Murders in the Land of the Naïve – 7
Heehs
wrote Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography, OUP, 1989 (Bio-1), The Lives of Sri Aurobindo,
CUP, 2008, (Bio-2) & much else
in the same vein.[1] I
analyse his prefaces using his device critical
openness of a seeker of truth &
his diktat: Biographers must take their
documents as they find them…, paying as much attention to what is written by
the subject’s enemies as by his friends, not giving special treatment even to
the subject’s own version of events. Accounts by the subject…need to be
compared against other narrative accounts…that do not reflect [his] point of view. The pseudonym ‘Marcher’ is a fusion
of his forebears Catherine Mayo (1867-1940) & William Archer (1856-1924),
though Marcherism – degrading the Sanatana Dharma & vilifying the greatest
children of Mother India – was born centuries before Mayo-Archer. The entire credit
for his thriving at the expense of his subject
and his ashram goes to his Daemon, a
special emission of “the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and
Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature”.[2]
All
text in Italics is from Bio-1, Bio-2 & their prefaces; all in
Roman is mine.
I have often interspersed my comments in Roman within Marcher’s text which is
always in italics.
Peter’s Attitude
and Approach G-1: I first encountered Aurobindo in 1968…. [Later] I learned that the peaceful expanse of his brow, his
trouble-free face and fathomless eyes [in photos] owed their distinctiveness to the retoucher’s art…. [The] next four years…I did a lot of reading,
primarily of Aurobindo…and tried to meditate. Now and then I thought about
travelling to India….
A week after my arrival, I found myself living in the ashram Aurobindo had
founded. 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 this life;
second, to organize his manuscripts and prepare them for publication. [It] took several years for me and my colleagues
just to organize his manuscripts… [And] to
find [those which] had not been
published.
My Comments as his hagiographer:
Marcher’s psychic insight, honed over years of meditations, pierced our Indian
psyche in his first days in India.
To validate this insight that Indians take their hagiographies, i.e., the received [=touched up] version of their heroes’ lives very seriously, his
Daemon wafted him to Aurobindo’s ashram.
The first time he stepped into its precincts, while he stood stunned seeing us
buzzing like worker bees around a bedecked concrete slab (the Samadhi), the chief
of this ashram saw in him our
Redeemer and rushed to his feet. The moment Marcher revealed the things he found very interesting to do our chief entrusted their exclusive
charge to him. What moved Marcher to pity were these facts: When Aurobindo’s father was in England,
Darwin enunciated the Prime Law of Evolution: The white race is charged to
civilise the coloured races or exterminate them[3];
Kipling (Nobel in Literature, 1907) proved Indians are “no more than
half-devil, half-child”; when Aurobindo was
in England, Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, roared in Parliament,
“When a man has black, red, or yellow skin, when he has the Providential chance
of being governed by whites, he ought…to bow down and utter thanks”; in
mid-1940s, a decorated black officer of the R.A.F. found that to whites we
coloured are born with a shiftless and indolent character, and so are physically,
mentally, socially and culturally inferior to them. So Marcher was not
surprised when our chief admitted that what had struck instantly to him had never occurred to anyone here. Later his
research confirmed his first-glance appraisal of Aurobindo’s photo, viz. he was
a fraud since he wore neither loincloth nor turban, and had no simulated
halo around his head – the dress-code legalized by the West. For instance Aurobindo himself narrated these
incidents proving he was a coward from childhood: one day, before he was five,
seeing his enraged mother beat his brother
with a candlestick, he ran out of the room under the pretext of being
thirsty; before he reached his teens he was given to selfishness, fear, a tendency to tell lies; at St. Paul’s besides
being weak and inept on the playing
field, he was also a coward and a liar; and in 1910, when
British Law caught up with his terrorist activities, he made a cowardly escape from
Calcutta, first to the nearest French enclave and then to the furthest with
false papers and decades later when his disciples asked him about it, he invented
the compulsion of divine adeshes.
