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What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world’s history is not a teaching, not even a revelation: it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme. –The Mother As a Teacher Sri Aurobindo was loved and highly revered by his students at Baroda College, not only for his profound knowledge of English literature and his brilliant and often original interpretations of English poetry, but for his saintly character and gentle and gracious manners. There was a magnetism in his personality, and an impalpable aura of a lofty ideal and a mighty purpose about him, which left a deep impression upon all who came in contact with him, particularly upon young hearts and unsophisticated minds. Calm and reserved, benign and benevolent, he easily became the centre of respectful attention wherever he happened to be. To be close to him was to be quieted and quickened: to listen to him was to be fired and inspired. Indeed, his presence radiated something which was at once enlivening and exalting. His power sprang from his unshakable peace, and the secret of his hold on men lay in his utter self- effacement. His greatness was like the gentle breath of spring invisible but irresistible, it touched all that was bare and bleak around him to a splendour of renewed life and creative energy. When Professor Littledale went on leave in 1898 Sri Aurobindo was appointed professor of English. In 1899 he spoke on Oxford and Cambridge on the occasion of the Baroda College Social Gathering. In the year 1900 Principal Tait asked the Maharaja to appoint Sri Aurobindo as permanent professor of English in the Baroda College. In his proposal the principal spoke highly of his work and ability. The Maharaja granted the request. Sri Aurobindo’s pay was raised to Rs.360. Unlike his brother Manmohan (also a professor in English) Sri Aurobindo never prepared himself for the class with elaborate notes. About his career as a professor Sri Aurobindo said in the course of a talk: "I was not so conscientious a professor as Page – 77 Manmohan. I never used to look at the notes and sometimes my explanations did not agree with them at all. I was professor of English and sometimes of French. What was surprising to me was that students used to take down everything verbatim and mug it up by heart. Such a thing would never have happened in England. There [at Baroda] the students besides taking my notes used to get notes of some professor from Bombay, especially if any of them was , to be an examiner. "Once I was giving a lecture on Southey’s Life of Nelson. My lecture was not in agreement with the notes. So the students remarked that it was not at all like what was found in the notes. I replied: I have not read the notes-in any case they are all rubbish! I could never go to the minute details. I read and left my mind to do what it could. That is why I could never become a scholar. Up to the age of fifteen I was known as a very promising scholar in St. Paul’s. After fifteen I lost that reputation. The teachers used to say that I had become lazy and was deteriorating because I was reading novels and poetry only; at examination time I used to prepare a little. But now and then when I wrote Greek and Latin verse my teachers used to lament that I was not utilising my remarkable gifts because of my laziness. "When I went up for Scholarship at the King’s College, Cambridge, Oscar Browning remarked that he had not seen such remarkable papers before." The reminiscences of some of his students, reproduced below, are very interesting inasmuch as they throw some authentic light upon the way he lived at Baroda and did his teaching at the college: Letter of Sanker Balwant Didmishe dated 18 September 1967 (Translated from Marathi) I was in Inter in 1905. Sri Aravind was teaching Burke’s French Revolution. As his method of teaching consisted in Page – 78 going to the roots, one could never forget what he taught, even though the whole text was not completed. His mastery of the English language was phenomenal. Sometimes he examined our composition books. He wrote on them such remarks as "Fit for Standard III" and "How have you come to the College?" "I was in the B.A. Class in 1906. At that time he was giving us (students of Jr. B.A. with voluntary English) notes on English literature. The College started at 11.00 a.m., but Sri Aravind Babu came exactly at 11.30, went straight to his room and began teaching. We eight students used to sit in his office. Before beginning, he would ask us to read seven or eight lines from the previous day; then his dictation and our writing commenced. While dictating he sat on the chair and looked at the photo of Principal Tait on the wall in front. He had no books or notes with him; everything was extempore. This procedure went on for one and a half hours. These notes were on the Augustan Age of English literature. That same year agitation began in Bengal and his attention turned to it. He went on leave and the Bande Mataram paper was founded. We