The Trial and the Verdict -- by Alok Pandey

We have in this book TLOSA what may be called the Second Trial of Sri Aurobindo to see where He stands in our assessment. Unfortunately the trial is being ordered not by the British Municipal Magistrate but by an inmate of his own ashram. It is being done in crass violation of all ethical and spiritual norms. Ethically it is not in good taste to pass comments upon someone who is no more there to defend himself and set things in their right perspective. Spiritually, it is an anathema to doubt and criticize the Master, an act regarded in all spiritual schools as the straight road to perdition. [Extract, read full article below]

The Trial and the Verdict -- by Alok Pandey

(Claims of Objectivity and the Conclusions of the Blind and the Biased)

Introduction and Background:

Action and event have no value in themselves, but only take their value from the force which they represent and the idea which they symbolise and which the force is there to serve.

(Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita (CWSA), p 168)

If we read the book in the light of the above quotation, it will not take us long to recognize as to what went wrong with the author of TLOSA. All our actions are the objective representations or notations of inner states and emerge against a background of attitudes and beliefs. They are the end result of what was always present within us waiting its hour to be thrown out or discovered. This book too and the aftermath that followed was only waiting to happen. Perhaps the phrase ‘a stitch in time saves a nine’ applies here aptly. When early warnings are ignored, then we are only waiting for the volcano to erupt and its lava and ashes to scorch the earth and cloud the skies. Was this avoidable? We can never know with certainty, but one thing is sure. The responsibility of the storm that has been raised lies squarely on the author of the book, who goes about reinventing the image of Sri Aurobindo, raising contentious issues and discussing them with a clear bias. As if this is not enough, with an almost vicarious pleasure, he tries to belittle other people’s views on Sri Aurobindo. Take for example what the author himself says in an interview given to Auroville Today that sparked off the controversy:

Most biographies of Sri Aurobindo published before 1989 were based on his reminiscences, supplemented by an assortment of secondary sources. The idea that a historical work must be based on archival sources had apparently not occurred to the writers. It might not have occurred to me either if my first boss at the Ashram Archives, Jayantilal Parekh, had not suggested that I make a chronology of Aurobindo’s life, basing it on “authentic documents”. With his encouragement, I spent a few years working on and off in archives in Delhi, Calcutta and Baroda, and later in London and Paris.

The problems are aggravated when limits are set as to what can be said or thought about a subject. The person who advised me to search for “authentic documents” felt squeamish about using certain documentary accounts. One of the most detailed accounts of Aurobindo’s life in school was written by a classmate who sent a report to the Government of India after Sri Aurobindo’s arrest in the Alipore Bomb Case. It was clear from his language that he did not like Sri Aurobindo. My advisor thought that the document should not be published or even referred to. This obviously is not the right way for a historian to proceed.

When you finally sit down to write, you do it against the background of a general understanding, a conventional account of the subject. In effect what you’re doing is correcting what’s generally known about the subject. The result is a new interpretation that modifies or replaces the conventional account.

(Interview to Auroville Today, August 2008)

In the interview the author says he might not have been particularly interested in gathering authentic documents on Sri Aurobindo’s life had his boss not suggested it. In the book, he candidly admits that he might not have even stayed on at the Ashram if this work were not entrusted to him. This itself indicates that his primary interest for coming to the Ashram was History and not Yoga. His main intention was not so much to give an objective account as he claims (even if such an absurd thing is possible in a biography) but to ‘correct’ the impression that other accounts have created. First of all, he assumes that his account is the only correct one, even though he has never even met Sri Aurobindo as opposed to a number of existing biographies by those (Iyengar, Navajata, Purani)who have personally met him and have had the rare privilege of his darshan . Basically what the author wants is to ‘impose’ his own idea and image of Sri Aurobindo on the unsuspecting reader and in the process destroy the image that others have formed in his heart and mind. He uses the garb of objectivity and his position in the Archives to achieve this. At the same time he wants to enrol himself in the good books of his select academia and win praises from them.

