Rammohan Roy

Indian Nationalism, Pluralism and Sri Aurobindo

by

Richard Carlson

p2p foundation

Sri Aurobindo is a complex figure. In India he is often remembered as both a maha-guru and a charged symbol of its independence movement. In the cultural memory of some Hindu ultranationalist his writings and speeches are often deployed as an emotional declarations of resentment toward the legacy of occupation and militancy toward the partition of the subcontinent into a Hindu and Islamic State. A close reading however, of how he is portrayed in ultranationalist rhetoric reveals that Aurobindo’s words are often historically de-contextualized, his sentences cut up into snippets to form slogans of nationalism that invite quite the opposite of the intended meaning. These sectarian readings of Aurobindo collapse his cosmopolitan vision of a pluralist India into a chauvinist ideology that suit the narrow communal interest of political Hindu Nationalism. This introductory article, as do those that follow presents Indian Nationalism through the biography and works of Sri Aurobindo.

….

Until the first years of the twentieth century –when it became distinctly political- Indian Nationalism had taken the form of a cultural and religious movement. The movement for Indian Nationalism traces its genealogy to the early 19th century and the founding figure of the Bengal Renaissance, Raja Rammohan Roy (1775-1833).

The Bengal Renaissance was an intellectual awakening that rivaled its European counterpart in marking the transition from feudalism to modernity in Bengal and other parts of India. The Bengal Renaissance was a cosmopolitan movement that was not only a cross-cultural hybrid but an epistemic one as well. The movement grafted the ideology of the European Enlightenment, through the universal application of reason and social humanist values on to a nascent Hindu reform movement by the Brahmo Samaj and similar organizations.

As annunciated by its founder Rammohan Roy in 1828 the mission of the Brahmo Samaj was to preach the true Vedanta of India whose teachings were wide enough to embrace all faiths within an inclusive universal religion while simultaneously undermining the foundationalist claims of any final scriptural authority as the privileged bearer of truth.

If Rammohan Roy inhabited a Hinduism that was cosmopolitan, he was also a Unitarian who co-founded the Calcutta Unitarian Society. His work would influence another famous Unitarian, Ralph Waldo Emerson who read his translation of the Upanishads. Emerson’s vision of Transcendentalism in its American context come from sources that parallel those that inspired Rammohan Roy. Roy sowed the dynamism intrinsic to the idea of the Enlightenment into the soil of ancient Eastern, the cosmopolitan rhizomes that emerged and spread out across cultures, became a formative force in the movement towards Indian nationalism. It is therefore, not surprising that almost a century after Roy and Emerson that Mohandas K. Gandhi would find inspiration in his struggle for national independence in the writings of the Henry David Thoreau, a Transcendentalist, who was inspired by the Vedanta of ancient India in the translations and commentaries he read by Roy and others.

While holding fast to the principles of the Enlightenment that were founded on the omniscience of reason the Bengal Renaissance interrogated existing Hindu orthodoxy. In doing this it also widened the appeal of Hinduism across the sub-continent by eschewing the many repressive practices it had historically used to discipline large portions of the population especially, through the caste system and by its treatment of women.

The Bengal Renaissance found expression throughout the 19th century, in the activities of intellectuals, social reformers, journalists, writers, poets, artists and scientists. Even after the insurrection against the British in the Revolt of 1857 the movement continued to flourish through a creative explosion of literature notably found in the work of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who wrote novels, essays, poems and commentaries. It was Chatterjee who wrote the poem Bande Mataram that was to become the anthem of the independence struggle. The poem personified (Mother) India as the Hindu goddess Durga. Chatterjee believed that a reawakened India could achieve status as a world cultural power.

For all its creativity however, the Bengal Renaissance was to remain confined mostly to upper caste and wealthier Hindus, some of whom even considered themselves atheists. This socio/economic fact however, would unfortunately later undermine their rhetoric in advocating a unified Bengal and Indian subcontinent.