were subscribing to it in the College Reading Room. After his return from leave we asked if he was going away. He replied in the negative, but it was certain that he was leaving. We, therefore, thought of giving him a send-off. Principal Clarke declined to permit the use of the College Hall, so we decided to have a photograph taken and refreshments served in the studio of the Vivid Kala Mandir, which was in Pawar’s Wada opposite Ramji Mandir. Three group photographs were taken there: (1) Sri Aravind with Sr. B.A. Eng. Vol. students (2) Sri Aravind with Jr. B.A. Eng. Vol. students (3) Sri Aravind with French students. There, of course, while speaking, he told us that he was going and reprimanded us for asking for the use of the Central Hall, as if there was no other place. 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Sri Aurobindo with the students of his French class, Baroda Page – 81 second group I was sitting at the feet of Sri Aravind Babu. My dress at that time consisted of a long coat, Hungarian cap and dhoti. Sri Aravind Babu used to wear English dress — coat, waistcoat and pants but on his head a white turban [rumāl or pheta], with an embroidered border. It was not customary at that time for students to go to his residence and so we did not go to the bungalow. Then, after the break-up of the Congress at Surat, he came to Baroda for five or six days to speak on behalf of the Extremist party. There four lectures were delivered in the Bankaneer Theatre. We used to go and sit two hours before the time. His dress then was Bengali dhoti, khamis (shirt) and a shawl wrapped around him, but nothing on his head. One story which I heard: While taking tea in the morning in a group with His Highness in Kashmir, he put a question and answered it himself. Seeing the mehatar doing his work of sweeping, he put the question: "Who is happy in this camp?" Answer: "The Maharaja as he has the company of the Maharani and next this mehatar, as his wife is also here with him". When this tale was carried to His Highness, he enjoyed a hearty laugh. Another hearsay story is that after the Delhi Darbar incident, the letter which was sent to Lord Curzon was drafted by Sri Aravind Babu. Both these stories are matters of hearsay. The buggy in which he went to the College from Khaserao Saheb’s bungalow had purple glass panes. I have no more information than this." The Baroda College Golden Jubilee Commemoration Volume (Ed. Prof. A.K. Trivedi [Bombay: Times of India press, 1933]) contains the. following statements by other students of Sri Aurobindo. "Mr. Littledale was succeeded [as Professor of English] by Mr. Arwind Ghosh, now of all India reputation and whose Page – 82 command over English was second to that of none, not even to that of an Englishman. The speech he delivered at one of the annual social gatherings was a piece of chaste and polished English, the like of which I have never heard. It occupied only three pages of the College Miscellany, but it set an example in classical English. Professor Ghosh gave us essays to write. He corrected all the essays. He used to teach us that every sentence should logically follow from the preceding sentence and similarly every para, should logically follow from the preceding one. Correct composition leads to correct thinking." (Mr. M.H. Kantavala, p. 24) "Professors Manubhai and Arvind Ghose, no doubt, held the students spell bound during the time of their lectures; but they did not mix with the students as much as Masani, Tapidas and Naik…. Professor Ghose too dictated notes to the students and in doing so, asked the students to give out to him the last sentence of his previous notes and would then continue his notes further." (Mr. M.K. Sharangpani, pp. 39-40) "Mr. Aravind Ghose who joined service about 1894 also used to grace the Debating Society’s meetings with his presence. Once or twice he was accompanied by Mr. K.G. Deshpande, B.A., Bar-at-Law…. Rarely they addressed the meeting but when they did it was really an intellectual feast that seemed to us. Later on Ghose was appointed Lecturer in French and English. His tutorial work was much appreciated. He took an active part in the literary activities of the College boys." (Mr. N.K. Dikshit, p. 42) "He was revered by all, but being by nature shy and reserved was not easily accessible. His reading of English Texts was very simple and did not create an impression in students’ minds of his Rhetorics, but we were all stunned at Page – 83 his genius when he dictated extemporaneous notes in a very lucid style. One sentence followed another naturally. I owe to him and his notes on "Pride and Prejudice" for my effort in writing a Gujarati novel. While we were in the B.A. class, Mr. S.C. Mallick, a friend to Prof. Ghose, delivered us a lecture laying stress on Swadeshi, and many of us took to the Swadeshi vow from that date. Prof. Ghose also spoke and we were enamoured of his Rhetorics full of sentiments and ardour. Every syllable that he spoke was full of patriotic spirit." (Mr. R.S. Dalal, p. 46) Sri