Sri Aurobindo And The Mother - On India
ON
THE WAR
1 Some forces are working for
the Divine, some are quite anti-divine in their aim and purpose.
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 invincible,
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.
To be a successful instrument for the
Asuric forces is easy, because they take all the movements of your
lower nature and make use of them, so that you have no
spiritual effort to make. On the contrary, if you are to be a fit
instrument of the Divine Force you must make yourself perfectly pure,
since it is only in an integrally divinised instrument that the Divine
Force will have its full power and effect.
4-7-1940
*
2 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.
19-9-1940
*
_____________________________
1 From a letter to a
disciple.
2 This letter was addressed
to the Governor of Madras covering a contribution to the Viceroy's War Purposes Fund,
made as a token of a complete adhesion to the Allied cause. It was written at the
time of the collapse of France and the threatened collapse of Britain. It was placed at
the disposal of the Governor for publicity in case of need.
Page 24
1 You have said that you have begun to doubt Whether it was the Mother's war and ask me to make you feel again that it is. I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's war. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance. It is no use concentrating on the defects or mistakes of nations; all have defects and commit serious mistakes; but what matters is on what side they have ranged themselves in the struggle. It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room to think and act according to the light in them and grow in the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot be the slightest doubt that if one side wins, there will be an end of all such freedom and hope of light and truth and the work that has to be donewill be subjected to conditions which would make it humanly impossible; there will be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. If the other side that has declared itself for the free future of humanity triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted and conditions will have been created in which there will be a chance for the Ideal to grow, for the Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura.
29-7-1942
*
2 What we say is not that the
Allies have not done wrong things, but that they stand on the side of the
evolutionary forces. I have not said that at random, but on what to me are
clear grounds of fact. What you speak of is the dark side. All
nations and governments have been that in their dealings with each other,
-at least all who had the strength and got the chance. I hope you are not
expecting me to believe that
_____________________________
1 This letter was written to a disciple in answer to his doubts about Sri Aurobindo's publicly declared standpoint with regard to the War.
2 These are extracts from a letter written to a disciple in answer to certain doubts and misgivings regarding Sri Aurobindo's unconditional and all-out help to the Allies in the War.
Page 25
there are or have been virtuous governments and unselfish and sinless peoples! But there is the other side also. You are condemning the Allies on grounds that people in the past would have stared at, on the basis of modern ideals of international conduct; looked at like that all have black records. But who created these ideals or did most to create them (liberty, democracy, equality, international justice and the rest)? Well, America, France, England - the present Allied nations. They have all been imperialistic and still bear the burden of their past, but they have also deliberately spread these ideals and spread too the institutions which try to embody them. Whatever the relative worth of these things-they have been a stage, even if a still imperfect stage of the forward evolution. (What about the others? Hitler, for example,says it is a Crime to educate the coloured peoples, they must be kept as serfs and labourers.) England has helped certain nations to be free without seeking any personal gain; she has also conceded independence to Egypt and Eire after a struggle, to Iraq without a struggle. She has been moving away steadily, if slowly, from imperialism towards co-operation; the British Commonwealth of England and the Dominions is something unique and unprecedented, a beginning of new things in that direction: she is moving in idea towards a world-union of some kind in which aggression is to be made impossible; her new generation has no longer the old firm belief in mission and empire; she has offered India Dominion independence-or even sheer isolated independence, if she wants that,-after the war, with an agreed free constitution to be chosen by Indians themselves .… All that is what I call evolution in the right direction-however slow and imperfect and hesitating it may still be. As for America she has forsworn her past imperialistic policies in regard to Central and South America, she has conceded independence to Cuba and the Philippines... Is there a similar trend on the side of the Axis? One has to look at things on all sides, to see them steadily and whole. Once again, it is the forces working behind that I have to look at, I don't want to go blind among surface details. The future has to be safeguarded; only then can present troubles and contradictions have a chance to be solved and eliminated. . . .
For us the question does not arise. We
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 the right side,
they at once make themselves
Page 26
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 considerations 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. . . .
The Kurukshetra example is not to be
taken as an exact parallel but rather as a traditional instance of
the war between two world-forces in which the side favoured by the
Divine triumphed, because the leaders made themselves His
instruments. It is not to be envisaged as a battle between virtue and
wickedness, the good and the evil men, After all, were even the Pandavas
virtuous without defect, quite unselfish and without passions? . . .
