded on bad 

and imperfect observation flowering into a logical fallacy_ 

The logical fallacy we land in as the goal of our bad observa¬ 
tion is the erroneous conception that because we are more 
advanced than certain ancient peoples in our own especial lines 
of success, as the physical sciences, therefore necessarily we 
are also more advanced in other lines where we are still 
infants and have only recently begun to observe and experi¬ 
ment, as the science of psychology and the knowledge of our 
subjective existence and of mental forces_While our fore¬ 

fathers believed that the more ancient might on the whole be 
trusted as more authoritative, because nearer to the gods, and 
the less ancient less authoritative because nearer to man’s 
ultimate degeneracy, we [moderns] believe on the contrary 
that the more ancient is always on the whole more untrue 
because nearer to the unlettered and unenquiring savage, the 
more modern the more true because held as opinion by the 
lettered and instructed citizen of Paris or Berlin. Neither 
position can be accepted. Verification by experience and 
experiment is the only standard of truth, not antiquity, not 
modernity. Some of the ideas of the ancients or even of the 
savage now scouted by us may be lost truths or statements of 


99 



India’s Rebirth 


valid experience from which we have turned or become oblivi¬ 
ous; many of the notions of the modem schoolmen will cer¬ 
tainly in the future be scouted as erroneous and superstitious. 29 

* 

The time-limit allowed for the growth of civilisation [by the 
theory of a straight-line progression from a primitive age] is 
still impossibly short.... We can no longer argue that no 
ancient civilisations can have existed of which the traces have 
entirely perished and that prehistoric means, necessarily, 

savage and undeveloped_ Everything tends to show that 

there must be the remains of other civilisations yet undiscov¬ 
ered. We cannot have exhausted all that the earth contains. 30 * 

* 

* * 


* Sri Aurobindo wrote this some eight years before the first archaeological 
discoveries in 1921-22 of the Indus Valley or Harappan civilization (3500-1900 
BC, now increasingly called Indus-Saraswati civilization). Since it had a priori 
been decided that the "Vedic Aryans” entered India around 1500 BC, most 
scholars felt compelled to conclude that this civilization was "pre-Aryan” and 
pre-Vedic. Yet seals depicting deities seated in yogic postures, fire and 
sacrificial altars, figures of the so-called Pasupati and the bull, worship of a 
Mother goddess, recent indications of a marked affinity between the Indus 
language and Vedic Sanskrit—all these are strongly suggestive of Vedic 
culture, and indeed a number of archaeologists are veering to the view that 
the Indus-Saraswati civilization was late or even post-Vedic. On the other 
hand, they agree that no findings have been made east of the Indus which 
could be traced to an Aryan people coming into India. 

More recent findings (in the 1980s) at Dwaraka and Bet-Dwaraka have put 
one more spanner in the well-greased works of the Aryan invasion theory, as 
they corroborate the submergence of Krishna’s city, regarded till now as a 
"myth” from the Mahabharata. Although the Dwaraka findings, carbon- 
dated to about 1500 BC, do not as yet fit with the traditional date ascribed to 
Krishna’s time (let us however venture to suggest that further exploration 
will reveal more ancient remains), even this "recent" date shows the absur¬ 
dity of semiprimitive Aryan tribes invading India and instantly creating a 
mighty urban civilization! Or else, if the Dwaraka ruins are a late develop¬ 
ment of the "pre-Aryan” Indus-Saraswati civilization, what becomes of its 
association with "Aryan” Krishna, or at least (if Krishna is denied the honour 


100 




1914 


1914-1915 


(A few of Sri Aurobindo’s 
"Thoughts and Aphorisms") 

How much hatred and stupidity men succeed in packing up 
decorously and labelling "Religion” ! 

The quarrels of religious sects are like the disputing of pots, 
which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalising nectar. 
Let them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in 
whatever pot and attain immortality. 

Break the moulds of the past, but keep safe its gains and its 
spirit, or else thou hast no future. 

There are two for whom there is hope, the main who has felt 
God’s touch and been drawn to it and the sceptical seeker 
and self-convinced atheist; but for the formularists of all the 
religions and the parrots of free thought, they are dead souls 
who follow a death that they call living. 


of a physical existence) with the "Aryan” Mahabharata? Could this self- 
inflicted puzzle be the reason why S. R. Rao's rediscovery of ancient 
Dwaraka has not attracted the degree of attention which that of ancient 
Troy by Schliemann did? 

Such has also been the fate of V. S. Wakankar’s rediscovery in the 1980s of 
the bed of the Vedic river Saraswati, confirmed by satellite photography. 
This great river, now proved to have dried up before 2000 BC, is lavishly 
honoured in the Rig-Veda, supposedly composed by Aryan tribes a thousand 
years later! Moreover, some 700 Indus-Saraswati settlements have been 
found along its banks, further confirming the Vedic nature of this civiliza¬ 
tion. (An unbiased study of all available elements from archaeology, 
geography, mathematics, astronomy, etc., has now established that the Veda 
must have been composed between 7000 and 4000 BC. S1 ) 

Whatever twists and turns Indian civilization may have followed, whatever 
migrations may have taken place to or from India, a sharp demarcation 
between pre- and post-Aryan India finds justification neither in the Scrip¬ 
tures nor in archaeology. It is safe to predict that future archaeological find¬ 
ings will further confirm the essential continuity of Indian civilization. 


101 



India’s Rebirth 


Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but 
let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth 
into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. 
There will always be more in God than the thought of man 
has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered. 

•k 

The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were 
created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be 
allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman. 

* 

Fight, while thy hands are free, with thy hands and thy voice 
and thy brain and all manner of weapons. Art thou chained 
in the enemy’s dungeons and have his gags silenced thee? 
Fight with thy silent all-besieging soul and thy wide-ranging 
will-power and when thou art dead, fight still with the world- 
encompassing force that went out from God within thee. 

Thou thinkest the ascetic in his cave or on his mountain-top a 
stone and a do-nothing. What dost thou know? He may be 
filling the world with the mighty currents of his will and 
changing it by the pressure of his soul-state. 

* 

The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill- 
organised society, and our public charities are but the first 
tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber. 

Selfishness kills the soul; destroy it. But take care that your 
altruism does not kill the souls of others. 


Medical Science has been more a curse to mankind than a 


102 




1914 


blessing. It has broken the force of epidemics and unveiled a 
marvellous surgery; but, also, it has weakened the natural 
health of man and multiplied individual diseases; it has im¬ 
planted fear and dependence in the mind and body; it has 
taught our health to repose not on natural soundness but a 
rickety and distasteful crutch compact from the mineral and 
vegetable kingdoms. 

Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our 
incurable barbarism. If we must encase ourselves in a 
bewildering multitude of comforts and trappings, we must 
needs do without Art and its methods; for to dispense with 
simplicity and freedom is to dispense with beauty. The luxury 
of our ancestors was rich and even gorgeous, but never 
encumbered. 

* 


The communistic principle of society is intrinsically as 
superior to the individualistic as is brotherhood to jealousy 
and mutual slaughter; but all the practical schemes of 
Socialism invented in Europe are a yoke, a tyranny and a 
prison. 

If communism ever reestablishes itself successfully upon 
earth, it must be on a foundation of soul’s brotherhood and 
the death of egoism. A forced association and a mechanical 
comradeship would end in a world-wide fiasco. 

Democracy in Europe is the rule of the Cabinet minister, the 
corrupt deputy or the self-seeking capitalist masqued by the 
occasional sovereignty of a wavering populace; Socialism in 
Europe is likely to be the rule of the official and policeman 
masqued by the theoretic sovereignty of an abstract State. It 
is chimerical to enquire which is the better system; it would 
be difficult to decide which is the worse. 


103 



India's Rebirth 


The gain of democracy is the security of the individual's life, 
liberty and goods from the caprices of the tyrant one or the 
selfish few; its evil is the decline of greatness in humanity. 

This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfect¬ 
ing their environment by the machinery of government and 
society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within 
that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art 
within, that outside thee thou shalt enjoy; no machinery can 
rescue thee from the law of thy being. 

Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisa¬ 
tion and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is 
perfect; then a child shall destroy her. 

* 


So long as a cause has on its side one soul that is intangible in 
faith, it cannot perish . 32 



1914 


August 29, 1914 

(From a letter to Motilal Roy, a revolutionary from 
Chandernagore who later attempted to create a 
commune based on Sri Aurobindo's ideals.) 

Gandhi’s loyalism* is not a pattern for India which is not 
South Africa, and even Gandhi’s loyalism is corrected by 
passive resistance. An abject tone of servility in politics is 
not "diplomacy” and is not good politics. It does not deceive 
or disarm the opponent; it does encourage nervelessness, fear 
and a cringing cunning in the subject people. What Gandhi 
has been attempting in South Africa is to secure for Indians 
the position of kindly treated serfs,—as a stepping-stone to 
something better.... Our position is different and our aim is 
different, not to secure a few privileges, but to create a nation 
of men fit for independence and able to secure and keep it. 

* 

* * 


August, 1914 

In the fixed tradition of thousands of years [the Vedas] 
have been revered as the origin and standard of all that can 
be held as authoritative and true in Brahmana and Upanishad, 
in Tantra and Purana, in the doctrines of great philosophical 
schools and in the teachings of famous saints and sages. The 
name borne by them was Veda, the knowledge,—the received 
name for the highest spiritual truth of which the human 
mind is capable. But if we accept the current interpretations, 
whether Sayana’s or the modern theory, the whole of this 
sublime and sacred reputation is a colossal fiction. The 


* To the British Empire in South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902) 
and the 1906 Zulu rebellion. When Sri Aurobindo wrote this letter, Gandhi 
was still in South Africa; he returned to India a few months later, in 
January, 1915. 


105 



India's Rebirth 


hymns are, on the contrary, nothing more than the naive 
superstitious fancies of untaught and materialistic barbar¬ 
ians concerned only with the most external gains and enjoy¬ 
ments and ignorant of all but the most elementary moral 
notions or religious aspirations . 33 


September, 1914 

Western Philology has converted it [the word arya] into 
a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which 
different speculations fix different values.... [But] in the 
Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a parti¬ 
cular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of 
ideality, of aspiration.... 

Whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of 
the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or 
defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for 
his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, 
no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, 
he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man . 34 

* 

* * 

September, 1914 (?) 

(From a letter to Motilal Roy.) 

You must understand that my mission is not to create 
Maths, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of 
the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali.... Every ascetic 
movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker 
and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one 
thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life 
greater and more divine is another. You cannot enforce one 


106 



1914 


ideal on the country without weakening the other. You cannot 
take away the best souls from life and yet leave life stronger 
and greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is 
the Yoga I teach,—no other renunciation. 

* 

* * 


December, 1914 

Like the majority of educated Indians I had passively 
accepted without examination, before myself reading the 
Veda, the conclusions of European Scholarship both as to 
the religious and as to the historical and ethnical sense of the 
ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary 
line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the Upa- 
nishads as the most ancient source of Indian thought and 
religion, the true Veda, the first Book of Knowledge. The Rig- 
veda in the modern translations which were all I knew of this 
profound Scripture, represented for me an important docu¬ 
ment of our national history, but seemed of small value or 
importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual 
experience.... 

It was my stay in Southern India which first seriously 
turned my thoughts to the Veda. Two observations that were 
forced on my mind gave a serious shock to my second-hand 
belief in the racial division between Northern Aryans and 
Southern Dravidians. The distinction had always rested for 
me on a supposed difference between the physical types of 
Aryan and Dravidian and a more definite incompatibility 
between the northern Sanskritic and the southern non- 
Sanskritic tongues. I knew indeed of the later theories which 
suppose that a single homogeneous race, Dravidian or Indo- 
Afghan, inhabits the Indian peninsula; but hitherto I had not 
attached much importance to these speculations. I could not, 
however, be long in Southern India without being impressed 
by the general recurrence of northern or "Aryan” type in the 


107 



India's Rebirth 


Tamil race. Wherever I turned, I seemed to recognise with a 
startling distinctness, not only among the Brahmins but in all 
castes and classes, the old familiar faces, features, figures of 
my friends of Maharashtra, Gujerat, Hindustan, even, though 
this similarity was less widely spread, of my own province 
Bengal. The impression I received was as if an army of all 
the tribes of the North had descended on the South and sub¬ 
merged any previous populations that may have occupied it. A 
general impression of a Southern type survived, but it was 
impossible to fix it rigidly while studying the physiognomy of 
individuals. And in the end I could not but perceive that what¬ 
ever admixtures might have taken place, whatever regional 
differences might have been evolved, there remains, behind 
all variations, a unity of physical as well as of cultural type* 
throughout India.... 

But what then of the sharp distinction between Aryan and 
Dravidian races created by the philologists? It disappears. If 
at all an Aryan invasion is admitted, we have either to sup¬ 
pose that it flooded India and determined the physical type 
of the people, with whatever modifications, or that it was the 
incursion of small bands of a less civilised race who melted 
away into the original population. We have then to suppose 
that entering a vast peninsula occupied by a civilised people, 
builders of great cities, extensive traders, not without mental 
and spiritual culture, they were yet able to impose on them 
their own language, religion, ideas and manners. Such a 
miracle would be just possible if the invaders possessed a 
very highly organised language, a greater force of creative 
mind and a more dynamic religious form and spirit. 

And there was always the difference of language to support 
the theory of a meeting of races. But here also my preconceived 
ideas were disturbed and confounded. For on examining the 


* I prefer not to use the term race, for race is a thing much more obscure 
and difficult to determine than is usually imagined. In dealing with it the 
trenchant distinctions current in the popular mind are wholly out of place. 
[Sri Aurobindo's footnote.] 


108 



1914 


vocables of the Tamil language,* in appearance so foreign to 
the Sanskritic form and character, I yet found myself contin¬ 
ually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be 
pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit 
and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally, between the 
Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocable not only 
suggested the connection, but proved the missing link in a 
family of connected words. And it was through this Dravidian 
language that I came first to perceive what seems to me now 
the true law, origins and, as it were, the embryology of the 
Aryan tongues. I was unable to pursue my examination far 
enough to establish any definite conclusion, but it certainly 
seems to me that the original connection between the Dravi¬ 
dian and Aryan tongues was far closer and more extensive 
than is usually supposed and the possibility suggests itself 
that they may even have been two divergent families derived 
from one lost primitive tongue. If so, the sole remaining evi¬ 
dence of an Aryan invasion of Dravidian India would be the 
indications to be found in the Vedic hymns. 

It was, therefore, with a double interest that for the first 
time I took up the Veda in the original, though without any 
immediate intention of a close or serious study. It did not 
take long to see that the Vedic indications of a racial division 
between Aryans and Dasyus and the identification of the latter 
with the indigenous Indians were of a far flimsier character 
than I had supposed. But far more interesting to me was the 
discovery of a considerable body of profound psychological 
thought and experience lying neglected in these ancient hymns. 
And the importance of this element increased in my eyes when 
I found, first, that the mantras of the Veda illuminated with a 
clear and exact light psychological experiences of my own for 
which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European 
psychology or in the teachings of Yoga or of Vedanta, so far 


* Sri Aurobindo studied Tamil for a few years with the help of Subramania 
Bharati, the well-known Tamil revolutionary and poet. 


109 




India’s Rebirth 


as I was acquainted with them, and, secondly, that they shed 
light on obscure passages and ideas of the Upanishads to 
which, previously, I could attach no exact meaning and gave 
at the same time a new sense to much in the Puranas . 35 

* 

★ * 


1915 (?) 


(Extracts from an interview given to 
a correspondent of The Hindu:) 

I am convinced and have long been convinced that a 
spiritual awakening, a reawakening to the true self of the 
nation is the most important condition of our national great¬ 
ness_India, if she chooses, can guide the world. 

... I quite agree with you that our social fabric will have to 
be considerably altered before long.... Our past with all its 
faults and defects should be sacred to us; but the claims of 
our future with its immediate possibilities should be still 
more sacred. 

[The correspondent notes that Sri Aurobindo's "concluding 
words were spoken in a very solemn mood”:] It is more impor¬ 
tant that the thought of India should come out of the philoso¬ 
phical school and renew its contact with life, and the spiritual 
life of India issue out of the cave and the temple and, adapting 
itself to new forms, lay its hand upon the world. I believe also 
that humanity is about to enlarge its scope by new knowledge, 
new powers and capacities, which will create as great a revo¬ 
lution in human life as the physical science of the nineteenth 
century. Here, too, India holds in her past, a little rusted and 
put out of use, the key of humanity’s future. 

It is in these directions that I have been for some time 
impelled to turn my energies rather than to the petty political 
activities which are alone open to us at the present moment. 
This is the reason of my continued retirement and detachment 


110 



1915 


from action. I believe in the necessity at such times and for 
such great objects of tapasya in silence for self-training, for 
self-knowledge and storage of spiritual force. Our fore¬ 
fathers used that means, though in different forms. And it is 
the best means for becoming an efficient worker in the great 
days of the world . 36 

★ 


(From a letter to Motilal Roy.) 

It is regrettable that Bengal should be unable to find 
anything in the Ary a* but not surprising. The intellect of 
Bengal has been so much fed on chemical tablets of thought 
and hot-spiced foods that anything strong and substantial is 
indigestible to it. Moreover people in India are accustomed 
only to second-hand thoughts,—the old familiar ideas of the 
six philosophies, Patanjali etc., etc. Any new presentation of 
life and thought and Yoga upsets their expectations and is 
unintelligible to them. The thought of the Arya demands 
close thinking from the reader; it does not spare him the 
trouble of thinking and understanding and the minds of the 
people have long been accustomed to have the trouble of 
thought spared them. They know how to indulge their minds, 
they have forgotten how to exercise them.... 

Soon after the Arya began, I got a letter from some 
graduates saying that what they wanted was "man-making.” 
I have done my share of man-making and it is a thing which 
now anybody can do; Nature herself is looking after it all 
over the world, though more slowly in India than elsewhere. 
My business is now not man-making, but divine man-making. 
My present teaching is that the world is preparing for a new 
progress, a new evolution. Whatever race, whatever country 
seizes on the lines of that new evolution and fulfils it, will be 
the leader of humanity.... 


* The monthly edited and published by Sri Aurobindo from 1914 to 1921. 


Ill 




1915 


India and especially Bengal have the best chance and the 
best right to create that race and become the leaders of the 
future,—to do in the right way what Germany thought of 
doing in the wrong way. But first they must learn to think, 
to cast away old ideas, and turn their faces resolutely to the 
future. But they cannot do this, if they merely copy Euro¬ 
pean politics or go on eternally reproducing Buddhistic 
asceticism. I am afraid the Ramakrishna Mission with all 
its good intentions is only going to give us Shankaracharya 
and Buddhistic humanitarianism. But that is not the goal to 
which the world is moving. 

* 

* * 

January, 1915 

Charity and altruism are often essentially egoistic in their 
immediate motive. They are stirred by the discomfort of the 
sight of suffering to the nervous system or by the pleasur¬ 
ableness of others’ appreciation of our kindliness or by the 
egoistic self-appreciation of our own benevolence or by the 
need of indulgence in sympathy. There are philanthropists 
who would be troubled if the poor were not always with us, 
for they would then have no field for their charity.... 

Nor is detailed sympathy and alleviation of particular 
sufferings the only help that can be given to men. To cut 
down branches of a man’s tree of suffering is good, but they 
grow again; to aid him to remove its roots is a still more 
divine helpfulness . 37 

•k 

* * 


1915 

To be clear in one’s own mind, entirely true and plain with 
one’s self and with others, wholly honest with the conditions 
and materials of one’s labour, is a rare gift in our crooked, 


112 



1915 


complex and faltering humanity. It is the spirit of the Aryan 
worker and a sure secret of vigorous success. For always 
Nature recognizes a clear, honest and recognisable knock at 
her doors and gives the result with an answering scrupulosity 
and diligence. 38 

* 

•k * 

(On March 29, 1914, Sri Aurobindo met Mirra, a French 
lady who had come from France to see him. She stayed 
at Pondicherry for a year, went back to France, and in 
1916 journeyed to Japan where she remained until her 
return to Pondicherry on April 24, 1920. 

For thirty years she was going to work with Sri 
Aurobindo. We know her as "Mother." 

Two passages from letters Sri Aurobindo wrote to 
Mother in France, while World War I was raging:) 

May 6, 1915 

One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self- 
abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to 
live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a 
period of universal decomposition. 39 


(From a letter of September 16, 1915.) 

It is a singular condition of the world, the very definition 
of chaos with the superficial form of the old world resting 
apparently intact on the surface. But a chaos of long disinte¬ 
gration or of some early new birth ? It is the thing that is being 
fought out from day to day, but as yet without any approach 
to a decision. 40 


113 


India’s Rebirth 


August, 1915 

The Vedic ritual, well-nigh obsolete, has lost its profound 
symbolic meaning; the pastoral, martial and rural images of 
the early Aryan poets sound remote, inappropriate, or, if 
natural and beautiful, yet void of the old deeper significance 
to the imagination of their descendants. Confronted with the 
stately hymns of the ancient dawn, we are conscious of a 
blank incomprehension. And we leave them as a prey to the 
ingenuity of the scholar who gropes for forced meanings 
amid obscurities and incongruities where the ancient bathed 
their souls in harmony and light.... The sense is dead and 
only the obscurity of a forgotten poetic form remains. There¬ 
fore when we read "Sarama by the path of the Truth discovers 
the herds”, the mind is stopped and baffled by an unfamiliar 
language. It has to be translated to us ... into a plainer and 
less figured thought, "Intuition by the way of the Truth arrives 
at the hidden illuminations.” * Lacking the clue, we wander 
into ingenuities about the Dawn and the Sun or even imagine 
in Sarama, the hound of heaven, a mythological personifica¬ 
tion of some prehistoric embassy to Dravidian nations for 
the recovery of plundered cattle! 41 

* 

* * 


August, 1915 

That stupendous effort [of Western materialism and 
civilisation] is over; it has not yet frankly declared its 
bankruptcy, but it is bankrupt. It is sinking in a cataclysm as 
gigantic and as unnatural as the attempt which gave it birth. 
On the other hand, the exaggerated spirituality of the Indian 


* We cannot in these few extracts give a fair idea of the Vedic symbolism 
which Sri Aurobindo brought to light; the reader is invited to study his 
Secret of the Veda. 


114 




1915 


effort has also registered a bankruptcy; we have seen how 
high individuals can rise by it, but we have seen also how 
low a race can fall which in its eagerness to seek after God 
ignores His intention in humanity. Both the European and 
the Indian attempt were admirable, the Indian by its absolute 
spiritual sincerity, the European by its severe intellectual 
honesty and ardour for the truth; both have accomplished 
miracles; but in the end God and Nature have been too strong 
for the Titanism of the human spirit and for the Titanism of 
the human intellect. 42 


★ 

★ * 

October, 1915 

(From a book review in the AryaJ 

The book before us, Mr. O. C. Gangoly's South Indian 
Bronzes, must rank as one of the best of them all. Southern 
India, less ravaged than the North by the invader and the 
Vandal and profiting by the historic displacement of the centre 
of Indian culture southward, teems with artistic treasures.... 
But there are [in this book] some startlingly confident state¬ 
ments against which our critical sense protests. For instance, 
"it is beyond doubt that the two divisions of the country 
indicated by the Vindhya ranges were occupied by people 
essentially different in blood and temperament." Surely the 
important theories which hold the whole Indian race to be 
Dravidian in blood or, without assigning either an "Aryan” or 
"non-Aryan” origin, believe it to be homogeneous—omitting 
some islander types on the southern coast and the Mongoloid 

races of the Himalaya,—cannot be so lightly dismissed_ 

It distresses us to see Indian inquirers with their great oppor¬ 
tunities simply following in the path of certain European 
scholars, accepting and adding to their unstable fantasies, 
their huge superstructures founded on weak and scattered 


115 




India’s Rebirth 


evidence and their imaginative "history” of our prehistoric 
ages. There is better and sounder work to be done and 
Indians can do it admirably as Mr. Gangoly himself has 
shown in this book. 43 

* 

* * 

1916 

Either the Veda is what Sayana says it is, and then we have 
to leave it behind for ever as the document of a mythology 
and ritual which have no longer any living truth or force for 
thinking minds, or it is what the European scholars say it is, 
and then we have to put it away among the relics of the past 
as an antique record of semi-barbarous worship; or else it is 
indeed Veda, a book of divine knowledge, and then it becomes 
of supreme importance to us to know and to hear its message. 

Dayananda’s view is quite clear, its foundation inexpugnable. 
The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One Deity under many 
names, names which are used and even designed to express 
His qualities and powers. Was this conception of Dayananda’s 
an arbitrary conceit fetched out of his own too ingenious 
imagination? Not at all; it is the explicit statement of the 
Veda itself: "One existent, sages”—not the ignorant, mind 
you, but the seers, the men of knowledge,—"speak of in 
many ways, as Indra, as Yama, as Matarishwan, as Agni” 
[ Rig-Veda , 1.164.46]. The Vedic Rishis ought surely to have 
known something about their own religion, more, let us 
hope, than Roth or Max Muller, and this is what they knew. 

We are aware how modern scholars twist away from the 
evidence. This hymn, they say, was a late production, this 
loftier idea which it expresses with so clear a force rose up 
somehow in the later Aryan mind or was borrowed by those 
ignorant fire-worshippers, sun-worshippers, sky-worshippers 
from their cultured and philosophic Dravidian enemies. 
But throughout the Veda we have confirmatory hymns and 


116 




1916 


expressions: Agni or Indra or another is expressly hymned as 
one with all the other gods. Agni contains all other divine 
powers within himself, the Maruts are described as all the 
gods, one deity is addressed by the names of others as well as 
his own, or, most commonly, he is given as Lord and King of 
the universe attributes only appropriate to the Supreme Deity. 
Ah, but that cannot mean, ought not to mean, must not mean, 
the worship of One; let us invent a new word, call it henothe- 
ism* and suppose that the Rishis did not really believe Indra 
or Agni to be the Supreme Deity but treated any god or every 
god as such for the nonce, perhaps that he might feel the more 
flattered and lend a more gracious ear for so hyperbolic a 
compliment! But why should not the foundation of Vedic 
thought be natural monotheism rather than this new-fangled 
monstrosity of henotheism ? Well, because primitive barbar¬ 
ians could not possibly have risen to such high conceptions 
and, if you allow them to have so risen, you imperil our 
theory of the evolutionary stages of the human development 
and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic 
hymns and their place in the history of mankind. Truth must 
hide herself, commonsense disappear from the field so that a 
theory may flourish! I ask, in this point, and it is the funda¬ 
mental point, who deals most straightforwardly with the text, 
Dayananda or the Western scholars? 

Dayananda goes farther; he affirms that the truths of 
modern physical science are discoverable in the hymns.... 
The ancient civilisations did possess secrets of science some 
of which modem knowledge has recovered, extended and 
made more rich and precise but others are even now not 
recovered. There is then nothing fantastic in Dayananda's 
idea that Veda contains truth of science as well as truth of 
religion. I will even add my own conviction that Veda contains 
other truths of a science the modem world does not at all 


* A word coined by Max Muller. 


117 



India's Rebirth 


possess, and in that case Dayananda has rather understated 
than overstated the depth and range of the Vedic wisdom. 44 

* 

* * 

March, 1916 

Sanskrit ought still to have a future as a language of the 
learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient 
tongue ceases entirely to be written or spoken.* But if it is to 
survive, it must get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style 
contracted by it in its decline with the lumbering impossible 
compounds and the overweight of hairsplitting erudition. 45 

* 

* * 

May, 1916 

Human moderation is usually a wiseacre and a botcher; it 
sews a patch of new velvet on old fustian or of new fustian 
on old velvet and admires its deplorable handiwork. And its 
cautious advance means an accumulation of shams, fictions 
and dead conventions till the burden of falsehood becomes 
too great for life to bear and a violent revolution is necessary 
to deliver the soul of humanity out of the immobilising cere¬ 
ments of the past.... 

We have to face the future’s offer of death as well as its 
offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant 
death to our old names and forms that we shall live most 
vitally in greater and newer forms and names. Go on we 
must; for if we do not, Time itself will force us forward in 
spite of our fancied immobility. And this is the most pitiable 
and dangerous movement of all. For what can be more pitiable 


* Yet Sanskrit, the only language that was ever used over the whole of India 
and the one best expressive of her spirit and richness, is today on the way to 
extinction, its study discouraged in both North and South India. 


