SRI AUROBINDO: SECULARIST?

OR NATIONALIST?

Dr. K.S. NARAYANACHARYA

KAUTILYA INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL STUDIES, MYSORE

Sri Aurobindo – Secularist? Or Nationalist?

By Dr. K.S. Narayanacharya, Published by Kautilya Institute of National Studies,

Chamaraja Mohalla, Mysore 570 005, Karnataka, India.

The Kautilya Institute of National Studies has no animosity for anyone, no

disrespect for difference of views, and no dislike for any segment of humanity, ancient or

present. It is simply interested in bringing together all the best from all the quarters, that

is necessary and vital to make our life collectively safe, beautiful, enjoyable, meaningful in a

forward flow that providence has set for it so strongly that inimical forces are doomed for

extinction by nature as it were. These are holding on to artificial, cruel, terrorist aids and

for too long. The time for reckoning has arrived at long last, let us hope.

The beautiful, hopeful and meaningful vision of an Indian Renaissance held by Swamy

Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Netaji and millions of martyrs has been frustrated by

false men, usurpers, "men of straw" in the past half century. Let us defeat these internal

inimical forces also and march on.

Publications so far: 1. Semetic Challenges 2. Fundamentalism versus Hinduism 3. Sri Ramanuja, Melukote and Srivaishnavism 4. T.S. Eliot, and Hindu Influence on his 'The Wasteland' (in Kannada) 5. Relevance of Kautilya for Today

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In the Press: 1. Society and the Challenges of Spiritualisation in the Hindu Context

About the Author

Born in 1933, and educated at Mysore, (Maharaja's College and Yuvaraja's College), Sri K.S. Narayanacharya, popularly known as Ramayanacharya, is a B.Sc. (P.C.M), B.A. (Hons) English, and M.A. (Modern English Literature) coming from an orthodox and devout family of Vedic scholars. His Doctoral thesis is on The Influence of Indian thought on the poetry of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot. He has studied the Krishna Yajurveda under the guidance of great masters like the late Dandavati Siva Dixit Somayaji of Dharwad, where he has worked as Professor and Principal of the famed Karnataka Arts College, Karnataka University, for over 32 years as a teacher of English literature. Author of over 70 works in Kannada and English on varied subjects like the Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharatha, Bhagavata, the Hymns of Alwars, Vedanta, Haridasa literature, D.R. Bendre, and Kautilya, Sri Acharya is a recipient of several State awards like Sangeetha Nritya Academy's ‘Karnataka Kala Sri’, the Sahitya Academy prize, ‘Gamaka Rathnakara’ from the State Government, and titles from Religious Heads, like Veda Bhushana, Valmiki Hridayajna, Pravachana Kalanidhi and so on. Music, lndology, poetry, discourses and lecture tours are among the abounding interests of the Acharya. He is an invincible debater and a passionate advocate of Hindu values as lasting solutions for the maladies of our society. He is a novelist too, turning our Epics into popular moulds of fiction. His serials in the Kannada weeklies like Tharanga and Karmavira are very popular and run for months at a stretch. The Acharya is a master of English, Kannada, Sanskrit and Tamil and has lectured all over the country.

For his services to Indian literature and spirituality through works, speech and discourses, the Karnataka State Open University, Mysore has awarded him recently (18th, March, 2005) an Hon D.Litt. degree.

Dedicated to the memories of

Swamy Vivekananda, Swamy Dayananda and Maharshi Sri Aurobindo

Who stood in the forefront of Hindu Renaissance accepting all challenges from within and without and showed

us the way to the future yet to be achieved

“The resplendent Sun is but the Child of Mother Darkeness”

- Taittiriya Aranyaka

“For even out of the darkness the day is born and lightning has its uses.”

- Sri Aurobindo: On the importance of Original thinking,

Essays Divine and Human p.47. “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; There is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.”

“The difficulties that surrounds her* now may increase for a time, especially with regard to the Pakistani 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 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 toward 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.”†

* India (from a letter to a disciple dated April 4, 1950) – Sri Aurobindo’s prophecy. † India’s Rebirth, p.253.

Preface ...............................................................................................................................8

Why all this?................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 1: Attempts to Hijack and ‘Secularise’ Sri Aurobindo!.....................................13

Mischievous Semantics .............................................................................................. 14 Illustration................................................................................................................... 15 Who Are The Misinterpreters?................................................................................... 16 The Apologists............................................................................................................ 17 The Agenda................................................................................................................. 18

Chapter 2: Examination of Wrong Views, Insinuations and Rebuttals...........................20 Personal Note.............................................................................................................. 20 Sri Aurobindo’s Own Views ...................................................................................... 20 The Open End, But the Warning!............................................................................... 22

Chapter 3: Sri Aurobindo on Revivalism ........................................................................25 ‘Spirituality’ and Sri Aurobindo................................................................................. 27

Chapter 4: On Education, and the Place of Sanskrit in it ................................................32 Sanskrit ....................................................................................................................... 34 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 36

Bibliography....................................................................................................................38

Preface The name of the disease is “Secularitis”; like jaundice which makes everything you look at appear yellow; ‘Secularitis’ is now like mass-hysteria, covering up even academia, intelligentsia, the press, the learned and the lay, the sophisticated, the snobbish and the rustic alike. You require this label ‘Secular’ for anything, any idea, ideology, programme to pass of for ‘civilised’, ‘entertainable’ and ‘respectable’ phenomenon. Otherwise you are despicable, contemptible, ridiculous in a topsy-turvy situation, irredeemably secure in its deadly jaws. The symptoms: at the mention of the mere word ‘Hindu’, the patient goes into profound fits of madness, fury, rage; if he regains self-consciousness, by miracle, he becomes apologetic, and tries to explain that it stands for an act of historical blunder, which has no place or meaning in a fast current of ‘internationalism’, which ought not to take route in any form of ‘nationalism’. Hindu means ‘communal’, ‘revivalistic’, even ‘fundamentalist’ as against Islam and Christianity which are really secular, broad-minded, forward-looking and modern. ‘Godhra’ is secular; ‘post-Godhra’ is communal; Cow-protection is communal, astrology a superstition, Indian history by Indians is hopelessly communal, but Indian history by communist comrades is secular, authentic, scientific and ‘impartial’. ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ movement is communal, but vandalism by Muslim hoodlums is secular. Conversion to Islam and Christianity by force and fraud is secular as guaranteed by the open ‘socialist, secular constitution’, but reconversion to Hinduism or anti-conversion laws and legislations are incurably communal. Street riots protesting the bulldozing of a Darga in the middle of a road or in the footpath, as per the court’s order, are entirely secular and in order, but the voluntary peaceful, shifting of 24 other temples on the same road sides, as per the same court order must not even be reported in secular newspapers, as it would contrast the behaviour patterns of peaceful and antinational communities, which would be communal! And so on and on. The causes, or factors leading to this disease and expressible in symptoms as have been pointed out:

(i) allergy to Indian history, (ii) allergy to Truth and the daring to accept it, (iii) fear of antagonising the votes of the ‘minorities’ behaving as if they are

more major than the ‘majority’ community, on the part of secular politicians, and unthinking docility, and comfort in ignorance as contrasted with discomfort with knowledge and truth on the part of the public, too long under the spell of alien rulership.

(iv) various inhibitions, untraceable, for want of expressions of more symptoms, (v) monetary considerations, temptations of various kinds, for the press, the

public men, and opinion-creators, the lobby agents and many others. The cure, the treatment, the prescription:

(a) expose to sunlight, the diseased body in all its affected parts, (b) call them for debate, where they pick up courage, (c) drown the market, or the public reading-rooms with materials warning of the

contagion and the consequence, (d) retrieve the saveable through persuasion, hard endurable food and civilised

feelings, educate them,

(e) mobilise an intellectual army to fight this war by propaganda, disinformation, and mud-singling campaign,

(f) expose the poison in the concerned literature, (g) have recourse to healthy national roots of culture, national honour, national

history and its heroes, and promote respect for all these, and so on.

