Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 149

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

August 27, 1931

The calumnies don’t really matter. What Tagore says about gossip and rumours is quite right, not only of Bengal, but everywhere. It is part of average human nature (the lower vital again!) to take pleasure in scandal, nindā [criticism], believing and reporting anything against people, and if nothing true or half true can be found, inventing or reporting inventions. The best thing is not to pay any attention – if it is forced on one, then a quiet correction or contradiction is enough. And for the rest to go straight on one’s way, casting these saletés behind you.

I am afraid Pramatha Chowdhuri¹ is asking from me a thing psychologically impossible. You know that I have forbidden myself to write anything for publication for some time past and some time to come – I am self-debarred from press, platform and public. Even if it were otherwise, it would be impossible under present circumstances to write at a week’s notice. You will present him my excuses in your best and most tactful manner.

P.S. I take Pramatha Chowdhuri’s remark as a complimentary hyperbole. The Golden Book will be as golden and Tagore’s work and fame as solid without any lucubration from me to gild the one or to buttress the other.

¹ Pramatha Chowdhuri (7 August 1868 – 2 September 1946). In 1899, he married Indira Devi, daughter of Satyendranath Tagore, an elder brother of Rabindranath. He knew thoroughly English and French literatures. He founded the magazine Sabuj Patra and wrote under the pseudonym Birbal. A powerful group of new writers gathered around Sabuj Patra and gave a new direction to the Bengali language.

Back