Dictionary of Proper Names

Selected from Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works (1989/1996)

I

Iago Othello’s ‘Ancient’, a villain in Shakespeare’s play “Othello, the Moor of Venice”.

Ibbetson, Sir Denzil Denzil Charles Jelf (1847-1908): educated at St. Peter’s College Adelaide, South Australia, & St. John’s College, Cambridge: entered ICS 1870, posted to Punjab: from 1873, in various posts, including Superintendent of Census, Director of Public Instruction & Financial Commissioner, Secretary GoI, Dept. of Revenue & Agriculture (1896-98), Chief Commissioner of Central Provinces (1898-1902), Member Gov.-Gen.’s Council (1902-05): Lt.-Gov. Punjab (1905-08): wrote Handbook of Punjab Ethnography, Gazetteer of the Punjab, etc. [Buckland]

Iblis the Devil in Islam.

Ibn Batata Ibn Battutah (1304-1368/69), medieval Arab traveller, author of one of the famous travel books in history, the Rihlah.

Ibsen Henrik (Johan) (1828-1906), Norwegian poet & playwright.

Icelandic Sagas heroic prose narratives of great families of Iceland in 930-1030; far in advance of any medieval literature in their realism, their controlled, objective style, their powers of character delineation, & their overwhelming tragic dignity.

Ichalgurh a fortress, built c.1452 by early Paramāra kings; it is c.80 km NW of Edur & c.11kms north of Mount Abu whose Guru Shikhar peak rises to 1722 metres above sea level, abounds in temples & legends of Rajput chivalry. It was renovated & renamed Achalgarh by Mahārāṇā Kūmbha (see Mewār) who built more forts than any Rajput king. The temple of Achaleshwar Mahādev stands just outside the fort.

Ida mountain SE of Troy, a seat of Zeus, who directed the Trojan War from there.

Idas son of Aphareus, & twin brother of Lynceus. He was in love with Marpessa, whom he carried off in a chariot given him by Poseidon. The twins were finally killed in a battle with their rivals, the Dioskouroi (q.v.).

Idomeneus king Crete one of Helen’s suitors; led his contingent to the Trojan War.

Ijjat Pasha cf. Middat Pasha in Abdul-Hamid; & Abdullah Pasha.

Ikshvākū/ Ikshwacou/ Ixvaacou/ Ixvacou son of Manu Vaivasvata, who was son of Vivasvata, the Sun. Ikshvākū founded the Ikshvākū Kūla of Surya-vamshis that reigned from Ayodhyā at the beginning of the Tretā Yuga.

Ilā in the Veda, goddess of revelation, “the strong primal Word of Truth who gives us its active vision” [SABCL 11:32]; one of the five powers of the Truth-Consciousness. In the Puranas, Ilā is the daughter of Manu Vaivaswata who instituted a sacrifice to Mitra & Varuna to obtain a son, but the officiating priest mismanaged the performance & the result was the birth of a daughter, Ilā. Through the favour of the two deities, however, her sex was changed & she became a man, Sudyumna. Under the malediction of Shiva, Sudyumna was again turned into a woman &, as Ilā, married Chandra-deva (god of the planet Būdha) & gave birth to Pururavas. Later, Lord Vishnu changed her back into Sudyumna who fathered three sons.

Ilbert Bill drafted in 1883 by Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert on the orders of Liberal Viceroy Ripon, being Law Member of Ripon’s Supreme Council (1882-85). A pleased Ripon appointed him Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta Univ., for 1885-86. All that Ripon’s Bill sought was to abolish the bestiality enshrined in the Criminal Procedure Code of 1873 framed by Macaulay as head of Gov.-Gen Bentinck’s the Law Commission. Even if under that Code criminally charged Europeans could only be tried by European judges & magistrates, though in Presidency towns Europeans charged by British police could be tried by Indian magistrates & judges. Of course, the sentences these Indian magistrates/ judges passed could be overturned by the higher courts manned by European judges. ― As soon as Ripon’s Bill was tabled in the Supreme Council at Calcutta, Europeans in India & Europe made common cause & not only whipped up an unprecedented mass agitation against the bill but showered insults on Ripon & boycotted him in every way possible. At the same time a few intrepid Indian politicians dared praise Ripon’s sense of justice & through forums still open to them tried to rouse support for the Viceroy & his effort. Naturally, within the year, Ripon’s Bill was withdrawn by Dufferin who rectified Ripon’s Bill thus: Even if a European criminal could be arraigned before an Indian magistrate or judge he could claim to be judged only by a jury consisting of 50% of his own race which, in effect, re-established the Cr. Code of 1873. What continued was the equally old Code: an Indian charged with a crime could be judged by exclusively European magistrates, judges & juries with no knowledge of the language in which their evidence was written – one famous example was the conviction of Tilak. Back in London, Ilbert was appointed Parliamentary Assistant Counsel & Counsel to the Treasury 1886-1901 & Clerk to the House of Common’s for 1901. Ilbert authored The Govt. of India, 1898; Legislative Methods & Forms, 1901. [Buckland; S. Bhattacharya: 114, 457, 483]

Iliad Homer’s epic in 24 books. It tells the story of the quarrel of Achilles & Agamemnon over Briseis (q.v.) resulting in Achilles’s wrath & its consequences in the Trojan War.

Ilian a descendant of Chandra-deva & Ilā (q.v.), i.e. a Chandra-vamshi; hence the race is more commonly known as (Lunar Dynasty).

Ilion or Ilium Troy as the city of Ilus (q.v.)

Illyrian of Illyria, a large, vaguely defined region north of Greece.

Ilus Trojan king, son of Dardanus (in another version, of Tros) & ancestor of Priam. He was one of the chief builders of Troy, which was named Ilion or Ilium after him.

Imam (ǐmäm’ Arabic term: though used of the leader in the Friday prayer in the mosque, is also a synonym for caliph. In this use it is applied by Shiites to Ali ibn Abi Tālib, the Prophet’s cousin & 2^nd convert, husband of Fatima, the Prophet’s first child, & 4^th Caliph from c.602 to his murder in 661 by the Omayyad, & also to his sons Hasan & Husein both killed by the Omayyad, & to the rest of the caliphs in the family of the Prophet. The followers of Ali’s family came to believe that there was a hidden imamate, the succession of the legitimate, unrecognized descendants of Ali or true caliphs. The idea grew up in the Middle Ages that one in this succession, the 12^th or the 7^th, imam, would return at the end of the world to restore the right caliphate. The returning imam is called the Mahdi (q.v.). The Fatimites, followers of Fatima, were particularly given to this belief in the hidden imam, & the Druses & Assassins hold doctrines related to the same belief. [Based on Columbia Encyclopedia, 1950]

Independent(s) sect of English Christians in 16^th & 17^th centuries who wished to separate from the Church of England & form independent local churches composed only of Christian believers. They became known as Congregationalists [cf. Holy Office]

The Independent English journal launched by Motilal Nehru at Lucknow in 1919 ‘to support the cause of Indian nationalism’. Motilal had joined the Congress after the reactionary Montague-Chelmsford Reforms were published in April 1918. In 1922, he joined C.R. Das, N.C. Kelkar, Viṭhalbhai, & Ajmal Khan, in launching the Swaraj Party (q.v.). In 1924, with C.R. Das down with ill-health & having practically thrown Viṭhalbhai out of the party, Motilal sent a letter to Sri Aurobindo to contribute to this paper then edited by B.C. Pal – no longer the fiery nationalist he was in 1906-07. Sri Aurobindo remarked in private, “Evidently the Swarajists are very much afraid of Gandhi.” [Durga Das, India – From Curzon to Nehru; A.B. Purani, Evening Talks…, 2007, p.282]

Independent a Pondicherry paper whose sub-editor (c.1913) was R.S. Sharma (q.v.)

Independent Labour Party British party founded in 1893. See Labour (Party).

L’Inde où j’ai vecu L’Inde où j’ai vecu: Avant et après indépendence, a book by Madame David Néel (q.v.), published in 1951.

India Sanyal: It appears that most of the earth’s land mass was joined together a billion years ago in a supercontinent called Rodinia…. Rodinia broke up about 750 million years ago & various continents began to drift apart. Very little is known about this period loosely dubbed the Pre-Cambrian period; however, there is one remaining relic from that period that is still very visible – the Aravalli range. It is arguably the oldest surviving geological feature anywhere in the world. Today the range extends from Mount Ᾱbu where it still retains their its height then begins to become low hills & ridges as it moves through Mewār, Jodhpur, & Delhi, into Haryānā. In the Cambrian period the continental land masses began to reassemble &…into a new supercontinent called Pangaea which began to break up around 175 million years ago into a northern continent called Laurāsia (consisting of North America, Europe & Asia) & a southern one called Gondwānā (Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia & India). The name Gondwānā is itself derived from the Gond (q.v.) tribe of central India. About 158 million years ago, India & Madagāscar separated from Africa, & c.90 million years ago the Indian craton separated from Madagāscar &, as it drifted steadily northwards towards Asia, eruptions happened in the Western Ghats near Mumbai & created the Deccan Traps (which Shivaji would use to wear down Aurangzeb’s armies). Fifty-five-sixty million years ago the Indian craton collided with the Eurāsian plate, pushing up the Himalayas & the Tibetan plateau & continues to push into Asia. The actual of collision between the Indian & Eurāsian plates is called the Indus-Yarlung-Tsanpo Suture zone. The holy Mānsarovar Lake sits in a trough along this zone. Overlooking the lake is Mount Kailās....

Raychaudhuri: India is corrupted form of Sapta sindhavah in the Veda & Hapta Hindu in the Vendidad (earliest Zoroastrian scripture), from the river Sindhu, the most imposing feature of Āryavarta (q.v.) & the cradle of its earliest known civilisation…. It [the cradle] extended from the Himavat (which included the present Himalayas as well as the Patkai, Lushai & Chittāgong Hills in the east & the Suleiman & Kirthar ranges in the west) stretching along its north bound on the west by the hilly tableland of Iran & on the east by the Arākān ranges & the wooded valley of the Irrāwaddy, with the Great Ocean to its east & west & south. Its earliest cosmographers judged it to have been part of a larger unit called Jāmbu-dwīpa, innermost of seven concentric island-continents into which earth, was originally divided.