118 




1916 


than to be borne helplessly forward clinging to the old that 
disintegrates in spite of our efforts and shrieking frantically 
to the dead ghosts and dissolving fragments of the past to save 
us alive? And what can be more dangerous than to impose 
immobility on that which is in its nature mobile? This means 
an increasing and horrible rottenness; it means an attempt to 
persist on as a putrid and stinking corpse instead of a living 
and self-renewing energetic creature. The greatest spirits are 
therefore those who have no fear of the future, who accept 
its challenge and its wager; they have that sublime trust in 
the God or Power that guides the world... , 46 

* 

Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead 
and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality 
remain intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return 
the full godhead of their nature. He who can do this is the 
leader and the guru.* 1 

* 

•k * 

July, 1916 

In India the institution of slavery was practically absent 
and the woman had at first a freer and more dignified position 
than in Greece and Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by 
the proletariate, called in India the Shudra, and the increasing 
tendency to deny the highest benefits of the common life and 
culture to the Shudra and the woman brought down Indian 
society to the level of its Western congeners. 48 

* 

* * 


August, 1916 

If we look at the beginnings of Indian society, the far-off 
Vedic age which we no longer understand, for we have lost 


119 




India’s Rebirth 


that mentality, we see that everything is symbolic_Let us 

take, for this example will serve us best, the Vedic institution 
of fourfold order, caturvama, miscalled the system of the 
four castes,—for caste is a conventional, vama a symbolic 
and typal institution.... This [symbolic significance of the 
caturvama ] appears in the Purushasukta of the Veda where 
the four orders are described as having sprung from the body 
of the creative Deity, from his head, arms, thighs and feet. To 
us this is merely a poetical image and its sense is that the 
Brahmins were the men of knowledge, the Kshatriyas the 
men of power, the Vaishyas the producers and support of 
society, the Shudras its servants.... We read always our own 
mentality into that of these ancient forefathers and it is 
therefore that we can find in them nothing but imaginative 
barbarians.... [But] to them this symbol of the Creator’s 
body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. 
Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the 
cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the 
material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos 
are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden 
Reality. 

[Later] in the evolution of caste, the outward supports of 
the ethical fourfold order,—birth, economic function, reli¬ 
gious ritual and sacrament, family custom,—each began to 
exaggerate enormously its proportions and its importance in 
the scheme. At first, birth does not seem to have been of the 
first importance in the social order, for faculty and capacity 
prevailed; but afterwards, as the type fixed itself, its main¬ 
tenance by education and tradition became necessary and 
education and tradition naturally fixed themselves in a here¬ 
ditary groove. Thus the son of a Brahmin came always to be 
looked upon conventionally as a Brahmin; birth and profes¬ 
sion were together the double bond of the hereditary conven¬ 
tion at the time when it was most firm and faithful to its own 
character. This rigidity once established, the maintenance of 


120 




1916 


the ethical type passed from the first place to a secondary or 
even a quite tertiary importance.... Finally, even the economic 
basis began to disintegrate; birth, family custom and rem¬ 
nants, deformations, new accretions of meaningless or fanciful 
religious sign and ritual, the very scarecrow and caricature of 
the old profound symbolism, became the riveting links of the 
system of caste in the iron age of the old society. In the full 
economic period of caste the priest and the Pundit masque¬ 
rade under the name of the Brahmin, the aristocrat and 
feudal baron under the name of the Kshatriya, the trader and 
money-getter under the name of the Vaishya, the half-fed 
labourer and economic serf under the name of the Shudra. 
When the economic basis also breaks down, then the unclean 
and diseased decrepitude of the old system has begun; it has 
become a name, a shell, a sham and must either be dissolved 
in the crucible of an individualist period of society or else 
fatally affect with weakness and falsehood the system of life 
that clings to it. That in visible fact is the last and present 
state of the caste system in India. 49 

* 

* * 


October, 1916 

[The Vedic Rishis] may not have yoked the lightning to 
their chariots, nor weighed sun and star, nor materialised all 
the destructive forces in Nature to aid them in massacre and 
domination, but they had measured and fathomed all the 
heavens and earths within us, they had cast their plummet 
into the inconscient and the subconscient and the supercon- 
scient; they had read the riddle of death and found the secret 
of immortality; they had sought for and discovered the One 
and known and worshipped Him in the glories of His light 
and purity and wisdom and power. 50 

* 


121 




India's Rebirth 


* The whole Rig-veda reveals itself as a body of doctrine 
and practice, esoteric, occult, spiritual, such as might have 
been given by the mystics in any ancient country but which 
actually survives for us only in the Veda. It is there deliberately 
hidden by a veil, but the veil is not so thick as we first imag¬ 
ine; we have only to use our eyes and the veil vanishes; the 
body of the Word, the Truth stands out before us.... 

Our life is a battle between the powers of Light and Truth, 
the Gods who are the Immortals and the powers of Darkness. 
These are spoken of under various names as Vritra and 
Vritras, Vala and the Panis, the Dasyus and their kings. We 
have to call in the aid of the Gods to destroy the opposition 
of these powers of Darkness who conceal the Light* ** from 
us or rob us of it, who obstruct the flowing of the streams of 
Truth, rtasya dharah [Rig-Veda, V.12.2], the streams of Heaven 
and obstruct in every way the soul’s ascent. We have to invoke 
the Gods by the inner sacrifice, and by the Word call them 

into us,—that is the specific power of the Mantra_We give 

what we are and what we have in order that the riches of the 
divine Truth and Light may descend into our life and become 
the elements of our inner birth into the Truth.... Finally, as 
the summit of the teaching of the Vedic mystics comes the 
secret of the one Reality, ekam sat [1.164.46], or tad ekam 
[X. 129.2], which became the central word of the Upanishads. 
The Gods, the powers of Light and Truth are powers and 
names of the One, each God is himself all the Gods or carries 
them in him: there is the one Truth, tat satyam [III.39.5], and 
one bliss to which we must rise. si 


* This text, although written in 1946 in the Foreword to Hymns to the 
Mystic Fire, has been included here in conclusion to the preceding series of 
extracts from Sri Aurobindo's writings on the Veda. 

** Symbolized in the Veda by the cows or "shining herds." 


122 



1916 


December, 1916 

This is certain that there is not only no construction here 
without destruction, no harmony except by a poise of con¬ 
tending forces won out of many actual and potential discords, 
but also no continued existence of life except by a constant 
self-feeding and devouring of other life. Our very bodily life 
is a constant dying and being reborn, the body itself a belea¬ 
guered city attacked by assailing, protected by defending 
forces whose business is to devour each other.... 

It is good that we should be reminded of [this truth]; first, 
because to see it has for every strong soul a tonic effect which 
saves us from the flabbiness and relaxation encouraged by a 
too mellifluous philosophic, religious or ethical sentimental¬ 
ism, that which loves to look upon Nature as love and life 
and beauty and good, but turns away from her grim mask of 
death, adoring God as Shiva but refusing to adore him as 
Rudra; secondly, because unless we have the honesty and 
courage to look existence straight in the face, we shall never 
arrive at any effective solution of its discords and opposi¬ 
tions. We must see first what life and the world are; after¬ 
wards, we can all the better set about finding the right way 
to transform them into what they should be. If this repellent 
aspect of existence holds in itself some secret of the final 
harmony, we shall by ignoring or belittling it miss that secret 
and all our efforts at a solution will fail by fault of our self- 
indulgent ignoring of the true elements of the problem.... 

War and destruction are not only a universal principle of 
our life here in its purely material aspects, but also of our 
mental and moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual 
life of man intellectual, social, political, moral we can make 
no real step forward without a struggle, a battle between what 
exists and lives and what seeks to exist and live and between all 
that stands behind either. It is impossible, at least as men and 
things are, to advance, to grow, to fulfil and still to observe 
really and utterly that principle of harmlessness which is yet 


123 



India’s Rebirth 


placed before us as the highest and best law of conduct. We 
will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even 
defensive employment of physical violence ? Good, though until 
soul-force is effective, the Asuric force in men and nations 
tramples down, breaks, slaughters, bums, pollutes, as we see 
it doing today, but then at its ease and unhindered, and you 
have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your absti¬ 
nence as others by resort to violence.... Evil cannot perish 
without the destruction of much that lives by the evil.... 

It is not enough that our own hands should remain clean 
and our souls unstained for the law of strife and destruction 
to die out of the world; that which is its root must first 
disappear out of humanity. Much less will mere immobility 
and inertia unwilling to use or incapable of using any kind of 
resistance to evil, abrogate the law; inertia, Tamas, indeed, 
injures much more than can the rajasic principle of strife 
which at least creates more than it destroys. Therefore, so 
far as the problem of the individual’s action goes, his absten¬ 
tion from strife and its inevitable concomitant destruction in 
their more gross and physical form may help his own moral 
being, but it leaves the Slayer of creatures unabolished. 

It is only a few religions which have had the courage to 
say without any reserve, like the Indian, that this enigmatic 
World-Power is one Deity, one Trinity, to lift up the image of 
the Force that acts in the world in the figure not only of the 
beneficent Durga, but of the terrible Kali in her blood-stained 
dance of destruction and to say, "This too is the Mother; this 
also know to be God; this too, if thou hast the strength, 
adore.” And it is significant that the religion which has had 
this unflinching honesty and tremendous courage, has suc¬ 
ceeded in creating a profound and widespread spirituality 
such as no other can parallel. For truth is the foundation of 
real spirituality and courage is its soul. 52 

* 

★ * 


124 




1917 


January, 1917 

The gospel of universal peace and goodwill among men 
—for without a universal and entire mutual goodwill there 
can be no real and abiding peace—has never succeeded for a 
moment in possessing itself of human life during the historic 
cycle of our progress, because morally, socially, spiritually 
the race was not prepared and the poise of Nature in its 
evolution would not admit of its being immediately prepared 
for any such transcendence. Even now we have not actually 
progressed beyond the feasibility of a system of accomoda¬ 
tion between conflicting interests which may minimise the 
recurrence of the worst forms of strife. And towards this 
consummation the method, the approach which humanity 
has been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a monstrous 
mutual massacre unparalleled in history; a universal war, 
full of bitterness and irreconcilable hatred, is the straight 
way and the triumphant means modern man has found for 
the establishment of universal peace!.... A day may come, 
must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready 
spiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace; 
meanwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and function 
of man as a fighter have to be accepted and accounted for by 
any practical philosophy and religion. 53 

* 

* * 


February, 1917 

The Gita expressly says that Arjuna has thus lapsed into 
unheroic weakness [by his unwillingness to fight the enemies], 
because he is invaded by pity, kripayavistam. Is this not then 
a divine weakness ? Is not pity a divine emotion which should 
not thus be discouraged with [Krishna’s] harsh rebuke? Or 
are we in face of a mere gospel of war and heroic action, a 
Nietzschean creed of power and high-browed strength, of 


125 





India’s Rebirth 


Hebraic or old Teutonic hardness which holds pity to be a 
weakness and thinks like the Norwegian hero who thanked 
God because He had given him a hard heart ? But the teaching 
of the Gita springs from an Indian creed and to the Indian 
mind compassion has always figured as one of the largest 
elements of the divine nature.... 

It is this compassion in the Aryan fighter, the soul of his 
chivalry, which will not break the bruised reed, but helps 
and protects the weak and the oppressed and the wounded 
and the fallen. But it is also the divine compassion that 
smites down the strong tyrant and the confident oppressor, 
not in wrath and with hatred,—for these are not the high 
divine qualities, the wrath of God against the sinner, God’s 
hatred of the wicked are the fables of half-enlightened 
creeds, as much a fable as the eternal torture of the Hells 
they have invented,—but, as the old Indian spirituality clearly 
saw, with as much love and compassion for the strong Titan 
erring by his strength and slain for his sins as for the sufferer 
and the oppressed who have to be saved from his violence and 
injustice. 54 

* 

* * 


March, 1917 

Civilisation can never be safe so long as, confining the 
cultured mentality to a small minority, it nourishes in its 
bosom a tremendous mass of ignorance, a multitude, a prole¬ 
tariate. Either knowledge must enlarge itself from above or 
be always in danger of submergence by the ignorant night 
from below. Still more must it be unsafe, if it allows enor¬ 
mous numbers of men to exist outside its pale uninformed by 
its light, full of the natural vigour of the barbarian, who may 
at any moment seize upon the physical weapons of the civilised 
without undergoing an intellectual transformation by their 
culture.... Knowledge must be aggressive, if it wishes to 
survive and perpetuate itself; to leave an extensive ignorance 


126 



1917 


either below or around it, is to expose humanity to the 
perpetual danger of a barbaric relapse. 

If Science has thus prepared us for an age of wider and 
deeper culture ... it has encouraged more or less indirectly 
both by its attitude to life and its discoveries another kind of 
barbarism,—for it can be called by no other name,—that of the 
industrial, the commercial, the economic age which is now 
progressing to its culmination and its close. This economic 
barbarism is essentially that of the vital man who mistakes 
the vital being* for the self and accepts its satisfaction as the 
first aim of life.... To the natural unredeemed economic 
man beauty is a thing otiose or a nuisance, art and poetry 
a frivolity or an ostentation and a means of advertisement. 
His idea of civilisation is comfort, his idea of morals social 
respectability, his idea of politics the encouragement of 
industry, the opening of markets, exploitation and trade 
following the flag, his idea of religion at best a pietistic for¬ 
malism or the satisfaction of certain vitalistic emotions. He 
values education for its utility in fitting a man for success in 
a competitive or, it may be, a socialised industrial existence, 
science for the useful inventions and knowledge, the com¬ 
forts, conveniences, machinery of production with which it 
arms him, its power for organisation, regulation, stimulus to 
production. The opulent plutocrat and the successful mam¬ 
moth capitalist and organiser of industry are the supermen 
of the commercial age and the true, if often occult rulers of 
its society.... 

In a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and barbarous, of 
success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness and possession 
the soul of man may linger a while for certain gains and 
experiences, but cannot permanently rest. If it persisted too 

* The vital, in Sri Aurobindo's terminology, represents the region of con¬ 
sciousness between the physical and the mind, i.e. the region of emotions, 
feelings, passions, etc., which constitute the various expressions of the 
Life-Energy. 


127 




India's Rebirth 


long, Life would become clogged and perish of its own plethora 
or burst in its straining to a gross expansion. Like the too 
massive Titan it will collapse by its own mass, mole met sua. 55 

* 

* * 


August, 1917 


(A few "Thoughts and Glimpses.") 

Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great begin¬ 
ning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy 
mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. 
God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire 
and in the whirlwind. 

The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of crea¬ 
tion; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, 
the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. 
The night returns again and again and the day lingers or 
seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not there¬ 
fore but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair 
swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God’s purpose 
and thy will to accomplish. 

Wherefore God hammers so fiercely at his world, tramples 
and kneads it like dough, casts it so often into the blood-bath 
and the red hell-heat of the furnace ? Because humanity in 
the mass is still a hard, crude and vile ore which will not 
otherwise be smelted and shaped; as is his material, so is his 
method. Let it help to transmute itself into nobler and purer 
metal, his ways with it will be gentler and sweeter, much 
loftier and fairer its uses. 

* 


128 



1917 


Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in 
man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, 
his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him 
some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown 
him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and 
Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously 
devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and 
profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done 
if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves 
into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult-egoism 
stand in the way. 

All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has 
been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not 
cult and creed, but a sustained and all-comprehending effort 
at spiritual self-evolution. 

The changes we see in the world today are intellectual, 
moral, physical in their ideal and intention: the spiritual 
revolution waits for its hour and throws up meanwhile its 
waves here and there. Until it comes the sense of the others 
cannot be understood and till then all interpretations of pre¬ 
sent happening and forecast of man’s future are vain things. 
For its nature, power, event are that which will determine 
the next cycle of our humanity. 56 

★ 

* * 


December, 1917 

Each language is the sign and power of the soul of the 
people which naturally speaks it. Each develops therefore its 
own peculiar spirit, thought-temperament, way of dealing 
with life and knowledge and experience.... A nation, race or 
people which loses its language, cannot live its whole life or 


129 




India’s Rebirth 


its real life. And this advantage to the national life is at the 
same time an advantage to the general life of the human race. 57 


1918 (?) 

("The Hour of God") 

There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and 
the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; 
there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the 
strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are 
periods when even a little effort produces great results and 
changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much 
labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the 
latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of 
sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of 
God's bounty. 

Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine 
moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, 
because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome 
and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them 
who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the 
moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction. 

In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and 
hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight 
into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity 
of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and 
the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and 
invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is 
the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and 
cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure 
cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a 
whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the 
wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of 


130 


1918 


his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he 
shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of 
the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper 
too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the 
incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the 
Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward. 

But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the 
clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the 
night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on 
the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered. 58 

★ 

* * 


1918 

(From a letter answering a request for Sri Aurobindo's 
opinion of a proposed law intended to facilitate 
marriages among Hindus of different castes.) 

I can only say that everything will have my full approval 
which helps to liberate and strengthen the life of the individ¬ 
ual in the frame of a vigorous society and restore the freedom 
and energy which India had in her heroic times of greatness 
and expansion. Many of our present social forms were shaped, 
many of our customs originated, in a time of contraction and 
decline. They had their utility for self-defence and survival 
within narrow limits, but are a drag upon our progress in the 
present hour when we are called upon once again to enter 
upon a free and courageous self-adaptation and expansion. I 
believe in an aggressive and expanding, not in a narrowly 
defensive and self-contracting Hinduism_ 59 


131 



India’s Rebirth 


(From an introduction to a book entitled 
Speeches and Writings of Tilak.,1 

The Congress movement was for a long time purely occi¬ 
dental in its mind, character and methods, confined to the 
English-educated few, founded on the political rights and 
interests of the people read in the light of English history 
and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of 
the country or in the inner spirit of the nation.... To bring in 
the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on 
the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian 
religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable 
conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in 
India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen 
this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual 
field of practical politics. 

There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoc¬ 
cupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points 
of the moment and puts away into the background the great 
principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these 
first and always and details only in relation to them. The one 
type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an 
issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an 
accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other 
type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the direc¬ 
tions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the 
deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character 
of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these 
it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogate 
the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter 
that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders 
of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent 
political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of 
mind. 60 

* 

* * 


132 


1918 


April, 1918 


' (Extracts from a message on national education 
published in New India of April 8, 1918, 
a journal edited by Annie Besant.) 
fs 


The greatest knowledge and the greatest riches man can 
possess are [India’s] by inheritance; she has that for which 
all mankind is waiting.... But the full soul rich with the 
inheritance of the past, the widening gains of the present, 
and the large potentiality of the future, can come only by a 
system of National Education. It cannot come by any extension 
or imitation of the system of the existing universities with its 
radically false principles, its vicious and mechanical methods, 
its dead-alive routine tradition and its narrow and sightless 
spirit. Only a new spirit and a new body born from the heart 
of the Nation and full of the light and hope of its resurgence 
can create it.... 

The new education will open careers which will be at once 
ways of honourable sufficiency, dignity and affluence to the 
individual, and paths of service to the country. For the men 
who come out equipped in every way from its institutions 
will be those who will give that impetus to the economic life 
and effort of the country without which it cannot survive in 
the press of the world, much less attain its high legitimate 
position. Individual interest and National interest are the 
same and call in the same direction. 


// 


Habituated individually always to the customary groove, 
we prefer the safe and prescribed path, even when it leads 
nowhere, to the great and effective way, and cannot see our 
own interest because it presents itself in a new and untried 
form. But this is a littleness of spirit which the Nation must 
shake off that it may have the courage of its destiny.... 

This is an hour in which, for India as for all the world, its 
future destiny and the turn of its steps for a century are being 


133 



India’s Rebirth 


powerfully decided, and for no ordinary century, but one 
which is itself a great turning-point, an immense turn-over in 
the inner and outer history of mankind. As we act now, so 
shall the reward of our Karma be meted out to us, and each 
call of this kind at such an hour is at once an opportunity, a 
choice, and a test offered to the spirit of our people. 61 


It is found that civilisation has created many more problems 
than it can solve, has multiplied excessive needs and desires 
the satisfaction of which it has not sufficient vital force to sus¬ 
tain, has developed a jungle of claims and artificial instincts 
in the midst of which life loses its way and has no longer any 
sight of its aim. The more advanced minds begin to declare 
civilisation a failure and society begins to feel that they are 
right. But the remedy proposed is either a halt or even a retro¬ 
gression, which means in the end more confusion, stagnation 
and decay, or a reversion to "Nature” which is impossible or 
can only come about by a cataclysm and disintegration of 
society; or even a cure is aimed at by carrying artificial 
remedies to their acme, by more and more Science, more and 
more mechanical devices, a more scientific organisation of 
life, which means that the engine shall replace life, the arbi¬ 
trary logical reason substitute itself for complex Nature and 
man be saved by machinery. As well say that to carry a disease 
to its height is the best way to its cure.... 

The radical defect of all our systems is their deficient 
development of just that which society has most neglected, 
the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being. 

The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man 
not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for 
a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, 
which after all it need not have left if it had no divine business 
here in the world of physical, vital and mental nature.... 


134 



1918 


Therefore it will hold sacred all the different parts of man’s 
life which correspond to the parts of his being, all his physi¬ 
cal, vital dynamic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, intellectual, 
psychic evolution, and see in them instruments for a growth 
towards a diviner living. 62 

* 

* * 


May, 1918 

Man’s road to spiritual supermanhood will be open when 
he declares boldly that all he has yet developed, including the 
intellect of which he is so rightly and yet so vainly proud, are 
now no longer sufficient for him, and that to uncase, discover, 
set free this greater Light within shall be henceforward his per¬ 
vading preoccupation. Then will his philosophy, art, science, 
ethics, social existence, vital pursuits be no longer an exercise 
of mind and life, done for themselves, carried in a circle, but a 
means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life 
and for the bringing of its power into our human existence. 63 

* 

* * 


June, 1918 

A spiritual age of mankind ... will not try to make man 
perfect by machinery or keep him straight by tying up all his 
limbs. It will not present to the member of the society his 
higher self in the person of the policeman, the official and 
the corporal, nor, let us say, in the form of a socialistic 
bureaucracy or a Labour Soviet. Its aim will be to diminish as 
soon and as far as possible the element of external compul¬ 
sion in human life by awakening the inner divine compulsion 
of the Spirit within. 64 

* 

* * 


135 



India’s Rebirth 


July, 1918 

The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his 
ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit 
into his normal humanity and the transformation of this 
earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation 
is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crown¬ 
ing movement of its long obscure and painful course. 

Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of 
humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a 
spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great 
need of the human being.... They will especially not make 
the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by 
machinery and outward institutions; they will know and 
never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly 
or it can never be made a reality for the kind.... 

Failures must be originally numerous in everything great 
and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past 
failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long 
resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and 
endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign 
of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant’s 
endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando* of the discoverer. 
For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true begin¬ 
ning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden 
achievements or its long patient labour.... 

This endeavour will be a supreme and difficult labour even 
for the individual, but much more for the race. It may well 
be that, once started, it may not advance rapidly even to its 
first decisive stage; it may be that it will take long centuries 
of effort to come into some kind of permanent birth. But that 
is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes 
in Nature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed 

* The answer of Stephenson to those who argued by strict scientific logic 
that his engine on rails could not and should not move, "Your difficulty is 
solved by its moving." [Sri Aurobindo’s footnote.] 


136 



1918 


by a swift gathering up and precipitation of the elements into 
the new birth, a rapid conversion, a transformation that in 
its luminous moment figures like a miracle. 65 

* 

* * 


August, 1918 

When we look at the past of India, what strikes us ... is her 
stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy 
of life, her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness. For 
three thousand years at least,—it is indeed much longer,—she 
has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with 
an inexhaustible many-sidedness, republics and kingdoms 
and empires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences and 
creeds and arts and poems and all kinds of monuments, palaces 
and temples and public works, communities and societies and 
religious orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, 
psychic sciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics and 
administration, arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades, industries, 
fine crafts,—the list is endless and in each item there is almost 
a plethora of activity. She creates and creates and is not 
satisfied and is not tired; she will not have an end of it, seems 
hardly to need a space for rest, a time for inertia and lying 
fallow. She expands too outside her borders; her ships cross 
the ocean and the fine superfluity of her wealth brims over 
to Judea and Egypt and Rome; her colonies spread her arts 
and epics and creeds in the Archipelago; her traces are found 
in the sands of Mesopotamia; her religions conquer China and 
Japan and spread westward as far as Palestine and Alexan¬ 
dria, and the figures of the Upanishads and the sayings of the 
Buddhists are re-echoed on the lips of Christ. Everywhere, as 
on her soil, so in her works there is the teeming of a super¬ 
abundant energy of life.... 

Indeed without this opulent vitality and opulent intellectu¬ 
ality India could never have done so much as she did with her 


137 



India’s Rebirth 


spiritual tendencies. It is a great error to suppose that spirit¬ 
uality flourishes best in an impoverished soil with the life 
half-killed and the intellect discouraged and intimidated. The 
spirituality that so flourishes is something morbid, hectic 
and exposed to perilous reactions. It is when the race has lived 
most richly and thought most profoundly that spirituality 
finds its heights and its depths and its constant and many- 
sided fruition. 66 

* 

★ * 

September, 1918 

... the shifty language of politics,—that strange language 
full of Maya and falsities of self-illusion and deliberate delu¬ 
sion of others, which almost immediately turns all true and 
vivid phrases into a jargon, so that men may fight in a cloud 
of words without any clear sense of the thing they are battling 
for... , 67 


The subjection of woman, the property of the man over the 
woman, was once an axiom of social life and has only in recent 
times been effectively challenged. So strong was or had become 
the instinct of this domination in the male animal man, that 
even religion and philosophy have had to sanction it.... This 
idea too is crumbling into the dust, though its remnants still 
cling to life by many strong tentacles of old legislation, conti¬ 
nued instinct, persistence of traditional ideas; the fiat has gone 
out against it in the claim of woman to be regarded, she too, as 
a free individual being. 68 

* 

* * 


November, 1918 

We are sometimes asked what on earth we mean by spiritual¬ 
ity in art and poetry or in political and social life,—a confession 


138 



1918 


of ignorance strange enough in any Indian mouth at this stage 

of our national history-We have here really an echo of the 

European idea, now of sufficiently long standing, that religion 
and spirituality on the one side and intellectual activity and 
practical life on the other are two entirely different things and 
have each to be pursued on its own entirely separate lines and 
in obedience to its own entirely separate principles.... 

£ Spirituality [does not mean] the moulding of the whole type 
of the national being to suit the limited dogmas, forms, tenets 
of a particular religion, as was often enough attempted by the 
old societies_Spirituality is much wider than any parti¬ 
cular religion-True spirituality rejects no new light, no 

added means or materials of our human self-development. It 
means simply to keep our centre, our essential way of being, 
our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive, and evolve 
out of it all we do and create.... [India] can, if she will, give 
a new and decisive turn to the problems over which all man¬ 
kind is labouring and stumbling, for the clue to their solu¬ 
tions is there in her ancient knowledge. Whether she will rise 
or not to the height of her opportunity in the renaissance 
which is coming upon her, is the question of her destiny. 69 

* 

★ * 


December, 1918 

In the stupendous rush of change which is coming on the 
human world as a result of the present tornado of upheaval, 
ancient India’s culture, attacked by European modernism, 
overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indiffer¬ 
ence of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul 
of the nation that holds it in its keeping.... Each nation is a 
Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives 
by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata 
Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception, and 
fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence_ 


139 



India's Rebirth 


To follow a law or principle involuntarily or ignorantly or 
contrary to the truth of one’s consciousness is a falsehood 
and a self-destruction. To allow oneself to be killed, like the 
lamb attacked by the wolf, brings no growth, farthers no 
development, assures no spiritual merit. Concert or unity may 
come in good time, but it must be an underlying unity with a 
free differentiation, not a swallowing up of one by another or 
an incongruous and inharmonious mixture. Nor can it come 
before the world is ready for these greater things. To lay 
down, one’s arms in a state of war is to invite destruction and 
it can serve no compensating spiritual purpose- 

India is indeed awaking and defending herself, but not 
sufficiently and not with the whole-heartedness, the clear 
sight and the firm resolution which can alone save her from 
the peril. Today it is close; let her choose,—for the choice is 
imperatively before her, to live or to perish. 

A political Europeanisation would be followed by a social 
turn of the same kind and bring a cultural and spiritual 
death in its train.... Either India will be rationalised and 
industrialised out of all recognition and she will be no longer 
India or else she will be the leader in a new world-phase, aid 
by her example and cultural infiltration the new tendencies 
of the West and spiritualise the human race. That is the one 
radical and poignant question at issue. Will the spiritual 
motive which India represents prevail on Europe and create 
there new forms congenial to the West, or will European 
rationalism and commercialism put an end for ever to the 
Indian type of culture? 70 

* 


The old world that is shaken outwardly in its bases and 
already crumbling in some of its parts, is the economical and 
materialistic civilisation which mankind has been forming 
for the last few centuries.... An era of revolutions has opened 


140 




1918 


which is likely to complete the ruin and prepare the building 
of a new structure. 

No paltering mechanisms which have the appearance but 
not the truth of freedom, will help us; the new structure, 
however imposing, will only become another prison and com¬ 
pel a fresh struggle for liberation. The one safety for man 
lies in learning to live from within outward, not depending 
on institutions and machinery to perfect him, but out of his 
growing inner perfection availing to shape a more perfect 
form and frame of life.... It is because there are plenty of 
signs that the old error continues and only a minority, leaders 
perhaps in light, but not yet in action, are striving to see more 
clearly, inwardly and truly, that we must expect as yet rather 
the last twilight which divides the dying from the unborn age 
than the real dawning. For a time, since the mind of man is 
not yet ready, the old spirit and method may yet be strong 
and seem for a short while to prosper; but the future lies 
with the men and nations who first see beyond both the glare 
and the dusk the gods of the morning and prepare themselves 
to be fit instruments of the Power that is pressing towards 
the light of a greater ideal. 71 




India's Rebirth 


February, 1919 

Even in failure there is a preparation for success: our 
nights carry in them the secret of a greater dawn. 