Were not the Pandavas fighting to
establish their own claims and interests just and right, no doubt, but
still personal claims and self-interest? Theirs was a righteous
battle, dharma-yuddha, but it was for right and justice, in their own case.
And if imperialism, empire-building by armed force, is under all
circumstances a wickedness, then the Pandavas are tinted with that brush,
for they used their victory to establish their empire, continued after
them by Parikshit and Janamejaya. Could not modern humanism and
pacifism make it a reproach against the Pandavas that these
Virtuous men (including Krishna) brought about a huge slaughter that
they might become supreme rulers over all the numerous free and
independent peoples of India? That would be the result of weighing old
happenings in the scales of modern ideals. As a matter of fact such an
empire was a step in the right direction then, just as world-union of
free peoples would be a step in the right direction now,-in both cases the
right consequences of a terrific slaughter. . . .
We should remember that conquest and
rule over subject peoples were not regarded as wrong either in
ancient or mediaeval or
Page 27
quite recent times but as something great and glorious; men did not see special wickedness in conquerors or conquering nations. Just government of subject peoples was envisaged but nothing more-exploitation was not excluded. The modern ideas on the subject, the right of all to liberty, both individuals and nations, the immorality of conquest and empire, or such compromises as the British idea of training subject races for democratic freedom, are new values, an evolutionary movement; this is a new Dharma which has only begun slowly and initially to influence practice,-an infant Dharma which would have been throttled for good if Hitler succeeded in his "Avataric" mission and established his new "religion" over all the earth. Subject nations naturally accept the new Dharma and severely criticise the old imperialisms; it is to be hoped that they will practise what they now preach when they themselves become strong and rich and powerful. But the best will be if a new world-order evolves, even if at first stumblingly or incompletely, which will make the old things impossible-a difficult task, but not absolutely impossible.
The Divine takes men as they are and
uses men as His instruments even if they are not flawless in virtue,
angelic, holy and pure. If they are of good will, if, to use
the Biblical phrase, they are on the Lord's side, that is enough for the
work to be done. 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, and leave for a
later time all side-issues and minor issues or hypothetical problems that
would cloud. the one all-important tragic issue before us.
3-9-1943
*
MESSAGE TO SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS
I have heard your broadcast. 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
Page 28
31-3-1942
*
SRI AUROBINDO'S POSITION ON INDIA'S
INDEPENDENCE 2
Sri Aurobindo thinks it unnecessary to
volunteer a personal pronouncement, though he would give his Views if
officially approached for them. His position is known. He has always stood for India's complete independence which he was
the first to advocate publicly and without compromise as the only ideal
worthy of a self-respecting nation. In 1910 he authorized the
publication of his prediction that after a long period of wars, world-Wide
upheavals and revolutions beginning after four years, India would
achieve her freedom. Lately he has said that freedom was coming
soon and nothing could prevent it. He has always foreseen that
eventually Britain would approach India for an amicable agreement,
conceding her freedom. What he had foreseen is now coming to pass and
the British Cabinet Mission is the sign. It remains for the
nation's leaders to make a right and full use of the opportunity. In any case,
whatever the immediate outcome, the Power that has been working out
this event will not be denied, the final result, India's liberation,
is sure.
24-3-1946
*
1 SRI S.CRIPPS' TELEGRAM IN REPLY TO SRI AUROBINDO'S MESSAGE:
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.
2 This statement was given
in reply to a request from Amrita Bazar Patrika for Sri Aurobindo's views on the British
Cabinet Mission, 1946.
Page 29
THE FIFTEENTH OF AUGUST 1947
I
1August 15th is the
birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new
age. But it has a significance not only for us, but for Asia and the
whole world; for it signifies the entry into the comity of nations of a
new power with untold potentialities which has a great part to play
in determining the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of
humanity. To me personally it must naturally be gratifying that this date
which was notable only for me because it was my own birthday
celebrated annually by those who have accepted my gospel of life, should
have acquired this vast significance. As a mystic, I take this
identification, not as a coincidence or fortuitous accident, but as a sanction
and seal of the Divine Power which guides my steps on the work with
which I began life. Indeed almost all the world movements which I
hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though at that time they
looked like impossible dreams, I can observe on this day either approaching
fruition or initiated and on the way to their achievement.
