I may like to add in passing that in these matters the views of historians such as Romila Thapar, whose tilts and biases are very well known, or of the honourable ministers such as Jairam Ramesh whose knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s life and works is at best fragmentary and at worst picked up from popular tabloids, means nothing. Being a Scholar does not necessarily make one an all-knowing Omnibus; being a historian does not automatically guarantee faithful chronicling of all things; least of all, it assures authenticity since that involves certain human qualities of compassion, honesty, sincerity, especially a spiritual sensitivity which is very much wanting in the author of the said book. As someone rightly put it, he deals with his subject as if he were bludgeoning him into a shape desired by him. [extract - read full letter below]
Dear Shri T N Chaturvediji,
I was a bit distraught to see your letter circulating over the internet recently concerning Peter Heehs’ book TLOSA and the affairs following that. I have the following points to bring to your notice for your careful consideration:
1. You have mentioned that the book is a well-researched book with clear references. This is not a fact. The author has been very selective in referencing. He has generally taken references that would help his nefarious work of denigrating Sri Aurobindo. For this purpose he has gone to the extent of using obscure newspaper cuttings, (obviously) biased government records, stray statements from persons who were known detractors of Sri Aurobindo, whose own credentials are doubtful, out of context and partial statements from credible sources to create an image of Sri Aurobindo that would rend the heart of any devotee. For who else except a coward or a man with utter self-seeking interest would keep quiet when his parents are being verbally abused publicly. Spraying some words of praise to provide interim relief to a reader who feels hurt at such a callous and brutal treatment of a divine subject only adds to the degree of his cunning and his ability to conjure dark things under the neat cover of a white sheet spread over the darkness. I must add that this is not the first time he has done this. What is true is that this time he has done it with a masterly skill and managed to divide the community by splitting it across several lines that are merely a reflection of the deep schism in the book itself. I do not know how you missed this mischief which so many scholars of Sri Aurobindo have noted and written extensively about, unless someone deliberately tried to mislead you to use your good offices for justifying falsehood of the worst kind ever. For such a falsehood as this book hits out not only at the core of the Ashram life in particular but at the very core of spiritual life in general.
2. I can understand when biased historians who have their own vested interests and public agenda and political leanings are insensitive to spiritual things. But what amazes me is to see learned persons like you who are perhaps better read about these things than the average historian, to allow themselves to be defined through the lens of the Western world. Is this not slavery of another kind when we try to practise what is dished out by the Western media as the best values and forget our own swadharma? Yes, by doing so we may look good in the eyes of the West and even earn some praise from our past masters but at what cost? It is understandable that in the modern western world where mind is seen as all, one cannot conceive of any higher value than freedom to mentally dissect anything and everything brutally and mercilessly. But here in India we hold the Spirit and spiritual values as much greater. Otherwise things such as obedience to the Guru, fidelity to the path and the Master, surrender to the Guidance of the inner Divine or His human Representatives would all become redundant or at least subservient to the analytical mind, and the gospel of scientific materialism become the highest truth for us to bask and bathe in. Then let us close all the Ashrams and turn them into Research institutes where spiritual truths will be analysed and concluded by experts in the field of Freudian psychology and such like. Is that you would like as the destiny of this wonderful Ashram? Encouragement of men like Peter Heehs with a frowning mock at any form of devotion and worship is very much a step in that direction. Besides the whole thing then turns into an impossible paradox. For if you regard intellectual freedom as the highest quality, even over and above reverence