I might not have stayed if I had not been asked to do two things I found very interesting: first, to collect material dealing with his life; second, to organize his manuscripts and prepare them for publication.

(Preface of TLOSA)

We see here the first error. We can imagine what would have happened if we had similarly a leftist or psychoanalyst who wanted to study Sri Aurobindo’s life from his perspective and publish a book on his findings. But perhaps he was encouraged on this dangerous and dubious course as is indicated in his letter to a Ph D student in Psychology:

A historian, like a psychologist, cannot fill his or her professional work with personal reflections, opinions, etc.

I have no professional qualifications as a psychologist. My discussion on pages 245-248 is that of a historian who, for the purposes of this discussion, read a few dozen books and papers on the subject. These are listed in the bibliography of my paper “Genius, Mysticism and Madness”, published in the Psychohistory Review, a peer reviewed American journal, in 1997. This paper is listed in my list of publications on my website, and (I believe) included in the 1998 list of scientific research done in the Ashram.

My discussion of the topic in the book is based on this article. Note that both the article and the book were written as contributions to historical research, an activity supported by the ashram in its role of a scientific research institution. The article therefore contains no expression of devotion and treats Sri Aurobindo’s experiences as the subject of scientific and historical research. As noted above, in both publications I present myself as a historian addressing an audience of scholars, and not as a devotee giving expression to personal feelings for the benefit of other devotees.

(Peter Heehs’s letter to a Ph D student)

If this is really true as the author claims, then perhaps everything right from the word “go” has been moving in a wrong direction. Is the ashram an institute for scientific or historic research on Sri Aurobindo’s life as anywhere else? Can Sri Aurobindo, the Master of Yoga, be an object of scientific study by the inmates of his own ashram? This is a question that baffles both reason and common sense.

When Nolini-da was asked: “Please write something on Sri Aurobindo as a man. You are the only person who can do it.” He became grave and replied:

It is of no importance to posterity what Sri Aurobindo did as a man; how he behaved as a man. What is of interest is how the Divine manifested through him, what he did for humanity as the Divine, how he acted as the Divine, what he did for the world as the Divine.

The Mother has been much more explicit. Her immortal words are engraved on the Samadhi to remind us day and night that the very human persona of Sri Aurobindo is nothing but the human form assumed by the Divine Master for our sake:

To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.

(The Mother, 9 December 1950, MCW, Vol. 13, p 7)

Part One:

We have in this book TLOSA what may be called the Second Trial of Sri Aurobindo to see where He stands in our assessment. Unfortunately the trial is being ordered not by the British Municipal Magistrate but by an inmate of his own ashram. It is being done in crass violation of all ethical and spiritual norms. Ethically it is not in good taste to pass comments upon someone who is no more there to defend himself and set things in their right perspective. Spiritually, it is an anathema to doubt and criticize the Master, an act regarded in all spiritual schools as the straight road to perdition. The author notes in his pre-publication blog on the method he has adopted and the conclusions he has drawn from his own assessment of Sri Aurobindo:

Some historians and politicians see him as one of the forerunners of Mahatma Gandhi, others as a precursor of today’s aggressive Hindu nationalists. Admirers of his writings see his epic in iambic pentameter as the harbinger of a new kind of poetry, but most contemporary poets and critics dismiss it as a throwback to the Victorian era. The opinions of amateur and professional philosophers are polarized along the same lines. There is general agreement among students of religion that Aurobindo was a remarkable mystic, but few are willing to swallow the claim of some of his followers that he was an avatar, like Krishna, Chaitanya or Christ.