I have been asked for a message on this
great occasion, but I am perhaps hardly in a position to give
one. All I can do is to make a personal declaration of the aims and
ideals conceived in my childhood and youth and now watched in their
beginning of fulfilment, because they are relevant to the freedom of
India, since they are a part of what I believe to be India's future
work, something in which she cannot but take a leading position. For
I have always held and said that India was arising, not to serve her own
material interests only, to achieve expansion, greatness, power and
prosperity,-though these too she must not neglect,-and certainly not
like others to acquire domination of other peoples, but to live also
for God and the world as a helper and leader of the whole human
race. Those aims and ideals were in their natural order these: a
revolution which would achieve India's freedom and her unity; the
resurgence and liberation of Asia and her return to the great role which
she had played in the progress of human civilisation; the rise of a
new, a greater, brighter and nobler
_____________________________
1 This message, given at the
request of the All India Radio, Trichinopoly, for the 15th August 1947, is in two
versions. The original version was found to be a little too long for the time allotted
for the message; so in the second version it was slightly abridged and recast. It is
this second version that was broadcast from the All India Radio on the 14th August
1947. Both the versions are published here consecutively.
Page 30
life for mankind which for its entire realisation would rest outwardly on an international unification of the separate existence of the peoples, preserving and securing their national life but drawing them together into an overriding and consummating oneness; the gift by India of her spiritual knowledge and her means for the spiritualisation of life to the whole, race; finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the many problems of existence which have perplexed and vexed humanity, since men began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society.
India is free but she has not achieved
unity, only a fissured and broken freedom. At one time it almost
seemed as if she might relapse into the chaos of separate States which
preceded the British conquest. Fortunately there has now developed a
strong possibility that this disastrous relapse will be avoided. The
wisely drastic policy of the Constituent Assembly makes it possible
that the problem of the depressed classes will be solved without
schism or fissure. But 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 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, possible 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 fundamental 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.
Asia has arisen and large parts of it
have been liberated or are at this moment being liberated; its
other still subject parts are moving through whatever struggles
towards freedom. Only a little has to be done and that will be done today or
tomorrow. There India has her part to play and has begun to play
it with an energy and ability which already indicate the measure of
her possibilities and the place she can take in the council of the
nations.
The unification of mankind is under
way, though only in an imperfect initiative, organised but
struggling against tremendous difficulties.
Page 31
But the momentum is there and, if the experience of history can be taken as a guide, it must inevitably increase until it conquers. Here too India has begun to play a prominent part and, if she can develop that larger statesmanship which is not limited by the present facts and immediate possibilities but looks into the future and brings it nearer, her presence may make all the difference between a slow and timid and a bold and swift development. A catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy What is being done, but even then the final result is sure. For in any case the unification is a necessity in the course of Nature, an inevitable movement and its achievement can be safely foretold. Its necessity for the nations also is clear, for without it the freedom of the small peoples can never be safe hereafter and even large and powerful nations cannot really be secure. India, if she remains divided, will not herself be sure of her safety. It is therefore to the interest of all that union should take place. Only human imbecility and stupid selfishness could prevent it. Against that, it has been said, even the gods strive in vain; but it cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine Will. Nationalism will then have fulfilled itself; an international spirit and outlook must grow up and international forms and institutions; even it may be such developments as dual or multilateral citizenship and a voluntary fusion of cultures may appear in the process of the change and the spirit of nationalism losing its militancy may find these things perfectly compatible with the integrity of its own outlook. A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human race.
The spiritual gift of India to the
world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and
America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid
the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards
her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to
her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice.
The rest is still a personal hope and
an idea and ideal which has begun to take hold both in India and in
the West of forward-looking minds. The difficulties in the way are
more formidable than in any other field of endeavour, but
difficulties were made to be overcome and if the Supreme Will is there, they
will be overcome. Here too, if this evolution is to take place,
since it must come through a growth of the spirit and the inner
consciousness, the initiative can come from India and although the scope must be
universal, the central movement may be hers.