Sri Aurobindo: No age in Asia was so rich in energy, so well worth living in, so productive of the best & most enduring fruits as that heroic period of India when she was divided into small kingdoms, many of them no larger than a modern district. Her most wonderful activities, her most vigorous & enduring work, that which, if we had to make a choice, we should keep at the sacrifice of all else, belonged to that period; the second best came afterwards in larger, but still comparatively small, nations & kingdoms like those of the Pallavas (c.4^th-9^th century), Chālukyas (6^th-12^th century), Pāṇdyās (c.1100-1567), Cholās (c.600 years from c.600 BC), & Cherās (c.800 years from 3^rd cent BC). [SABCL 15:264-65] ― In the ancient Indian collective life, there were three things: A spontaneously growing free communal units; the Dharma- idea; & the harmonising of national life by a central agency…. We had nothing of the mental ideal in politics. We had a spontaneous & a free growth of communities developing on their own lines. It was not so much a mental idea as an inner impulse or feeling, to express life in a particular form. Each such communal form of life – the village, the town, etc., which formed the unit of national life, was left free in its own internal management. The central authority never interfered with it…. There was not the idea of ‘interests’…each community was not fighting for its own interests; but there was rather the idea of Dharma – the function which the individual & the community have to fulfil in the larger national life. There were caste organisations not based upon a religio-social basis as we find nowadays; they were more or less groups organised for a communal life. There were also religious communities…. Each followed its own Swadharma unhampered by the State which recognised the necessity of allowing such various forms of life to develop freely in order to give to the national spirit a richer expression. Its function was not so much to legislate as to harmonise & see that everything was going on all right…. One was not at the head to put his hands over all organisations & keep them down. If he interfered with them he was deposed because each of these organisations had its own laws which had been established for long ages. The machinery of the State also was not as mechanical as in the West; it was plastic & elastic…. This organisation we find in history perfected in the reign of Chandragupta & the Maurya dynasty. The period preceding this must have been one of great political development in India. Every department of national life, we can see, was in charge of a board or a committee with a minister at the head & each board looked after what we now would call its own department & was left free from undue interference of the central authority. The change of kings left these boards untouched & unaffected in their work. An organisation similar to that was found in the town & in the village & it was this organisation that was taken up by the Mahomedans when they came…. The king as the absolute monarch was never an Indian idea. It was brought from Central Asia by the Mahomedans…. The English in accepting this system have disfigured it considerably…. If the old organisation had lasted it would have been a successful rival of the modern form of government. You need not come back to the old forms but you can retain the spirit which might create its own new forms. They could not last, firstly, because there was the flagging of national energy owing to various causes. Secondly, the country was too vast & the means of communication not efficient enough to permit all national forces being concentrated on a particular point. Chandragupta could not have very easily reached the farthest end of his dominion so as to put all available national strength to a single purpose. If India had been a small country it would have been easer & with the modern means of communication I am sure it would have succeeded. [Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, A.B. Purani; 2007:292-95.]Malhotra: Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030; q.v.) set the stage for other Muslim invaders in their orgy of plunder & brutality, as Will Durant explains: “In 1186 the Ghuri, a Turkish tribe of Afghanistan invaded India, captured the city of Delhi destroyed its temples, confiscated its wealth, & settled down in its palaces to establish the Sultanate of Delhi – an alien despotism fastened upon northern India for three centuries, & checked only by assassination & revolt.” [W.D.] ― “The first of these bloody sultans, Qutb-d Din Aibak, was a normal specimen of his kind – fanatical, ferocious & merciless. His gifts as the Mohammedan historian tells us, “were bestowed by hundreds of thousands & his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands.” In one victory of this warrior (who had been purchased as a slave), “fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery, & the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.” – “Another sultan, Balban, punished rebels & brigands by casting them under the feet of elephants, or removing their skins, stuffing these with straw, & hanging them from the gates of Delhi.” – “When some Mongol inhabitants who had settled in Delhi, & had been converted to Islam, attempted a rising, Sultan Alā-ud-din (see Chitōre & Gujarat) had all the males from fifteen to thirty thousand of them slaughtered in one day.” – “Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq acquired the throne by murdering his father, became a great scholar & an elegant writer, dabbled in mathematics, physics & Greek philosophy, surpassed his predecessors in bloodshed & brutality, fed the flesh of a rebel nephew to the rebel’s wife & children, ruined the country with reckless inflation, & laid it waste with pillage & murder till the inhabitants fled to the jungle.” He killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, “there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion & his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies & a heap of corpses, while the sweepers & executioners were weaned out by their work of dragging” the victims “and putting them to death in crowds.” In order to found a new capital at Daulatābād he drove every inhabitant from Delhi & left it a desert….” – “Fīrūz Shah invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves, & died at the ripe age of eighty. – Sultan Ahmad Shah (see Ahmadābād) feasted for three days whenever the number of defenceless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand.” – “These rulers… armed with a religion militaristic in operation... [made] the public exercise of the Hindu religions illegal, & thereby driving them more deeply into the Hindu soul. Some of these thirsty despots had culture as well as ability; they patronized the arts, & engaged artists & artisans, usually of Hindu origin, to build for them magnificent mosques & tombs: some of them were scholars, & delighted in converse historians, poets & scientists.” – “The Sultans drew from the people every rupee of tribute that could be exacted by the ancient art of taxation, as well as by straight-forward robbery…” – “The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by ‘Alā-ud-din, who required his advisers to draw up ‘rules & regulations for grinding down the Hindus, & for depriving them of that wealth & property which fosters disaffection & rebellion’. Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. “No Hindu,” says a Moslem historian, “could hold up his head, & in their houses no sign of gold or silver…or of any superfluity was to be seen… Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment & chains, were all employed to enforce payment.” – “…Timur-i-lang – a Turk who had accepted Islam as an admirable weapon… feeling the need of more gold, it dawned upon him that India was still full of infidels…Mullahs learned in the Koran decided the matter by quoting an inspiring verse: Oh Prophet, make war upon infidels & unbelievers, & treat them with severity. Thereupon, Timur crossed the Indus in 1398, massacred or enslaved such of the inhabitants as could not flee from him, defeated the forces of Sultan Mahmud Tūghlak, occupied Delhi, slew a hundred thousand prisoners in cold blood, plundered the city of all the wealth that the Afghan dynasty had gathered there, & carried it off to Samarkand with multitude of women & slaves, leaving anarchy, famine & pestilence in his wake.”

Sri Aurobindo: The ancient civilisation underwent indeed an eclipse & decline under the weight of a Central Asiatic religion & culture with which it failed to coalesce, but it survived its pressure, put its impact on it in many directions & remained to our own day alive even in decadence & capable of recovery, thus giving a proof of strength & soundness rare in the history of human cultures. And in the political field it never ceased to throw up great rulers, statesmen, soldiers, administrators. Its political genius was not in the decadence sufficient, not coherent enough or swift in vision & action, to withstand the Pathān, Moghul & European, but it was strong to survive & await every opportunity of revival, made a bid for empire under Rāṇā Saṇga, created the great kingdom of Vijayanagaram, held its own for centuries against Islam in the hills of Rājputāna, & in its worst days still built & maintained against the whole power of the ablest of the Moghuls the kingdom of Shivaji, formed the Mahratta confederacy & the Sikh Khālsā, undermined the great Moghul structure & again made a last attempt at empire (see Bājirao Peshwa). On the brink of the final & almost fatal collapse in the midst of unspeakable darkness, disunion & confusion it could still produce Ranjit Singh & Nana Fadnavis & Madhoji Scindhia & oppose the inevitable march of England’s destiny. [SABCL 14:378]

Malhotra: The Arabic, Turkish, & Persian invaders brought their historians to document their conquests of India as great achievements. Some of these historians ended up loving India & wrote excellent accounts of life in India, including about the Gāndhāra & Sindh regions. Their translations of Indian texts were later retranslated into European languages & hence many of the European Renaissance inputs from Islam were actually Indian contributions travelling via Islam. ― Of all these Muslim scholars, Alberuni left the most detailed accounts of India’s civilization. In the introduction to his translation of Alberuni’s famous book, Indica, the Arabic scholar Edward Sachau summarizes how India was the source of considerable Arabic culture: “The foundations of Arabic literature were laid between AD 750 & 850. It is only the tradition relating to their religion & prophet & poetry that is peculiar to the Arabs; everything else is of foreign descent… Greece, Persia, & India were taxed to help the sterility of the Arab mind. What India has contributed reached Baghdad by two different roads. Part has come directly in translations from the Sanskrit; part has travelled through Iran, having originally been translated into Persian, & farther from Persian into Arabic. In this way, e.g. the fables of Kalila & Dimna have been communicated to the Arabs, & book on medicine, probably the famous Charaka.” – “As Sindh was under the actual rule of Caliph Mansur (753-74), there came embassies from that part of India to Baghdad, & among them scholars, who brought along with them two books, the Brahma-sādhanā to Brahmagupta (Sirhind), & his Khandkhdyaka (Arkanda). With the help of these pundits, Alfazari, perhaps also Yakub ibn Tarik translated them. Both works have been largely used, & have exercised a great influence. It was on this occasion that the Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy. They learned from Brahmagupta earlier than from Ptolemy.” – “Another influx of Hindu learning took place under the Abbasside Caliphs of Baghdad in 786-808. The ministerial family of Barmak (see Barmecide), then at the zenith of their power, had come with the ruling dynasty from Balkh, where an ancestor of theirs had been an official in the Buddhistic temple Naubehar, i.e. nava vihāra (new temple/ monastery). The name Barmak is said to be of Indian descent, meaning paramaka or pramukha (the Superior or Abbot of the vihāra).” – “Induced by family traditions, they sent scholars to India, there to study medicine & pharmacology. Besides, they engaged Hindu scholars to come to Baghdad, made them the chief physicians of their hospitals, & ordered them to translate from Sanskrit into Arabic books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, & other subjects. Still in later centuries Muslim scholars sometimes travelled for the same purposes as the emissaries of the Barmak, e.g. Almuwakkuf not long before Alberuni’s time…” – “Many Arab authors took up the subjects communicated to them by the Hindus & worked them out in original compositions, commentaries & extracts. A favourite subject of theirs was Indian mathematics, the knowledge of which became far spread by the publications of Alkindi & many others.” Alberuni leaves no doubt as to the origin of the so-called Arabic system of numbers: “The numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs… The Arabs, too, stop with the thousand, which is certainly the most correct & the most natural thing to do… Those, however, who go beyond the thousand in their numeral system, are the Hindus, at least in their arithmetical technical terms, which have been either freely invented or derived according to certain etymologies, whilst in others both methods are blended together. They extend the names of the orders of numbers until the 18^th order for religious reasons, the mathematicians being assisted by the grammarians with all kinds of etymologies.” [A] ― In Islamic Spain, European scholars acknowledged India very positively, as evidenced by an important & rare 11^th century book on world science commissioned by the ruler of Spain. Its author, Said al-Andalusi [S.A.], focused on India as a major centre for science, mathematics & culture. Some excerpts: “The first nation to have cultivated science is India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, & a rich kingdom. India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the branches of knowledge.” – “The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness & objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, & useful & rare inventions.” – “To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers & of geometry. They have acquired immense information & reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) & the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science & the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds & the peculiarities of substances [chemistry].” – “Their kings are known for their good moral principles, their wise decisions, & their perfect methods of exercising authority.” – “What has reached us from the work of the Indians in music is the book… that contains the fundamentals of modes & the basics in the construction of melodies.” – “That which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking & the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols & secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played & its pieces are being manoeuvred, there appear the beauty of structure & the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions & noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies & points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers & in this, there is considerable gain & useful profit.”

