Apropos of Savitri and Prof. Manoj Das – by R.Y. Deshpande

Private dispute should always be avoided; but shrink not from public battle; yet even there appreciate the strength of thy adversary. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Prof Manoj Das writes: “I was for a while representing the Ashram in the courts where several cases were filed against the Trust because it brought out a revised version of the Master’s epic, Savitri. It was ‘revised’ in the sense that errors (typographical, punctuation, omission, words not properly deciphered in corrected proofs, etc) were removed through years of study and scrutiny.I was convinced that the Revised Edition of the epic is the most authentic one.” [Refer to Bireshwar Choudhury's reply to Manoj Das.]

In response to this we have the following on the website: “The Savitri revision controversy has rocked the Ashram for a decade or two. RY Deshpande was part of the team that finalised the Savitri revisions and he says that even Nirodbaran expressed his unhappiness over some of the revisions. The late Jugal Kishore Mukherjiwrote a fifty page letter to Amal on these revisions. … I will throw a challenge which Deshpande has long been insisting upon: Make all the Savitri manuscripts public. Put them up on the Net for all to see and judge for themselves the legitimacy of the revisions of the Archives editors.”

Prof Manoj Das says, “I was convinced that the Revised Edition of the epic is the most authentic one.” He also writes to the same effect to Dr Karan Singh.

Here my concern is to ask one or two immediate questions to Prof Manoj Das. If I get direct and non-evasive answers I would like to continue the dialogue further. The technical dialogue will be on this website. It is up to him to say yes or no.

To start with let us take a specific example, from Book Three Canto Four. The passage that needs to be looked into has something unusual in the third line:

Once more he moved amid material scenes,

Lifted by intimations from the heights

And twixt the pauses of the building brain

Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge

Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.

According to Amal the “greatest puzzle” in Savitri appears in the line “And twixt the pauses of the building brain”; this line in the Revised Edition has been modified to “And in the pauses of the building brain”. While proposing the replacement of “twixt” by “in” this is what the editors say: “The last emendation of a handwritten line was necessitated by what the editors consider to be a slip made by the author while revising.” The note further says: “The unrevised version of the line seems to represent Sri Aurobindo's intentions better than the revised one, and it has therefore been restored to the text.”

The editors seem to be too confident to say that “twixt” for “in” was a slip on the part of Sri Aurobindo, too self-assured; they also bravely speak of Sri Aurobindo's intentions, that what is suggested meets them in a better way. The least we can say is, we do not know.

The surprising aspect of this, however, is Amal himself should have gone out of his way to justify the ways of Man to God! He calls this “in”-“twixt” as the biggest puzzle in Savitri and sets himself to plead for “in” in place of Sri Aurobindo's “twixt”. He considers “twixt” as a “strange oversight” on part of the author himself. He adds:“Rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo's consistent yogic teaching.”

Very sagacious, indeed! And it is we who are going to judge Sri Aurobindo’s consistent yogic teaching! That itself seems to be the greatest puzzle about Savitri and not the text!

The upshot is: Sri Aurobindo's eyesight had become weak, he had to depend upon a scribe who was not alert enough, he was assisted by a typist who remained mute and deaf, his printer didn't always remain faithful to the material sent to him for printing. Well, if such is the background then, we have to go by Prof Manoj Das!

It seems that we are not really dealing with the “biggest puzzle in the text of Savitri”, but with something else—ardent disciples becoming wiser than the Teacher, not only pointing out his slips but also correcting him. But who can solve this biggest puzzle?

Be it The Lives of Sri Aurobindo calling Savitri a fictional creation, or Amal pointing out serious slips and errors supposedly made by the poet of Savitri and correcting them, or the so-called meticulous editing that resulted in the Revised Edition everywhere we have, to quote a phrase from Savitri,“man’s corporeal mind as the only lamp”. And what does this lamp do? With it “darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast”.

Related to these early matters we have some solid work done by Jugal Kishore Mukherjee. About 25 years ago he wrote letters to the Ashram trustees expressing his unhappiness regarding some articles published in the Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research journal. Controversial statements were made in it pertaining to the biographical and literary works of Sri Aurobindo. This controversy also gets connected with the manner in which the drafts of Savitri were editorially handled while preparing the Revised Edition. Jugal Mukherjee's first letter written on 22 June 1986 drew a rebuttal from the Archive's head Jayantilal Parekh; this was answered inthe second letter written on 14 June 1987. He writes: “At times, spiritual explanation consistently and repeatedly given by Sri Aurobindo himself for some of his actions/decisions is being belittled, if not directly challenged in the Archives and Research. Instead some extraneous mundane considerations are offered as contributory factors shaping Sri Aurobindo's action! And on what ground?—because some Tom, Dick and Harry certify it to be so!! How strange!” He adds: “In the Archival Notes a new theology is being subtly but persistently introduced, seeking to draw a distinction between the ‘inner’ Sri Aurobindo and ‘outer’ Sri Aurobindo, between his ‘inner’ action and ‘outer’ action, between his ‘inner’ motivation and ‘outer’ motivation. This has a very serious implication.” In the letter he points out any number of inappropriate “corrections” that were sought to be introduced into Savitri. Along with the happy elimination of many genuine “transmission errors”, he writes, other new and serious errors of misjudgement on the editors' part will be introduced into the text of the Poem.

About this whole affair Jugal Mukherjee expresses his total disappointment in his 50-page letter written exactly 25 years ago,24 April 1988—1 May 1988. “I have very attentively scrutinised every one of the 1795 listed ‘corrections’ for the entire book of Savitri, studying each one in relation to its immediate as well as overall context. This has confirmed my earlier fears and, I hope, I have been by now able to demonstrate to KDSethna and my four other friends (Nirod-da, Manoj DG, Paru P and Deshpande-bhai) that before being sent to the press the Table of Corrections indeed needed a second re-appraisal; for, it is now recognised by all concerned that at least some of the listed ‘corrections’—if not many, many—could by no means be incorporated into the body of Savitri. … I wonder what's the use of ‘correcting' a hundred ‘transmission errors' if at the same time we introduce on our own 30 new ‘errors’ arising out of hasty judgement or misjudgement? This misjudgement has been on many counts.”

My two queries to Prof Manoj Das are: Does he agree with Amal that on occasions there were oversights on part of Sri Aurobindo himself, that he made slips, he forgetting his own spiritual philosophy or the poetic techniques which he recommended to others? Does he deny Jugal Mukherjee’s statement that in the process of correcting a hundred errors in the Savitri-text there is the likelihood of thirty new errors getting introduced in it? I take that he has personally studied both these documents, one published in Mother India, about twenty-five years ago. If so can we have an open discussion?

RY Deshpande