If the will in a race or civilisation is towards death, if it clings 
to the lassitude of decay and the laissez-faire of the moribund 
or even in strength insists blindly upon the propensities that 
lead to destruction or if it cherishes only the powers of dead 
Time and puts away from it the powers of the future, if it 
prefers life that was to life that will be, nothing, not even 
abundant strength and resources and intelligence, not even 
many calls to live and constantly offered opportunities will 
save it from an inevitable disintegration or collapse. But if 
there comes to it a strong faith in itself and a robust will to 
live, if it is open to the things that shall come, willing to seize 
on the future and what it offers and strong to compel it 
where it seems adverse, it can draw from adversity and defeat 
a force of invincible victory and rise from apparent helpless¬ 
ness and decay in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of 
a more splendid life. This is what Indian civilisation is now 
rearising to do as it has always done in the eternal strength 
of its spirit. 72 

* 


April, 1919 

There is nothing in the most ascetic notes of the Indian 
mind like the black gloom of certain kinds of European 
pessimism, a city of dreadful night without joy here or hope 
beyond, and nothing like the sad and shrinking attitude 
before death and the dissolution of the body which pervades 
Western literature. The note of ascetic pessimism often 
found in Christianity is a distinctly Western note; for it is 
absent in Christ’s teachings. The mediaeval religion with its 
cross, its salvation by suffering, its devil-ridden and flesh- 


142 



1919 


ridden world and the flames of eternal hell waiting for man 
beyond the grave has a character of pain and terror alien 
to the Indian mind, to which indeed religious terror is a 
stranger.... 

Indian asceticism is not a mournful gospel of sorrow or a 
painful mortification of the flesh in morbid penance, but a 
noble effort towards a higher joy and an absolute possession 
of the spirit.... Practised not by the comparatively few who 
are called to it, but preached in its extreme form to all and 
adopted by unfit thousands, its values may be debased, coun¬ 
terfeits may abound and the vital force of the community 
lose its elasticity and its forward spring. It would be idle to 
pretend that such defects and untoward results have been 
absent in India. I do not accept the ascetic ideal as the final 
solution of the problem of human existence; but even its 
exaggerations have a nobler spirit behind them than the 
vitalistic exaggerations which are the opposite defect of 
Western culture. 73 

* 

* * 

May, 1919 

[Hinduism] is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive 
religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity 
into itself, if they had tolerated the process. 74 

* 


This world of our battle and labour is a fierce dangerous 
destructive devouring world in which life exists precariously 
and the soul and body of man move among enormous perils, 
a world in which by every step forward, whether we will it or 
no, something is crushed and broken, in which every breath 
of life is a breath too of death. To put away the responsibility 
for all that seems to us evil or terrible on the shoulders of a 
semi-omnipotent Devil, or to put it aside as part of Nature, 
making an unbridgeable opposition between world-nature 


143 



India's Rebirth 


and God-Nature, as if Nature were independent of God, or 
to throw the responsibility on man and his sins, as if he had a 
preponderant voice in the making of this world or could 
create anything against the will of God, are clumsily comfor¬ 
table devices in which the religious thought of India has never 
taken refuge. We have to look courageously in the face of the 
reality and see that it is God and none else who has made 
this world in his being and that so he has made it. We have to 
see that Nature devouring her children. Time eating up the 
lives of creatures. Death universal and ineluctable and the 
violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the 
supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures.... 

No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; 
the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is 
paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved 
mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of 
love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come 
the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is 
ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and 
immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, 
but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his 
hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind 
tormented and oppressed by the powers that are profiteers 
of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the 
Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet. 75 


1919 (?) 

(From a letter to Motilal Roy.) 

All difficulties can be conquered, but only on condition of 
fidelity to the Way that you have taken. There is no obliga¬ 
tion on any one to take it,—it is a difficult and trying one, a 
way for heroes, not for weaklings,—but once taken, it must 
be followed, or you will not arrive. 


144 




1919 


Hunger-striking to force God or to force anybody or 
anything else is not the true spiritual means. I do not object 
to Mr. Gandhi or any one else following it for quite other 
than spiritual purposes, but here it is out of place; these 
things, I repeat, are foreign to the fundamental principle of 
our Yoga. 

I myself have had for these fourteen years, and it is not yet 
finished, to bear all the possible typical difficulties, troubles, 
downfalls and backslidings that can rise in this great effort 

to change the whole normal human being_ We are the 

pioneers hewing our way through the jungle of the lower 
Prakriti. It will not do for us to be cowards and shirkers and 
refuse the burden, to clamour for everything to be made 
quick and easy for us. Above all things I demand from you 
endurance, firmness, heroism,—the true spiritual heroism. I 
want strong men. I do not want emotional children. 

* 

* * 


August, 1919 

The religious culture which now goes by the name of 
Hinduism ... gave itself no name, because it set itself no 
sectarian limits; it claimed no universal adhesion, asserted 
no sole infallible dogma, set up no single narrow path or gate 
of salvation; it was less a creed or cult than a continuously 
enlarging tradition of the Godward endeavour of the human 
spirit. An immense many-sided and many-staged provision 
for a spiritual self-building and self-finding, it had some 
right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the eternal 
religion, sanatana dharma.... 

Now just here is the first baffling difficulty over which the 
European mind stumbles; for it finds itself unable to make 
out what Hindu religion is.... How can there be a religion 


145 


India’s Rebirth 


which has no rigid dogmas demanding belief on pain of eternal 
damnation, no theological postulates, even no fixed theology, 
no credo, distinguishing it from antagonistic or rival religions? 
How can there be a religion which has no papal head, no gov¬ 
erning ecclesiastic body, no church, chapel or congregational 
system, no binding religious form of any kind obligatory on 
all its adherents, no one administration and discipline? For 
the Hindu priests are mere ceremonial officiants without any 
ecclesiastical authority or disciplinary powers and the Pundits 
are mere interpreters of the Shastra, not the law-givers of the 
religion or its rulers. How again can Hinduism be called a reli¬ 
gion when it admits all beliefs, allowing even a kind of high- 
reaching atheism and agnosticism and permits all possible 
spiritual experiences, all kinds of religious adventures?... 

To the Indian mind the least important part of religion is 
its dogma; the religious spirit matters, not the theological 
credo.... 

Hinduism has always attached to [the organisation of the 
individual and collective life] a great importance; it has left 
out no part of life as a thing secular and foreign to the religious 

and spiritual life_The people of India, even the "ignorant 

masses” have this distinction that they are by centuries of 
training nearer to the inner realities, are divided from them by 
a less thick veil of the universal ignorance and are more easily 
led back to a vital glimpse of God and Spirit, self and eternity 
than the mass of men or even the cultured elite anywhere else. 
Where else could the lofty, austere and difficult teaching of a 
Buddha have seized so rapidly on the popular mind ? Where 
else could the songs of a Tukaram, a Ramprasad, a Kabir, the 
Sikh Gurus and the chants of the Tamil saints with their fervid 
devotion but also their profound spiritual thinking have found 
so speedy an echo and formed a popular religious literature ? 
This strong permeation or close nearness of the spiritual turn, 
this readiness of the mind of a whole nation to turn to the 
highest realities is the sign and fruit of an agelong, a real and 
a still living and supremely spiritual culture. 


146 



1919 


The mentality of the West has long cherished the aggres¬ 
sive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all man¬ 
kind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, 
one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one 
array of prohibitions and injunctions, one ecclesiastical ordi¬ 
nance. That narrow absurdity prances about as the one true 
religion which all must accept on peril of persecution by 
men here and spiritual rejection or fierce eternal punishment 
by God in other worlds. This grotesque creation of human 
unreason, the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty, obscu¬ 
rantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to 
take firm hold of the free and supple mind of India. Men 
everywhere have common human failings, and intolerance 
and narrowness especially in the matter of observances there 
has been and is in India.... But these things have never taken 
the proportions which they assumed in Europe. Intolerance 
has been confined for the most part to the minor forms of 
polemical attack or to social obstruction or ostracism; very 
seldom have they transgressed across the line to the major 
forms of barbaric persecution which draw a long, red and 
hideous stain across the religious history of Europe. There 
has played ever in India the saving perception of a higher 
and purer spiritual intelligence, which has had its effect on 
the mass mentality. Indian religion has always felt that since 
the minds, the temperaments, the intellectual affinities of 
men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of 
thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in 
his approach to the Infinite. 76 



India’s Rebirth 


1920 

The will of a single hero can breathe courage into the 
hearts of a million cowards. 77 

* 

No system indeed by its own force can bring about the 
change that humanity really needs; for that can only come by 
its growth into the firmly realised possibilities of its own 
higher nature, and this growth depends on an inner and not 
an outer change. But outer changes may at least prepare 
favourable conditions for that more real- amelioration,—or 
on the contrary they may lead to such conditions that the 
sword of Kalki* can alone purify the earth from the burden 
of an obstinately Asuric humanity. The choice lies with the 
race itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its 
Karma. 78 

* 

* * 


January 5, 1920 

(From a letter to Joseph Baptista, a co-worker of Tilak 
who had requested Sri Aurobindo to take up the editor¬ 
ship of a Nationalist English paper proposed to be 
brought out from Bombay. Sri Aurobindo explained 
his reasons for turning down this request, through 
which the Nationalists were hoping to give him an 
opportunity to return to politics.) 


* Kalki: the last Avatar, who comes riding a white winged horse, armed 
with a sword. He will come "like a burning comet." 


148 




1920 


Dear Baptista, 

I do not at all look down on politics or political action or 
consider I have got above them. I have always laid a domi¬ 
nant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual 
life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic 
withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is 
to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to 
be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance 
of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and 
intention of political activity would differ considerably from 
anything now current in the field. I entered into political 
action and continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and 
one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for 
freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place 
of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. 
That is now done and the Amritsar Congress is the seal upon 

it_* What preoccupies me now is the question what [the 

country] is going to do with its self-determination, how will it 
use its freedom, on what lines is it going to determine its 
future ? 

You may ask why not come out and help, myself, so far as I 
can, in giving a lead ? But my mind has a habit of running 
inconveniently ahead of the times,—some might say, out of 
time altogether into the world of the ideal. Your party, you 
say, is going to be a social democratic party. Now I believe in 
something which might be called social democracy, but not 
in any of the forms now current, and I am not altogether 
in love with the European kind, however great an improve¬ 
ment it may be on the past. I hold that India having a spirit 
of her own and a governing temperament proper to her own 


* The 1919 Amritsar session declared Swaraj to be the aim of the Congress, 
as did the following 1920 Nagpur session; but this demand was soon eclipsed 
by the Khilafat movement (for the continuance of the Sultan of Turkey as 
the Caliph of the Mahomedan world), and returned to the fore only in 1929, 
at the Lahore session. 


149 



India’s Rebirth 


civilisation, should in politics as in everything else strike out 
her own original path and not stumble in the wake of Europe. 
But this is precisely what she will be obliged to do, if she has 
to start on the road in her present chaotic and unprepared 
condition of mind. No doubt people talk of India developing 
on her own lines, but nobody seems to have very clear or suffi¬ 
cient ideas as to what those lines are to be. In this matter I 
have formed ideals and certain definite ideas of my own, in 
which at present very few are likely to follow me,—since they 
are governed by an uncompromising spiritual idealism of an 
unconventional kind and would be unintelligible to many and 
an offence and stumbling-block to a great number. 79 

* 

* * 


April, 1920 

(Barin Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's brother, was sentenced 
to death at the Alipore Bomb Case in 1909. On appeal 
his sentence was commuted to deportation for life to 
the Andamans; he was released early in 1920, after 
an amnesty. Soon afterwards, Barin wrote to Sri 
Aurobindo for guidance both from a political and a 
spiritual point of view. A few excerpts from 
Sri Aurobindo's long reply in Bengali.) 

What the Divine wants is for man to embody Him here, 
in the individual and in the collectivity—to realise God in 
life. The old system of yoga could not harmonise or unify 
Spirit and life; it dismissed the world as Maya or a transient 
play of God. The result has been a diminution of life-power 
and the decline of India. The Gita says, utsideyur ime loka na 
kuryam karma cedaham ["These peoples would crumble to 
pieces if I did not do actions,” 3.24]. Truly "these peoples" of 
India have gone to ruin. What kind of spiritual perfection is 
it if a few Sannyasins, Bairagis and Saddhus attain realisation 


150 



1920 


and liberation, if a few Bhaktas dance in a frenzy of love, god- 
intoxication and Ananda, and an entire race, devoid of life, 
devoid of intelligence, sinks to the depths of extreme tamas? 

Why did I leave politics ? Because our politics is not the 
genuine Indian article; it is a European import, just an imita¬ 
tion of European ways. But that too was needed. Both of us 
also engaged in politics of the European style; had we not 
done so, the country would not have risen, and we too would 
not have had the experience or obtained a full development.... 
But now the time has come to take hold of the substance 
instead of extending the shadow. We have to awaken the true 
soul of India and in its image fashion all works. For the last 
ten years I have been silently pouring my influence into this 
European political vessel, and there has been some result. I 
can continue to do this wherever necessary. But if I went out 
to do that work again, associating myself with the political 
leaders and working with them, it would be supporting an 
alien law of being and a false political life. People now want to 
spiritualise politics—Gandhi, for instance—but they can’t get 
hold of the right way. What is Gandhi doing ? Making a hodge¬ 
podge called satyagraha out of ahimsa paramo dharmah 
[non-violence is the highest law], Jainism, hartal, passive 
resistance, etc.; bringing a sort of Indianised Tolstoyism into 
the country. The result—if there is any lasting result—will 
be a sort of Indianised Bolshevism. I have no objection to his 
work; let each one act according to his own inspiration. But 
that is not the real thing. 

I believe that the main cause of India’s weakness is not 
subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, 
but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in 
the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability 
or unwillingness to think—incapacity of thought or "thought- 
phobia”. Whatever may have been in the mediaeval period, 
now this attitude is the sign of a great decline. The mediaeval 


151 



India's Rebirth 


period was a night, a time of victory for the man of ignor¬ 
ance; the modern world is a time of victory for the man of 
knowledge. It is the one who can fathom and learn the truth 
of the world by thinking more, searching more, labouring 
more, who will gain more Shakti. Look at Europe, and you 
will see two things; a wide limitless sea of thought and the 
play of a huge and rapid, yet disciplined force. The whole 
Shakti of Europe lies there. It is by virtue of this Shakti that 
she has been able to swallow the world, like our Tapaswins of 
old, whose might held even the gods of the universe in awe, 
suspense and subjection. People say that Europe is rushing 
into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these 
revolutions, all these upsettings are the initial stages of a 
new creation. Now look at India: a few solitary giants aside, 
everywhere there is your "simple man", that is your average 
man who will not think and cannot think, who has not the 
least Shakti but only a momentary excitement.... The differ¬ 
ence lies there. But there is a fatal limitation to the power 
and thought of Europe. When she enters the field of spirit¬ 
uality, her thought-power stops working. There Europe sees 
everything as a riddle, nebulous metaphysics, yogic halluci¬ 
nation—"It rubs its eyes as in smoke and can see nothing 
clearly.” Still, in Europe there is now a great striving to sur¬ 
mount even this limitation. Thanks to our forefathers, we 
have the spiritual sense, and whoever has this sense has 
within his reach such Knowledge, such Shakti that with one 
breath he could blow away like a blade of grass all the huge 
power of Europe. But to get that Shakti, Shakti is needed. 
We, however, are not worshippers of Shakti; we are worship¬ 
pers of the easy way.... Our civilisation has become ossified, 
our Dharma a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint 
glimmer of light or a momentary wave of intoxication. So 
long as this state of things lasts, any permanent resurgence 
of India is impossible.... 

We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and so the Shakti 
has abandoned us. We practise the yoga of love, but where 


152 



1920 


there is no Knowledge or Shakti, love does not stay, narrow¬ 
ness and littleness come in. In a narrow and small mind, life 
and heart, love finds no room. Where in Bengal is there love ? 
Nowhere else even in this division-ridden India is there so 
much quarrelling, strained relations, jealousy, hatred and 
factionalism as in Bengal. In the noble heroic age of the Aryan 
people there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, 
but the endeavour they set in motion lasted many centuries. 
The Bengali's endeavour lasts for a day or two. You say what 
is needed is emotional excitement, to fill the country with 
enthusiasm. We did all that in the political field during the 
Swadeshi period; but all we did now lies in the dust.... 
Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement, 
feeling and mental enthusiasm the base. I want to make a 
vast and heroic equality the foundation of my yoga; in all the 
activities of the being, of the adhar [vessel] based on that 
equality, I want a complete, firm and unshakable Shakti; 
over that ocean of Shakti I want the vast radiation of the sun 
of Knowledge and in that luminous vastness an established 
ecstasy of infinite love and bliss and oneness. I do not want 
tens of thousands of disciples; it will be enough if I can get 
as instruments of God a hundred complete men free from 
petty egoism. I have no faith in the customary trade of guru. 
I do not want to be a guru. What I want is that a few, awak¬ 
ened at my touch or at that of another, will manifest from 
within their sleeping divinity and realise the divine life. It is 
such men who will raise this country. 80 

★ 


May, 1920 


(From a letter to Motilal Roy.) 

The old politics in India persist in a chaos of parties and 
programmes ... and in Bengal we have a rush of the commercial 


153 




India's Rebirth 


and industrial spirit which follows the Western principle 
and, if it succeeds on these lines, is likely to create a very 
disastrous reproduction or imitation of the European situa¬ 
tion with its corrupt capitalism and the Labour struggle and 
the war of classes. 

People care nothing about the spiritual basis of life which 
is India’s real mission and the only possible source of her 
greatness, or give to it only a slight, secondary or incidental 
value, a something that has to be stuck on as a sentiment or a 
bit of colouring matter. Our whole principle is different. 

* 


August, 1920 

Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the 
builders of the new world,—not those who accept the com¬ 
petitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic 
communism of the West as India's future ideal, not those who 
are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in 
the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but 
all who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth 
and labour for a greater ideal.... It is with a confident trust 
in the spirit that inspires us that we take our place among 
the standard-bearers of the new humanity that is struggling 
to be born amidst the chaos of a world in dissolution, and of 
the future India, the greater India of the rebirth that is to 
rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient Mother. 81 


We used the Mantra Bande Mataram with all our heart 
and soul, and so long as we used and lived it, relied upon 
its strength to overbear all difficulties, we prospered. But 
suddenly the faith and the courage failed us, the cry of the 


154 





1920 


Mantra began to sink and as it rang feebly, the strength began 
to fade out of the country. It was God, who made it fade out 
and falter, for it had done its work. A greater Mantra than 
Bande Mataram has to come. Bankim was not the ultimate 
seer of Indian awakening. He gave only the term of the initial 
and public worship, not the formula and the ritual of the inner 
secret upasana [worship]. For the greatest Mantras are those 
which are uttered within, and which the seer whispers or 
gives in dream or vision to his disciples. When the ultimate 
Mantra is practised even by two or three, then the closed 
Hand of God will begin to open; when the upasana is 
numerously followed the closed Hand will open absolutely. 82 

* 

★ * 


August 30, 1920 


(From a letter to Dr. B. S. Munje, a Congress leader 
from Nagpur who asked Sri Aurobindo to return to 
British India to preside over the Nagpur session of the 
Congress a few months later.* Tilak had just 
passed away on August 1.) 


Dear Dr. Munje, 

As I have already wired to you, I find myself unable to accept 
your offer of the Presidentship of the Nagpur Congress. 
There are reasons even within the political field itself which 
in any case would have stood in my way. In the first place I 
have never signed and would never care to sign as a personal 
declaration of faith the Congress creed, as my own is of a 
different character.... I am entirely in sympathy with all 
that is being done so far as its object is to secure liberty for 


* Dr. Munje also visited Sri Aurobindo in October, 1920, and had long talks 
with him; he later became a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. 


155 



India’s Rebirth 


India, but I should be unable to identify myself with the pro¬ 
gramme of any of the parties. The President of the Congress 
is really a mouthpiece of the Congress and to make from the 
presidential chair a purely personal pronouncement miles 
away from what the Congress is thinking and doing would be 
grotesquely out of place. 

The central reason however is this that I am no longer first 
and foremost a politician, but have definitely commenced 
another kind of work with a spiritual basis, a work of spiri¬ 
tual, social, cultural and economic reconstruction of an almost 
revolutionary kind, and am even making or at least supervis¬ 
ing a sort of practical or laboratory experiment in that sense 
which needs all the attention and energy that I can have to 
spare. 

A gigantic movement of non-cooperation merely to get some 
Punjab officials punished or to set up again the Turkish 
Empire which is dead and gone, shocks my ideas both of 
proportion and of common sense. 83 * 

* 

* * 


November, 1920 


(From an article entitled 
"A Preface on National Education.") 

The living spirit of the demand for national education no 
more requires a return to the astronomy and mathematics of 
Bhaskara or the forms of the system of Nalanda than the living 
spirit of Swadeshi a return from railway and motor traction 
to the ancient chariot and the bullock-cart.... It is the spirit, 
the living and vital issue that we have to do with, and there 


* References to the officials responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 
and to the Khilafat movement. 


156 



1920 


the question is not between modernism and antiquity, but 
between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities 
of the Indian mind and nature, not between the present and 
the past, but between the present and the future. It is not a 
return to the fifth century but an initiation of the centuries 
to come, not a reversion but a break forward away from a 
present artificial falsity to her own greater innate potentiali¬ 
ties that is demanded by the soul, by the Shakti of India. 

A language, Sanskrit or another, should be acquired by 
whatever method is most natural, efficient and stimulating 
to the mind and we need not cling there to any past or 
present manner of teaching: but the vital question is how we 
are to learn and make use of Sanskrit and the indigenous 
languages so as to get to the heart and intimate sense of our 
own culture and establish a vivid continuity between the still 
living power of our past and the yet uncreated power of our 
future, and how we are to learn and use English or any other 
foreign tongue so as to know helpfully the life, ideas and 
culture of other countries and establish our right relations 
with the world around us. This is the aim and principle of a 
true national education, not, certainly, to ignore modern 
truth and knowledge, but to take our foundation on our own 
being, our own mind, our own spirit.... 

The scientific, rationalistic, industrial, pseudo-democratic 
civilisation of the West is now in process of dissolution and 
it would be a lunatic absurdity for us at this moment to build 
blindly on that sinking foundation. When the most advanced 
minds of the Occident are beginning to turn in this red even¬ 
ing of the West for the hope of a new and more spiritual 
civilisation to the genius of Asia, it would be strange if we 
could think of nothing better than to cast away our own self 
and potentialities and put our trust in the dissolving and 
moribund past of Europe. 84 


* 


* * 


157 




India’s Rebirth 


January, 1921 




India has never been nationally and politically one. India 
was for close on a thousand years swept by barbaric invasions 
and for almost another thousand years in servitude to succes¬ 
sive foreign masters.... But in India at a very early time the 
spiritual and cultural unity was made complete and became 
the very stuff of the life of all this great surge of humanity 
between the Himalayas and the two seas.... Invasion and 
foreign rule, the Greek, the Parthian and the Hun, the robust 
vigour of Islam, the levelling steam-roller heaviness of the 
British occupation and the British system, the enormous 
pressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush 
the ancient soul out of the body her Vedic Rishis made for 
her. 


India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last 
creative word; she lives and has still something to do for 
herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now 
to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of 
the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's 
success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable 
Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher 
towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning 
to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her 
Dharma. 85 

* * 


158 



1922 


November 18, 1922 

(From a letter to Chittaranjan Das, the Nationalist 
leader who had defended Sri Aurobindo at the Alipore 
Bomb Case. C. R. Das came to Pondicherry to meet 
Sri Aurobindo in June, 1923; he passed away two 
years later, on June 16, 1925, his health broken 
by numerous imprisonments.) 


Dear Chitta, 

I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards 
life and work to which it has brought me. I have become con¬ 
firmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and 
dynamically then, but which has now become more and more 
evident to me, that the true basis of work and life is the spir¬ 
itual,—that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed 
only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can 
never get out of the futile circle the race is always treading 
until he has raised himself on to the new foundation. I 
believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great 
victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of 
the dynamic power of this greater consciousness ? What was 
the condition of its effective truth ? How could it be brought 
down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life? How could 
our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made 
true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This 
was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own 
experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge 
and some mastery of the secret... . 86 

* 

* * 


159 



India's Rebirth 


December I, 1922 


(From a letter to Barin.) 


Dear Barin, 

As you know, I do not believe that the Mahatma's principle 
[of non-cooperation] can be the true foundation or his pro¬ 
gramme the true means of bringing out the genuine freedom 
and greatness of India, her Swarajya and Samrajya.* On the 
other hand ... I hold that school [of Tilakite nationalism] to 
be out of date. My own policy, if I were in the field, would be 
radically different in principle and programme from both, 
however it might coincide in certain points. But the country 
is not yet ready to understand its principle or to execute its 
programme. 

Because I know this very well, I am content to work still 
on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas 
and forces, which may afterwards at the right moment and 
under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the 
vital and material field... . 87 


* 


* * 


* I.e., her self-rule and perfect empire. 


160 




Ill 


1923-1926 


(In these years, Sri Aurobindo used to have daily talks 
with a few disciples on a wide variety of subjects, from 
his yoga to the prevailing national or international 
situation. The following excerpts from these talks, 
noted down from memory by some of the disciples 
present, provide glimpses of Sri Aurobindo's views on 
India's political, social, cultural systems and 
her spiritual possibilities.) 


April 9, 1923 


The ancients [in India] based their society on the structure 
of religion—I do not mean narrow religion but the highest 
law of our being. The whole social fabric was built up to 
fulfil that purpose. There was no talk in those days of indi¬ 
vidual liberty in the present sense of the term, but there was 
absolute communal liberty. Every community was completely 
free to develop its own religion—the law of its being. Even 
the selection of the line was a matter of free choice for the 
individual.... In ancient times each community had its own 
Dharma and within itself it was independent; every village, 
every city had its own organization quite free from all politi¬ 
cal control and within that every individual was free—free to 
change and take up another line for his development. But all 
this was not put into a definite political unit. There were, of 
course, attempts at that kind of expression of life but they 
were only partially successful. The whole community in India 
was a very big one and the community culture based on 
Dharma was not thrown into a kind of [political or national] 
organization which would resist external aggression. 


April 18, 1923 

(The short-lived display of Hindu-Muslim unity that 
followed the launch of the Khilafat agitation in 1920 
soon gave way to renewed distrust and acrimony, 
which seized on issues such as Hindu processions 
playing music before mosques, killing of cows in 
public during Id, etc.; early in 1923 clashes broke out 
in Amritsar and Multan, now in Pakistan, and were 
going to recur with increasing frequency till 
the Partition—and after.) 


165 



India's Rebirth 


(A disciple:) Did you read [Pandit Madan Mohan] 
Malaviya's speech about the Multan riots and also 
what C. Rajagopalachari has said? 

(Sri Aurobindo:) I am sorry they are making a fetish of this 
Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts; some day the 
Hindus may have to fight the Muslims and they must prepare 
for it. Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of 
the Hindus. Every time the mildness of the Hindu has given 
way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organ¬ 
ize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of 
itself, it would automatically solve the problem. Otherwise, 
we are lulled into a false sense of satisfaction that we have 
solved a difficult problem, when in fact we have only shelved 
it. 

* 

* * 


July 23, 1923 

(A disciple:) The Mahatma believes that non-violence 
purifies the man who practises it. 

I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to 
the man's nature when he takes to Satyagraha or non-violence. 
He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or 
subject themselves to voluntary suffering, what happens is that 
their vital being gets strengthened. These movements affect the 
vital being only and not any other part. Now, when you cannot 
oppose the force that oppresses, you say that you will suffer. 
That suffering is vital and it gives strength. When the man who 
has thus suffered gets power he becomes a worse oppressor.... 

What one can do is to transform the spirit of violence. But 
in this practice of Satyagraha it is not transformed. When you 
insist on such a one-sided principle, what happens is that cant, 
hypocrisy and dishonesty get in and there is no purification 
at all. Purification can come by the transformation of the 


166 




1923 


impulse of violence, as I said. In that respect the old system 
in India was much better: the man who had the fighting 
spirit became the Kshatriya and then the fighting spirit was 
raised above the ordinary vital influence. The attempt was to 
spiritualize it. It succeeded in doing what passive resistance 
cannot and will not achieve. The Kshatriya was the man who 
would not allow any oppression, who would fight it out and 
he was the man who would not oppress anybody. That was 
the ideal.... 

There is also the question of Hindu-Muslim unity 
■which the non-violence school is trying to solve on 
the basis of their theory. 

You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is 
toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a reli¬ 
gion whose principle is "I will not tolerate you” ? How are you 
going to have unity with these people? Certainly, Hindu- 
Muslim unity cannot be arrived at on the basis that the 
Muslims will go on converting Hindus while the Hindus shall 
not convert any Mahomedan. You can’t build unity on such a 
basis. Perhaps the only way of making the Mahomedans harm¬ 
less is to make them lose their fanatic faith in their religion.... 

The Mahomedan religion was bom under such circum¬ 
stances that the followers never forgot the origin. 

That was the result of the passive resistance which they 
practised. They went on suffering till they got strong enough 
and, when they got power, they began to persecute others 
with a vengeance.... 

Gandhi's position is that he does not care to remove 
violence from others; he wants to observe non-violence 
himself. 

