Yesterday (19.04.2012), the IIIrd ADM Court of Puducherry granted an interim injunction restraining the Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from taking disciplinary action against the inmates who had been issued show cause notices for participating in the silent protest of January 1-7 against the Trustees’ support of the denigration of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs. The Trustees now won’t be able to expel these inmates, deprive them of food & shelter nor remove them from their work place. We remind again the readers how the Trustees have long since used this ultimate threat of expulsion and depriving food & shelter to keep the inmates in a state of constant fear and forced obedience. It is because of this fear of retribution that most inmates of the Ashram have not come out openly against the maladministration of the Trust.
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The general public should also be informed about the duplicity and double stardards of the Trustees. Their spokesmen have recently stated in the national TV channels that they respect freedom of speech and “neither proscribe nor prescribe” books in Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This was said for the sole purpose of defending Peter Heehs’s book Lives of Sri Aurobindo, which, strangely, they themselves had criticised in the past. The Managing Trustee has been quoted saying that the book “has crossed all limits of decency”. Manoj Das, the writer, who is in close touch with the Trustees and a key decision-maker in the present administration, found ninety objectionable passages in the book ─ mark that these statements have not yet been denied in public!
Yet, on the other hand, the same Trustees (and their henchmen) do not respect the freedom of speech of the very inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who have dared to criticise their inaction and sit for a silent protest against them. These inmates were subject to a series of show cause notices which threatened disciplinary action in order to strike fear into their hearts and thereby silence them into meek submission. It means that the Trustees can tolerate open denigration of Sri Aurobindo in his own Ashram but cannot bear with any kind of dissension from the inmates of the Ashram. Wonderful! Freedom for the fake American historian in India but no freedom for the inmates of the Ashram who have left everything (family, friends, property, native place) to consecrate their lives to the practice of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga!
With this background in mind, readers of this blog might better appreciate the immense relief felt by those sadhaks and sadhikas who had been issued show cause notices by the Trust. We hope that the interim injunction, so quietly passed yesterday in the Puducherry Court, will herald a new dawn in the life of the Ashram, and that its inmates will now be able to express themselves freely and fearlessly without inviting a vindictive backlash from the administration.
Victory to the Divine Mother.
ReplyDeleteShe has come forward to protect Her children, who had surrendered their all to her, and have nowhere else to go.
It remains to be seen how the attitude of the vindictive management changes with this injunction, and the inmates enjoy a degree of freedom and peace in their pursuits.
H. Acharya