Dear
Mr. Das,
I have read your letter of
15.06.2014 to Niranjan-bhai (Niranjan Naik). As you have requested him not to say
anything about you, I am interested to reply to your letter because I am
thoroughly conversant with the facts of the controversy. Also the nature of
your letter demands an answer.
On 10.05.2013 in your article “Last
Appeal”, you had said that you will not to write anything more on the present
controversy in the Ashram. As you frequently break your own promise and baffle
the common devotees and disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, an answer to
your letter is therefore badly needed. All your letters like the present one
are factually wrong, unsubstantial, discordant, irrelevant and full of unnecessary
emotion.
You have written to Niranjan-bhai,
“You know a considerable number of malicious writings have been written against
me. Some were anonymous and some were with pseudo names. It is the belief of
all that you have written all these articles. I am not curious about it. It is
a general fact that we cannot escape the consequences of our own actions. I have
not done anything that is harmful to you.”
Dear Mr. Das, if you know that everybody
reaps the consequence of his own karma, then why do you write again and again
such baseless letters full of falsehood, breaking you noble promises to remain
silent? I have read so many articles on the Internet (www.thelivesofsriaurobindo.com) regarding you in which you have been
seriously accused. But you have never dared to reply to these accusations. You say
you have not done any harm to Niranjan-bhai. I would rather say, “What more
harm can you do to him?” I mention below a few examples of the harm caused to
Niranjan-bhai by your revengeful actions.
1. As the authorised guardian of
Navajyoti Karyalaya after the passing away of Babaji and Prapatti, had you not
suggested to Niranjan-bhai to step down from his post of the manager on the
evening of 29.05.2006? The next morning, on 30.05.2006, had he not told you to
write his resignation on his behalf as he did not know what to write? You did
that and he immediately copied it by hand and submitted it to the Managing
Trustee. Why did you do so and with whose persuasion?
2. Niranjan-bhai had written a general
article entitled “Guru Ninda” for the November 2008 issue of the Oriya magazine
Navaprakash, of which he was the
editor since its inception in 1970. When the magazine was ready to be released
from the Ashram Press, you advised the Managing Trustee Manoj Das Gupta to stop
the article. It was done without informing the poor editor.
3.
You stopped giving your articles in the January 2011 issue of Navaprakash with the demand that Niranjan
Naik should be completely dissociated from Navaprakash.
You sent word through Ms Jayanti Tripathy, the manager of Navajyoti Karyalaya,
that so long as Niranjan Naik is the editor of Navaprakash, you will not contribute to the magazine. Your adorable
Lord Manoj Das Gupta fulfilled your wish. So from February 2011, your articles
appeared in Navaprakash and Niranjan-bhai
was thrown out. It is worth mentioning
that your contribution to Navaprakash
from August 2002 was only possible after the passing away of Prapatti and
Babaji at the request of Niranjan-bhai.
4. After the passing away of Babaji
and Prapatti, the Trustees take all the decisions regarding Navajyoti Karyalaya
in consultation with you. Since the time of the Mother Niranjan-bhai used to go
daily to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s rooms in order to take the offering and
prayers of the devotees of Odisha and bringing back for them the Mother’s
blessings, messages and other necessary things. This was also stopped. Even
getting the required blessings and messages indirectly from another lady was
also stopped.
5. His colleagues in Navajyoti were
told to harass and torture him at his workplace so that he will be compelled to
leave Navajyoti. They displaced his table, almirah, phone and other things in
his absence. They even stole the key of his almirah and took away his cupboard containing
messages. Every day they take away the chairs in front of his table, which he
has to bring back. They mislead or threaten the visitors who come to see him.
They even threatened to stop him from coming to Navajyoti by locking the office
door. They could not do so because the matter was reported to the Police. An
Ashram gounda (Arupananda) was sent to his office room to beat him up on
21.04.2014 at around 12.10 P.M. In this case also, the police was informed. Niranjan-bhai
does not get a copy of the magazines or even his own books written and compiled
by him. There are so many other things which need not be mentioned.