My Comments as his
biographer: a) In 1988, this seeker of Truth wrote that he had settled in Pondicherry (not in this Ashram),
as a research scholar (not as
a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother), at the Sri Aurobindo Archives & Research Library (not at
Sri Aurobindo Ashram’s A&R.L), specializing
in the life and politics of Sri Aurobindo (not as a disciple practising
Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga); and Bio-2 preface
(2008) says: he found himself living
in the ashram (but still fudging if it is as disciple); b) I had…been asked implies that Mother
or the Managing Trustee promptly gave him this blanket authority, as if they
were dumb idiots with no insight into his nature and agenda; c) St. Paul’s
admitted Sri Aurobindo in 1884, the first time it took in any white Jewish or non-white
child; d) in England those days, empowered by Darwin and Salisbury, “the lower class people used to shout
‘Blackie’, Blackie’”; e) besides being the youngest in his class (after 1886
poorest and weakest due to a starvation-diet) and not being, by Marcher’s own account, a budding yogi,
the only self-defence open to a Blackie
squashed among 600 rough-and-tumble middle/lower-class white local Britons was
discretion and fibs; f) even months after he left St Paul’s, its playfield “was
a semi-subterranean basement” with “no organized games” controlled by a Master;
g) in those days games “were never allowed to interfere with school work” and, besides
school work, he prepared for the open ICS entrance exam on his own while others
had hired tutors.[4]
Peter’s Attitude
and Approach G-2: (1) The facts of his life were rather well known; after all, he was one of
the most famous men in India
when he died. But it had never occurred to anyone to search
systematically for biographical documents. (2) I spent parts of the next few years digging (sometimes literally) in
public archives and private collections in Delhi, Calcutta,
Baroda, and Bombay. I was able to
find material that might have lain unnoticed for years or even been thrown out
when at attic was cleaned. Later trips to London
and Paris were
less strenuous but equally productive.
My Comments:
(1) A.B. Purani’s original preface to his biography Life
of Sri Aurobindo prefigured Marcherism: “There was a pressing reason which urged me to
take up this task… people who knew very little about him began to publish
unauthorised books on his life and work [Marcher’s perfidy]. I had occasion
to refer to Sri Aurobindo all the doubtful points of these books for correction
or corroboration. This gave me the correct ground for his biography. I
had been collecting materials myself since 1923.” He had, sensibly, stopped with the Siddhi Day: 24 Nov.’26, but superior researcher-biographer Marcher rectified his English and facts, altered, rearranged, and enlarged his contents, adding 230 pages to bring up the “Life” to post 1950, and issued it as the Revised or the Authentic Edition in 1978.
(2) More scholarly truths! Like Hercules, single-handed Marcher bore years of strenuous digging (sometimes
literally) in archives and
collections of Indians genetically incapable of knowing that true
biography is created exclusively on a systematic collection of primary, secondary, tertiary, relevant,
irrelevant, and hostile documents and hearsay, and their anti-devotional
interpretation. As to the disciples who authorised, organised, paid for his
trips without verifying his real identity, tagged along to do the strenuous stuff like weeks of literal digging in a musty rat-pigeon
infested attic, and worked as his obedient clerks, photographers, etc, well,
the True Law of Genetics compelled them to bow
down to him and offer thanks for the
providential chance of being governed….
Peter’s Attitude and
Approach G-3: Most of the documents I found in public archives dealt with Aurobindo’s
life as a politician. They confirmed that he had been an important figure in
the Struggle for Freedom, but fell short of proving what his followers
believed: that he was the major cause of its success. Nevertheless, his
contribution was significant and, at the time, not very well known. Accounts
that had been written to correct this deficiency were so uncritical that they undermined their own inflated
claims.
My Comments:
In 1989, Bio-1 revealed the reason Aurobindo’s contribution is not very well
known, why reliable documents in
public archives deal only with his life
as a politician: As late as 1920,
wrote Subhas Bose [who, like Nehru, was yet to join Indian politics], Aurobindo remained ‘easily the most
popular leader in Bengal, despite his voluntary exile’. But many of
his admirers [only hot-headed leftists] became disillusioned when he remained in retirement even after
Congress adopted [under pressure of its young leftists Nehru and Bose] complete independence as its goal in 1927;
and began to take [fancied] positive steps towards its achievement. Among the disillusioned was Nehru, who wrote in 1962: ‘When Gandhiji
started his non-cooperation movements and
convulsed India,
we expected Sri Aurobindo to emerge
from his retirement….’ Congress took
the first step in the direction of complete independence when the non-cooperation movement was
inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi. [a) This
first step in the direction of complete independence, started by Gandhi on 1st Aug.’20 was a
violent pan-Islamic agitation thinly disguised
as an All-India non-cooperation movement and when it was called off by Gandhi in 1922, by Marcher’s
own account,
communalism became rampant all over the country.
b) Nehru
joined Gandhi in 1927 and was by his own account often
baffled by the course of these movements; c) on Nehru’s speech after he immersed
Gandhi’s ashes, his aide Rafi Kidwai remarked, “he has performed the last rites…of
Gandhism as well.”]