Such is the content which I put into
this date of India's liberation;
Page 32
whether or how far or. how soon this connection will be fulfilled, depends upon this new and free India.
*
THE FIFTEENTH OF AUGUST 1947
II
August 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.
August 15th is my own birthday and it
is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this
vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous
accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides
my
steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full
fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the
world-movements
which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked
like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to
achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large
part and take a leading position.
The first of these dreams was a
revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India.
India today is free but she has not achieved unity. At one moment it
almost seemed as if in the very act of liberation she would fall back
into the chaos of separate States which preceded the British conquest.
But fortunately it now seems probable that this danger will be
averted and a large and powerful, though not yet a complete union will be
established. Also, the wisely drastic policy of the Constituent
Assembly has made it probable that the problem of the depressed classes
will be solved without schism or fissure. But the old communal division
into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent
political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this
settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever 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,
possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India's internal
development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations
weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be;
the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about
naturally, by an increasing recognition
Page 33
of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may finally come about under whatever form-the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India's future.
Another dream was for the resurgence
and liberation of the peoples of Asia and her return to her great
role in the progress of human civilisation. Asia has arisen; large
parts are now quite free or are at this moment being liberated: its other
still subject or partly subject parts are moving through whatever
struggles towards freedom. Only a little has to be done and that will
be done today or tomorrow. There India has her part to play and has
begun to play it with an energy and ability which already indicate the
measure of her possibilities and the place she can take in the council
of the nations.
The third dream was a world-union
forming the other outer basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life
for all mankind. That unification of the human world is under way; there
is an imperfect initiation organised but struggling against
tremendous difficulties. But the momentum is there and it must
inevitably increase and conquer. Here too India has begun to play a prominent
part and, if she can develop that larger statesmanship which is not
limited by the present facts and immediate possibilities but looks into
the future and brings it nearer, her presence may make all the
difference between a slow and timid and a bold and swift development. A
catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy what is being
done, but even then the final result is sure. For unification is a necessity
of Nature, an inevitable movement. Its necessity for the nations is
also clear, for without it the freedom of the small nations may be at
any moment in peril and the life even of the large and powerful nations
insecure. The unification is therefore to the interests of all, and
only human imbecility and stupid selfishness can prevent it; but these
cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine
Will. But an outward basis is not enough; there must grow up an
international spirit and outlook, international forms and
institutions must appear, perhaps such developments as dual or
multilateral citizenship, willed interchange or voluntary fusion of
cultures. Nationalism will have fulfilled itself and lost its militancy and would no longer find
these things incompatible with self-preservation
and the integrality of its outlook. A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human
race.
Page 34
Another dream, the spiritual gift of India to the world, has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice.
The final dream was a step in evolution
which Would raise man to. a higher and larger consciousness
and begin the solution of the problems which have perplexed and vexed
him since he first began to think and to dream of individual
perfection and a perfect society. This is still a personal hope and an
idea, an ideal which has begun to take hold both in India and in the West
on forward-looking minds. The difficulties in the way are more
formidable than in any other field of endeavour, but difficulties were
made to be overcome and if the Supreme Will is there, they will be
overcome. Here too, if this evolution is to take place, since it must
proceed through a growth of the spirit and the inner consciousness, the
initiative can come from India and, although the scope must be
universal, the central movement may be hers.
Such is the content which I put into
this date of India's liberation; whether or how far this hope will be
justified depends upon the new and free India.
*
A MESSAGE 1
I would have preferred silence in the
face of these circumstances that surround us. For any words we can find
fall flat amid such happenings. This much, however, I will say that the
Light which led us to freedom, though not yet to unity, still burns
and will burn on till it conquers. I believe firmly that a great and
united future is the destiny of this nation and its peoples. The
Power that brought us through so much struggle and suffering to freedom,
will achieve also, through whatever strife or trouble, the aim
which so poignantly occupied the thoughts of the fallen leader at the
time of his tragic ending; as it brought us freedom, it will bring us
unity. A free and united India will be there and the Mother will
gather around her her sons and
_____________________________
1 Given in answer to a
request from the All India Radio, Trichinopoly, on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's death.
Page 35
weld them into a single national strength in the life of a great and united people.