In the 1870 and 1880’s cultural nationalism coupled with Hindu reformist revivalism in movements like the Arya Samaj, founded by Swami Dyananda, became the source of inspiration for many Indian writers, activist and reformers. Although it was as reform minded in its opposition to the caste system and the oppression of women as the Brahmo Samaj the Arya Samaj believed in the authority on the “divinely inspired” Vedas while the Brahmo Samaj refused any allegiance to one ultimate scriptural authority.

In the 1890s Swami Vivekananda would emerge to champion a vision of a pluralistic Hinduism with India as its homeland. Although the belief in India as the sacred home of Hinduism is now thought by some to be a reactionary idea, Vivekananda’s beliefs in Indian Nationalism can hardly be called nationalist in a xenophobic sense. He had no difficulties in reconciling the many diverse cultures of India within a cosmopolitan world view. He was perhaps the first key figure to introduce the Vedanta and Yoga to the West, by personally bringing its universal message abroad in successful trips to England and America, where he famously addressed the World Parliament of Religions in 1893.

The Indian nationalist movement became distinctly political at the turn of the 20th century when the British attempted to partition Bengal. Although it was officially announced as an administrative partition, that would facilitate better governance, the partition had the impact of dividing Bengal along geographical lines (East/West) and thereby along religious lines (Hindu/Muslim) This was a political move consistent with the divide and conquer strategy of Colonial Empire. The relationship between the British and the Indian Nationalist movement now became one of a Colonial-National interchange, as a newly emerging independent nation prepared to articulate its founding discourse.

In response to the British action in Bengal several nationalist leaders emerged such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal to help forge a popular resistance to the colonialist enterprise by calling for complete independence from England. One of the leaders of the independence movement was Aurobindo Ghose (Sri Aurobindo). Sri Aurobindo based his demand for independence on the inherent right of a nation for self-determination and the inherent evil of colonialism that subjugated indigenous peoples to foreign occupation.

At a young age Sri Aurobindo had been sent to England by his Anglophile father to be raised and educated. He graduated from Cambridge where he was educated in the Classics. He could read and write in multiple European and Indian languages. At Cambridge he won prizes for Greek and Latin poetry. Culturally Auronbindo was a cosmopolitan figure, philosophically he had certain affinities with Nietzsche, Bergson, Tagore.

When he returned to India rather than becoming a privileged member of the Crown’s Indian Civil Service (ICS) he choose to rediscovered his Indian heritage by immersing himself in its indigenous traditions that he found in the Vedanta and the practice of Yoga. His will to cultural and self-discovery transformed him into both a revolutionary and a yogi. It did not take long to find himself on trail for his life as the British tried him on charges of sedition.

Although due to his revolutionary activities the British considered him to be an extremist in fact, Auorbindo advocated a secular democracy for a free India in which Hindus, Muslims and others would be given equal status as the citizens of a modern unified nation. But even though his political ideas were inspired by European political theory Aurobindo’s writings and speeches also barrowed heavily from the symbols and sources of Hinduism. In one famous speech he would describe the essence of the culture of the sub-continent and its newly emerging nation to be the “sanatan dharma”, The “eternal law” that expresses the essence of ones religious being. Aurobindo projected this eternal law on to the nation. The “sanatan dharma” however, is also used to describe the essence of Hinduism. Therefore, whether one believes in a pluralist or a sectarian form of Hinduism makes all the difference in interpreting the term. Today Hindu Nationalist often invoke the “sanatan dharma” in problematic ways for a nations with a secular constitution.

Due to such misappropriation of language and the confusion of cultural memory with critical history, many contemporary political theorist both on the Right and the Left often historically de-contextualize both Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo to conflate their multi-dimensional view of a national polity with the reductive contemporary phenomena of Hindu Nationalism, often called “Hindutva” (Hinduness).