Why all this? In the cases of Swami Vivekananda and Maharshi Sri Aurobindo, a peculiar class of savants, explicators of their thoughts and vision, interpreters of their valuable insights for our present and future applications, is cropping up, standing for exactly the opposite of what they stand for! They are selective, self-deceptive, myopic, and ‘secular-educated’ so that they exhibit all the above-mentioned symptoms in their write-ups! One such is under scrutiny in this booklet. These ridicule ‘Shivaji’ as a ‘misguided patriot’; but are silent when efforts are made to celebrate Afzal Khan’s and Aurangazeb’s for their festivals, commemorative occasions, and renovations of their tombs! They forget that Sri Aurobindo has said that “it is not enough we have Ramdasses, we must have Shivajis” (See inside the text). In the face of the gravest provocations threatening the very existence of Hinduism and its numerous Institutions, these savants are silent unlike Vivekananda, and Aurobindo; they condemn the Hindus for their mild reactions even! Christians have converted an Executive Officer of the TTD and acquired lands on the Holy Hills and are building Churches, with no Christians around, anywhere! They distribute Bible copies on the TTD busses that take the Hindu pilgrims onto the Hills. They distribute abusive pamphlets on idol worship, under the patronage of a Christian Chief Minister and a Christian Super Prime Minister! Our Ramakrishna Muth heads are silent. Our Aurobindo-savants are silent! Swamy Sri Vidyaranya got the Vijayanagar Empire established through two reconverts to Hinduism from Islam, Harihara and Bukka, who had once been generals under the Bahamani muslim leaders. They were earlier of the Shepard community, but the Swamy made them Kshatriyas, true to the Catholic Hindu core of the teaching. But the Swamy’s present-day followers have failed their founder, leader, by keeping silent and blind to Muslim and Christian onslaughts in similar but graver circumstances! Swamy Ramananda (Ramanuja-follower) and after him Sant Tulsidas established not only Muths for reorganisation of Hindu society to reclaim the weak, trodden and stolen, but also gymnasia (Akharas) for body-building and Hindu defence. The Northern Swamies, the saints, Mahants are keeping up their tradition to this day. But in the South our Acharyas are fast asleep! Reading newspapers, entertaining political opinions, and guiding society and leaders in political matter is considered ‘unreligious’! Our concept of Spirituality is less than even Gandhian! We do not realise that in Hinduism Religion and Spirituality both mean the same, Dharma; and it is only in Semitic terms religion is regimented and spirituality is totally wanting. We must educate our old leaders in these simple matters. All ‘savants’ gather together to condemn a VHP, a Bajrang Dal, ABVP and other patriotic organisations as “Hindu-upsurge-outfits” in a language they inherit from a prejudiced press. An ‘outfit’ means something that has outgrown a body beyond its

form! An ‘upsurge’ is a futile uprisal. This is the language of the British, our erstwhile colonisers, who described our First Freedom Struggle as a ‘Mutiny’! Lord Sri Rama thought it fit that an untrained monkey-army with its guerrilla methods was best suited for overthrowing, weeding out Ravana!! Have you read the Ramayana, sir? If in the contexts of proxy wars both within the nation and across the borders with Islamic and Christian terrorists we employ similar armies, what is wrong? In fact, we want more of Shiva Sainiks, Hindu Sainiks, and Bajrang Dal people to match the armies of Bin Laden, a Bush and ISI traitors! Not to speak of Naxal armies of leftists ideologists, or foreign backed LTTE. But what do we do? We dispute the existence of a Rama or a Hanuman, we dispute the burning of Lanka; or we condemn it; we blame Rama, instead of receiving inspiration from him! Will the Upanishads save us, the way they are being interpreted as entirely other-worldly? “Nayamatma bala hinena labhyah” – “God cannot be attained by the weak”, “Uttishtata, jagrata, prapya varan nibodhata” – “Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached” – this is what the Upanishads meant to Swamy Vivekananda! But to his followers? They declare themselves as ‘non-Hindus’! They claim that Ramakrishna founded a new religion! “Ramakrishaism”. “All religions, Terrorists and Non-terrorists are equal!” This is the fate of Sri Aurobindo in the hands of a coterie handling a cult built in his name recently. I have tried to place facts as they are, by showing Sri Aurobindo’s own views, side by side of the views attributed to him, in high presumption and arrogance. Let the readers judge for themselves the truth of the matter! I shall try to persuade again. Spirituality in the Hindu context, interpreted outside national, political, social applications, and divorced of all involvement or commitment in inhibited circumstances, would bring them a sense of modernity or impartiality, they imagine! This is the spiritual problem of modern man, according to Carl Jung, the celebrated psychologist1. See his analysis: “Nothing is easier than to affect the consciousness of the present. As a matter of fact, a great hoard of worthless people give themselves the air of being modern by overleaping the various stages of development and the tasks of life they represent. They appear suddenly by the side of the truly modern man as uprooted human beings, bloodsucking ghosts, whose emptiness is taken for the unenviable loneliness of the modern man and cast discredit upon him. He and his kind… are hidden from the undiscerning eyes of mass-men by these clouds of ghosts, the pseudo-moderns… unless he can atone by creative ability for his break with tradition he is merely disloyal to the past. It is shear

1 Window on the World, Ed. L. Brander OUP, p.43, 45.

juggling to look upon a denial of the past as the same thing as consciousness of the present. ‘Today’ stands between ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’.” The savant who denies contextual meanings of the past utterances of a Vivekananda, or Aurobindo or avoids them, circumvents them to escape their overtones for the present and future, and the Stalinist historians like a Romilla Thapar, Irfan Habib and other comrades who dispute the entire past of a Hindu history and its glory, fall, strongly, into the category of ‘pseudo moderns’, I would add ‘pseudo-seculars’ also. Arnold Toynbee, the historian, warns us2: “Whatever maybe the relief that Hindu souls are going to find for themselves eventually, it seems clear that for them, their can be no relief from the impact of Western civilisation by opening themselves to the influence of communism; for communism a Western heresy adopted by an ex-orthodox Christian Russia – is as much part and parcel of the Graeco-Judaic heritage as the Western way of life is, and the whole of this tradition is alien to Hindu spirit.”3 Our ‘pseudo-moderns’ would dispute the relation between spirituality and religion, altogether to escape being stigmatised as narrow, sectarian or denominalised into ‘outfits’ they would like avoid, and if possible, avoid being branded as ‘Hindu’! The result is just the opposite!! The more they try to avoid it, the more they are likely to be branded as Hindu, perhaps courageless Hindus. What else is the opposite of moral-courage? Is it not moral cowardice? We are not asking them to join the army, become parts of mass movements or openly fight Christian, Muslim or communist vandals in public streets. All that we ask is: shed your inhibitions; be bold to speak the truth in context of Hindu humiliation, and where Hindu values are at stake; do not take shelter under ‘pseudo-modernism’, ‘pseudo-secularism’ to escape your responsibility, do not distort ancient or modern leaders to suit your cowardly minds, do not speak of empty spirituality divorced of actual contexts of life with political, social, economic overtones. Sri Krishna shall be your role-model; He applied spiritual values to the political context of Mahabharata-times to show light to a bewildered Arjuna on the war-field! Bringing to politics to spirituality is one thing; bringing spirituality to politics is another. You are hopelessly confused between the two! Silence would have been better for you than irresponsible and misleading writing. But actually your duty is speaking the truth. Why should you be ashamed of religion in the Hindu context? Read this comment by A.N. Whitehead4: “Religion is the vision of something that stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach, something which is the ultimate ideal and the hopeless quest.” If this does not suit Christianity or Islam, they can go to Hell differently in their own pervert senses of religion as commandments, regimented creeds. But why should you join them, as you are a Hindu? Do you want the stamp of Sri Aurobindo on this? See:

2 India and the West, Ed. V. Satchidanandan: A Toynbee Anthology OUP, p.39. 3 I am not suggesting that our Aurobindo savants are being directly influenced by communism. They are unwittingly in their clasp and company by denying the link between the ‘Hindu’ past, and their directionless present and by shunning comments of moral courage on compelling situations where Hindu identity is in danger. All that we ask of them is, ‘be bold, truthful and honest’. 4 Science and the Modern World, p.171.

“If we define spirituality as the attempt to know and live in the highest self, the divine, and to raise life in all its parts to the divinest possible values, then it is evident that there was no too much of religion, but rather too little of it” 5. “The right remedy is not to belittle still further the age-long ideal of India, but to return to its old amplitude, and give it a still wider scope, to make it in very truth all the life of the national religion in this high spiritual sense”6. “It was in religion that the soul of India awoke and triumphed. There were always indications, always great fore-runners, but it was when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed down at the feet of an illiterate Hindu ascetic, a self-illuminated mystic without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon him that the battle was won”7. “The master idea of the Indian people has been the seeking of man for his true spiritual self and the use of life as a frame and means for that discovery and man’s assent from the ignorant and natural into the spiritual existence”8. Untouchability in spiritual compartments of political and social organisations, in scientific and technological fields, in jurisprudence and daily worship, in the relation of man and woman, the ruled, has never been the Indian practice. All our Dharmasastras bear ample proof of their mutual interdependence. Pure ‘spirituality’ is a creature no one has seen! It is the creation of sterile minds. The least that one expects of misinterpreters, if they are still honest, is an unconditional apology. Mysore Dr. K.S. Narayanacharya June 6, 2006

5 The Culture of India, as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo, Ed. K.M. Munshi and R.R. Diwakar, p.21., the passage is from Renaissance in India. 6 ibid. Same p. 7 ibid. Same p.73. 8 ibid. Same p.72.

