Ashram Trustees Criticise the Republication of the First Edition of Savitri – by Sridharan

A letter of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust has recently been published in the All India Magazine of Sri Aurobindo Society in the issue of November 2012, strongly criticising the republication of the first edition of Savitri by Helios Books. Not only the letter is written in extremely bad taste, but totally irrelevant and misleading comparisons and statistics regarding the various editions of Savitri have been quoted in it to impress the lay reader without actually touching upon the central issue.

What is the central issue? The editors of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives with the full support of the Ashram Trustees have been accused of tampering the original works of Sri Aurobindo. This has caused great distress among not only devotees but intellectuals and scholars who have written lengthy letters to the Ashram Trust pointing out the editorial deficiencies in the editing of Sri Aurobindo’s works, especially the 1993 edition of Savitri. (Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s letter to Amal Kiran on the subject runs to 50 pages, single-spaced and closely typed.) This has led to filing of numerous court cases against the Ashram Trust by exasperated disciples causing a tremendous waste of energy and financial resources to the Ashram. All this could have been easily avoided by a little transparency and open-mindedness in the public  domain by making the manuscripts available to one and all instead of sitting on them and firing salvos from the safety of the Archives Cold Storage. A public discussion could have at least released the pent-up pressure if not improved upon the last edition of Savitri and other works of Sri Aurobindo. But no! The Ashram Trustees think that there are no other scholars in the whole wide world except the four editors who finalised the 1993 edition of Savitri. Even in this exercise, Jugal Kishore Mukherji (former in-charge of the Higher Course of the Ashram School) was sidelined and not allowed to study the original manuscripts of Savitri. Dr. R.Y. Deshpande’s request for the same was also time and again turned down. What does this suggest? That there are things to hide and that the decisions of the editors could easily be challenged and even proved wrong. This is the central issue and the context of the Savitri controversy which has dogged the Ashram Trust for more than a decade now! This is the core issue that has not been addressed in the above mentioned letter which has been dutifully published by the Society purely out of extraneous considerations and threat! If the advertisement of the first edition of Savitri was released against payment from Helios Books, then the views and statement of the Ashram Trustees ought to have been released as an advertisement as well and against payment! However, the spineless Chairman of Sri Aurobindo Society and the equally inept and incompetent Management Committee of SAS chose to prostrate themselves in front of the Ashram Trustees, not out of genuine academic consideration but out of fear of losing petty privileges granted to them by the Ashram Trustees!  

Why should therefore the Ashram Trustees write such an uncouth letter and force the servile and intellectually incompetent Chairman of the Sri Aurobindo Society to publish it in a magazine dedicated to the spreading of Sri Aurobindo’s works? The Chairman also lets the Ashram Trust backstab Helios Books after being paid for the advertisement in the magazine. This is simply not fair! If he really did not believe in the first edition of Savitri, he should not have allowed the advertisement in the first place! But why allow such nasty and spiteful objections after the advertisement has been printed? Or did he yield to this demeaning act because the members of the Society will be deprived of food in the Ashram Dining Room or cinema in the Ashram Playground? I would not be surprised at all if these were the actual mundane considerations which made him allow such a vicious attack! And to think that, in the early days of the Ashram, the first disciples left everything (wife, children, property, name and fame, position and power) for the sake of the spirit! Times have surely changed!

Now that the central issue has been amply discussed, let us take up some of the irrelevant issues raised by the letter written by the Ashram Trustees. First of all, why do the Ashram Trustees snub Helios Books on using the term “priceless edition” to describe the first edition of Savitri? Don’t they equally value the first edition or do they only value the 1993 allegedly tampered edition? If the implication is that the Archives editors perfected Sri Aurobindo’s poetry in the 1993 edition, then so be it – self-deception and vanity are in plenty everywhere, both outside and inside the Ashram! That is precisely why Helios Books has published the first edition of Savitri fulfilling a long-standing public demand.

There have been 4 earlier editions of Savitri: the 1950-51 edition, the 1954 edition, the 1970 edition also known as SABCL edition, and the 1993 edition. It would be pertinent to note that 99.75 % of the text in all the editions has remained the same. (Letter of Ashram Trustees)

What is the pertinence of the above statement? Does it mean that making new editions does not make any difference to the reader because 99.75 % of the text has remained the same? If so, why “impertinently” produce a “revised version”? And why object to the first edition at all?