for the Master in whose Ashram you have taken shelter, then you lose automatically the right to criticize devotees going to court or doing a dharna however unpleasant it may look or contradict the existing ethos of the Ashram life. One cannot use different yardsticks for interconnected events, something that one has painfully and repeatedly witnessed in the handling of this issue by those concerned. One has to be at least consistent in what we profess and what we practise. If we uphold intellectual freedom as higher than other spiritual qualities such as reverence for the Master because such is the demand of modernity and of a democratic setup of life, then we must remember that the same setup and modern outlook allows one to go to the police, media or to stage protests and dharnas against anyone however high and mighty he may be. Yes, I agree that these things are anathema to the Ashram life and its spiritual culture, but then so is the birth of such a book that uses the Ashram’s good offices and documents to denigrate the Master an anathema to the Ashram life and ethos. This has never happened in the history of the Ashram life so long as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were in Their physical bodies. Never has this basic fundamental ethos of the Ashram life been violated wherein (personal views of individuals apart) someone living in the Ashram as part of it has written such nasty stuff on Sri Aurobindo, His Work and His life. Who then broke the rules of the game or changed it for the worse? This is a question to be sincerely pondered upon if any sincerity is still left in those who are busy justifying Peter Heehs’s stand and even going to the extent of heavily quoting from Their luminous Words to explain away one’s opinion while refusing to even look at any other possibility. How does one expect Truth to prevail in such an atmosphere where selfish interests are driving the campaign of ‘saving’ Peter Heehs from some impossible religious fanatics, fundamentalists and terrorists? One has only to come here and see for oneself as to who is being persecuted more, Peter Heehs who goes about jogging everyday on the Pondicherry Beach despite the Terrorists and the land mafia people persecuting him through hired goons or the devotees who spoke frankly against his long standing misdeeds against whom there are dedicated websites spewing filth and venom which goes through the heart of the community in order to compel division or else to make it bleed and suffer.
3. I may like to add in passing that in these matters the views of historians such as Romila Thapar, whose tilts and biases are very well known, or of the honourable ministers such as Jairam Ramesh whose knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s life and works is at best fragmentary and at worst picked up from popular tabloids, means nothing. Being a Scholar does not necessarily make one an all-knowing Omnibus; being a historian does not automatically guarantee faithful chronicling of all things; least of all, it assures authenticity since that involves certain human qualities of compassion, honesty, sincerity, especially a spiritual sensitivity which is very much wanting in the author of the said book. As someone rightly put it, he deals with his subject as if he were bludgeoning him into a shape desired by him.
Well, I have spoken my heart freely and frankly to you since I do not doubt your basic loyalty towards Sri Aurobindo, having shared the same platform with you in some talks and meetings. I believe that you have been misguided by some persons who have their own vested interests involved and who are backing human beings blindly regardless of the nature of their deeds. Ideas and idealisms are for such men mere words to be twisted and used for selfish gains. Much as the West loves to define us as tolerant, non-violent Gandhian community since it serves their purpose while for itself it reserves the right to decimate nations for its oil-fields and petty national egoism. It prattles and sells the idea of intellectual freedom to infiltrate and pollute the minds and hearts of our children through media propaganda while it persecutes anyone who dares to speak the truth and reveals its dark underbelly, à la Assange if you like. How long will we accept this mental slavery and spare original thought for ourselves, a thought that has the refreshing perfume of ‘Indian-ness’ and the fragrance of pure spiritual thought and feeling that lifts itself in adoration towards the sublime rather than pulling it down towards the abysses of human silliness and scholarly stupidity!!