6. You had called a meeting of all
the Navajyoti members with the Ashram Trust Board with special instructions to
the Navajyoti Manager not to inform or call Niranjan Naik to the meeting, as he
was protesting against Peter Heehs’ book and the support given to him by the
Trustees. The entire meeting was regarding Niranjan Naik. It started with your
speech on how you were undergoing sleepless nights since the last four months
after getting Niranjan Naik’s reply of 18.10.2010 to your letter in support of Peter Heehs
and the Trustees, which you had secretly distributed during the Darshan of 15th
August, 2010. After this meeting Niranjan-bhai is not treated well and does not
feel that he is a member of Navajyoti. He goes to the Navajyoti office to
perform his remaining duties as Mother herself had given him work there.
7. As you yourself have invited the
exposure of your evil actions, here is another one. You are a professional
writer. You write for name, fame, money and awards. Niranjan-bhai is an
inspired writer with no literary background, who started writing only in 1970
when Babaji and Prapatti entrusted him the editorship of the then new magazine Navaprakash with the Blessings of the
Mother. He writes for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in Navaprakash and, if any Odiya publishers want to publish his
articles, they simply take them from there. But you have been telling them not
to publish his articles as if they are not worth publishing. Some of them
politely answered you, “Sir, we want to
publish them because people like to read his articles on Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother’s Yoga, which is the whole purpose of the magazine.” Such things
happened even before the present controversy of the Ashram when you had a very
cordial relation with Niranjan-bhai. Does it not prove that you are a big
literary person with a very mean and jealous mind?
8. Dear Mr. Das, all these incidents
related to Niranjan-bhai have happened and more are still happening under your
guidance of Navajyoti Karyalaya. Yet you write to Niranjan-bhai, “Out of good will
for you in the background, I am writing this letter. I have not done anything
that is harmful to you.” Have you ever discussed with him about the incidents
of harassment, intimidation and encroaching on his right to do Mother’s
service? Yet he is not worried about it. You are welcome to do more harm to him
in association with the Trustees and Navajyoti Karyalaya workers, as you
possess the power and means. He is more worried and hurt by your support of Peter
Heehs after you yourself noted down more than 90 objections in his book “Lives of
Sri Aurobindo”. You have also helped him to file a case against the Govt. of Odisha
in order to withdraw its ban on his book. Niranjan Naik can never accept such
hypocrisy of a distinguished Ashramite like you in the matter of Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother’s prestige.
Dear Das, you have written, “The
reason for writing this letter is that some people have made remarks... that
pain me. The substance of their remarks is that a person who has remained in
the Ashram for so many years can blame you so harshly? … The doubt behind their
remarks was that it is useless to remain in the Ashram for so many years in the
name of sadhana.”
You have very cleverly not mentioned
the reason why you were blamed. You only want to create confusion. You have
tactfully reversed these remarks which were actually meant for you and your
shameless Gurudrohi activities in the Ashram in order to please your present
Guru Peter Heehs and your Lord Manoj Das Gupta. All the sensible devotees of
Odisha have an intimate relation with Niranjan-bhai and they appreciate his
previous and present actions wholeheartedly in spite of being threatened by the
Ashram authorities. If there is really any blame, Niranjan-bhai will take it as
misguided innocence.
You have written about the spiritual
experiences of the inmates of the Ashram which is totally out of context in
this letter. I quote the portion, “I know a large number of sadhaks and
sadhikas of the Ashram who have a deep inner life. Most of them do not and
should not express them. But sometimes the sadhaks or sadhikas have asked this
writer the meaning of their supra-sensory experiences or visions according to
the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. That signifies their progress and
the Divine Mother’s Grace which astonishes this writer.”
