A Letter to a friend signifying who Sri Aurobindo was - by Aju Mukhopadhyay

          A casual remark by a newly acquainted intellectual friend of Kolkata at Coffee House round table meet after many years on a Sunday, “Oh, Rishi Arabinda! He would have been hanged if C R Das didn’t plead for him and the matter would have ended. Why, he was first to create violence in Bengal.” elicited the following letter to him after some days

     Actually we were not old friends but we met through common friends. Such remarks from intellectuals are sometimes heard about him so I didn’t pay much attention at that moment, others mightn’t have heard at all. But the fact is, it went very deep in me and gnawed at my heart as I love Sri Aurobindo. Your remarks might have been uttered just casually like uttering such words as, “He escaped at a crucial moment of the Independence Movement when his presence was very required”, etc.

     I haven’t forgotten, may be because it was uttered by you, an intellectual with a long academic and journalistic career but such remarks are usually shallow without full understanding of facts, without a common knowledge of who Sri Aurobindo was!

     It is an irony that he was active in open politics only for five years in Bengal. But by his presence and activities for a short while he left an indelible impression of his personality and influence on the then public,  he pioneered the thoughts and actions of the Independence Movement for decades. He edited two papers in English; daily and weekly, and one weekly in Bengali with such courageous tone and dignity, such deftness and dexterity of language; with or without mention of his name as editor, that the British knowing full well could not charge him for long. When they charged him later for sedition for quite a few times desperately, he came out unscathed each time without entering their snare before and after the Alipore trial when great C R Das took charge of the case.

      When he was charged for one of his writing in Bande Mataram, for sedition for the first time, he resigned from the post of the Principal of the National College but was released without any charge proved against him. Rabindranath Tagore, eleven years elder to him, came to him at his place of stay at Raja Subodh Mullick’s residence and greeted him with his poem “Namaskar”, beginning with “Arobindo Rabindrer laha namaskar!” Tagore met him again long after that 1907, in 1928, at Pondicherry and was astounded observing his face and was impressed that Sri Aurobindo carried the divine in him. He wrote an article on it.  This is to impress that he was a man above usual man, not to be so casually dispensed with light remarks.

     Das was his friend in England when a student. While in Pondicherry quite later Sri Aurobindo was engaged in yoga but had little money to carry on with his disciples. He was again helped by his friend, Chitta, who paid him rupees one thousand as remuneration for translation of his poem, “Sagar Sangeet”.

     After many night-labours and many days pleading the concluding remarks of the God inspired Barrister C.R. Das’s speech while pleading for Aurobindo Ghose was,: “Therefore I say, that the man standing before the bar of this court is standing before the bar of the high court of history, that long after this turmoil is hushed in silence, long after he is dead and gone, he will be considered as the Prophet of Patriotism, Father of Nationalism and Lover of Humanity.”

     Yes, the man standing there before the bar was a God realized, transformed person due to his rigorous sadhana in jail and before, The future Yogi, Sri Aurobindo, was standing before the bar in the presence of the presiding Judge, Charles Porton Beachcroft.   

     At his time very few were there in India who could write English like him. He later created the largest epic in English, Savitri, which was one of the twelve largest works in world literature. He wrote more than 50000 lines of poetry besides other prose works. His vision of life divine was so lofty that forgetting his revolutionary role, the British paper “Times” came out with great appreciation in favour of The Life Divine; a creation which gives great hopes for man in the unknown future in contrast to the hellish presentation of the communist world to the contemporaries, two diabolic dark personalities like Stalin and Mao-Ze-dong whose contribution to the mankind is best remembered by their victims.