Thank you for your patience in reading this letter. It is written in a spirit of goodwill albeit from an Indian heart and mind and a soul that not only worships and adores Sri Aurobindo and the Mother but believes that the hope of the future lies in Them. It is therefore that we need to look beyond our present positions and limited view of things and see into the far avenues of the unborn beyond and ask this one simple question. Is this how we would like to present Sri Aurobindo, His life and work to the posterity, to our grandchildren and to the soul of India and the world? If yes, then there is nothing more to say, and each may follow his own path even if it leads towards the abyss. But if we have a clear no from our hearts, then what prevents us from taking a clear stand against the perpetrator of such crass falsehood – fear of being labeled as non-liberal, intolerant etc? Let us hope that we have learnt the lessons from our own history lest our tolerance becomes a cause for another bondage and our trying to define ourselves through labels of the West leads in the end to the loss of our own innate strength and the light that guides this nation. For if that happens, then it will be truly a sad day for India and the Earth and we all will be jointly a party to this national crime regardless of the camp we may belong to. Let us hearken to these luminous words written more than a century ago:
Alok Pandey
Dr. Alok Pandey Replies to T.N. Chaturvedi
Dear Shri T N Chaturvediji,
I was a bit distraught to see your letter circulating over the internet recently concerning Peter Heehs’ book TLOSA and the affairs following that. I have the following points to bring to your notice for your careful consideration:
1. You have mentioned that the book is a well-researched book with clear references. This is not a fact. The author has been very selective in referencing. He has generally taken references that would help his nefarious work of denigrating Sri Aurobindo. For this purpose he has gone to the extent of using obscure newspaper cuttings, (obviously) biased government records, stray statements from persons who were known detractors of Sri Aurobindo, whose own credentials are doubtful, out of context and partial statements from credible sources to create an image of Sri Aurobindo that would rend the heart of any devotee. For who else except a coward or a man with utter self-seeking interest would keep quiet when his parents are being verbally abused publicly. Spraying some words of praise to provide interim relief to a reader who feels hurt at such a callous and brutal treatment of a divine subject only adds to the degree of his cunning and his ability to conjure dark things under the neat cover of a white sheet spread over the darkness. I must add that this is not the first time he has done this. What is true is that this time he has done it with a masterly skill and managed to divide the community by splitting it across several lines that are merely a reflection of the deep schism in the book itself. I do not know how you missed this mischief which so many scholars of Sri Aurobindo have noted and written extensively about, unless someone deliberately tried to mislead you to use your good offices for justifying falsehood of the worst kind ever. For such a falsehood as this book hits out not only at the core of the Ashram life in particular but at the very core of spiritual life in general.
2. I can understand when biased historians who have their own vested interests and public agenda and political leanings are insensitive to spiritual things. But what amazes me is to see learned persons like you who are perhaps better read about these things than the average historian, to allow themselves to be defined through the lens of the Western world. Is this not slavery of another kind when we try to practise what is dished out by the Western media as the best values and forget our own swadharma? Yes, by doing so we may look good in the eyes of the West and even earn some praise from our past masters but at what cost? It is understandable that in the modern western world where mind is seen as all, one cannot conceive of any higher value than freedom to mentally dissect anything and everything brutally and mercilessly. But here in India we hold the Spirit and spiritual values as much greater. Otherwise things such as obedience to the Guru, fidelity to the path and the Master, surrender to the Guidance of the inner Divine or His human Representatives would all become redundant or at least subservient to the analytical mind, and the gospel of scientific materialism become the highest truth for us to bask and bathe in. Then let us close all the Ashrams and turn them into Research institutes where spiritual truths will be analysed and concluded by experts in the field of Freudian psychology and such like. Is that you would like as the destiny of this wonderful Ashram? Encouragement of men like Peter Heehs with a frowning mock at any form of devotion and worship is very much a step in that direction. Besides the whole thing then turns into an impossible paradox. For if you regard intellectual freedom as the highest quality, even over and above reverence for the Master in whose Ashram you have taken shelter, then you lose automatically the right to criticize devotees going to court or doing a dharna however unpleasant it may look or contradict the existing ethos of the Ashram life. One cannot use different yardsticks for interconnected events, something that one has painfully and repeatedly witnessed in the handling of this issue by those concerned. One has to be at least consistent in what we profess and what we practise. If we uphold intellectual freedom as higher than other spiritual qualities such as reverence for the Master because such is the demand of modernity and of a democratic setup of life, then we must remember that the same setup and modern outlook allows one to go to the police, media or to stage protests and dharnas against anyone however high and mighty he may be. Yes, I agree that these things are anathema to the Ashram life and its spiritual culture, but then so is the birth of such a book that uses the Ashram’s good offices and documents to denigrate the Master an anathema to the Ashram life and ethos. This has never happened in the history of the Ashram life so long as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were in Their physical bodies. Never has this basic fundamental ethos of the Ashram life been violated wherein (personal views of individuals apart) someone living in the Ashram as part of it has written such nasty stuff on Sri Aurobindo, His Work and His life. Who then broke the rules of the game or changed it for the worse? This is a question to be sincerely pondered upon if any sincerity is still left in those who are busy justifying Peter Heehs’s stand and even going to the extent of heavily quoting from Their luminous Words to explain away one’s opinion while refusing to even look at any other possibility. How does one expect Truth to prevail in such an atmosphere where selfish interests are driving the campaign of ‘saving’ Peter Heehs from some impossible religious fanatics, fundamentalists and terrorists? One has only to come here and see for oneself as to who is being persecuted more, Peter Heehs who goes about jogging everyday on the Pondicherry Beach despite the Terrorists and the land mafia people persecuting him through hired goons or the devotees who spoke frankly against his long standing misdeeds against whom there are dedicated websites spewing filth and venom which goes through the heart of the community in order to compel division or else to make it bleed and suffer.