The contemporary movement of Hindu Nationalism however, began long after Vivekananda had died and Aurobindo had retired from politics. A rough date for the advent of the current Hindu Nationalist movement perhaps maybe around 1925 when K.B. Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S); a militant ultranationalist movement. Hedgewar wished to protect India from further foreign subjugation by uniting Hindus on a common platform by instilling discipline and national character. Hedgewar had been influenced by the concept of Hindutva in the writing of Vināyak Dāmodar Savarkar; who conflated Hinduism with Indian identity

After Hedgewar the leadership of the R.S.S was passed on to Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, whose view of Hinduism while open to absorbing Jainism and Buddhism, was overtly hostile to Christianity, Islam. Under Golwalkar R.S.S political activities increased until the movement was briefly outlawed when members of the R.S.S were convicted of the assassination of Gandhi. Known for his extremist view, in his book, “We, Our Nationhood Defined” (1939), Golwalkar praised Adolph Hitler’s ethic of ethnic cleansing by writing:

“Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”

as well as denouncing Muslims as citizens of India:

“Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”

But the founding fathers of current Hindu Nationalism had little influence on the Indian Independence Movement, most of whose leaders -unlike Hedgewar and Golwalker- understood Hinduism as an inclusive faith that would thrive within the secular democracy they sought to create. This has not however, stopped the present day successor ideologues of Hindu Nationalists from attempting to incorporate some of the founders of India’s cultural and political independence movement into their reactionary cause.

The appropriation of political figures from the early independence movement such as Vivekananda and Aurobindo, by contemporary Hindu Nationalists in an effort to further their exclusionist ends, is done in much the same cynical fashion as the attempt by contemporary American Tea Party politicians to appropriate the legacies of America’s founders in claiming to known the “original intentions” of the framers of the constitution: Jefferson, Franklin, Paine et al. in trying to legitimize their demands for libertarian economics and xenophobic politics.

In the case of Vivekananda and Aurobindo both held complex social understandings of nationalism that in many ways was similar to their European contemporaries, who were sympathetic to the progressive social movements of the post-Romantic era, such as Thomas Carlyle, and Oscar Wilde. Indeed Aurobindo’s brother was friends with Wilde.

For both Vivekananda and Aurobindo, as with the earlier Bengal Renaissance figures, Hinduism was synonymous with a universal religion that was characterized by its radical inclusivity. The universal religion of Vedanta that they heralded was a system of beliefs that could include Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhist and members of other faiths including non-believers. It was a religion whose social values were coextensive in its aims with the religion of humanity proclaimed by the champions of the secular European Enlightenment.

Having become confident that the independence struggle would succeed Sri Aurobindo gradually withdrew from the arena of nationalist politics and began to concentrate more on his spiritual practice of integral yoga. In his years after politics he devoted himself to the spiritual practices of integral yoga and rejected narrow sectarian identification with religious forms such as traditional Hindu practices. His social-political text advocated a form of nationalism based on a secular social democracy that could evolve toward Utopian forms of spiritual anarchy. While unique in its invocation of Vedantic practices of self-knowledge, his political views are of a social progressive who envisions a future that -while cosmic in scope- is entirely consistent with other European socio-utopian discourse of the era.

While the spirit of Sri Aurobindo’s integral discourse can be traced back to the syncretistic doctrines and cosmopolitanism of the Bengal Renaissance, the cultural and political forms of engagement that evolved from the Bengal Renaissance failed to cast a net wide enough to serve as a foundation for a unified India. Although the Bengal Renaissance embraced a cultural ethos of universal human rights when it evolved into a political resistance movement it was not able to sustain a call for a single nation on the subcontinent. Its social message could not fully infiltrate into the economic structures of lower castes to fully gain their support and so was looked upon with suspicion by Marxist. Most importantly, it could not convince Muslims that its promises of equal status under one secular nation would suit their needs and demands. The fact that the discourse that followed the Bengal Renaissance resonated primarily with wealthy and upper middle class Hindus of certain upper castes ultimately undermined its utopian urge and influence to construct a unified nation and universal religion. However, the view of those who can be included as major figures in Bengal Renaissance from Rammohan Roy to Sri Aurobindo advocated a pluralistic nationalism one that is far different than the communal nationalism espoused by the Hindu right political parties of today’s India.

The dynamics of Indian Nationalism, Communalism and Orientalism are further elucidated in three excellent articles that follow which explore the revolutionary activities and socio-spiritual writings of Sri Aurobindo.
The article by Marcel Kvassay entitled “Heehs, on Sri Aurobindo and Indian Communalism” is a review of several books by the author Peter Heehs. Heehs is certainly the foremost biographer of Sri Aurobindo yet, he has recently come under attack through the hate speech and legal actions of Hindu fundamentalist in response to his recent scholarly biography: The Lives of Sri Aurobindo.