The disappointment felt by Nehru [with
no idea or interest in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga or his Ashram in 1927] has coloured the judgment of [Nehruvian] historians
of the freedom movement. [Their, and so Marcher’s] tendency now is to look on Aurobindo as an inspiring writer and
ideologue, but to discount his practical work between 1906 and 1910. More detailed study of this period may lead to a
reappraisal of his contribution [e.g. these reappraisals in Bio-2: By
not imploring Muslims to join his party in
1907 he is to blame for India’s Partition; his contribution is nominal as he was only for a moment the most important leader of the country – which he never was.]
In
1988, claiming to specialise in his subject’s life and politics for 17
years, Marcher’s Nehruvian India’s
Freedom Struggle: 1857-1947
(recommended by Delhi Govt. for its “historical detail and accuracy”) appraised Aurobindo’s contribution in just five crumbs: (a) Aurobindo pinpointed another evident
weakness by saying that the Congress organization represented ‘not the mass
of population, but a single and very limited class’ [=New Lamps for Old had no new data, insight, proposal]. (b) The Extremists headed by Tilak…were led in Calcutta by a brilliant
circle that included B.C. Pal, B. Upadhyay and Aurobindo [=last and least]. (c) Naoroji equated Swaraj with ‘colonial self-govt’; Pal [with] ‘absolute autonomy free from foreign
control’ [and] Aurobindo gave [only
a] bold expression to this demand for
complete independence [?!]. (d) Aurobindo,
three times prosecuted but never convicted, found sanctuary [in Pondicherry]…in 1910. (e) A few leaders of Indian opinion responded favourably to Cripps
proposals. M.N. Roy [Father of Indian Communism]…supported the Cripps’ proposals. Aurobindo… likewise welcomed the Cripps
Offer.[5]
According
to Marcher’s Gandhi dismissed Aurobindo’s
advice through three reliable channels giving
five practical advantages – political,
administrative, communal, social and military – because
he was ignorant of ground-realities. But was he? 1) Says Bio-1: He had begun his sadhana in 1904 with the idea of getting power and
guidance…in his work to free India. Now in Pondicherry
he began to look on that work as ‘a part and result’ of his sadhana.
2) “The first result” of his 1908
experience, “was a series of tremendously powerful experiences and radical
changes of consciousness….” 3) “From [then on]…the mental being in [him] became
a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of
personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of
knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it
willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire.” 4) When a ‘scholar’
claimed in 1937 that Karmayogin was
“an index of his latest views on the burning problems of the day”, he replied, “My spiritual consciousness and
knowledge at that time (Jun.’09 to Feb.’10) was as nothing to what it is now –
how would the change leave my view of politics and life unmodified altogether?”
5) “The spiritual life, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a
change from the ordinary consciousness in which one finds one’s true being and
comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the
Divine.” 6) When required, he and Mother directly and indirectly guided key
politicians and the fodder in the battlefield (e.g. Churchill and the American
infantryman John Kelly).[6] This
would lead a spiritual aspirant to accept the global consciousness and
knowledge of ground realities behind Sri Aurobindo’s advice – but was Marcher
ever a spiritual aspirant?
Peter’s Attitude
and Approach G-4: The most remarkable discovery was
a diary he had kept for more than
nine years, in which he noted the day-to-day events of his inner and outer
life. Most biographies of Aurobindo have made his sadhana, or practice of yoga, seem like a series of
miracles. His diary made it clear
that he had to work hard to achieve the states of consciousness that are the
basis of his yoga and philosophy.
My Comments:
To this diary (singular) of day-to-day events of his inner and outer
life which proves that he had to work
hard to achieve etc, add Bio-1’s
a detailed account…in a series of diaries
(plural)…of the day-to-day growth of
the spiritual faculties of an advanced yogin. The implication here, that the
sadhana detailed in these diaries
was inspired, carried out and consummated solely by the powers of his human
mind-life-body at the time and not by any deux
ex machina of supernatural intervention,
is meant to justify the anti-devotional editing of these diaries by Marcher. But
this implication is illicit because, first, in his meditations in jail
(1908-09), Sri Aurobindo “was already on his way” (which phrase Bio-1 converts to took preliminary steps, bringing the marathoner into his last lap
back to the starting line), to the “realisations of the supreme Reality with
the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes
of consciousness leading to the Supermind”, the third and fourth of “the four
great realisations on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded”.