Chapter 1: Attempts to Hijack and ‘Secularise’ Sri Aurobindo! Cultural suicide or cultural amnesia cannot be mistaken for spiritual Renaissance. The will to live, expressed through an upsurge in cultural roots that ‘clutch’ (in the phrase of T. S. Eliot) cannot be mistaken for ‘revivalism’ in the bad sense of that term. Even doctors try to ‘revive’ a patient that collapses by artificial devices for breathing, by blood providence, by drips and whatever treatment possible. What is wrong in ‘revival’? They mere adding up of three extra letters – ‘i-s-m’ cannot make good sense, acquire a bad odour. This is pervert semantics. The process of living involves cyclic ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’ in the very roll of seasons. Shelley prayed for such a regeneration of life in his Ode to the Westwind, without a sense of shame. Resurrection, Revitalisation, Rejuvenation, Revival, and Renaissance – all are healthy terms indicating that life must be saved, the past and the future must be connected through purposeful, meaningful efforts in the present. Behind these terms lies the grasp that life is worth saving. Even scoundrels, thieves and ‘anti-life’ persons are attempted to be ‘saved’ in hospitals, on operation tables, with nobody asking the medically unethical question, whether the patient’s life is worth saving. ‘Value’ of life is immaterial there! Saving is all that matters as long as the patient possesses the potency to be saved – good heart condition, pulse beat, enough blood and responsiveness to medical treatment, and of course economic support for hospital treatment. When this is so, how much more responsible, fear-free, muddle-free and realistic-minded should one be while talking of cultural renaissance, spiritual revival and cultural revitalisation, unification and assertion of an ancient society like the Hindu society at present! Most English-educated, leftist oriented, chicken-hearted pseudo intellectual are vowed to see this society, its traditions and values, its glorious culture in fading conditions of today, totally die, in preference to slogan=supported abstract notions of a ‘socialistic society’, secular (anti-Hindu_ society, based on pure scientific temperament, without caste, class or social conflicts. Those that are wedded to see this society flower up again are branded as ‘revivalists’, as all ‘progress’ is the monopoly of socialists, leftists of all hue and the medley of rulers that have usurped political power since the advent of Freedom since 1947. The terms ‘revivalism’ and ‘progressivism’ have taken thus a communist bias, meaning thereby “that any attempts to revive Hindu culture is a sin, is undesirable, is unfashionable, and is setting the past against the future, is obscurantist, is fundamentalist, retrograde, and planned by vested interests to bring back the proletariat under the tyranny of feudal forces reorganising themselves for a further onslaught on the hapless masses; the larger credit for popularising this criminal notion, and lending support to all manners of anti-Hindu forces, notions, movements, political and social forces and steps in administration must go to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress led by him and his dynastic successors till date. The complimentary, erroneous and suicidal notion that all ‘progress’ meant, suppression, distortion, destruction and erasement of Hindu cultural values, Hindu history, Hindu spirituality and political and social polarisation in such a way as to prevent the nation from coming back to itself, on its own feet, reshape its Individuality and not imitate falsely alien role-models has been monopolised by the communist forces and their various outfits in education, labour

fronts, political movements, some sections of the Press, and foreign forces behind them that do not tolerate a strong, united self-sufficient, trouble-free, harmonious Hindu society and a government reflecting these true aspirations of a nation too long under foreign rule, now free, and attempting to rebuild itself, reshape itself, and flower up again like the mighty Oak tree or our Ashvattha tree.

Mischievous Semantics Any talk of cultural or spiritual renaissance today in contexts of Aurobindonian thoughts, Vivekananda’s visionof future Hindustan, or Gandhian concept of Hindu-Muslim unity, or Sarvodaya, must take into account this mischief of communist semantics, and the poison infiltrated into hundreds of thousands of words and phrases in English and through them into local languages. Just, for example, see the difference between these two words – ‘Initiative’ and ‘Incentive’ being now wrongly equated, creating confusions with irresoluble disastrous effects in the common usage in the press, public speech and private talk, political and social circles, even in well meaning mouths of innocent folk.

(1) ‘Initiative’ means, self-efforts, in a free atmosphere by an individual who chooses to come up, in endeavours, in enterprise, in organisation, in industry, business, so that it connotes all the healthy meanings and intentions in a ‘democratic’ setup or frame of mind, in the best senses of this term. If a man requires an ‘initiative’ , all that the government has to do is to give or provide him with such free opportunities, without external or artificial support or interference, and creating healthy conditions and traditions in society that are congenial for the practice of that ‘initiative’ . This is freedom, unfettered, without crutches.

(2) ‘Incentive’ means a tempting support, attractive prompting or temptation to do something which the individual might not like to do or practice on his own. There is every scope for the government or the ideology behind it to ‘encourage’ (in innocent looking terms), the individual to undertake what he may not want to do on his own. This has a communist background, with violent ideas of artificial creating of conditions suited to achieve chosen purposes of the greater bosses behind the individual, who is no more now than a ‘cog in the machine’ (in Bertrand Russell’s phrase). The cog is just a useful part of a machine, useless by itself, and useful only in the context of a machine. The machine may be a party like CPI (M) or CPI, IUML or ULFA, LTTE, Naxalites or even the Congress, or an international ideology like Pan-Islamism or Christianity with no national boundaries, where the individual has no use except to serve someone’s interest, which he on his own does not share. So he requires an artificial motivation, for the moment to egg him on to do something that serves the interests of that someone else who has the real stakes. So he gives him money, muscle support promises (that may or may not be fulfilled later on, fooling devices, as in our election campaigns) instruments to achieve that goal, slogans, press lobbying, political encouragement and social coercion and what not. There is no individual flowering up here of Purushartha as we would say. Shall we illustrate? It is a poet, a philosopher, a scientific researcher, an artist, a free-trader

who requires Initiative; while it is a murderer, mercenary, a gangster, hired audiences, regimented sections of society that require Incentive.

Illustration The prophet raised his armies to ‘spread’ Islam on the basis of Incentive, by paying no salaries, but by telling his followers, whatever they loot is theirs, and what they conquered was theirs, whichever woman among the ‘unfaithful’ he captured he could sell or have for a concubine, whichever man he caught he could enslave and so on, as his officially accepted, non-disputed biographies bear testimony to. Our modern day ‘Reservations’ in ‘free’ India come under this category, unfortunately, also. All manners of state subsidies, free distribution of pumpsets, power supply, of TV sets, distribution of lands (the DMK move) come under incentives, preventing the individual from growing from within, with self-efforts. Once a public issue is made, and tempers rise, and mad sensitivities are aroused in alarming proportions, public debate dies, and people become docile, imbecile and dumb,(as in West Bengal and Kerala) so that the rule of ‘might’ rules, undisturbed by sanity, freedom, debate and the possibility of change for the better. ‘Revivalism’ is being stuffed down our throats in this very fashion today, along with similar words and phrases which we are unable to examine in a coercive atmosphere. Can we forgive people who ought to know better? People well educated, claiming to be custodians of treasures of Sri Aurobindo’s thoughts, and vision? People who talk of spiritual renaissance, without the equally necessary backdrop of social and political changes appropriate to them? How can you talk of renaissance in a vacuum? How would it be different from escapism into the ‘other world’, if a programme for renaissance is not backed up by necessary social or political conditions, or if it cannot face this job? Is this not ‘medievalism’ in the condemnable sense of that term, seeking refuge in the world of the spirit, as it is unable to and afraid of meeting environmental, external, and material challenges before it? Did Swamy Vivekananda preach it or practise it? This silk-cocoon attitude? Did Sri Aurobindo mean it in all his works? (Can you equate him with Sri Ramana?) Is spiritual renaissance an isolated phenomenon like a rainbow, a flash in the skies, with no ground realities to meet or fulfil or oppose, reform, recreate? In practical terms, do we not need a revival of all ancient Hindu institutions, minus the crusts overgrown on them, minus the evils that have cropped up in their place? Temple worship, bhajans, muths, efflorescence of philosophic thinking, artistic creations, our own political and social institutions to suit our changing needs, changing times? Do we not need modern maharshis like Arun Shourie, Gurumurthy, Jagmohan, Sita Ram Goel, Sri Ram Swarup and others, to continue the works of a Tagore, an Aurobindo and a Vivekananda or a Dayananda? Or no? Do we not need a new Kshatra – militant – force to protect and promote our interests? What Vivekananda called Bauddhika Kshatriyas, as well as really those dedicated to the protection of Hindu interests which are the really lasting benefiting interests of the nation, of our society? Do we not need indigenous trade values or valid theories and practice to protect ourselves from the onslaughts in the false name of globalisation? Do we not need an army, navy or air force fully wedded to

national, social, politically legitimate interests? Or do we afford the debauching of these with communal reservations? In short, do we want a Shivaji, a Ranjit Singh, a Subhash Chandra Bose, a Jhansi Rani, or a Sarvarkar today, in our altered circumstances, but with unfinished tasks they contributed to? Christian and Muslim vested interests inside and outside the country want to balkanise the nation and capture power at the centre today. Our communist comrades are hell-bent on helping these realise this vile goal of the anti nationals. So, what does your empty talking of ‘spiritual renaissance’ minus ‘reviving’ suitable conditions to realise this goal, come to mean or achieve?