3. I may like to add in passing that in these matters the views of historians such as Romila Thapar, whose tilts and biases are very well known, or of the honourable ministers such as Jairam Ramesh whose knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s life and works is at best fragmentary and at worst picked up from popular tabloids, means nothing. Being a Scholar does not necessarily make one an all-knowing Omnibus; being a historian does not automatically guarantee faithful chronicling of all things; least of all, it assures authenticity since that involves certain human qualities of compassion, honesty, sincerity, especially a spiritual sensitivity which is very much wanting in the author of the said book. As someone rightly put it, he deals with his subject as if he were bludgeoning him into a shape desired by him.
Well, I have spoken my heart freely and frankly to you since I do not doubt your basic loyalty towards Sri Aurobindo, having shared the same platform with you in some talks and meetings. I believe that you have been misguided by some persons who have their own vested interests involved and who are backing human beings blindly regardless of the nature of their deeds. Ideas and idealisms are for such men mere words to be twisted and used for selfish gains. Much as the West loves to define us as tolerant, non-violent Gandhian community since it serves their purpose while for itself it reserves the right to decimate nations for its oil-fields and petty national egoism. It prattles and sells the idea of intellectual freedom to infiltrate and pollute the minds and hearts of our children through media propaganda while it persecutes anyone who dares to speak the truth and reveals its dark underbelly, à la Assange if you like. How long will we accept this mental slavery and spare original thought for ourselves, a thought that has the refreshing perfume of ‘Indian-ness’ and the fragrance of pure spiritual thought and feeling that lifts itself in adoration towards the sublime rather than pulling it down towards the abysses of human silliness and scholarly stupidity!!
Thank you for your patience in reading this letter. It is written in a spirit of goodwill albeit from an Indian heart and mind and a soul that not only worships and adores Sri Aurobindo and the Mother but believes that the hope of the future lies in Them. It is therefore that we need to look beyond our present positions and limited view of things and see into the far avenues of the unborn beyond and ask this one simple question. Is this how we would like to present Sri Aurobindo, His life and work to the posterity, to our grandchildren and to the soul of India and the world? If yes, then there is nothing more to say, and each may follow his own path even if it leads towards the abyss. But if we have a clear no from our hearts, then what prevents us from taking a clear stand against the perpetrator of such crass falsehood – fear of being labeled as non-liberal, intolerant etc? Let us hope that we have learnt the lessons from our own history lest our tolerance becomes a cause for another bondage and our trying to define ourselves through labels of the West leads in the end to the loss of our own innate strength and the light that guides this nation. For if that happens, then it will be truly a sad day for India and the Earth and we all will be jointly a party to this national crime regardless of the camp we may belong to. Let us hearken to these luminous words written more than a century ago:
We say to the nation, “It is God’s will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India’s eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, ‘This is our dharma.’ We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours.”
We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India’s work, the world’s work, God’s work, “You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual preeminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.”
(Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Karmayogin, pp 27-28)
Alok Pandey
Well-drafted letter and I hope there will enter some light in the dingy rooms of these people. Most of them write articles or reviews or comments without reading “that” atrocious book, full of misrepresentations, or reading properly at all. The test will lie in a frank open discussion para by para and page by page of the Lives. And they call it a well-researched biography! which only means they don’t know what thorough research is. There are any number of tight professional articles on this website itself and none of them has been countered. In fact, most of the time these people go about, as the famous phrase goes, strutting like headless chickens. The greater pity is, perhaps, our authorities have no eyes to see things. They have a major share in this perpetration and there doesn’t seem to be any escape from it. Well, … take the example of Gautam Chikermane of the Hindustan Times who was making big noises about the Freedom of Expression in April, running to Grace Office and back to New Delhi to find every devious way to distort facts, but has now preferred to remain silent when it comes to the matter of silencing the voice of Kanchan Gupta. What does he say about it? We shall be looking for the answer at the HT.
ReplyDeleteI can't comment on the scholarship of Peter Heeh's book as I have never read it, this being because I choose to admire the lotus, rather than wallow in the mud in which it grows.
ReplyDeleteI can however as a westerner, comment on the paradigm which Peter Heehs seems to ascribe to, based on his comments in various articles and interviews. Mr Heehs seems to have, despite several decades in India, retained a very modernist materialist world view.
Rupert Sheldrake has recently published a book the Science Delusion, where he addresses many of the so called scientific truths postulated by the paradigm and exposes them as at best a set of beliefs arising out of a particular cultural paradigm, the superiority of western modernity, and at worst self justifying myths of western patriarchal power and control. (of course this is my subjective interpretation not necessarily Sheldrake's)
I find it funny that, for all the Heehs supporters adherence to Freud, they seem to be incapable of turning it onto their own common culture. America was in part founded by puritans, and this influence seems to be still strong in american culture, it frowned upon ritual and delight, emphasising austerity, sin and punishment. As my mother use to say, best to look at your own dirty laundry before you comment on the state of others.
If this debate is to have any chance of progress, in my view, perhaps the westerners need to turn the torch on their own psyches and the influence of the culture in which they were born and its significant conscious and unconscious influence.
I have great sympathy for the people who reside in the Ashram and are personally caught up in this ideological battle. It does seem to me, however, that it has had one positive outcome, in that many devotees are looking at how the Ashram is run, and making suggestions for change. For my part, I don't care, I don't know Peter Heehs from Adam, and I have long since left many of the westerners I have know in the IY behind, better to move forward in solitude, rather than division.
Diane
I must say that this is a very fine comment, balanced and mature, speaking of the quality of a high soul. I will also say that to have “a very modernist materialist world view” is a positive thing and must be valued; we Indians generally don’t have that. In that process something which is desirable for it to be the spirit’s instrument is missed. When this is understood then perhaps this artificial compartmentalisation of Indian and Western sets of values or perceptions, of this culture or that culture, gets knocked off, and it is that which I will promote wholeheartedly. So it is really not a question of ideological inter- or intra-cultural differences, but something else that comes into play. The real struggle is with the deep-rooted falsehood seated within us. It is there in all of us, in one form or the other, and dealing with it is the business we have to attend, attend within oneself as well as, and as far as, possible in the wider collective. In the present context we are talking of certain collective issues and, it seems, it is these which need be addressed now. Our quarrel is essentially with misrepresentation and falsification of the vision and work of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. This is hitting at the very roots of spirituality itself, and if we are here for spiritual purposes then it becomes totally unacceptable. There is a systematic attempt to destroy or cause damage to these foundational values which, if we allow to happen, will eventually mean nothing short of us committing suicide. We cannot be passive witness to these happenings,--if there is some fire burning in our souls. Perhaps we had been sleeping for too long, the sleep of tamas, of inertia, perhaps a “vast disguise” is waking us up now, and it is time for us to exercise our “tremendous choice” not given again. The rest will be done by the Master of the Destiny.
