Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part One. Autobiographical Notes
2. Sri Aurobindo’s corrections of statements in a proposed biography
Political Life, 1893–1910
A General Note on Sri Aurobindo’s Political Life
There were three sides to Sri Aurobindo’s political ideas and activities. First, there was the action with which he started, a secret revolutionary propaganda and organisation of which the central object was the preparation of an armed insurrection. Secondly, there was a public propaganda intended to convert the whole nation to the ideal of independence which was regarded, when he entered into politics, by the vast majority of Indians as unpractical and impossible, an almost insane chimera. It was thought that the British Empire was too powerful and India too weak, effectively disarmed and impotent even to dream of the success of such an endeavour. Thirdly, there was the organisation of the people to carry on a public and united opposition and undermining of the foreign rule through an increasing non-cooperation and passive resistance.
At that time the military organisation of the great
empires and their means of military action were not so overwhelming and
apparently irresistible as they now are: the rifle was still the decisive
weapon, air power had not developed and the force of artillery was not so
devastating as it afterwards became. India was disarmed, but Sri Aurobindo
thought that with proper organisation and help from outside this difficulty
might be overcome and in so vast a country as India and with the smallness of
the regular British armies, even a guerrilla warfare accompanied by general
resistance and revolt might be effective. There was also the possibility of a
great revolt in the Indian army. At the same time he had studied the temperament
and characteristics of the British people and the turn of their political
instincts, and he believed that although they would resist any attempt at
self-liberation by the Indian people and would at the most only concede very
slowly such reforms as would not weaken their 
imperial control, still they were not of the kind which would be ruthlessly
adamantine to the end: if they found resistance and revolt becoming general and
persistent they would in the end try to arrive at an accommodation to save what
they could of their empire or in an extremity prefer to grant independence
rather than have it forcefully wrested from their hands.
In some quarters there is the idea that Sri Aurobindo’s political standpoint was entirely pacifist, that he was opposed in principle and in practice to all violence and that he denounced terrorism, insurrection etc. as entirely forbidden by the spirit and letter of the Hindu religion. It is even suggested that he was a forerunner of the gospel of Ahimsa. This is quite incorrect. Sri Aurobindo is neither an impotent moralist nor a weak pacifist.
The rule of confining political action to passive
resistance was adopted as the best policy for the National Movement at that
stage and not as a part of a gospel of Non-violence or pacific idealism. Peace
is a part of the highest ideal, but it must be spiritual or at the very least
psychological in its basis; without a change in human nature it cannot come with
any finality. If it is attempted on any other basis (moral principle or gospel
of Ahimsa or any other) it will fail, and even may leave things worse than
before. He is in favour of an attempt to put down war by international agreement
and international force, what is now contemplated in the “New Order”, if that
proves possible, but that would not be Ahimsa, it would be a putting down of
anarchic force by legal force, and even then one cannot be sure that it would be
permanent. Within nations this sort of peace has been secured, but it does not
prevent occasional civil wars and revolutions and political outbreaks and
repressions, sometimes of a sanguinary character. The same might happen to a
similar world-peace. Sri Aurobindo has never concealed his opinion that a nation
is entitled to attain its freedom by violence, if it can do so or if there is no
other way; whether it should do so or not, depends on what is the best policy,
not on ethical considerations. Sri Aurobindo’s position and practice in this
matter was the same as Tilak’s and that of 
other
Nationalist leaders who were by no means Pacifists or worshippers of
Ahimsa.1
For the first few years in India, Sri Aurobindo
abstained from any political activity (except the writing of the articles in the
Indu Prakash) and studied the conditions in the country so that he might be
able to judge more maturely what could be done. Then he made his first move when
he sent a young Bengali soldier of the Baroda army, Jatin Banerji, as his
lieutenant to Bengal with a programme of preparation and action which he thought
might occupy a period of 30 years before fruition could become possible. As a
matter of fact it has taken 50 years for the movement of liberation to arrive at
fruition and the beginning of complete success. The idea was to establish
secretly or, as far as visible action could be taken, under various pretexts and
covers, revolutionary propaganda and recruiting throughout Bengal. This was to
be done among the youth of the country while sympathy and support and financial
and other assistance were to be obtained from the older men who had advanced
views or could be won over to them. Centres were to be established in every town
and eventually in every village. Societies of young men were to be established
with various ostensible objects, cultural, intellectual or moral and those
already existing were to be won over for revolutionary use. Young men were to be