Who Are The Misinterpreters? I read this valuable comment by Sri Sita Ram Goel in this context, for example, to support my views: “It was not that voices in defence of Gods and their worship as idols were not raised while Hindu reform movements surged forward. Some of these voices came from the tallest figures in the saga of India’s re-awwakening to her ancient heritage. Swamy Vivekananda had said if idol-worship could produce a spiritual master like Sri Ramakrishna, all honour to it. Sri Aurobindo had expounded at length how the concrete images to which Vedic Rishis addressed their hymns had emerged out of the deepest intuitions of spiritual conciousness. Mahatma Gandhi had allowed his reverence for idols and temple in unmistakable terms. But the voices it seems, failed to impress the followers of these great men. The Ramakrishna Mission installed life-like statues of Sri Ramakrishna in the temples it built. Sri Aurobindo Ashram raised their own gurus to the same status. Mahatma Gandhi has so far been spared the ‘honour’. His followers, however are not known for their fondness for Hindu idols or temples… What was worse, the Ramakrishna Mission and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram imbibed the theology of Monotheism in another respect, namely the cult of the latest and the best which will not be bettered. In the eyes of the Mission, Sri Ramakrishna is no more a saint who sought and verified in his own experience the truths of Sanatana Dharma; he has become a ‘synthesis of all faiths’ including Islam and Christianity, such as has never been seen in the past and will not be witnessed again in the future. The Ashram hails Sri Aurobindo not as a great Yogin and sage who explored and explained to the modern world the deepest insights of the Hindu spiritual tradition, but as the highest manifestation of the Divine in human history! Shades of Christ and Muhammad… The stalwarts of India’s reawakening never claimed to be founders of new religions. Nor were they interested in Hinduism because it carried some exclusive message made known to mankind by some Hindu at some point in time. For them, Hinduism was Sanatana Dharma, that is, a spiritual vision valid at all times, in all places and for all people, and directly accessible to all seekers without the help of a historical intermediary. To the Buddha, a new was suspect. He described his own way as that on which the Buddhas of the past had walked and the Buddhas of the future will work.”9 The thrust of what I want to say in this write up has been beautifully summed in the words I have just quoted! Let me explain: I am a great admirer of Sri Aurobindo’s powerful presentation of Hinduism, its many splendours, achievements, its excellences, its wide embrace, its openness, its galaxy of great thinkers and visionaries, whose experiences are for all human application, its resilience, and eternal novelty. I am no part of any closed cults of

9 History of Hindu – Christian Encounters p.370, 371

any kind in any great thinker’s name. Sri Aurobindo is great and unique among all Renaissance luminaries for various reasons: he himself was wedded to the goal of this country’s all round upliftment – not only spiritual but also political and social. He among all, was the one who knew the Vedas directly by personal yogic experience to rank among Vasishta, Jamadagni and Visvamitra. Nothing great and contributory to the main stream of Hindu culture ever escaped his scrutiny or study or reverence – be it the Puranas, the Epics, classical Sanskrit literature, Hymns of Alwars and Nayanmars or even Dharmasastras. [Swami Dayananda based his vision only on the Vedas, excluding puranas and epics, and even the Upanishads! Rajaram Mohan Roy selected only some portions of the Upanishads for his Hind Bible and his prayer book. Both were under terrible inhibitions of Christianity and denounced idonl worship, but served as steps backwards towards Hinduism to those who were being brainwashed and bombarded by misleading Christian missionaries. ‘Make some trivial concession, and attempt to keep the core, to keep our people within the fold’ – seemed to be their policy, consciously or unconsciously. Other steps were equally needed, but they felt the time was not ripe and as urgent attention on the Vedas, as the missionaries were targeting the Vedas for abuse, misinterpretation, distortion and anti-Hindu propaganda. That was what the great Shankara had done several centuries earlier to Buddhist challenges also. Defensiveness, being apologetic and compromising elsewhere to fight on the main-front has always been the main strategy of reformers and savants of Hinduism, for the time-being, leaving the future followers to retrace their full steps completely and comprehensively in stages later on. Whether the followers of these great savants have done so or not is for anybody to see! Where they have not done so, it has invariably become a closed cult. Where it stopped, Swami Vivekananda took it further forward. Even then he wrote more on the Upanishads and Yoga, and less, hardly anything, on the Vedas themselves, and their symbolic meanings of a full inner yoga. It was this that Sri Aurobindo completed leaving nothing in his grasp of the full glory of Hinduism. In recent times another great Bengali Saint and reformer Sri Prabhupad Bhakti Vedanta Swamy of ISKCON went a further step taking all doubters, sceptics, and apologists back into idol worship, Bhajan, Bhagavat Purana and through them to Veda and Yoga. There is no contradiction of intentions in all these glorious steps of recovery of Hinduism for the Hindus as well as the non-Hindus, from Christian and Muslim onslaughts, through steps are separated yet in the same Direction. Dayananda-followres would lose nothing if they admire the Puranas or Gita, and attend temple worship as a means to Yoga. It is enough that everything conforms to Veda. So also Vivekananda-followers and others.]

The Apologists But there is a tendency among all these followers to be afraid of the word ‘Hindu’, and anything to strengthen it except in terms of ‘meditation’, silence and Gandhian Ahimsa, and aberrations particularly with political overtones, or social reforms exceeding self-inhibited parameters! The inhibiting factors of today are ‘Secularism’ of the Nehruvian legacy and ‘sarvadharma samata bhava’ of Gandhi, in the foremost. To the anti-Hindu brigade of Christians and Muslims, are added now the communists of all hues, and Gandhian followers of ‘Equality, equal validity of all religions’. Obviously religions with agendas of ‘kill, conquer, rape, and loot’ and Hindu Dharma (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism included) asking for introspection and perfecting the art of inner yoga for the attainment of Perfection and Immortality of the human personality and its core, are not the same!

Gandhi erred personally and collectively, misleading millions of Hindus, being responsible for partition and atrocities on Hindus, and paid in personal tragic terms, for not knowing the Quaran or the Bible in their entireties, and their true intentions, their histories of Prophets, their historical records, even in our own country. He lived in a fool’s paradise! It hurts one to say all this. He was undoubtedly a great Hindu reformer standing for eradication of untouchability and other evils befalling Hinduism. But he paid, and made us pay dearly, for divorcing political vigilance, political strategy and other aspects of strengthening the Hindu society from purely other-worldly activities like mere prayer and piety. He helped Muslims become strong, and discouraged all Hindu attempts of resurgence, upsurge and rejuvenation under the inhibitions of his own new-found and erroneous concept of ‘Equality of all Religions’; something that is still going on in this country under the Congress and allied partners in political mismanagement and social misdirection. Should the followers of Sri Aurobindo be victims too? This is our present question here. Sri Aurobindo himself was a full revolutionary like Vyasa, Krishna, Visvamitra and Vasistha, keeping no aspects of life as mutually untouchable, exclusive, or irreconcilable. It was integral and yogic everywhere. There is evidence both in his personal life and in all his abundant writings. Is it enough for one to read merely his Life Divine (imperfectly) or Savitri as spiritual and literary masterpieces to claim to be an authority or spokesman of his collective thought or what he stood for comprehensively? Sri Aurobindo has said lots on Christianity and Islam, their true nature and how their separatist ideologies are impediments to the goal of Integral India or Akhand Bharath (We shall quote profusely to show this). This is no exclusive or impracticable ideology of some ‘extreme Hindu outfits’. This is one among his chief cherished goals left for us to achieve here and now. Let us state these goals in full:

The Agenda (1) Achievement of Akhand Bharath, (2) Asian resurgence, (3) World unity with Indian leadership, (4) Spiritual gift of India to the world and (5) The advent of a new race of human beings with what he called ‘Superamental

consciousness’ (meaning thereby a new community of men without ego, selfishness, hatred and other imperfections, but with knowledge, understanding, love cooperation and will to live to achieve perfection in an integrated life.)

Among the means to ahieve this, among other things he suggested that: (6) Sanskrit be made the National language of India, (7) Integral yoga be made a part of general education, (8) Sanatana Dharma be made national Dharma and (9) Also India be renamed as Bharatha Varsha.

Do all these look like an obscurantist programme or ideology? Do you therefore include Sri Aurobindo among ‘Sangh Parivar’ people or those belonging to some ‘extreme Hindu outfits’? Or do you give up the essential Aurobindo for your own secularised version of his words and mission for your own false satisfaction? Do you share his vision or do you feel apologetic for being associated with him? Is it for you to shed your own inhibitions or to try to reform Sri Aurobindo and cast him in Gandhian and Nehruvian role-models? Why are you scared, sir, to be associated with attempts to revitalise the Hindu society, reorganise it, reform it, and make it survive the onslaughts by Christian and Muslim vested interests? Are you ashamed of calling yourself a Hindu?

Chapter 2: Examination of Wrong Views, Insinuations and Rebuttals Read these funny sentences of a timid apologist, claiming to be a savant of Sri Aurobindonian thought10. (We shall answer all these.)

(1) “A spiritual civilisation like the Indian does not endure and progress by sticking to reviving its old forms whether in religion, arts, or socio-economic institutions but by breaking their mould and creating new ones which are appropriate to the changing times and true to its innate trend and genius.”

(2) “Therefore a Hindu religious revival is to my thinking an absurdity.” (3) “Those who want to resurrect a particular manifestation of Hinduism, in this

case a medieval one, lose sight entirely of the predominantly spiritual nature of this culture.”

(Emphasis added.) Comment: This is an attack on Sangh Parivar for their attempts to revive the Hindu pride, and rediscover our national and cultural identity and integrity. The charge is that this attempt is merely revivalistic and worth discarding. What then must be the new identity? It is not stated openly but implicitly we are to understand that we must stop attempting becoming “Hindus” or stop ‘Hinduise’ the non-Hindu elements or obstacles, but simply accept “Indianism” – instead of “Hinduism” (precisely the Nehruvian hallucination!) What particular manifestation of ‘Hinduism’ does the objector want to be given up? The R.S.S. brand, the V.H.P. Brand or the old classical Hindu cultural brands, we still see in Hindu scholarship, Hindu ways of worship, Hindu thinking based on Vedas and all that has sprung from it? Perhas all these, so that “Hindu-Muslim Bhai Bhai”, “ Ishvara Allah Tere Nam”, “ Mera Bharath Mahan” type of goody goody thing is what is mistaken for the emergence of a new identity. For, all the rest are presumably ‘medieval’. Is this what Sri Aurobindo stands for?