This has no relevance here. Perhaps
you want to justify the publication of your own supra-sensory experiences in
magazines and leaflets to exhibit yourself as a big sadhak. In the February issue of the Oriya quarterly Navajyoti, you have written an article on
the centenary of the first meeting of the Mother with Sri Aurobindo. Going out
of the way in this article, you have criticised
the inmates who have protested against Peter Heehs’s book and the
Trustees who support him. You have also written about your personal experience
of the Mother when you first saw her in a Terrace Darshan – this is not at all
relevant to the article. As a very few people read Navajyoti, you wrote in brackets below your editorial in the March
issue of Navaprakash that everybody
should read your article in the February issue of Navajyoti!
You did not stop there. With the help of Navajyoti workers you prepared a small
pamphlet of that article and distributed it to Oriya visitors who came for the 29th
March Special Darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s rooms. Your eagerness
to show that you are an advanced sadhak under the pretext of describing the
centenary of the Mother’s first meeting with Sri Aurobindo raised the eyebrows
of several devotees. But you know Sri Aurobindo has said, “The difficulty of
yoga is not in getting experiences or a subjective realization of the truth, it
is in objectivising the truth, that is in making the outer consciousness down
to the material an expression of the inner truth. So long as that is not done
the attacks of the lower nature can always intervene.” (SABCL, Letters on Yoga, Volume 23, pp 892-93).
You have now made Navaprakash a means
for the advertisement of yourself and your books. So your irrelevant passage
did not serve the purpose at all. It rather exposed your childish way of
proving your spirituality by publishing your experience, which is generally
forbidden.
Dear Mr. Das, you have written,
“Recently a distinguished educationist had come to the Ashram from Bangalore.
What you told him regarding me has pained him and me. The gentleman is a very
sensible person and sincerely likes the Ashram. With what a healthy expectation
he had come to this holy atmosphere! How are you justified to disturb him by blaming
an insignificant person like me? I hope you will consider my appeal to desist henceforth
from such actions.”
Again this is merely emotion! There
is no fact, no substance, no truth in what you say. You have given a completely
different twist to this event. The Bangalore gentleman never met you though he
had read everything about you and the Ashram on the Internet. He is a long time
friend of Niranjan-bhai and loves to read his writings in Navaprakash. He asked Niranjan-bhai why he was no more the editor
of Navaprakash and why his writings
were not published in it. Niranjan-bhai had to explain him all the facts and
your role automatically came to the front. He was astonished to know that a
person like you was behind such devious activities. So after going back to
Bangalore, he emailed you just one sentence, “Why such unspiritual things are
going on in the Ashram?” You talked to him over the phone for an exceptionally
long time. But there was nothing substantial in your high sounding words. You
kept on insisting that all the accusations were false. So he did not like to
listen to your hypocritical way of speaking. You yourself have written in the
beginning of your letter that everybody has to reap the consequence of his own
action. So why are you so restless?
You have written, “Some of your
friends have taken a tremendous step. They have taken the help of the Court to
nullify the Will of the Mother that is the backbone of the Ashram management.
As per the ancient Ashram tradition of India, this step is unprecedented,
unbelievable and unnatural. To nullify the Will of the founder of any Ashram
through the Court is a strange event. Even when the Guru’s presence is not
there his / her Will gives excellence to an Ashram. Without that an Ashram can
remain, but it cannot be called a spiritual Ashram.”
Mr. Das, such utterances of yours
are nothing new. You have fruitlessly uttered the same view on several
occasions and got its answer. You still utter it because you have nothing else
to say. You present the Ashram Trust Deed as the Mother’s Will only to fool the
common devotees and disciples. You know very well that the Trust Deed, written
in 1955, is only a legal document which the Mother has signed for the then
management of the Ashram. It is not written, prepared or dictated by the Mother
herself. The actual Will Mother left for the future management of the Ashram in
the form of a tape was stolen from Her Room within a week of her leaving the
physical body. That was the Will of the Mother which was recorded in Her own
voice. Legal Trust Deeds are always subject to amendment with the passage of
time and circumstances.
You are the same person who fought
in the Court to justify Peter Heehs’s corrections of Savitri in spite of the Mother’s warning not to change a comma
of Savitri. You went to the extent of
keeping silent when your lawyer said in the course of his arguments in the
Court, “Mother did not read Savitri.”