DeleteAnonymous Ashramite:
ReplyDeletePeter is a thief. He is not a writer.
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete"I may like to add in passing that in these matters the views of historians such as Romila Thapar, whose tilts and biases are very well known, or of the honourable ministers such as Jairam Ramesh whose knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s life and works is at best fragmentary and at worst picked up from popular tabloids, means nothing." - Alok Pandey
I absolutely agree with Alok Pandey. How can a professor of history comment on Sri Aurobindo? Or for that matter, how can Jairam Ramesh, who has had no spiritual experience whatsoever, comment on a Yogi? Even the much quoted David Annoussamy review shows profound ignorance of spirituality in general, but it has been quoted as if his review is a final judgment on the book. David Annoussamy was Chief Justice in the Court of Law but that does not make his pronouncements a final authority in the realm of spirituality where he might not have an iota of experience.
Apropos of David Annoussamy's so-called review (it seems more a sponsored job) let me reproduce a few quotes in the following:
Delete“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” ― Harlan Ellison
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.” ― John Lennon
“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” ― G.K. Chesterton
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” ― Stephen Hawking
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ― George Orwell
Anonymous:
DeleteExcellent quotes!
Let me reproduce here Manoj Pavitran’s review of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo; he points out the lack of “intellectual honesty or historical integrity or academic rigor” in the biography.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who is familiar with Sri Aurobindo can see that the author carefully omits quite many well-known aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s life, especially what has been told by the Mother, who in my view is the foremost authority on Sri Aurobindo. The author has no difficulty in using newspaper clippings as documented evidence in his interpretations, but when it comes to documented evidence coming from the Mother, we see a great reluctance to use them and active omissions. The Mother’s words may not be palatable to an academic audience, but to omit them from Sri Aurobindo’s life is not intellectual honesty or historical integrity or academic rigor. Truth is truth, whether it is appealing to the academic world or not, and hiding it to please a particular audience may be good marketing strategy but lowers the standards of truth. Anyone who is familiar with Sri Aurobindo can see that the author carefully omits quite many well-known aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s life, especially what has been told by the Mother, who in my view is the foremost authority on Sri Aurobindo. The author has no difficulty in using newspaper clippings as documented evidence in his interpretations, but when it comes to documented evidence coming from the Mother, we see a great reluctance to use them and active omissions. The Mother’s words may not be palatable to an academic audience, but to omit them from Sri Aurobindo’s life is not intellectual honesty or historical integrity or academic rigor. Truth is truth, whether it is appealing to the academic world or not, and hiding it to please a particular audience may be good marketing strategy but lowers the standards of truth.
It can be accessed at
http://sriaurobindoashram.com/Content.aspx?ContentURL=_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-04%20Compilations/-01%20English/Critical%20Analysis%20of%20The%20Lives%20of%20Sri%20Aurobindo/-01_Reviews/A%20Review%20by%20Manoj%20Pavitran.htm
We must be extremely thankful to http://sriaurobindoashram.com/ for posting a few of the articles and comments that had appeared at different places critiquing The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Congratulations. These can be accessed at
ReplyDeletehttp://sriaurobindoashram.com/Contents.aspx?ParentCategoryName=_StaticContent/SriAurobindoAshram/-09%20E-Library/-04%20Compilations/-01%20English/Critical%20Analysis%20of%20The%20Lives%20of%20Sri%20Aurobindo/-02_Articles
It is a pity that David Annoussamy should not have read these before writing his own review of the book, giving the impression that he essentially went by the material that was supplied to him. The same can perhaps be said of Gautam Chikermane, Ashish Nandy, Sagarika Ghoshe, Ramachandra Guha, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Romila Thapar, Jairam Ramesh, TN Chaturvedi, and a whole lot of them, some of whom were particularly very active in March/April; this looks to be true at least in the case of their early comments and media observations. It is this want of balanced and well-read view which makes their judgement suspect, if not valueless.