Sri Aurobindo: The real problem introduced by the Mussulman conquest was not that of subjection to a foreign rule & the ability to recover freedom, but the struggle between two civilisations, one ancient & indigenous, the other mediaeval & brought in from outside. That which rendered the problem insoluble was the attachment of each to a powerful religion, the one militant & aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant indeed & flexible, but obstinately faithful in its discipline to its own principle & standing on the defence behind a barrier of social forms. There were two conceivable solutions, the rise of a greater spiritual principle & formation which could reconcile the two or a political patriotism surmounting the religious struggle & uniting the two communities. The first was impossible in that age. Akbar attempted it on the Mussulman side, but his religion was an intellectual & political rather than a spiritual creation & had never any chance of assent from the strongly religious mind of the two communities. Nanak attempted it from the Hindu side, but his religion, universal in principle, became a sect in practice. Akbar attempted also to create a common political patriotism, but this endeavour too was foredoomed to failure. An autocratic empire built on the Central Asian principle could not create the desired spirit by calling in the administrative ability of the two communities in the person of great men & princes & nobles to a common service in the creation of a united imperial India: the living assent of the people was needed & that remained passive for want of awakening political ideals & institutions. The Moghul Empire was a great & magnificent construction & an immense amount of political genius & talent was employed in its creation & maintenance. It was as splendid, powerful & beneficent &, it may be added, in spite of Aurangzeb’s fanatical zeal, infinitely more liberal & tolerant in religion than any mediaeval or contemporary European kingdom or empire & India under its rule stood high in military & political strength, economic opulence brilliance of its art & culture…. A military & administrative centralised empire could not effect India’s living political unity. And although a new life seemed about to rise in the regional peoples, the chance was cut short by the intrusion of the European nations & their seizure of the opportunity created by the failure of the Peshwas & the desperate confusion of the succeeding anarchy & decadence. ― We are still suffering from the bitter effects of the great decline which came to a head in the 18^th & 19^th centuries. Undoubtedly there was a period, a brief but very disastrous period of the dwindling of that great fire of life, even a moment of incipient disintegration, marked politically by the anarchy which gave European adventure its chance, inwardly by an increasing torpor of the creative spirit in religion & art, – science & philosophy & intellectual knowledge had long been dead or petrified into a mere scholastic Punditism, – all pointing to a nadir of setting energy, the evening-time from which according to the Indian cycles a new age has to start. It was that moment & the pressure of a superimposed European culture which followed it that made the reawakening necessary. [SABCL 14: 377-80; CWSA 20:4-5]

Sanyal: “India is not unique in having developed a caste system. Genetics has proved that it has nothing to do with the Aryan influx & the imposition of a rigid hierarchy. Through history there have been different versions of the caste system in Japan, Iran, & even in classical Europe. Genetics also tells us that there is no real difference between groups that we now differentiate as ‘castes’ & ‘tribes’.”

Sri Aurobindo: When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the Sanātana Dharma that they arise, it is for the world & not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world. When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanātana Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanātana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand & extend herself, it is the Sanātana Dharma that shall expand & extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma & by the Dharma that India exists. [SABCL 2:8]

[Sanjeev Sanyal: Land of the Seven Rivers – A Brief history of India’s geography, 2012; H.C. Raychaudhuri: An Advanced History of India, by R.C. Majumdar, H.C. Raychaudhuri, & Kalikinkar Datta, 3rd Ed., MacMillan India, 1973, 1974; Rajiv Malhotra: “How ‘Gāndhāra became ‘Kandahār”, Infinity Foundation, Internet, 2001; AW = Andre Wink: “The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume I – Early Medieval India & the Expansion of Islam 7th-11th Centuries”. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1999. pp.144-146; WD = Will Durant: “The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage”, MJF Books, NY. 1935. pp. 459-463; A = Alberuni: Alberuni (AD 973 – 1048), a Muslim scholar, mathematician & master of Greek & Hindu system astrology, wrote twenty books. In his seminal work, “Indica” (c. 1030 AD) he wrote (“Alberuni’s India”, by Edward Sachau. Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1993. (Reprint). First published 1910 — translated in 1880s.); SA = Said al-Andalusi: In the eleventh-century, an important manuscript titled “The Categories of Nations” was authored in Arabic by Said al-Andalusi, who was a prolific author & in the powerful position of a judge for the king in Muslim Spain. A translation & annotation of this was done S.I. Salem & Ᾱlok Kumar & published by University of Texas Press: “Science in the Medieval World”. This is the first English translation of this eleventh-century manuscript. Quotes are from Chapter V: “Science in India”]

India (1) organ of the British Committee of the INC in London, “to place before the British public the Indian view of Indian affairs” began publication in 1890 with William Digby as editor. It was irregularly issued till 1892 when it became a monthly, & from 1898 to 1921 it came out as a weekly with Henry Cotton’s son as its editor an appointment opposed by Lajpat Rai’s Punjabi which wanted an Indian journalist to be its editor. (2) Tamil nationalist weekly edited by Srinivasa Aiyengar. When he was jailed for sedition in 1908, three of those connected with the paper, the proprietor Thirumalāchāri, his cousin Srinivasa Āchārya, & the writer Subramania Bhārati, moved to Pondicherry, where India was registered in October 1908. In 1909 the proprietorship was transferred to Srinivasa Ᾱchārya. The paper was discontinued in April 1910. (3) Urdu weekly started by Lālā Pindi Dass in 1907 at Gujranwala, Punjab. Its special feature was a series of articles entitled Shiva Shambhoo kā Chiṭhā.

India House a mess-cum-lodge established in 1905 by Shyamji Krishnavarma (q.v.) who had settled in London in 1897, where he saw Indian students facing unabashed racism. He (SK) & Sardarsingh Rāṇā (SR) purchased the building at 65, Cromwell Avenue, Highgate, for Indian students coming to England. Named India House (IH), it was inaugurated on 1^st July by H.M. Hyndman of Social Democratic Federation, in the presence of Naoroji, Lajpat Rai, Madam Cāmā, Swinny of Positivist Society, Quelch (editor of Justice), Mme Desparde Irish Republican & Suffragette, Hans Raj, Dost Mohammed, for students holding Indian Travelling Fellowships instituted by SK, SR et al in memory of Indian martyrs of 1857 but on condition that they would not accept any post from British Raj. On 14 July Tilak asked SK to host Madhavrao Jādhav, who hoped to learn bomb making in France, & also sent P.M. Bāpat (later Senāpati Bāpat) who had lost his Govt. Scholarship for having lectured & written on British rule in India. V.D. Sāvarkar, another protégé of Tilak, came to IH, under the Rs. 2000/- p.a. Shivaji Fellowship, one of the three set up by SR. By June 1907, with Scotland Yard & Indian intelligence hounding them, SK, SR, & Cāmā moved to Paris leaving IH in Sāvarkar’s care. On 10 May 1907 (50^th anniversary of 1857) when the British held war games in Delhi & deported Lajpat Rai & Ajīt Singh, Sāvarkar commemorated anniversary by opening a branch of Abhinava Bharat Society that he & his brother had founded years back in Pune, which taught selected residents the art of bomb-making & printing leaflets. That year a branch of IH opened in Tokyo, & the next year one in New York. By 1908, the London IH had become the central rendezvous for students & Nationalist leaders coming to England. In the latter category were Lajpat Rai & B.C. Pal (whose speeches were admired by Jawaharlal then studying in England). After Dhingrā murdered Curzon Wyllie on 1 July 1909, Sāvarkar got hold of a copy of Dhingrā’s political statement & published it in Daily News on the day Dhingrā was sentenced to death. Churchill is reported to have described it as the finest statement ever made in the name of Patriotism. [Shyamji Krishnavarma…, Indulal Yāgnik, 1950]

India Office/ IO situated in Westminster, housed the offices of the Secretary of State for India (he held the rank of a Cabinet minister), who ruled today’s India + Pakistan + Bangladesh + Myanmar + Sri Lanka + Nepal, in tandem with the Viceroy in India. The two posts were created in 1858. The complex system of governing India created by William Pitt (1759-1806), Prime Minister 1783-1801 & 1804-06 by his India Bill, passed on 18 May 1784 as a Statute, had established a Board of Control or India Board, consisting of Commissioners for the affairs of India, with extensive powers. In 1834, the Home Govt. of India nominally passed from the East India Co. to the Crown, but the Statute left large powers to the Company’s Court of Directors. That system endured until 1858, when by an Act of Parliament India’s indirect slavery to the Company & its Board of Directors was replaced by the direct one to the British Parliament, in practice to the Govt. in power, which ruled India through its Secretary of State for India & its Viceroy-cum-Governor-General of India.

Indian Civil Service/ ICS In 1805 the E.I. Co. established East India College at Haileybury, London, to train nominees chosen by the Company’s directors to serve in the Company’s Indian territories. They spent two years at this college in order to continue & strengthen their general education & to learn jurisprudence, political economy & one of the Oriental languages; the test was not severe & was easily passed. The E.I. Co.’s commercial monopoly was broken in 1833 & from 1834 it was merely an agency of the Parliament. The Act of 1833 pledged that “no native of India…shall, by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, colour, or any of them, be disabled from holding any place, office or employment”; but E.L. Ellenborough (1790-1871), Lord Chief Justice of England, admitted when Gov.-Gen. (1842-44): “Our very existence depended upon the exclusion of the Indians from military & political power.” This admission, notes Buckland’s D.I.B., “Being disrespectful & out of control, Ellenborough was recalled by the Company’s Court of Directors in June 1844”. In 1855, the College at Haileybury was abolished after Parliament introduced Competitive Examination for recruitment to its Indian Civil Service. The Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 pledged: “…it is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever Race or creed be freely & impartially, to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified, by their education, ability, & integrity, duly to discharge.” As blatantly false a pledge as that of the Act of 1833, as admitted by E.R.B.B. Lytton (1831-91), Viceroy-cum-Gov.-Gen. (1876-80) in 1878: “No sooner was the Act of 1833 passed, than [we] began to devise means for practically evading the fulfilment of it. [Since] every Indian, once admitted to Govt. employment…is entitled to expect & claim appointment in the fair of course of promotion to the highest posts in that service…claims & expectations [that] never can or will be fulfilled. [So] we have chosen the least straightforward course. The application to Indians of the competitive examination system as conducted in England, & the recent reduction in the age at which candidates can compete, are…deliberate & transparent subterfuges.” (See India Office above) The ICS officer or Civilian appointed by The Civil Service Commission (CSC) in London after 1858, began service as District Officer with an army of native staff, the ICS officer or Civilian appointed by was at once Collector of Revenue, Registrar of lands, Judge between landlord & tenant, Ministerial officer of Courts of Justice, Treasurer & Accountant, Administrator of District Excise, President of Local Rates Committee, Referee for all compensations, Govt. Agent in all suits it was a party to, Referee in public works, Manager of estates of minors, Civil & Police Magistrate, Criminal Judge, Head of Police, & President of Municipalities. A Govt. Commission in 1886 reported that most Civilians could not speak the local vernacular (Latin vernae = slaves) tongue, knew little & cared less about the custom, way of life, & habits of his charges. Karandikar: “Right from the start when a high-ranking world-power like England started shaping its own destiny in India, India lost her age-old detachment & isolation, & began to assume international importance…subservient…to British interests…. England’s success in 1875 in securing virtual mastery over the Suez Canal (opened in 1869), brought the far-flung British empire appreciably closer to the heart of the empire. The added confidence in the security of the empire suggested the addition of ‘Empress of India’ to the long list of Royal titles. This confidence, percolating from higher levels to the lower, degenerated in India as in other possessions (colonies) into arrogance & haughtiness. English youths coming to India as servants of the Crown, ceased to have anything in common with the generation of Elphinstone & Munroe. Imperialism, in all its unsavoury implications, came to be their watchword.” [Karandikar: 12, 16] ― The Regulations regarding the appointments to the ICS were framed by the Secretary of State ‘assisted’ by the Civil Service Commission in London. The CSC selected candidates through yearly open competitive exams (begun in 1855) held in London & its Board of ICS Studies tutored & tested them. It began by restricting an Indian Civilian’s salary to one-fifth that of a European. Then, in 1860, the age-limit for this exam was lowered from 23 to 22 & one-year probation in England, a costly affair was added. In 1866, the age was lowered to 21 & probation in England increased to two-years. In 1876 the age was 19.

