May 15, 1971
What do you bring?
The idea came to me to write an article on “Sri Aurobindo and
Bangladesh…." But I don’t know whether it would be helpful,
or whether anything should be said at all.
But where could it be published?
I think in one of the newspapers in India, that’s easy.
What did you write? I am curious.
(Satprem reads the article. At one point in the text, he briefly
mentions what he thinks each country represents: France =
clarity of intellect; Germany = ingenuity; Russia = the
brotherhood of man…. Mother interrupts:)
You said nothing for the United States.
What is it?
Practical organization.
(Satprem finishes his reading
[[The article appears at the end of this conversation ]])
Oh, it’s good!… It should be put into proper English.
Can it be of any help — can it STILL be of help?
Oh, yes, oh, definitely! — It should be immediately….
Isn’t it too late?
Page 134
No…. We must try, at all events.
It needs proper English…. Who can translate it?
Can Sujata try?
Sujata, are you literary? (laughter)
It’s full of power, that power has to be kept.
(after suggesting names for
a possible translator)
What will we do with the translation then?
Can we try sending it to newspapers in Madras, Delhi and
Calcutta?
We should…. The newspapers won’t dare — they’ll be afraid of government reprisals.
But, Mother, on the whole, all of India was against Delhi’s
decision. Everywhere, in all the papers I saw that they com
pletely disapproved of Delhi’s decision. Entire India is against
Indira on that particular point.
We have to think about it. We shouldn’t send it out haphazardly, someone should take it in hand. We must find a way to have it printed right away.
How much time did you take to write it?
A morning.
(silence)
You aren’t pessimistic?
No. You see, what God wills will be. And I take God in the sense of….
And that’s what I said to…. N.S .[[A minister in the Indian government and, at the time, a friend of Indira's. ]] sent U. expressly to ask me what she should do, because Indira doesn’t listen to her at all anymore — not at all — and she seems to be completely … well,
Page 135
anyway, as though submerged by a hostile formation. [[This is the beginning of the break between N.S. and Indira. These assertions are hence highly unreliable. Let us note that Mother's own emissaries N. and U. will take N.S.'s side against Indira. So we are not sure what to make out of the words reported to Mother by those scheming emissaries. Mother was betrayed on every side. ]] So I replied that I personally have only one hope (Mother clenches her fists in front of her as though clinging to something): “Let the Divine Will be done,” and “All those who are capable of helping the contact and hastening the reception of that Will here must put all their consciousness and aspiration into it.” That’s what I replied…. And this (indicating the article), from the standpoint of action, is the last chance — not that people listen very much, but it creates a current of force.
(silence)
The great argument is that the people of Bangladesh don’t care and have stopped defending themselves.
But…!
And already over two million refugees have come into India, and they’re expecting the two million to swell to ten million. And India won’t have anything to eat. That’ what’s going to happen tomorrow, immediately. It’s really a bottomless pit…. Ten million swarming into North India.
I called — I called, I asked for help — and that [the article] came, and it’s good, it’s very good. Since it came, it’s a last hope.
We must find a large number of newspapers in all the provinces.
And I wouldn’t sign your name. I would put “A lover of India,” something like that.
You wouldn’t like something like “A letter from the Sri
Aurobindo Ashram"?… No, you’re right, "A lover of India" is
the right tone.
Yes, there are a lot of things around it.
Yes, that’s right.
It would be nice to put “A disciple of Sri Aurobindo, a lover of
India.” But that … we’ll see.
* * *
Page 136
ADDENDUM
Sri Aurobindo and Bangladesh
Behind the jostle of temporary points of view and instant interests there are the Eternal Landmarks. To lose sight of them is to lose one’s very way and steer onto the reefs of expediency and comfortable compromise upon which we shall founder a moment later. Behind the little frontal events is the greater tide of history and to lose sight of it is to lose one’s direction and the golden thread that leads to our perfect fulfillment, be it individual or national. Those who have left their unique mark upon the labyrinth of history are the very ones who have seized the golden thread and affirmed the Greater History and the Greater Meaning against all the instant arguments and fleeting expediencies.
The Greater History tells us that the whole earth is a single body with a single destiny, but that within that single destiny each part of the greater body, each nation, has its special role to play and its rare moments of choice when it must make the decisive gesture, its true gesture in the total movement of the great Eternal History. Each nation is a symbol. Each gesture of each nation potentially represents a little victory in the total victory or a little defeat in the total defeat. And sometimes the whole of our history is at stake at a symbolic point of the earth; and, a little gesture, a tiny turn to the right or left, has repercussions, either good or bad, down the ages and over the entire earth body.
India is precisely such a symbol and Bangladesh is another, a little turning point in the great course of events of the earth. The time has come to consider the eternal Landmarks and read the greater tide in the small eddies. Now, the greater tide tells us that India’s role is to be the spiritual heart of the terrestrial body just as, for example, the role of France is to express clarity of intellect, or that of Germany to express skill, Russia the brotherhood of man and the United States enthusiasm for adventure and practical organization, etc. But only if India is ONE can she fulfill this role, for how can one who is herself divided lead others? Thus the division of India is the first Falsehood that must disappear, for it is the symbol of the earth’s division. As long as India is not one, the world cannot be one. India’s striving for unity is the symbolic drama of the world’s striving for unity.
