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On the Congress platform he had stood up as a champion of left-wing thought and a fearless advocate of independence at a time when most of the leaders, with their tongues in their cheeks, would talk only of colonial self-government. He had undergone incarceration with perfect equanimity… when I came to Calcutta in 1913, Aurobindo was already a legendary figure. Rarely have I seen people speak of a leader with such rapturous enthusiasm and many were the anecdotes of this great man, some of them probably true, which travelled from mouth to mouth. — Subhas Chandra Bose, An Indian Pilgrim Political Life Life at Baroda was full, though the political career that followed was like a tornado. During these years (the years of teaching at Baroda) Sri Aurobindo used to pass his vacations in Bengal, especially the second vacation which generally coincided with the Puja holidays. His first visits to Bengal after his return to India helped him to gauge the temper of the people, and he also came into contact with certain individuals, certain ideas, certain trends, that were working, however obscurely, however tardily, for the liberation of the country from the nightmare death-in-life of alien bureaucratic rule. In 1899 or possibly 1898 Jatindranath Banerjee (afterwards Niralamb Swamy) came to Baroda for military training in the Baroda army in order to prepare himself for revolutionary work. Sri Aurobindo, with the help of Khaserao and Madhavrao Jadhav, got him admitted to the army for training. Jatin was declared as a U.P. man, not a Bengali. Sri Aurobindo persuaded him to join the revolutionary movement he intended to launch in Bengal. Jatin agreed. When he had received adequate military training, Jatin was sent by Sri Aurobindo to Bengal with a clear-cut programme of revolutionary work. Jatin soon managed to establish contact with Barrister P. Mitter, Bibhuti Bhushan Bhattacharya and Mrs. Sarala Ghoshal, who had already started some revolutionary work (ostensibly on the plea that the groups of young men were learning lathi play) on the inspiration of Baron Okakura. Sri Aurobindo himself came to Bengal in 1900 or a little later and met these revolutionaries on Jatin’s initiative. About this Sri Aurobindo comments: "I simply kept myself informed of their work. My idea was for an open armed revolution in the whole of India. What they did at that time was very Page – 105 childish — things like beating magistrates and so on. Later it turned into terrorism and dacoities, which were not at all my idea or intention." His own idea was "a programme of preparation and action which he thought might occupy a period of 30 years before fruition could become possible". Returning to Baroda, Sri Aurobindo met Mr. Mandavale, a member of a Secret Society in Western India which had as its directing chief a Thakur of the Udaipur State, and took the oath of the Revolutionary Party. This meant Sri Aurobindo making a special journey into Central India to try to win over Indian sub-officers and men in certain regiments to the revolutionary cause. Probably this same year Barin passed his Entrance Examination. He spent six months with Manmohan at Dacca and then tried to learn agriculture but received no monetary support. He tried to run a tea shop in Patna but there also he did not succeed and so he went to Baroda to stay with Sri Aurobindo. One day even before he had got up from his bed, Sri Aurobindo found Barin with a dirty canvas bag and very dirty clothes. He exclaimed, "How is it that you are here in this state?" He sent him straight to the bathroom! Even before this time, whenever Sri Aurobindo used to go to. Deoghar, he used to inculcate the revolutionary spirit in Barin. When Barin came to Baroda it was an opportunity to prepare him for the revolutionary work. Soon he became fully infected with the revolutionary fever. Sri Aurobindo became the secret link between the revolutionary groups in Western and Eastern India. By and by the revolutionary spirit spread in Bengal, especially in the villages and among the common people of whom Sri Aurobindo had written in one of the ‘New Lamps for Old’ articles of 1893: "The proletariat among us is sunk in ignorance and overwhelmed with distress." The darkness was lifting at last, the stupor was ending. Barin too had found his vocation, and he was now able to translate into action the ideas and programmes of Sri Aurobindo: Page – 106 "Barindra’s work in Bengal was the organisation in the villages even the most remote of a chain of Samitis, or youth organisations, which would meet under all kinds of pretexts, but with the real aim of providing a civic and political education and opening the eyes of the young to the ‘affairs of the nation’…. In smoky little grain shops, on the terraced roofs of private houses, young men would meet to hear about the lives of Mazzini and Garibaldi, to read exhortations from Swami Vivekananda, to listen to the warlike incidents of the Mahabharata and to comments on the Bhagavad Gita. The number of samitis increased daily." In Maharashtra, under Lokamanya Tilak’s unparalleled leadership, political education came to be imparted during the Ganapati Festivals that attracted old and young alike. In course of time, this breeze of revolutionary fervour blew almost all over the subcontinent. One particular feature of the movement was that several of the leaders were either Yogis themselves or disciples of Yogis at least they were men endowed with great strength of character. Men like P. Milter, Satish Mukherji, Bepin Pal and Manoranjan Guha-thakurtha were disciples of the famous Yogi Bejoy Goswami. It was as though the soul of the race had awakened and was throwing up such fine personalities. The patriotism which fired Sri Aurobindo’s being since his boyhood was not a mere love of the country of his birth, and a yearning for its freedom and greatness. It was worship of India, as we have already seen, as the living embodiment of the highest spiritual knowledge, and the repository of the sublimest spiritual achievements of the human race. He had no narrow partisan patriotism that attaches a person to his own country and makes him regard it as the greatest and best. He loved and adored India, because he knew that in the present Chaturyuga (a cycle of four ages: Satya, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali) India was destined to be the custodian of the supreme knowledge, and the leader of the world in the ways of the Spirit — a Page – 107 fact which is being more and more realised and acknowledged by the master minds of the present age.