And second, Sri Aurobindo alludes to this diary
or diaries in Apr.’20: “When I came
to Pondicherry,
the Guru of the world who is within us then gave me the complete directions of
my path – its complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These
ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet
finished.” The commonsense conclusion is that even if M&Co had been equally advanced yogins with the same first two
major realisations, obtained the same Guru and the same complete directions from
him for the same path, even if they have acquired the same third and fourth
major realisations of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, along with all the same physical
transformations, they would still never be able to understand even hazily,
forget elucidate, annotate and edit this specific personal anushthana jotted down in this diary
or diaries by Sri Aurobindo for a
specific growth of his spiritual faculties at that stage of
his sadhana. Besides, his sadhana went far beyond
this period, but he never bothered to record it for M&Co and their ilk to
mess around with.
The
wangling and soiling of this diary or
diaries is the most accursed episode
in the lives of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples. Take this verdict of M&Co in Bio-1: Its language is bare, unliterary [aren’t private jottings permitted
that?], often couched in arcane terminology [mystic yet lucid to materialist
scholars]…its businesslike entries [clear to M&Co] provide little ‘inspiration’ or uplift [to disciples, unschooled per se]. They also discourage what might be called [zombified disciples’] spiritual romanticism. What [it] does provide is a down-to-earth account
[=materialist, anti-theist] of a
multitude of events, great and small, inner and outer, in the life of a
dedicated researcher [no better than M&Co]. Much of his later practice of yoga was directed towards the
effectuation of the physical transformation. He considered ‘this part of the
endeavour’ to be ‘the most difficult and doubtful’ [!?] and he did not look forward to full success
in his lifetime [due to his personal defects?]. But he believed that whatever he [not an unsubstantial Power] accomplished would
help in the eventual establishment of a divine life on earth, in a body [of
any Tom-Peter-Harry], and not only in an unsubstantial
[!?] heaven or nirvana…. He traced out
the path of his
new method of
sadhana [not
one worked
out in him by deux
ex machina of supernatural intervention?], logging it for his own use [and that of M&Co] in Record of Yoga and making it accessible to others in the Synthesis of Yoga.[7]
Isn’t
this wonderful? The same new
method of sadhana that Aurobindo logged for his own use is accessible to the coarsest materialist
along with instant possession of Aurobindo’s
first two previous realisations and a guarantee of full acquisition of the
third and fourth realisations “on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy
are founded”, just by flicking through this 900-page Synthesis graciously re-edited by M&Co! Alas, the very basis
of Aurobindo’s own sadhana and that
indicated in Synthesis is, in a
nutshell, “Surrender the whole being exclusively to the Divine” – suicidal for one
whose birthright is licentious liberty in the Pursuit of Happiness or
fulfilment of the meanest impulse.
Peter’s Attitude
and Approach G-5: Most biographies of Aurobindo have made his sadhana, or practice of yoga, seem like a series of
miracles. His diary made it clear
that he had to work hard to achieve the states of consciousness that are the
basis of his yoga and philosophy.
My Comments:
That his leftist appraisal in India’s Freedom Struggle hatched those in
Bio-1 and Bio-2 is proved by his attitude and approach declared in their
prefaces: My form, method and tone all
are scholarly. A scholarly biography cannot be devotional. Biographers must
take their documents as they find them…paying as much attention to what is
written by the subject’s enemies as by his friends, not giving special
treatment even to the subject’s own version of events. Accounts by the subject
have exceptional value, but they need to be compared against other narrative
accounts and, more important, against documents that do not reflect his point
of view. Bio-1 preface declared
biographies by disciples heretical; for being written from the spiritual (devotional) point of view they can only result
in hagiography. Hagiography is a fictitious life-story invoking in the subject’s
nature and life-events the deux ex
machina of supernatural intervention – a presence, intervention, or action
of a person or power which is ex machina
or outside the Darwinian universe, the only actual
reality. No spiritual experience,
it ruled, can be a genuine experience of
actual realities unless Marcher’s purely
mental critical openness of a seeker of material
Truth says so. Now Bio-2 preface outlaws disciple-biographers
for making his practice of yoga seem like a series of miracles because
according to M&Co Aurobindo’s diaries
prove that the achievements of his sadhana, all his experiences and
realisations were the result of his mind’s hard
work.