That is one of the violences of the Satyagrahi that he does 
not care for the presssure which he brings on others. It is not 


167 



India’s Rebirth 


non-violence—it is not "Ahimsa." True Ahimsa is a state of 
mind and does not consist in physical or external action or in 
avoidance of action. Any pressure in the inner being is a 
breach of Ahimsa. 

For instance, when Gandhi fasted in the Ahmedabad mill- 
hands’ strike to settle the question between mill-owners and 
workers, there was a kind of violence towards others. The 
mill-owners did not want to be responsible for his death and 
so they gave way, without, of course, being convinced of his 
position. It is a kind of violence on them. But as soon as they 
found the situation normal they reverted to their old ideas. 
The same thing happened in South Africa. He got some con¬ 
cessions there by passive resistance and when he came back 
to India it became worse than before. 

* 

* * 

September 12, 1923 

The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything 
to the world which may be said to be of fundamental impor¬ 
tance and typically its own; Islamic culture was mainly 
borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy 
and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is 
true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have 
not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are 
very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of 
gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of 
that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta. 

I have, however, mentioned [in The Foundations of Indian 
Culture ] that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic 
architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done 
anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new 
forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always 
semi-barbaric. 



1924 


February 28, 1924 

... That is the history of every religion, sect or religious 
institution: it begins with religion and ends in commerce. 
Everywhere you find the same thing. 

* 

* * 


March 7, 1924 

(A disciple:) The Khilafat is steam-rollered.* 

It is quite right that it should be gone; the new [Turkish] 
republic seems thorough and solid in its working.... 

There are tendencies among the Muslims showing 
that fanaticism may disintegrate. 

That is not sufficient because it would not change their 
whole outlook. What is wanted is some new religious move¬ 
ment among the Mahomedans which would remodel their reli¬ 
gion and change the stamp of their temperament. For instance, 
Bahaism in Persia which has given quite a different stamp to 
their temperament.** 

* 

* * 


* Mustapha Kemal, whose Nationalist forces deposed the Sultan in 
November, 1922, and who proclaimed Turkey a republic a year later, finally 
abolished the office of the Caliph early March, 1924. The Khilafat movement 
in India soon died a natural death, after however having succeeded in 
strengthening the Indian Muslims' sense of separateness. 

** Unfortunately, this tendency was reversed and Bahaism proscribed in 
many Muslim countries; in Iran, Bahaism is still today the object of severe 
persecution and the official policy is "to block the Bahais' progress and 
development." 


169 


India’s Rebirth 


June 2, 1924 

Gandhi is wonderstruck that his interpretation of the Gita 
is seriously questioned by a Shastri. I am rather wonder- 
struck at his claim to an infallible interpretation of the Gita. 

(A disciple:) He has criticized the Arya Samaj also. 

Yes, he has criticized Dayananda Saraswati who has, accord¬ 
ing to him, abolished image-worship and set up the idolatry of 
the Vedas. He forgets, I am afraid, that he is doing the same in 
economics by his Charkha and Khaddar, and, if one may add, 
by his idolatry of non-violence in religion and philosophy. 

In that way every one has established idol-worship. He has 
criticized the Arya Samaj but why not criticize Mahomedan- 
ism ? His statement is adulatory of the Koran and of Chris¬ 
tianity which is idolatry of the Bible, Christ and the Cross. 
Man is hardly able to do without externals and only a few 
will go to the kernel. 

★ 

* * 


August 17, 1924 

(A few months earlier, Gandhi had sent his son 
Devadas to Pondicherry to see Sri Aurobindo.) 

He asked my views about non-violence. I told him, "Suppose 
there is an invasion of India by the Afghans, how are you going 
to meet it with non-violence?” That is all I remember. I do 
not think he put me any other question. 

* 

* * 


170 



1925 


January 21, 1925 

If the Truth which the yoga [of Sri Aurobindo] wants to 
achieve is attained and if India accepts it, then it will give 
quite a new turn to Indian politics—different from European 
politics. It would be a profound change. 

* 

* * 


December 4, 1925 

So long as you need to be virtuous you have not attained 
the pure spiritual height where you have not to think whether 
the action is moral or not. People hastily conclude that when 
you ask them to rise above morality, you are asking them to 

sink below good and evil. That is not at all the case_By 

morality you become more human, but you do not go beyond 
humanity. Morality has done much good to man, maybe; it 
has also done much harm. 

(A disciple:) But people always confuse morality with 
spirituality. 

Like the Christians to whom there is no difference between 
morality and spirituality. For instance, take this fast now 
announced [by Gandhi]. It is a Christian idea of atonement 
for sin. All those other reasons which are given make it 
rather ridiculous. 

Indian culture knew the value of morality, and also its 
limitations. The Upanishads and the Gita are loud with and 
full of the idea of going beyond morality. 


171 




India’s Rebirth 


April 7, 1926 

It is the European idea that makes you think that the 
parliamentary form or constitution is the best. [In ancient 
India] we had great communal liberty and the communities 
were the centre of power and of national life. The king could 
not infringe the right of the commune.... If these rights were 
interfered with the people at once made themselves felt. That 
was the form which the genius of the race had evolved.... 

I don’t understand why everything should be centralized as 
in the parliamentary constitution. We must have different, 
numerous centres of culture and power, full of national life 
spread all over the country and they must have political 
freedom to develop themselves. 

(A disciple:) Village organization can also help in the 
creation of such centres. 

Yes. But it is not by lectures and sermonizing to the village 
people, as we are trying to do now.... If you want to work 
in the village, you must take to a natural profession, go and 
settle down among the village people and be one of them. 
When they see that you are a practical man they will begin to 
trust you. If you go there and work hard for ten or fifteen 
years you will gain your status and you will be able to do 
something because they will be prepared to listen to you. 

The parliamentary form would be hardly suitable for our 
people. Of course, it is not necessary that you should have 
today the same old forms [as in ancient India]. But you can 
take the line of evolution and follow the bent of the genius of 
the race. 

* 

* * 


172 


1926 


May 18, 1926 

Life has no "isms” in it. Supermind* also has no "isms”. It 
is the mind that introduces all "isms" and creates confusion. 
That is the difference between a man who lives and a thinker 
who can’t: a leader who thinks too much and is busy with 
ideas, trying all the time to fit the realities of life to his ideas, 
hardly succeeds, while the leader who is destined to succeed 
does not bother his head about ideas. He sees the forces at 
work and knows by intuition those that make for success. He 
also knows the right combination of forces and the right 
moment when he should act.... 

Look at Indian politicians: all ideas, ideas—they are busy 
with ideas. Take the Hindu-Muslim problem: I don’t know 
why our politicians accepted Gandhi’s Khilafat agitation.** 
With the mentality of the ordinary Mahomedan it was bound 
to produce the reaction it has produced: you fed the force, it 
gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu 
mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require 
Supermind to find out, it requires common sense. Then, the 
Mahomedan reality and the Hindu reality began to break 
heads at Calcutta.*** The leaders are busy trying to square 
the realities with their mental ideas instead of facing them 
straight.... 

At one time it was thought that the mind could grasp the 
whole Truth and solve all the problems that face humanity. 


* Sri Aurobindo called ''Supermind” or ''Supramental" the region of full 
Truth-Consciousness which will be the normal state of consciousness of the 
next stage of evolution, just as the mind is the normal consciousness of our 
human stage. 

** From the outset Gandhi made it clear that the Khilafat question was in 
his view more important and urgent than that of Swaraj. He wrote: "To the 
Musalmans, Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with 
the Khilafat question_It is impossible not to sympathise with this atti¬ 

tude.... I would gladly ask for postponement of Swaraj activity if thereby 
we could advance the interest of the Khilafat.” 88 

*** A reference to serious riots in Calcutta the previous month. 


173 




India’s Rebirth 


The mind had its full play and we find that it is not able to 
solve the problems. Now, we find that it is possible to go 
beyond mind and there is the Supermind which is the organi¬ 
zation of the Infinite Consciousness. There you find the truth 
of all that is in mind and life. 

For instance, you find that Democracy, Socialism and Com¬ 
munism have each some truth behind it, but it is not the 
whole Truth. What you have to do is to find out the forces 
that are at work and understand what it is of which all these 
mental ideas and "isms” are a mere indication. You have to 
know the mistakes which people commit in dealing with the 
truth of these forces and the truth that is behind the mistakes 
also. I am, at present, speaking against democracy; that does 
not mean that there is no truth behind it. I know the truth 
[behind democracy], but I speak against democracy because 
that mentality is at present against the Truth that is trying to 
come down. 

* 


June 1, 1926 

(A disciple:) These newspapers print anything they 
like. Can they print the talk that takes place in one’s 
house ? 

If you expect manners from modern newspapers you will 
be sorely disappointed in these democratic days. It is one of 
the blessings of modern democracy! If you were in America 
and did not give any interview, even then they would invent 
one! The press is a public institution; formerly, it was some¬ 
thing dignified, but now the newspapers are the correct meas¬ 
ure of the futility of human life.... It is the same with all other 
modern things—the press, the theatre, the radio; they drag 
down everything to the level of the crowd.... They succeed 

only if they can pamper the common man’s tastes_ 

It is the same old question of the mass being pulled up by 


174 



1926 


something higher. But, as it always happens, instead of being 
pulled up it is the mass that pulls everything down to its 
level.... 

Are things worse or becoming better? 

To me the condition of Europe, after the war especially, 
seems almost to be the same as that at the break-up and disin¬ 
tegration of the Roman Empire. There is the same tendency 
to plunge the world into barbarism again. 

* 

* * 

June 22, 1926 

(A disciple:) Are Indians more spiritual than other 
people ? 

No, it is not so. No nation is entirely spiritual. Indians are 
not more spiritual than other people. But behind the Indian 
race there lives the past spiritual influence. 

Some prominent national workers in India seem to 
me to be incarnations of some European force here. 

They may not be incarnations, but they may be strongly 
influenced by European thought. For instance, Gandhi is a 
European—truly, a Russian Christian in an Indian body. And 
there are some Indians in European bodies! 

Gandhi a European! 

Yes. When the Europeans say that he is more Christian 
than many Christians (some even say that he is "Christ of the 
modern times’’) they are perfectly right. All his preaching is 
derived from Christianity, and though the garb is Indian the 
essential spirit is Christian. He may not be Christ, but at any 


175 


India’s Rebirth 


rate he comes in continuation of the same impulsion. He is 
largely influenced by Tolstoy, the Bible, and has a strong Jain 
tinge in his teachings; at any rate more than by the Indian 
scriptures—the Upanishads or the Gita which he interprets 
in the light of his own ideas. 

Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man. 

Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. But what he 
preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived 

from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering, etc_ 

The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. 
They have got a passion in their intellect, say, a passionate 
intellect. They have a distracted and restless emotional being, 
but there is something behind it which is very fine and psychic, 
though their soul is not very healthy. And therefore I am not 
right in saying that Gandhi is a Russian Christian, because 
he is so very dry. He has got the intellectual passion and a 
great moral will-force, but he is more dry than the Russians. 
The gospel of suffering that he is preaching has its root in 
Russia as nowhere else in Europe—other Christian nations 
don’t believe in it. At the most they have it in the mind, but 
the Russians have got it in their very blood. They commit a 
mistake in preaching the gospel of suffering, but we also 
commit in India a mistake in preaching the idea of vairagya 
[disgust with the world], 

★ 

* * 


June 23, 1926 

When Gandhi’s movement was started, I said that this 
movement would lead either to a fiasco or to a great confu¬ 
sion. And I see no reason to change my opinion. Only I would 
like to add that it has led to both. 

* 

* * 


176 



1926 


June 29, 1926 

In India we had nothing of the mental ideal in politics. We 
had a spontaneous and a free growth of communities devel¬ 
oping on their own lines. It was not so much a mental idea as 
an inner impulse or feeling, to express life in a particular 
form. Each such communal form of life—the village, the town, 
etc., which formed the unit of national life, was left free in 
its own internal management. The central authority never 
interfered with it. 

There was not the idea of "interest” in India as in Europe, 
i.e., each community was not fighting for its own interest; 
but there was the idea of Dharma, the function which the 
individual and the community has to fulfil in the larger 
national life. There were caste organizations not based upon 
a religio-social basis as we find nowadays; they were more 
or less guilds, groups organized for a communal life. There 
were also religious communities like the Buddhists, the Jains, 
etc. Each followed its own law—Swadharma—unhampered 
by the State. The State recognized the necessity of allowing 
such various forms of life to develop freely in order to give to 
the national spirit a richer expression. 

Then over the two there was the central authority, whose 
function was not so much to legislate as to harmonize and 
see that everything was going on all right. It was generally 
administered by a Raja; in cases it was also an elected head 
of the clan, as in the instance of Gautama Buddha’s father. 
Each ruled over either a small State or a group of small 
States or republics. The king was not a law-maker and he 
was not at the head to put his hand over all organizations 
and keep them down. If he interfered with them he was 
deposed because each of these organizations had its own 
laws which had been established for long ages. 

The machinery of the State also was not so mechanical as 
in the West—it was plastic and elastic. 


177 



India's Rebirth 


This organization we find in history perfected in the reign 
of Chandragupta and the Maurya dynasty. The period 
preceding this must have been a period of great political 
development in India. Every department of national life, we 
can see, was in the charge of a board or a committee with a 
minister at the head, and each board looked after what we 
now would call its own department and was left free from 
undue interference of the central authority. The change of 
kings left these boards untouched and unaffected in their 
work. An organization similar to that was found in every 
town and village and it was this organization that was taken 
up by the Mahomedans when they came to India. It is that 
which the English also have taken up. The idea of the King 
as the absolute monarch was never an Indian idea. It was 
brought from Central Asia by the Mahomedans. 

The English in accepting this system have disfigured it 
considerably. They have found ways to put their hand on and 
grasp all the old organizations, using them merely as channels 
to establish more thoroughly the authority of the central 
power. They discouraged every free organization and every 
attempt at the manifestation of the free life of the community. 
Now attempts are being made to have the cooperative societies 
in villages, there is an effort at reviving the Panchayats. But 
these organizations cannot be revived once they have been 
crushed; and even if they revived they would not be the same. 

If the old organization had lasted it would have been a 
successful rival of the modern form of government. 

(A disciple:) Is it possible to come back to old forms 
in modern times? 

You need not come back to the old forms, but you can retain 
the spirit which might create its own new forms.... 

It has been a special feature of India that she has to contain 
in her life all the most diverse elements and assimilate them. 
This renders her problem most intricate. 


178 



1926 


If it is India's destiny to assimilate all the conflicting 
elements, is it possible to assimilate the Mahomedan 
element also? 

Why not? India has assimilated elements from the Greeks, 
the Persians and other nations. But she assimilates only 
when her central truth is recognized by the other party, and 
even while assimilating she does it in such a way that the 
elements absorbed are no longer recognizable as foreign but 
become part of herself. For instance, we took from the Greek 
architecture, from the Persian painting, etc. 

The assimilation of the Mahomedan culture also was done 
in the mind to a great extent and it would have perhaps gone 
further. But in order that the process may be complete it is 
necessary that a change in the Mahomedan mentality should 
come. The conflict is in the outer life and unless the Mahomed- 
ans learn tolerance I do not think the assimilation is possible. 

The Hindu is ready to tolerate. He is open to new ideas and 
his culture has got a wonderful capacity for assimilation, but 
always provided that India’s central truth is recognized. 

Did India have the national idea in the modern 
sense? 

The "nation idea" India never had. By that I mean the 
political idea of the nation. It is a modern growth. But we 
had in India the cultural and spiritual idea of the nation.... 

Present-day Indians have got nothing to boast of from their 
past. Indian culture today is in the most abject condition, 
like the fort of Gingee—one pillar standing here, another 
ceiling there and some hall out of recognition somewhere! 

* 

* * 


179 



India’s Rebirth 


July 1, 1926 

(A disciple:) Didn’t the non-cooperation movement 
give life to the country? 

Do you call that life? It was based on a falsehood. How 
could you expect it to create anything ? Swaraj was sought to 
be established by spinning—could anything come from such 
a false ideal ? Some life was given to the country during the 
Swadeshi days in Bengal. You ought to have seen what Bengal 
was before the Swadeshi movement to understand what it 
accomplished. At that time we gave forms and ideals which 
have since degenerated. Those forms have now been taken up 
and distorted. Mahatma Gandhi has a sort of force—by exert¬ 
ing it he advances to a certain extent but in reaction he goes 
back much farther.... 

The Satyagraha movement is only meant for Mahatma 
Gandhi and a few men like him—it ought not to be thrust 
upon a whole people. 

People talk of village organization—let them first bring life 
to the villages and they will organize themselves. 

In India the students generally have great capacities but 
the system of education represses and destroys these capaci¬ 
ties. Look at the method of the classroom—the students must 
sit there for so many hours and pore over their books: all 
this is very injurious. What is needed is an atmosphere—a 
pervasive atmosphere of learning. The students should imbibe 
that, find out their own aptitudes and develop along those 
lines.... Under the proper system of education both the needs 
—the need of the individual and the need of the nation—can 
be reconciled.... That is the future education of the race if it 
is to make any real progress. 



1926 


July 26, 1926 

Generally woman can be said to be more efficient on the 
physical plane, because she follows her intuitions. She is 
more able to arrange matter generally, goes straight to the 
thing to be done, while man wanders forth into ideas and 
mental constructions. It can be seen in politics; women 
would succeed better. Man is able to put more mental power, 
while the woman acts more psychically. Man is more intel¬ 
lectual and woman more intuitive. She is also very active on 
the vital plane. 

(A disciple:) But while woman has often been the 
source of inspiration to man, she has not produced 
any great creative work. 

Because she was not given any opportunity by social bond¬ 
ages. Whenever women have been given opportunity they have 
shown their capacity.... We have to wait a few generations 
in order to see them at work. 

* 

* * 


August 1, 1926 

The attempt to placate the Mahomedans was a false diplo¬ 
macy. Instead of trying to achieve Hindu-Muslim unity 
directly, if the Hindus had devoted themselves to national 
work, the Mahomedans would have gradually come of them¬ 
selves.... This attempt to patch up a unity has given too 
much importance to the Muslims and it has been the root of 
all these troubles. 

* 

* * 


181 



India’s Rebirth 


August 3, 1926 

Religion is as much useful and in the same manner as any 
other form of culture, e.g., art, science, ethics, etc. All these 
help the development of man; they prepare the materials 
which will enrich his higher spiritual life.... But as the other 
departments of culture—aesthetics, morals, science—can be 
abused, so religion also can be abused and in fact is very 
often abused. And as it is said, when the best thing degener¬ 
ates it becomes the worst corruption—so it is with religion; 
when its great possibilities are abused it leads to the worst 
evils. 

* 

* * 

August 4, 1926 

(A disciple:) Religion is too complex a phenomenon to 
be defined. The Bengali equivalent of religion —dharma 
—is still more complex. 

Dharma is not religion though it has become customary to 
translate "religion” by "dharma.” Dharma is law—it includes 
the social and moral laws; also the law of one’s own being, 
one's own nature is said to be dharma— svadharma. 

* 

* * 


August 7, 1926 

(A disciple:) What are the characteristics of Indian 
politicians? 

They never do a thing at the right time and whatever they 
do, they do badly (laughter). They have no touch with reality 
—they see what the English people are doing in England 
and try to apply that to this country, though it may be quite 


182 



1926 


unsuitable here. They take all political cants and catch 
phrases and they adopt them in their talk, not in work. They 
have too much mental activity—have all sorts of ideas and 
forms in their brains, which have very little practical value. 

Why is this so? 

That is all due to Mayavada [the doctrine of Illusion]—our 
men have become too subtle in their minds and all our politi¬ 
cians are drawn from that class. Then the system of education 
is greatly responsible for this state of things. 

Is the system in England different from that introduced 
in India? 

Yes, [in India] they want only clerks and the education is 
intended for nothing else. 

* 

* * 


August 8, 1926 

The Greeks had more light than the Christians who converted 
them; at that time there was gnosticism in Greece, and they 
were developing agnosticism and so forth. The Christians 
brought darkness rather than light. 

That has always been the case with aggressive religions 
—they tend to overrun the earth. Hinduism on the other 
hand is passive and therein lies its danger.... 

(A disciple:) There is a marked difference between the 
national workers of the Swadeshi period and those at 
the present time. The former workers drew their 
inspiration from the Gita; the present workers have 
discarded the Gita, they laugh at spirituality, they 
draw their inspiration from the Bolshevists or similar 
other European movements. 


183 




India’s Rebirth 


That is the reason why they have degenerated and cannot 
do anything. They only take the forms adopted in the previous 
movement without realizing the changed circumstances and 
fresh requirements of the time. 

Most of our workers and leaders at the present time 
are without any spiritual life. 

I cannot say anything about individuals. But the central 
thing in Hinduism is spirituality and there cannot be any big 
movement without any spirituality behind it. 

★ 

* * 


Early August, 1926 

(A disciple:) If this work of bringing down the Truth 
does not succeed in India, do you think India will lose 
the chance for ever? 

India has the greatest chance because of her past and 
because the spiritual force is accumulated here.... 

But if India remains indifferent and sticks to old worn-out 
forms and refuses to move forward or listen to the call of her 
soul, then the Truth may recede and try somewhere else. 
The Truth is not confined to India, it is not India's property. 
But there is very little chance of its succeeding elsewhere if 
it fails in India. It may make an unsuccessful or partially 
successful effort somewhere else, as Christianity did, and 
then retire. 

* 

* * 

August 21, 1926 

I find it always difficult to work [innerly] in Indian politics. 
The difficulty is that the vessels don’t hold the Power, they 


184 



1926 


are so weak. If the amount of force that is spent on India 
were spent on a European nation you would find it full of 
creative activities of various kinds. But here, in India, it is 
like sending a current of electricity through a sleeping man: 
he suddenly starts up, begins jerking and throwing his arms 
and feet about and then drops down again; he is not fully 
awake. 

(A disciple:) What is it due to? 

Due to tremendous tamas. Don’t you feel it all around, that 
tamas? It is that which frustrates all efforts. 

What has brought it about? 

It is the result of various causes. It was already settling—I 
mean, the forces of disintegration and inertia—before the 
British came. And after their coming the whole tamas has 
settled like a solid block. There must be some awakening 
before something substantial can be done. Otherwise, India 
has got very good men; you had Tilak, Das, Vivekananda 
—none of them an ordinary man, and yet you see the tamas 
there. 

* 

* Hr 


August 29, 1926 

(Sri Aurobindo refuted a criticism of 
birth control in an article.) 

Scientists and medical men have devised methods by 
which birth control may be made effective without any injury. 
The objects are twofold: first, the prevention of too many 
children; secondly, keeping the woman in good health, so 
that the few children she gives birth to may be healthy. 

Of course inner control is better. But can that be expected 
of the man ?... 


185 



India’s Rebirth 


(A disciple:) Gandhi has quoted all the doctors who 
oppose this method. 

But he has not quoted those who support it. 

One objection is that it will increase licence. 

That again is the moralist idea. There are the two extremes: 
one extreme is inner control, the other is free indulgence; 
mid-between comes the system of birth control. 

* 

* * 


September 6, 1926 

All the energy that I have I owe to yoga. I was very inca¬ 
pable before. Even the energy that I put forth in politics 
came from yoga. 

* 

* * 


186 



IV 

1929-1938 


(At the end of 1926, Sri Aurobindo withdrew com¬ 
pletely, leaving the material responsibility of the 
disciples and the growing Ashram to Mother. Apart 
from three and later four yearly "darshans," Sri 
Aurobindo kept in external touch with the disciples 
through letters—thousands of letters in which he 
tirelessly dealt with their questions or difficulties or 
revolts. 

This section consists mostly of excerpts from some 
of Sri Aurobindo’s letters.) 




Undated 


Man is a transitional being; he is not final.... 

The step from man to superman is the next approaching 
achievement in the earth’s evolution. It is inevitable because 
it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of 
Nature’s process.... 

Supermanhood is not man climbed to his own natural zenith, 
not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, 
intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, 
love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond 
mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than 
the highest consciousness proper to human nature. 

Man in himself is little more than an ambitious nothing. He 
is a littleness that reaches to a wideness and a grandeur that 
are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind 
is a dark ray in the splendours of the universal Mind. His life 
is a striving, exulting, suffering, an eager passion-tossed and 
sorrow-stricken or a blindly and dumbly longing petty moment 
of the universal Life. His body is a labouring perishable speck 
in the material universe. This cannot be the end of the myste¬ 
rious upward surge of Nature. There is something beyond, 
something that mankind shall be. 89 


The world is not either a creation of Maya or only a play, 
lila, of the Divine, or a cycle of births in the ignorance from 
which we have to escape, but a field of manifestation in 
which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the 
nature in Matter and from Matter through Life and Mind to 
what is beyond Mind till it reaches the complete revelation 
of Sachchidananda* in life. It is this that is the basis of [Sri 
Aurobindo’s] Yoga and gives a new sense to life. 90 


* Sachchidananda: the eternal divine principle of Existence (sat), Conscious¬ 
ness (chit) and Delight (ananda). 


189 



India's Rebirth 


October 23, 1929 

(From a letter to a Muslim disciple who started 
making violent demands which he tried to justify 
on "religious" grounds.) 

You say that you ask only for the Truth and yet you speak 
like a narrow and ignorant fanatic who refuses to believe in 
anything but the religion in which he was born. All fanati¬ 
cism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature 
of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single 
book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The 
Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot 
be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic 
religions only,—those that happened to be in a line from the 
Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their 
founders. Hindus and Confucians and Taoists and all others 
have as much right to enter into relation with God and find 
the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in 
them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time 
and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never 
pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and 
there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these reli¬ 
gions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or 
form the Divine Wisdom chooses. You cannot shut up God in 
the limitations of your own narrow brain or dictate to the 
Divine Power and Consciousness how or where or through 
whom it shall manifest; you cannot put up your puny bar¬ 
riers against the divine Omnipotence. These again are simple 
truths which are now being recognised all over the world; 
only the childish in mind or those who vegetate in some 
formula of the past deny them. 

You have insisted on my writing and asked for the Truth 
and I have answered. But if you want to be a Mussulman, no 
one prevents you. If the Truth I bring is too great for you to 
understand or to bear, you are free to go and live in a half- 


190 



1932 


truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert 
anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call 
no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine 
consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to 
come to me and cleave to it and in no others. 91 

★ 

•k ★ 


January 14, 1932 

The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, 
in the past, but I do not see why we should merely repeat 
them and not go farther. In the spiritual development of the 
consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed 
by a greater future. 

I am concerned with the earth, not with worlds beyond for 
their own sake; it is a terrestrial realisation that I seek and 
not a flight to distant summits. 92 

★ 

* * 

July 31, 1932 


(From an unpublished letter.) 

As for Gandhi, why should you suppose that I am so tender 
for the faith of the Mahatma? I do not call it faith at all, but 
a rigid mental belief and what he calls soul-force is only a 
strong vital will which has taken a religious turn. That, of 
course, can be a tremendous force for action, but unfortu¬ 
nately Gandhi spoils it by his ambition to be a man of reason, 
while in fact he has no reason in him at all, never was reason¬ 
able at any moment in his life and, I suppose, never will be. 
What he has in its place is a remarkable type of unintention¬ 
ally sophistic logic. Well, what this reason, this amazingly 


191 




India’s Rebirth 


precisely unreliable logic brings about is that nobody is even 
sure and, I don’t think, he is himself really sure what he will 
do next.* He has not only two minds but three or four minds, 
and all depends on which will turn up topmost at a particular 
moment and how it will combine with the others. There would 
be no harm in that, on the contrary these might be an advan¬ 
tage if there were a central Light somewhere choosing for him 
and shaping the decision to the need of the action. He thinks 
there is and calls it God—but it has always seemed to me that 
it is his own mind that decides and most often decides wrongly. 
Anyhow I cannot imagine Lenin or Mustapha Kemal not 
knowing their own minds or acting in this way—even their 
strategic retreats were steps towards an end clearly conceived 
and executed. But whatever it be it is all mind action and 
vital force in Gandhi. So why should he be taken as an exam¬ 
ple of the defeat of the Divine or of a spiritual Power?** I 
quite allow that there has been something behind Gandhi 
greater than himself and you can call it the Divine or a 
Cosmic Force which has used him, but then there is that 
behind everybody who is used as an instrument for world 
ends,—behind Kemal and Lenin also; so that is not germane 
to the matter. 

* 

* * 


* This was also noted by many of those who approached Gandhi. Nehru, 
for instance, wrote: “I told him [Gandhi, in March, 1931] that his way of 
springing surprises upon us frightened me, there was something unknown 
about him which, in spite of the closest association for fourteen years, I 
could not understand at all and which filled me with apprehension. He 
admitted the presence of this unknown in him, and said that he himself 
could not answer for it or foretell what it might lead to." 93 

** The disciple had probably referred to the second Round Table Confer¬ 
ence, which Gandhi attended in London at the end of 1931 and which ended 
in failure. The British government in response unleashed a reign of terror, 
caning and firing on demonstrators, jailing, whipping and torturing tens of 
thousands. It then promulgated its "Communal Award," which further 
hardened the division between Hindus and Muslims, also among the Hindus 
on the basis of caste. 