K.M. Munshi, ex-governor of the Uttar Pradesh, who was one of the students of Sri Aurobindo at the Baroda College, writes: "My own contact with Sri Aurobindo dates back to 1902 when, after passing the Matriculation examination, I joined the Baroda College. Though previously I had, only on occasions, the privilege of being in personal contact with him, the Aurobindonian legend in the College filled me with reverence, and it was with awe that I hung upon his words whenever he came to College as. Professor of English." In Bhavan’s Journal (Vol. VIII, No. 26, 22 July 1962) Munshi reminisced about his former teacher: "Prof. Arvind Ghosh, later to be known as Sri Aurobindo, was our Professor of English, though at times he acted as private Secretary to Sayajirao III, the Gaekwad of Baroda. To the students of our College, Prof. Ghosh was a figure enveloped in mystery. He was reputed to be a poet, a master of many languages and in touch with Russian nihilists. Many stories of his doings were whispered from mouth to mouth among the students almost with awe. The Russo-Japanese War, declared in 1904, shook some Page – 84 of us in the College to our very depth. Port Arthur fell to the Japanese in January 1905. Admiral Togo destroyed the Russian Fleet in May. Asia had successfully challenged the mastery of Europe! Prof. Ghosh, as our acting Principal, declared a prize in an essay-cum-debate competition on "Japan and the Japanese"…. Under the influence of Prof. Arvind Ghosh, which, however, was remotely felt through Mohanlal Pandya, an employee of the Agricultural Department of Baroda State, a group of young students in the College were highly agitated over the question [of the partition of Bengal]. We heard of the echoes of coming army movements to overthrow the British and of plans of terrorist activities by secret societies. We became ardent revolutionaries. We talked of Garibaldi and the French Revolution, and hoped to win India’s freedom by a few hundred drachms of picric acid…. I remember only one occasion when I directly talked to Prof. Arvind Ghosh. "How can nationalism be developed?" I asked. He pointed to a wall-map of India and said something to this effect: Look at that map. Learn to find in it the portrait of Bharatmata. The cities, mountains, rivers and forests are the materials which go to make up Her body. The people inhabiting the country are the cells which go to make up Her living tissues. Our literature is Her memory and speech. The spirit of Her culture is Her soul. The happiness and freedom of Her children is Her salvation. Behold Bharat as a living Mother, meditate upon Her and worship Her in the nine-fold way of Bhakti…. During the Partition movement. Prof. Arvind Ghosh resigned his post of the professor in our College. While leaving Baroda, he gave us a stirring speech, the substance of which I noted down on the spot. The summary of that speech and his messianic utterance, the Uttarpara Speech. remained the source of inspiration for me for years." Page – 85 Here are some interesting extracts from the memoirs of R.N. Patkar. "Being in close contact with this great man I sometimes used to take liberty with him. While I was in Matriculation class, I once asked him how I should improve my English, what author I should read and study. I had read some portion of Macaulay’s "Lives of Great Men" and I was fascinated by his style. I asked him if I should read Macaulay. Then, as was usual with him he smiled and replied, ‘Do not be anybody’s slave, but be your own master. By reading Macaulay or any other writer you will never be like him. You will not be a Macaulay but a faint echo of Macaulay. You will be but a copy to be derided by the world, but never an original. Therefore you may read any good author carefully, but should think for yourself and form your own judgment. It is likely you may differ from the views of the writer. You should think for yourself and cultivate a habit of writing and in this way you will be the master of your own style.’ " Describing Sri Aurobindo’s usual method of. teaching, Mr. Patkar writes: "In the beginning he used to give a series of introductory lectures for initiating the student into the subject-matter of the text…. After preparing the student to understand the text… he used to start reading the text… stopping wherever necessary to explain the meaning of difficult and obscure sentences. Then… dictate general lectures bearing on the various aspects pertaining to the text. "The method must have yielded salutary results, especially when applied to a classic like Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, which Sri Aurobindo taught in 1902. After the first years, Sri Aurobindo seems to have taken the measure of his wards and they too seem to have made the most of their exceptional opportunities, thereby turning Page – 86 the classes into adventures in the realms of ideas and values. "The influence Sri Aurobindo exercised on his students was not of course confined to the class-room, important as it was; he was, besides, the Chairman