When Sri Aurobindo & four other Indians sat for the ICS entrance exam Regulations for the Open Competition of June 1890 set only four provisos: “British citizen; above 17 & below 19 years old; physically fit; good moral character”. Selection was “on the ground of superior proficiency in subjects within the ordinary range of English education”; none of the 17 subjects the examinee could opt for was binding; selection would be solely on total marks scored. Of the 45 selected, Sri Aurobindo & five others were under 18, rest under 19; two of them took only 6 papers, Wood & the one ranked 1^st took 7, only Sri Aurobindo & the one ranked 2^nd took 10 papers. The Board of ICS Studies held three examinations: Easter & Christmas in 1891 & July 1892. In the Final Exam, only two kept the same rank; Sri Aurobindo dropped 11^th to 37^th, Wood 22^nd to 32^nd, & Madgāvkar (q.v.) from 42^nd to 18^th; while Mahimohan in whose father Manmohan Ghose’s house Sri Aurobindo was born, rose from 45^th to 16^th & Yusuf from 43^rd to 7^th solely on Arabic, Littlewood who rose from 19^th to 2^nd place in the Final Exam died when coming out to India in the S.S. Roumania which capsized in October 1892 with no survivors (see Ghose, K.D.). Though Sri Aurobindo passed the Final Exam in July 1892, on the false charge that he failed the Riding Test & did not send his University Certificate to the Board, Secretary of State Kimberley rejected him. And yet, Sri Aurobindo averred in his “New Lamps for Old” in 1893-94: “with all its vices & shortcomings, one does find, as perhaps one does not find elsewhere, rare & exalted souls detached from the failings of their order, who exhibit the qualities of the race in a very striking way; not geniuses certainly, but swift & robust personalities, rhetorically powerful, direct, forcible, endowed to a surprising extent with the energy & self-confidence which are the heirlooms of their nation; men in short who give us England – & by England I mean the whole Anglo-Celtic race – on her really high & admirable side. Many of these are Irish or Caledonian; others are English gentlemen of good blood & position, trained at the great public schools, who still preserve that fine flavour of character, scholarship & power, which was once a common possession in England, but threatens under the present dispensation to become sparse or extinct. Others again are veterans of the old Anglo-Indian school, moulded in the larger traditions & sounder discipline of a strong & successful art who still keep some vestiges of the grand old Company days, still have something of a great & noble spirit, something of an adequate sense how high are the affairs they have to deal with & how serious the position they are privileged to hold.”

Indian Field edited by Kishori Chand Mitra (q.v.) during the early days of Bankim’s literary career. N.N. Sen (q.v.) was also on the staff for some time.

Indian Majlis (Urdu majlis=assembly). Since Rammohan Roy, some Indians & Englishmen lobbied in England for administrative reforms in India. In 1873, a speech at the Cambridge University Union by Chowdhury Asutosh (q.v.) reading at St. John’s, Cambridge, was instrumental in the passing of a motion by Syed Mahmud “that in the opinion of this House, England has failed in her duties to India”. This led to the formation of the Majlis where Indian students in England held political discussions & debates on England’s treatment of India – while the Government kept a close watch. Though an ICS probationer, Sri Aurobindo not only joined the Majlis but was for a time its secretary – facilitating his rejection by India Office. Among other members, his friend K.G. Deshpande became another target of the Govt., while Harisingh Gaur & Moropant Joshi, latter ‘earned’ their knighthoods. Jawaharlal Nehru, a former member: “More effort was spent at the Majlis in copying Parliamentary & University Union style & mannerisms than in grappling with the subject.” Even when Swaraj, Boycott & Swadeshi of the Nationalist Party had seized the minds of the Indian masses, he adds, they remained “parlour-firebrands” who on return rarely took “any effective part” in the freedom struggle. [Several sources + Nehru’s Autobiography]

(Indian) Mirror (1) English daily of Calcutta; “a Government journal masking under the disguise of an Indian daily” [SABCL 1:180]. It was founded in 1861 as a fortnightly paper by Manmohan Ghose with financial assistance from Debendranath Tagore. In 1863 it was edited by Narendra Nath Sen, who became its sole proprietor in 1870. In 1876 the paper was converted into a daily by Keshab Chandra Sen. (2) a British paper founded in 1903 by Alfred Harmsworth (q.v.).

(Indian) Nation English weekly edited by N.N. Ghose.

Indian National Congress/ INC/ Congress Party The struggle for independence had four distinct phases. The first was an impotent rage, on the part of certain classes & communities…which gained momentum with the actual experience of the sundry evils of British rule & the miseries caused thereby. It led to sporadic attempts…and armed resistance on a small scale in various localities all over India. These isolated acts formed a background to, & culminated in, the great outbreak of 1857 which, together with the organized armed rebellion of the Wahhabis to restore Muslim supremacy (1850-63), may be said to have ended the first phase of the struggle. The drastic manner in which both the revolts were put down caused such a terror & demoralization that armed revolt against the British authority ceased to be regarded as practical politics. …. The second phase…roughly covers the period 1860-1905…. There was almost a revolutionary change in every sphere of Indian life…the English-educated classes, now dominated the field…. Western ideas of patriotism & nationalism…made their influence felt…. Anger & hostility towards the British rule were replaced [in the English-educated classes] by devotion & loyalty to the British throne, based upon implicit faith in the benevolence & liberalism of the British people. Armed resistance [of those who actually experienced of the sundry evils of British rule & the miseries caused thereby were pushed underground] by political organization & constitutional agitation [of the English-educated classes].” [RCM-1]

In 1883: The Indian National Conference was held in Calcutta from 28 to 30 December under the auspices of the Indian Association founded by S.N. Bannerjea in 1876. It was the first assembly where non-official representatives from all over India met to discuss questions relating to industrial & technical education, wider employment of Indians in the Civil Service, separation of the judicial from executive functions, representative government & the Arms Act inflicted by Lytton; its second session was also held in Calcutta in 1885 & then merged with the INC created by Hume inaugurated in December 1885. Hume had enlisted English sympathisers like J. Bright (q.v.), James Caird, Lord Ripon, Wedderburn, George Yule, Bradlaugh, & on 28 December 1885, invited 70-odd lawyers, reformists, educationists, journalists, & their associations to Bombay, & steered them into creating a sort of Majlis & anointed U.C. Bonnerji (q.v.) as its first president. In spite of being advised by Hume that Dufferin was against any effort to include the proletariat, the congregation voted to call itself Indian National Congress (INC), knowing well it qualified for none of these three terms. It passed nine resolutions among which were: To seek the cooperation of all the Indians in its efforts; to eradicate the concepts of race, creed & provincial prejudices & try to form national unity; to discuss & solve the social problems of the country; to request the Govt. to abolish the India Council headed by the Secretary of State to oversee the Viceroy of India; to admit ‘considerable portion’ of elected natives to the central & provincial Legislative Councils with rights ‘to discuss Govt. of India’s the annual budgets; to hold ICS Entrance Exam simultaneously in England & India & restore the age-limit to 23; to permit “the re-assemblage of the INC next year at Calcutta”. The number of delegates (then called representatives) which was only 71 at the first session & rose to 436 at the second session held at Calcutta (presided over by Naoroji), increased to 1889 at the fifth session held at Bombay (presided over by Sir William Wedderburn) & it was felt necessary to restrict it at 1000 to be elected by different political public associations all over the country. [Several sources including SB]

In 1893-94 Popular orators like Mr Pherozshah Mehta, who carry the methods of the bar into politics, are very fond of telling people that the Congress has habituated us to act together.... Not only has the concord it tends to create been very partial, but the sort of people who have been included…do not extend beyond certain fixed & narrow limits…. So Mr Mehta [presiding over the 1890 Congress Session held at Calcutta] argued that the Congress could justly arrogate the epithet National without having any direct support from the proletariate… ‘It is because the masses are still unable to articulate definite political demands that the functions & duty devolve upon their educated & enlightened compatriots to feel, to understand & to interpret their grievances & requirements, & to suggest & indicate how these can best be redressed & met.’ …Mr Manmohan Ghose asks himself this very question & answers…‘The delegates present here today are the chosen representatives of that section of the Indian people who have learnt to think, & whose number is daily increasing with marvellous rapidity.’…So much at the mercy of their instincts & prejudices are the generality of mankind, that we hazard a very high estimate when we call even one man out of ten thousand a thinking man. But evidently by the thinking portion Mr Ghose would like to indicate the class…who have got some little idea of the machinery of English politics & are eager to import it into India along with cheap Liverpool cloths, shoddy Brummagem wares, & other useful & necessary things which have killed the fine & genuine textures…. But of all the brand new articles we have imported, inconceivably the most important is that large class of people – journalists, barristers, doctors, officials, graduates & traders – who have grown up & are increasing with prurient rapidity under the aegis of the British rule: & this class I call the middle class…phrases like ‘thinking men’ or ‘the educated class’ are merely expressions of our own boundless vanity & self-conceit. – Sri Aurobindo [NL]

The second characteristic, laid down by B.C. Pal said in effect: The continuance of British authority was necessary for building up a real freedom movement & establish a Govt. which would be a Govt. of the people, by the people & for the people. But the INC could not reasonably expect to build up a real modern democracy by enlisting the masses to the service of the Congress before they were sufficiently advanced in social ideas & had been properly educated which again, necessitated the continuance of British authority as Govt. alone was authorised & equipped to educate the masses with advanced social & political ideas. [Vide RCM]

The third characteristic was provided by Surendra Nath Banerjee: We rely on the liberty-loving instincts of the greatest representative assembly in the world, the palladium of English Liberty, the sanctuary of the free & brave, the British House of Commons. But when Mr Banerji’s words no longer, reverberate in your ears, listen to a quieter, more serious voice…of Matthew Arnold, himself an Englishman & genuine lover of his country, but for all that a man who thought deeply & spoke sanely. And where according to this sane & powerful intellect shall we come across the really noteworthy outcome of English effort? We shall best see it, he tells us, not in any palladium or sanctuary, not in the greatest representative assembly in the world, but in an aristocracy materialised, a middle class vulgarised & a lower class brutalised: & no clear-sighted student of England will be insensible to the just felicity with which he has hit off the social tendencies prevailing in that country…. This is highly typical of the English school of thought & the exaggerated emphasis it lays on the mould & working of institutions. …. Servile in imitation…we have swallowed down in a lump our English diet.... We blindly assent...that the awakening of the masses from their ignorance & misery is entirely unimportant & any expenditure of energy in that direction entirely premature. There we have laid the foundation, as England laid the foundation, of social collapse, of social calamities…. – Sri Aurobindo [NL]