trained in activities which might be helpful for ultimate military action, such
as riding, physical training, athletics of various kinds, drill and organised
movement. As soon as the idea was sown it attained a rapid prosperity; already
existing small groups and associations of young men who had not yet the clear
idea or any settled programme of revolution began to turn in this direction and
a few who had already the revolutionary aim were contacted and soon developed
activity on organised lines; the few rapidly became many. Meanwhile Sri
Aurobindo had met a member of the Secret Society in Western India, and taken the
oath of the Society and had been introduced 
to
the Council in Bombay. His future action was not pursued under any directions by
this Council, but he took up on his own responsibility the task of generalising
support for its objects in Bengal where as yet it had no membership or
following. He spoke of the Society and its aim to P. Mitter and other leading
men of the revolutionary group in Bengal and they took the oath of the Society
and agreed to carry out its objects on the lines suggested by Sri Aurobindo. The
special cover used by Mitter’s group was association for lathi play which had
already been popularised to some extent by Sarala Ghoshal in Bengal among the
young men; but other groups used other ostensible covers. Sri Aurobindo’s
attempt at a close organisation of the whole movement did not succeed, but the
movement itself did not suffer by that, for the general idea was taken up and
activity of many separate groups led to a greater and more widespread diffusion
of the revolutionary drive and its action. Afterwards there came the partition
of Bengal and a general outburst of revolt which favoured the rise of the
extremist party and the great nationalist movement. Sri Aurobindo’s activities
were then turned more and more in this direction and the secret action became a
secondary and subordinate element. He took advantage, however, of the Swadeshi
movement to popularise the idea of violent revolt in the future. At Barin’s
suggestion he agreed to the starting of a paper, Yugantar, which was to
preach open revolt and the absolute denial of the British rule and include such
items as a series of articles containing instructions for guerrilla warfare. Sri
Aurobindo himself wrote some of the opening articles in the early numbers and he
always exercised a general control; when a member of the sub-editorial staff,
Swami Vivekananda’s brother, presented himself on his own motion to the police
in a search as the editor of the paper and was prosecuted, the Yugantar
under Sri Aurobindo’s orders adopted the policy of refusing to defend itself in
a British Court on the ground that it did not recognise the foreign Government
and this immensely increased the prestige and influence of the paper. It had as
its chief writers and directors three of the ablest younger writers in Bengal,
and it at once acquired an immense influence throughout Bengal. It 
may be noted that the Secret Society did not include terrorism in its
programme but this element grew up in Bengal as a result of the strong
repression and the reaction to it in that province.
The public activity of Sri Aurobindo began with the writing of the articles in the Indu Prakash. These [nine]2 articles written at the instance of K. G. Deshpande, editor of the paper and Sri Aurobindo’s Cambridge friend, under the caption “New Lamps for Old” vehemently denounced the then congress policy of pray, petition and protest and called for a dynamic leadership based upon self-help and fearlessness. But this outspoken and irrefutable criticism was checked by the action of a Moderate leader who frightened the editor and thus prevented any full development of his ideas in the paper; he had to turn aside to generalities such as the necessity of extending the activities of the Congress beyond the circle of the bourgeois or middle class and calling into it the masses. Finally, Sri Aurobindo suspended all public activity of this kind and worked only in secret till 1905, but he contacted Tilak whom he regarded as the one possible leader for a revolutionary party and met him at the Ahmedabad Congress; there Tilak took him out of the pandal and talked to him for an hour in the grounds expressing his contempt for the Reformist movement and explaining his own line of action in Maharashtra.
Sri Aurobindo included in the scope of his
revolutionary work one kind of activity which afterwards became an important
item in the public programme of the Nationalist party. He encouraged the young
men in the centres of work to propagate the Swadeshi idea which at that time was
only in its infancy and hardly more than a fad of the few. One of the ablest men
in these revolutionary groups was a Mahratta named Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar who
was an able writer in Bengali (his family had been long domiciled in Bengal) and
who had written a popular life of Shivaji in Bengali in which he first brought
in the name of Swaraj, afterwards adopted by the Nationalists as their word for
independence,– Swaraj became one item of the fourfold 
Nationalist programme. He published a book entitled Desher Katha
describing in exhaustive detail the British commercial and industrial
exploitation of India. This book had an immense repercussion in Bengal, captured
the mind of young Bengal and assisted more than anything else in the preparation
of the Swadeshi movement. Sri Aurobindo himself had always considered the
shaking off of this economic yoke and the development of Indian trade and
industry as a necessary concomitant of the revolutionary endeavour.
