Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Letters

Fragment ID: 6369

(this fragment is largest or earliest found passage)

Sri Aurobindo — Sayajirao Gaekwar, the Maharaja of Baroda

March 29, 1905

To the Maharaja¹

29 March 1905

May it please Your Highness,

Last December Your Highness was graciously pleased to grant my request that my brother might be entertained in Your Highness’ service and directed me to remind Your Highness of the matter subsequently.

Owing to my brother’s ill-health during the last two months, I have not thought it right to do so as yet, but now that Your Highness is leaving for Europe, I am obliged to take advantage of Your Highness’ kind permission, hoping that Your Highness will consent to his joining whatever work may be assigned to him in June after he has recovered his health by a change.

My brother has read up to the F. A. of the Calcutta University. He had to give up the University course for certain family reasons, but since then he has studied privately with my elder brother and myself and can both speak and write English well and fluently; he has indeed some little literary ability in this direction. He can speak Hindustani fluently and has learned by this time to read and understand Marathi to some extent.

Your Highness asked me in December in what Department I should like him to be put. A work [?in which]² his knowledge of English would be immediately useful would perhaps be most suitable to him at the beginning. But this is a matter which I would prefer to leave entirely in Your Highness’ hands. Your Highness is aware of the circumstances which oblige me to request this kindness at Your Highness’ hands and it will be a great obligation to me if Your Highness will graciously keep them in mind when deciding this point.

Your Highness was once gracious enough to offer under similar circumstances to make an appointment of Rs 60. A start of the same kind [of] Rs 50 or 60 would be enough to induce my brother to settle here in preference to Bengal. If Your Highness will give him this start, it will be only adding one more act of grace to the uniform kindness and indulgence which Your Highness has shown to me ever since I came to Baroda.

I remain

Your Highness’ loyal servant

Aravind. A. Ghose

¹ 29 March 1905. Sri Aurobindo wrote this letter to his employer, Sayajirao Gaekwar (1863–1939), Maharaja of Baroda from 1875 to 1939, on behalf of his younger brother, Barindra Kumar Ghose, who then was living with him in Baroda. Barin had just returned from Bengal, where for two or three years he had been helping to organise the revolutionary secret society that Sri Aurobindo, Jatin Banerji and others had set up. The Maharaja agreed to give Barin a job, but Barin went back to Bengal before he could begin work.

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² MS damaged; conjectural reconstruction. – Ed.

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