In 1887, INC adopted Banerjee’s advice with a British Committee consisting of Hume, Wedderburn, Henry Cotton, & Naoroji on an annual budget of Rs. 45000 p.a. This blind faith in the English model was not perturbed even when Dufferin publicly ridiculed it on 30 November 1888: “Some intelligent, loyal, & patriotic & well-meaning men are desirous of taking…a big jump into the unknown…by the application to India of democratic methods of government, & the adoption of parliamentary system, which England herself had only reached by slow degrees & through the discipline of many centuries of preparation… Well, gentlemen, I am afraid that the people of England will not readily be brought to the acceptance of this programme.” & sure enough, within a decade INC’s London Committee proved too ineffective & expensive & had to be dropped. [Vide APK]

1892: In October, Sri Aurobindo left King’s & came down to London, from a cradle of English culture & democracy into the hub of imperial intrigues. He joined C.R. Das & other patriotic students but did not share their thrill over the election of Naoroji of the Indian National Congress on a British Liberal ticket obtained thanks to Wedderburn & Gladstone to the Parliament. The INC had been led to believe that Gladstone’s liberal principles had created in his Liberal Party a great sympathy for Irish nationalism, but Sri Aurobindo knew that where Parnell failed to change official policy through Parliament, INC’s chances were nil, rightly guessing the reaction of Secretary of State, Hamilton: “Naoroji’s long residence in England & association with the least reputable portion of the [British] political world have hopelessly deteriorated whatever brains or prescience he may originally have possessed.” [APK] Yet when Prime Minister Gladstone’s Liberal party passed as the Councils Act of 1892 (the first was passed in 1861 & the third in 1909 firmly laying the seeds of the Partition on 1947), instead of seeing the true nature of the English as Parnell had done the INC went into ecstasies, claiming that their prayers & petitions since 1885 for enlargements of Viceroy’s & Governor’s councils to include Indians had materialised though “it did not,” it regretted, “concede to the people the right of electing their own representatives to the Council” & hoped ‘that the rules, now being prepared under the Act, will be framed on the lines of Mr Gladstone’s declaration’ in the House of Commons.” Naturally that did not happen, & the speeches of INC delegates at those Councils, “achieved little success by way of practical results”. Naoroji lost in the next election; no other Indian was ever elected to Parliament. Sri Aurobindo’s hope that the 700-year-old Irish struggle would inspire INC not to appeal to the British sense of justice but to their own sense of manhood proved a cry in wilderness. [Vide RCM-1]

1893: The India Office demonstrated its ability to circumvent Parliament on a matter of great importance to Congress when H. Paul, M.P., & the Secretary of the British Committee of Congress, succeeded in securing parliamentary approval in a rump session… for simultaneous ICS entrance exams in India & England, the Secretary of State for India, Lord Kimberley, simply called it a ‘fatal mistake’ & took measures to prevent its implementation.” [APK]

In 1893-94: It is true that in the dull comedy which we call English politics, Truth & Justice – written in large letters – cover the whole of the poster, but in the actual enactment of the play these characters have very little indeed to do. Nevertheless we still go on appealing to the English sense of justice. The simple truth of the matter is that we shall not get from the British Parliament anything better than nominal redress, or at the most a petty & tinkering legislation…. But if we carry our glance across the English Channel, we shall witness a very different & more animating spectacle. Gifted with a lighter, subtler & clearer mind than their insular neighbours, the French people have moved irresistibly towards a social & not a political development…the best blood, the highest thought, the real grandeur of the nation does not reside in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies; it resides in the artistic & municipal forces of Parisian life, in the firm settled executive, in the great vehement heart of the French populace – & that has ever beaten most highly in unison with the grand ideas of Equality & Fraternity…. To put it in a concrete form, Paris may be said to revolve around the Theatre, the Municipal Council & the French Academy, London looks rather to the House of Commons & New York to the Stock Exchange…. If then we are bent upon adopting England as our exemplar, we shall certainly imitate the progress of the glacier rather than the progress of a torrent. From Runnymede to the Hull riots is a far cry; yet these seven centuries have done less to change partially the political & social exterior of England…. It was not a convocation of respectable citizens, but the vast & ignorant proletariate, that emerged from a prolonged & almost coeval apathy & blotted out in five terrible years the accumulated oppression of thirteen centuries…. Is it at all true that the initiators of Irish resistance to England were a body of successful lawyers, remarkable only for a power of shallow rhetoric, & deputed by the sort of men that are churned out at Trinity College, Dublin?.... Certainly men who preferred action to long speeches & appealed…not to the British sense of justice but to their own sense of manhood, are not at all the sort of people we have either the will or the power to imitate…. Indeed it will not hurt any of us to put out of sight…the gradual evolution of an Indian Parliament, with which certain politicians are fond of amusing us, & look things straight in the face. We must resolutely hold fast to the primary fact that right & effective action can only ensue upon a right understanding of ourselves in relation to our environment. For by reflection or instinct to get a clear insight into our position & by dexterity to make the most of it, that is the whole secret of politics, & that is just what we have failed to do. – Sri Aurobindo [NL]

There is no doubt that the progress of the Congress from 1885 to 1905 was an even march based on a firm faith in constitutional agitation in the unfailing regard for justice attributed to the English. [SP]

At the 4^th Congress, Allahabad, 1888: Although there was no regular constitution for the Congress, regulation of business of the Congress contemplated by a resolution to keep the feelings of the Hindu & Mohemedan smooth. The resolution stated that “no subject shall be passed for discussion by the Subjects Committee or allowed to be discussed at any Congress by the President thereof to the introduction of which the Hindu or Mohemedan delegates as a body object unanimously or nearly unanimously & that if after discussion of any subject which has been admitted for discussion it shall appear that all the Hindu or all the Mohemedan delegates as a body are unanimously or nearly unanimously opposed to the resolution which it is proposed to pass thereon, such resolution shall be dropped provided that the rule shall refer only to subjects in regard to which the Congress had not already definitely pronounced an opinion.” Only two Muslims ‘attended’ the 1^st Congress in 1885; 33 in 1886; 156 (22% of the total) in 1890. Under the Constitution adopted in 1908, after the Nationalist Party had been kicked out with Govt. help, 20% of AICC members had to be Muslims. [Vide MVRR & SP]

…when I say that the Congress is not really national…I do not at all mean to re-echo the Anglo-Indian catchword about Hindus & Mahomedans. Like most catchwords it is without much force, & has been still farther stripped of meaning by the policy of the Congress. The Mahomedans have been as largely represented on that body as any reasonable community could desire, & their susceptibilities, far from being denied respect, have always been most assiduously soothed & flattered… – Sri Aurobindo [NL]

Karandikar: Among Jihadis aroused by Principal Beck of Aligarh’s Anglo-Oriental College, was Nawab Mohabat of Junāgadh, in the south of which is Prabhās Pātaṇ. In the latter half of 1893 jihadis attacked Prabhās-Pātaṇ, Hindu-populated towns in U.P., Bombay city, Yeola & a few other places in Bombay Presidency. When Govt. of Bombay insisted that jihadis were incited by the cow-protection movement, William Wedderburn’s article in New Review held Viceroy Dufferin responsible for having deliberately roused them as a way of terrorising the politically conscious Hindus. Tilak wrote on the subject in the Kesari, toured Bombay & Yeola, & on 10^th September 1893 held a public meeting in Poona which passed the resolution affirming cow-protection was not responsible & traced the riots to the absence of any authoritative exposition of policy for the guidance of Govt. officials & the absence of authoritative record of existing religious & social rights & privileges. To maintain the spontaneous unity that the rioting had caused among Hindus of Poona, he proposed the formation of a procession on the day of the immersion of the statues at the end of the Ganapati week to develop a sense of solidarity among all Hindu Mahārāshtrians. This gradually brought about an annual Ganapati Festival. The Jihadi riots continued into the next year & the Octopus imposed punitive police & mass arrest & prosecution of Hindu leaders when & wherever Hindus retaliated, – a policy earnestly followed well into the 1970-80.

Sri Aurobindo: [While] we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions... the waters of the great deep are being stirred & that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilized societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely & ominously agitated. Already [1893] a red danger-signal has shot up from Prabhāsa-Pātaṇ, & sped across the country…. Perhaps the religious complexion of these occurrences has lulled our fears; but when turbulence has once become habitual in a people, it is only folly that will reckon on its preserving the original complexion…. I am speaking to that class which Mr Manmohan Ghose has called the thinking portion of the Indian community: well, let these thinking gentlemen carry their thoughtful intellects a hundred years back. Let them recollect what causes led from the religious madness of St. Bartholomew to the social madness of the Reign of Terror (q.v.)…. With us it rests – if indeed it is not too late – with our sincerity, our foresight, our promptness of thought & action that the hideous parallel shall not be followed up by a sequel as awful, as bloody & more purely disastrous… I again assert as our first & holiest duty, the elevation & enlightenment of the proletariate….” [NP]

It is an undeniable fact that a strong section of the Muslims, from the very beginning, adopted an unsympathetic attitude towards the Congress, though Muslims in general were indifferent…. Md. Rahimtulla Sayani, who presided over the Congress in 1896 at Calcutta, observed with truth: “It is imagined by some persons that all, or almost all, the Muslims of India are against the Congress movement; this is not true. Indeed by far the largest part, do not know what the Congress movement is. [RCM-4]

Lord Curzon…to Secretary of State Hamilton on 7 June, 1899: ‘I gather that you want me to ascertain what native princes or noblemen contribute to Congress funds & I will endeavour to discover this.’ But Curzon hardly required any inspiration. On November 18, 1900, he wrote to Hamilton: ‘My own belief is that the Congress is tottering to its fall, & one of my greatest ambitions while in India is to assist it to a peaceful demise.’ ― Towards the end of the year 1903 Lord Curzon’s Government proposed to separate the whole of Chittagong Division & the Districts of Dacca & Mymensingh from Bengal, & to incorporate them with Assam…. The crowning act of Lord Curzon’s folly was the partition of Bengal in the teeth of an angry, unanimous opposition, the like of which was never seen before during the British rule. [It] called forth all the latent forces of nationalism which had been gathering strength for years. Ere long, the protest took the form of Swadeshi movement which soon outstripped its original limitations of space & object & merged itself into an all-India national struggle for achieving freedom from the British yoke. That struggle continued through ups & downs, but without a break, until freedom was won. ― [By July 1905] the Govt. of India was in feverish haste to put into operation the entire scheme of Partition. On 3 August, 1905, they forwarded to the Secretary of State a draft proclamation & a draft Bill… The Secretary of State was equally prompt, & with his approval the Proclamation was published on September 1, 1905. It was the final decision regarding Partition & gave a list of the districts in Bengal which, along with Assam, would ‘form a separate Province called the Province of Eastern Bengal & Assam’. It was further stated that the new Province would be a Lieutenant-Governorship with Mr Joseph Bampfylde Fuller, then the Chief Commissioner of Assam, as the first Lieutenant-Governor. Finally, it stated that the new arrangement would come into force from October 16, 1905…. There is, however, no doubt that the solidarity of opposition against the Partition was gradually weakened. Lord Curzon won over Salimullah, the Nawab of Dacca, partly by advancing a loan at a very low rate of interest, & partly by holding out the hope that the interests of the Muslims will dominate the administration of the new Province, & the Nawab, as their leader, will occupy a unique position there, with Dacca, his own home, raised to the status of a great capital city of an opulent Province. The Nawab gradually became a great supporter of the Partition, & gathered a section of Muslims round him…. The new administration, in its actual operation, openly favoured the Muslims, & the first Lt.-Gov., Fuller, said with reference to the two main sections of population, the Musalmans & Hindus, that they were like his two queens of Indian legends, the first being the suo (favoured) & the second, the duo (neglected). No wonder that the followers of Salimullah would gain in strength. When the partition led to the Swadeshi, i.e. the movement for the use of indigenous & boycott of English goods, the Englishmen gradually became hostile to anti-Partition agitation, & withdrew their support from it. Injury to material interests proved a much stronger force than sympathy for a just cause. [RCM-I]

