Sri Aurobindo, Life and Times of the Mahayog, The Pre-Pondicherry Phase

Manoj was also active in the field of historical research. In 1971, a few months before Sri Aurobindo’s 100th birth anniversary, he received permission from The Mother to travel to England and Scotland to research in the archives of London and Edinburgh the confidential correspondence about Sri Aurobindo between Lord Minto, the Governor-General and Viceroy of British India (1905-1910), and Lord Morley, the then Secretary of State for India.

His research, published under the title Sri Aurobindo in the First Decade of the 20th Century, brought to light some little-known facts about India’s freedom struggle led by Sri Aurobindo. But even though his work was appreciated by The Mother, Manoj wasn’t really happy with the result. As he wrote, “the biggest weakness of the work, apart from its amateur character, was its incompleteness.” And over the years, his conviction grew that much about Sri Aurobindo in the first decade of the twentieth century remained untraced. 

The mahayogi

This led him to compose the present 716- page book about the early life and times of the Mahayogi. “I am not speaking about Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry, the Seer of the Supramental future, but of Aurobindo Ghose if you please – of Vadodara, Kolkata and of the British India as a whole,” he wrote. And he justifies his view that Sri Aurobindo was already a Mahayogi in those early days with extracts from published and unpublished archival documents and personal diaries.

He quotes Dinendra Kumar Roy, who travelled with Sri Aurobindo from Kolkata to Deoghur: “In a day or two I realized that Aurobindo’s heart was devoid of any earthly meanness or nastiness … he had not the least worldly ambition or human selfishness. As I passed days and nights sharing his abode and came to know him more and more closely, I realised that Aurobindo was not a mortal human, but a god descended under curse. Only the Divine knew why he was made a Bengali and exiled to India.” Rabindranath Tagore lauded Sri Aurobindo in 1907 in a poem that started with the line, “Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to three, O friend, O country’s friend, O voice incarnate, free, of my country’s soul!” Even people who were ‘utter materialists’ observed something special. As did A.B. Clark, the Principal of the Baroda College, who said to someone: “So you met Aurobindo. Did you notice his eyes? There is mystic fire and light in them. They penetrate into the beyond.” And he added, “If Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices, Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions.” Or Subhas Chandra Bose, the future Netaji, who wrote, three years after Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal for Pondicherry, “When I came to Calcutta in 1913, Aurobindo was already a legendary figure. Rarely have I seen people speak of a leader which such rapturous enthusiasm and many were the anecdotes of this great man, some of them probably true, which travelled from mouth to mouth.”

So is this yet another hagiography about Sri Aurobindo? “I do not know the right word for a biography where the author records, quite objectively, the impressions and experiences of others for whom the subject indeed had proved to be their supreme ideal,” writes Manoj. “If this too is hagiography, then the word deserves greater respectability.”

But the aim of this book is not to describe “the unparalleled awe and wonder that Sri Aurobindo’s personality inspired,” but an attempt to construct a biography of Sri Aurobindo’s life up to his arrival in Pondicherry, and to give a historic insight of India’s freedom struggle in the first decade of the previous century. The attempt to write a biography, writes Manoj, is fraught with the dangers of incompleteness and inaccuracies, as Sri Aurobindo himself had warned that nobody could write about his life because it had not been on the surface for men to see. This caveat notwithstanding, Manoj gives a detailed account of Sri Aurobindo’s life in England, Baroda, and later Kolkata, which includes his family life and what is known about his spiritual development and experiences in that period. 

Politics in the early 1900s

A large part of the book deals with the political developments in the period 1900-1910. Many books about this period of Indian history barely mention Sri Aurobindo – he only participated in the struggle for a brief time. “But those historians forget to record that it was the ideals popularised by him – swadeshi [the movement to boycott foreign goods and encourage the use of domestic products, eds.], non-cooperation, autonomy – which became the driving force,” writes Manoj. This serious omission is set right in this book. Manoj mentions that the aims of absolute independence and autonomy were for the first time ever pronounced in the pages of the magazine Bande Mataram in 1907, in an article written by Sri Aurobindo.

These views were opposed by the Moderates, the moderate section of the Indian National Congress, who accepted British rule and wouldn’t dream of the British ever relinquishing their hold on India, notwithstanding the increasingly harsh realities of a ruined national economy. They wished India to become part of a federation led by the British. But the section known as the Nationalists or the Extremists, led by Tilak and Sri Aurobindo, wanted absolute independence and autonomy. Manoj describes how the conflict in the party climaxed in December 2007, in what has become known as “the split in Surat”, where the Nationalists broke up the Congress in a historic scuffle, on the orders of Sri Aurobindo. Writes Manoj: “Today’s historians barely mention the consequences of this split; but it was more than a landmark in the history of the National Congress; it was a landmark in the history of the nation, and was decisive to convince the Indian people that they must be liberated from foreign rule.”

Bande Mataram

Manoj dedicates a special chapter to the origins of Bande Mataram (Hail to The Mother), the national song of India that is considered “the most enduring gift of the Swadeshi movement and the uncrowned national anthem of India”. Sri Aurobindo called it a mantra, and wrote “The Mantra has been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself.” Manoj describes how this mantra fired India and became a greeting amongst friends and an invocation at political and social meetings, much to the annoyance of the British who banned it by a Government circular. “The more widespread this practice became, the more active became the merciless lathis wielded by the police, breaking thousands of limbs over hundreds of processions. Students were fined, flogged or expelled from schools for shouting Bande Mataram, houses were set on fire because the slogan ringing inside did not stop despite threats.”