Peter’s Attitude
and Approach G-6: In trying to trace the lines of Aurobindo’s sadhana, a biographer can use the subject’s diaries,
letters, retrospective accounts [and] for comparison, accounts by others of similar
mystical experiences.
My Comments:
Since true biographers cannot be devotional and must take their documents as they find them, Marcher decided that Aurobindo’s sadhana is fully and finally
fixed only in these documents in his (Marcher’s) possession, and it began and
ended by a mind and body identical to his. And true biographers psycho-analyse all documents without giving special treatment to the subject’s own version of events.
Hence the scorn in this verdict in Bio-2:
In writing and speaking about his
sadhana Aurobindo
made the following claims: that he saw
visions, heard voices, and had
other sources of knowledge independent of the senses and the reason;
that he could read people’s minds and had knowledge of the
future; that by means of mental power he could change the course of
events, cure diseases, and alter the form of his body
[but Bio-1 said he considered his sadhana of physical transformation to be ‘the most difficult and doubtful’ and did not look forward to full
success!]; that he went into trance [=dream,
daze, spell, stupor, reverie, daydream, sleep, wool-gathering]; that he felt physical pain as pleasure and
experienced spontaneous erotic delight [identical to Marcher’s, hence
justifying his sleaze]; that he had a
sort of [=?] supernatural
strength; that he was in touch with goddesses and gods [a Ladies’ man!]; that he was one with God [this clause is
meant to incite religious fanatics who use the term God for their Ultimate Reality. The term Brahman which Sri Aurobindo experienced and identified with is a
totally different Reality.[8]
Note too, that most all the claims Marcher
lists are de-contextualised from diaries
or avowedly illicit notes by disciples of casual comments during private talks
written much later from memory.]
True
biographers compare the subject’s
accounts against other accounts that do not reflect the same point of view. This explains the scorn
in the rest of the verdict: Those
familiar with Indian mythological [=fictional] literature will not be surprised [=will be amused] by these powers and experiences, as they are
commonplace [=every character: human, animal, inanimate has it] in the epics and Puranas [not in the
Indian spiritual tradition before and after Puranas?]. Those familiar with the literature of
mysticism [in the West only mysticism
is allowed to claim being real] will observe that Aurobindo’s powers and
experiences are similar to
those that other mystics from Milarepa [Buddhist] to Rumi [Sufi] to Saint
Teresa [Christian] are said to
have [=not ‘proved’ to have] possessed.[9] With
this Marcher, who alone deals
successfully with Aurobindo’s inner experiences – emotional, intellectual and
spiritual, says: Entirely educated by the West, Aurobindo knew that only Christian, Sufi and Buddhist mystics alone are permitted to claim
authenticity, so he plagiarised their terminology to pass off his powers and experiences as similar to theirs. But Marcher, final
authority on everything Indian, promptly uncovered them as merely Puranic fantasies.
Peter’s Attitude
and Approach G-7: But in the end, mystical experiences remain subjective. Perhaps they
are only hallucinations or signs of psychotic breakdown. Even if not, do they
have any value to anyone but the subject?
My Comments:
Marcher’s documents and scholarly analysis have convinced him that Aurobindo’s mystical or spiritual experiences
subjective, i.e., not objectively scientifically/mechanically
replicable, they were hallucinations
born of a predisposition to psychotic
breakdown inherited from a mother medically certified as psychotic, as
documents and unbiased scholarly research show. This opinion, like all his real
ones, is cut up in bits, planted in different places and dulled into ambivalence
with seems, at least partly, would, etc.