¹ He looked upon India as the spiritual battlefield of the world where the final victory over the forces of the Ignorance and darkness would be achieved. The following lines from his The Yoga and Its Objects throw a flood of light on this point and explain his spiritual nationalism: "God always keeps for Himself a chosen country in which the higher knowledge is, through all chances and dangers, by the few or the many, continually preserved, and for the present, in this Chaturyuga at least, that country is India…. When there is the contracted movement of knowledge, the Yogins in India withdraw from the world and practise Yoga for their own liberation and delight or for the liberation of a few disciples; but when the movement of knowledge again expands and the soul of India expands with it, they come forth once more and work in the world and for the world…. It is only India that can discover the harmony, because it is only by a change not a mere readjustment of present nature that it can be developed, and such a change is not possible except by Yoga. The nature of man and of things is at present a discord, a harmony that has got out of tune. The whole heart and action and mind of man must be changed but from within and not from without, not by political and social institutions, not even by creeds and philosophies, but by realisation of God in ourselves and the world and a remoulding of life by that realisation." In 1902 Sri Aurobindo was occupied in teaching French and English at the college. Southey’s Life of Nelson and Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution were the text books in the first two classes. Sri Aurobindo presided over Sarat Chandra Mallick’s lecture in the college. This year Sri Aurobindo went to Midnapur for the first time during the vacation. There he met Hemchandra Das.
¹"India must become dynamic and effect the conquest of the world through her spirituality." -Vivekananda Page – 108 There was practice of rifle shooting on Das’s lands. It was resolved to form six centres of revolutionary work in Bengal. Jatin Banerjee and Barin accompanied Sri Aurobindo to Midnapur. Jatin had already started an organisation of young men at Calcutta in the compound of P. Mitra. When Sri Aurobindo went to Calcutta, Jatin arranged an interview between the two Sri Aurobindo gave the oath of the revolutionary party to P. Mitra. Sri Aurobindo later went to Midnapur for a second time and gave the oath to Hemchandra Das who, during the ceremony, held a sword in one hand and the Gita in the other. The content of the oath was to secure the freedom of Mother India at any cost and to declare the secret of the society to no one. The idea of forming secret revolutionary societies had been in the air in Bengal for a long time. Even Rajnarayan Bose, Sri Aurobindo’s grandfather, had started a society which Tagore had joined when young! But these efforts did not result in any achievement. There was a secret society in Maharashtra presided over by Thakur Ramsingh, the Rajput prince. The Bombay branch was managed by a council of five. Sri Aurobindo was able to contact this body and joined it. This was after he had already started his activity in Bengal. During this year (1902) a society was started at Deoghar under Satyen Bose. The revolutionary spirit was so rampant that even government servants were sympathetic to it and men like Jogendranath Mukherji, a magistrate, actively joined the movement. From 28 April 1902 to 29 May 1902 Sri Aurobindo was on privilege leave in Bengal. It was mainly for the revolutionary work that Sri Aurobindo visited Bengal during these years. Sister Nivedita came to Baroda in October of this year. She had identified herself with the political ideology of Vivekananda. She had an ardent aspiration for India’s freedom. She had ultimately to sever her connection with Page – 109 the Ramakrishna Mission on account of her political activity. The relation between Sister Nivedita and Sri Aurobindo is not well known and many conjectures and rumours have appeared in the Indian press. We give here in Sri Aurobindo’s own words the truth of the matter. "Then about my relations with Sister Nivedita they were purely in the field of politics. Spirituality or spiritual matters did not enter into them and I do not remember anything passing between us on these subjects when I was with her. Once or twice she showed the spiritual side of her but she was then speaking to someone else who had come to see her while I was there…. I met Sister Nivedita first at Baroda when she came to give some lectures there. I went to receive her at the station and to take her to the house assigned to her; I also accompanied her to an interview she had sought with the Maharaja of Baroda. She had heard of me as one who ‘believed in strength and was a worshipper of Kali’ by which she meant that she had heard of me as a revolutionary. I knew of her already because I had read and admired her book Kali the Mother. It was in these days that we formed our friendship. After I had started my revolutionary work in Bengal through certain emissaries, I went there personally to see and arrange things myself. I found a number of small groups of revolutionaries that had recently sprung into existence but all scattered and acting without reference to each other, I tried to unite them under a single organisation with the barrister P. Mitra as the leader of the revolution in Bengal and a central council of five persons, one of them being Nivedita…. I had no occasion to meet Nivedita after that until I settled in Bengal as Principal of the National College and the chief editorial writer of the Bande Mataram. By that time I had become one of the leaders of the public movement known first as extremism, then as nationalism, but this gave me no occasion to meet her except once or twice at the Congress, as my collaboration with her was solely in the secret revolutionary field. I Page – 110 was busy with my work and she with hers, and no occasion arose for consultations or decisions about the conduct of the revolutionary movement. Later on I began to make time to go and see her occasionally at Bagbazar. "In one of these visits she informed me that the Government had decided to deport me and she wanted me to go into secrecy or to leave British India and act from outside so as to avoid interruption of my work. There was no question at that time of danger to her; in spite of her political views she had friendly relations with high Government officials and there was no question of her arrest. I told her that I did not think it necessary to accept her suggestion; I would write an open letter in the Karmayogin which, I thought, would prevent this action by the Government. This was done and on my next visit to her she told me that my move had been entirely successful and the idea of deportation had been dropped. The departure to Chandernagore happened later and there was no connection between the two incidents…."