Personal Note I am not an RSS man and am not part of any of their ‘outfits’. But I respect all attempts to revive Hindu values, protect Hindu interests, culturally, spiritually and politico-socially. I am not ashamed of calling myself a Hindu nor feel shy of inheriting its traditions, treasures and its thoughts and achievements. I am proud of anyone who joins attempts to defend Hinduism against its detractors or denigrators, and does research, writing, debating and if it comes to that, fight on the war field also in direct or indirect wars.

Sri Aurobindo’s Own Views After all, Aurobindo is on my side in this respect, what if some Aurobindoneans refuse to read or understand the main spirit of all his writings? Read for example these:

10 The Current Hindu upsurge in Sri Aurobindo’s Light – By Mangesh Nadkarni

(i) ”A certain class of minds11 shrink from aggressiveness as if it were a sin. Their temperaments forbid 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 than to love… The Gita is the best answer to those who shrink from the battle as a sin and aggression as a lowering of morality… The sword of the warrior is as necessary to the fulfilment of justice and righteousness, as the holiness of the saint. Ramadas is not complete without Shivaji.”12 How do you like this Mr. Objector? There was no RSS when Sri Aurobindo wrote these words! What does it matter? What wrong is there if RSS is born of such views of Sri Aurobindo and most other Renaissance thinkers of India, and efforts in that direction to rebuild Hindu society and form a nation wedded to the ideals of Rishis and Rajarshis who are still relevant? If RSS derives its inspiration thus justifiably from Sri Aurobindo, what is your loss? How can you belong to him as well as to Congressism, unthinkingly? Read this again: (ii) “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 recurrent 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.”13 Commentary: We talk of spirituality as isolated from life’s struggles not only on the mental plane but on all others also! Is this what Sri Aurobindo understood? To Sri Aurobind all forms of fight against untruth, ugliness, cowardice, distortion and disintegration meant spiritual in the most comprehensive sense of the term, as he derived this meaning from the Gita, the Upanishads, and more pre=eminently from the Veda-Samhitas themselves. Mere passive meditation is not the meaning of this term. This negative, unvedic ‘yoga’ is often criticised by him profusely in his Life Divine, Essays on the Gita, and elsewhere. (I shall show instances hereafter.) M. Gandhi was moving in this passive, suicidal direction and taking the Congress with him in this un-Hindu, unheroic way, as Aurobindo knew, as our objector must know also. Read again: (iii) “The Mahommedans base their separateness and their refusal to regard themselves as Indians first and Mahommedans afterwards on the existence of great Mahommedan 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 the Mother, neither can they mutilate her. Our deal 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 11 The reference seems to be to Gandhians and Congressists under him, and by extension of logic to all pacifists, who are apologetic about Hinduism, and condemn our efforts to stand up again after thousands of years of suppression, humiliation, distortion and damage to our institutions. 12 India’s Rebirth, p.45-46, letter dated April 1908. All references hereafter in this write-up are to such letters in this anthology. 13 The Rebirth of India, p. 51, letter dated June 19, 1909. Sri Aurobindo’s central throught revolves round the idea of Deva-Asura fight which is Vedic, Puranic, Epical, and even in yogic terms. That is how he has been able to synthesise Buddhism with Vedic thought – a marvel that was not possible for even eminent thinkers before him and even later till date. Forget this and you loose his main focus.

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 these into itself.”14 (iv) Also: “The congress movement was for a long time purely occidental 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 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.”15 Here is ample proof that Sri Aurobindo knew the infinite, potential dangers of Congressism which stood against all that the nation had achieved or represented in the main stream of Hindu culture in its identity. He knew of the impossibility of Muslims living in harmony with the Hindus, as long as their separatist mentality persisted; this persistence is because of the basic tenets and teachings and practices of the founder of Islam, the Prophet – a detail Sri Aurobindo might not have known, as most savants of ‘unity’ took it for granted that Islam too was a ‘religion’ like any other, without realising its diabolic, predatory nature. Only recent researches are waking us up all over the world. It is remarkable that Sri Aurobindo knew of it, even in the absence of penetrative researches then, and had the daring to warn us, lone among our Renaissance leaders, as no other did! If RSS agrees with him, all the better for RSS, and to us through them. An attack on RSS in this respect as ‘medieval’, ‘revivalist’, ‘fundamentalist’ is really an attack on Sri Aurobindo only and the ideals, agenda, programmes he stood for! Note in particular his optimistic view that one day or the other the Muslims also will be absorbed into the larger Hindu culture under emergence, by making them shed their jehadist ideology! Are not things moving in this direction today? Whether the Muslims will reform himself or no, whether he will give up his jehad or no, or prefer to be alienated, isolated, liquidated is left to the forces of history which are not under any control of any human agency any longer. With this ‘opening’ still left at the other end, if we try to mend our fences, repair our mansion of culture, and remove cobwebs, and strengthen the building on unalterable foundations, why should anybody ridicule it as ‘revivalism’? What do we care even if someone hurls this undignified abuse on us?

The Open End, But the Warning! How did Sri Aurobindo keep that ‘open end’ for Hindu culture? What was his answer for the charge of ‘Revivalism’? What was the reality he knew? What did he think of the Gandhian attempts of artificial unity? Read this:

14 India’s Rebirth, p.64, Letter dated November 6, 1909. This is in the context of Separate Electorate idea of Morley-Minto ‘Reforms@. This is also an answer to Dr. U.N. Mukherji who published a brochure with the thesis that ‘Hindus were a dying race and would do well to imitate’ the Mohammedans in social freedom and equality. P.63 15 India’s Rebirth, p.132, from an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.

“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 culture.”16 Contrast this with our objector’s view already quoted: “A spiritual civilisation like the Indian does not endure and progress by sticking to or reviving its old forms whether in religion, arts or socio-economic institutions but by breaking their mould and creating new ones…” 17 The objector is clearly not merely twisting Aurobindo, he is violating and even condemning Aurobindo! This is what I called ‘secularising’ and hijacking! See for yourself if I am not right in my inferences. Read further Sri Aurobindo: “Recover the patrimony 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 but in your lives.”18 Read this open end he keeps for Muslims: “We do not fear Mahomedan opposition; we do not shun, we desire the awakening of Islam in India even if its 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 the mind, for where the cause 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… but we must cease to approach him falsely or flatter out of a selfish weakness and cowardice. We believe this to be the only practical way of dealing with the difficulty”19 Comments: There are a good number of suggestions of far-reaching consequences here, with respect to the “agenda” unfulfilled still of Sri Aurobindo, as stated earlier.

(a) Akhand Bharath is eminently realisable, and not a day-dream if we can handle the Muslim problem (and the Christian problem, as corollary_ in the right way.

(b) That way would not be the Gandhian way of ‘false flattery’ or the Nehruvian ‘selfish weakness’.

(c) We shall try to remove the misunderstandings sincerely on our parts and leave the only two choices possible for the Muslims –

i. “the firm clasp of the brother.” ii. “the resolute grip of the wrestler.”

16 India’s Rebirth, p.52 (Emphasis added.) 17 Already quoted (but now with added emphasis.) 18 Ibid p.52. Is this “revivalism” that our objector condemns, without examination? Is this RSS or Sri Aurobindo speaking? Where do you stand now Mr. Objector? Whom do you fool now? 19 India’s Rebirth p.53. Letter, June 19, 1909. (Emphasis added.)

(You know what this means even now: either the negotiation table or the war-field, as Sri Krishna offered to Duryodhana! A Mahabharatha awaits, and let there be no tom-foolery.) In another phrase

i. “love compels love,” ii. “strength conciliates the strong.”

(This is a language no Congressman has used so far! This looks like RSS; what can we do?)

(d) The inner message for us is: “Become strong, and the adversary will listen to you, if you speak in a position of advantage and strength.”20

(e) We can still form a sort of Indian commonwealth with a subdued Pakistan, a humbled Bangladesh, a friendship-earned Myanmar, and culturally coerced Malaysia or Indonesia, and strength-backed Nepal and Sri Lanka. The instruments are (1) strength, military and scientific might, (2) cultural-bonds revived, (3) our intentions of Asian unity made transparent, and (4) conjointly facing terrorism on all sides. Afghanistan seeks our aid, so also Iraq and Iran, which were parts of a Greater India, the Bharatha Varsha, till about 10 century A.D. (5) avoid the Gandhi-Nehru legacy of blunders, hypocrisy, selfishness and insincere, unpatriotic politics once for all.

(f) Once the “Hindu commonwealth” is so formed, with individual sovereignty of each member respected, guaranteed and protected, (unlike NATO or SEATO, which were merely military pacts_ we can then isolate the West, with China and Japan playing a definite and decisive role in ‘Asian Resurgence’.

(g) The spiritual gift of India, through the spread of Yoga and Vedanta is already on the forward progress, and requires our official backing in a positive and involved way.

(h) Sanskrit being restored to its rightful place, and (i) Sanatana Dharma being recognised as our National integrated view in all matters

will follow simultaneously. (j) The renaming of India as Bharatha Varsha is no difficult talk, if we have the

will, and unity, once the Muslim/Christian problems are solved as directed above either by reconciliation or a decisive ‘Mahabharatha’ repeat, but with vote-bank politics ended and defranchising anti-national terrorist elements of all kinds.