     In Bengal it seems that he is more known as Rishi, not known in what exact sense. In other states he is more respected and known as Sri Aurobindo. Aurobindo Ghose was the first to have claimed full freedom, Purna Swaraj, from the British yoke as early as in 1906-07. Long before Gandhi Sri Aurbindo called for boycott and non-cooperation, passive resistance and independent Indian education system, etc. He became the first Principal of the first National College in India.  For his active leadership beyond their control the British considered him as the most ‘Dangerous Man’ in India. While he was incarcerated in Alipore jail British Parliament was engaged for a full day discussing about his arrest and it continued beyond one day. His support was Sir Ramsay Mcdonald, once a British Prime Minister who had interviewed Sri Aurobindo earlier. Please excuse me, with knowledge and mastery over half a dozen European languages and half a dozen Indian languages, with new interpretation of the oldest available Scripture, Vedas and mastery over Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, he was like father to most of the intellectuals of his time, yet he cared little for intellect. He received words spontaneously from the heaven in his pen; he was a giant in the Intuitive and Overmental world. He not only created mystic poetry but simple poems also, touching the common man and society.

     I  have written this in a single flow as if inspired by my feeling and interest on the subject. I have books on him and on the Mother; I have translated them and have a book of poems on them only. If you feel interested, we can go more, if you don’t it won’t go. I am happy to have cleared my heart of an oppressed feeling, I am happy to have made efforts to let you know that he was such a Himalayan entity that no dwarf can reach him really without a spiritual width and depth.

     Though he tried, made all efforts to remain in politics, edited papers, wrote and gave speeches after he was released, without any charge against proved, from the Alipore Jail and Court, he could not continue. Government’s pressure was immensely increasing to arrest him in any way and serve the final blow to finish all their future deals with him. It was a long and arduous struggle, more in his inner life than outwardly. As in his Uttarpara Speech he said on 30. 5. 1909 that God was his only guide and that He had wished him to do his work, meaning work of inner Yoga to reach him, he could not stay in turbulent political life; on one hand chased by the British Raj and on other hand his inner being was unwilling to continue in the same way, Finally he, throwing dust in the eyes of the police, reached the French India, Pondicherry, never again to return contrary to expectations, and plunged in the deepest water of yoga.

     While the case had still been going pending judgment, when his co-prisoners asked him about the result, he said that he would be freed. When, after the verdict was given to hang Barindra Kumar Ghose and Ullaskar Dutta to death, he said to his brother, Barindra, that he would not be hanged. After sometime when the two to be hanged appealed to the High Court, their punishments were commuted to life imprisonment in Andaman jail with some others. Sri Aurobindo knew of the results.

© Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2020/21 

     Here is a poem from my book, "Poems on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother"

                                           Sri Aurobindo

“God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep

For man shall not know the coming till its hour

And belief shall be not till the work is done”-

said Sri Aurobindo in his epic poem Savitri.

 

The voice of truth in the seer poet Sri Aurobindo was heard

As he was a lotus born in mud, away from the mundane scene,

The cascading Supramental light like the golden swan

Touching the sky kept its foot on earth fixed.

 

Like a tree he was peaceful, unhurried and calm with perseverance

Among the thousand resounding words his existence was silence

In his body sat the God, his face revealed the eternity

Out of intense love for men he sat away from humanity.

 

Small fries in shallow water and surface-gazers

were lost in the depth of his fathomless water.

© Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2020

The Mother of Pondicherry

 

Hardly her birthday was celebrated;

Keeping the celebration of the centenary   

Of Mother’s permanent coming to Pondicherry 

Pending for the next April twenty-fourth

Vicious Corona Viruses Began their Reign

Signaling almost an end of it after a year;

Visit to their last Earthly Abode including her room

Is still a taboo

Hush hush silence, barricade and boundary remains

We haven’t visited them for more than a year hence!

Nature has given a signal in the meantime; 

There was torrential rain on her next birthday

From the early hours before the dawn

Until noon without a respite soon

On Twenty-first February 2021;

Such rains unprecedented drowning the Sun  

Never happened in Pondicherry

On such a date

In such a manner

Restricting further her Restricted Birthday affair,

From the beginning of her Coming

Till the end of her Ministry

Even up to date;

But the issue is neither local nor temporal

Not to be decided by the Nature solely;

It is in the infinity in the eternity

Where things shall take shape

Events be reshaped

It is in the realm of the Mother’s Divinity

Where the future shall be molded;

We wait

Wait!    

© Aju Mukhopadhyay, 2021