¹ Sri Aurobindo took one month’s leave from 22 February 1903. The reason for the leave was to patch up the differences that had arisen between Jatin Banerjee and Barin at Calcutta. It appears that Jatin, after his military training at Baroda, had become a strict disciplinarian and insisted on imposing discipline on the young men in the organisation. Barin was not capable of working under anyone except the topmost leaders. Jatin became unpopular because of his strictness. One may say that there was rivalry between him and Barin for leadership. When Sri Aurobindo went to Bengal he stayed with Jogendra Vidya Bhushan, who was a Government servant and a sympathiser of the revolutionary movement. Devavrata and Suresh Samajpati were on Barin’s side. Even Hemchandra Das was for Barin. Hemchandra Das writes: "He [Jatin] had an intense desire for doing work. He was, besides, a military
¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, pp. 68-70. Page – 111 man. For a Bengali this fact of becoming a military man is such an unimaginable thing that his temper became that of ‘general’. Jatin used to exercise his generalship fully upon his young men." Sri Aurobindo heard both the sides and gave his ruling that Jatin must continue to work. The final authority was not to be vested in either Jatin or Barin but in a committee of five members including P. Mitra and Sister Nivedita. It should be noted here that the differences were not really removed and occasional bickerings continued. Sri Aurobindo took no interest in the affair. He met the members only for work. One of those he met was Abinash Bhattacharya, a young man who was among the first to join the nationalist movement in Bengal. Abinash got his chance to see Sri Aurobindo when one day Barin took him to Jatin’s house, where Sri Aurobindo was talking with Jatin. Sri Aurobindo spoke with Abinash and welcomed him into the movement. Sri Aurobindo has written: "The work under P. Mitra spread enormously and finally contained tens of thousands of young men and the spirit of revolution spread by Barin’s paper Yugantar became general in the young generation; but during my absence at Baroda the council ceased to exist as it was impossible to keep up agreement among the many groups." On 28 September 1904 Sri Aurobindo was appointed Vice-Principal of the college; his pay was raised to Rs. 550 per month. He was very popular with the students and the principal also liked him very much. The Maharaja kept a provision for his personal work even while making this permanent appointment. Previous to this time Sri Aurobindo had met Shri Charu Chandra Dutt, I.C.S., who was working at Thana. The Bhawani Mandir scheme was explained to Dutt and he joined the revolutionary party. In September 1904 Sri Aurobindo again passed through Thana, met Charu Page – 112 Chandra Dutt and discussed the Bhawani Mandir scheme with Haribhai Modak, editor of Rastramat, Kaka Saheb Patil, a pleader of Vasai, and one or two other men. Their viewpoint was that the spiritual element should be left out, the political side stressed and, on the material side, that bombs and pistols should be gathered. From March 1905 to February 1906, Sri Aurobindo acted for the Principal, who was on leave; his pay was Rs550 plus an acting allowance of Rs. 160, or a total of Rs. 710. He was liked very much by the students. The government announced the partition of Bengal on 20 July 1905. This was the signal for tremendous agitation throughout India and particularly in Bengal. From Baroda Sri Aurobindo wrote to the revolutionary workers in Calcutta, ‘This is a fine opportunity. Carry on the anti-partition agitation powerfully. We will get many workers for the movement." Later Sri Aurobindo wrote and sent them a pamphlet entitled "No Compromise". No press in Calcutta was willing to print it. Finally Abinash and his friends got it composed at their house by Kulkarni, a Marathi revolutionary who was staying with them. At night they had a few thousand copies of the pamphlet printed and later distributed them freely.¹ It was around this same time that Sri Aurobindo wrote the famous revolutionary booklet Bhawani Mandir. We have already mentioned the Bhawani Mandir scheme. The idea for it was mostly Barin’s. A temple of Mother India was to be built somewhere in the forest or on some mountain-top. Here workers who would dedicate themselves, in the spirit of complete renunciation, to India’s freedom, would be prepared. Others who could not rise to this pitch of renunciation of everything were to help these political Sannyasins in other ways. It is possible that the basic conception of this scheme was derived from Ananda Math of Bankim Chandra.
¹ Abinash Bhattacharya, "Aurobindo", pp. 832-33. Page – 113 The following words of R.N. Patkar also make an interesting reading regarding the book "Bhawani Mandir". "One day… in the beginning of 1905, Messrs. Aravind Babu, Deshpande and Jadhav went to Chandod, a small town on the bank of the Narmada, and a place of pilgrimage. There they passed a day with a Yogi and then proceeded to Ganganath¹, a place a few miles distant from Chandod. There is a beautiful Ashram there where Swami Brahmanand spent his life. At that place they passed another day, discussed some spiritual problems with the disciple of Brahmanand Swami and then returned to Baroda. After this trip I saw a marked change both in Aravind Babu and Deshpande. Both of them changed their life altogether. They started worshipping the Goddess and taking only one meal — a pure vegetarian meal a day; both started living a life of austerity. But between the two I saw a greater change in Aravind Babu. He was never as free with me as he used to be before. He looked serene and calm with the gravity of a man of ripe old age. I always found him alone in his own room in a contemplative mood or closeted with his friends Deshpande and Jadhav. One evening I saw Barindra going with the planchette into the room where all the three used to meet. Successively for three days they met in that very room, along with Barindra with the planchette. On the fourth day I met Barindra and asked him what all of them were doing. Without the least hesitation he told me that a message from the Goddess has been received with detailed directions, which after being put in a readable form will be printed and published in the form of a book. The book was out in a few days under the title of "Bhawani Mandir"², or The Message of the Goddess. It was for private circulation only…." During the year 1906, even though Sri Aurobindo served in the state, the greater part of his time was spent in Bengal. From February 1906 he applied for privilege leave. The