From this simple, eternal Fact follow all the conclusions and
Page 137
policies that will flow with the current of the earth’s destiny. Sri Aurobindo said so already in 1947, “The division must and will go.” Dire will be the consequences for India and for the earth if we fail to heed this eternal Theorem: “The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country,” said Sri Aurobindo. “It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest.” We now know, twenty-four years after this prophetic declaration, that China is at our gates and only awaits her hour to invade the entire continent, seizing precisely on this division of India to strike at the spiritual heart of the world and, perhaps, frustrating the realization of the entire destiny of the earth or postponing it until a future cycle after much suffering and complication.
The Great History tells us that India must again be one, and that particular current of history is so imperative that twice already Destiny has managed to put India before the possibility of her reunification. The first time was in 1965 when Pakistan’s foolish aggressiveness enabled India to counterattack and carry the battle right into the suburbs of Lahore — and up to Karachi had she but had the courage to seize boldly her destiny. The hour was indeed for a decisive choice. The Mother declared categorically: “India is fighting for the triumph of Truth, and She must fight until India and Pakistan become ONE again, for such is the truth of their being.” At Tashkent, we yielded on the crest of a petty compromise which was to lead us into a second, more bloody and painful reef, Bangladesh. There too destiny graciously arranged to enable India to hasten to the aid of her massacred brethren — even the famous skyjacking incident of January [[Two months before the massacre in Bangladesh, an Indian plane hijacked by some Pakistanis enabled India to close her airspace to Pakistani planes, thus forcing Pakistan to go around Ceylon to carry her troops to Bengal, which once more underscores the geographical absurdity of these two parts of a single country separated by fifteen hundred miles of Indian territory. ]] was, as it were, arranged by the Grace so as to spare India from delaying her intervention until it was too late (or to spare her the shame of not intervening at all and allowing Pakistan’s planes to fly over her head loaded with weaponry and murderers to slaughter her brothers). But there again, yielding to the demands of the moment and to the small, shortsighted
Page 138
interests, we refused to accept the challenge of the Great Direction of our History, and we now find ourselves on the brink of a new compromise which will lead us inevitably to a third and even more disastrous and bloody reef. For one day India must inevitably face that which twice she has fled. Only each time the conditions are more disastrous for her and for the world — perhaps so disastrous that the whole earth will even be engulfed in another general conflict, while the whole story could have been resolved at the little symbolic point that is Bangladesh, at the right hour, with the right gesture and a minimum of suffering.
For let there be no doubt about it, the Bangladesh affair is not an Indian event, it is a world event. The division of India is not a local incident, it is a terrestrial Falsehood which must disappear if the division of the world is to disappear. And here again we hear the voice of Sri Aurobindo, six months before his passing, referring to yet another phenomenon which then seemed of such slight importance, so remote, a trifling “local” affair at the other end of the world: the invasion of South Korea in 1950, twenty-one years ago. And yet that small Korean symbol, like the small symbol of Bangladesh (or the one of Czechoslovakia in 1938), contained in seed the whole fatal course which is still carrying the world toward a sinister destiny: “The affair of Korea,” wrote Sri Aurobindo, “is the first move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent — in passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India.” Now, twenty-one years later, we see that Tibet and the whole of South East Asia have been swallowed up and the “gate into India” has truly been opened wide by the wound of the Pakistani Falsehood — already, or very shortly, the Chinese are, or will be, in Khulna, some eighty miles from Calcutta, to help Yahya Khan to “pacify” Bengal. And Sri Aurobindo added, “If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps until they are ready to deal with America.”
This is where we are today. That which we want to avoid returns upon us with tenfold force. The hour for political calculation, for the pros and cons of our petty mathematics of expediency (which always goes awry) is past. The time has come to rediscover the Great Direction of India, which is really the Great Direction of the world, and to place our faith in the Spirit that guides her Destiny, rejecting petty fears of a phantom world opinion and doing away
Page 139
with the little supports which only lend support to the Enemy. Tomorrow America will perhaps resume her economic aid to Pakistan on the pretext of counteracting the Chinese presence. The Bangladesh slaughter will be honorably justified by a pseudoregime which will operate with the blessings of the international community. But one does not cheat the tide of history: for the third time our little compromises will crumble and we will find ourselves confronted with a terrible ordeal, its intensity nourished by our own successive failures in the past. The sooner not only India, but America and Russia too, understand the unreality of Pakistan and the magnitude of what is at stake at the borders of India, the sooner may the looming catastrophe be halted before it becomes totally and definitely irrevocable. “One thing is certain,” wrote Sri Aurobindo a few months before his passing, “that if there is too much shilly-shallying and if America gives up now her defence of Korea” [we could say even more: the defense of Bangladesh] “she may be driven to yield position after position until it is too late: at one point or another she will have to stand and face the necessity of drastic action even if it leads to war.”
For the battle of India is the battle of the world. This is where the world’s tragic destiny is brewing, or its last-minute burst of hope into a new world of Truth and Light, for it is said that the deepest darkness lies nearest the most luminous light.
The last Asura must die at the feet of the Eternal Mother.
A lover of India
Page 140