of the Baroda College Union and Debating Society, and this brought him into contact, though less frequently, with the entire student body. He had to introduce visiting lecturers to the Union; he had to regulate the course of debates in such a way that the best in the students came out and they didn’t miss the spirit of intellectual inquiry in the excitement of the moment. His own speeches though they were not many were doubtless memorable events in the history of the Union. "He was never an orator", says Mr. Patkar recapitulating the scene, "but a speaker of a very high order, and… the audience used to listen to him with rapt attention. Without any gestures or the movements of the limbs, he stood… and the language used to flow like a stream from his lips with a natural ease and melody that kept his audience almost spell-bound." Without the impact of the speaker’s personality and the magic of his living voice, it must be next to impossible to form a measure of Sri Aurobindo’s power of public speech on the basis of a reported summary alone. Even so, a speech like the one he delivered before the College Social Gathering in 1899, and later printed in the Baroda College Miscellany, can give us some idea at least of the content and quality of his speeches at the Baroda College. The subject is Oxford and Cambridge, and what Indian Universities should learn from them. What does life at Oxford or Cambridge mean to a student who is privileged to be in residence for three years? Sri Aurobindo warms up to the answer and finds the right words: "He goes up from the restricted life of his home and school and finds himself in surroundings which with astonishing rapidity expand his intellect, strengthen his Page – 87 character, develop his social faculties, force out all his abilities and turn him in three years from a boy into a man. His mind ripens in the contact with minds which meet from all parts of the country and have been brought up in many various kinds of trainings, his unwholesome eccentricities wear away and the unsocial, egoistic elements of character are to a large extent discouraged. He moves among ancient and venerable buildings, the mere age and beauty of which are in themselves an education. He has the Union which has trained so many great orators and debaters, has been the first trial ground of so many renowned intellects. He has, too, the athletics clubs organised with a perfection unparalleled elsewhere, in which, if he has the physique and the desire for them, he may find pursuits which are also in themselves an education. The result is that he who entered the university a raw student, comes out of it a man and a gentleman, accustomed to think of great affairs and fit to move in cultivated society, and he remembers his College and University with affection, and in after days if he meets with those who have studied with him, he feels attracted towards them as to men with whom he has a natural brotherhood. This is the social effect. I should like the Colleges and Universities of India also to exercise, to educate by social influences as well as those which are merely academical and to create the feeling among their pupils that they belong to the community, that they are children of one mother… The academy (college or university) as a hallowed place that facilitates emotional integration, as a nursery for the children of the mother (Mother India), and as a means of building up a noble race, the future humanity in India: such, indeed, was the university ideal that Sri Aurobindo wished to set before his student-audience, and he thought too that, even with all our limitations, we could make an effort to realise the ideal. But Sri Aurobindo hastened to remind his hearers that the college or the university Page – 88 couldn’t be expected to do everything, not even to give a ‘complete’ education: "’But the University cannot and does not pretend to complete a man’s education; it merely gives some materials to his hand or points out certain paths he may tread, and it says to him, ‘Here are the materials I have given into your. hands, it is for you to make of them what you can’; or ‘These are the paths I have equipped you to travel; it is yours to tread them to the end, and by your success in them justify me before the world.’ " Words, words even the most eloquent words have effect on the audience only in proportion to the power with which they are charged by the speaker’s personality. Sri Aurobindo stood before his eager-eyed audience composed largely of Gujarati and Marathi youths as a Bengali who had mastered, like Kacha in the asuric world, the lore of the West, but who had rejected (as Kacha did Devayani’s) the blandishments of Western civilisation; they saw him as a scholar steeped in Greek, Latin, English and French classics but who nevertheless incarnated the spirit of Indian culture, the oneness in the Mother. They could sense that Sri Aurobindo’s words were more than words; they were pointers to action, a call to realisation; and the words went home. But of course Sri