¹More about the Ganganath school at the end of this chapter, p. 132. ² This booklet is reproduced at the end of this chapter, p. 120. Page – 114 leave was granted from 1 March. Thus it was possible for him to pass the whole of the first term of the college as well as the summer vacation in Bengal. On 12 March 1906 the declaration of the Yugantar, a Bengali journal, was filed. On 14 April 1906 the famous Barisal conference was held. Sri Aurobindo attended. The conference was declared illegal by the government and the participants were ordered to disperse. Krishna Kumar Mitra, Sri Aurobindo’s uncle, refused to leave the pandal. There was a procession to protest against the government’s action. In the first row were Sri Aurobindo, Bepin Chandra Pal, B.C. Chatterji. Behind them were delegates to the conference in rows of four. The procession was charged by the police. They allowed the leaders to pass and stopped the delegates from proceeding further. The delegates stood on the highway and refused to disperse. They were lathi-charged. Many ran away. Chittaranjan son of Monoranjan Guha, was wounded in the head. It was criminal to shout "Vande Mataram" in the street in those days; so the young men were instructed to shout in the streets in defiance of the order. If they happened to see a policeman they first went over to the verandahs of the houses and shouted "Vande Mataram" from there the verandah is not the road! After the conference Sri Aurobindo went round the districts of East Bengal in company with Bepin Chandra Pal and a young man named Sarat. This was done for observation and study of these parts and also to bring political awakening by personal contact. About this period Sri Aurobindo later said: "There was a sudden transformation during the Swadeshi days. Before that people used to tremble before an Englishman in Bengal. And then the position was reversed. I remember when I wanted to do political work I visited Bengal and toured the districts of Jessore, Khulna, etc. We found the people steeped in pessimism, a black weight of darkness Page – 115 weighing over the whole country. It is difficult nowadays to imagine those times. "I was travelling with Devavrata Bose. He was living on plantains only and he used to speak to the people. He had a very persuasive way of talking. It was at Khulna that we had a right royal reception, not so much because I was a politician as because I was the son of K.D. Ghose. They Served me with seven rows of dishes and I could hardly reach out to all of them and even from the nearer ones I could eat very little. My father was extremely popular at Khulna. Wherever he went he became a power. When he was at Rangpur he was very friendly with the English magistrate. We went and stayed with his cousin in England afterwards, Mr. Drewett. It was always ‘doctor’ who got things done at Rangpur. "When the new magistrate came he found that nothing could be done without Dr. K.D. So he asked the Government to remove him and he was transferred to Khulna. It was from that time that he became a politician. That is to say, he did not like English domination. Before that everything Western was good. He wanted, for example, all his sons to be great; at that time to join the I.C.S. was to become great. "He was extremely generous. Hardly anybody who went to him for something came back empty-handed." In June 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Baroda. He presented himself when the second term opened in the month of June and took one year’s leave without pay from 18 June 1906. After passing a total of a week or two at Baroda, he went back to Bengal. It is clear that since 1902 Sri Aurobindo’s interest had moved more and more towards politics and the service at Baroda ceased to interest him. The best thing for us would be to see what his politics really was; how it envisaged its ultimate goal and meant to attain it. There were three sides to Sri Aurobindo’s political ideas Page – 116 and activities. First, there was the action with which he started, a secret revolutionary propaganda and organisation of which the central object was the preparation of an armed insurrection. Secondly, there was a public propaganda intended to convert the whole nation to the ideal of independence which was regarded, when he entered into politics, by the vast majority of Indians as unpractical and impossible, an almost insane chimera. It was thought that the British Empire was too powerful and India too weak, effectively disarmed and impotent even to dream of the success of such an endeavour. Thirdly, there was the organisation of the people to carry on a public and united opposition and undermining of the foreign rule through an increasing non-cooperation and passive resistance. At that time the military organisation of the great empires and their means of military action were not so overwhelming and apparently irresistible as they now are: the rifle was still the decisive weapon, air power had not yet been developed and the force of artillery was not so devastating as it afterwards became. India was disarmed, but Sri Aurobindo thought that with proper organisation and help from outside this difficulty might be overcome and in so vast a country as India and with the smallness of the regular British armies, even a guerrilla warfare accompanied by general resistance and revolt might be effective. There was also the possibility of a general revolt in the Indian army. At the same time he had studied the temperament and characteristics of the British people and the turn of their political instincts, and he believed that although they would resist any attempt at self-liberation by the Indian people and would at the most only concede very slowly such reforms as would not weaken their imperial control, still they were not of the kind which would be ruthlessly adamantine to the end: if they found resistance and revolt becoming general and persistent they would in the end try to arrive at an accommodation to save what they could of their empire or in an extremity prefer to grant Page – 117 independence rather than have it forcefully wrested from their hands. These were the three planks of Sri Aurobindo’s political programme. Within a few years of his return, then, Sri Aurobindo saw very clearly that salvation could come to India, then fallen upon evil days, not through dialectical skill and