The books reviewed are:

(1998). Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

(2005). Nationalism, Religion, and Beyond. Delhi: Permanent Black.

(2008). The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. New York: Columbia University Press.
The next article by Peter Heehs “Shades of Orientalism”, introduces Orientailsm into the study of Indian Nationalism and Sri Aurobindo. The abstract reads:

“Edward Said attempts to show that all European discourse about the Orient is the same, and all European scholars of the Orient complicit in the aims of European imperialism. There may be “manifest” differences in discourse, but the underlying “latent” orientalism is “more or less constant.” This does not do justice to the marked differences in approach, attitude, presentation and conclusions found in the works of various orientalists. I distinguish six different styles of colonial and postcolonial discourse about India (heuristic categories, not essential types), and note the existence of numerous precolonial discourses. The thought of the early-twentieth-century writer Sri Aurobindo took form in a colonial framework and has been used in various ways by postcolonial writers. An anti-British nationalist, he was by no means complicit in British imperialism. Neither can it be said, as some Saidians do, that the nationalist style of orientalism was just an imitative indigenous reversal of European discourse, using terms like “Hinduism” that had been invented by Europeans. Five problems that Aurobindo dealt with are still of interest to historians: the significance of the Vedas, the date of the vedic texts, the Aryan invasion theory, the Aryan-Dravidian distinction and the idea that spirituality is the essence of India. His views on these topics have been criticized by Leftist and Saidian orientalists, and appropriated by reactionary “Hindutva” writers. Such critics concentrate on that portion of Aurobindo’s work that stands in opposition to or supports their own views. A more balanced approach to the nationalist orientalism of Aurobindo and others would take account of their religious and political assumptions, but view their project as an attempt to create an alternative language of discourse. Although in need of criticism in the light of modern scholarship, their work offers a way to recognize cultural particularity while keeping the channels of intercultural dialogue open.”
The article by Debashish Banerji entitled “Sri Aurbindo, India and Ideological Discourse” explores both inclusive and exclusionist Hinduism through the creation of what Banerji calls four forms of Orientalism: Enlightenment Positivism, Positivist Racism, Romantic and Dialogic that are briefly summarized here:

1) Positivism in this Enlightenment sense does not make any distinction between human beings, colonizer or colonized. It moves towards the equalization of the field. It is burdened by what it calls the ”white-man’s burden”.

2) Positivist Racism also starts with the precept that Reason is the primary defining attribute of human beings. In this sense, it is also definitional in its approach to Humanity, but it construes non-White people, non Western people, as racially different and inferior. Non-Western people – we find here the invention of “the west” as a self-identifying civilizational essence tied to race and differentiated from “the east” or “the Orient”-  just don’t have that definitional property of Reason to the degree required to be given entry into the club of Humanity. That is, the brown, black, red and yellow peoples of the world are “not quite/not white,” in Homi Bhabha’s celebrated description of the phenomenon.

3) Along with these, almost as their necessary inverse, come two other discourses. They constitute the field of Orientalism. The first of these could be called Romantic Orientalism. This discourse starts by acknowledging the “Enlightened West” to be defined by Materialism, and then projects its Other, the domain of Romanticism and Spritituality onto the ”the Orient,” ie. the colonized. The colonized is that Other because s/he fills the lack of Euro-America, its lost spirituality, rejected because not a part of its definition of the Human. Thus the fascination of the Other as the romantic, exotic, primitive, spiritual native  (in our case, Indian) characterizes Orientalism. But Orientalism is also conflicted. Just as the discourse of Positivism expresses itself as a binary, Orientalism also carries an internal conflict which divides it into two discourses. One of them is the mainstream Orientialist discourse, that so well brought out by Edward Said, which characterizes the Oriental or “non-Western” people as those who will remain and are meant to remain creatures of imagination and spirituality, never capable of political self-determination or rational epistemology.