5-2-1948
*
MESSAGE TO THE ANDHRA UNIVERSITY 1
You have asked me for a message and
anything I write, since it is to the Andhra University that I am
addressing my message, if it can be called by that name, should be
pertinent to your University, its function, its character and the
work it has to do. But it is difficult for me at this juncture when momentous
decisions are being taken which are likely to determine not only the form
and pattern of this country's Government and administration but the
pattern of its destiny, the build and make-up of the nation's
character, its position in the world with regard to other nations, its
choice of what itself shall be, not to turn my eyes in that direction.
There is one problem facing the country which concerns us nearly and to
this I shall now turn and deal with it, however inadequately,-the
demand for the reconstruction of the artificial British-made
Presidencies and Provinces into natural divisions forming a new system, new and
yet founded on the principle of diversity in unity attempted by
ancient India. 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 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 succeeded 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
_____________________________
1 This message was given by
Sri Aurobindo to the Andhra University on the occasion of the presentation of the Sir
Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy National Prize to him at the convocation held at the
University on the 11th December 1948.
Page 36
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. But throughout India's history the political unity was never entirely attained and for this there were several causes,-first, vastness of space and insufficiency of communications preventing the drawing close of all these different peoples; secondly, the method used which was the military domination by one people or one imperial dynasty over the rest of the country which led to a succession of empires, none of them permanent; lastly, the absence of any will to crush out of existence all these different kingdoms and fuse together these different peoples and force them into a single substance and a single shape. Then came the British Empire in India which recast the whole country into artificial provinces made for its own convenience, disregarding the principle of division into regional peoples but not abolishing that division. For there had grown up out of the original elements a natural system of sub-nations with different languages, literatures and other traditions of their own, the four Dravidian peoples, Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of the North, Rajputana and Bihar. British rule with its provincial administration did not unite these peoples but it did impose upon them the habit of a common type of administration, a closer intercommunication through the English language and by the education it gave there was a created a more diffused and more militant form of patriotism, the desire for liberation and the need of unity in the struggle to achieve that liberation. A sufficient fighting unity was brought about to win freedom, but freedom obtained did not carry with it a complete union of the country. On the contrary, India was deliberately split on the basis of the two-nation theory into Pakistan and Hindustan with the deadly consequences which we know.
In taking over the administration from
Britain we had inevitably to follow the line of least resistance
and proceed on the basis of the artificial British-made provinces, at
least for the time; this provisional arrangement now threatens to become
permanent, at least in the main and some see an advantage in this
permanence. For they think it will help the unification of the country and
save us from the necessity of preserving regional sub-nations which
in the past kept a country from an entire and thorough-going
unification and uniformity. In a
Page 37
rigorous unification they see the only true union, a single nation with a standardised and uniform administration, language, literature, culture, art, education,-all carried on through the agency of one national tongue. How far such a conception can be carried out in the future one cannot forecast, but at present it is obviously impracticable and it is doubtful if it is for India truly desirable. 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 interplay have been abolished in their separating effect by the march of Science and the swiftness of the means of communication. 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 satisfying their legitimate aspirations. The Congress itself in the days before liberation came had pledged itself to the formation of linguistic provinces, and to follow it out, if not immediately, 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.
This development might well be regarded
as the inevitable trend of her future. For the Dravidian
regional peoples are demanding their separate right to a self-governing
existence; Maharashtra expects a similar concession and this would mean
a similar development in Gujarat and then the British-made
Presidencies of Madras and Bombay would have disappeared. The old Bengal
Presidency had already been Split up and Orissa, Bihar and Assam
are now self-governing regional peoples. A merger of the Hindi-speaking
part of the Central Provinces and the U.P. would complete the
process. An annulment of the partition
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of India might modify but would not materially alter this result of the general tendency. A union of States and regional peoples would again be the form of a united India.