(Posted by Columbia University Press in Asian Studies, Postings by Authors, Religion)

In the Epilogue, where he gives his final judgment on the subject of his book he opines in a similar vein. Let us examine the final verdict that the author passes on Sri Aurobindo:


1. Re: Avatarhood:

It is difficult to offer a balanced assessment of a man who is regarded by some as an incarnation of God and by others as a social and political reactionary. To accept Sri Aurobindo as an avatar is necessarily a matter of faith, and matters of faith quickly become matters of dogma. Besides, the term “avatar” has lost much of its glow in recent years. Once reserved for “descents” that come “from age to age,” it now is applied to any spiritual leader with a halfway decent following. As for the label “reactionary,” it is itself a reaction against Sri Aurobindo’s appropriation by members of the Hindu Right, who claim his posthumous endorsement for their backward-looking programs.

(TLOSA, Epilogue)

Mark the language. He could have simply left the subject of Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood as a matter of faith, which would have been honest and decent for someone who obviously does not believe in it. But he must go on to reduce faith, into something low and obscure, narrow and bigoted. Again mark the political overtone, - the Hindu Right’s backward-looking programs. It sounds so much like the leftists and pseudo-secularists. One thought that the Ashram and its inmates had to stay away from politics! Elsewhere, the author touches upon the issue of Avatarhood in the following words:

Whether spontaneous or conventional, a reverential attitude was becoming the only acceptable way to approach Sri Aurobindo. Disciples took it for granted that he was an avatar, or incarnation of God. He never made any such claim on his own behalf; on the other hand, he never dissuaded anyone from regarding him in this way, and wrote openly that the Mother was an incarnation of the Shakti. She reciprocated when speaking about him with disciples, but insisted on “great reserve” when people wrote articles for the general public. (TLOSA, p 380)

What about the assertion that Aurobindo was an avatar? I can’t say that the question interests me very much. Aurobindo never claimed the distinction for himself, and I don’t think anyone alive is in a position to say one way or the other. The Aurobindo that interests me is the one who turned from a life of hectic action to a life of contemplation, but was able, during his forty-year retirement, to write a shelf full of books on philosophy, political theory, and textual criticism, along with thousands of letters and, yes, that epic in iambic pentameter. (CUP blog)

This flip-flop is typical of the author. He writes in one place that he is not interested in the issue of Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood; then, in another place, he says that the word has anyway lost its meaning. Still later, he states that it is a matter of faith. So far one may not have much cause to complain. After all, it is a matter of faith and not all may be interested in the issue. The author of TLOSA is well within his rights to limit the scope of the book leaving out any discussion on the issue of Avatarhood, even though this may be one of the central elements of Sri Aurobindo’s vision and action, at least central to the right and full understanding of his work. But the author goes on to make unnecessary and false comments as the following:

Disciples took it for granted that he was an avatar, or incarnation of God. He never made any such claim on his own behalf. (TLOSA, p 380)

Aurobindo never claimed the distinction for himself, and I don’t think anyone alive is in a position to say one way or the other. (CUP blog)

To accept Sri Aurobindo as an avatar is necessarily a matter of faith, and matters of faith quickly become matters of dogma. (TLOSA, Epilogue)

Few are willing to swallow the claim of some of his followers that he was an avatar, like Krishna, Chaitanya or Christ. (CUP blog)

Through these statements, he makes it appear as if Sri Aurobindo never spoke about his Avatarhood and it is just the sentimental self-flattering devotees and followers who have made him an Avatar, something that does not go well with most. He also makes an off the cuff remark that no one alive is in a position to say one way or the other. Now both reason and commonsense coupled with a little maturity and sensitivity demand that the author does not comment upon an issue that neither interests him nor is an objectively verifiable thing. He could leave it as a matter of faith but then he must not go on to hit at faith itself and say that faith is the pathway towards dogma! Either he does not know what faith is or else he is confused and does not know the difference between faith, dogma, belief, and indoctrination. Whatever may be the case, Sri Aurobindo did accept the distinction tacitly and implicitly, though he did not claim it like the author has done with regard to being his first “objective biographer”. I quote from Letters on Himself:

Q: We believe that both you and the Mother are Avatars. It is said that both you and she have been on the earth since its creation. What were you doing during the previous lives?

A: Carrying on the evolution.