192 



1934 


August 30, 1932 

[The Mother and myself] do not found ourselves on faith 
alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have 
been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say 
that I have been testing day and night for years upon years 
more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his 
method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed 
by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the 
often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in 
their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer to the field 
of earth and Matter. 94 

* 

* * 

May, 1933 

... But what a floundering confusion the intellect of man 
has brought itself into now-a-days—whether in thought or 
in the field of practical life! An infant crying in the night 
when he is not hitting other infants in the stomach in order 
to bring the golden age. (I am referring to infants like Hitler, 
Mussolini and others.) 95 

* 

* ★ 


August 10, 1933 

(A disciple:) I am disconcerted at what is happening 
in the world. Everywhere misery is rampant, people 
are losing faith in everything and even the intellec¬ 
tuals like Tagore, Russell and Rolland are clamouring 
for an end of the age.... 

Even if all smashed, I would look beyond the smash to the 
new creation. As for what is happening in the world, it does 
not upset me because I knew all along that things would hap¬ 
pen in that fashion, and as for the hopes of the intellectual 


193 



India's Rebirth 


idealists I have not shared them, so I am not disappointed. 96 


* 

* * 


January 14, 1934 

[The aim of the yoga I practise] is to manifest, reach or 
embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to get away 
from earth into a higher world or some supreme Absolute. 
The old yogas (not quite all of them) tended the other way 
—but that was, I think, because they found the earth as it 
is a rather impossible place for any spiritual being and the 
resistance to change too obstinate to be borne.... But the 
fundamental proposition in this matter was proclaimed very 
definitely in the Upanishads which went so far as to say that 
Earth is the foundation* and all the worlds are on the earth 
and to imagine a clean-cut or irreconcilable difference between 
them is ignorance: here and not elsewhere, not by going to 
some other world, the divine realisation must come. 97 


* 


* 


March 24, 1934 

Tagore, of course, belonged to an age which had faith in its 
ideas and whose very denials were creative affirmations.... 
Now all that idealism has been smashed to pieces by the 
immense adverse event and everybody is busy exposing its 
weaknesses—but nobody knows what to put in its place. A 
mixture of scepticism and slogans, "Heil-Hitler” and the 
Fascist salute and the Five-Year-Plan and the beating of 
everybody into one amorphous shape, a disabused denial of 
all ideals on one side and on the other a blind "shut-my-eyes 


* "Earth is his footing" (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.1.1), "in matter he 
has taken his firm foundation" (Mundaka Upanishad, II.2.8). 


194 



1934 


and shut-everybody’s-eyes” plunge into the bog in the hope 
of finding some firm foundation there, will not carry us very 
far. And what else is there? Until new spiritual values are 
discovered, no great enduring creation is possible. 98 

★ 

★ * 


Undated (1934) 

^ As for the Hindu-Muslim affair, I saw no reason why the 
greatness of India's past or her spirituality should be thrown 
into the waste paper basket in order to conciliate the Moslems 
who would not at all be conciliated by such policy. What has 
created the Hindu-Moslem split was not Swadeshi, but the 
acceptance of the communal principle by the Congress^here 
Tilak made his great blunder), and the further attempt by the 
Khilafat movement to conciliate them and bring them in on 
wrong lines. The recognition of that communal principle at 
Lucknow made them permanently a separate political entity 
in India which ought never to have happened; the Khilafat 
affair made that separate political entity an organised separate 
political power. 99 * 

* 

★ * 

October 2, 1934 

I do not care a button about having my name in any blessed 
place. I was never ardent about fame even in my political 
days; I preferred to remain behind the curtain, push people 


* Tilak, released in 1914 from a six-year-long deportation to Burma, launched 
in 1916 the Home Rule agitation and led a few months later the reentry of 
the Nationalists into the Congress at its Lucknow session. The Muslim 
League also met at Lucknow at the same time, and agreed to work with the 
Congress in exchange for the concession of separate electorates and fixed 
numbers of seats for Muslims in the Provincial and Imperial Legislative 
Councils (the so-called "Lucknow Pact"). 


195 




India's Rebirth 


without their knowing it and get things done. It was the con¬ 
founded British Government that spoiled my game by prose¬ 
cuting me and forcing me to be publicly known and a "leader”. 
Then, again, I don’t believe in advertisement except for books 
etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medi¬ 
cines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a 
stunt or a boom—and stunts and booms exhaust the thing 
they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high 
and dry on the shores of nowhere—or it means a movement. 
A movement in the case of a work like mine means the foun¬ 
ding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It 
means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in 
and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from 
which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy 
and silence. It is what has happened to the "religions” and is 
the reason of their failure. If I tolerate a little writing about 
myself, it is only to have a sufficient counter-weight in that 
amorphous chaos, the public mind, to balance the hostility 
that is always aroused by the presence of a new dynamic 
Truth in this world of ignorance. But the utility ends there 
and too much advertisement would defeat that object. I am 
perfectly "rational”, I assure you, in my methods and I do 
not proceed merely on any personal dislike of fame. If and so 
far as publicity serves the Truth, I am quite ready to tolerate 
it; but I do not find publicity for its own sake desirable. 100 


Undated 

It is not by these means [modem humanism and humani- 
tarianism, idealism, etc.] that humanity can get that radical 
change of its ways of life which is yet becoming imperative, 
but only by reaching the bed-rock of Reality behind,—not 
through mere ideas and mental formations, but by a change 
of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But 


196 



1934 


that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing 
in the present noise of all kinds of many-voiced clamour and 
confusion and catastrophe. 

Science has missed something essential; it has seen and 
scrutinised what has happened and in a way how it has 
happened, but it has shut its eyes to something that made this 
impossible possible, something it is there to express. There is 
no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine 
Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of 
manageable and utilisable appearance. It is the magic of the 
Magician you are trying to analyse, but only when you enter 
into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin 
to experience the true origination, significance and circles of 
the Lila. 

Another danger may then arise [once materialism begins to 
give way]—not of a final denial of the Truth, but the repeti¬ 
tion in old or new forms of a past mistake, on one side some 
revival of blind fanatical obscurantist sectarian religionism, 
on the other a stumbling into the pits and quagmires of the 
vitalistic occult and the pseudo-spiritual—mistakes that made 
the whole real strength of the materialistic attack on the past 
and its credos. But these are phantasms that meet us always 
on the border line or in the intervening country between the 
material darkness and the perfect Splendour. In spite of all, 
the victory of the supreme Light even in the darkened earth- 
consciousness stands as the one ultimate certitude. 101 


I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all 
seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by 
the flicker of their torch-lights,—yet perhaps one ought to, 
for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great 
obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new 


197 



India's Rebirth 


psychology looks to me very much like children learning 
some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in 
putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious 
underground super-ego together and imagining that their 
first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the 
very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up 
and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but 
the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari 
budhna esam [ Rig-Veda , 1.24.7]. The superconscient, not the 
subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The signifi¬ 
cance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets 
of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found 
in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in 
the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists 
is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole 
before you can know the part and the highest before you can 
truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater 
psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings 
will disappear and come to nothing. 102 


Wanton waste, careless spoiling of physical things in an 
incredibly short time, loose disorder, misuse of service and 
materials due either to vital grasping or to tamasic inertia 
are baneful to prosperity and tend to drive away or discour¬ 
age the Wealth-Power. These things have long been rampant 
in the society and, if that continues, an increase in our means 
might well mean a proportionate increase in the wastage and 
disorder and neutralise the material advantage. This must be 
remedied if there is to be any sound progress. 

Asceticism for its own sake is not the ideal of this yoga, 
but self-control in the vital and right order in the material 
are a very important part of it—and even an ascetic disci¬ 
pline is better for our purpose than a loose absence of true 
control. Mastery of the material does not mean having plenty 


198 



1934 


and profusely throwing it out or spoiling it as fast as it 
comes or faster. Mastery implies in it the right and careful 
utilisation of things and also a self-control in their use. 103 


There is a consciousness in [things], a life which is not the 
life and consciousness of man and animal which we know, but 
still secret and real. That is why we must have a respect for 
physical things and use them rightly, not misuse and waste, 
ill-treat or handle with a careless roughness. This feeling of all 
being consciousness or alive comes when our own physical 
consciousness—and not the mind only—awakes out of its 
obscurity and becomes aware of the One in all things, the 
Divine everywhere. 104 

★ 

Hr * 

December 25, 1934 

As to whether the Divine seriously means something to 
happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certi¬ 
tude that the supramental is a truth and that its advent is in 
the very nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the 
when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from 
somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a 
rather grim clash of conflicting forces. For in the terrestrial 
world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see 
is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve 
something with the destiny of it all concealed from human 
eyes. This is, however, certain that a number of souls have 
been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My 
faith and will are for the now. 105 


Hr 


Hr * 


199 



India's Rebirth 


January 25, 1935 

I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to 
spirituality and mysticism that it is a phenomenon of 
capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic 
cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of 
man’s history is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the 
fallacy of Karl Marx. Man's nature is not so simple and one- 
chorded as all that—it has many lines and each line produces 
a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them 
and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions 
of all kinds, by ignorant religionism, by spiritism, demonism 
and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual phil¬ 
osophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by 

the union with the All, the Eternal or the Divine_With the 

deeper minds the dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past 
or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions 
of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual 
path is left. It is true that the European mind having little 
light on these things dallies with vital will-o’-the-wisps like 
spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religion¬ 
ism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by 
them or pass through them in search of a greater Light_ 106 

★ 

★ * 

February 10, 1935 

It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring 
down the Supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in 
the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner 
Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth-consciousness; I 
see it above and know what it is—I feel it ever gleaming down 
on my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it 
possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native 
power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in 


200 




1935 


half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth 
opening the way to a development of divine consciousness 
here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. 107 


August 8, 1935 

From the spiritual point of view such temporary phenom¬ 
ena as the turn of the educated Hindus towards materialism 
are of little importance. There have always been periods 
when the mind of nations, continents or cultures turned 
towards materialism and away from all spiritual belief.... 
These waves come because of a certain necessity in human 
development—to destroy the bondage of old forms and leave 
a field for new truth and new forms of truth and action in 
life as well as for what is behind life. 108 

* 

* * 


August 18, 1935 

I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of 
India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a 
book that is closed and the lines of which have to be con¬ 
stantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not 

final though everything may be there in seed_I may say 

that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new 
or old, for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is 
still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception 
of the matter. 109 

★ 

* * 

Undated 

Human reason is a very convenient and accommodating 
instrument and works only in the circle set for it by interest, 


201 



India’s Rebirth 


partiality and prejudice. The politicians reason wrongly or 
insincerely and have power to enforce the results of their 
reasoning so as to make a mess of the world’s affairs: the 
intellectuals reason and show what their minds show them, 
which is far from being always the truth, for it is generally 
decided by intellectual preference and the mind’s inborn 
education-inculcated angle of vision; but even when they see 
it, they have no power to enforce it. So between blind power 
and seeing impotence the world moves, achieving destiny 
through a mental muddle. 110 

* 


War and conquest are part of the economy of vital Nature, it 
is no use blaming this or that people for doing it—everybody 
does it who has the power and the chance. China who now 
complains was herself an imperialist and colonising country 
through all the centuries in which Japan kept religiously 
within her own borders.... If it were not profitable, I suppose 
nobody would do it. England has grown rich on the plundered 
wealth of India. France depends for many things on her African 
colonies. Japan needs an outlet for her over-abundant popu¬ 
lation and safe economic markets nearby. Each is pushed by 
forces that use the minds of rulers and peoples to fulfil them¬ 
selves—unless human nature changes no amount of moralizing 
will prevent it. 111 

* 

* * 

September 10, 1935 

There is no connection between the spiritual truth and 
knowledge in which I live and Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals and 
ways of life. If it were so, then I would have to live like him— 
for surely you do not suppose that my truth and knowledge 
are only in the mind and are not intended to have a practical 
manifestation in life! I have always written that my Yoga is 


202 




1935 


intended for the manifestation of a new principle of life and 
works are an essential part of my Yoga. If that manifestation 
were already there, there would be no need for my bringing 
down into life this new spiritual principle. Mahatma Gandhi's 
life expresses his own ideas of the true truth and the true 
knowledge. These ideas are not mine.* 

The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual. 
Morality is a question of man’s mind and vital, it belongs to 
a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore 
cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a 
spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man 
must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct 
than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual conscious¬ 
ness is higher not lower than the moral,—it is founded on 
union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness 
and its action is founded on obedience to the Divine Will. 112 


September 16, 1935 

(A disciple:) It is rather depressing to hear about the 
atrocities committed by some Mohamedans on Hindu 
families in Bengal. With the coming of Independence 
I hope such things will stop.... In your scheme of 
things do you definitely see a free India?... 

That is all settled. It is a question of working out only. The 
question is what is India going to do with her Independence ? 
The above kind of affair? Bolshevism? Goonda-raj? Things 
look ominous. 113 

* 

* * 


* This first paragraph is published here for the first time. 


203 



India's Rebirth 


October 8, 1935 

If going beyond the experiences of past seers and sages is 
so shocking, each new seer or sage in turn has done that 
shocking thing—Buddha, Shankara, Chaitanya, etc. all did 

that wicked act_Truly, this shocked reverence for the past 

is a wonderful and fearful thing! After all, the Divine is infi¬ 
nite and the unrolling of the Truth may be an infinite process 
or at least, if not quite so much, yet with some room for new 
discovery and new statement, even perhaps new achievement, 
not a thing in a nutshell cracked and its contents exhausted 
once for all by the first seer or sage, while the others must 
religiously crack the same nutshell all over again, each trem¬ 
blingly fearful not to give the lie to the "past” seers and 
sages. 114 


October 17, 1935 

There is nothing noble besides in fanaticism—there is no 
nobility of motive, though there may be a fierce enthusiasm 
of motive. Religious fanaticism is something psychologically 
low-born and ignorant—and usually in its action fierce, cruel 
and base. Religious ardour like that of the martyr who sacri¬ 
fices himself only is a different thing. 115 

★ 


October 19, 1935 

(A disciple sought Sri Aurobindo's comments on the 
following statement of Gandhi in response to a call by 
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar for mass conversions among the 
depressed classes: "But religion is not like a house or 
a cloak which can be changed at will. It is more an 
integral part of one's self than of one's body. Religion 


204 



1936 


is the tie that binds one to one's Creator, and while 
the body perishes as it has to, religion persists 
even after that.") 

If it is meant by the statement that the form of religion is 
something permanent and unchangeable, then it cannot be 
accepted. But if religion here means one’s way of commu¬ 
nion with the Divine, then it is true that that is something 
belonging to the inner being and cannot be changed like a 
house or a cloak for the sake of some personal, social or 
worldly convenience. If a change is to be made, it can only be 
for an inner spiritual reason, because of some development 
from within. No one can be bound to any form of religion or 
any particular creed or system, but if he changes the one he 
has accepted for another, for external reasons, that means he 
has inwardly no religion at all and both his old and his new 
religion are only an empty formula. At bottom that is I sup¬ 
pose what the statement drives at. Preference for a different 
approach to the Truth or the desire of inner spiritual self- 
expression are not the motives of the recommendation of 
change to which objection is made by the Mahatma here; the 
object proposed [by Dr. Ambedkar] is an enhancement of 
social status and consideration which is no more a spiritual 
motive than conversion for the sake of money or marriage. If 
a man has no religion in himself, he can change his credal 
profession for any motive; if he has, he cannot; he can only 
change it in response to an inner spiritual need. If a man has 
a bhakti for the Divine in the form of Krishna, he can’t very 
well say, "I will swap Krishna for Christ so that I may become 
socially respectable.” 116 

* 


May 17, 1936 

There is no necessity to reveal one’s plans and movements 
to those who have no business to know it, who are incapable 


205 




India's Rebirth 


of understanding or who would act as enemies or spoil all as a 
result of their knowledge.... No moral or spiritual law com¬ 
mands us to make ourselves naked to the world or open up our 
hearts and minds for public inspection. Gandhi talked about 
secrecy being a sin but that is one of his many extravagances." 7 

* 

* * 

September 13, 1936 

No doubt, hatred and cursing are not the proper attitude. 
It is true also that to look upon all things and all people with 
a calm and clear vision, to be uninvolved and impartial in 
one’s judgments is a quite proper yogic attitude. A condition 
of perfect samata [equanimity] can be established in which 
one sees all as equal, friends and enemies included, and is 
not disturbed by what men do or by what happens. The ques¬ 
tion is whether this is all that is demanded from us. If so, then 
the general attitude will be of a neutral indifference to every¬ 
thing. But the Gita, which strongly insists on a perfect and 
absolute samata, goes on to say, "Fight, destroy the adver¬ 
sary, conquer.” If there is no kind of general action wanted, 
no loyalty to Truth as against Falsehood except for one’s 
personal sadhana, no will for the Truth to conquer, then the 
samata of indifference will suffice. But here there is a work 
to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense 
forces are arrayed, invisible forces which can use visible 
things and persons and actions for their instruments. If one 
is among the disciples, the seekers of this Truth, one has to 
take sides for the Truth, to stand against the forces that attack 
it and seek to stifle it. Arjuna wanted not to stand for either 
side, to refuse any action of hostility even against assailants; 
Sri Krishna, who insisted so much on samata, strongly rebuked 
his attitude and insisted equally on his fighting the adversary. 
"Have samata,” he said, "and seeing clearly the Truth, fight.” 
Therefore to take sides with the Truth and to refuse to concede 


206 



1936 


anything to the Falsehood that attacks, to be unflinchingly 
loyal and against the hostiles and the attackers, is not incon¬ 
sistent with equality.... It is a spiritual battle inward and 
outward; by neutrality and compromise or even passivity 
one may allow the enemy force to pass and crush down the 
Truth and its children. If you look at it from this point, you 
will see that if the inner spiritual equality is right, the active 
loyalty and firm taking of sides is as right, and the two cannot 
be incompatible. 118 

★ 

* * 

September 19, 1936 

I do not take the same view of the Hindu religion as 
Jawaharlal [Nehru], Religion is always imperfect because it 
is a mixture of man's spirituality with his endeavours that 
come in in trying to sublimate ignorantly his lower nature. 
Hindu religion appears to me as a cathedral-temple, half in 
ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always 
fantastic with a significance—crumbling or badly outworn in 
places, but a cathedral-temple in which service is still done 
to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who 
enter with the right spirit. The outer social structure which 
it built for its approach is another matter. 119 

* 

* * 


December 24, 1936 

The view taken by the Mahatma in these matters is Christian 
rather than Hindu—for the Christian, self-abasement, humility, 
the acceptance of a low status to serve humanity or the Divine 
are things which are highly spiritual and the noblest privilege 
of the soul. This view does not admit any hierarchy of castes; 
the Mahatma accepts castes but on the basis that all are equal 
before the Divine; a Bhangi [scavenger] doing his dharma is 


207 




India's Rebirth 


as good as the Brahmin doing his, there is division of function 
but no hierarchy of functions. That is one view of things and 
the hierarchic view is another, both having a standpoint and 
logic of their own which the mind takes as wholly valid but 
which only corresponds to a part of the reality. All kinds of 
work are equal before the Divine and all men have the same 
Brahman within them is one truth, but that development is 
not equal in all is another. The idea that it needs a special 
punya to be born as a Bhangi is, of course, one of those force¬ 
ful exaggerations of an idea which are common with the 
Mahatma and impress greatly the mind of his hearers. The 
idea behind is that his function is an indispensable service to 
the society, quite as much as the Brahmin’s, but, that being 
disagreeable, it would need a special moral heroism to 
choose it voluntarily and he thinks as if the soul freely chose 
it as such a heroic service and as reward of righteous 
acts—but that is hardly likely. The service of the scavenger is 
indispensable under certain conditions of society, it is one of 
those primary necessities without which society can hardly 
exist and the cultural development of which the Brahmin life 
is part could not have taken place. But obviously the cultural 
development is more valuable than the service of the physi¬ 
cal needs for the progress of humanity as opposed to its first 
static condition, and that development can even lead to the 
minimising and perhaps the entire disappearance by scienti¬ 
fic inventions of the need for the functions of the scavenger. 
But that, I suppose, the Mahatma would not approve of, as it 
would come by machinery and would be a departure from 
the simple life. In any case, it is not true that the Bhangi life 
is superior to the Brahmin life and the reward of a special 
righteousness. On the other hand, the traditional conception 
that a man is superior to others because he is born a 
Brahmin is not rational or justifiable. A spiritual or cultured 
man of pariah birth is superior in the divine values to an 
unspiritual and worldly-minded or a crude and uncultured 
Brahmin. Birth counts, but the basic value is in the man 


208 




1936 


himself, in the soul behind, and the degree to which it 
manifests itself in his nature. 120 

* 

* * 


November 17, 1938 

All this* promises a bad look-out when India gets purna 
Swaraj. Mahatma Gandhi is having bad qualms about Congress 
corruption already. What will it be when puma Satyagraha 
reigns all over India? 121 


* Sri Aurobindo is referring to certain dishonest financial practices. 


209 



V 


1938-1940 


(In the night of November 23-24, 1938, Sri Aurobindo 
fell down while walking in concentration and broke 
his right leg. In the years that followed, a small group 
of disciples, mostly attendants and physicians, met 
him every day. Two of them recorded the informal 
talks that ensued, which often touched on the Indian 
political scene, the rising threat of Nazism, and then 
World War II which Sri Aurobindo followed closely. 

A few excerpts from these talks are presented here.) 



December 23, 1938 


Every time the Light has tried to descend it has met with 

resistance and opposition. Christ was crucified_ Buddha 

was denied; sons of Light come, the earth denies them, rejects 
them, and afterwards accepts them in name to reject them in 
substance. 

* 

* * 


December 25, 1938 

I have no faith in government controls, because I believe in 
a certain amount of freedom—freedom to find out things for 
oneself in one's own way, even freedom to commit blunders. 
Nature leads us through various errors and mistakes; when 
Nature created the human being with all his possibilities for 
good and ill she knew very well what she was about. Free¬ 
dom for experiment in human life is a great thing. Without 
the freedom to take risks and commit mistakes there can be 
no progress.... 

[But] everything is moving towards mechanization in 
Europe. The totalitarian States do not believe in any individ¬ 
ual variation and even non-totalitarian States are obliged to 
follow them; they do it for the sake of efficiency—but whose 
efficiency? It is the efficiency of the State as an organized 
machine, not that of the individual. The individual has no 
freedom, he doesn’t grow. Organize by all means, but there 
must be scope for freedom and plasticity. 

Do you think that the average man of today is better than a 
Greek of 2500 hundred years ago, or than an Indian of those 
times? Look at the condition of Germany today [under Hitler] 
—you can’t say that it is progressing. 

I have come in contact with the Indian masses and found 
them better than the Europeans of the same class. They are 
superior to the European working classes. The latter may be 


213 



India’s Rebirth 


more efficient, but that is due to external reasons.... The 
Irish doctor who was in our jail [at Alipore] could not think 
how the young men who were so gentle and attractive could 
be revolutionaries. I found even the ordinary criminal quite 
human and better than his counterpart in Europe. 

It is curious how a thing gets spoiled when it gets recogni¬ 
tion. Democracy was something better when it was not called 
democracy. When the name is given the truth of it seems to 
go out.... 

(A disciple:) Communism began with a high ideal and 
it is certainly better than Fascism or Nazism. 

In which way better? Formerly people were unconscious 
slaves, now under Communism they are conscious slaves.... 
They are bound to the State, the dictator and the party. They 
can’t even choose the dictator. And whoever differs from them 

is mercilessly suppressed_The whole thing—whatever its 

name—is a fraud. It is impossible to change humanity by 
political machinery—it can’t be done. 

★ 

* He 

December 27, 1938 

The old Indian system grew out of life, it had room for 
everything and every interest. There were monarchy, aris¬ 
tocracy, democracy; every interest was represented in the 
government. While in Europe the Western system grew out 
of the mind: they are led by reason and want to make every¬ 
thing cut and dried without any chance of freedom or varia¬ 
tion. If it is democracy, then democracy only—no room for 
anything else. They cannot be plastic. 

India is now trying to imitate the West. Parliamentary 
government is not suited to India. But we always take up 


214 



1938 


what the West has thrown off.... 

(A disciple:) What is your idea of an ideal government 
for India? 

My idea is like what Tagore once wrote. There may be one 
Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to 
secure a continuity of policy, and an assembly representative 
of the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation 
united at the top, leaving ample scope to local bodies to 
make laws according to their local problems. 

The Congress at the present stage—what is it but a Fascist 
organization? Gandhi is the dictator like Stalin, I won’t say 
like Hitler: what Gandhi says they accept and even the Work¬ 
ing Committee follows him; then it goes to the All-India 
Congress Commitee which adopts it, and then the Congress. 
There is no opportunity for any difference of opinion, except 
for Socialists who are allowed to differ provided they don’t 
seriously differ. Whatever resolutions they pass are obliga¬ 
tory on all the provinces whether the resolutions suit the 
provinces or not; there is no room for any other independent 
opinion. Everything is fixed up before and the people are only 
allowed to talk over it—like Stalin’s Parliament. When we 
started the [Nationalist] movement we began with the idea 
of throwing out the Congress oligarchy and open the whole 
organization to the general mass. 

Srinivas Iyengar retired from Congress because of his 
differences with Gandhi.... 

He made Charkha a religious article of faith and excluded 
all people from Congress membership who could not spin. 
How many even among his own followers believe in his 
gospel of Charkha? Such a tremendous waste of energy just 
for the sake of a few annas is most unreasonable. 


215 



India’s Rebirth 


Give [people] education, technical training and give them 
the fundamental organic principles of organization, not on 
political but on business lines. But Gandhi does not want 
such industrial organization, he is for going back to the old 
system of civilization, and so he comes in with his magical 
formula "Spin, spin, spin.” C. R. Das and a few others could 
act as a counterbalance. It is all a fetish. 

* 

* * 


December 30, 1938 

The Japanese have a wonderful power of self-control. They 
don’t lose their temper or quarrel with you, but if their honour 

is violated they may kill you. They can be bitter enemies_ 

The Japanese also have a high sense of chivalry_But these 

things perhaps belong to the past. It is a great pity that people 
who have carried such ideals into practice are losing them 
through contact with European civilization. That is a great 
harm that European vulgarizing has done to Japan. Now you 
find most people mercantile in their outlook and they will do 
anything for the sake of money. 

(A disciple:) Has European civilization nothing good 
in it? 

It has lowered the moral tone of humanity.... The ancients 
tried to keep to their ideals and made an effort to raise them 
higher, while Europe lost all her ideals after the [first World] 

War. People have become cynical, selfish, etc_I suppose it 

is all due to commercialism. 


216 




1939 


January 6, 1939 

Are not all governments robbers? Some do the robbing 
with legislation, some without. 

* 

* * 


January 8, 1939 

(A disciple:) Gandhi writes that non-violence tried by 
some people in Germany has failed because it has not 
been so strong as to generate sufficient heat to melt 
Hitler's heart. 

I am afraid it would require quite a furnace!... The trouble 
with Gandhi is that he had to deal only with Englishmen, and 
the English want to have their conscience at ease. Besides, the 
Englishman wants to satisfy his self-esteem and wants world- 
esteem. But if Gandhi had had to deal with the Russians or 
the German Nazis, they would have long ago put him out of 
their way. 

* 

* * 


January 15, 1939 

It is easy to see that the process of evolution is universal 
and human evolution cannot be bound down to a set of philo¬ 
sophical ideas or rules of practice. No epoch, no individual, 
no group has the monopoly of truth. It is the same with 
religion—Christian, Mohammedan, etc. 

The Greeks had the sense of beauty; their life was beautiful. 
The one thing that modern Europe has not taken from the 
Greeks is beauty. You can’t say modem Europe is beautiful 
—in fact, it is ugly. 

What can be said of ancient Greece can be said also of 
ancient India. She had beauty, much of which she has since 


217 



India's Rebirth 


lost. The Japanese are the only race that can be said to have 
preserved beauty in their life. But now even they are fast 
losing it under European influence. 

The setback to the human mind in Europe is amazing.... We 
had thought during the last years of the nineteenth century that 
the human mind had attained a certain level of intelligence and 
that it would have to be satisfied before any new idea could 
find acceptance. But it seems one can't rely on common sense 
to stand the strain. We find Nazi ideas being accepted; fifty 
years back it would have been impossible to predict their 
acceptance. Then, again, the ease with which the best intellec¬ 
tuals accept psychoanalysis and Freud’s ideas is surprising. 

Throughout the course of history a small minority has been 
carrying the torch to save humanity in spite of itself. 

* 

* * 

January 16, 1939 

(A disciple:) Nana Saheb Sinde of Baroda has spoken 
to a youth conference emphasizing the need of military 
training for the defence of the country. His speech was 
against the current vogue of non-violence. 

It is good that someone raises his voice like that when efforts 
are being made to make non-violence the method of solving 

all problems_ This non-violent resistance I have never 

been able to fathom.... To change the opponent's heart by 
passive resistance is something I don’t understand- 

I am afraid Gandhi has been trying to apply to ordinary life 
what belongs to spirituality. Non-violence or ahimsa as a spir¬ 
itual attitude and its practice is perfectly understandable 
and has a standing of its own. You may not accept it in toto 
but it has a basis in reality. You can live it in spiritual life, 
but to apply it to all life is absurd.... It is a principle which 


218 



1939 


can be applied with success if practised on a mass scale, 
specially by unarmed people like the Indians, because you 
are left with no other choice. But even when it succeeds it is 
not that you have changed the heart of the enemy, but that 
you have made it impossible for him to rule.... 