4) The fourth discourse is where some promise starts emerging. This is a variant of Romantic Orientalism, what may be termed Dialogic Orientalism. This is constituted by the awareness among those within the West who perceive the origin of the Other within their own culture, who believe that spirituality is part of the definition of the Human, which has been suppressed and neglected in the development of the progressive “logocentric” discourse of the Enlightenment. This anthropological deformation needs to be corrected. Engagement in dialogue with the living potential of that in non-western cultures can transform and enrich the world, and create a new future.

Kvassay, http://anti-matters.org/articles/123/public/123-180-1-PB.pdf

Heehs, http://www.svabhinava.org/friends/PeterHeehs/ShadesOrient-frame.php

Banerji: http://www.debashishbanerji.com/writing/ideologicaldiscourse.html

Background

In August 2008, Auroville Today published an interview of Peter Heehs along with a review of his book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Around the middle of September 2008, some individuals sent out extracts from the book over the internet claiming that Peter Heehs had denigrated Sri Aurobindo. The extracts were circulated to a wide audience including the SYG. At the same time printed copies of the extracts were also distributed in and around the ashram. Some persons started writing letters to the Trustees asking for action against the book and the author; some also began a signature campaign with a view to bring about public pressure on the Trustees.

At the same time, the Ashram received several letters from devotees who claimed to have read the book, and they expressed an opinion that was diametrically opposed to the opinions of those who disliked the book. There was another group of persons who felt that they liked the book on the whole, barring a few passages. Some also felt that too much was being made about an issue that didn’t deserve so much attention, and they preferred to remain unconcerned about the controversy.

Over a period of time the voice to take action against the author and the book from one section of the people became more and more shrill and this concretized into a demand for removing Peter Heehs from the ashram. Around February 2010, a second mass-petition was floated. In around June 2010, Manoj Das Gupta wrote a piece entitled, “Reflections…..” where he put forth his own perceptions regarding the controversy. Quite many people responded postivitely to the perceptions contained therein, and this helped to clarify many doubts, and gave a lie to many wild rumours and allegations.

In August 2010, five individuals claiming to be inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, filed a suit against the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust in the district court of Puducherry under section 92 of the Civil Procudure Code. This section deals with public charitable trusts and under this any beneficiary with bona fides can approach the court of law if he or she feels that the trustees are not discharging their duties and have committed a breach of trust. The five persons said in their affidavit that the book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is “a sacrilegious book which falsely portrays Sri Aurobindo as a liar and a mentally imbalanced person, and ridiculing his spiritual encounters and experiences as an outcome of Sri Aurobindo’s tantric sexual indulgence and schizophrenic state of mind.” And, according to them, the trustees have committed a breach of trust by continuing to harbour, defend and openly extending support to Peter Heehs instead of promoting Sri Aurobindo’s tenets and philosophy. They further claim that the trustees’ refusal to expel Peter Heehs from the ashram on their insistence and that of others constitutes a breach of trust. Furthermore, given the breach of trust, the present trustees need to be removed and new trustees will have to be appointed and the trust administered as per a scheme to be put in place by the Court.

While it is clear that the group of five individuals who have filed this suit clearly sees things this way, it is not clear if a majority of the ashram community, inmates, ex-students and devotees, see things the same way. From our interactions with various people it has occurred to us that apart from some notable supporters and sympathizers, a vast majority of the people do not approve of this court case. There is however a sense of doubt in people’s mind on whether the trustees could have handled the situation better. We have probed this doubt, discussed this with people inside and outside the ashram, and have grouped together some perceptions which we would like to present here. We will also try and validate these perceptions in the light of some basic reasoning. At the end we will also state some facts which are critical to understanding the issue.

