1978
Nirmal Singh’s rejoinder to Peter Heehs on the birthplace of Sri
Aurobindo. According to Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo was wrong about where he
was born.
12.02.1984
Appointment
of Manoj Das Gupta as Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust after the passing
away of Nolini Kanto Gupta. He was recommended as Trustee by Nolini Kanto
Gupta through a dubious note signed (or made to sign) in his last days and
left in the custody of Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya. We do not know why Nolini
did not give the note to Padmanabhan Counouma, who was then the Managing
Trustee of the Ashram, and why he did not recommend Manoj Das Gupta earlier through
a formal meeting of the Board of Trustees. Manoj Das Gupta’s policy of not
rocking the boat even when the boat is about to be wrecked, as in the controversy
over the Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter
Heehs, makes him undoubtedly the most vehemently criticised Trustee in the
history of the Ashram. He is also known to protect the guilty and punish the
victims or those who have raised the alarm.
|
17 Oct 2016
Timeline of the Controversy
11 Sept 2016
Bagha Jatin: The Bengal Tiger Whom The British Feared – swarajyamag.com
Saswat
Panigrahi - September 10, 2016, 11:45 am
Exactly 101 years ago, on this day, the nationalist-revolutionary succumbed to severe bullet injuries in Balasore hospital following a gallant battle with the British-controlled police.
Indian history has discounted the significant contributions of Bagha Jatin towards the freedom movement, thanks to the Left-leaning historiographers. This, despite the fact that there is no dearth of well documented historical records available on the vast revolution the great freedom fighter had conceived!
4 Jul 2016
Dr. Hedgewar (founder of the R.S.S) met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry
In
January 1920, Dr. L.V. Paranjpe started the Bharat Swayamsevak Mandal. Doctorji
[Dr. Hedgewar] was his chief colleague. Efforts began in the month of
July that year to organise a corps of some 1000-1500 volunteers for the
Congress session. Doctorji threw himself heart and soul into that task.
While
such fervent efforts were afoot, the tragic news of the passing away of
Lokmanya Tilak at Bombay on the night of 31st July came like a bolt from the
blue. The entire nation was plunged in indescribable grief. And more so the
people of Nagpur. With a heavy heart, Doctorji attended to the work for organising
hartal, mourning and condolence meetings on the tenth day, and offered his
tearful homage.
Consequent
on Lokmanya’s demise, the organisers were faced with the task of finding another
Extremist leader for the presidentship. It was decided that a deputation should
go to Pondicherry and bring Babu Aurobindo Ghose for the session. Dr. Moonje
accordingly set out for Pondicherry. Doctorji also accompanied him as a
representative of the youth of Nagpur.
12 Jun 2016
Sri Aurobindo's Response to K.R. Kripalani's Article on the Swadeshi Movement
Did you enjoy the
article “Fifty Years of Growth” by K. R. Kripalani in the Visva-Bharati?[i]
Fifty years of growth refers by the way to the Congress. About the Swadeshi
period he writes: “Along time was to elapse before we were to appreciate the
infinite possibilities of the muddy waters at hand. In the meantime something
startlingly romantic happened. . . .
“The fountain [of
undefiled water] was cut by the fiery shafts of Tilak, Vivekananda, and
Aurobindo, among others. They gave to Indian Nationalism its fiery basis in
India’s ancient cultural glory and its modern mission. . . . It is always more
beautiful and more inspiring to contemplate the Idea and be drunk with it than
to face the actual facts and touch the running sores. . . .
“But this spirit,
fiery and beautiful as it was, was fraught with grave dangers. The glory that
it invoked and the passion that it aroused were so intensely Hindu that Muslims
were automatically left out. Not that they were deliberately excluded. . . .
However that may be, it seems now not unlikely that had the influence of Tilak
and Aurobindo lasted in its original intensity, we might have had two Indias
today— a Hindu-istan and a Pak-istan, both overlaying and undermining each
other. . . .
31 May 2016
Why India Is A Nation – Sankrant Sanu
Introduction
One of the oft-repeated
urban myths that sometimes pops-up in conversation even among many educated,
well meaning Indians is that India as a nation is a British creation. The
argument goes roughly as follows – India is an artificial entity. There are
only a few periods in history when it was unified under the same political
entity. It was only the British that created the idea of India as a single
nation and unified it into a political state. A related assumption, in our
minds, is that the developed Western countries have a comparatively far greater
continuity of nationhood, and legitimacy as states, than India.
This urban myth is not
accidental. It was deliberately taught in the British established system of
education. John Strachey, writing in `India: Its Administration and Progress’
in 1888, said “This is the first and most essential thing to remember about
India – that there is not and never was an India, possessing … any sort of
unity, physical, political, social or religious; no Indian nation.
10 May 2016
Revivalism and Secularism – by Amal Kiran
[This article was published in the “Mother India” issue of 14 October
1950. How relevant it is even today!]
For a number of days
after the election of Purushottamdas Tandon to the Congress Presidentship the
talk of the whole nation turned on Congress’s future policy under the direction
of the new President. Perhaps feelings ran high more about the issue of the
Secular State and the question came to the fore: Should our country, with its
huge Hindu majority, be revivalist or, because of its multi-communal character,
secular?