Aurobindo could not help contrasting Indian educational conditions with conditions at St. Paul’s or King’s. The puny stature of the typical Indian under- graduate must have sorely pained Sri Aurobindo. How true was it of the Indian scholar, as it was true (though the context is different) of Dryden’s Achitophel: A fiery soul, which working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay: And o’erinformed the tenement of clay. The average Indian scholar didn’t care for physical culture, Page – 89 he had no joy in the art of robust and healthy living; on the contrary, becoming a spectacled bookworm at a tender age, he was given to excessive intellectual inbreeding. What wonder, then, that his general outlook was severely pessimistic in consequence? The Indian scholar ripened fast all too fast and there an end! What Sri Aurobindo wrote about the "cultured Bengali" was thus capable of a general application also: The cultured Bengali begins life with a physical temperament already delicate and high-strung. He has the literary constitution with its femineity and acute nervousness. Subject this to a cruel strain when it is tenderest and needs the most careful rearing, to the wicked and wantonly cruel strain of instruction through a foreign tongue; put it under the very worst system of training; add enormous academical labour, immense official drudgery in an unhealthy climate and constant mental application…’ and need one be surprised by the results? Sri Aurobindo pondered over all these engines of our limitation, and sought the key that would turn limitations-into opportunities, and frustration into triumph. Sri Aurobindo’s 9 articles in the ‘New Lamps for Old’ series¹ and the 7 (also anonymous) that followed, from the issue of 16 July to that of 27 August 1894, on the personality and achievement of Bankim Chandra are among the earliest exhibits that we have of Sri Aurobindo’s English prose style. Excepting in their boldness of thought and energy of expression, they do not betray the age of the author (he was barely 22 then). Already we notice in them the sinuosity and balance, the imagery and colour, the trenchancy and sarcasm, that were to distinguish Sri ¹"This title (‘New Lamps for Old’)… is not used in the sense of the Aladdin story, but was intended to imply the offering of new lights to replace the old and faint reformist lights of the Congress." (Sri Aurobindo, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 13) Page – 90 Aurobindo’s later and maturer writings. He argues with cogency and subtlety; he describes with picturesqueness and particularity; and he denounces, if denounce he must, with pitiless deadly accuracy. This about the ‘civilians’ of almost a century ago: "A shallow schoolboy stepping from a cramming establishment to the command of high and difficult affairs, can hardly be expected to give us anything magnificent or princely. Still less can it be expected when the sons of small tradesmen are suddenly promoted from the counter to govern great provinces…. Bad in training, void of culture, in instruction poor, it [the best education men of that class can get in England] is in plain truth a sort of education that leaves him with all his imperfections on his head, unmannerly, uncultivated, unintelligent." In his speech before the Baroda College Union referred to on an earlier page, Sri Aurobindo had painted the bright side of British education and here we have the antithesis! Sri Aurobindo is speaking, not of the finest flowers of British education, but of the humdrum or worse than humdrum that found a way to India. "They are really very ordinary men," said Sri Aurobindo, "and not only ordinary men but ordinary Englishmen types of the middle-class or Philistines… with the narrow hearts and commercial habit of mind peculiar to that sort of people." Nor is the Anglicised Babu spared in the least: he is the man of endless perorations in the Congress, he "frolics in the abysmal fatuity" of interpellations on the floor of the Legislative Council, and he ekes out his "scanty wardrobe with the cast-off rags and thread-bare leavings" of his English masters. The educational system in India was "the most ingeniously complete machine for murder that human stupidity ever invented, and murder not only of a man’s body but of a man’s soul". Of a certain Mr. Munro (alas, oblivion has all but swallowed him up, but in his day Page – 91 he seems to have done some injury to Bankim Chandra), all that is said is that he "had the temper of a badly educated hyena!" As for Bankim himself, here is Sri Aurobindo’s splendid summing up: "And when Posterity comes to crown with her praises the Makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a place-hunting politician nor on the narrow forehead of a noisy social reformer but on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali [Bankim] who never clamoured for place or power, but did his work in silence for love of his work, even as nature does, and just because he had no aim but to give out the best that was in him, was able