The Decision

The first thing that struck some people was the tenacity with which the trustees stuck to their decision of not expelling Peter. While some call this a sign of stubborness bordering on arrogance, there are others who say that this was a sign of courage and conviction. After all, this was just a question of letting one individual go and given the public pressure at that time, a decision to expel Peter would have made the trustees instantly look like “hero warriors”. This brings us to some fundamental questions: Given its nature and aim, is public opinion a legitimate way to govern the ashram? Are the interests of the ashram inmates best addressed through public opinion? And if so, what can be consitituted as “public” and what not and how does one measure public opinion? Is public opinion always right? In spiritual life, where does the jurisdiction of public opinion begin and where does it end? These are questions to which one may not have any clear answers. Now that there is a court case these questions will perhaps be dealt with in great detail and it is quite possibile that legal minds, social scientists and bureaucrats will come up with formulations to “govern” a spiritual institution.

But does this serve the nature and aim of the ashram? For those supporting the court case, the formulation of public opinion and the current deliberations are a road to panacea. For them governance is an issue and what we see today are the pangs of a new birth, the birth of a new administrative structure that will bring in better lives for the inmates and devotees. However, for many others, it seems like a road to disaster. It seems to them that manufacturing public opinion and taking recourse to mass movements to achive a certain objective is essentially a political act which is not in consonnance with the ashram ethos. For them, an institution that aims to provide maximum opportunity to an individual to develop one’s being, each person is expected to go by his/her individual opinion rather than by the opinion of others. He/she is neither expected to follow others’ opinion nor expect others to follow his/hers. The basis of ashram life is not to bother about others but focus on one’s own inner development. Processing petitions, holding dharnas and resorting to legal action may not be an option. It does appear that public opinion in a spiritual institution is a dicey subject and it may not be entirely incorrect to say that if one is unsure of its usefulness one is best advised to keep away from it.

However, in this case, as some have pointed out, if public opinion was not a valid basis, was the sense of “public hurt” a basis on which the trustees should have acted? Although this looks like a fair question it does leave itself open to further questions. First, is “public hurt” any different from “public opinion”? And, how does one assess the credibility of the person who comes and says that he/she is hurt even when the person has not read the book? The petition contains signatures of some people who can barely read or write English. It was apparent as it is now that most of the people who were raising objections to the book had not read the book. It has also come to light from our discussions that some people who had signed the petition had not even read the extracts. There were others who signed just because they were told by their friends and peers and they simply complied. After all, everyone knows how signature campaigns are conducted! Moreover, one may argue that feeling “hurt” whether private or public, is a subjective response of the ego, and while one can sympathize with it, it cannot be held up as a justifiable and/or mandatory ground for decision-making in a spiritual institution, whose raison d’etre, voluntarily accepted by all its inmates, is to provide conditions for the transcendence of the ego, not its enablement. Was this kind of a petition credible enough for the trustees to take a decision to expel a fellow-inmate? The trustees apparently did not think so.

But then what about those who had read the book, those devotees and intellectuals, who in their best judgment, found that the book had denigrated Sri Aurobindo? Most of these people had written letters to the trustees and some had even taken the onus of explaining to the larger body of devotees across the world over the internet that Peter had transgressed all the rules of being a devotee and an ashram inmate. Unfortunately, in reality, while these devotees and intellectuals were busy criticizing Peter’s book and posting their views on the internet, there were others who started praising the book and started writing letters to the trustees stating to the contrary. Were these persons any less devoted to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother because they did not find the book to be denigrating Sri Aurobindo? There was already another opinion emerging from certain sections of the ashram community who found the book not only informative but also uplifting. A debate had already set in and it was no longer possible to decide one way or the other. It was apparent as it is now that there were multiple views on the book. The book may not have been to the taste of some devotees, but it did not mean that it was condemnable. One could accept its values as well as its limitations. Was it fair to expel a fellow-inmate based on the opinion of one section of the ashram community? The trustees apparently thought this was unfair.

It could however be argued that if the conviction and reasoning were clear why didn’t the trustees come out with a clear statement explaining their stand? This brings us back to the first issue of public opinion. Wasn’t it public opinion that wanted the trustees to come out with a public statement? As we have seen, if the very concept of public opinion in a spiritual institution remains a matter of debate is it in the best interest of the ashram to come out with public statements? Will such statements represent the voice of all the inmates and devotees or a section of them? And would such statements satisfy one and all? After all, if one goes down the path of public opinion there will perhaps be no end to “opinions” and “statements” and the ashram notice board will be filled with statements much like the press briefings dished out by political parties and leaders every day. On the other hand, those who had “individual” opinion on the issue could always go to the trustees and get their doubts sorted out. In this case, the trustees, to the best of their judgment, took a firm decision that nothing further needed to be done apart from what they had already done. And, an ashram inmate or a devotee, being truthful to his/her purpose of being in the ashram, ought perhaps to realize that this decision does not make any material difference to one’s spiritual life.

