Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Letters
Fragment ID: 22144
A&R.– 1988, April, p. 66
... with whatever the superior wisdom and political experience of the ruling race to grant to them. You are asking for a thing contrary to human nature.*1
I state the difficulty broadly as I see it; I shall try to make my meaning more precise in a subsequent letter. Meanwhile all I can say is that whatever can be done to alter this state [of] things – subject to my conscience and lights, I am always willing to do. But my scope of action is very limited. I am an exile in French India, in danger of arrest or internment if I step across the border. I have long abstained from all intermiscence in politics, and anything I might say, write or do now would be misunderstood by the Government. They regard me, I believe[,] as an arch revolutionary and irreconcilable; any assertion of mine to the contrary would be regarded probably as camouflage or covert for unavowable designs. Nor could I engage to satisfy them by my utterances or action2, I would necessarily have to speak and act from the point of view of Indian aspiration to liberty and this is a thing which they still regard [as] objectionable. All that I can see at present to do is in the line I am doing, but that is necessar[il]y a [...]3 kind of action which can only bear fruit indirectly and not in the [? present.]
But if the English mind would take the first step and try to see things from the Indian standpoint – [......]4 and act accordingly, all difficulties might be solved. The Indian mind has not the Irish memory for past wrongs and discords, it forgives and forgets easily. Only it must be made to feel that the approach on the other side is frank and whole hearted. If it once felt that, every difficulty would be solved[.]
I send you my volume of poems since you have desired to read it, but with some hesitation. I doubt whether you will find much that is worth your perusal except two or three of the shorter poems, they were written long ago[,] some as many as 20 or 25 years, and are rather gropings after verse and style than a self-expression[.] It is only now that I am doing work which I feel has some chance of living, but it is not yet ready for publication.
1 The asterisk is Sri Aurobindo’s; its significance is not known.
2 Or conduct
3 Illegible word.
4 Two or three words illegible.