to create a language, a literature and a nation." He was deeply stirred by the creations of Bankim…. As for Bankim, there are two poems: the shorter ‘Saraswati with the Lotus’ and the longer ‘Bankim Chandra Chatterji’. "Thy tears fall fast, O mother" begins the first, the emotion held taut in its six poignant lines; but the second is more elaborate: O master of delicious words! the bloom Of chompuk and the breath of king-perfume Have made each musical sentence with the noise Of women’s ornaments and sweet household joys… All nature in a page, no pleasing show But men more real than the friends we know… His nature kingly was and as a god In large serenity and light he trod His daily way, yet beauty, like soft flowers Wreathing a hero’s sword, ruled all his hours. Thus moving in these iron times and drear, Barren of bliss and robbed of golden cheer He sowed the desert with ruddy-hearted rose, The sweetest voice that ever spoke in prose. Page – 92 Sri Aurobindo translated some portions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, some dramas of Kalidasa, the Nitishataka of Bhartrihari, some poems of Vidyapati and Chandidas etc. into English. Once, when R.C. Dutt, the well-known civilian, came to Baroda at the invitation of the Maharaja, he somehow came to know about Sri Aurobindo’s translations and expressed his desire to see them. Sri Aurobindo showed them to him (though not without reluctance, for he was by nature shy and reticent about himself), and Dutt was so much struck by their high quality that he said to Sri Aurobindo: "If I had seen your translations of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata before, I would not have published mine.¹ I can now very well see that, by the side of your magnificent translations, mine appear as mere child’s play." Sri Aurobindo wrote many English poems during his stay at Baroda, and also began some which he finished later. His first book of poems. Songs to Myrtilla and Other Poems, was published there for private circulation. It contained many poems written in England in his teens, and five² written at Baroda. Urvasie, a long poem, was also written at Baroda and published for private circulation.³ Soon after his arrival in India, Sri Aurobindo was invited by his Cambridge friend K.G. Deshpande, who was then English editor of the Indu Prakash of Bombay, to write articles on the political situation in the country. These appeared serially under the challenging caption ‘New Lamps for Old’ from 7 August 1893 to 6 March 1894, but they did not carry Sri Aurobindo’s name. Introducing the series to the readers, K.G. Deshpande wrote in the issue of 7 August: ¹ R.C. Dutt’s translations of the two Epics were published in England and highly acclaimed. ² These five were: One on Madhusudan Dutt, one on Bankim Chandra Chatterji, a sonnet on his maternal grandfather. Rajnarayan Bose. and two English adaptations from Chandidas, the reputed Bengali mystic poet whom he read along with Vidyapati and others at Baroda. ³ Love and Death, a long poem, and the drama, Perseus the Deliverer, belong also to Baroda period. Page – 93 "Hypocrisy has been the besetting sin of our political agitation. Oblique vision is the fashion. True, matter of fact, honest criticism is very badly needed…. The questions at issue are momentous. It is the making or the unmaking of a nation. We have therefore secured a gentleman of great literary talents, of liberal culture and of considerable English experience, well-versed in the art of writing and willing, at great personal inconvenience and probable misrepresentation, to give out his views in no uncertain voice, and,… in a style and diction peculiarly his own. We… assure them [our readers] that they will find in those articles matter that will set them thinking and steel their patriotic souls." What was unusual about the articles was the fusion of a young man’s intolerance and idealism and a wise man’s deep and abiding wisdom. Sri Aurobindo began the series with the well-known, yet none the less always startling, question: "If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into a ditch?" It was some nine years since the Indian National Congress had commenced its activities with a blazing fanfare of trumpets and deafening bugle-sounds, but where was the Promised Land? "The walls of the Anglo-Indian Jericho stand yet without a breach, and the dark spectre of Penury draws her robe over the land in greater volume and with an ampler sweep." What had gone wrong, then? Almost everything! The indictment is direct, at point-blank range as it were: "I say, of the Congress, then, this that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and wholeheartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed." Hadn’t there been "a little too much talk about the Page – 94 blessings of British rule, and the inscrutable Providence which has laid us in the maternal, or more properly the step-maternal, bosom of just and benevolent England?" Its grandiose name notwithstanding, the Congress was not a popular body, its leaders