I am not underestimating the problems as they have cropped up, or have been created by Congress, and other parties taking disadvantage of its weaknesses. The solution is not impossible. Sri Aurobindo has showed us a clear direction. It is for us to follow, but first create the right kind of leaders. Blaming or stigmatising RSS will be a difficulty as long as inhibited, cynical, pen-pushers write irresponsibly from positions that are too large for them!

20 Sri V.D. Savarkar said similarly: “Militarise the Hindu, and Hinduise the army”, an advice we should have heeded at least after 1947. How many millions more of martyrs do we have to sacrifice?

Chapter 3: Sri Aurobindo on Revivalism Let us go back to the question of what is ‘revivalism’, or whether it is good or bad for our nation. If by this term one means the complete going back to the past, and abandonment of the present and blocking the future, it is anti-life, anti-nature and must be condemned wholeheartedly. In the Islamic context, the ‘purdah’ for women, beards for men, skull cap, jihad as ideology being still taught in every mushrooming thousands of madrasas all over the Asian countries, and countries and ideas ill-suited to a cooperative collective living for all mankind, and cause ill-will, hatred and wars – this is revivalism. It is strange that Nehru or his followers never blamed the Muslim community for this obscurantism which is the same as revivalism and the equivalent of fundamentalism in its extreme form. Till today no one condemns these attempts! Not Congressists or leftists. The Christian version of revivalism is the bringing back of inquisition, (burning of the heretics) and conversion through fraud and foul methods, prevention of free thinking, opposition to science, attempts to divide the world as followers of the Messiah and followers of Satan, mad and wild doctrines of “one God, one book, the only son of God, and the only means of salvation as belief in Christ” and a host of doctrinaire teachings not in conformity with civilised communal life. In Hinduism, revival of “cast” (if it is possible at all) and if anyone talks of it, could be considered as revivalism in the bad sense. But nobody talks of it; not the RSS, not the VHP, ABVP and not the BHMS or any other “outfit”. “Cow-protection” was considered one! But it is a programme enshrined in the constitution itself, with obvious economic rationale! It is the Congress that has persistently stood for ‘caste’ revival in the reverse gear, for vote advantages, and reservations beyond reasonably stipulated periods in the constitution! Who is the real revivalist? “Mandal I” of V.P. Singh, now Mandal II of Arjun Singh are not RSS creations! Dynastic rule, feudal hierarchy is what no sensible man would want. That would have been revivalist. Nehru “abolished” it. Sardar Patel got all the princely states merged in free India – a staunch Hindu supporter that he was accused of being, in the rebuilding of Somnath temple in Gujarat – and Smt. Indira Gandhi abolished even privy purses, going back on guarantees issued under the constitution! Hindus never fought against it as Muslims did ‘Shah bano’ case judgement of even the Supreme Court. Who is the revivalist? Nehru declared factories are our temples and places of worship. Hindus did not fight him. Nor were temples closed, as Churches got converted into government godowns in Russia under communists! DMK, DK, leftists in Tamil Nadu, in Kerala sought and brought their best in ruining the traditions of temples and one-sided land reforms (the Congress even in Karnataka) harming the Hindu cause and wanting religion to be a closed chapter in Indian history in programmes of progressivism, revolution and ushering in dynastic rule at the same time! Nehru, Indira, Rajiv, Sonia and now Rahul!

Who is the real ‘revivalist’, sir? Every Congressman of political clout has a private army like the feudal lords of the past in England, like ‘palegars’ here, and wants his son/daughter to continue in his office! Mr. Objector, why don’t you condemn all this? The Hindu knows what to revive, what to preserve, what to transform, what new identities are needed, and how to forge them. The RSS is nobody’s feudal army. If patriotism is equated with Hitlerism, we can equate democratic freedom also with British or American arrogance! In fact Sri Aurobindo says that this imitative democracy is a passing phase and we must find our own! “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 through really, the first stages of a sort of national Yoga… God has struck it all down – Moderatism, the bastard child of English liberalism; Nationalism the mixed progeny of Europe and Asia; Terrorism the abortive 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 prelude to India’s regeneration”21. What is wrong with the love of revival of India, with its true mission restored, as a visionary sees it? It was Nehru who had “romantic misunderstandings” (T.S. Eliot’s phrase in another context), of India’s present and future, and was “discovering India” for himself in British-maintained jails in this country! He had nothing to learn, or be inspired by our rich past, and made incorrigible blunders in understanding our own history. Indian history started for him from 1947, and died with his death, when he could not known or learn anything even from it. He, through Moulana Abdul Kalam Azad, instructed the Education Ministry, that is our curricula, no gloating over the Gupta period should be done, or the Mughal period condemned as foreign conquest, and so forth. All that was “buried and over”. That was how, anyone who talked of Shivaji, a Jhansi Rani, Rana Pratap and others came to be branded as Revivalists. But how can you change history> It is like changing your parents! The Communists in Russia and China had attempted doing so, and so Nehru the ‘Modernist’ also wanted to change! No Hindu would say, all must float beards like a Shivaji, ride horses like him, and dress like a Rana Pratap. That would have been revivalism, if it were so. What Shivaji means for the Hindu is the spirit of self-assertion, spirit of reorganising Hindu society to recover the lost pride, and if it comes to that, fight the terrorist like Aurangzeb in his own way, using guerrilla ambushes, to end his tyrannical rule. The real revivalists are those who invented road names in New Delhi after notorious plunderes like Aurangzeb, Tughlaq, Khilji, Imbrahim Lodhi, Babur, Akbar and their tribe!(Nehru was alive and initiated all this, at the time!) So it came to mean in congress-psyche, that justified attempts to revive Hindu pride were “revivalist”, while similar but unjustified attempts to “revive” the aggressor’s pride was “progressive”! I shall not accuse people of this perversity of having any brains! It is a superstition that you can bring them back to sanity!! 21 India’s Rebirth, p.93. Letter dated July 13, 1911. See the amazing and pointed reference to terrorism more than a century ago! Terrorism must die, not love of freedom! http://www.voiceofdharma.com/books/ir/IR_part2.htm

An ex-president of India once described Aurangzeb as a “socialist” and a “secularist” on a national occasion! Very good discovery! No revivalism, this? You still have a city in Vasco-da-Gama’s name, a sea pirate that looted Goa! Don’t speak of this as “revivalism”! You will be ridiculed! But try to rebuild a temple for Lord Rama, that had been devastated by Babur and Aurangzeb; you will be branded as a “revivalist”! Ask for anything that is likely to boost up the Hindu pride, you are a ‘revivalist’. Let us see what Aurobindo has to say about this: “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 loosing us the battle of life. We must therefore save India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past.”22 “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 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 circumstances of the past, that because temporary causes had brought us low and made us weak, low therefore must be our aims and weak our methods… 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 all life of all the peoples of the earth, is the task next in importance and urgency… 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.”23 If there was a ‘revivalist’ among the renaissance luminaries heralding a free and full Hindustan, here was one, in Sri Aurobindo, Mr. Objector should know.

‘Spirituality’ and Sri Aurobindo We shall now examine what kind of ‘spirituality’ was it that Sri Aurobindo envisaged, preached and practiced. When this term is currently being used by all sorts of people as if it excludes ‘religion’, ‘worship’ and ‘lower forms of faith’ to which common men are used, we have to verify that claim by some that spirituality is unfettered by all that is meant by religion, in the Hindu context. Confusions created in this regard by the creedal religions of the Abrahamic tradition of a monotheistic God, and unverifiable claims of 22 India’s Rebirth, p.38. Letters of Feb 24, 1908 23 India’s Rebirth, p.60, 61. Letter dated Sep 25, 1909. The warning was against confining to the ‘present’ as created by the British or the Mughals before them. But by foresight it applies even more eminently to Nehru’s attempts to continue the foreign tradition and keep India unaltered by preventing all attempts to rebuild culturally ourselves.

exclusive revelations sought to be imposed on the whole world through violent and fraudulent means, as the ‘only faiths’, have further complicated the matter to confound our already confused secularist in Sri Aurobindo’s camp. We shall see what the master himself meant by these terms, religion and spirituality to expose those who dub ‘Hindu religious revival’ as absurdity as earlier pointed out. Here is Sri Aurobindo: “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.”24 Comment: This gags the mouth of our objector who wants Aurobindo to be included among other-wordly ‘spiritualists’, having nothing to do with nationalistic ideas, even if the country is passing through violent convulsions, vivisection, and vilification of its values, its history, its great antiquity and uniqueness. Do we see today in the RSS or VHP any “particular manifestation of Hinduism, in this case a medieval one”? Which one, if the charge is true? Mr. Objector, you must know that European medievalism is different from our medievalism! It was Christianity, its anti-progress, anti-science, closed approach to life that threw Europe into medievalism, during which same period by Christian count, our country was in its most efflorescent evolution – the 1100 years that you say which is “generally recognised as the period of decline of the spiritual culture”. No; this is misinterpretation, sir. The Chalukyas in the South, the Guptas in the North, and the flowering up of a Kalidasa, a Varahamihira, a Pāṇini, a Patanjali, a Vararuchi, the re-edition of the Epics and our Puranas, Harshavardhana, Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, the Alwars, the Nayanmars, Samudragupta, Vikramaditya, Baskaracharya, the Hoysalas, Shivaji, Vijayanagar emperors, Sayana – to dub all these as medieval figures is madness to say the least. Medievalism (i.e. anti-cultural, anti-human, vandalistic barbaric waves of destruction) came to India with the advent of Islam with the Ghaznis, Ghoris, Tughlaqs, Khiljis and Mughals. Cultural India struggled hard all over this period to fight ‘medievalism’ and keep its ever youthful ‘renaissance’ spirit, unlike any other cultural entity, ancient or modern. ‘Medievalism’ by expression has acquired a backward mindset as meaning and stands for anti-cultural, anti-human trends. Islam and Christianity are promoting this frame of mind wherever they set foot. Not Hinduism. See what the spread of Hinduism did in Indonesia, Malaysia, Gandhara (now Afghanistan), China, Tibet and even Japan and Korea! How can one brush aside Hinduism, any aspect of it, as a medieval manifestiaon? You may say ‘asceticism’ is an aspect of Hindu medievalism. But see how Sri Aurobindo dispels even this ignorance: “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… I do not accept the ascetic ideal as the final solution of the problem of the human existence.” “But even its exaggerations have a noble spirit behind them than the vitalistic exaggerations which are the opposite defect of Western culture.”25