I entered into political action & continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim & one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom & the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. – Sri Aurobindo [to Bapista, Jan.5, 1920]

I often called on my elder brother Abinash Bhattacharya in the Yugāntar office. I remember going to see him on a morning of early July 1906. But Dada & Barinda had left for Howrah station to receive Sri Aurobindo who was due shortly to arrive…. My mind had involuntarily painted an image of him in accordance to what I had heard. Unconsciously, I was expecting to meet an imposing leader matched by an overbearance, eager to win me over by his moving speech. So, I was quite surprised when instead of an imposing person a lean youth alighted from the hansom.... But, despite its disproportionate leanness, his body seemed to possess tremendous strength. His young face bore mixed expressions of seriousness & happiness. But strangest of all were his large smouldering eyes; no one could escape their grip of sparkling effulgence. I kept observing him with wonder. [UPB]G.K. Gokhale was in the viceroy’s good graces; Rāshbehari Ghose became his cat’s-paw. Elected president of the Moderates-Only-Congress, Rāshbehari met with Lord Minto, who convinced him to run [that] Congress ‘in conformity with ideas as to which he & I might agree’. At its 1908 session, Rāshbehari proclaimed, when in the fullness of time the people have outgrown the present system of administration they might hope for “the extension to India of the colonial form of self-government though, this ideal can only be realised in the distant future”. [PH-2]

24 Sep.1909, Gokhale wrote to William Wedderburn: “I fear one of our numerous disintegrations has overtaken us again – this time it is the national movement that appears to be going to pieces, throwing us back on Provincialism & one grieves to find that there is no influence available anywhere in the country, capable of staying the process. The organisation evolved by Mr Hume out of the material prepared by a succession of workers in different parts of the country is crumbling to pieces & the effort of the nation’s heart & mind that brought us together in that organization seems to have almost exhausted itself. The split at Surat, followed by the vigour with which the Government came down on the Extremists everywhere, has turned the whole Extremist party into active enemies of the national constitutional movement. And the Moderates placed between the officials & the Extremists have not the necessary public spirit & energy of character to hold together effectively for long, thought they are numerically strong in the country. In addition to the incessant attacks of the extremists, the conduct of the Bengal Moderates is hastening the disintegration of the national movement. Bengal really has no leader on our side. Surendranath B is an orator, but he has no great courage or backbone, & he cannot keep in hand the unruly pack whom he presses to lead. Moreover there is no doubt that the position of the constitutional party has been rendered almost impossible by the Govt.’s refusal to reconsider the partition & the continued incarceration of the deportees. [BRN]

INC Dec.1909: Only 243 delegates attended. The first resolution related to the Indian Councils Act, 1909, otherwise known as the Morley-Minto Reforms. The Congress welcomed the liberal constitutional measures, but disapproved the creation of separate electorates through Surendranath’s resolution: “That this Congress… deems it its duty to place on record its strong sense of disapproval of the creation of separate electorates on the basis of religion….” The narrow-minded politicians pointed out that the Hindu minorities in East Bengal and Assam and the Punjab were not given a like privilege, but this was really going off the track. What was more egregious was the different franchises set up for the different communities. To become a voter, the Muslim voter had to pay income tax on Rs.3000 a year while the non-Muslim voter had to pay on Rs. 3 lakhs a year. It was enough for the Muslim graduate to have standing of 3 years to become a voter while the non-Muslim was required to have 30 years standing.” But the Congress had reason to feel proud that some measure of constitutional reform had been achieved. [Based on RR & PS’s accounts]

Jan 1910: The basis of our claim to Swaraj is not that the English bureaucracy is a bad or tyrannical Government; a bureaucracy is always inclined to be arrogant, self-sufficient, self-righteous & unsympathetic, to ignore the abuses with which it abounds, & a bureaucracy foreign & irresponsible to the people is likely to exhibit these characteristics in an exaggerated form. But even if we were ruled by a bureaucracy of angels, we should still lay claim to Swaraj & move towards national self-sufficiency & independence. On the same principle we do not notice or lay stress on the collisions between Englishmen & Indians which are an inevitable result of the anomalous & unnatural relations existing between the races. It is the relations themselves we seek to alter from the root instead of dealing with the symptoms. But the incident at Goalundo detailed in this week’s Dharma is one which the country has to take notice of, unless we are to suppose that the movement of 1905 was the last flaring up of national strength & spirit previous to extinction & that the extinction has now come. – Sri Aurobindo [SABCL Vol.2:358-62]

The Swadeshi movement acquired an All-India & national character almost immediately after its birth. It was the repercussion of this movement on Indian politics that gave rise to the Extremist or Nationalist Party under Tilak, Arabinda, Lajpat Rai, Khaparde & other leaders, & radically changed the conception of political goal & the method to achieve it, upheld by the Indian National Congress since its inception in 1885. In so doing, it brought about a great upheaval of nationalist sentiment all over India…. Not only this, but a closer examination will reveal the fact that almost all the characteristic features that marked India’s struggle for freedom up to 1947, may be traced to the Swadeshi movement. Even the Non-co-operation & Passive Resistance – the two Brahmāstras with which Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have fatally struck the British rule in India, – as well as the concomitant circumstances – terrible repression on the part of the Government & the heroic courage, sufferings, & self-sacrifice on the part of the people – had their origin in the Swadeshi movement. Arabinda preached Non-co-operation & Passive Resistance during the Swadeshi movement, long before Gandhi, & also anticipated his enunciation of the high moral & spiritual values of a non-violent struggle. He said: “On their fidelity to Swadeshi, to boycott, to passive resistance, rested the hope of a peaceful & spiritual revolution, on that it depended whether India would give the example unprecedented in history of a revolution worked only by moral force & peaceful pressure”…. All the oppressive & terrorising weapons in the armoury of the British Government which were hurled by them against the people till 1947 were first brought into operation against the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. The difference between the political ideologies of the Moderates & the Extremists, & of the Hindus & the Muslims, which the Swadeshi movement generated, persisted till the very end. It is impossible to understand the history of India’s struggle for freedom in its true perspective without a thorough knowledge of the Swadeshi movement in its different aspects…. Another topic to which unusual prominence has been given in this Volume is the militant aspect of nationalism, generally referred to as terrorism. The followers of this cult of violence, who should be more properly called revolutionaries, have suffered in the estimation of the people as a result of the preaching of the cult of Ahimsa (nonviolence) by Mahatma Gandhi. Without belittling in any way the high ethical ideal behind this cult it may be pointed out that non-violence was never known to have played any important role in practical politics, especially where a struggle against a highly organized military power was concerned. [RCM-1]

13 July, 1911: Be very careful to follow my instructions in avoiding the old kind of politics. Spirituality is India’s only politics, the fulfilment of the Sanātan Dharma its only Swaraj. I have no doubt we shall have to go through our Parliamentary period in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by seeing in practice how helpless it is to make nations blessed. India is passing really through the first stages of a sort of national Yoga. It was mastered in the inception by the inrush of divine force which came in 1905 & aroused it from its state of complete tāmasic ajñānam. But, as happens also with individuals, all that was evil, all the wrong sanskaras & wrong emotions & mental & moral habits rose with it & misused the divine force. Hence all that orgy of political oratory, democratic fervour, meetings, processions, passive resistance, all ending in bombs, revolvers & Coercion laws. It was a period of aśuddha rājasic activity & had to be followed by the inevitable period of tāmasic reaction from disappointed rajas. God has struck it all down, – Moderatism, the bastard child of English Liberalism; Nationalism, the mixed progeny of Europe & Asia; Terrorism, the abortive offspring of Bakunin & Mazzini. The latter still lives, but it is being slowly ground to pieces. At present, it is our only enemy, for I do not regard the British coercion as an enemy, but as a helper. If it can only rid us of this wild pamphleteering, these theatrical assassinations, these frenzied appeals to national hatred with their watchword of Feringhi-ko-māro, these childish conspiracies, these idiotic schemes for facing a modern army with half a dozen guns & some hundred lāthis, – the opium visions of rajōguna run mad, then I say, “More power to its elbow.” For it is only when this foolishness is done with, that truth will have a chance, the sattwic mind in India emerge & a really strong spiritual movement begin as a prelude to India’s regeneration. No doubt, there will be plenty of trouble & error still to face, but we shall have a chance of putting our feet on the right path. In all, I believe God to be guiding us, giving the necessary experiences, preparing the necessary conditions. – Sri Aurobindo [to Parthasārathi Aiyangar]

1914-15: In December 1914, she & Mr N. Subba Rau Pantulu, the General Sec. of the Congress, had conferred with Messrs. Tilak, Gokhale & others at Poona about an amendment in the INC’s 1908 Constitution that debarred Nationalists from joining the INC so as to take back Mr Tilak. Mr Rau went to Bombay to suggest their proposal with Pherozshah Mehta who refused to permit it. Back in Poona he met Mr Gokhale, taking his cue from Mr Mehta withdrew his support to the amendment proposed, in an oral message to Mrs Besant. In reply to a letter from Bhupendra Nath Basu the President-elect of the 19^th Congress of 1914 Gokhale wrote a confidential letter explaining the reasons of his change of view. The letter became public in no time. It was stated in it that Mr Tilak had openly avowed his intention of adopting the “Boycott of Govt.” & the obstructionist methods of the Irish if he entered the Congress. When Mr Tilak repudiated it, on an enquiry by Mrs Besant, an apology was no doubt offered to him, but the reconciliation was postponed. On 8^th February 1915, Mr S.R. Pantulu published in New India a statement in which he said that the Bombay conventionalist leaders (i.e., Mehta, Gokhale, & Wacha) were dead opposed to Mrs Besant’s amendment. After Mehta & Gokhale died in the last two months of 1915, no one was strong or capable enough to take charge of the INC: Sir N. Chandavarkar was a spent force, & H.C. Maitra, Mudholkar, & Subba Rau Pantulu were excellent Lieutenants, Captains or Colonels nothing more. S.N. Bannerjea was not quite in tune with the new thought, Srinivasa Sastri no doubt stepped into the shoes of Gokhale as president of the Servants of India Society but had never occupied the front bench, Malaviya was not in a position to lead nor had he the grit to force his way forward, Gandhi had not as yet start his public life on defined lines, Lajpat Rai was in exile in America, S.P. Sinha who presided over the Congress of the 1915 in Bombay was altogether out of tune with the new spirit & ceased to interest himself in Congress politics, and attempts made by Mrs Besant to bring the Moderate & Nationalist wings of the Congress together had failed again. In 1915, Lōkamānya Tilak should have been the uncrowned king not only Maharashtra, but of the whole of India, except for an unfortunate combination of forces to keep him out of what should legitimately have been his. But he himself wanted sedulously to avoid offending the susceptibilities of the Moderates but they did not respond to his approaches. As things stood, the Articles of the Constitution restricted the right of election of any Nationalist, for it contemplated a Moderate creed with Colonial Self-Government as the goal. (PS paraphrased) Jan.5, 1920: There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, & the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line & intention of political activity would differ considerably from anything now current in the field. I entered into political action & continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim & one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom & the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. That is now done & the Amritsar Congress is the seal upon it. The will is not as practical & compact nor by any means as organised & sustained in action as it should be, but there is the will & plenty of strong & able leaders to guide it. I consider that in spite of the inadequacy of the Reforms, the will to self-determination, if the country keeps its present temper, as I have no doubt it will, is bound to prevail before long. What preoccupies me now is the question what it is going to do with its self-determination, how will it use its freedom, on what lines is it going to determine its future? – Sri Aurobindo [to Bapista]