were apt to swear by the false political gods of British manufacture, and they were only too ready to make a virtue of timidity, mere good manners and the disinclination to tell the direct truth. How could a set of complacent comfortabe middle-class individuals speak and act on behalf of the millions comprising the proletariat? Pherozeshah Mehta and his friends might think that the proletariat was not important, but the heart of the matter was that without "the elevation and enlightenment of the proletariat" nothing really could be achieved. Sri Aurobindo therefore urged that only a mass awakening an organisation of the entire power of the country could redeem the time, cause discomfiture to the alien rulers and usher in national independence. While charging the generality of British officials in India with rudeness and arrogance and meanness, while describing their conduct as that of "a small coterie of masters surrounded by a nation of Helots", Sri Aurobindo never- the-less exhorted his countrymen, neither to nurse hatred for the foreigner nor merely cringe before him, but rather to seek strength and the clue to salvation within: "Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism…. If we were not dazzled by the artificial glare of English prestige, we should at once acknowledge that these men are not worth being angry with…. Our appeal, the appeal of every high-souled and self-respecting nation, ought not to be to the opinion of the Anglo-Indians, no, nor yet to the British sense of justice, but to our own reviving sense of manhood, to our own sincere fellow-feeling… with the silent and suffering people of India." In another place, Sri Aurobindo remarked that the Page – 95 Indian patriot had more to learn from the French republican experiment (or even the Athenian) than from the British: "But if we carry our glance across the English Channel, we shall witness a very different and more animating spectacle. Gifted with a lighter, subtler, and clearer mind than their insular neighbours, the French people have moved irresistibly towards a social and not a political development." Sri Aurobindo then showed that if, like the British, we had laid the foundations of social collapse, we had also, like the French, learned to enact the drama of political incompetence. Our national effort, then, "must contract a social and popular tendency before it can hope to be great and fruitful". The first two articles in the series, with their white-heat brilliance and uncompromising hammer-blows, caused dismay and indignation in Congress circles, and Mahadev Govind Ranade warned the proprietor of the Indu Prakash that, should the series continue in the same strain, he would be prosecuted for sedition. As requested by the proprietor, the original plan was abandoned,-but at K.G. Deshpande’s instance the series was continued on a much more subdued key, the articles appeared at long intervals, and then ceased altogether. As Ranade was rather anxious to meet the writer of the sensational articles, Sri Aurobindo had an interview at Bombay for half an hour when the veteran leader tried to persuade the firebrand to turn to some less incendiary, but more constructive, cause like jail reform! When Sri Aurobindo went to prison he remembered Ranade’s advice and ironically wrote afterwards that he had begun the prison-reform by going to prison! The necessity to tone down the "New Lamps for Old" articles in the Indu Prakash to the point of pointlessness, doling out doses of the philosophy of politics instead of outlining the rites of sacrificial purification by blood and Page – 96 fire, made Sri Aurobindo withdraw into a shell for the time being, hoping for a more favourable opportunity for the exposition of revolutionary theory and its translation into practice. He looked about him, and he could see that the times were not propitious. In a poem he wrote soon after. Lines on Ireland: 1896, under cover of describing the abasement and agony of Ireland after Parnell’s fall and death and the defeat at the 1895 polls of Gladstone’s move to grant Home Rule, Sri Aurobindo managed by sleight of hand to picture the Indian predicament too, the flight of idealism, the hugging of slavery, the loss of self-respect, the reign of sloth, the peace of the grave. The subject is Ireland, but by poetic implication or dhwani, we are made to think of India more than of Ireland:
"O mutability of human merit! How changed, how fallen from her ancient spirit! She that was Ireland, Ireland now no more, In beggar’s weeds behold at England’s door… Yet thine own self a little understand, Unhappy country, and be wise at length. An outward weakness doing deeds of strength Amazed the nations, but a power within Directed, like effective spirit unseen. Behind the mask of trivial forms, a source And fund of tranquil and collected force…. But thou to thine own self disloyal, hast Renounced the help divine, turning thy past To idle legends… Therefore effective wisdom, skill to bend All human things to one predestined end Renounce thee…."