24 India’s Rebirth, p.149. Letter of Jan 5, 1920 written to Joseph Baptista, a co-worker of Tilak 25 India’s Rebirth, p.143. Letter of Apr 1919

Are you answered? Sri Aurobindo does not spare any great name, when it comes to upholding the right attitudes in life for its betterment. Not even Shankaracharya. Read: “I find that Shankara 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: pratyaksha (direct knowledge) is more important.”26 Then come to religion. Creedal religions like Christianity and Islam have brought a bad name for this word, this concept, this expression. That does not mean religion is restricted to this bad sense of unverifiable commandments, of prophets and cruel gods and crude heavens and cruder hells. You quote, Mr. Objector, from Aurobindo, a sentence from his Essays on Gita in the context of his criticism of Christianity and Islam “a grotesque creation of human unreason, the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty, obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism” etc. , and want to use it against Hinduism, and “those” (God knows who!) that want to make it “institutionalised”. Good God! Is there any institutionalised brand of Hinduism anywhere, anytime in our history? But I know what is meant: this is a baseless attack on RSS or VHP, as they are presumed to be “regimenting” Hindu youth for something abominable, as Congress and fellow travellers think. You have never visited an RSS camp, never mixed with them, read their literature to know that RSS is as general and catholic as Hinduism, they never discuss or encourage doctrinal, communal or cast differences. In fact RSS is a big program for reuniting the Hindu society (listen to their Aikya mantra), respect-promoting for our cultural indivisibility, national sovereignty, our ancient cultural achievements, the Hindu pride. Nehru came to know of it in his last years. J. P. [Jayaprakash Narayan27] was cured of his prejudices in this respect (read Sri Sita Ram Goel’s testimony), when he visited one of their annual meetings; Lal Bahadur Sastry sought their help in kicking out Pak aggressors! They use “lathis” for training cadets in heroic exercises, which they do not want our soldiers to use in the army (that would be revivalist!). They cannot use guns (as the police and military use) as they respect law, unlike your Naxals, PWG, ULFA and other ‘respectable’ law-breakers, negotiating with docile governments, encouraging them privately. You must know all this to shed your language and unjustified, irrational prejudices. In fact, it is the Hindutva forces that are the hope of this country, as Sri Aurobindo as amply implied in his profuse writings. Why try to bring a wedge between the two? Read this: “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…Religion in India is a still more plastic term and may mean anything from the heights of Yoga to strangling your fellowman and relieving him

26 India’s Rebirth, p.95. (Emphasis added) Letter 1910-1914: This is from manuscripts between these years, in the first years of his stay at Pondicherry 27 JP's visit to an RSS camp, as told by Sita Ram Goel in "Perversion of India's Political Parlance" http://www.voi.org/books/pipp/ch1.htm

of the worldly goods he may happen to be carrying with him…28 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… The one superiority of average Indian religion is that it does really reverence the genuine Bhakta or Sannyasin provided he does not come with too strange a garb or too revolutionary an aspect… 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.”29 We may add that philosophy or metaphysics (a spiritual inquiry) concerns with the ultimate general principles of life called Rita or Dharma, as experienced in the Veda, Upanishads and Gita while Religion concerns with individual particularities, and requirements, deduced from them, as applied in varying individual contexts of life. There is no clash in Hinduism. Practices may change, evolve, replace one another, without violating the general principles available for rational inquiry and verification in individual lives. Nothing is hard, rigid, and frozen in Hinduism. The ethics-makers, moral codifiers, law givers, emperors, lay-men, the learned and professionals are all governed by it. There is nothing like “pure spirituality”, as opposed to all religious practices, and exclusive of political governance, commerce, war-rules, administration, jurisprudence and punishments for criminals. Read this: “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 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.”30 The RSS is an eminent answer to the fulfilment of this kshatra (militant) element of Dharma, to balance the other spiritual-pursuit aspect individually and collectively. Sri Krishna embodied both aspects in Him, as the Gita shows. Illustrius examples abound in the Hindu Epics and Puranas. Sri Aurobindo has already been quoted to show he wanted not only a Ramadas, but also a Shivaji! Mr. Objector! Where are you driving in the wilderness of your confused thoughts? Whom are you trying to fool? See this sarcastic comment on the Ramakrishna Mutt ascetics increasingly taking to ‘withdrawal’ instead of trying to protect Hindu interests in the wake of grave

28 This may be an allusion to the Kapalikas, Bhairavas and other tribal forms of worship where they waylay people, rob, and offer part of the earnings to crude conceptions of God as ‘killer’. But you can’t damn Yoga or higher forms for this. As George Santayana puts it: “If religion is profound it becomes obscure; if simple profane”. Perfect religion is perfect spirituality. You cannot condemn Hindus for Christian or Islamic barbarities in the name of God and damn all religion as unspiritual. 29 India’s Rebirth, p.68-70. Early 1910 30 India’s Rebirth, p.106-107. Letter to Sri Motilal Roy, Sep 1914

provocation and communal clashes. Let alone action or support! They are deadly silent and mortally afraid of saying a word in support of Hindus morally and mentally. Read this: “The work that was begun at Dakshineswar is far from finished, it is not even understood. That which Vivekananda received and strove to develop, has not yet materialised.”31 I do not understand why our objector is afraid of the term religion! See this explanation of Sri Aurobindo: “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 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, sanâtana dharma.”32 Mr. Objector, what is your argument against striving to make this our national Dharma, and later on world-Dharma? How is this ‘revivalist’ or “a particular manifestation of Hinduism” or “an absurdity” as you dismiss it? Do you have an alternative? Come out with it please, if there is one! Read this also: “Spirituality…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.”33

31 India’s Rebirth, p.76. We have quoted Sita Ram Goel to the same effect earlier. Swamy Vivekananda proudly called himself a “Hindoo Sanyasi”, as the servant of the Hindu community. See Aurobindo’s drive and direction, to see for yourself whether he’s a secularist or a nationalist (emphasis added). 32 India’s Rebirth, p.145-146. 33 India’s Rebirth, p.139. Nov 1918

Chapter 4: On Education, and the Place of Sanskrit in it This is for Mr. Arjun Singh or someone else better in his place to note and follow: Read this: “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.”34 Is this revivalism? Nationalism? Cultural Universalism? Spiritual education envisaged for everyone’s betterment? Or is it anti-secularism? Sectarianism? ‘Religiosity’ as the objector says? On the role of India had to play in the world-betterment in spiritual, cultural, educational and aesthetic terms, in the job of what Vivekananda called man-making, see these emphatic words of Sri Aurobindo: “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 revolution. She must have the courage of her past knowledge and the immensity of soul that will measure itself with her future.”35 Note: Nearly a century ago here is Sri Aurobindo visualising for our country a new world-leadership, unique and in agreement with her capacity, potential, culture, temper and in keeping with historically past experiments and precedents. Our leader must wake up to the new Western challenges, give up succumbing to their world domination programmes, assert themselves in not only cultural matters, but also science, technology, space-craft, defence and the now world-wide phenomenon of Information Technology and Business management. Some of these fields never could have been imagined when Sri Aurobindo wrote these words. But it is testimony to his prophethood that conditions are being created where dreams can be fulfilled, if statesmanship and patriotism can still be possessed or acquired by our leaders, by shedding the tendency for mere imitation. There were people, however, like Nehru, who understood by ‘Revolution’ more Westernisation, more contempt for our own resources, our own self-identity, more imitation, more uprooting. This was the way the country was fooled of ‘modernisation’. Even Gandhi was bamboozled to believe that Nehru was his ‘heir’-apparent, as if the country was some kind of Joint Jahgir or Inam between them. Gandhi was no one to appoint or anoint Nehru in this regard. His prophesy: “He will speak my 34 India’s Rebirth, p.67. (Dec. 25, 1909) See how these words are charged with an unparalleled enthusiasm for the reconstruction and recreation of the Hindu model of education, as the panacea for all the ills affecting us today. 35 India’s Rebirth, p.72. (Feb. 19, 1910) Sri Aurobindo is not talking of abortive revolutions like the Soviet or Chinese Communist experiments. He is talking of ‘revolution’ in the sense of advancement in Man-making processes and conditions congenial for them. Few could understand it, then. But now?