What a tremendous generalizer Gandhi is! Passive resis¬ 
tance, charkha and celibacy for all! One can’t be a member 
of the Congress without oneself spinning! 

* 

* * 


January 18, 1939 

There is a spiritual solution which I propose; but it aims 
at changing the whole basis of human nature. It is not a 
question of carrying on a movement, nor is it a question of a 
few years: there can be no real solution unless you establish 
spirituality as the basis of life. 

It is clear that Mind has not been able to change human 
nature radically. You can go on changing human institutions 
infinitely and yet the imperfection will break through all 
your institutions. 

★ 

* * 

January 21, 1939 

She [Nivedita] took up politics as a part of Vivekananda’s 
work.... Vivekananda himself had ideas about political work 

and spells of revolutionary fervour_ It is curious how 

many Sannyasins at that time thought of India’s freedom.* 

* 

* * 


* It is noteworthy that one of the very first attempts to overthrow British 
rule was made in eastern India in the last decades of the eighteenth century 
by organized groups of Sannyasins. 


219 



India’s Rebirth 


January 24, 1939 

(A disciple:) There are so many difficulties [in finding 
out the cause of poverty], political, economic, etc. 

I don’t think it is so insoluble a problem as all that. If you 
give the people education—by education I mean proper 
education, not the modem type—then the problem can be 
solved. People in England or France don’t have the kind of 
poverty we have in India. That is because of their education 
—they are not so helpless. 

Modem artists are putting an end to art. Vulgarization 
everywhere!... When this craze for utility comes, beauty 
goes to the dogs. This is the modern tendency. 


January 26, 1939 

(A disciple:) [In India] the forests are being depleted 
of animals. 

The forests have to be preserved and also the wildlife. 
China destroyed all her forests and the result is that there is 
flood every year. 

In Socialism you have the State which intervenes at every 
step with its officials who rob money.... It is the State 
bureaucracy that dictates the policy irrespective of the good 
of the commune. In Communism they hold the land as the 
common property of the whole unit, and each one is entitled 
to labour and to have his share from the produce. 

In India we had a kind of communism in the villages. The 
whole village was like a big family and the lowest had his right 
as a member of the family. The washerman, the carpenter, the 


220 



1939 


blacksmith, the barber, all got what they needed. That is the 
only communism that is practicable. Each such commune 
can be independent and many such units can be scattered all 
over the country and they can combine or coordinate their 
activities for a common purpose. 

* 

* * 


January 29, 1939 

You know what [C. R.] Das said about criminals? He said, 
"In my whole legal career I have not met worse types of 
criminals than in politics." 

It is better not to destroy the capitalist class as the Social¬ 
ists want to: they are the source of national wealth. They 
should be encouraged to spend for the nation. Taxing is all 
right, but you must increase production, start new industries, 
and also raise the standard of living; without that if you 
increase the taxes there will be a state of depression. 

* 

* * 


February 2, 1939 

Nowadays people want the modem type of democracy—the 
parliamentary form of government. The parliamentary system 
is doomed. It has brought Europe to its present sorry pass_ 

[In India] one should begin with the old Panchayat system 
in the villages and then work up to the top. The Panchayat 
system and the guilds are more representative and they have 
a living contact with people; they are part of the people’s 
ideas. On the contrary, the parliamentary system with local 
bodies—the municipal councils—is not workable: these coun¬ 
cils have no living contact with the people; the councillors 
make only platform speeches and nobody knows what they 


221 



India's Rebirth 


do for three or four years; at the end they reshuffle and rear¬ 
range the whole thing, making their own pile during their 
period of power. 

* 


November 28, 1939 

(A disciple:) X was lamenting over the plight of Bengali 
Hindus. He says there is a cultural conquest taking 
place. 

How? Hindus are becoming Muslims? 

No, not religious conquest but cultural, Hindu culture 
being replaced by Muslim. At schools and colleges, 
books on Muslim culture are being forced on the 
students. 

Why don’t the Hindus react? 

(Another disciple:) Instead of lamenting they should 
also organize something. 

Quite so. 

* 

* * 


December 30, 1939 

(A disciple:) There are some people who object to 
"Vande Mataram" as a national song. And some Con¬ 
gressmen support the removal of some parts of the 
song. 

In that case the Hindus should give up their culture. 


222 


The argument is that the song speaks of Hindu gods, 
like Durga, and that is offensive to the Muslims. 




1940 


But it is not a religious song: it is a national song and the 
Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the 
Muslims accept it ? It is an image used in poetry. In the Indian 
conception of nationality, the Hindu view would naturally be 
there. If it cannot find a place there, the Hindus may as well 
be asked to give up their culture. The Hindus don’t object to 
"Allah-ho-Akbar"_ 

Why should not the Hindu worship his god? Otherwise, the 
Hindus must either accept Mohammedanism or the European 
culture or become atheists.... 

I told C. R. Das [in 1923] that this Hindu-Muslim question 
must be solved before the Britishers go, otherwise there was a 
danger of civil war. He also agreed and wanted to solve it_ 

Instead of doing what was necessary the Congress is trying 
to flirt with Jinnah, and Jinnah simply thinks that he has to 
obstinately stick to his terms to get them. The more they try, 
the more Jinnah becomes intransigent. 

* 

* * 


January 3, 1940 

(A disciple:) X who is an I.C.S. is said to be brilliant. 

Then why did he go in for the I.C.S. to waste himself?... In 
that official routine work all the brilliant qualities are lost. 
There is no scope for them. 


February 5, 1940 


* 


* * 


(A disciple:) Dominion status Subhas Bose calls a 
compromise; he wants independence. 

It is a compromise on the surface, but it is practically inde¬ 
pendence; you get all you want without any unnecessary 


223 



India’s Rebirth 


struggle. When you can secede at your will from the British 
connection, it is practically independence.* Independence is 
all right if you are prepared for a revolution, but is the country 
ready for it ? 

* 

* * 


April 2, 1940 

(Smiling) Have you seen the report of the All India 
Sweepers’ Conference at Lahore under Sardul Singh’s presi¬ 
dentship? They have protested against Jinnah’s Muslim India 
scheme and said that if India was going to be divided they 
must also have a separate India. I was not quite wrong when 
I said that barbers also would now start an agitation for an 
India of their own !... 

* 

* * 

May 5, 1940 

Now they [the Muslim League] say that they are the sole 
representatives of the Muslims, and the Government strongly 
supports them. The Congress is also half-hearted against [the 
scheme of] Pakistan.... 

The Congress and other people are shouting old slogans in 
changed conditions. At one time the Independence cry was 
all right, but now Dominion status is almost equivalent to 
that and in time you can be virtually independent. Besides, it 
is the best chance under the present conditions in opposition 
to charkha and non-violence_ 

(A disciple:) If Hitler invades India, Gandhi will 
declare we are all non-violent. 

Hitler will be delighted at it. 

* In 1942, Sri Aurobindo publicly supported the Cripps proposal to grant 
India Dominion status (see page 237). 


224 



1940 


Yes, he will sweep off everybody with machine guns. 

Gandhi believes he can be converted. 

It is a beautiful idea, but not credible. Does anybody really 
believe in his non-violence?... Will he face an army with his 
charkha ? 

* 

* * 

May 17, 1940 

It seems it is not five or six of our people [the Ashram’s 
disciples] but more than half that are in sympathy with 
Hitler and want him to win.* 

(A disciple, laughing:) Half? 

No, it is not a matter to laugh at. It is a very serious matter. 
... If these people want that the Ashram should be dissolved, 
they can come and tell me and I will dissolve it instead of the 
police doing it. They have no idea about the world and talk 
like children. Hitlerism is the greatest menace that the world 
has ever met—if Hitler wins, do they think India has any 
chance of being free ? It is a well-known fact that Hitler has 
an eye on India. He is openly talking of world-empire_ 

I hear K. [a disciple] says that Russia can come now and 
conquer India. It is this kind of slave mentality that keeps India 
in bondage. He pretends to spirituality; doesn’t he know that 
the first thing that Stalin will do is to wipe out spirituality 
from India ?... 

* 


* A sympathy shared by many in India at the time, which stemmed from a 
justified anti-British feeling but veiled the reality of what was at stake. 


225 




India's Rebirth 


May 18, 1940 

(A disciple:) D. was being jeered at [by other "disci¬ 
ples”] for being pro-Ally. When he said he was sad at 
Holland's defeat, they remarked, "You are pro-Ally?" 

They are glad that Holland was occupied? Very strange, 
and yet they want freedom for India! That is one thing I can’t 
swallow. How can they have sympathy with Hitler who is 
destroying other nations, taking away their liberty? It is not 
only pro-Ally sympathy but sympathy for humanity that they 
are jeering at. 


May 21, 1940 

(A disciple:) Gandhi writes in the Harijan that there is 
not much to choose betwen Imperialism and Fascism. 

He finds very little difference. 

There is a big difference. Under Fascism he wouldn’t be 
able to write such things or say anything against the State. 
He would be shot. 

And he still believes that by non-violence we can 
defend our country. 

Non-violence can’t defend. One can only die by it. 

He believes that by such a death a change of heart can 
take place in the enemy. 

If it does, it will be after two or three centuries. 


* 

* * 


226 



1940 


May 28, 1940 

Have you read what Gandhi has said in answer to a corres¬ 
pondent? He says that if eight crores of Muslims demand a 
separate State, what else are the twenty-five crores of Hindus 
to do but surrender? Otherwise there will be civil war. 

(A disciple:) I hope that is not the type of conciliation 

he is thinking of. 

Not thinking of it, you say? He has actually said that and 
almost yielded. If you yield to the opposite party beforehand, 
naturally they will stick strongly to their claims. It means 
that the minority will rule and the majority must submit. 
The minority is allowed its say, "We shall be the ruler and 
you our servants. Our harf [word] will be law; you will have 
to obey.” This shows a peculiar mind. I think this kind of 
people are a little cracked. 

* 

★ * 

June 17, 1940 

(The German troops entered Paris a few days earlier; 
on the 17 th Petain proposed an armistice.) 

(A disciple:) / think everybody realizes the danger if 

Hitler occupies France. 

Does India realize it? Everybody seems to be busy with his 
own interest and none considers anything in the light of the 
world situation. The Congress Committee is now in session; 
will it realize the danger? 

(Another disciple:) I think it will. 


227 



India’s Rebirth 


Let us hope so. Nehru seems to shut his eyes and calls all 
these fears a bogey of foreign invasion. 

* 

★ * 

June 18, 1940 

(A disciple:) Some people in India defend France's 
peace offer .* They say, "What can the French do? 
Their army was being annihilated ...." 

That is the typical Indian mentality. That is why India is 
under subjection. Just because an army has been defeated, 
must it surrender? Then, will a subject nation always be a 
subject nation ? Won’t it fight for freedom ?... The greatness 
lies in not giving up the struggle and refusing to accept the 
defeat as final. 

* 

* * 

June 21, 1940 

In Kashmir, the Hindus had all the monopoly. Now if the 
Muslim demands are acceded to, the Hindus will be wiped 
out. 

* 

* * 

June 25, 1940 

The greatest preoccupation of modern man seems to be to 
find out means of destruction as well as means of escaping 
destruction.... 

(A disciple:) Have you read what Jawaharlal says? 

Yes, that he doesn’t think there is the slightest likelihood 
* Not a "peace offer” but Petain’s capitulation to Hitler. 


228 




1940 


of a major invasion of India. Only a minor invasion from 
Afghanistan and such places perhaps ?... 

If Nehru says like that, how can we blame [others]? 
Nehru who is supposed to have international politics 
at his fingertips! 

All the knowledge most Indian politicians have of the inter¬ 
national situation is some illusions about extreme political 
ideas, which have been shattered everywhere. 

* 

★ * 

July 4, 1940 

(A disciple:) Gandhi has offered his help through the 
Viceroy to the British government and asked the British 
to lay down their arms and practise non-violence. 

He must be a little cracked. 

While asking them to lay down their arms, he wants 
them to keep up their spirit. 

And be subjected in practice! * 

* 


* This refers to an open letter which Gandhi addressed to the British a few 
days earlier: "I appeal for cessation of hostilities ... because war is bad in 
essence. You want to kill Nazism. Your soldiers are doing the same work of 
destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours are not 
as thorough as the Germans.... I venture to present you with a nobler and a 
braver way, worthy of the bravest soldiers. I want you to fight Nazism 
without arms or ... with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the 
arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity.... Invite Herr 
Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call 
your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your 
many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but not your souls nor your 
minds....” (Amrita Bazar Patrika, July 4, 1940, "Method of Non-violence 
—Mahatma Gandhi's appeal to every Briton.”) 


229 




India's Rebirth 


July 7, 1940 

With [Subhas] Bose on one side and Gandhi on the other, 
future unity will be difficult. If Hindus and Muslims had 
now made a united demand the Government would have had 
to submit.* 

* 

* * 


October 7, 1940 

(A disciple:) It is because of the British divide-and- 
rule policy that we can't unite. 

Nonsense! Was there unity in India before the British 
rule? 

But now since our national consciousness is more 
developed there is more chance of unity if the British 
don’t bolster up Jinnah and his Muslim claims. 

Does Jinnah want unity? ... What he wants is independence 
for Muslims and if possible rule over India. That is the old 
spirit.... But why is it expected that Muslims will be so 
accommodating? Everywhere minorities are claiming their 
rights. Of course, there may be some Muslims who are differ¬ 
ent, more nationalistic in outlook: even [Maulana] Azad has 
his own terms, only he sees Indian unity first and will settle 
those terms afterwards. 

* 

* * 

October 12, 1940 

(A disciple:) But how long can Hitler keep these races 


* To submit to granting independence to a united India, as Britain needed 
India's cooperation during the War. 


230 



1940 


[in the countries he invaded] in subjection? They will 
rise in revolt one day. 

What about Poland and Czechoslovakia? They are two of 
the most heroic nations in the world and yet what can they 
do?... 

The trouble about India is that the British govern¬ 
ment has not kept a single promise so far. So nobody 
trusts it. 

The fact is that the British don't trust India to help them if 
she is given Dominion status. Otherwise they would have 
given it. 

7 don't think India will refuse to help if we get some¬ 
thing. 

You think so? I am not sure. What do you think of the left¬ 
wingers, Communists, Subhas Bose, for instance? And it is 
not true that they [the British] have given nothing.... They 
gave provincial autonomy and didn’t exercise any veto power. 
It is the Congress that spoiled everything by resigning.* ** If 
without resigning they had put pressure at the Centre they 
would have got by now what they want. It is for two reasons 
I support the British in this war: first in India's own interest 
and secondly for humanity’s sake, and the reasons I have 
given are external reasons, there are spiritual reasons too.* * 

* 

* * 


* By resigning from all the provincial ministries in Oclober-November, 
1939, as the Congress declared itself unable to lend support to Britain in the 
war. 

** A few days earlier, Sri Aurobindo issued a public declaration in support 
of the Allies (see page 236). 


231 



VI 


1940-1950 


(This section consists of excerpts from 
writings, letters, and messages.) 



Early 1940 


At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in 
which is concealed a choice of its destiny.... Man has 
created a system of civilisation which has become too big for 
his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still 
more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and 
manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and 
its appetites.... 

Because the burden which is being laid on mankind is too 
great for the present littleness of the human personality and 
its petty mind and small life-instincts, because it cannot 
operate the needed change, because it is using this new appa¬ 
ratus and organisation to serve the old infraspiritual and 
infrarational life-self of humanity, the destiny of the race 
seems to be heading dangerously, as if impatiently and in 
spite of itself, under the drive of the vital ego seized by colos¬ 
sal forces which are on the same scale as the huge mechanical 
organisation of life and scientific knowledge which it has 
evolved, a scale too large for its reason and will to handle, 
into a prolonged confusion and perilous crisis and darkness 
of violent shifting incertitude. Even if this turns out to be 
a passing phase or appearance and a tolerable structural 
accommodation is found which will enable mankind to 
proceed less catastrophically on its uncertain journey, this 
can only be a respite. For the problem is fundamental and in 
putting it evolutionary Nature in man is confronting herself 
with a critical choice which must one day be solved in the 
true sense if the race is to arrive or even to survive . 122 



India’s Rebirth 


July 4, 1940 

(In this letter, Sri Aurobindo is referring 
in particular to the Allies.) 

If the nations or the governments who are blindly the 
instruments of the divine forces were perfectly pure and 
divine in their processes and forms of action as well as in the 
inspiration they receive so ignorantly they would be invin¬ 
cible, because the divine forces themselves are invincible. It 
is the mixture in the outward expression that gives to the 
Asura the right to defeat them . 123 

* 

•k k 

September 19, 1940 

(A message to the Governor of Madras, accompanied 
by a.contribution. This declaration was Sri Aurobindo’s 
first public intervention since he withdrew in 1910.) 

We feel that not only is this a battle waged in just self- 
defence and in defence of the nations threatened with the 
world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, 
but that it is a defence of civilisation and its highest attained 
social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future 
of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be 
unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the 
victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace 
and union among the nations and a better and more secure 
world-order . 124 


■k 


* * 


236 



1942 


March 31, 1942 

(The British govemement, partly realizing the inevi¬ 
tability of India’s future independence and partly under 
American pressure to secure her support during the 
war, sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India in March, 1942, 
with a proposal for dominion status after the war, as 
a first step towards full independence. Sri Aurobindo 
sent Cripps the following message.) 

As one who has been a nationalist leader and worker for 
India’s independence, though now my activity is no longer in 
the political but in the spiritual field, I wish to express my 
appreciation of all you have done to bring about this offer. I 
welcome it as an opportunity given to India to determine for 
herself, and organise in all liberty of choice, her freedom and 
unity, and take an effective place among the world’s free 
nations. I hope that it will be accepted, and right use made 
of it, putting aside all discords and divisions.... I offer my 
public adhesion, in case it can be of any help in your work. 125 * 


* The next day, on April 1, Cripps replied with the following telegram: "I 
am most touched and gratified by your kind message allowing me to inform 
India that you who occupy unique position in imagination of Indian youth, 
are convinced that declaration of His Majesty’s Government substantially 
confers that freedom for which Indian Nationalism has so long struggled.” 

Sri Aurobindo in addition sent a personal messenger to the Congress to 
urge them to accept Cripps' proposal; he also sent a telegram to C. Raja- 
gopalachari, in which he said: "... Appeal to you to save India. Formidable 
danger new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination." (Japan 
was then threatening to invade Burma and India; a few days earlier, it had 
also become known that Subhas Bose was in Germany and, confident of 
Germany’s victory, was trying to organize with its help an anti-British front.) 

Sri Aurobindo’s advice was ignored: "He has retired from political life, 
why does he interfere!” said Gandhi to Duraiswamy Iyer, Sri Aurobindo’s 


237 



India's Rebirth 


August 7, 1943 


(From a talk.) 

It was after Dunkirk that I openly came out with my decla¬ 
ration and gave the contribution openly. If I had believed in 
appearances I should not have. It is in spite of opposite 
appearances that you have to act on faith.... If you depend 
upon reason then you can’t know what is Truth_ 

Our people cannot understand why one who has the Divine 
consciousness or Brahmic consciousness should take sides in 
a fight. That is all right if you want to remain in the static 
Brahman; then you can look upon the whole thing as Maya 
and it may not exist for you. 

But I believe in Brahman siding against Brahman—that 
the Brahman, I think, has always been doing.... Krishna 
took sides openly in the Mahabharata and Rama also. 

* 

•k * 

September 3, 1943 

(From a letter to a disciple.) 

We [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] made it plain in a letter 
which has been made public that we did not consider the war 
as a fight between nations and governments (still less between 
good people and bad people) but between two forces, the 
Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side 
men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on 


messenger. Although Nehru and Rajagopalachari favoured acceptance of 
Cripps' offer, Gandhi found it unacceptable "because of his opposition 
to war." Maulana Azad, President of the Congress, also opposed it, and the 
Congress finally turned it down. Had Cripps' proposal been accepted, the 
Partition and the blood bath that followed might have been averted, as also 
the three Indo-Pakistan wars. 


238 



1943 


the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of 
the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong 
movements and actions which are common to human nature 
and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) 
would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the 
victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade 
it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual 
failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and 
perished. That is the whole question and all other considera¬ 
tions are either irrelevant or of a minor importance. The Allies 
at least have stood for human values, though they may often 
act against their own best ideals (human beings always do 
that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values 
exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical 
(e.g. the virtues of the Herrenvolk, the master race). That 
does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless 
angels nor the Germans a wicked and sinful race, but as an 
indicator it has a primary importance. 

Even if I knew that the Allies would misuse their victory or 
bungle the peace or partially at least spoil the opportunities 
opened to the human world by that victory, I would still put 
my force behind them. At any rate things could not be one- 
hundredth part as bad as they would be under Hitler. The 
ways of the Lord would still be open—to keep them open is 
what matters. Let us stick to the real, the central fact, the 
need to remove the peril of black servitude and revived 
barbarism threatening India and the world.... 

P.S. Ours is a Sadhana which involves not only devotion or 
union with the Divine or a perception of Him in all things 
and beings but also action as workers and instruments and a 
work to be done in the world or a force to be brought in the 
world under difficult conditions; then one has to see one’s 
way and do what is commanded and support what has to be 
supported, even if it means war and strife carried on whether 


239 



India's Rebirth 


through chariots and bows and arrows or tanks and cars and 
American bombs and planes, in either case ghoram karma [a 
dreadful work, Gita, 3.1]_As for violence etc. the old com¬ 

mand rings out for us once again after many ages: "Mayaivaite 
nihatah purvameva nimittamatram bhava Savyasacin" [By 
me and none other already they are slain, become only the 
occasion, O Arjuna, Gita, 11.33]. 126 

* 

* * 

Mid- 1940s 

(From a letter.) 

I do not regard business as something evil or tainted, any 
more than it is so regarded in ancient spiritual India.... All 
depends on the spirit in which a thing is done, the principles 
on which it is built and the use to which it is turned. I have 
done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary 
politics, ghoram karma, and I have supported war and sent 
men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very 
clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of 
action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the 
most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do 
every kind of human work, sarvakarmani. Do you contend 
that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to 
Arjuna was mistaken or wrong in principle ? 

I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to 
spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of 
spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and 
surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in 
the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work 
demanded from us by the Divine.... The Indian scriptures 
and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make 
room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and 
for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is 


240 



1946 


the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works 
of all kinds, sarvakarmani, is un-Indian, European or western 
and unspiritual. 127 

* 

★ * 

September, 1945 

(From a letter.) 

About the present human civilisation. It is not this which 
has to be saved; it is the world that has to be saved and that 
will surely be done, though it may not be so easily or so soon 
as some wish or imagine, or in the way that they imagine. 
The present must surely change, but whether by a destruc¬ 
tion or a new construction on the basis of a greater Truth, is 
the issue. The Mother has left the question hanging and I can 
only do the same. 128 

* 

★ ★ 

October 19, 1946 

(From a letter to a disciple who expressed anguish at 
the widespread horrors perpetrated on Hindus by 
Muslims in Bengal, notably in Noakhali and Tippera 
districts, now in Bangladesh; this organized violence 
—which the British government did nothing to stop — 
was part of Jinnah's plan of "Direct Action" which 
was intended to demonstrate the impossibility for 
Hindus and Muslims to live together, and therefore 
the inevitability of Pakistan.) 

As regards Bengal, things are certainly very bad; the condi¬ 
tions of the Hindus there are terrible and they may even get 
worse in spite of the Interim mariage de convenance at Delhi.* 


* A reference to the Interim Government worked out between the British 
and the Congress, which the Muslim League had just agreed to join. 


241 




India’s Rebirth 


But we must not let our reaction to it become excessive or 
suggest despair. There must be at least twenty million Hindus 
in Bengal and they are not going to be exterminated,—even 
Hitler with his scientific methods of massacre could not 
exterminate the Jews who are still showing themselves very 
much alive and as for Hindu culture, it is not such a weak 
and fluffy thing as to be easily stamped out; it has lasted 
through something like five millenniums at least and is going 
to carry on much longer and has accumulated quite enough 
power to survive. What is happening did not come to me as a 
surprise. I foresaw it when I was in Bengal and warned peo¬ 
ple that it was probable and almost inevitable and that they 
should be prepared for it. At that time no one attached any 
value to what I said although some afterwards remembered 
and admitted, when the trouble first began, that I have been 
right; only C. R. Das had grave apprehensions and he even 
told me when he came to Pondicherry that he would not like 
the British to go out until this dangerous problem had been 
settled. But I have not been discouraged by what is happen¬ 
ing, because I know and have experienced hundreds of times 
that beyond the blackest darkness there lies for one who is a 
divine instrument the light of God’s victory. I have never had 
a strong and persistent will for anything to happen in the 
world—I am not speaking of personal things—which did not 
eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster. 
There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and 
it seemed certain that a black yoke of the Asura would be 
imposed on the whole world; but where is Hitler now and 
where is his rule? Berlin and Nuremberg have marked the 
end of that dreadful chapter in human history. Other black¬ 
nesses threaten to overshadow or even engulf mankind, but 
they too will end as that nightmare has ended. 129 



1946 


December 2, 1946 


(From a letter.) 

Mother India is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a 
Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi supporting their 
separate existence and keeping it in being. Such Beings are as 
real and more permanently real than the men they influence 
but they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic con¬ 
sciousness and being and act here on earth by shaping the 
human consciousness on which they exercise their influence. 
It is natural for man who sees only his own consciousness 
individual, national or racial at work and does not see what 
works upon it and shapes it, to think that all is created by 
him and there is nothing cosmic and greater behind it. 130 

★ 

* * 

December 22, 1946 

(A remark to a disciple 
on India's political scene.) 

Out of all of them, Patel* is the only strong man. 131 

* 

* * 


* Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875-1950), who as India's Home Minister after 
Independence showed great firmness in negotiating the integration of the 
princely states, Kashmir's accession to India, and the merger of the 
Hyderabad state. 


243 




India’s Rebirth 


April 9, 1947 

(From a letter.) 

The difficulties [you feel] are general in the Ashram as well 
as in the outside world. Doubt, discouragement, diminution 
or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, 
perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the 
common features of the difficulty. In the world outside there 
are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of 
cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of 
honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, 
money, comfort, pleasure to the exclusion of higher things 
and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting 
the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenome¬ 
non for which those who know anything about the workings of 
the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were pre¬ 
pared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the dark¬ 
ness of night before dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I 
know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and 
feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine 
have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, 
the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light 
will come. 132 

* 

* * 

August 15, 1947 

(A passage from Sri Aurobindo's message on the 
occasion of India’s independence. August 15 is also 
Sri Aurobindo's own birthday.) 

India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured 
and broken freedom.... The old communal division into 
Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a 
permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped 
that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled 


244 



1947 


fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary 
expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, 
even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possi¬ 
ble even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition 
of the country must go,—it is to be hoped by a slackening of 
tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace 
and concord, by the constant necessity of common and 
concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that 
purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever 
form—the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a funda¬ 
mental importance. But by whatever means, the division 
must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be 
seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not 
be. 133 * 

* 

* * 


1947 (?) 

(From notes to biographers.) 

The idea of two nationalities in India is only a newly-fangled 
notion invented by Jinnah for his purposes and contrary to 
the facts. More than 90% of the Indian Mussalmans are 
descendants of converted Hindus and belong as much to the 
Indian nation as the Hindus themselves. This process of con¬ 
version has continued all along; Jinnah is himself a descendant 
of a Hindu, converted in fairly recent times, named Jinahbhai 
and many of the most famous Mohammedan leaders have a 
similar origin. 134 


* Newly created Pakistan invaded Kashmir two months later. The Indian 
army was able to repulse the attack and was about to drive Pakistani forces 
out of Kashmir when Nehru called a halt to the fighting and brought the 
"dispute’' before the United Nations—with the result that Kashmir is still 
today divided and its Pakistan-occupied part a continual source of terrorism 
flowing into India, as part of the preparation for what Pakistani leaders 
have called "the need for a second partition of India." 


245 




India’s Rebirth 


History very seldom records the things that were decisive 
but took place behind the veil; it records the show in front of 
the curtain.... My action in giving the movement in Bengal 
[at the beginning of the century] its militant turn or founding 
the revolutionary movement is very little known. 135 


In some quarters there is the idea that Sri Aurobindo’s polit¬ 
ical standpoint was entirely pacifist, that he was opposed in 
principle and in practice to all violence and that he denounced 
terrorism, insurrection, etc., as entirely forbidden by the 
spirit and letter of the Hindu religion. It is even suggested 
that he was a forerunner of the gospel of Ahimsa. This is quite 
incorrect. Sri Aurobindo is neither an impotent moralist nor a 
weak pacifist. 

The rule of confining political action to passive resistance 
was adopted as the best policy for the National Movement at 
that stage [in 1905 and after] and not as a part of a gospel of 
Non-violence or pacifist idealism. Peace is a part of the 
highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least 
psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature 
it cannot come with any finality. If it is attempted on any 
other basis (moral principle or gospel of Ahimsa or any 
other), it will fail and even may leave things worse than 
before. 

Sri Aurobindo’s position and practice in this matter was 
the same as Tilak’s and that of other Nationalist leaders who 
were by no means Pacifists or worshippers of Ahimsa. 136 



1948 


July 18, 1948 


(From a letter.) 

