Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3

Letter ID: 843

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

October 20, 1936

(Padmaja, daughter of Sarojini Naidu, bore a tale to Dilipda, which troubled him no end, as it concerned two of his great friends: Subhash Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru.)

I would certainly not hang anybody on the testimony of Padmaja; she has too much of a delight in scandal-mongering of the worst kind; but I suppose she would not cite Jawaharlal as a witness if there were nothing in it. The question is: how much exaggeration? I am afraid it is not at all impossible that Subhash should say one thing to Jawaharlal and quite another to somebody else. Politics is like that, a dirty and corrupting business full of “policy”, “strategy”, “tactics”, “diplomacy”, in other words, lying, tricking, manœuvring of all kinds. A few escape the corruption but most don’t. It has after all always been a trade or art of Kautilya from the beginning, and to touch it and not be corrupted is far from easy. For it is a field in which people fix their eyes on the thing to be achieved and soon become careless about the character of the means, while ambition, ego and self-interest come Pouring in to aid the process. Human nature is prone enough to crookedness as it is, but here the ordinary restraints put upon it fail to be at all effective. That however is general – in a particular case one can’t pronounce without knowing the circumstances more at first hand or before having seen the documents cited.

I hope this attack prolonged by so many outward circum-¦ stances heaping themselves on each other, will now pass. As you have got over the pressure of the vital longing and of the will to doubt (though the doubt of yourself continues), I hope that you will get over all the emotional weakness of oversensitiveness (don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean getting over the emotions, for the emotional being is a necessity of the Yoga) and be able to present a quiet front to the speech and action and event that disturb it. The will to do so was growing and where the will affirms itself, success in the end must come. Then the fixing of the quiet mind will provide the ground that is needed for peace and silence. It is the sensitiveness and the self-doubt that come across now and bring the relapse into despondency. If these can go, the way will become clear.