In this new regime your University will
find its function and fulfilment. Its origin has been
different from that of other Indian Universities; they were
established by the initiative of a foreign Government as a means of
introducing their own civilisation into India, situated in the capital
towns of the
Presidencies and formed as teaching and examining bodies with purely
academic aims: Benares and Aligarh had a different origin but were
all-India institutions serving the two chief religious communities of
the country. Andhra University has been created by a patriotic Andhra
initiative, situated not in a Presidency capital but in an Andhra
town and serving consciously the life of a regional people. The home of
a robust and virile and energetic race, great by the part it had
played in the past in the political life of India, great by its
achievements in art, architecture, sculpture, music, Andhra looks back
upon imperial
memories, a place in the succession of empires and imperial dynasties
which reigned over a large part of the country; it looks back on
the more recent memory of the glories of the last Hindu Empire of
Vijayanagar,-a magnificent record for any people. Your University can
take its high position as a centre of light and learning, knowledge
and culture which can train the youth of Andhra to be worthy of
their forefathers: the great past should lead to a future as great or
even greater. Not only Science but Art, not only book-knowledge and
information but growth in culture and character are parts of a true
education; to help the individual to develop his capacities, to help in
the
forming of thinkers and creators and men of vision and action of the
future, this is a part of its work. Moreover, the life of the regional
people must not be shut up in itself; its youths have also to contact
the
life of the other similar peoples of India interacting with them in
industry
and commerce and the other practical fields of life but also in
the things of the mind and spirit. Also, they have to learn not only to
be
citizens of Andhra but to be citizens of India; the life of the
nation is their life. An elite has to be formed which has an adequate
understanding of all great national affairs or problems and be able to
represent Andhra in the councils of the nation and in every activity and
undertaking of national. interest calling for the support and
participation of her peoples. There is still a wider field in which India will need
the services of men of ability and character from all parts of the
country, the international field. For she stands already as a
considerable international figure and this
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will grow as time goes on into vast proportions; she is likely in time to take her place as one of the preponderant States whose voices will be strongest and their lead and their action, determinative of the world's future. For all this she needs men whose training as well as their talent, and force of character is of the first order. In all these fields your University can be of supreme service and do a work of immeasurable importance.
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
formidable. There is a disordered world-situation left by the war, full
of risks and suffering and shortages and threatening another
catastrophe which can only be solved by the united effort of the
peoples and
can only be truly met by an effort at world-union such as was
conceived at San Francisco but has not till now been very successful in
the practice; still the effort has to be continued and new devices
found
which will make easier the difficult transition from the perilous
divisions of the past and present to a harmonious world-order; for
otherwise
there can be no escape from continuous calamity and collapse. 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 industry and commerce, a powerful
organisation of social and 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 progression
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
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liberation and change, a vast inner and outer progress is needed if we are to fulfil India's true destiny.
*
CURRENT POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC IDEAS 1
Sri Aurobindo is in no way bound by the
present world's institutions or current ideas whether in political,
social or economic field; it is not necessary for him either to approve
or disapprove of them. He does not regard either capitalism or
orthodox socialism as the right solution for the world's future; nor
can he admit that the admission of private enterprise by itself makes
the society capitalistic, a socialistic economy can very well admit
some amount of controlled or subordinated private enterprise as an
aid to its own. working or a partial convenience without ceasing to be
socialistic. Sri Aurobindo has his own views as to how far Congress
economy is intended to be truly socialistic or whether that is only a
cover, but he does not care to express his views on that point at
present.
15-4-1949
*
A MESSAGE TO AMERICA 2
I have been asked to send on this
occasion of the fifteenth August a message to the West, but what I have to
say might be delivered equally as a message to the East. It has been customary to dwell on the division and difference between
these two sections of the human family and even oppose them to each
other; but, for myself I rather be disposed to dwell on oneness
and unity than on division and difference. East and West have the
same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after
a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher
than itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we
move. There has been a tendency in some minds to dwell on the
spirituality or mysticism of the East and materialism of the West; but
the West has had no less than
_____________________________
1 A letter to a Sadhak.
2 Given in response to a
request for a message on the occasion of Sri Aurobindo's birth
anniversary celebrations in New York on the 15th August 1949.
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the East its spiritual seekings and, though not in such profusion, its saints and sages and mystics, the East has had its materialistic tendencies, its material splendours, its similar or identical dealings with life and Matter and the world in which we live. East and West have always met and mixed more or less closely, they have powerfully influenced each other and at the present day are under an increasing compulsion of Nature and Fate to do so more than even before.
There is a common hope, a common
destiny, both spiritual and material, for which both are needed as
co-workers. It is no longer towards division and difference that we
should turn our minds, but on unity, union, even oneness necessary
for the pursuit and realisation of a common ideal, the destined goal, the
fulfilment towards which Nature in her beginning obscurely set out
and must in an increasing light of knowledge replacing her first
ignorance constantly persevere.