language” was a complete flop, as the two talked totally different languages – Gandhi speaking of Hinduism, to the little extent he knew of it, was proud of, and lived its values and Nehru speaking of socialism, Westernisation in complete contempt for Hinduism or what it stood for, and in total ignorance of its infinite and unfathomable potentialities to solve its own problems as well as those of the rest of the world! Gandhi was fooled completely and overpowered through mean tactics by Nehru and his coterie, to usurp the rightful place of Sardar Patel as the first P.M., both by legitimacy and consensus in tragic circumstances which are described identically by the biographers of all these three leaders. That is another story. But it happened in spite of Sri Aurobindo’s strong optimism, and clear visualisation of such opportunity for world leadership for our country. On the world scene, then or now, nobody invites you to take over the leadership. It happens – and happens in all sorts of ways! A thief and vagabond like Robert Clive laid the foundations of the British Empire, accidentally! Nobody expected Britain to lead for three centuries. Seafarers and pirates like Vasco da Gama, Columbus and others similarly made histories for their countries for a while. Hitler came like a bolt from the blue and tried the idea of German world-leadership for a while, to fail. Among such failed world leaders we can include Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini and other present day American presidents. War-machinery, science potential, wealth, power of mercantile organisations, trade tactics alone cannot produce leaderships to endure, be successful and benefit the rest of the world. Spiritual power alone is the most essential requirement. See these words: “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 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 Monoism of Shankara for the Monoism of Haeckel, the written Shastra for the unwritten law of European social opinion, the dogmatism of Brahmin Pandits for the dogmatism of European scientists, thinkers and scholars. Such a foolish exchange of servitude can receive the assent of no self-respecting mind. Let us 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 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…”36 This is the focus Sri Aurobindo wants for the education of youth in this country. A job which we have not even begun! Again see this emphatic, prophetic vision: ”I am convinced and have long been convinced that a spiritual awakening to the true self of the nation is the most important condition of our national greatness…India, if she chooses, can guide the world. I quite agree with you that our social fabric will have to

36 India’s Rebirth, p.87-88.

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.” “I believe also that humanity is about to enlarge its scope by new knowledge, new powers and capacities, which will create as great a revolution 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.”37

Sanskrit Our objector has said enough number of ‘good for nothing’ things, to escape being branded as anti-Hindu. For example he refers to the Shah Bano case and the way the Muslim community behaved in pressurising the parliament to undo a Supreme Court order. (Nothing is gained on this now.) He mentions Article 370, and the plight of Kashmiri pandits, Christian and Muslim conversions-spree unchecked, uniform civil code, its necessity, Godhra and its aftermath, the partiality or the ruling junta and the press. Not to agree with general public opinion in this regard would be risky. But it fools no one. But he condemns Astrology being prescribed as a course of study in some universities, observance of Ganesha festival with pomp and grandeur, cry for cow-protection, as ‘revivalist’ without realising their organisational value or practical daily use or effects. He makes much of Hindu tolerance in the face of mass-massacres by Muslim terrorists of international networks and wants Hindus, to take them as we have been tolerating all these days, in Gandhian ways, and continue to suffer as ever before. He has no solutions. For they are not readily available for him for approval, like reaction in the wake of Rama Janma Bhoomi uprisals, Godhra post-mortem, and he is perhaps not sure of what side to take. See this advice for Hindus: “I would be the last person to suggest we emulate Israel in this respect.”38 Would you not be, sir! I pity you. Is this the spirit of Sri Aurobindo? Or is this Congress ideology or policy? A legacy of Gandhi-Nehru foolishness clamped on unthinking populace? Let us get it right and see Jewish history. Israel was once their homeland. Jerusalem their town of worship. They believed themselves as the chosen race of God; but did not believe in proselytisation or conversion. They did not impose their concepts of God, Heaven and Hell on others. Then came their conquest by Egyptians. They were captured and sold as slaves as drawers of water and hewers of wood and stone. Their lands were taken away. Then came the Christian menace. The so called “Jesus” was crucified by Roman rulers against whom, these Christian rebels had organised revolts by forming secret societies. The wily Christians put the blame on the innocent Jews; the Jewish punishment was of pelting stones on traitors! But this misconception is still ruling the roost. Christians despised the Jews and pictured them as Devil’s disciplines, even in plays (The Jew of Malta, and The Merchant of Venice bear proof). Then came the Muslim deluge, the Muslim avalanche. The holy prophet himself massacred thousands of them for not following him.

37 India’s Rebirth, p.110. 38 The Current Hindu Upsurge in Sri Aurobindo’s Light – Mangesh Nadkarni, p.8.

The Jews became an emaciated community; their numbers dwindled, they scattered to save themselves, their lands were taken away. They remained a race without a land of their own (like our Sindhi brethren today) and took refuge in Germany and other countries. Their industriousness, self-confidence, power of endurance and love of peace enriched the lands where they settled. Then came Hitler to hound them out! Mr. Objector sir, you would have known how many millions of them were killed in the gas chambers of Hitler! Would you not want justice for the Jews? After the Second World War, the Allies resettled them in Israel, which is still not to the liking of Arab countries. But listen; a man called Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858 – 1922) worked for the revival of Hebrew, a language which the Jews, as they were scattered all over the world, could no longer use as their spoken language; he dedicated himself to this ‘lost’ cause, to make it once again a spoken language, by starting newspapers in that language, by bringing out a dictionary in 12 volumes, by creating new words where there was need, by encouraging conversations, and all else that was needed! A dead language was again brought to life, long before Israel attained freedom. His own people opposed it under the superstition that only gods should speak their language! But he took up this challenge. Today Israel has regained its language, its freedom, its pride, its might and its due place in the international world.39 Under Nehru and Congress we did not have the courage even to recognise Israel as a state! That would displease the Arab lords!! That was our fear. The NDA government dared to break this taboo. Would you still be “the last person to suggest we emulate Israel”, Mr. Objector? How eccentric of you! How inhuman of you! I pity your weakness and fear! Have we no lessons here? Can we not do a similar revival of Sanskrit in this country? Read this from Sri Aurobindo: “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 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.”40 “Sanskrit ought still to have a future as the language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongues cease entirely to be written or spoken (yet Sanskrit, the only language that was ever used over the whole of India and one best expressive of her spirit and richness, is today on the way to extinction, its study discouraged in both North and South India).”41 What is possible for Israel should be possible for India, at least now.

39 Read in Kannada, Matte Hottitu Hebrew Hanate (The lamp of Hebrews was lit up again) by Dr. H.R. Viswas, pub. Rashtrotthana Parishat, Bangalore 2006 40 India’s Rebirth, p.129-130. Dec 1917 41 India’s Rebirth, p.118. Mar 1916

Conclusion I generally ignore unintelligent attacks on any programme of Hindu reconstruction of society, Hindu-resurgence, and the need to rebuild a strong Hindu nation, which accommodates all peace lovers, and believers in coexistence. But when ‘knowledgeable’ people in responsible positions, (but in fear, inhibition and suffering from inferiority complex) make bold to exhibit their ignorance publicly as a form of ‘knowledge’ or ‘enlightenment’ I generally do not keep quiet. That was how I started my 10 volumes scheme on Introducing the Culture of the Vedas (in Kannada) in 1973, and have authored over 85 books to date in languages I know to read and write. Some students of the Sanskrit department of Karnataka university came to me for help to write a seminar paper on the famous “Gambler’s Hymn” that year. I was deeply under the spell of Sri Aurobindo by then, in addition to mastering of the Veda in a traditional style, both in recitation and interpretation. Sri Aurobindo was my light and delight then and now. I helped in deciphering the symbolic meaning of the hymn and guided the boys. When the paper was presented, the professor was all fury-incarnate for violating the great “orientalists” (Max Muller, Kagi, Peterson, Wilson, Griffith and others) and striking a ‘new’ path. He threatened he would fail them if they attempted ‘originality’ or resorted to traditional or ‘outrageous’ meanings that nobody had discovered. He then asked for the source of ‘mischief’, came to know of me, came to me and warned: “Look, you are a professor of English Literature. Sanskrit is no business of yours. Veda is not your chosen field. Do not misguide my students”. I told him of similar confrontations between Sri Aurobindo and Dr. Radhakrishnan! I asked him: “Do you encourage mugging up, and inheriting western prejudices even in matters of Veda?” He fumbled for words and failed. Ultimately I won and he said: “Your interpretations might be right; I may agree in private. But publicly Western authorities I respect. They are the quotable quotes in exams; not your native meanings.” I asked him: “If I also write books of reference, would you agree with me, uphold my right to views and being quoted?” He said grumblingly: “By all means”, and disappeared! Dr. Bendre encouraged me in all my later endeavours and I authored tomes not only on the Vedas but on Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavata, Bhagavad Gita, Alwars and books on Indological studies. I hope our present Objector will also see reason, one day, come round, and change his pervert views of Sri Aurobindo, and not act as an impediment between him and the general reading public, in a true understanding of the true spirit of the master and what he stood for really. I have quoted from one source only in this write up, generally not much known to the Aurobindo readers. But I can show similar proof from his other better known works also, if need be.

We cannot quote Aurobindo against himself! Can we? Let the wise readers decide for themselves what Sri Aurobindo really stood for, and his programme for us today in this country.

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