April, 1920: Why did I leave politics: Because our politics is not the genuine Indian thing; it is a European import, an imitation of European ways. But it too was needed. You & I also engaged in politics of the European style. If we had not done so, the country would not have risen, & we would not have had the experience or obtained a full development…. But now the time has come to take hold of the substance instead of extending the shadow. We have to awaken the true soul of India & to do everything in accordance with it. For the last ten years I have been silently pouring my influence into this foreign political vessel, & there has been some result…. But if I took up that work openly again... it would be supporting an alien law of being & a false political life. People now want to spiritualise politics... making a hodgepodge…. The result if there is any lasting result will be a sort of Indianised Bolshevism. I have no objection... let each one act according to his own inspiration.... I could use my spiritual influence; it would give strength to those who received it & they would work with great energy. But the force would be expended in shaping the image of a monkey & setting it up in the temple of Shiva…. But in the temple of India we want not Hanuman but the Godhead, the Avatar, Rama himself. – Sri Aurobindo [to Barindra]

*

1850s: Provisional Gov.-Gen. Sir Henry Lawrence (1806-57), born & brought up in India, declared in 1850s: “The people of India are capable of administering their own affairs & the municipal feeling is deep rooted in them. The village communities, each of which is a little republic, are the most abiding of Indian institutions.” [LR]

1922-23: On 18^th November, 1922, Sri Aurobindo had written to Chitta, “...I have been following with interest your political activities, specially your present attempt to give a more flexible & practically effective turn to the non-cooperation movement. I doubt whether you will succeed against such contrary forces.... I am most interested however in your indications about Swaraj; for I have been developing my own ideas about the organisation of a true Indian Swaraj &...look forward to see how far yours will fall in with mine.” [SABCL 26:438] ― When the British Govt. proposed a constitution for India in its Govt. of India Act 1921, Chitta & Dr. Bhagawan Das drafted ‘An Outline Scheme of Swaraj’ for the latter to present at the Gaya Congress in 1923. Chitta brought that draft to Sri Aurobindo on 5^th June, 1923, for his approval. In its final form, printed at Madras by Doraiswami Iyer, it advocated a pyramidal structure: practically autonomous local or village centres, out of which would grow of larger & larger centres, each with powers to manage its own affairs, & on top the Central Government working mainly as an advisory body but with the residuary power of control to be used only exceptionally. It synthesised all types of socio-political organisation: “By taking due account of these laws & facts, it is possible to minimise the disadvantages & pick out the advantages of all the many forms of socio-political organisation, which man has tried, of the village community, the city-guilds system, the city-state, the country-state, theocracy & sacerdotalism, autocracy & monarchy & despotism, aristocracy & feudalism & militarism, plutocracy & capitalism, bureaucracy & oligarchy of many kinds, & finally democracy & collectivism of many shapes & forms, each one only a lop-sided exaggeration of one constituent & necessary element in the corporate life of humanity, & synthesise them all anew in a truly beneficent form of Swaraj, government of the community by its Higher Self.” [Quoted from the booklet]

1929-46: For the Congress Session in 1929 (at Lahore) the Provincial Congress Committees had recommended Sardar Patel for the presidentship. But Gandhi gave the guddi to Jawaharlal because Motilal, whom Gandhi made president the previous year, had asked him for it. In 1930 Gandhi made Jawaharlal president again! There is little doubt that this identification of the Nehru family with the nation was a factor in the choice of Nehru as the first Prime Minister of free India & his daughter becoming the 3^rd. In 1946 too Gandhi made Nehru the Congress President though Patel both as the head of the Parliamentary Board & nominated by almost all Provincial Congress Committees should have succeeded Azad as president. Many years later Kriplani let the cat out of his bag: “All the P.C.C.s sent in the name of Patel by a majority & one or two proposed the name of Rajen Babu in addition, but none that of Jawaharlal. I knew Gandhi wanted Jawaharlal to be President & made the proposal myself saying ‘some Delhi fellows wanted Jawaharlal’s name’ & circulated it to the Working Committee to get their endorsement. I played this mischief.” It was during the seven-day all-party conference that Wavell had called in May 1946, that Gandhi had decided Sardar & Rajendra Prasad had ceased to be his “yes men”. Patel & Prasad (like Tilak) being genuine nationalists professed a secularism which did not copy that of Gandhi’s as Jawahar’s & Motilal’s did, i.e., weighted on the non-Hindu side – that was what Gandhi left unsaid. Asked for his reaction to the majority of his Working Committee preferring Patel to Nehru, Gandhi agreed that Patel would prove a better negotiator & organizer but Jawahar will not take second place & felt that Nehru would see reason when confronted with the problem of improving the lot of the masses. Neither he nor Indira did improve the lot of the masses, being too busy improving that of their own & of their chamchās…. [DD]1936: The Spanish civil war in 1936 became a conflict between opposing conceptualisations of society – between democracy & fascism, freedom & tyranny. It became evident that the Republican resistance to the Falangist forces in Spain…. [Presiding over] the annual session of the Congress at Lucknow in December 1936, Nehru declared, “In Spain today, our battles are being fought & we watch this struggle…with the painful anxieties of those who are themselves involved in it.” He also… accused [the League of Nations] of preventing the democratic forces from effectively combating fascism. ‘In the Spanish struggle,’ writes R.P. Dube, ‘all the values of European civilization which Nehru held dear to his heart seemed to be at stake – democracy, socialism, human dignity, self-determination, individual freedom.’ (Jawaharlal Nehru: A Study in Ideology & Social Change). [SD]15^th August 1947: President Rajendra Prasad: while our achievement is in no small measure due to our own sufferings & sacrifices, it is also the result of world forces & events &, last though not the least, it is the consummation & fulfilment of the historic tradition & democratic ideals of the British race. This is a great truth, which is not always realized, nor remembered, by the Indians. [RCM-3]1950: Nehru gave to the Constitution of India, its spirit & its soul, its philosophy & its vision; the system of parliamentary democracy was adopted by deliberate choice, Nehru said, ‘because, to some extent we had always thought it was in keeping with our own old traditions also’. [SK] ― Fabianism & the American, Swiss, Weimar, & Eire Constitutions held sway in the Constitution, while the only totally Indian influence was in a non-mandatory Article which permitted the setting up of village panchayats with some autonomy. [JS] ― Gandhi: ‘Illiteracy does not worry me. I would plump for unadulterated adult franchise for both men & women.’ Nehru: ‘In other countries real full-blooded political democracy came after a good deal of education had spread... in India we have taken a huge jump to 100% political democracy, without the wherewithal to supply the demand which a politically conscious electorate makes.’ [GSP; USA granted women political suffrage in 1920, 300 years post-1776; England in 1928, 713 years post-Magna Charta]

1950: When Red China invaded Tibet, & Nepal was in a grip of internal turmoil, the fears of both President Prasad & Sardar Patel who had been urging Nehru to ensure that Tibet continued as an independent buffer, proved correct. Since in India’s first communication with China vis-à-vis Tibet, Nehru had employed the word “sovereignty” instead of “suzerainty”, the questions he sent to China over the invasion proved futile. Patel had written to Nehru on 7^th November 1950, that China intended to establish hegemony over all of South-East Asia, Nehru had not replied to it. ― Not only did Nehru actively destroy opposition, he was also brazen about his repugnance towards his political rivals. K.M. Munshi writes that when Sardar Patel died in December 1950, Nehru issued a direction to the ministers & secretaries not to attend the funeral in Bombay. But President Rajendra Prasad went to the funeral. When Prasad died in 1963 in a Patna ashram, Nehru not only refused to change the schedule of his Rajasthan fundraising tour but also advised Dr. S. Radhakrishnan against going. – Maulana Azad too, revised his opinion of Nehru in the last years of his life (1955-58). Indeed he went to the extent of regretting having being so unfair to Patel & asserting that he was sure the country would have been better off if Patel had been Prime Minister. He realized that the best protection for the Muslims was the goodwill of the Hindus & a strong government. Nehru’s policies had weakened the administration & his economic theories had failed to improve the living conditions of the people, especially the Muslims. [DD]1995: …we cannot disown the use of science & technology to... get rid of the chronic poverty, ignorance & disease which still afflict millions in our country.... The pace of progress has fallen far short of aspirations... 47% of our population is still illiterate... gap between villages & towns is much wider today than in 1947. [MS]

1997: The six fatal mistakes that had ensured India’s political & economic backwardness: Total adult franchise; rejection of Rajāji’s & Patel’s advice to first educate the people; letting population to treble; disregarding the injunction of Article 45 of the Constitution to provide free & compulsory education for all below the age of 14; insulating the people from our ancient culture & heritage; not inculcating the sense of national identity; fostering the idea of freedom without duty or responsibility. Thus raising the question: Shall India lose her freedom or disintegrate? [NP]

*

References: LR = Lālā Lajpat Rai, Young India – An interpretation & a history of the nationalist movement from within, Servants of the People Society, Lahore, 4th Reprint, 1927; quote on Fly-leaf; RCM-1 = R.C.