Q. I find it difficult to understand so concise a statement. Can’t you elaborate it?

A: That would mean writing the whole of human history. I can only say that as there are special descents to carry on the evolution to a farther stage, so also something of the Divine is always there to help through each stage itself in one direction or another.

Q: Since you and the Mother were on earth constantly from the beginning what was the need for Avatars coming down here one after another?

A. We were not on earth as Avatars.

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, pp 445- 448)


If we had lived physically in the Supermind from the beginning nobody could have been able to approach us nor could any Sadhana have been done. There could have been no hope of contact between ourselves and the earth and men.

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, p 450)

We also have the meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s symbol in the Mother’s words:

The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda. The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.

The junction of both—the central square—is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme – the lotus.

The water—inside the square—represents the multiplicity, the creation.

(Mother, CWM Vol. 13, p 28)

A symbol as we know is one way of representing a deeper Reality. Used extensively in mystic poetry, it has been powerfully used to express occult and spiritual realities and thereby attract the forces and the idea they represent. The above symbol is clearly the inner Reality that Sri Aurobindo represents. He is at the centre of the great evolutionary leap in creation that is being undertaken now through the inner alchemy of the aspiration of earthly life in response to the Divine descending and transmuting it into its Supramental equivalent. Sri Aurobindo, in this symbol, becomes the meeting point of the aspiration of Matter and the response of the Divine, precisely what the work of the Avatar is.

The Mother, who alone is the most qualified to speak on Sri Aurobindo, explains thus in response to a question (referring to Sri Aurobindo’s birth as an “eternal birth”):

From the purely spiritual point of view, it could be said that it is the birth of the Eternal on Earth. For each time the Avatar takes a physical form it is the birth of the Eternal himself on Earth.

All that, contained in two words: “eternal birth”.

(Mother, CWM, Vol. 9: p 179)


In the eternity of becoming, each Avatar is only the announcer, the forerunner of a more perfect realisation. And yet men have always the tendency to deify the Avatar of the past in opposition to the Avatar of the future.

Now again Sri Aurobindo has come announcing to the world the realisation of tomorrow; and again his message meets with the same opposition as of all those who preceded him.

But tomorrow will prove the truth of what he revealed and his work will be done.

(Mother, CWM, Vol. 13: p 22)


I had always heard that Sri Aurobindo was “the last Avatar”; but he is probably the last Avatar in a human body— afterwards, we do not know...

(CWM, Vol. 10: p 253)

Finally and a bit ironically given the fact that Peter makes this claim that no one alive is in a position to say one way or the other, we have the one alive centenarian who has been close to Sri Aurobindo, Amal Kiran, who has written about this issue:

“…finally Kalki who will come to set right the balance by bringing the Transcendent’s power to base on the Transcendent’s Peace a new earth-order, a terrestrial Heaven. In this tale of evolutionary humanity we would identify Kalki with Sri Aurobindo, the Master of Integral Yoga.

(Amal Kiran, Our Light and Delight, p 47)

There are quite a number of such statements that clearly reveal Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood. However, what is true is that Sri Aurobindo never made any public proclamations on it and discouraged his disciples from discussing it. In fact which Avatar has made public pronouncements? The fact of Avatarhood is always a personal revelation made to the disciple. It is only later that more and more souls discover the Grace and Truth of the embodied Divine and the knowledge of his Avatarhood becomes public.

This is not to say that the disciples of Sri Aurobindo have to convince others about him being an Avatar. We agree that is a very personal question, a matter of faith and inner revelation and not something to be imposed as an outer belief. The Gita speaks of it as one of the three highest mysteries, rahasyo hyetad uttamam. But it is only to show that the author of TLOSA has neither been objective nor fair and has often passed off his personal opinions and biases under the garb of objectivity. The doctrine of Avatarhood actually occupies such a central place in Sri Aurobindo’s scheme of things that a general discussion on it would certainly not have been out of place in a book dedicated to Sri Aurobindo’s life and works. After all, according to Sri Aurobindo, all previous evolutionary leaps were the result of an inner emergence hastened and precipitated by a descent from Above. In fact, the entire effort at ‘divinisation of earthly life’ adds a whole new dimension to the issue of Avatarhood as is revealed in the parable of the ten incarnations. How can anyone trying to do any justice to Sri Aurobindo’s Thought simply ignore and bypass or trivialise it by statements such as:

Besides, the term “avatar” has lost much of its glow in recent years. Once reserved for “descents” that come “from age to age,” it now is applied to any spiritual leader with a halfway decent following.” (TLOSA, Epilogue)

Why did he make such tongue-in-cheek statements in an important academic biography? On the contrary, he should have explained the average reader what are these “descents” from “age to age”, so that he can understand the true meaning of Avatarhood. Just because the academia rejects the notion due to its a priori bias and preconceived notions, should the writer also ignore it? He could have at least supplied the readers with adequate information and then left them to form their own opinions.

We can see how the author plays a double game. When asked as to why he portrayed Sri Aurobindo so negatively, he explained that he was trying to show that Sri Aurobindo was born human but became an Avatar later on! What is surprising is that his supporters easily buy this argument. First of all, there is nothing like an Avatar born human and becoming Divine. It is rather the Divine descending and veiling Himself for the sake of the work he has come to do. This is abundantly described by Sri Aurobindo in his Essays on the Gita, and even more directly in his Poem, God’s Labour and of course Savitri. Secondly, where does he show in his book that Sri Aurobindo became an Avatar later on? Finally, how can the spiritual reality of the Avatar be proved by any external yardstick? As Sri Aurobindo makes it abundantly clear in the Evening Talks:

Everyone who descends for a spiritual purpose has to be limited. Of course such a limitation is self-imposed, - he consents to the rules of the play of forces and works through that play.

(A. B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, p 745)

In short we may say that the conception of Avatarhood is one of the central aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s vision. Whether we accept or dismiss it is a matter of faith and inner revelation. It can only be verified by spiritual and occult means and not by any outer method or scientific process. Until we develop those means (if at all we seek to develop them) we have to rely on the testimony of those who have developed them or better still on the word of the Guru and the Master. We have to leave it as a matter of personal faith and certainly not go about denigrating the faith of others. It is here that PH oversteps his limits and treads into spaces where even the highest mind of man, his swiftest intelligence is like a babe upon the knees of a vast and infinitely superior Wisdom.



2. Re: Faith and Dogma:


One of the many questions that the book raises is whether someone claiming to be a disciple can adopt this sort of callous, critical and doubting approach towards his Master. One can perhaps justify it from the precedents set by some disciples whom Sri Aurobindo allowed to raise questions and doubts. But there are several problems with this justification. One, Sri Aurobindo could correct the false impressions that rose in the disciple’s mind and take away the load of a serious karmic effect by His occult action. In the present context, how can we adopt that approach when no one is there physically to correct these false impressions? Secondly, disciples asked questions or raised doubts in their personal correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. But with regard to PH, he has gone public with the book. We do not know how the Mother and Sri Aurobindo would have responded if a disciple went public in this manner. Would They have allowed it in the name of intellectual freedom and continued to shower accolades and keep him where he is? We know how the Mother responded to Amal-da’s suggestion to correct some words / punctuations in Savitri. If later She was compassionate, it was mainly because of the right attitude with which he took things and when he made it clear that he had no intention to challenge or doubt Sri Aurobindo but was concerned only about genuine slips that may have crept in. Can we say that the book adopts this attitude? On the contrary, one sees the utter arrogance of the self-sufficient and vain-glorious intellect at work that is ready to point a finger at the Guru at the first opportunity. Thirdly, can we use the formula of doubt and criticism to judge the Master, as the author of TLOSA does? Here are Sri Aurobindo’s own words to guide us:

The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith,—a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, “whatever is a man’s faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.”