intellectual subtlety, but through renewed faith and stem spiritual discipline; not by a brazen mimicry of Western models and Western mores, but rather by recapturing, amplifying and re-living the eternal truths of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita: Yet thine own self a little understand, Unhappy country, and be wise at length. On the other hand, Sri Aurobindo was no mere revivalist, or obscurantist, or parrotist of outworn formulas. As he wrote later in the course of a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy, "The traditions of the past are very great in their own place in the past. But that is no reason why we should go on repeating the past. In the evolution of a spiritual consciousness upon earth, a great past ought to be followed by a greater future." In his own life and in the life of the nation, what Sri Aurobindo wanted, what he set out to achieve, was a veritable transformation not a retreat to the past, not a return to obsolete forms, but a rediscovery of the soul and rebuilding around it of a life full of vigour and vitality, and in consonance with the imperatives of the present and also ready to meet the challenges of the future. All that divided him and divided the people from the Mother "Glory of moonlight dreams!" all that fed the virus of alienation, all that emasculated or maimed Indian humanity: all that had to be ruthlessly attacked at the source, and rooted out or chased away. In short, individual and nation alike had deliberately to will and achieve the difficult feat of re-nationalisation. Page – 118 For him, it did not simply mean acquiring a knowledge of Bengali, Gujarati or Marathi; or delving into the treasures of Sanskrit literature; or showing a preference for Indian dress or Indian dishes. For the nation too, the change required was something far deeper than a shuffling of the externals or a pathetic exhumation of all our dead yesterdays. The problem rather was, alike for the individual and for the race, to get at the living past and structure on its sure foundations alone the present and the future. Sometime during his stay at Baroda Sri Aurobindo had another personal experience of the power of occult knowledge when Narayana Jyotishi, without any reference to the horoscope, foretold his three political trials and also his release by saying that he would come to trouble while fighting against "white enemies". At that time Sri Aurobindo had not seriously thought of taking up open political activity. That Sri Aurobindo’s politics and militant nationalism were nothing but a seething focus of a world-transforming spirituality is amply attested even by his very early writings. In his The Ideal of the Karmayogin he says: "There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that dharma, but of its living reality. For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspiration. To understand the heart of this dharma, to experience it as a truth, to feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make Yoga the ideal of human life that Page – 119 India rises today; by the Yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness; by the Yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a Spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and reflex."
OM NAMAS CHANDIKAYAI A temple is to be erected and consecrated to Bhawani, the Mother, among the hills. To all the children of the Mother the call is sent forth to help in the sacred work. Who Is Bhawani? Who is Bhawani, the Mother, and why should we erect a temple to her? Bhawani Is the Infinite Energy In the unending revolutions of the world, as the Wheel of the Eternal turns mightily in its courses, the Infinite Energy, which streams forth from the Eternal and sets the wheel to work, looms up in the vision of man in various aspects and infinite forms. Each aspect creates and marks an age. Sometimes She is Love, sometimes She is Knowledge, sometimes She is Renunciation, sometimes She is Pity. This Infinite Energy is Bhawani, She also is Durga, She is Kali, She is Radha the Beloved, She is Lakshmi, She is our Mother and the Creatress of us all. Bhawani Is Shakti In the present age the Mother is manifested as the Mother of Strength. She is pure Shakti. The Whole World Is Growing Full of the Mother as Shakti Let us raise our eyes and cast them upon the world Page – 120 around us. Wherever we turn our gaze, huge masses of strength rise before our vision, tremendous, swift and inexorable forces, gigantic figures of energy, terrible sweeping columns of force. All is growing large and strong. The Shakti of war, the Shakti of wealth, the Shakti of Science are tenfold more mighty and colossal, a hundredfold more fierce, rapid and busy in their activity, a thousandfold more prolific in resources, weapons and instruments than ever before in recorded history. Everywhere the Mother is at work; from Her mighty and shaping hands enormous forms of Rakshasas, Asuras, Devas are leaping forth into the arena of the world. We have seen the slow but mighty rise of great empires in the West, we have seen the swift, irresistible and impetuous bounding into life of Japan. Some are Mlechchha Shaktis clouded in their strength, black or blood-crimson with Tamas or Rajas, others are Arya Shaktis, bathed in a pure flame of renunciation and utter self-sacrifice; but all are the Mother in Her new phase, remoulding, creating. She is pouring Her spirit into the old; She is whirling into life the new. We in India Fail in All Things for Want of Shakti But in India the breath moves slowly, the afflatus is long in coming. India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving with agony and tears, but she strives in vain. What ails her, she who is after all so vast and might be so strong? There is surely some enormous defect, something vital is wanting in us, nor is it difficult to lay our finger on the spot. We have all things else, but we are empty of strength, void of energy. We have abandoned Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts, in our brains, in our arms. The wish to be reborn we have in abundance, there is no deficiency there. How many attempts have been made, how many movements have been begun, in religion, in society, in politics! But the same fate has overtaken or is preparing to overtake them all. They flourish for a moment, Page – 121 then the impulse wanes, the fire dies out, and if they endure, it is only as empty shells, forms from which the Brahma has gone or in which it lies overpowered with Tamas and inert. Our beginnings are mighty, but they have neither sequel nor fruit. Now we are beginning in another direction; we have started a great