Here are some bits put together: Six months
after his birth his mother showed the
first signs of a mental disorder that gradually took entire possession of
her…the disease seems to have been at least partly hereditary since two
of her siblings were similarly affected. After returning to India
in 1880, Swarnalata…was given a cottage a few miles outside the town…. She seems
to have suffered what we now would call manic-depressive psychosis. When
Aurobindo returned to India
in 1893…his mother was ‘dead to the world’. In 1906-08 one his colleagues Hemendra Prasad who witnessed Aurobindo
speaking more than harshly to his secretary, noted, “Well if you take the
clothes away there remains little to distinguish one human radish from another [=he
was no better than any T-P-H]…I suspect a
tinge of lunacy is not absent in him. His mother is a lunatic. And it is not
strange at all” that the madness in Aurobindo’s family might express itself in
him as an intensity that exceeded all norms. Occasionally his associates felt
his wrath and one of them said, “He hated indiscipline and did not like others
to cross him.” When annoyed he kept quiet; when angry “his lips trembled a
little”. For several days [after
being jailed on 2 May 1908]
he suffered “intense mental agony”. Soon
his thoughts became so wild and unregulated that he wondered whether he was
going insane. After Aurobindo had spoken of his vision of Krishna
in the Uttarpara speech, a few of his associates murmured that he had lost his
balance. R.C. Dutt, a onetime friend of Aurobindo’s said “Aurobindo’s mother was off her mind, and
Arabindo himself was eccentric.” The Viceroy wrote to London
“there is madness in his family and he probably has a bee in his bonnet.”[10]
To
conclude that Aurobindo’s mystical
experiences are of no value to anyone, that they do not contribute to the human effort to achieve a more perfect
life, because being subjective
they cannot be objectively reproduced by physical science and universalised by
technology, is to deny the very foundation of his Integral Yoga, the pillars of
his Ashram, the guiding lights and goals of his disciples. But what else can a
materialist conclude when his first
encounter found Aurobindo not particularly remarkable, the next led to
the discovery that the peaceful expanse
of his brow, his trouble-free face, and fathomless eyes in his photographs owed their distinction to the retoucher’s
art, and the sole sources of truths, his chosen documents and scholarly research,
prove his subject’s predisposition to
the hallucinations of a psychotic?
However,
in an interview on 2 April
2012[11],
with supreme largesse this ultimate authority
on Aurobindo let him be called a spiritual person, but certainly not an avatar!
Zombified
disciple
To be concluded
[1]
All approved as per Rule No. 6 on p.5 of the Rules of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003: “Nothing should be sent out
for publication… without having been first submitted to Sri Aurobindo [now the
Trust Board]….”
[2]
Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Chapter 1
[3]
“At some future period,” says Darwin’s The
Descent of Man, “not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised
races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage
races throughout the world.” – Georges van Vrekhem, Evolution, Religions, and the Unknown God, Amaryllis, Manjul Pub.
House Pvt. Ltd, 2011, p.116
[4]
Georges van Vrekhem, Evolution,
Religions, and the Unknown God, Amaryllis, Manjul Pub. House Pvt Ltd, 2011;
and Preparing for the Miraculous,
Stichting Aurofonds, 2011; R.A.T.
Gascoyne-Cecil Salisbury (1830-1903): Secretary of State for India 1874-82;
Prime Minister 1885, 1886-92, 1895-1902; History
& Culture of the Indian peoples…, Vol. X, Part II:383-84; “And
as a white man, he has every right to assault the Indian who is, in the words
of Kipling, the Banjo Bard of the Empire, no more than ‘half-devil,
half-child’.” CWSA Vol. 6:390. E.R. Braithwaite, To Sir, With Love, Penguin, New York, 1987:99-100; Bio-1: preface, 13, 69; Bio-2 preface, 8, 17-18, 41, 203-09; India’s Freedom Struggle, OUP, 1988; Sri
Aurobindo, The Mother:1-2; Purani, Life… 1978:4, 13-14; and Evening Talks, 2007, p.210; RAES PAULINA…, ed. Gardiner &
Lupton, St. Paul’s School, West Kensington, 1911:116-17
[5]
Bio-1:70-71, 49; Durga Das, India – From Curzon to Nehru & After,
Collins, 1969:279 (Kidwai, I believe, referred to the violence let loose
against all members of the R.S.S); P. Heehs, India’s Freedom Struggle…, OUP 1988: inside cover, 97, 157, 58, 65,
66, 69, 70, 140
[6]
Bio-1:11, 70; SABCL 26:79, 84;
Marcher’s Publisher’s Note to his CWSA 8; SABCL 23:137; The Light that Shone into the Dark Abyss, Maggi Lidchi-Grassi, Sri
Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1994
[7]
Bio-1:99-100, 105, 131, 134
[8]
See Purani’s Evening Talks, 14
Dec.1938; and CWSA’s Letters on Himself,
p.668
[9]
Bio-2: 245
[10]
Bio-1:7, 25; Bio-2:8, 33, 112, 199, 163-64, 247; Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo for All Ages:53; R.C. Dutt
was a loyal ICS officer of the Raj for 26 years. In 1904-06 he was in Baroda
service but his only connection with Sri Aurobindo was a common interest in
translating classical Sanskrit literature and he accepted that his was a poor
work. This comment may be rooted in jealousy and desire to please the British.
[11]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a.AR,
6 minutes, uploaded by IBNLive
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