(Synthesis of Yoga, p 44)


Mental faith combats doubt and helps to open to the true knowledge; vital faith prevents the attacks of the hostile forces or defeats them and helps to open to the true spiritual will and action; physical faith keeps one firm through all physical obscurity, inertia or suffering and helps to open to the foundation of the true consciousness; psychic faith opens to the direct touch of the Divine and helps to bring union and surrender.

(Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 23, p 571)


Faith does not depend upon experience; it is something that is there before experience. When one starts the yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith. It is so not only in yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment, failure, disproof, denial because of something in them that tells them that this is the truth, the thing that must be followed and done. Ramakrishna even went so far as to say, when asked whether blind faith was not wrong, that blind faith was the only kind to have, for faith is either blind or it is not faith but something else – reasoned inference, proved conviction or ascertained knowledge.

Faith is the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. This thing within us can last even when there is no fixed belief in the mind, even when the vital struggles and revolts and refuses. Who is there that practises the yoga and has not his periods, long periods of disappointment and failure and disbelief and darkness? But there is something that sustains him and even goes on in spite of himself, because it feels that what it followed after was yet true and it more than feels, it knows. The fundamental faith in yoga is this, inherent in the soul, that the Divine exists and the Divine is the one thing to be followed after – nothing else in life is worth having in comparison with that. So long as a man has that faith, he is marked for the spiritual life and I will say that, even if his nature is full of obstacles and crammed with denials and difficulties, and even if he has many years of struggle, he is marked out for success in the spiritual life.

(Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 23, pp 572-73)


As to doubts and argumentative answers to them, I have long given up the practice as I found it perfectly useless. Yoga is not a field for intellectual argument or dissertation. It is not by the exercise of the logical or the debating mind that one can arrive at a true understanding of yoga or follow it. A doubting spirit, “honest doubt” and the claim that the intellect shall be satisfied and be made the judge on every point is all very well in the field of mental action outside. But yoga is not a mental field, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness—it is even laid down by yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach its goal. For the same reason an unquestioning openness to the Guru is demanded in the Indian spiritual tradition; as for blame, criticism and attack on the Guru, it was considered reprehensible and the surest possible obstacle to sadhana.

If the spirit of doubt could be overcome by meeting it with arguments, there might be something in the demand for its removal by satisfaction through logic. But the spirit of doubt doubts for its own sake, for the sake of doubt; it simply uses the mind as its instrument for its particular dharma, and this not the least when that mind thinks it is seeking sincerely for a solution of its honest and irrepressible doubts. Mental positions always differ, moreover, and it is well-known that people can argue for ever without one convincing the other. To go on perpetually answering persistent and always recurring doubts such as for long have filled this Ashram and obstructed the sadhana, is merely to frustrate the aim of the yoga and go against its central principle with no spiritual or other gain whatever. If anybody gets over his fundamental doubts, it is by the growth of the psychic in him or by an enlargement of his consciousness, not otherwise. Questions which arise from the spirit of enquiry, not aggressive or self-assertive, but as a part of a hunger for knowledge can be answered, but the “spirit of doubt” is insatiable and unappeasable.

(Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, pp 162-63)

Perhaps for this very reason, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo discouraged Their disciples from writing about Their lives. In Her letter of 3rd June 1939, the Mother clearly cautions us on this matter:

My point of view is this, that anything written by a sadhak about Sri Aurobindo which brings him down to an ordinary level and admits the reader to a sort of gossiping familiarity with him is an unfaithfulness to Him and His work. Good intentions are not sufficient, it is necessary that this should be understood by everybody.

(Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 13, p 27)

Note that here She specifically speaks about a sadhaka writing a book on Sri Aurobindo. This is because it brings into action forces that are detrimental and dangerous to one’s sadhana and also the collective life of the Ashram community. One may even become an instrument of hostile forces that take a perverse pleasure in assessing and negating the Divine, throwing doubt upon Him and judging, belittling and criticising Him in the human way. But if a community of seekers and the very guardians of the Sacred Space continue to encourage and support such an activity under the guise of genuine research, then only God can save it from perdition.

Alok Pandey

27 March 2011