Majumdar’s History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol.1, Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1963; NL = “New Lamps for Old”, Bande Mataram, SABCL Vol.1, pp.3-56; SB = Sachchidananda Bhattacharya, Dictionary of Indian History, Calcutta University, 2nd Ed., 1972; SLK = S.L. Karandikar, Lōkamānya Bal Gangādhara Tilak – The Hercules & Prometheus of Modern India, published by author from Sadāshiv Peth, Poona-2, 1957, p.112; RCM-2 = Drs R.C. Majumdar et al, History & Culture of the Indian People, 1963, Vol. X, part II, pp. 19, 53, 55, 398, 481, 484, 528-32, 542-43, 557, 575-74, & Vol. XI, p.79; RCM-3 = R.C. Majumdar’s History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol.3, Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1963 pp.818-19; RCM-4 = R.C. Majumdar et al, An Advanced History of India, 3rd Ed., MACMILLAN India, p.891; SA = Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram, SABCL Vol. I; APK = A.P. Kaminsky, The India Office–1880-1910, 1986, 159ff 557; UPB = Upendra Chandra Bhattacharya (1892-1974), Reminiscences; PH-1 = Peter Heehs, India’s Freedom Struggle 1857-1947 – A Short History, Oxford Univ. Press, Delhi; A Winner of a Delhi Administration State Prize, pp.152-54, 73-75; PH-2 = Peter Heehs, Lives of Sri Aurobindo, Columbia Univ. Press, USA, 2007; BRN = B.R. Nanda, G.K. Gokhale – The Indian Moderates & the British Raj, 1979, pp. 338, 339, 365; MVRR = M.V. Ramana Rao (an official in Indira’s A.I.C.C.), A Short History of the Indian National Congress, S. Chand & Co., 1959. Foreword by Indira Gandhi; Preface by U.N. Dhebar.; PS = Pattabhi Sitāramayyā: History of the Indian National Congress, 1935, pp.53, 19, 55, 89-99, 119-20; DD = Durga Das: India – From Curzon to Nehru & After, Collins, London, 1969; SK = Subash Kashyap: Secretary-General of the Parliament in “Nehru & the Constitution” in The Illustrated Weekly, 28 Nov. 1982; JS = Justice Shelat of Supreme Court of India, The Spirit of the Constitution, Bhāratīya Vidyā Bhavan, Bombay, 1967; GSP = G.S. Pāthak, Ex-Vice-President of India, Parliamentary Democracy, Bhāratīya Vidyā Bhavan, Bombay, 1971; MS = Manmohan Singh, quoted in Sri Aurobindo Action, Pondicherry, January, 1996; NP = Nāni Palkhiwāla, Integrated News, Chennai, Sept.1, 1997, p.23; SD = Shirsho Dasgupta: Eighty Years Later, A Homage to Catalonia: Indians & the Spanish Civil War, 2016]

Indian) Patriot English daily of Madras, edited (c.1909) by C. Karunakara Menon.

Indian People English bi-weekly of Imperial Press, Allahabad started in 1907.

Indian Review English monthly started in 1889, published by G.A. Natesan & Co., Madras.

(Indian) Social Reformer English weekly founded in 1890 & published from Pune; primarily devoted to social reform, it continued to be published till April 1953.

Indian Sociologist four-page monthly started in January 1905 in London by Shyamji Krishṇavarmā (SK), Japan snatched Port Arthur from Russia. The next month he & his friends started The Indian Home Rule Society to inspire opposition to British imperialism through non-violent political & social reforms in England & India. With the rise of the Nationalist Party in 1906, its tone grew more nationalistic & the Govt. clamped down on SK & banned the paper’s importation into India. SK & colleagues moved to Paris where the paper grew more violent & copies continued to enter India. With the French allying to the British in the First War SK & his group moved to Geneva & Indian Sociologist stopped in July 1914.

Indian World English monthly of Calcutta started in 1905, edited by Prithwish Roy.

Indrajit during Rāvana’s assault on Swarga, his eldest son Meghanāda captured Indra. Brahma gave him the title Indra-jeet (defeater of Indra) when he released Indra.

Indraprastha capital of the Pāndavas.

Indrasen charioteer of the Pāndavas who was sent to Dwārkā to bring Krishna to Indraprastha on the occasion of emperor Yudhishthīra’s Rājasūya Yajna (q.v.).

Indraswarup, Paramahamsa, Sri Aurobindo attended his discourse at the Gaekwād’s palace in Baroda.

Indumati sister of Bhōja, the king of Vidarbha, who chose Prince Aja for her husband at her svayamvara. She was killed when Nārada’s garland fell on her while she slept in an arbour.

Indu (Prakāsh) English-Marathi weekly founded in 1862 under the editorship of R.D. Ranade, then a professor at Elphinstone College. Later the editorship was entrusted to N.G. Chandāvarkar & the English section to K.G. Deshpande.

Inquisition The Roman Catholic ecclesiastical court founded in the 13th century under Pope Innocent III best remembered for its innocent devilish sentences.

Ionians inhabited the south of Greece before the Dorian invasion drove many of them across the Aegean to the central part of the west coast of Asia Minor, which became known as “Ionia”. Earliest Greek literature & philosophy developed here.

Iravatie/ Iravathi or Parushni a sacred river of Āryavarta corrupted by hostile rulers to Ravi; (2) a character in Kālidāsa’s Mālavikāgnimitram.

Isabella poem by Keats published shortly before his death in 1821.

Isaie French spelling of Isaiah, after whom is name the biblical Book of Isaiah which contributed significantly to Jewish & Christian religious traditions.

Ishān an epithet of Shiva, he is the guardian of the northeast quarter.

Isha (Upanishad) or Vājasaneyi, or Ishavas(h)yopaishad, last in Shukla Yajurveda.

Ishmaelite descendant of Ishmael, the outcast son of Abraham & Hagar in Genesis in the Old Testament. Ishmaelites were nomadic tribes some of which took up farming, caravan trading, & banditry. Moslems consider Arabs consider Arabs descendants of Ishmael, thus distinguishing themselves from the descendants of Isaac & Israel.

Isis (1) one of the most important goddesses of ancient Egypt, whose worship, originating under the New Empire (c.1700-1100 BC), spread throughout Egypt until it was universal there & then extended into other lands of the Mediterranean world. (2) One of four headstreams of river Thames!

Isis Unveiled principal two-volume work (1877) of Mme Blavatsky, the text-book for Theosophists; it is a compilation of mysticism, stories & archaeology, which hints at a lost knowledge that had been familiar to the initiates of antiquity.

Islam lit. submission to, having peace with, God; a religion founded by Prophet Mahomad. Although there have been many sects & movements in Islam, they are bound by a common faith & a sense of belonging to a single community; adherents of Islam are called Moslems or Muslims (one who submits). “The ethos of Islam is its attitude toward God: He is awful, transcendent, almighty, just, loving, merciful, & good; to His will they submit; Him they constantly praise & glorify; in Him alone they hope for there is an unbridgeable distinction between Creator & creature; they ask intercession of the prophets & saints, but they (the Shiites perhaps excepted) preserve jealously the distinction between Creator & creature, to Him alone they pray. He has given Man successive revelations through His prophets, but Man constantly falls away from these prophets & the merciful God sends new ones. Since Mahomad’s relations with the Jews & Christians became gradually worse, although Islam accepts Abraham & Jesus as the two principal prophets of God it believes that wherever the Koran differs from the Old Testament & the New Testament, it is because the Jews & Christians have corrupted or perverted the biblical text. Mohammed is the last prophet, & when the world falls away from Islam the end of the world will come. Islam is theoretically, a theocracy, & its caliph the vice-regent of God. The Prophet was succeeded by his last father-in-law Abu Bakr (573-634) as the first caliph; the 2^nd caliph was Omar (c.581-killed in 644) who had been adviser to the Prophet & had organised the shura which had first elected Abu Bakr, & after Bakr’s death himself; the 3^rd elected caliph was Othman (c.574-656) a son-in-law of the Prophet who belonged to the Omayyad; the 4^th & last elected caliph was the Prophet’s first cousin & second convert Ali ibn Abi Tālib (c.602-killed in 661). [Compiled from Encyclopaedias Britannica & Columbia, (1950)]

Sri Aurobindo: The first four were real Khalifās. Afterwards it became a political institution. ─ In the first four there was the reality of the Khilafat. They were centres of Islamic culture & had some spirituality. After that the Umayyad & other dynasties came & it became more & more religious & external. When it passed into the hands of the Turks it became a mere political institution without the fact of it. ─ Every time the Light has tried to descend it has met with resistance & opposition…. Sons of Light come, the earth denies & rejects them; afterwards, accepts them in name to reject them in substance. Only a small minority grows towards a spiritual birth, & it is through them that the Divine manifestation takes place.... If kings & emperors had left Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual it would have been much better for real Buddhism. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline…. The same happened to Mohammedanism. When it succeeded, the followers of the Prophet became Khalifās; after them the religion declined. It is not kings & emperors that keep alive spirituality but people who are really spiritual that do so.” [Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, 2007, pp. 268, 269-70, 578-79]

Muawiya I established the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) becoming its first caliph in 661. He was the son of Abu Sufyan, a native of Mecca. He was converted the year of the surrender of Mecca & became Mohammed’s secretary. Under Omar he became the very able governor of Syria. He struggled with Ali over the government of the empire & led in the deposition of Hasan. As the 5^th caliph he made Islam an autocracy, retaining the old forms of self-government. He made the Moslem empire the remarkably unified force that it was. Under him the Arabs became an obedient, flexible instrument of war & incorporated the Caucasus, Transoxiana, Sindh, the Maghreb & the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) into the Muslim world. ─ The Umayyad Caliphate was succeeded by the Abbasside. The rulers of the Ottoman Empire with its capital in Istanbul (Constantinople) claimed caliphal authority from 1517, inaugurating the Fourth major Caliphate (which was dissolved in March 1924). During the history of Islam, a few other Muslim states, almost all hereditary monarchies, have claimed to be caliphates. Historically, the caliphates were polities based in Islam which developed into multi-ethnic trans-national empires. [Vide Columbia Encyclopedia, 1950, & the Internet]

Sri Aurobindo a Mohammedan disciple: All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God & of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal & universal & infinite & cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only…. Hindus & Confucians & Taoists & all others have as much right to enter into relation with God & find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time & finally decline & perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that Koran was the last message of God & there would be no other. God & Truth outlast these religions & manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. [SABCL 26:483-84]

The Mother: In all religions we find invariably a certain number of people who possess a great emotional capacity & are full of a real & ardent aspiration, but have a very simple mind & do not feel the need of approaching the Divine through knowledge. For such natures religion has a use & it is even necessary for them; for, through external forms…it offers a kind of support & help to their inner spiritual aspiration…. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion. Put anywhere else, born into any other cult, they would have found there & lived there the same spiritual life. It is their own capacity; it is some power of their inner being & not the religion they profess that has made them what they are. This power in their nature is such that religion to them does not become a slavery or a bondage…it would be a crime to disturb their faith. [CWM Vol. 3:76-81]

Isles of the Blest islands in the Western Ocean; the Druids & hence the Celts believe that it is in these islands that souls of favoured mortals are received by the gods & live happily in paradise. The Canaries & the Madeira Islands were sometimes identified with them [s/a Elysium]

Israel denotes both the Jewish state & the people who are descendants of Jacob. In the Old Testament, the term “Kingdom of Israel” is used to designate two political units: the united kingdom of Israel under kings Saul, David, & Solomon that lasted from c.1020 to 922 BC; & the northern kingdom of Israel including the territories of the ten northern tribes, that was established in 922 BC. The southern kingdom, ruled by David’s dynasty, was thereafter referred to as Judah.

Ithaca centre of the island-kingdom of Odysseus in the Ionian Sea.

Ito, Prince (Hirobumi) (1841-1909), Japanese statesman, the outstanding figure in the modernization of Japan. He was assassinated by a Korean in 1909.

Ivans (1) Ivan the Great, Ivan III (1440-1505), Grand Duke of Moscow (1462-1505); (2) Ivan the Terrible, Ivan IV (1530-84), Grand Duke of Moscow, Czar in 1547.

Iyer, N.P. Subramania astrologer of Thanjavur famous for his Kālaprakaśikā (q.v.)