industrial movement which is to enrich and regenerate an impoverished land. Untaught by experience, we do not perceive that this movement must go the way of all the others, unless we first seek the one essential thing, unless we acquire strength. Our Knowledge Is a Dead Thing for Want of Shakti Is it knowledge that is wanting? We Indians, born and bred in a country where Jnana has been stored and accumulated since the race began, bear about in us the inherited gains of many thousands of years. Great giants of knowledge rise among us even today to add to the store. Our capacity has not shrunk, the edge of our intellect has not been dulled or blunted, its receptivity and flexibility are as varied as of old. But it is a dead knowledge, a burden under which we are bowed, a poison which is corroding us, rather than as it should be a staff to support our feet and a weapon in our hands; for this is the nature of all great things that when they are not used or are ill used, they turn upon the bearer and destroy him. Our knowledge then, weighed down with a heavy load of Tamas, lies under the curse of impotence and inertia. We choose to fancy indeed, nowadays, that if we acquire Science, all will be well. Let us first ask ourselves what we have done with the knowledge we already possess, or what have those who have already acquired Science been able to do for India. Imitative and incapable of initiative, we have striven to copy the methods of England, and we had not the strength; we would now copy the methods of the Japanese, a still more energetic people; are we likely to succeed any better? The mighty force of knowledge which European Page – 122 Science bestows is a weapon for the hands of a giant, it is the mace of Bheemsen; what can a weakling do with it but crush himself in the attempt to wield it? Our Bhakti Cannot Live and Work for Want of Shakti Is it love, enthusiasm, Bhakti that is wanting? These are ingrained in the Indian nature, but in the absence of Shakti we cannot concentrate, we cannot direct, we cannot even preserve it. Bhakti is the leaping flame, Shakti is the fuel. If the fuel is scanty how long can the fire endure? When the strong nature, enlightened by knowledge, disciplined and given a giant’s strength by Karma, lifts itself up in love and adoration to God, that is the Bhakti which endures and keeps the soul for ever united with the Divine. But the weak nature is too feeble to bear the impetus of so mighty a thing as perfect Bhakti; he is lifted up for a moment, then the flame soars up to Heaven, leaving him behind exhausted and even weaker than before. Every movement of any kind of which enthusiasm and adoration are the life must fail and soon burn itself out so long as the human material from which it proceeds is frail and light in substance. India Therefore Needs Shakti Alone The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing wanting, which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength strength physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all the others. If we have strength everything else will be added to us easily and naturally. In the absence of strength we are like men in a dream who have hands but cannot seize or strike, who have feet but cannot run. India, Grown Old and Decrepit in Will, Has to Be Reborn Whenever we strive to do anything, after the first rush of enthusiasm is spent a paralysing helplessness seizes upon Page – 123 us. We often see in the cases of old men full of years and experience that the very excess of knowledge seems to have frozen their powers of action and their powers of will. When a great feeling or a great need overtakes them and it is necessary to carry out its promptings in action, they hesitate, ponder, discuss, make tentative efforts and abandon them or wait for the safest and easiest way to suggest itself, instead of taking the most direct; thus the time when it was possible and necessary to act passes away. Our race has grown just such an old man with stores of knowledge, with ability to feel and desire, but paralysed by senile sluggishness, senile timidity, senile feebleness. If India is to survive, she must be made young again. Rushing and billowing streams of energy must be poured into her; her soul must become, as it was in the old times, like the surges, vast, puissant, calm or turbulent at will, an ocean of action or of force. India Can Be Reborn Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction. What Is a Nation? The Shakti of Its Millions For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in Page – 124 the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. To get rid of Tamas we have but to wake the Brahma within. It Is Our Own Choice Whether We Create a Nation or Perish What is it that so many thousands of holy men, Sadhus and Sannyasis, have preached to us silently by their lives? What was the message that radiated from the personality of Bhagawan Ramakrishna Paramhansa? What was it that formed the kernel of the eloquence with which the lion- like heart of Vivekananda sought to shake the world? It is this, that in every one of these three hundred millions of men, from the Raja on his throne to the coolie at his labour, from the Brahmin absorbed in his Sandhya to the Pariah walking shunned of men, GOD LIVETH. We are all gods and creators, because the energy of God is within us and all life is creation; not only the making of new forms is creation, but preservation is creation, destruction itself is creation. It rests with us what we -shall create; for we are not, unless we choose, puppets dominated by Fate and Maya; we are facets and manifestations of Almighty Power. India Must Be Reborn. Because Her Rebirth Is Demanded by the Future of the World India cannot perish, our race cannot become extinct, because among all the divisions of mankind it is to India that is reserved the highest and the most splendid destiny, the most essential to the future of the human race. It is she who must send forth from herself the future religion of the entire world, the Eternal Religion which is to harmonise all religion, science and philosophies and make mankind one soul. In the sphere of morality, likewise, it is her mission to purge barbarism (Mlechchhahood) out of humanity and to Aryanise the world. In order to do this, she must first re-Aryanise herself. It was to initiate this great work, the greatest and most wonderful work ever given to a race, that Bhagawan Page – 125 Ramakrishna came and Vivekananda preached. If the work does not progress as it once promised to do it is because we have once again allowed the terrible cloud of Tamas to settle down on our souls