Dwelling on the administrative boundaries of the trustees it is important to understand that the prestige of the ashram lies in the spiritual values it upholds. These values are nurtured by the psychological freedom that the inmates enjoy. This freedom is such that the ashram does not seek to define The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and their yoga in any manner. It is left for each individual to perceive and follow one’s path. If one may draw an analogy, the ashram is not a crystal but a nebula where there is space around everybody. The primary responsibility of the trustees is to provide material needs and preserve this space around everyone. It is also to be understood that maintaining harmony is not the sole responsibility of the authorities as it is not anywhere in any instititution. The members of the institution are as much responsible. They are responsible by way of their willingness to co-exisit with others who may not feel alike and think alike. And finally, maintaining harmony does not mean appeasing one section of the people just because they are vocal.

And now some facts:

1.In the “Acknowledgements” section of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo Peter says that “The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is in no way responsible for the selection, arrangement, interpretation, or presentation of material in this biography. The author alone is responsible for the contents of the book.”

2.The trustees had not read the manuscript of the book prior to publication. It may be noted that the Trust does not require to approve any book by any inmate on any subject. Many books have been written without the permission or approval from the Trust.

3.There were two mass petitions. The first one was circulated in September 2008. This was signed by about 360 persons – ashram inmates, ex-students and devotees. The specific actions demanded in the first petition were (1) Peter should be removed from the Archives (the trustees, seeing the hysteria being whipped up by the detractors of the book, took a practical step, requesting Peter to stay away temporarily from the Archives) and (2) The book should be withdrawn (this demand did not make sense since the ashram was not the publisher, and the Ashram felt that any effort to ban any book would be counter productive).

4.The second mass-petition was circulated around February 2010. In hindsight it appears that this was a preparation towards the filing of Sec.92 case, though most of the signatories were probably not aware of the same. As per the petitioners’ own admission in court, this petition was signed by (to be verified) 184 ashramites (most, if not all of them, also signatories to the first petition) and 1700 odd devotees from around India. This second mass-petition never reached the Ashram. It was sent to Government of India officials, such as the Prime Minister and others. Incidentally, this in itself is a violation of a stated rule of the Ashram that no inmate of the Ashram should write to any government officials without express consent of the Board of Trustees.

5.It was alleged that the Trustees did not investigate the issue. On the contrary, Peter was asked to give an explanation by the trustees and he provided his explanation in the form of a letter, relevant parts of which were extracted by Manoj Das Gupta in his “Refelctions on……”.

6.Peter did not violate any copyright rules. It was not even necessary for him, just as it is not necessary for anyone undertaking a study, to take any permission from the copyright holder to quote from the Works of Sri Aurobindo. The Copyright Act which governs and regulates all matters relating to copyright has specific provision to this effect.

7.Contrary to what has been alleged, Peter did not take out any material from Archives and send them to anyone outside. In fact copies of various historical documents (over which Ashram cannot claim to have any copyright, since the originals exist in other places and under others care like Baroda State Records, National Archives etc.) were taken by Peter at his own personal initiative from those places, and after his purpose had been served, he had himself placed such copies at the disposal of the Archives so that they may be accessible to all.

8.There is no evidence to suggest that Peter has indulged in acts intended to “outrage religious feelings”, if at all such feelings are advisable for a community that aspires to be spiritual. Both the criminal cases filed against him in Orissa have been stayed by the High Court of Orissa.

9.The Writ in the High Court of Madras seeking Peter’s deportation has been dismissed.

10.There is still no conclusive evidence to suggest that Peter has denigrated Sri Aurobindo in his book.

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Ajit, Arindam, Bulu & Gautam