I am afraid I can hold out but cold comfort—for the present 
at least—to those of your correspondents who are lamenting 
the present state of things. Things are bad, are growing 
worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst 
if that is possible—and anything however paradoxical seems 
possible in the present perturbed world. The best thing for 
them is to realise that all this was necessary because certain 
possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of, if a new and 
better world was at all to come into being; it would not have 
done to postpone them for a later time.... Also they can 
remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and 
that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remem¬ 
ber too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to 
be made of the same texture as the old and different only in 
pattern, and that it must come by other means—from within 
and not from without; so the best way is not to be too much 
preoccupied with the lamentable things that are happening 
outside, but themselves to grow within so that they may be 
ready for the new world, whatever form it may take. 137 

* 

* * 

December, 1948 

(Extracts from a message to the Andhra University, 
which on December 11 conferred on Sri Aurobindo 
the Sir Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy 
National Prize.) 

India, shut into a separate existence by the Himalayas and 
the ocean, has always been the home of a peculiar people 
with characteristics of its own recognisably distinct from all 


247 



India’s Rebirth 


others, with its own distinct civilisation, way of life, way of 
the spirit, a separate culture, arts, building of society. It has 
absorbed all that has entered into it, put upon all the Indian 
stamp, welded the most diverse elements into its fundamental 
unity. But it has also been throughout a congeries of diverse 
peoples, lands, kingdoms and, in earlier times, republics also, 
diverse races, sub-nations with a marked character of their 
own, developing different brands or forms of civilisation and 
culture, many schools of art and architecture which yet suc¬ 
ceeded in fitting into the general Indian type of civilisation 
and culture. India’s history throughout has been marked by 
a tendency, a constant effort to unite all this diversity of 
elements into a single political whole under a central imperial 
rule so that India might be politically as well as culturally 
one. Even after a rift had been created by the irruption of the 
Mohammedan peoples with their very different religion and 
social structure, there continued a constant effort of political 
unification and there was a tendency towards a mingling of 
cultures and their mutual influence on each other; even some 
heroic attempts were made to discover or create a common 
religion built out of these two apparently irreconcilable faiths 
and here too there were mutual influences. 

The ancient diversities of the country carried in them great 
advantages as well as drawbacks. By these differences the 
country was made the home of many living and pulsating 
centres of life, art, culture, a richly and brilliantly coloured 
diversity in unity; all was not drawn up into a few provincial 
capitals or an imperial metropolis, other towns and regions 
remaining subordinated and indistinctive or even culturally 
asleep; the whole nation lived with a full life in its many 
parts and this increased enormously the creative energy of 
the whole. There is no possibility any longer that this diversity 
will endanger or diminish the unity of India. Those vast 
spaces which kept her people from closeness and a full inter¬ 
play have been abolished in their separating effect by the 


248 



1948 


march of Science and the swiftness of the means of commu¬ 
nication. The idea of federation and a complete machinery 
for its perfect working have been discovered and will be at 
full work. Above all, the spirit of patriotic unity has been too 
firmly established in the people to be easily effaced or 
diminished, and it would be more endangered by refusing to 
allow the natural play of life of the sub-nations than by satis¬ 
fying their legitimate aspirations. The Congress itself in the 
days before liberation came had pledged itself to the forma¬ 
tion of linguistic provinces, and to follow it out, if not imme¬ 
diately, yet as early as may conveniently be, might well be 
considered the wisest course.* India's national life will then 
be founded on her natural strengths and the principle of unity 
in diversity which has always been normal to her and its 
fulfilment the fundamental course of her being and its very 
nature, the Many in the One, would place her on the sure 
foundation of her Swabhava and Swadharma.... 

A union of States and regional peoples would again be the 
form of a united India. 

In this hour, in the second year of its liberation the nation 
has to awaken to many more very considerable problems, to 
vast possibilities opening before her but also to dangers and 
difficulties that may, if not wisely dealt with, become formi¬ 
dable .... There are deeper issues for India herself, since by 
following certain tempting directions she may conceivably 
become a nation like many others evolving an opulent indus¬ 
try and commerce, a powerful organisation of social and 

* The formation of Indian states along linguistic lir»es in the following 
years, while meeting Sri Aurobindo's suggestion on the surface, was in prac¬ 
tice accompanied by such a high degree of centralization and ail-pervasive 
bureaucratization that the "natural play of life" of the provinces was stifled 
rather than encouraged; the rigid and uniform machinery of parliamentary 
representation imposed on the states, which admittedly has served mainly 
to generate corruption and foster divisions, was also hardly capable of 
providing the "perfect working” Sri Aurobindo had in mind for an Indian 
federation. 


249 



India’s Rebirth 


political life, an immense military strength, practising power- 
politics with a high degree of success, guarding and extending 
zealously her gains and her interests, dominating even a large 
part of the world, but in this apparently magnificent progres¬ 
sion forfeiting its Swadharma, losing its soul. Then ancient 
India and her spirit might disappear altogether and we would 
have only one more nation like the others and that would be 
a real gain neither to the world nor to us. There is a question 
whether she may prosper more harmlessly in the outward 
life yet lose altogether her richly massed and firmly held 
spiritual experience and knowledge. It would be a tragic irony 
of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at 
the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more 
and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving 
Light. This must not and will surely not happen; but it cannot 
be said that the danger is not there. There are indeed other 
numerous and difficult problems that face this country or will 
very soon face it. No doubt we will win through, but we must 
not disguise from ourselves the fact that after these long 
years of subjection and its cramping and impairing effects a 
great inner as well as outer liberation and change, a vast inner 
and outer progress is needed if we are to fulfil India’s true 
destiny. 138 

* 

★ * 


250 



1950 


April, 1950 


(From a Postcript Chapter to 
The Ideal of Human UnityJ 

The indwelling deity who presides over the destiny of the 
race has raised in man’s mind and heart the idea, the hope of 
a new order which will replace the old unsatisfactory order, 
and substitute for it conditions of the world’s life which will in 
the end have a reasonable chance of establishing permanent 
peace and well-being.... It is for the men of our day and, at 
the most, of tomorrow to give the answer. For, too long a 
postponement or too continued a failure will open the way to 
a series of increasing catastrophes which might create a too 
prolonged and disastrous confusion and chaos and render a 
solution too difficult or impossible; it might even end in 
something like an irremediable crash not only of the present 
world-civilisation but of all civilisation. 

The terror of destruction and even of large-scale extermina¬ 
tion created by these ominous discoveries* may bring about a 
will in the governments and peoples to ban and prevent the 
military use of these inventions, but, so long as the nature of 
mankind has not changed, this prevention must remain 
uncertain and precarious and an unscrupulous ambition may 
even get by it a chance of secrecy and surprise and the 
utilisation of a decisive moment which might conceivably 
give it victory and it might risk the tremendous chance. 139 


(In October, 1950, six months after Sri Aurobindo 
wrote what follows, China invaded Tibet; an appeal by 
Tibet to the United Nations fell on deaf ears, and India 


* A reference to the recent discovery and use of nuclear weapons. 


251 



India’s Rebirth 


remained a silent spectator. In October, 1962, China 
launched an offensive on India’s northern borders.) 

In Asia a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply 
across the way to any possibility of a continental unity of the 
peoples of this part of the world, in the emergence of Com¬ 
munist China. This creates a gigantic bloc which could easily 
englobe the whole of Northern Asia in a combination between 
two enormous Communist Powers, Russia and China, and 
would overshadow with a threat of absorption South-Western 
Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the 
whole frontier of India, menacing her security and that of 
Western Asia with the possibility of an invasion and an 
overrunning and subjection by penetration or even by over¬ 
whelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political 
and social institutions and dominance of this militant mass 
of Communism whose push might easily prove irresistible. 
In any case, the continent would be divided between two 
huge blocs which might enter into active mutual opposition 
and the possibility of a stupendous world-conflict would 
arise dwarfing anything previously experienced.... 140 


April 4, 1950 

(From a letter to a disciple.) 

You have expressed in one of your letters your sense of the 
present darkness in the world round us.... For myself, the 
dark conditions do not discourage me or convince me of the 
vanity of my will to "help the world”, for I knew they had to 
come; they were there in the world nature and had to rise up 
so that they might be exhausted or expelled and a better world 
freed from them might be there. After all, something has been 
done in the outer field and that may help or prepare for getting 
something done in the inner field also. For instance, India is 


252 



1950 


free and her freedom was necessary if the Divine Work was 
to be done. The difficulties that surround her now and may 
increase for a time, especially with regard to the Pakistan 
imbroglio, were also things that had to come and to be cleared 
out. Nehru’s efforts to prevent the inevitable clash are not 
likely to succeed for more than a short time and so it is not 
necessary to give him the slap you wanted to go to Delhi to 
administer to him. Here too there is sure to be a full clear¬ 
ance, though unfortunately, a considerable amount of human 
suffering in the process is inevitable. Afterwards the work 
for the Divine will become more possible and it may well be 
that the dream, if it is a dream, of leading the world towards 
the spiritual Light, may even become a reality. So I am not 
disposed even now, in these dark conditions, to consider my 
will to help the world as condemned to failure. 141 


* * ** 

June 28, 1950 

(From a letter.) 

I do not know why you want a line of thought to be indicated 
to you for your guidance in the affair of Korea.* There is 
nothing to hesitate about there, the whole affair is as plain as 
a pike-staff. It is the first move in the Communist plan of cam¬ 
paign to dominate and take possession first of these northern 
parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their 
manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent—in pass¬ 
ing, Tibet as a gate opening to India.* * If they succeed, there 
is no reason why domination of the whole world should not 
follow by steps... , 142 

* 


* A few days earlier. North Korean forces launched an attack on South 
Korea with Soviet support; Chinese troops joined in a few months later. 

** China invaded Tibet four months later, in October. 


253 




India’s Rebirth 


(Some forty years earlier, on September 18, 1909, 
Sri Aurobindo wrote ... ) 

The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked 
by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out 
of the evolution. 


November, 1950 

(From Sri Aurobindo's last writings.) 

This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: 
even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is 
at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infal¬ 
libly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even 
when they seem to stumble.... In this vast and apparently 
confused mass of existence there is a law, a one truth of being, 
a guiding and fulfilling purpose of the world-existence. 143 

* 

* * 


254 



On December 5, 1950, Sri Aurobindo left his body. For 
ten years he had worked to free India from the clutches 
of an alien rule; for forty years thereafter he laboured 
to free the earth from the clutches of a dying age. But 
among all the nations of the world, India always held 
a special place in his consciousness: to him she was 
the Mother, a being with a unique mission and destiny 
in these birth throes of a new age. 

For a long time now, the ancient Mother has lain 
prostrate, half slumbering, half decaying, a prey to a 
thousand cancers. But even today, if we awaken to 
what makes her a country unlike any other, if we redis¬ 
cover in ourselves the simple secret of her ancient 
Shakti, if we see her bleeding flesh and hear her 
prayer to us, we can yet bring about her rebirth. 

* 

* * 


June 6, 1967 


(An inner communication from 
Sri Aurobindo to Mother.) 

All the countries live in falsehood. 

If only one country stood courageously for truth, 
the world might be saved. 144 



1942 


March 31, 1942 

(The British govemement, partly realizing the inevi¬ 
tability of India’s future independence and partly under 
American pressure to secure her support during the 
war, sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India in March, 1942, 
with a proposal for dominion status after the war, as 
a first step towards full independence. Sri Aurobindo 
sent Cripps the following message.) 

As one who has been a nationalist leader and worker for 
India’s independence, though now my activity is no longer in 
the political but in the spiritual field, I wish to express my 
appreciation of all you have done to bring about this offer. I 
welcome it as an opportunity given to India to determine for 
herself, and organise in all liberty of choice, her freedom and 
unity, and take an effective place among the world’s free 
nations. I hope that it will be accepted, and right use made 
of it, putting aside all discords and divisions.... I offer my 
public adhesion, in case it can be of any help in your work. 125 * 


* The next day, on April 1, Cripps replied with the following telegram: "I 
am most touched and gratified by your kind message allowing me to inform 
India that you who occupy unique position in imagination of Indian youth, 
are convinced that declaration of His Majesty’s Government substantially 
confers that freedom for which Indian Nationalism has so long struggled.” 

Sri Aurobindo in addition sent a personal messenger to the Congress to 
urge them to accept Cripps' proposal; he also sent a telegram to C. Raja- 
gopalachari, in which he said: "... Appeal to you to save India. Formidable 
danger new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination." (Japan 
was then threatening to invade Burma and India; a few days earlier, it had 
also become known that Subhas Bose was in Germany and, confident of 
Germany’s victory, was trying to organize with its help an anti-British front.) 

Sri Aurobindo’s advice was ignored: "He has retired from political life, 
why does he interfere!” said Gandhi to Duraiswamy Iyer, Sri Aurobindo’s 


237 



Chronology 


1872, Aug. 15 


1878, Feb. 21 

1879, June 

1885, Dec. 

1886, Aug. 16 

1892, August 

1893, Feb. 6 

1893, May 31 

1894, April 8 

1897 

1897, Jan. 15 
c. 1900 

1901, April 30 

1902, July 4 
1905 


1906, June 


-Sri Aurobindo is born in Calcutta; he spends his 
first years at Rangpur (now in Bangladesh), and 
at the age of 5 is sent to Loreto Convent School, 
Darjeeling. 

- Mother is born in Paris. 

- Sri Aurobindo leaves India for England with his 
parents and his two elder brothers. He spends 5 years 
in Manchester, enters St. Paul’s School, London, in 
1884, and King’s College, Cambridge, in 1890. 

- First session of the Indian National Congress at 
Bombay. 

- Sri Ramakrishna passes away. 

- Sri Aurobindo passes the I.C.S. ; he does not appear 
at a riding test and is disqualified. 

- Lands at Bombay and soon joins the Slate service 
of the Maharaja Gaekwad of Baroda. From August 
1893 to March 1894, contributes a series of articles, 
"New Lamps for Old,’’ to the Indu Prakash. 

- Swami Vivekananda sails for America. 

-Bankim Chandra Chatterji passes away. In July- 

August, Sri Aurobindo writes a series of articles 
on him in the Indu Prakash. 

- Sri Aurobindo teaches French, then English at the 
Baroda College; he will become its Vice-Principal 
in 1905. 

- Swami Vivekananda lands at Colombo, and on his 
way north delivers many lectures throughout India. 

- Sri Aurobindo makes first contacts with secret 
societies in Maharashtra and Bengal. 

- Sri Aurobindo marries Mrinalini Bose. 

- Swami Vivekananda passes away. 

- Sri Aurobindo writes Bhawani Mandir, a revolu¬ 
tionary pamphlet. 

- Partition of Bengal, beginning of the Swadeshi 
movement. 

- Sri Aurobindo leaves Baroda for good. 


256 



1906, August 


1906, Dec. 

1907, Aug. 16 


1907, Dec. 


1908, January 


1907-1908 


1908, May 2 


1909 

1909, May 30 
1909, June 19 

1909, Aug. 23 

1910, February 


1910, April 4 


- Bepin Chandra Pal launches the Bande Mataram 
(English daily); Sri Aurobindo joins it and soon 
becomes its editor. 

-On August 15, the Bengal National College opens 
with Sri Aurobindo as its principal. 

- At its Calcutta session presided over by Dadabhai 
Naoroji, the Congress declares Swaraj to be its goal. 

- Sri Aurobindo is arrested for the publication of 
seditious writings in the Bande Mataram-, released 
on bail. He resigns his post of principal of the 
Bengal National College, giving on August 23 a 
speech to the students and teachers. Acquitted a 
month later. 

- At the Surat session of the Congress, the National¬ 
ist party with Sri Aurobindo presiding over its 
conference breaks away from the Moderates. 

- First session of the Muslim League at Karachi. 

- In Baroda, Sri Aurobindo meets Vishnu Bhaskar 
Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi, and experiences the 
Brahman consciousness. Gives many speeches on 
his way back to Calcutta. 

- Many Nationalist leaders, such as Lala Lajpat Rai, 
Tilak, Ashwini Kumar Dutt, etc., are deported 
under various repressive laws. The Nationalist 
movement goes underground. 

- Sri Aurobindo is arrested in the Alipore Bomb 
Case; spends a year in jail and is acquitted on May 
6, 1909. 

- The Morley-Minto reforms provide separate elec¬ 
torates for Indian Muslims. 

-Sri Aurobindo’s famous Uttarpara speech. 

- First issue of the Karmayogin (English weekly). 

- First issue of the Dharma (Bengali weekly). 

- Sri Aurobindo abruptly leaves Calcutta for Chan- 
dernagore; on March 31, he will leave for Pondi¬ 
cherry. 

- Sri Aurobindo reaches Pondicherry. 

- Charged with sedition for an article in the Karma- 
yog in (the charge will be rejected in November). 


257 



1914, March 29 
1914, June 

1914, Aug. 15 

1916, Dec. 

1919-1920 


1920 

1920, April 24 
1920, Aug. 1 
1920, October 
1920, Dec. 

1923, June 5 
1923, Sept. 
1925, Jan. 5 

1925, June 16 

1926, Nov. 24 

1928, Feb. 16 
1928, Nov. 17 


1929, Dec. 


1930-1932 


1937 

1938, Nov. 24 


- First meeting with Mother. 

- Tilak is released from a six-year-long deportation 
to Burma. 

-First issue of the Arya (English monthly), which 
will appear until January, 1921. 

-"Lucknow Pact” between the Congress and the 
Muslim League. 

- Beginning of the Khilafat and non-cooperation 
movements under the growing leadership of 
Mahatma Gandhi. 

- Sri Aurobindo turns down several offers to return 
to British India and to active politics. 

- Mother returns to Pondicherry from Japan. 

- Lokmanya Tilak passes away. 

- Dr. B. S. Munje pays a visit to Sri Aurobindo. 

- Nagpur session of the Congress; the goal of Swaraj 
is eclipsed by the Khilafat agitation. 

- Chittaranjan Das meets Sri Aurobindo. 

- Creation of the Swarajya Party. 

- Lala Lajpat Rai and Purushottamdas Tandon meet 
Sri Aurobindo. 

- Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das passes away. 

- Sri Aurobindo withdraws completely to concen¬ 
trate on his work. 

- Rabindranath Tagore meets Sri Aurobindo. 

- Lala Lajpat Rai passes away a few weeks after 
having been assaulted by the police during a 
demonstration at Lahore. 

- The Lahore session of the Congress, presided over 
by Jawaharlal Nehru, adopts the goal of complete 
independence. 

- Three Round Table Conferences with, in August 
1932, the Communal Award which hardens divi¬ 
sions between Hindus and Muslims. Savage 
repression of the Civil Disobedience Movement by 
the British rulers. 

- Formation of Congress ministries in the Provinces. 

- Sri Aurobindo breaks his leg while walking in 
concentration. 


258 



1939, Sept. 

1940, March 

1940, Sept. 19 

1941, March 

1941, Aug. 7 

1942, March 31 

1942, April 
1942, Aug. 9 
1944, July 
1946, Aug. 16 

1946, Sept. 2 

1947, March 24 
1947, June 


1947, Aug. 15 

1947, October 

1948, Jan. 30 
1950, October 

1950, Dec. 5 


- World War II breaks out; the Provincial ministries 
resign in October-November. 

- The Muslim League, in session at Lahore, formally 
demands the creation of Pakistan. 

- Sri Aurobindo’s declaration in support of the 
Allies. 

- Subhas Bose, having escaped from detention in 
Calcutta, arrives in Germany. 

- Rabindranath Tagore passes away. 

- Sri Aurobindo publicly supports Cripps’ proposals; 
the Congress turns them down. 

- The Japanese overrun Burma and bomb cities on 
India’s east coast. 

- Start of the "Quit India" movement; Mahatma Gan¬ 
dhi and other leaders are arrested soon afterwards. 

- Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army and the 
Japanese are repulsed in Manipur. 

- The Muslim League launches its "Direct Action” 
plan; bloody riots follow in Bengal and Bihar. 

- Formation of the Interim Government, which the 
Muslim League joins a month later. 

- Lord Mountbatten is the new Viceroy. 

- On the 3 rd , Mountbatten announces the British 
government’s final decision to grant India inde¬ 
pendence on the basis of partition; on the 14 th , the 
Congress accepts the partition of India and the 
creation of Pakistan. 

-India’s Independence; Sri Aurobindo’s 75 th birth¬ 
day. 

- Pakistan attacks Kashmir; the Indian army repels 
Pakistani troops, but Nehru calls a halt to the fight¬ 
ing and takes the dispute to the United Nations. 

- Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated. 

-China invades Tibet; India remains a silent spec¬ 
tator. 

- Sri Aurobindo leaves his body. Mother continues 
his work. 


259 



References 


We give below, section by section, either detailed references or, when these 
would be too cumbersome to list in full, guides to the sources. The bold 
numerals refer to the volumes of the Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo's 
works (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1972); they are followed by the 
page number. "A. & R." refers to the Archives and Research half-yearly series 
published from Pondicherry. 

The reader wishing to know more about Sri Aurobindo's immense contribu¬ 
tion to India is invited to study the following titles: Bande Mataram, The 
Karmayogin, The Secret of the Veda, Essays on the Gita, The Foundations of 
Indian Culture, On Himself, as well as Sri Aurobindo's talks with disciples: 
Evening Talks (noted by A. B. Purani) and Talks with Sri Aurobindo (four 
volumes noted by Nirodbaran). 

For a general introduction to Sri Aurobindo’s life, thought and work, we 
recommend Satprem’s Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness 
(Institut de Recherches fivolutives, Paris, & Mira Aditi, Mysore, 1996). 


I 

Nearly all the texts in this section are from the Bande Mataram for the 
years 1893 to 1908 (vol. 1 in Cent. Ed., also with articles in vol. 17 and vol. 27), 
and from the Karmayogin for the years 1909-1910 (vol. 2, also with articles in 
vol. 3 and 17). Exceptions are: 

1. 3.125-127 

2. 3.181 

3. The Life of Sri Aurobindo by A. B. 

Purani (1978), p. 82 

4. On Himself, 26.29-32 

5. A. & R., April 1978, p. 13-18 

6. A. & R., April 1979. p. 4 

7. A. & R., December 1978, p. 111 

8. A. & R., April 1979, p. 1-4 


9. Sri Aurobindo in the First Decade of 
the Century by Manoj Das, p. 137 

10. Ibid., p. 134 

11. On Himself. 26.34 

12. A. & R.. April 1977, p. 56-58 

13. 3.454-456 

14. 3.460 

15. A. & R.. December 1979, p. 196-199 

16. Ibid., p. 200-201 


II 


Excerpts from letters to Motilal Roy are found in vol. 27 (p. 463 to 499). 
Other references are: 


260 



17. On Himself. 26.27, 37-38 

18. A. & R.. April 1981, p. 1-6 

19. A. & R., April 1983, p. 47 

20. A. & R.. December 1980, p. 187-194 

21. Ibid., p. 194 

22. A. & R., December 1977, p. 84 

23. A. & R.. April 1983, p. 21 

24. 3.116-117 
25.27.182-183 

26. A. & R.. December 1983, p. 100, 124 

27. A. & R., December 1984, p. 132, 136 

28. A. &. R., December 1985, p. 152, 168 

29. A. & R., April 1979, p. 93-94 

30. Ibid., p. 94 

31. See The Politics of History, by 
Navaratna S. Rajaram (Voice of 
India, 1995) 

32. Thoughts and Aphorisms (in vol. 17) 

33. The Secret of the Veda, 10.3 

34. 17.393-394 

35. The Secret of the Veda, 10.33-37 

36. Sri Aurobindo — His Life Unique, by 
Rishabhchand, p. 410-411 

37. 16.402-403 

38. 17.335 

39. On Himself. 26.424 

40. Ibid., 26.425 

41. The Secret of the Veda, 10.352-353 

42. 16.311 

43. 17.277-279 

44. 17.337-341 

45. 17.299 

46. 16.317-319 

47. Thoughts and Glimpses, 16.391 

48. The Ideal of Human Unity, 15.340 

49. The Human Cycle, 15.3-8 

50. The Secret of the Veda, 10.439 

51. Hymns to the Mystic Fire. 11.9-18 

52. Essays on the Gita, 13.37-42 

53. Ibid., 13.44-45 

54. Ibid., 13.52-54 

55. The Human Cycle, 15.69-73 


56. 16.392-394 

57. The Ideal of Human Unity, 
15.492-493 

58. The Hour of God (1991), p. 3-4 

59. A. & R., December 1984, p. 190 

60. 17.351, 357 
61.27.505-507 

62. The Human Cycle, 15.209-213 

63. Ibid., 15.230 

64. Ibid., 15.243 

65. Ibid., 15.250-252 

66. The Renaissance in India, 
14.401-404 

67. War and Self-Determination, 15.598 

68. Ibid., 15.605-606 

69. The Renaissance in India, 
14.426-433 

70. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 
14.1-11 

71. War and Self-Determination, 
15.588-597 

72. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 
14.27, 31 

73. Ibid., 14.73-75 

74. Ibid.. 14.90 

75. Essays on the Gita, 13.367-372 

76. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 
14.122-130 

77. 17.179 

78. War and Self-Determination, 15.635 

79. On Himself, 26.430-431 

80. Original Bengali text in A. & R., 
April 1980, p.1-10 

81. 16.331 
82.2.431 

83. On Himself, 26.432-433 

84. 17.194-196 

85. The Foundations of Indian Culture, 
14.363-381 

86. On Himself, 26.437 

87. Ibid., 26.438-439 


III 


Most of the excerpts from Sri Aurobindo’s talks in this section are from A. B. 
Purani's Evening Talks. Others are from talks noted by Anilbaran (published 
in Sri Aurobindo Circle), and from unpublished notations by Pavitra. 


261 



88. History of the Freedom Movement 
in India, by R. C. Majumdar 
(Firma KLM, 1988), Vol. Ill, p. 81 

IV 


89. 17.7-8 

90. On Himself, 26.126 

91. Ibid., 26.483 

92. Ibid., 26.122, 124 

93. The History of the Freedom 
Movement in India, Vol. Ill, p. 310 

94. On Himself, 26.468-469 

95. Unpublished portion of a letter to 
Dilip Kumar Roy 

96. Ibid., 26.165 

97. Letters on Yoga, 22.178 

98. Ibid., 22.152 

99. The Liberator by Sisirkumar Mitra 
(Jaico, 1970), p. 199 

100. On Himself, 26.375-376 

101. Letters on Yoga, 22.196-198 

102. Ibid., 24.1608-1609 

103. Ibid., 23.716 

104. Ibid., 23.717 


105. On Himself, 26.167 

106. 22.208-209 

107. Ibid., 26.143 

108. Letters on Yoga, 22.205 

109. On Himself, 26.125 

110. Ibid., 22.153 

111. Ibid., 22.490 

112. Ibid., 22.144 (2 nd paragraph only) 

113. On Himself, 26.389 

114. Ibid., 26.135 

115. Letters on Yoga, 22.490 

116. Letters on Yoga, 22.140 

117. On Himself, 26.380 

118. Letters on Yoga, 23.665-666 

119. Ibid., 22.139 

120. Ibid., 22.486-487 

121. Correspondence with Sri 
Aurobindo by Nirodbaran, 2.1185 


V 


All passages in this section are from Everting Talks (noted by A. B. Purani) 
and Talks with Sri Aurobindo (noted by Nirodbaran). 


VI 


122. The Life Divine. 19.1053-1056 

123. On Himself, 26.394 

124. Ibid. 

125. Ibid., 26.399 

126. Ibid., 26.396-398 

127. Ibid., 26.129-130 

128. Ibid., 26.167-168 

129. Ibid., 26.168-169 

130. Letters on Yoga. 22.424-425 

131. Champaklal Speaks (1976), p. 66 

132. On Himself, 26.169-170 

133. Ibid., 26.401-402 

134. Ibid., 26.46 


135. Ibid., 26.49 

136. Ibid., 26.22 

137. Ibid., 26.171-172 

138. Ibid., 26.407-413 

139. The Ideal of Human Unity, 
13.563-565 

140. Ibid., 15.567 

141. Partially in On Himself, 26.172 

142. Ibid., 26.416 

143. The Supramental Manifestation 
upon Earth, 16.73 

144. Mother’s Agenda Vol. 8, p. 173 


262 



Index 


A 


Adya Shakti, 21 
Afghanistan, 170, 229 
Agni, 116-117 
agriculture, 39 

see also peasantry, village 
Ahimsa, 55, 123, 151, 168, 218-219, 246 
see also non-violence 
Ajatashatru, 96 

Alipore Bomb Case, 46 (fn), 150, 159 
Alipore jail, 47, 48, 214 
Allies (in World War II), 226, 236, 
238-239 

altruism, 80, 102, 112 
Ambedkar, B. R.. 204-205 
America, 59, 81, 174, 237 
Americans, 77, 239 
Andhra University, 247 
Anusilan Samiti, 13 
Arabians, 190 

archaeology, 98 (fn), 100-101 (fn) 

Arjuna, 51. 125, 206, 240 
art. 65-68, 103, 127, 182. 220 
Indian art, 59-60, 67, 68, 168 
Arya (English monthly), 83, 111 
Arya Samaj, 170 
Aryan, 49, 106 

character and life, 52, 60 
fighter, 126 

invasion (theory of), 96, 98. 