A major part of the book is dedicated to the attempts of the British authorities to convict, expel or incarcerate the leaders of the budding Indian independence movement, such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Maharashtra, called by the British “The father of the Indian unrest”, who advocated “Swaraj (self-rule) as his birthright”, and who was later punished with a six-years jail sentence in Burma; Lala Lajpat Rai of Punjab, who was deported to Mandalay after taking part in political agitation in Punjab; and Bipin Chandra Pal of Bengal, a man Sri Aurobindo later referred to as ‘one of the mightiest prophets of nationalism’. Together they formed the triumvirate popularly known as Lal Bal Pal, which changed the political discourse of the Indian independence movement.

Four newspapers

Sri Aurobindo gave his full support. To implement his objective of converting the whole nation to the ideal of independence, four newspapers were started: Bande Mataram, Sandhya, Yugantar and Navashakti. All persistently preached the need for Indian independence – in outspoken or more veiled language. These papers had an informal common editorial board with Aurobindo at its head. On August 16, 1907, he was arrested on the grounds that the Bande Mataram was spreading sedition through its articles. But he was acquitted as the evidence was inconclusive.

The British once again arrested him in 1908 for his alleged participation in a bomb attempt to kill the Chief Presidency Magistrate of Kolkata, Douglas Kingsford. The attempt failed but led to the inadvertent killing of two innocent ladies. The British administration was convinced that Arabinda, as he was known, was behind the attempt. “There was a terrible fear at the top brass of the British Indian Administration of Arabinda Ghose”, writes Manoj, quoting a letter of Sir Andrew Fraser, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, to Lord Minto, the Governor General of India, urging him to deport Arabindo forthwith.

Much of the Indian press, however, took a different stand. While regrets were expressed that two guiltless people had died, there was sympathy for the young anarchists' who had made the attempt. Some newspapers even made angry protests that Aurobindo Ghose had been arrested and had been refused bail, and stated that the anarchism was the outcome of the refusal of the British cabinet to grant self-government of India and revoke the partition of Bengal.

The Alipore Bomb Trial

Manoj describes the proceedings at the Alipore Bomb Trial in great detail, including the memorable concluding statement by his defence lawyer, Chittaranjan Das – “… long after he [Sri Aurobindo, eds.] is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History.”

Manoj writes how, on the day of the verdict, people thronged the courts, the grounds around and the highways. And he gives a verbatim account of major parts of the judgment itself. “The point is whether his writings and speeches, which in themselves seem to advocate nothing more than the regeneration of his country, taken with the facts proved against him in this case, are sufficient to show that he was a member of the conspiracy. I am of the opinion that it falls short of such proof as would justify one in finding him guilty of so serious a charge,” wrote judge Beachcroft, acquitting Sri Aurobindo. But many of the others accused were convicted, including Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother Barin who was awarded capital punishment (which later was reduced to transportation for life). Sri Aurobindo meditated while Mr. Beachcroft read out the judgment...

Manoj recounts how Aurobindo experienced his incarceration at Alipore Jail as a spiritual boon, citing from his Tales of Prison Life, his Uttarpara Speech and as well as from the recollections of his fellow prisoners. “His eyes seemed far away, though they were not vacant, as if he dwelt in some far off twilit region … At night the warders would come and tell us, ‘Aravind remains standing the whole night’. They did not disturb him.” And when the Governor of Bengal came to visit the ward, he found Sri Aurobindo suspended with his head on the floor and feet in the air. As Sri Aurobindo casually revealed in a conversation with a few disciples, “In Alipore Jail I found once after my meditation that my body had taken a position which was physically impossible: it was actually raised a few inches above the ground, there was what is known as levitation.”

The Aurobindo Ghose who was released from prison was a different man. In his own words, “During this period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now an inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded the service and liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned with the whole future of humanity.” 

The realizations 

That time, he said, “he had already realized two of the four great realizations on which his Yoga and his spiritual philosophy are founded: the realization of the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman; and that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and all that is. To the other two realizations, that 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, he was already on his way in his meditations in the Alipore jail.”

The last chapters of this remarkable book describe Sri Aurobindo’s involvement in two new publications, the weekly newspaper Karmayogin and the Bengali Dharma, and his attempts, now that many of his party’s leaders were no longer active or had been expelled, to rekindle the patriotic spark and unite the scattered revolutionary groups. The British administration took notice and started exploring every possibility to deport or imprison him. By the end of July 1909, Sister Nivedita warned him of the Government’s plan to deport him, and advised him to lead the movement from outside the country. 

Manoj presents correspondence from the highest echelons of the British administration showing its efforts to find legal grounds to stop the activities of Arabinda Ghose. On February 25th, 2010, the decision was taken to prosecute him for sedition; but as he was nowhere to be found, a warrant for his arrest was issued on April 4th. For Sri Aurobindo had left. As he later recounted, “I suddenly received a command from above in a Voice well known to me, in three words ‘Go to Chandernagore’. Chandernagore was a French possession, one of the five scattered enclaves that made up the French settlements in India. He boarded the boat on February 20th, and for a month and a half remained in hiding in Chandernagore, engaged in sadhana, stopping his active engagement with the two newspapers. Afterwards, under the same ‘sailing orders’, he left Chandernagore and reached French Pondicherry on April 4th, 1910.

“The records and impressions of events in the external life of Sri Aurobindo till he reached Pondicherry as presented in this book probably constitute one-tenth, if not less, of the events in his life,” concludes Manoj. This cannot be seen as a shortcoming. Manoj has left us a major work on Sri Aurobindo’s earlier life and times. If the book has a shortcoming, it is only the absence of an alphabetical index. 

Sri Aurobindo, Life and Times of the Mahayogi – The Pre-Pondicherry Phase By Manoj Das Published by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Available from SABDA 716 pages Price in India Rs 750