Krishna Tewari
In remembrance of
On September 26th, Aurovilian Major General Krishna Tewari (ret’d.) passed away in his house at Auromodèle surrounded by his family and friends, at the age of 94. Krishna, a highly decorated officer, had joined the British Indian Army in early 1942. After India’s independence, he continued to serve in the Indian army.
Krishna had received darshan of The Mother in 1972, together with his family. Shortly afterwards, he and his wife Kamla participated in the inauguration ceremony of the Matrimandir. So impressed were they that they wanted to join the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville immediately, but The Mother forbade him to do so. They joined Auroville four years later, in 1976 when Auroville was having its disputes with the Sri Aurobindo Society. It was of great significance for Auroville to have a high-ranking Indian military officer in its midst and Krishna’s active presence during the resulting Supreme Court case was crucially significant and helped the positive outcome for Auroville.
Krishna had been involved in the war with Pakistan as well as the war against China and became the highest-ranking Indian officer to be taken prisoner by the Chinese. He was at the time Lt. Colonel and Commander Signals of the headquarters Eastern Command., 4th (Red Eagle) Infantry Division, which had been assigned the operational responsibility for the defense of India’s borders in Sikkim. But the division was ill-equipped to fight in high mountainous regions and to defend more than 1,800 kilometers of mountainous terrain.
In an interview with Claude Arpi, Krishna recalled the difficult circumstances under which his division was supposed to operate, facing shortages of every kind. He also mentioned his premonition that a severe test was in the offing to assess his faith in the Divine. “I certainly had no idea that I would be taken a prisoner of war,” he wrote in his diary. The event happened on October 20th, 1962.
After being captured by the Chinese, and suffering blows to the head that left him partly deaf for the rest of his life, Krishna and the other Indian PoWs were force-marched for three days to Marmang in Tibet, from where they were taken to Chen Ye [Chongye] in central Tibet. They spent over five months in a camp southwest of Tsetang. During this time Krishna kept his diary on sheets of toilet paper, and stitched them in the belt part of his trousers to prevent discovery by the Chinese. This was how his diary notes were preserved.
By the end of March 1963 they were informed that all Indian PoWs would soon be released. On March 29, they were driven in a bus to Lhasa and shortly afterwards flown to Sinning and were then given a long tour of China. On May 5, their ordeal came to an end when they safely landed in Calcutta. After six and a half months in China, he was back in India.
In Auroville, Krishna soon became part of various task forces and committees. He was instrumental in starting the Entry Service and took care of streamlining the paperwork for visitors and the visa work for Aurovilians with the Regional Registration Officer in Pondicherry. He also proposed to start the Auroville Archives, an idea which at the time was only lukewarm received. He was told to look at the space below the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium in Bharat Nivas, originally intended for cable ducts and air-conditioning. In an interview with Auroville Today Krishna recalled that the place was a dungeon full of dirt, rats, lizards and pests. Undeterred, he set to cleaning it, and by 1991 the beginning of the Archives was made.
Collecting documents was but a small part of the challenge. The major one was preserving them from humidity and excessive heat. Krishna did some successful fundraising to get a de-humidifier, an air-conditioning unit and basic office equipment. Meanwhile, archival material kept flowing in: documents from pre-Auroville days, photographs, slides, negatives, and photocopies of all of Mother’s handwritten messages on Auroville, made available by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Treasures such as the Book of Births, a handwritten book started in 1967 by Maggi Lidchi Grassi, one of Mother’s secretaries, containing the details of the birth of a child, and leaving a space for The Mother to give the child’s name, were handed over to him. Other treasures are the original silk scroll with the signatures of all the people who participated in Auroville’s inauguration in 1968, and the copies of the Aspiration talks of the Mother with early Aurovilians in 1971. Apart from being a depository of hundreds of reports and minutes of various working groups, the Auroville archives also video-recorded Aurovilians describing what they have lived through and contributed to Auroville. These records, said Krishna, will be made available to future researchers to study the growth of Auroville as a living laboratory of Human Unity.
The Auroville Archives gradually expanded and occupied more underground spaces at Bharat Nivas. But Krishna realised that a new and separate building would be required to house the growing collection. Once again, interest was at a low pitch, but undeterred he kept pushing the idea, with success. In 2015, the foundation stone for the building of the Auroville Archives was laid by Dr. Karan Singh, the Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation, crowning Krishna’s long aspiration. The building is scheduled to be inaugurated by the end of 2017.
Krishna, in private discussions with Aurovilians, often expressed how distressed he sometimes was about the situation in Auroville. But he then also would recall the reply of Nolini Kanta Gupta, Sri Aurobindo’s close disciple, to his question why people were behaving so badly in this place which The Mother had created. “Nolini smiled and said, ‘Wait and see’. It gave me confidence that there is a purpose behind all this.”
Krishna’s body was cremated at the Adventure Farewell Grounds on September 30th.
Sharanam (Maria Desamparados Aznar Arce)
In remembrance of
Nick Klotz
In remembrance of