Instead of a god-anointed leader, the nation has a "self- appointed crew" Page – 97 … for seldom men refuse Credence, when mediocrity multiplied Equals itself with genius — that is courageous enough to effect the "country’s ruin"! But this couldn’t last long, for although for a little while the gods might permit these little men to thrive in their pride, the time must come when they would be sent packing to the "loud limbo of futilities". The poem was evidently an attempt on Sri Aurobindo’s part to achieve a katharsis of the temporary feeling of frustration that may have grated upon his consciousness. Page – 98 MORE ON SRI AUROBINDO AS A TEACHER … We have recently found, in a notebook used by Sri Aurobindo at about the time he wrote the lectures (i.e. about 1898), lists of authors and poems which seem to be either selections for a course he was giving or the contents of a compilation he intended to publish. One of the lists consists of the names of a number of mostly minor eighteenth-century poets, many of whom are mentioned in the written lectures. But more prominence is given to three major poets: Keats, Milton and Dryden. Sri Aurobindo’s lists of their works, entitled collectively "English Extracts", run as follows: Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer"; "On the Grasshopper and Cricket"; "When I have Fears…"; "Staffa"; Endymion "Hymn to Pan", "Beneath my palm trees…"; "On Fame"; "On the Sonnet"; "On a Dream"; "To the Nile"; "La Belle Dame sans Merci"; "On Ailsa Rock"; "In a drear-nighted December…"; "Ben Nevis"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; "To Homer"; "To Fancy"; "On Melancholy"; "The Human Seasons"; "Ode to Maia", "Ode to Psyche"; "Ode to Autumn"; "Ode to a Nightingale" (omitting the stanza, "Fade far away…"); ‘Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb…";"Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art". Milton: "On the Death of a Fair Infant"; "On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity" — "It was the winter wild…"; "On Shakespeare"; "L’Allegro"; "II Penseroso"; "Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester"; "Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more…" [from Arcades}; "The star that bids the shepherd fold…", "Sabrina fair…" [both from Comus}; "To Cyriack Skinner"; "Lycidas"; "When the Assault Was Intended on the City"; "To the Lord General Cromwell"; "On his Deceased Wife"; "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont"; "On his Blindness"; "It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit…"; "While their hearts were jocund and sublime…". Page – 99 Dryden: "The longest tyranny that ever swayed… Had been admired by none but savage eyes" [lines 1-20 of "To Dr. Charleton"]; "The Tears of Amynta"; "St. Cecilia’s Day"; "Alexander’s Feast"; "Great God of Love…" (Song to Chloris) (i.e. "A Song to a Fair Young Lady"]; "Chloe and Amyntas" ["Rondelay"]; "Fair, sweet and young…" ["A Song"]. Baroda Reading … Dinendra Kumar Roy, who lived with Sri Aurobindo as his companion and Bengali tutor in 1898 and 1899, writes that Sri Aurobindo regularly received books "by railway parcel" from two Bombay firms. All the books would soon be read and he would place fresh orders. Sri Aurobindo was in the habit of listing in his notebooks titles of books that interested him. Such lists, which include books in French, German, Greek, etc., as well as English, show his tastes to be very decidedly literary. A similar impression is given by a collection donated by Sri Aurobindo to the Bengal National College shortly after he left Baroda in 1906. Of a total of 155 books, 79 are works of English (and American) poetry and 21 of other forms of English literature. 21 books are biographies of English men of letters and 7 works of other literatures. There are 8 works on history or geography (travel), and 5 books about philosophy (but not one philosophical text). Among the remaining volumes there is no single book on science or mathematics.
Some of the books in the National College collection contain marginal notes. These are mostly glosses on hard words, e.g. this note on "Codille" in Pope’s
Moral Essays: "in quadrille when those who defended the pool made more tricks than those who stood the game (ombre & his partner who held the king he called for) won the codille";
or this one on the word
Page – 100 one on "Linian", mentioned in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Prologue: "Giovanni di Lignano/Prof. of Canon Law at Bologna 1363 died 1383." The National College collection includes two Sanskrit literary texts. In another set of books owned by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda there are some other works in that language as well as a large number of Bengali books and bound periodicals. The Bengali books include Ananda Math, the sonnets of Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita. During the years 1900 and 1901 Sri Aurobindo was in the habit of noting down the books he was studying and sometimes also the number of pages read each day. These notes give us some idea of the diversity and rapidity of his reading. In September 1900 Sri Aurobindo was engrossed in a Sanskrit text of the Mahabharata. On the fourth of September, besides correcting his class’s examination papers, he read the 63 ślokas of sūktas 53 and 54 of the Virataparva. He had read up to this point (i.e. 54 sūktas containing 1533 ślokas} in just eight days. In three more days he read twice over the whole first part ("Purvamegha") of Kalidasa’s famous Meghaduta or Cloud-Messenger. On 3 January 1901 Sri Aurobindo began another poem of Kalidasa, his epic the Raghuvansha. At the same time he was studying other works in Sanskrit, English and German. The following is a verbatim extract from one of Sri Aurobindo’s notebooks:
¹ Commentary. Page – 101
¹A German play, written in 1852 by Gustav Freytag (1816-1895). Page – 102 |
in the Nitishataka:
"boiled rice of fine kind/
– food, boiled rice". Other notes explain biographical or historical allusions, like this