There are numerous instances where the text of the “republication” of the “priceless original edition of Savitri (1950-51)” differs from all the existing editions of Savitri, including the text of the 1950-51 edition. (Letter of Ashram Trustees)

Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected in the republished first edition. If this is termed objectionable, then why object to the objections made to the priceless “revised edition” which nobody wants to now buy or read? As for the overall confusion created by the differences between the four editions, the only way out is to go back to the first edition and restart on a sounder basis instead of composing a priceless “revised version” for the creative satisfaction of the editors. I would advise the conceited editors to write their own poetry instead of tweaking the poetry of the Master!

The so-called “republication” of Savitri contains some text which differs from the 1950-51 edition, but is in agreement with all the three subsequent editions of Savitri, although the advertisement specifically induces the reader to believe that the text is entirely in agreement with the 1950-51 edition. (Letter of Ashram Trustees)

Which publisher will be foolish enough to mention insignificant editorial details of his book in an advertisement? The editorial note inside the republication of the first edition clearly mentions the correction of “obvious typographical errors”. By the way, the pages have been renumbered to make one series in a single volume, which does not tally with the page numbers of the two volumes of the first edition. I suppose even this unavoidable difference deserves serious reprobation from the editors of the “revised version”! 

There are other instances in which the text in the “republication” agrees only with the 1993 edition of Savitri, and not with that of any other edition prior to the 1993 edition. (Letter of Ashram Trustees)

The editors of the 1993 edition should be therefore immensely pleased because in some instances the republication of the first edition agrees with the 1993 edition. But what about the other instances where they don’t match?

Finally, it is not the number of verbal changes that matters as much as the importance of these verbal changes from the point of view of substance and meaning. If “last” can be made “lust” without batting an eyelid by the Archives editors and the Ashram Trustees, the result is of course Peter Heehs! Who can trust him or his editorial team after his infamous Lives of Sri Aurobindo?  In retrospect, all that they have laid their hands upon becomes suspect! The only way then to move forward is to make all the original manuscripts of Savitri available in the public domain and let the reader decide for himself!

Thus, the “republication” of the “original edition” of Savitri advertised on page 40 of the August 2012 issue of AIM fails to measure up to its advertised claim. (Letter of Ashram Trustees)

Helios Books only claimed that the book has been “beautifully produced as a limited collector’s edition in hardbound cover”! If anybody denies the beautiful getup of this edition, he should be sent to Timbuktu or to the coal mines of Jharkhand! As for the “priceless original  edition of 1950-51”, it only shows the respect and veneration that Helios Books has for Sri Aurobindo unlike the Archives team of editors who have always tried to pick out faults in Sri Aurobindo’s works and have even succeeded in finding faults where there are none. Even his Yoga, philosophy and personal character have not been spared by them!

It really does not matter if someone buys this expensive book as long as the purchase is based on an informed choice and not induced by any misleading advertisement. (Letter of Ashram Trustees)

Good paper and printing is expensive nowadays. Publishers have to make both ends meet even if they don’t want to make profits unlike the highly subsidised editions of the Ashram Trust which floats irresponsibly on the donations of thousands of devotees and disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. If these devotees knew the way things function in Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Sri Aurobindo Society, they would be shocked and stop all further donations. In any case, a copy of the first edition of Savitri published by Helios Books costs only Rs 1200/=, which is not much by prevalent standards, considering the hardbound cover, the aesthetic getup and quality of the paper and printing.

Finally, who is misleading whom? The judgment should be left to the reader cum potential buyer of Savitri with one prime consideration in mind. Which edition would he or she prefer – the one published or finalised during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime or the 1993 edition which was finalised after 20 years of scholarly or unscholarly arguments and poring through endless number of drafts and versions of a symbolic epic poem which goes above the heads of most people, including the editors themselves? If the reader chooses the 1993 edition disregarding the controversy surrounding it, the edition is readily available in the bookshops of the Ashram Trust. But what if he decides to read the first edition and cannot find it anywhere? It is in fulfilling this demand of a growing section of conscious readers that Helios Books has truly played a commendable role by making the first edition available once again after 60 years.

The reader should also be informed that the copyright of Savitri has expired and the Ashram Trust no longer controls its publication. If the beautiful edition brought out by Helios Books has so much ruffled the feathers of the Archives editors and the Ashram Trustees, it only shows how desperate they are to re-establish their lost credentials. It is high time they realise that they cannot monopolise Sri Aurobindo as if he is their personal property and concede the ground to other publishers who can play valuable roles in the publication of his works.