100-101 (fn). 107-108, 114, 115, 116 
language. 97-98, 108-109 
people. 106-107, 108, 153 
worker, 113 

asceticism, 92, 106-107, 112, 142-143, 
149, 198, 240 
Asia, 25, 39, 157, 178 
and the Communist plan, 252-253 
astronomy, 168 
Augustus, 77 
avatar, 49, 89. 91, 102 
Azad, Abul Kalam, Maulana, 230, 238 (fn) 


B 

Bahaism, 169 


Baker, Edward, 47 (fn) 

Bakunin, 93 

Bande Mataram (mantra and national 
song). 9, 21-22, 37, 154, 222-223 
Bande Mataram (English daily), 17, 27, 
47 

Banerjee, Jatindranath, 13 
Banerji, Surendranath, 17 
Bangladesh, 15 (fn) 

Bankim, see under Chatterji 
Baptista, Joseph, 148 
barbarians, 126 
barbarism, 103, 127, 175, 239 
Barin, see under Ghose 
Baroda, 11, 35 
Baroda College, 11 

battle. 45-46, 51, 102, 123-126, 143-144, 
206-207, 238-240 

beauty, 66, 68, 103, 127, 217-218, 220 
Bengal, 39, 111-112, 152, 153. 222, 246 
atrocities on Hindus in, 203, 241-242 
awakening of, 21-22, 67 (fn), 180 
partition of, 17, 18, 54 (fn) 

Bengal National College, 27 
Bhagavat Gita, 46, 48, 52. 125-126, 

170, 171, 176, 183, 201, 206 
Bharati, Subramania, 109 (fn) 

Bhawani Mandir, 13 
Bible, 68, 170, 176, 190 
birth control, 185-186 
see also overpopulation 
Bolshevism, 151, 183, 200, 203 
Bose, Subhas Chandra, 223, 230, 

231, 237 (fn) 

Brahmanas, 95, 105 
brahmateja, 50 

Brahmins, 28-29, 44, 55, 87, 120-121, 208 
Britain, see under England 
British, the, see under English 
British rule (in India), 9, 18-19, 31, 

40 (fn), 43, 46 (fn), 60-61, 158, 178, 202, 
219 (fn), 230, 231 
Buddha. 92. 106, 144, 204, 213 
Buddhism. 92, 112, 129, 137, 177 
bureaucracy, 58, 68. 135, 220 
business, 216, 240 


263 



c 

Caliph (Sultan of Turkey), 149 (fn) 
capitalism, 154, 200 
capitalists, 77, 103, 221 
caste, 44, 79, 90. 207-208 

original meaning of, 28-30, 120, 177 
perversion of, 119, 120-121 
political use of, 18, 32, 192 (fn) 
caturvama/caturvamya, 90, 120 
Chaitanya, 204 
Chandala, 29, 44 
Chandernagore, 71 
Chandragupta Maurya, 178 
charity, 102, 112, 129 
see also altruism 
Charkha. 170, 215, 219, 225 
Charlemagne, 77 

Chatterji, Bankim Chandra, 9, 21, 155 
China, 88, 137, 202, 220 
Communist China, 252 
and India, 252, 253 
and Tibet, 252, 253 
Chokha Mela, 29 

Christ, 77, 137, 142, 144, 170, 175, 205, 
213 

Christianity, 59, 129, 142-143, 170, 
175-176, 184, 217 
Christians, 63, 68, 171, 183 
civilization, 96, 99, 100, 126-227, 142 
ancient, 96, 100, 117 
present, 127, 134, 235, 236, 241, 251 
see also Indian, Western civilization 
commercialism, 61, 67, 127, 140, 153, 
216 

Communism, 90, 103, 154, 174, 214, 
220-221, 252, 253 
Communists (Indian), 231 
Confucians, 190 

Congress, see under Indian National 
Congress 
Congressmen, 222 
conversion, 204-205 

of Hindus into Muslims, 167, 245 
Coomaraswamy, A. K., 60 (fn) 
corruption, 209, 222 
courage, 22-23, 25. 30, 36, 54, 57, 58, 
68, 124, 148, 154 
Cowell, E. B., 97 (fn) 
creation (new). 21, 23, 32. 57. 91, 128, 
154, 193, 200-201, 241, 244, 247 


criminals, 

Indian, 214 
in politics, 221 
Cripps, Sir Stafford, 237 
Cripps' proposal, 224 (fn), 237 
culture, see under Indian culture 
Curzon, 17 
Czechoslovakia, 231 


D 

Danton, 24 

Das, Chittaranjan, 13, 47, 159, 185, 216, 
221, 223, 242 

Dayananda Saraswati, 116-118, 170 
democracy. 61. 62, 103-104, 149, 174, 214 
Indian conception of, 39 
parliamentary, 93, 172, 214, 221 
in the West, 103 
see also political systems 
destruction, 21, 91, 123-124, 128, 241 
means of, 228, 251 
Deuskar, Sakharam Ganesh, 40 (fn) 

Devil, 143 

Dharma (Bengali weekly), 47 
dharma, 48 (fn), 69-70, 151, 152, 182 
in ancient times, 165, 177 
basis of democracy, 39 
India's, 49, 158 
see also sanatana dharma 
dictatorship, 214 
diplomacy, 37, 45 
divide-and-rule, 17, 18-19, 230 
Dominion status (for India), 223-224, 
231, 237 
Dravidian 

languages, 97, 98 (fn), 108-109 
races, 49 (fn), 96. 98, 107-109, 114, 

115, 116 

see also Aryan invasion 
Duraiswamy Iyer, 237 (fn) 

Durga, 124, 222-223 
Dutt, Ashwini Kumar, 17 
Dutt, Romesh, 40 (fn) 

Dwaraka, 100-101 (fn) 


E 

East, 25, 88 

economy, 43. 156, 200, 220, 221 


264 



Western system of, 42, 127 
India's ruined by Britain, 40 (fn), 43, 
202 

education, 11-12, 127, 216, 220 
artistic, 66-67, 

British/European, 39, 43, 52, 55, 59, 
60. 65, 183, 220 
language/medium of, 75, 157 
moral or religious, 73 
national, 23, 27, 35, 38, 67, 133, 180 
scientific, 65 

teaching by snippets, 74-76 
Egypt (ancient), 137 
England, 24, 60-61. 67, 202, 236, 239 
English, 

the English, 24, 43, 67. 71, 217, 239 
their coming to India, 60-61, 178 
language, 157 

see also British rule. Europe 
Europe, 55, 59, 88, 104, 152, 217 
and Asia, 25, 39 

bankruptcy of, 77-82, 114-115, 175, 
218 

her religious history, 59, 147 
her Shakti, 152 

see also education, materialism, 
politics, religion, scholarship 
Europeanization 

of India. 42, 43, 52. 59-61, 71-72, 86-87, 
140, 223 

of Japan, 88, 216, 218 
evil. 124, 143, 171, 182 
evolution, 51. 59, 65, 136, 189, 201, 217, 
235, 254 

the new evolution, 111 
see also supermind, truth 
Extremism, 32 (fn) 


F 

fanaticism, 147, 167, 169, 190, 197, 204 

Fascism. 194, 214, 226 

fast, see under hunger strike 

federation (for India), 249 

fight, see under battle 

force (spiritual), see under power 

forests, 220 

France. 202, 227-228 

freedom. 26. 79. 213, 214, 228 

French Revolution, 77, 80 

Freud, Sigmund, 218 


future, 25-26, 57. 60. 65, 72. 74. 76, 92, 
94, 99. 101, 110, 112, 118-119, 129, 
141, 142, 201, 236, 241, 247 


G 

Gandhi, Devadas, 170 
Gandhi, M. K.. Mahatma, 9, 151, 170, 
180, 191-192, 202-203, 206, 226, 230 
and birth control, 186 
and castes, 207-208 
and Charkha. 215-216, 219, 225 
a Christian, 175-176 
and Congress, 209, 215, 219 
and Cripps’ proposal, 237-238 (fn) 
a European, 175 
and hunger-strike, 145, 168, 171 
and Khilafat movement, 173 
and Muslim demands, 227 
and non-cooperation, 160, 180 
and non-violence, 166-168, 218-219, 
225, 226 

in South Africa, 105, 168 

and Swaraj, 173 (fn) 

and World War II, 217, 224, 

229-230 

Gangoly, O. C., 115-116 
Germans, 239 
Germany, 112 

in World War II, 213, 236, 237 (fn) 
Ghose, Barindra Kumar, 13, 17, 47, 150 
Gita, see under Bhagavat Gita 
Goethe. 77, 88 
Goonda-raj, 203 
Goswami, Bijoy, 76 
government, 217, 236 
controls, 213 

systems of. 165, 172, 177-178, 214-215 
Greece (ancient), 86, 119, 168, 183, 217 
Greek (language), 109 
Greeks, 158, 179, 183, 213, 217 
Griffith, Ralph T. H., 97 (fn) 
guru, 119 


H 

Haeckel, 87 

Harappan cililization, 100 (fn) 
hell, 126, 143, 147 


265 



Hindu, 

culture, see under Indian culture 
Hindus. 19, 31, 39, 40, 44. 58, 63-65, 
167, 179 190, 201. 222-223, 227, 
241-242, 245 

religion, see under Hinduism 
society, see under Indian society 
Hinduism. 48-50, 55, 69-70, 86-88, 92. 
94. 96, 124, 129, 143, 145-147, 207 
aggressive and expanding, 131 
its central principle, 145-147, 179, 184, 
its decline, 81, 131 
orthodox, 1, 32, 89-90, 94 
passive, 183 

untouched by the Congress, 32 
and violence, 246 

see also religion, sanatana dharma 
Hindu-Muslim question, 17, 18-19, 31, 
53-54, 58, 62-65, 165-166, 167, 173, 
181, 195, 222-223, 227, 228, 230, 
241-242, 244-245 

Hitler, 193, 194, 213, 217, 224-226, 227, 
229 (fn), 230. 239, 242 
sympathy for, 225 
Holland, 226 
honesty, 112-113 

humanitarianism, 59, 80, 112, 196 
humanity, see under man/mankind 
hunger strike, 145, 168, 171 


i 

I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service), 223 
idealism, 194, 196, 246 
imperialism, 24, 202, 226 
India, 

her assimilation of other cultures, 

86, 178-179, 248 
as Bharata Shakti, 139 
as Bhawani Bharati, 15 
her decline/degeneration, 30, 40-41, 
43. 59-60, 61, 85-86, 150-153, 185 
her destiny, 22, 133-134, 139, 245, 250 
her d/iarraa/Swadharma, 42, 49, 158, 
165, 177, 250 

her freedom, 149, 160, 209, 219, 226, 
230, 237, 244-245, 252-253 
her future, 61. 72. 92, 94. 110. 112. 149, 
154, 157, 203, 209, 237, 245, 249-250 
her genius/spirit, 61, 149-150, 172, 178 
government for, 172, 178, 215, 


220-221, 249 

her greatness, 24, 27-28, 44, 64, 110, 
132, 160 

the guide of the world /guru of 
nations, 38, 110 

her Independence, 19, 203, 209, 224 
the laboratory of the soul, 40 
her mission, 1, 92, 112, 139, 140, 154, 
159 

as the Mother. 13, 15. 16, 21-22, 28, 
41, 53. 54, 64, 223, 243. 255 
and the new Truth, 171, 184 
North India, 107-108, 115 
partition of, 17, 224, 244-245 
her past, 30, 38. 55, 60, 61, 64, 98 (fn), 
100-101, 137, 157, 165, 172, 177-179, 
184, 195, 201, 204, 214, 217, 247-248 
her rebirth/regeneration, 1, 41, 44, 

57, 88. 92, 93. 110, 140, 153, 154, 158 
her Shakti, 13-15, 152, 157, 158 
South India. 107-108, 115 
her spirituality/spiritual heritage, 24, 
26, 40. 52. 60. 86, 88, 93. 98 (fn). 110. 
114-115, 124, 126, 129, 132, 133, 
137-138, 139, 145-146, 154, 158, 175, 
179, 184, 195, 201, 225, 240, 250 
her unity, 62-64, 158, 230, 244-245, 
247-249 

see also art, Bengal, British rule, 
education, Hindu, Hinduism, Indian, 
scholarship, etc. 

Indian, 

civilization, 24, 30, 64, 81, 85, 98 (fn), 
100-10 \(fn), 137. 142, 152, 247-248 
culture, 64, 65, 67. 86. 115, 137, 139, 
140, 145-146, 157, 158, 168, 171, 179, 
222-223, 242, 248 
Indians. 13-15, 52, 60, 139, 146, 
150-153, 175, 185, 213-214 
intellect/mind, 12, 43, 87-88, 95, 
111-112, 126, 147, 157 
mentality, 225, 228 
society, 85-86, 89-90. 92, 119-121, 

131, 165 

universities, 11, 12, 60 
Indian National Congress, 9, 17, 19, 43, 

132, 149, 155-156, 219, 241 (fn), 249 
and the communal principle, 19, 53, 
195 

corruption in, 209 
a Fascist organization, 215 
imitation of, 61-62 


266 



and the Indian people, 18, 32 
and Jinnah, 223 
its leaders, 10, 20 
and Pakistan, 224 
and the Partition, 244 
sessions of, 

-Amritsar (1919), 149 
-Calcutta (1906), 35 
-Lahore (1929). 149 (fn) 

-Lucknow (1916), 195 
-Nagpur (1920), 149 (fn), 155 
-Surat (1907), 35 
and World War II, 227, 231 
Indo-Afghan race, 96, 107 
Indo-Saracenic architecture, 168 
Indra, 116-117 

Indu Prakash (Bombay daily), 9 
Indus-Saraswati civilization, 100 (fn) 
industry, 14, 43. 78. 127, 154, 216, 221 
institutions, 9, 71-72, 136, 141, 219 
intolerance, 147, 167 
Islam. 32, 44, 53. 129, 143, 158, 167, 170, 
217, 223 
see also Muslim 
Islamic culture, 168, 179 
itihasa, 98 (fn) 


J 

Jainism, 151, 176, 177 
Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, 156 (fn) 
Japan, 88, 137, 202, 216, 237 (fn) 
Japanese, 216, 218 
jat, 90 

Jews, 190, 242 

Jinnah, 223, 224, 230, 241, 245 
Judaism, 129 
Judea, 137 


K 

Kabir, 146 
Kala Purusha, 91 
Kali Yuga, 91 
Kali, 44, 106. 124 
Kalki, 148 

Karmayogin (English weekly), 47, 71, 
77, 83 

Kashmir, 228, 245 (fn) 

Kemal, Mustapha, 169(/n), 192 


Khaddar. 170 

Khilafat movement, 149 (fn), 156 (fn), 
165, 169, 173, 195 
Koran. 170, 190 
Korea. 253 

Krishna / Vasudeva, 46, 50, 51, \00(fn), 
106, 125, 205, 206, 238, 240 
Kshatriya, 20, 29, 44. 46, 55, 120-121, 
167 


L 

Lajpat Rai, Lala, 17 
language, 75, 129 

see also Aryan language, Dravidian 
languages, Sanskrit 
Latin, 109 

law, its true function, 45 
see also dharma and shastra 
Lenin, 192 
literature, 73, 80 
love, 14, 91, 153 
gospel of, 45-46, 144 


M 

machinery, 103, 127, 135, 136, 141 
exaggerated importance of, 51-52, 71, 
79, 81 

of the State, 104, 177 
Mahabharata, 46, 98 (fn), 100 (fn), 238, 
240 

Mahomed, 190 

Mahomedans, see under Muslims 
Malaviya, Madan Mohan, Pandit, 166 
man/mankind, 44-45, 65, 67, 94, 112, 
115, 118, 119, 120, 125, 127, 128, 129, 
134, 135, 136, 196, 201, 216, 218 
his destiny, 136, 235, 251 
in Europe, 78-79 
an infant, 193 
his intellect, 115, 163 r 218 
more mental than woman, 181 
his nature, 144, 189, 200, 219 
a reasoning animal, 85 
his status with regard to woman, 90 
of today, 213 
a transitional being, 189 
see also civilization, future 
Mantra, the future, 37, 155 


267 



Manu, 89 
Marx, Karl, 200 

materialism, 1, 61, 77-78, 80, 85, 92, 
114, 140, 197, 201 
mathematics, 168 

matter, field of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, 
189, 193, 194 
Maurya, the dynasty, 178 
Mayavada, 183 
Mazzini, 57, 93 
medical science, 102-103 
Mesopotamia, 137 
Minto, Earl, 47 (fn) 

see also Morley-Minto reforms 
Mitter, P. (Pramatha Mitra), 13 
moderation, moderatism, 89, 93, 118 
Mohammedans, see under Muslims 
monarchy, 177-178, 214 
Monier-Williams, M., 97 (fn) 

Moonje, B. S., see under Munje 
morality, 43, 73, 71, 186, 203, 246 
Morley-Minto reforms, 31 (fn), 62-63, 64 
Moslems, see under Muslims 
Mother, 113, 187, 193, 238, 241, 255 
the (Great) Mother, 21,41 
see also India, as the Mother 
motherland, see under India, as the 
Mother 

Mrinalini Devi, 16 

Muller, F. Max. 87, 95, 96-97, 116, 

117 (fn) 

Mullick, Subodh, 27 
Munje. B. S., 155 
music, 65, 66 
Muslim, 

culture, 168, 179, 222 
League, 31 (fn), 195 (fn), 224, 24 \(fn) 
religion, see under Islam 
Muslims. 167, 169, 173, 190 
coming Jo India, 158, 178-179, 248 
Indian Muslims, 31. 44, 53, 58. 169, 
181, 203, 222, 223, 227, 228, 245 
their sense of separateness, 31, 64, 
169 (fn) 

see also Hindu-Muslim question 
Mussolini, 193, 229 (fn) 


N 

Naoroji, Dadabhai, 35, 40 (fn) 
Napoleon, 77 


Nationalism, 13, 32, 64 
its call, 44 

is sandtana dharma, 50 
Nationalist movement/party, 17, 32-33, 
36, 44, 45, 47, 50, 54, 59, 60, 93, 215, 
246 

see also Swadeshi 
Nazis/Nazism, 211. 214, 217, 218, 

229 (fn). 236 
see also Hitler 

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 192 (fn), 207, 
228-229, 238 (fn), 245 (fn), 253 
newspapers, see under press 
Nivedita, Sister, 13, 71, 219 
non-cooperation movement, 156, 160, 
180 

non-violence, 45, 151, 166-168, 170, 
218-219, 225, 226, 229, 246 
see also Ahimsa 
nuclear weapons, 251 


o 

obscurantism, 147 
occultism, 200 

orthodox, see under Hinduism 
overpopulation, 63-64 
see also birth control 


p 

paganism, 129 

Pakistan, 15 (fn), 224, 221, 241, 245 (fn), 
253 

Pal, Bepin Chandra, 17 
Palestine, 137 

panchayat (system), 178, 221 
Pariah, 29, 208 

parliamentary democracy, see 
under democracy 
Parsis, 63 

partition, see under Bengal, India, 
Pakistan 

passive resistance, 93, 151, 167-168, 
219, 246 
Patanjali, 111 

Patel, Vallabhbhai, Sardar, 243 
patriotism, 21-22, 23, 24-25, 76 
peace, the gospel of, 45, 125, 246 


268 



peasantry, 18, 32, 39, 40, 44 
see also agriculture, village 
Persia. 86 (fn). 168, 169, 179 
Petain, 227 
philanthropy, 112 

see also altruism, charity 
poetry, 44, 65, 127, 138 
Poland. 231 
political systems, 

in ancient India, 137, 165, 172, 
177-178, 214, 220-221, 248, 
in the West, 103-104, 172, 214 
see also Communism, democracy, 
Socialism 

politician, 45, 132, 202 
Indian politicians, 173, 182-183, 
184-185, 221, 229 
the qualities of, 20, 25, 202 
politics, 18, 20, 41, 45, 55, 149, 240 
European/Western, 149, 151, 153-154 
the field of the Kshatriya, 20 
Indian politics. 93, 110, 151, 153-154, 
171, 177, 182-183, 184 
language of, 31, 138 
spirituality in, 50-51, 57, 61, 93, 132, 
138-139, 149, 184 
Pondicherry, 71, 83 
population, see under overpopulation 
poverty, 40, 102, 112, 220 
power (divine, spiritual), 21, 23, 25-26, 
36-37, 55-56. 57. 74. Ill, 141, 160, 

184, 236, 238, 254 
see also Shakti, strength 
pralaya, 74 
press, 80, 174 
propaganda, 196 
psychoanalysis, 197-198, 218 
psychology, 198 

Puranas, 69, 96, 100 (fn), 105, 110 


R 

Rajagopalachari, Chakravarti, 166, 
237-238 (fn) 

Rama, 238 

Ramakrishna, 76, 102 
Ramakrishna Mission, 112 
Ramayana, 98 (fn) 

Ramdas. 46 
Ramprasad, 146 
Rao. S. R., 10 \(fn) 


rationalism, 55, 85, 140 
reason, 1, 85, 201-202 
reforms/reformers, 89-90 
religion. 49, 101, 129-130, 169, 182, 190, 
201, 207 

aggressive religions, 183 
degeneration/failure of, 80, 169, 182, 
196 

divorced from life, 51, 68, 139 
European conception of, 50, 68, 139, 
145-146 

Indian conception of, 69, 182 
notion of single religion, 147 
see also Christianity, Hinduism, 
Islam, sanatana dharma, spirituality 
renunciation (of life), 106-107, 240 
republic (in ancient India), 137, 178, 248 
revolution, 37, 38, 110 
era of, 140-141 
spiritual, 129 
Rig-Veda. see under Veda 
Rishis, 26. 49. 89, 98 (fn), 116, 121, 158 
Rolland, Romain, 193 
Rome (ancient), 80, 119, 137 
Roth, Prof, von, 116 
Roy, Motilal, 105 
Rudra, 123, 144 
Russel, Bertrand, 193 
Russia. 193, 225, 252 
Russians, 176, 217 


s 

samata, 206 
Samurai, 29, 44 

Sanatana dharma, 49-50, 51, 69, 93, 94, 
145 

see also Hinduism 
Sannyasin, 69, 106, 219 
Sanskrit, 12, 100 (fn), 107, 109, 118, 157 
Saraswati (river), 101 (fn) 

Satyagraha, Satyagrahi, 151, 166, 180, 
209 

Satya Yuga, 91 
Sayana, 94-96, 105, 116 
scholarship, 

in Europe, 12. 80, 95-96, 97 (fn), 98 (fn), 
107, 115, 116 

in India, 12. 98 (fn), 115-116 
science. 49. 59. 77-78, 80. 110, 127, 134, 
135, 137, 235, 249 


269 



in ancient India, 137 
in the Veda, 117 
its limitation, 197 
superstition of, 87, 99 
see also education 
secular (nothing secular), 146, 149 
Shakespeare, 77 
Shakti, 13-15, 139, 152-153 
see also India, strength 
Shankaracharya, 29, 87. 92. 94-95, 97. 
112, 204 

Shastra, 69, 86-87, 89, 146 
Shiva, 29, 98 (fn), 123 
Shivaji, 46 

Shudras, 29, 119, 120-121 
Sikh Gurus, 146 
Sikhs, 63 

Sinde, Nana Saheb, 218 
Socialism/Socialists, 103, 135, 174, 215, 
220 

soul-force, 124, 191 
spiritism, 200 

spirituality, 50. 51, 92, 135, 138, 171, 200 
age of, 135-136 

basis of life. 154, 159, 203, 219 
European notion of, 139, 200 
of India, see under India, her 
spirituality 

in politics, 50-51, 57. 61. 93, 138-139, 
149-150, 184 
in society, 134, 138-139 
spiritualization of life/man, 129, 
134-135, 139, 140 
Sri Aurobindo's idea of, 149 
true spirituality, 139 
Sri Aurobindo (main events in his life, 
chronological ly), 
return from England, 9 
in Baroda service, 11 
his revolutionary action, 13, 246 
editor of Bande Mataram, 17 
principal of Bengal National 
College, 27 

behind the Nationalist movement, 
195-196, 246 

Bande Mataram sedition case, 27, 
195-196 

Surat Congress, 35 
Alipore Bomb Case, 47 
withdrawal from politics, 71, 110-111, 
151 

departure for Chandernagore, 71 


departure for Pondicherry, 71, 83 
meeting with Mother, 113 
calls for his return to politics, 
148-149, 155-156 
his withdrawal in 1926, 187 
accident to his leg, 211 
his support for the Allies, 231, 236, 238 
his public support for Cripps’ 
proposal, 224 (fn), 237 
his message for India's Independ¬ 
ence, 244-245 
his passing, 255 
see also Chronology, p. 257 ff 
Srinivas Iyengar, 215 
Stalin, 215, 225 

strength, 14-15, 16, 18, 21, 32, 36, 45, 
52-53, 54. 57. 58. 124, 125-126 
see also India, Shakti 
suffering. 22-23, 166-167, 176, 253 
Sufism, 168 

supermind, supramental, 173-174, 199, 
200 

superstition, 55, 85, 87, 90, 95, 99-100, 
106, 200 

svadharma, 177, 182, 250 
Swadeshi movement, 17, 35, 39, 40 (fn), 
156, 180, 183, 195 
Swaraj, 17, 35, 56, 93, 180, 209 
inner, 53 


T 

Tagore, Rabindranath, 17, 27, 193, 194, 
215 

Tagore, Surendranath, 13 

Tamil (language), 109 

Tamil saints, 146 

Tantra, 105 

Taoists, 190 

tapasya, 111 

taxes, 221 

terrorism, 56, 93. 246 
theosophy, 94, 200 
Tibet, 251-253 

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, Lokmanya, 

17, 132, 148, 155, 160, 185, 195, 246 
tolerance, 179 

Tolstoy/Tolstoy ism, 151, 176 
tradition, 191, 240-241 
tribals, 32, 44 


270 



truth, 37, 57. 112, 122, 197 
infinite, 204 
loyalty to, 206-207 
monopoly of, 190 

new Truth, 171, 184, 196, 200-201, 241 
spiritual truth, 202 
supreme Truth, 254 
Tukaram, 146 
Turkey, 169 


u 

unity, 31, 167 
see also Indian 

Upanishads, 69. 97. 105, 110, 137, 171, 
194, 201 

Uttarpara Speech, 48-49 


V 

Vaishyas, 29. 120-121 
Vande Mataram, see under Bande 
Mataram 

Veda, Vedas, 48, 69, 94-99, 105-109, 
116-118, 170, 190 
date of, 101 (fn) 
and India's future, 94 
lost sense of, 95, 96-97, 114 
Rock of the Ages, 97 
scientific knowledge in, 117-118 
secret of, 99, 122 
symbolism of, 98 (fn), 114 
viewed by Western scholars, 95-97, 
107, 116-117 

Vedanta, 52, 95, 96, 109, 168 
Vedic age/civilization, 96, 119-120 
Vedic Rishis, see under Rishis 
village, 39, 41 

in ancient India, 172, 220 
development, 172, 180 
see also agriculture, peasantry 
violence, see under non-violence 
virtue, 171 
Vishnu, 98 (fn), 144 

Vivekananda, Swami, 9, 24, 76, 97, 102, 
185, 219 
Voltaire, 77 


w 

Wakankar, V. S., 101 (fn) 
war, 81-82, 123-124, 125, 202, 239-240 
see also World War I, II 
waste. 198-199, 215 
West. 25. 88 

red evening of, 157 
see also Europe 

Western civilization, 24 (fn), 41, 42, 56, 
59. 77-81, 114, 127-128, 140, 157, 216 
Wilson, H. H.. 91 (fn) 
woman, 102, 181, 185 
in ancient India, 119 
in politics, 181 

her status with regard to man, 90 
her subjection, 138 
World War I, 124, 125, 216 
World War II. 211, 238-239 

Sri Aurobindo's support of the Allies, 
231, 236, 238 


Y-Z 

Yajfiavalkya, 96 
Yaska, 96 

Yoga. 48, 52. 69, 109, 137, 159, 186 
national Yoga, 93 
old system of, 150, 194 
Sri Aurobindo's. 144-145, 171, 189, 
191, 193-194, 201, 202, 203 
youth, the young, 44, 52, 57, 154 
see also education 
Yugantar (Bengali weekly), 17 
zamindars, 40 (fn) 
zenana, 44 


271 



< 537 , 9 * • 

!■*■* , m, \ f& 

CfiYltj TrV >a ^ I ff 


Acheve d’imprimer sur les presses de 
Thomson Press (Faridabad, Inde) pour 
I’lnstitut de Recherches fivolutives, 
janvier 1997 


Depot legal l er trimestre 1997 



What makes India a country unlike any other? 

What power can bring about her rebirth? 

Today, with the worldwide churning of blood and mud 
about to smother us, our answer to these questions will 
decide India’s destiny. 

The present selection from Sri Aurobindo’s writings 
is intended for those who seek such an answer. 


"India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her 
last creative word; she lives and has still something 
to do for herself and the human peoples. And that 
which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised 
oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed 
to repeat the cycle of the Occident’s success and 
failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti 
recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher 
towards the supreme source of light and strength 
and turning to discover the complete meaning and a 
vaster form of her Dharma.” 

Sri Aurobindo 


ISBN 2-902776-47-0 
& 81-85137-27-7