fear, doubt, hesitation, sluggishness. We have taken, some of us, the Bhakti which poured forth from the one and the Jnana given us by the other, but from lack of Shakti, from the lack of Karma, we have not been able to make our Bhakti a living thing. May we yet remember that it was Kali, who is Bhawani, Mother of Strength whom Ramakrishna worshipped and with whom he became one. But the destiny of India will not wait on the falterings and failings of individuals; the Mother demands that men shall arise to institute Her worship and make it universal. To Get Strength We Must Adore the Mother of Strength Strength then and again strength and yet more strength is the need of our race. But if it is strength we desire, how shall we gain it if we do not adore the Mother of Strength? She demands worship not for Her own sake, but in order that She may help us and give Herself to us. This is no fantastic idea, no superstition but the ordinary law of the universe. The gods cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. Even the Eternal comes not unawares upon men. Every devotee knows by experience that we must turn to Him and desire and adore Him before the Divine Spirit pours in its ineffable beauty and ecstasy upon the soul. What is true of the Eternal is true also of Her who goes forth from Him. Religion, the True Path Those who, possessed with Western ideas, look askance at any return to the old sources of energy, may well consider a few fundamental facts. The example of Japan I. There is no instance in history of a more marvellous Page – 126 and sudden up-surging of strength in a nation than modem Japan. All sorts of theories had been started to account for the uprising, but now intellectual Japanese are telling us what were the fountains of the mighty awakening, the sources of that inexhaustible strength. They were drawn from religion. It was the Vedantic teachings of Oyomei and the recovery of Shintoism with its worship of the national Shakti of Japan in the image and person of the Mikado that enabled the little island empire to wield the stupendous weapons of Western knowledge and science as lightly and invincibly as Arjun wielded the Gandiv. India’s Greater Need of Spiritual Regeneration II. India’s need for drawing from the fountains of religion is far greater than was ever Japan’s; for the Japanese had only to revitalise and perfect a strength that already existed. We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again. There is no scientific process, no machinery for that. Strength can only be created by drawing it from the internal and inexhaustible reservoirs of the Spirit, from that Adya-Shakti of the Eternal which is the fountain of all new existence. To be born again means nothing but to revive the Brahma within us, and that is a spiritual process— no effort of the body or the intellect can compass it. Religion, the Path Natural to the National Mind III. All great awakenings in India, all her periods of mightiest and most varied vigour have drawn their vitality from the fountain-heads of some deep religious awakening. Wherever the religious awakening has been complete and grand, the national energy it has created has been gigantic and, puissant; wherever the religious movement has been narrow or incomplete, the national movement has been broken, imperfect or temporary. The persistence of this phenomenon is proof that it is ingrained in the temperament Page – 127 of the race. If you try other and foreign methods we shall either gain our end with tedious slowness, painfully and imperfectly, or we shall not attain it at all. Why abandon the plain way which God and the Mother have marked out for you, to choose faint and devious paths of your own treading? The Spirit Within Is the True Source of Strength IV. The Brahma within, the one and indivisible ocean of spiritual force is that from which all life, material and mental, is drawn. This is beginning to be as much recognised by leading Western thinkers as it was from the old days by the East. If it be so, then spiritual energy is the source of all other strength. There are the fathomless fountain-heads, the deep and inexhaustible sources. The shallow surface springs are easier to reach, but they soon run dry. Why not then go deep instead of scratching the surface? The result will repay the labour. Three Things Needful We need three things answering to three fundamental laws. 1. Bhakti the Temple of the Mother We cannot get strength unless we adore the Mother of Strength. We will therefore build a temple to the white Bhawani, the Mother of Strength, the Mother of India; and we will build it in a place far from the contamination of modern cities and as yet little trodden by man, in a high and pure air steeped in calm and energy. This temple will be the centre from which Her worship is to flow over the whole country; for there, worshipped among the hills. She will pass like fire into the brains and hearts of Her worshippers. This also is what the Mother has commanded. Page – 128 II. Karma A New Order of Brahmacharins Adoration will be dead and ineffective unless it is transmuted into Karma. We will therefore have a Math with a new Order of Karma Yogins attached to the temple, men who have renounced all in order to work for the Mother. Some may, if they choose, be complete Sannyasis, most will be Brahmacharins who will return to the Grihasthashram when their allotted work is finished, but all must accept renunciation. Why? For Two Reasons: 1. Because it is only in proportion as we put from us the preoccupation of bodily desires and interests, the sensual gratifications, lusts, longings, indolences of the material world, that we can return to the ocean of spiritual force within us. 2. Because for the development of Shakti, entire concentration is necessary; the mind must be devoted entirely to its aim as a spear is hurled to its mark; if other cares and longings distract the mind, the spear will be carried out from its straight course and miss the target. We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land. III. Jnana the Great Message Bhakti and Karma cannot be perfect and enduring unless they are based upon Jnana. The Brahmacharins of the Order will therefore be taught to fill their souls with knowledge and base their work upon it as upon a rock. What shall be the basis of their knowledge? What but the great so-aham. the mighty formula of the Vedanta, the ancient gospel which has yet to reach the Page – 129 heart of the nation, the knowledge which when vivified by Karma and Bhakti delivers man out of all fear and all weakness. The Message of the Mother When, therefore, you ask who is Bhawani the