Now you are saying the Ashram Trust Deed cannot be amended and giving it the
importance of the Mother’s Will. Everybody understands the motive behind your
statement. The motive is to allow the present bunch of Trustees to enjoy the
absolute power of the Mother as life-long Trustees. According to you, to change
the Trust Deed (which is only a legal document) is unthinkable in the ancient
spiritual tradition of India. But to change the spiritual document of the Guru
(Savitri) through an American taxi
driver and to insult the Guru in his own Ashram through a derogatory book is
customary to the ancient spiritual tradition of India. Strange theory, Mr. Das!
You say that the Trust Deed of the
Ashram is the Mother’s Will. Let us assume it for the time being. But do the
present Trustees themselves respect it? It is written in the Trust Deed that
only the Mother can take new Ashramites and only She can remove them if
necessary. The Trustees have no power to accept or remove an Ashramite, which
they are doing now. The Trustees also have no power to take a new Trustee when
the number of Trustees falls below five. According to the Trust Deed, they can
do it only during the Mother’s retirement, but not after Her passing away.
Again there is no mention of the position of the Managing Trustee in the Trust
Deed. So what will you say regarding these gross violations of the Mother’s
Will? It is obvious that your assertions are merely opportunistic.
Mr. Das, you have written, “With the
result of your totally new and unprecedented effort the future of mankind will
surely be affected. If your expedition will succeed, it will mean the end of
the spiritual role of Ashram …. I do not believe that you are ignorant about
the kind of force that is behind the attack on Mother’s Will. As you are trying
to succeed in your effort, I also pray for the failure of your effort. Let the Divine’s Will be fulfilled. When you
are engaged in fulfilling such a high aim which is unheard of in the history of
mankind, why are you wasting your time and word-power to blame an ordinary
person like me? Henceforth I request you to abstain from it.”
If the effort to reform the Ashram
administration is successful, it would surely mean the resurgence of the
spiritual role of the Ashram in India and abroad. This role has been completely
trampled under the feet of the present Trustees, who are not only themselves
under the grip of sex, wealth and power, but also encourage the same vices in
others in order to get their support. If the force behind the effort to change
the present Trust Deed is really so frightful, then how frightful must be the
force that is working behind the senseless insult of Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother in their own Ashram and by their own disciple! You have very cleverly
bypassed this basic issue. Your prayer is therefore ridiculous. Moreover, you
have prayed to let the Divine’s Will be fulfilled. So what is the necessity of
praying for the failure of the effort of Niranjan-bhai’s group? If that is
necessary, will not the Divine Will do it? Again how can you be an ordinary
person when all the knavery required to protect and encourage the misdeeds of
the Trustees are provided by you and another knave of the Trust office?
Mr. Das, you are not only praying
but adopting all sorts of means to make the position of your Lord Manoj Das
Gupta as secure as possible, which is necessary for your own security. Some
people have even seen you at this ripe age running from Delhi to Odisha with
brief cases apparently full of the offerings of devotees. Is this true, and if
it is true, can you please explain me the purpose of these missions? You
recently attempted to influence some important persons, including ministers and ex-Governors, with the weight
of your titles to put pressure on the Government of Odisha to withdraw the ban
on Peter Heehs’s book.
You have written in the beginning of
your letter that you have good will for Niranjan-bhai. Niranjan-bhai also has
the same good will though not the good relation with you. That will come when
you change your stand and fight to recover the lost prestige of the Mother and
the Master in their own Ashram instead of supporting impostors like Peter Heehs
and Manoj Das Gupta for your own interest. Please ask yourself once: Would you
have done what you are doing now if the Mother and the Master were physically
present?
Please
remember that Niranjan-bhai is not interested to get back his lost privileges
and services that were graciously granted to him by the Mother Herself and
taken away by your group. He will only be satisfied when the Ashram will be
freed from the usurpers of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s power and prestige
and continue to fulfil
its role for the destined New Age of Mankind.
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