14 Apr 2016
The Sage and his idea of India – Anirban Ganguly
The Pioneer, 14 April 2016
Sri Aurobindo's vision of India had no place for pseudo-secularism,
vote-bank politics and repudiation of Bharatiya civilisation. The Sage was also
the quintessential internationalist, yet his internationalism was not a
rootless cosmopolitanism but steeped in Sanatana Dharma [extract – read full article below]
25 Mar 2016
Sri Aurobindo was certainly not for the Disintegration of India – by Raman Reddy
Secular
intellectuals obfuscate the obvious, by which I mean, they use every
intellectual argument to undermine what is pretty obvious to the common man. Of
late, the idea of breaking India has been so flaunted about by the secular
brigade under the cover of free speech (especially in the columns of a national
newspaper) that one wonders what is happening to the country. Why would one
support free speech when it undermines national security, especially when it
supports criminals and Asuras and denigrates Hindu goddesses? Fortunately, the majority of Indians will not
give much credence to this outright falsehood, so that we can rest in peace and
not bother about its practical consequences.
11 Mar 2016
Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of the Nation-Soul (2) – Kishor Gandhi
(3)
Admitting that the society or
group, like the individual has, besides its soul, also a mind, life and body,
the important question immediately arises: What exactly is the nature of the
group-mind, group-life, group-body? We have a fairly clear idea of the mind,
life and body of the individual man by direct experience aided by scientific
knowledge, but our notions of these parts of the group-being, even when we
admit their real existence, are altogether vague and uncertain. Taking first
the most external part, the physical body, what really is meant by the body of
a society or a group?
3 Mar 2016
Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of the Nation-Soul – Kishor Gandhi
“Mother
India is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have
such a Devi supporting their separate existence and keeping it in being. Such
beings are as real and more permanently real than the men they influence, but
they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic consciousness and being
and act here on earth by shaping the human consciousness on which they exercise
their influence. It is natural for man who sees only his own consciousness
individual, national or racial at work and does not see what works upon it and
shapes it, to think that all is created by him and there is nothing cosmic or
greater behind it.”[1]
[Extract – read full article below. Title provided by Compiler and references updated. From Kishor Gandhi’s “Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and The New Age”, pp 33-36 (First Edition in 1965).]
[Extract – read full article below. Title provided by Compiler and references updated. From Kishor Gandhi’s “Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and The New Age”, pp 33-36 (First Edition in 1965).]
18 Feb 2016
Myths about Sanskrit – by Dr. Kapil Kapoor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O4oaDaO36Y
28 Jan 2016
Response to FIRSTPOST on the Scheme Suit issue – by Bireshwar Choudhury
On 14 January 2016,
the Editor of the FIRSTPOST has referred in passing to the petitioners of the
Scheme Suit in a most disparaging manner in an article titled “SC has shown great foresight in striking against proxy PILs as instruments of intimidation”. As
an admirer of this website, which has dared to take on the likes of Wendy Doniger, it is strange that it has now decided to support one of “Wendy’s
children” – Peter Heehs (read this post). But I hope I can attribute this error
to factual ignorance and unfamiliarity with the recent problems in Sri
Aurobindo Ashram. If that be the case, I would like to point out a few outright
errors in the write-up for the clarification of the larger readership connected
with the FIRSTPOST, which hopefully would set the record right or at
least give us a chance to give our version of events on its website. I quote
from the article:
21 Jan 2016
Praise for “The Battle for Sanskrit” by Rajiv Malhotra
“Is
Sanskrit political or sacred, oppressive or liberating, dead or alive?”
For the past sixty
years my primary activity has been to interpret Sanskrit and sanskriti. Indeed,
Malhotra and I are sailing in the same boat. This book provokes a debate
between the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ of our heritage. It exposes that many
outsiders pretend to be insiders, but their hidden agenda is to convince
ignorant Hindus that the Vedas are myths and that the traditional claims are
nonsensical. They pretend to know our traditions even better than our highest
exponents.
15 Jan 2016
Subramanian Swamy on "Breaking India" by Rajiv Malhotra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDkjFc1Muc
...full text...
8 Jan 2016
Dismissal of the Scheme Suit in the Supreme Court – by Bireshwar Choudury
The Scheme Suit
filed against the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust has been dismissed on technical
grounds by the Supreme Court of India on 6 January, 2016. Unlike what
the supporters of Peter Heehs and the cronies of the Ashram Trust are
projecting on the Net, the Supreme Court has not exonerated the author of the Lives of Sri Aurobindo. The Scheme Suit has
been dismissed because the case against the Lives
of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs is still pending in the High Court of
Orissa.
4 Jan 2016
Spiritual Distortions – All Life is Yoga! – by Baikunth
There
is a need to define at present what is
not the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, more perhaps than
the need to define what it is. Of
course, the two functions are interdependent and cannot be dealt in an
exclusive manner, for one often defines something by what it is not. But the
mere positive definition leaves out the hidden distortions which you only come
to know after a long period of gestation, and not in a one-hour lecture on the
Integral Yoga, however inspiring it may be. There have been in the past, and
there still are a number of brilliant speakers who mostly fulfil their role in
the positive definition of the Yoga and philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother, but very few as yet have sufficiently dwelt on its negative definition,
by which I mean explaining elaborately what
it is not.
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