Mother, She herself answers you, "I am the Infinite Energy which streams forth from the Eternal in the world and Eternal in yourselves. I am the Mother of the Universe, the Mother of the Worlds, and for you who are children of the Sacred Land, Aryabhumi, made of her clay and reared by her sun and winds, I am Bhawani Bharati, Mother of India." Then if you ask why we should erect a temple to Bhawani, the Mother, hear Her answer, "Because I have commanded it, and because by making a centre for the future religion you will be furthering the immediate will of the Eternal and storing up merit which will make you strong in this life and great in another. You will be helping to create a nation, to consolidate an age, to Aryanise a world. And that nation is your own, that age is the age of yourselves and your children, that world is no fragment of land bounded by seas and hills, but the whole earth with her teeming millions." Come then, hearken to the call of the Mother. She is already in our hearts waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be worshipped, inactive because the God in us is concealed by Tamas, troubled by Her inactivity, sorrowful because Her children will not call on Her to help them. You who feel Her stirring within you, fling off the black veil of self, break down the imprisoning walls of indolence, help Her each as you feel impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your speech or with your wealth or with your prayers and worship, each man according to his capacity. Draw not back, for against those who were called and heard Her not She may well be wroth in the day of Her coming; but to those who help Her advent even a little, Page – 130 how radiant with beauty and kindness will be the face of their Mother! APPENDIX The work and rules of the new Order of Sannyasis will be somewhat as follows: 1. General Rules 1. All who undertake the life of Brahmacharya for the Mother will have to vow themselves to Her service for four years, after which they will be free to continue to work or return to family life. 2. All money received by them in the Mother’s name will go to the Mother’s Service. For themselves they will be allowed to receive shelter and their meals, when necessary, and nothing more. 3. Whatever they may earn for themselves, e.g., by the publication of books, etc., they must give at least half of it to the service of the Mother. 4. They will observe entire obedience to the Head of the Order and his one or two assistants in all things connected with the work or with their religious life. 5. They will observe strictly the discipline and rules of Achar and purity, bodily and mental, prescribed by the Heads of the Order. 6. They will be given periods for rest or for religious improvement during which they will stop at the Math, but the greater part of the year they will spend in work outside. This rule will apply to all except the few necessary for the service of the Temple and those required for the central direction of the work. 7. There will be no gradations of rank among the workers, and none must seek for distinction or mere personal fame but practise strength and self-effacement. Page – 131 II. Work for the People 8. Their chief work will be that of mass instruction and help to the poor and ignorant. 9. This they will strive to effect in various ways: 1. Lectures and demonstrations suited to an uneducated intelligence. 2. Classes and nightly schools. THE GANGANATH SCHOOL Again, on the borders of the Baroda State, there was a quasi-religious school with which the anarchist gang of Calcutta had a close connection and to which the following sympathetic reference was made in a Marathi paper of Baroda in August 1908: "Ganganath Bharatiya Vidyalaya. This institution is about 20 or 25 miles from this place and is on the banks of the Narbadda, near Chandod. It was opened about two years ago, and it was hoped that by this time it would have been in a prosperous state; but as Government looks with suspicion on all such private institutions and besides, on account of the evil deeds of some mischief-makers, it is liable to diverse dangers. It is helped by several eminent rich people and was visited last year by Arabinda Ghose,¹ and for these reasons several detectives have been making minute enquiries about it. Yesterday many of the students from this institution came to Baroda, and it is under contemplation to transfer it before long to Baroda on account of the spite shown above." The idea of opening this school originated with K.G. Deshpande (a graduate of Cambridge and Barrister-at-Law, who is a close friend of Tilak’s, and is said to have defended him when he was tried for sedition in 1897.), M.B. Jadav.
¹Sri Aurobindo was in Baroda in 1906 and 1908, but not 1907. Page – 132 Arabinda Ghose, Barindra Ghose and A.B. Devdhar, who are said to have consulted the spirit of Ramkrishna Paramhansa on the subject. They approached a sannyasi, named Keshawanand, who had a school in the temple of Mahadev on the top of a small hill, called Ganganath, about 3′/a miles from Chandod, where he taught some 19 boys Sanskrit assisted by a certain Brahmanand from Benares. Keshawanand collected some 25,000 rupees, principally from rich Bhatyas, but also, it is believed, from the Ruler of Baroda, and with the funds, built a new edifice at Ganganath which was opened on the 17th May 1905, under the title of Shri Ganganath Bharat Sri Vidyalaya with a staff of 4 teachers, M.B. Talvalkar, B.A., LL.B., Government Prosecutor, Baroda District, acting as Secretary and Treasurer. In June 1908 the institution was removed to Baroda and located in the Kashi Vishweshwar temple of Mahadev, which was secured chiefly through the influence of K.G. Deshpande, its principal supporter. There are 37 students on the rolls of the school which consists of two divisions, Vedic and Vehabaric. To the former, instruction is given in the Vedas and modern science. The latter are taught their mother-tongue, Hindi, Sanskrit, English, modern history, and Science. Only boys between the ages of 10 and 14, and who are unmarried, are admitted; their guardians have, moreover, to promise not to withdraw them for a period of from 6 to 10 years after admission. From "Note on Political Sadhus”. Criminal Intelligence Circular No. 2 of 1909. CID Report (1909) Vol. VII. pp. 80-81 (Tamil Nadu State Archives). Page – 133 List of Early Political Writings, 1893-1908 (SABCL Volumes 1-2) The Bourgeois and the Samurai An Early Fragment on the Congress Movement The Heart of Nationalism India and the British Parliament The Morality of Boycott Nagpur Speeches Nasik Speech On the Barisal Proclamation. Page – 134 |