But what shall be that ideal and that
goal? That depends on our conception of the realities of life and
the supreme Reality.
Here we have to take into account that
there has been, not any absolute difference but an increasing
divergence between the tendencies of the East and the West. The highest
truth is truth of the Spirit; a Spirit supreme above the world and
yet immanent in the world and in all that exists, sustaining and
leading all towards whatever is the aim and goal and the fulfilment of
Nature
since her obscure inconscient beginnings through the growth of
consciousness is the one aspect of existence which gives a clue to the
secret of our being and a meaning to the world. The East has always and
increasingly put the highest emphasis on the supreme truth of the
Spirit; it has, even in its extreme philosophies, put the world away as
an
illusion and regarded the Spirit as the sole reality. The West has
concentrated more and more increasingly on the world, on the dealings
of mind and life with our material existence, on our mastery over it,
on
the perfection of mind and life and some fulfilment of the human being
here: latterly this has gone so far as the denial of the Spirit and
even the enthronement of Matter as the sole reality. Spiritual
perfection as the sole ideal on one side, on the other, the
perfectibility of the
race, the perfect society, a perfect development of the human mind
and life and man's material existence have become the largest dream
of the future. Yet both are truths and can be regarded as part of
the intention of the Spirit in world-nature; they are not incompatible
with each other: rather their divergence has to be healed and both
have to be included and reconciled in our view of the future.
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The Science of the West has discovered evolution as the secret of life and its process in this material world; but it has laid more stress on the growth of form and species than on the growth of consciousness: even, consciousness has been regarded as an incident and not the whole secret of the meaning of the evolution. An evolution has been admitted by certain minds in the East, certain philosophies and Scriptures, but there its sense has been the growth of the soul through developing or successive forms and many lives of the individual to its own highest reality. For if there is a conscious being in the form, that being can hardly be a temporary phenomenon of consciousness; it must be a soul fulfilling itself and this fulfilment can only take place if there is a return of the soul to earth in many successive lives, in many successive bodies.
The process of evolution has been the
development from and in inconscient Matter of a subconscient
and then a conscious Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and
then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present
achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at
present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final work; but
it is possible to conceive a still further step of the evolution: Nature
may have in View beyond the imperfect mind of man a consciousness
that passes out of the mind's ignorance and possesses truth as its
inherent right and nature. There is a Truth-Consciousness as it is
called in the Veda, a Supermind, as I have termed it, possessing Knowledge,
not having to seek after it and constantly miss it. In one of the
Upanishads a being of knowledge is stated to be the next step above the
mental being; into that the soul has to rise and through it to attain
the perfect bliss of spiritual existence. If that could be achieved
as the next evolutionary step of Nature here, then she would be,
fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its
attainment of a full spiritual living even in this body or it may be in a
perfected body. We could even speak of a divine life on earth; our
human dream of perfectibility would be accomplished and at the same
time the aspiration to a heaven on earth common to several religions
and spiritual seers and thinkers.
The ascent of the human soul to the
supreme Spirit is that soul's highest aim and necessity, for that is
the supreme reality; but there can be too the descent of the Spirit and
its powers into the world and that would justify the existence of the
material world also, give a meaning, a divine purpose to the
creation and solve its riddle. East and West could be reconciled in the
pursuit of the highest and largest
Page 43
ideal, Spirit embrace Matter and Matter find its own true reality and the hidden Reality in all things in the Spirit.
11-8-1949
*
THE PRESENT DARKNESS AND THE NEW WORLD
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 growworst 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. It is, as in Yoga,
where things active or latent in the being have to be put into action in the
light so that they may be grappled with and thrown out or to
emerge from latency in the depths for the same purificatory purpose. Also
they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and
that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remember 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.
18-7-1948
*
You have expressed in one of your
letters your sense of the present darkness in the world round us and
this must have been one of the things that contributed to your
being so badly upset and unable immediately to repel the attack. 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,
Page 44
India is 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. . . . Here too there is sure to be a full clearance, 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 conditions, to consider my will to help the world as condemned to failure.
4-4-1950
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