As long as he was in the Baroda service, Sri Aurobindo
could not take part publicly in politics. Apart from that, he preferred to
remain and act and even to lead from behind the scenes without his name being
known in public; it was the Government’s action in prosecuting him as editor of
the Bande Mataram that forced him into public view. And from that time
forward he became openly, what he had been for sometime already, a prominent
leader of the Nationalist party, its principal leader in action in Bengal and
the organiser there of its policy and strategy. He had decided in his mind the
lines on which he wanted the country’s action to run: what he planned was very
much the same as was developed afterwards in Ireland as the Sinn Fein movement;
but Sri Aurobindo did not derive his ideas, as some have represented, from
Ireland, for the Irish movement became prominent later and he knew nothing of it
till after he had withdrawn to Pondicherry. There was moreover a capital
difference between India and Ireland which made his work much more difficult;
for all its past history had accustomed the Irish people to rebellion against
British rule and this history might be even described as a constant struggle for
independence intermittent in its action but permanently there in principle;
there was nothing of this kind in India. Sri Aurobindo had to establish and
generalise the idea of independence in the mind of the Indian people and at the
same time to push first a party and then the whole nation into an intense and
organised political activity which would lead to the accomplishment of that
ideal. His idea was to capture the Congress and to make it an instrument for
revolutionary action instead of a centre of a timid constitutional agitation
which 
would only talk and pass resolutions and
recommendations to the foreign Government; if the Congress could not be
captured, then a central revolutionary body would have to be created which could
do this work. It was to be a sort of State within the State giving its
directions to the people and creating organised bodies and institutions which
would be its means of action; there must be an increasing non-cooperation and
passive resistance which would render the administration of the country by a
foreign Government difficult or finally impossible, a universal unrest which
would wear down repression and finally, if need be, an open revolt all over the
country. This plan included a boycott of British trade, the substitution of
national schools for the Government institutions, the creation of arbitration
courts to which the people could resort instead of depending on the ordinary
courts of law, the creation of volunteer forces which would be the nucleus of an
army of open revolt, and all other action that could make the programme
complete. The part Sri Aurobindo took publicly in Indian politics was of brief
duration, for he turned aside from it in 1910 and withdrew to Pondicherry; much
of his programme lapsed in his absence, but enough had been done to change the
whole face of Indian politics and the whole spirit of the Indian people, to make
independence its aim and non-cooperation and resistance its method, and even an
imperfect application of this policy heightening into sporadic periods of revolt
has been sufficient to bring about the victory. The course of subsequent events
followed largely the line of Sri Aurobindo’s idea. The Congress was finally
captured by the Nationalist party, declared independence its aim, organised
itself for action, took almost the whole nation minus a majority of the
Mohammedans and a minority of the depressed classes into acceptance of its
leadership and eventually formed the first national, though not as yet an
independent, Government in India and secured from Britain acceptance of
independence for India.3
At first Sri Aurobindo took part in Congress politics
only from behind the scenes as he had not yet
decided to leave the Baroda service; but he took long leave without pay in
which, besides carrying on personally the secret revolutionary work, he attended
the Barisal Conference broken up by the police and toured East Bengal along with
Bepin Pal and associated himself closely with the forward group in the Congress.
It was during this period that he joined Bepin Pal in the editing of the
Bande Mataram, founded the new political party in Bengal and attended the
Congress session at Calcutta at which the Extremists, though still a minority,
succeeded under the leadership of Tilak in imposing part of their political
programme on the Congress. The founding of the Bengal National College gave him
the opportunity he needed and enabled him to resign his position in the Baroda
service and join the college as its Principal. Subodh Mullick, one of Sri
Aurobindo’s collaborators in his secret action and afterwards also in Congress
politics, in whose house he usually lived when he was in Calcutta, had given a
lakh of rupees for this foundation and had stipulated that Sri Aurobindo should
be given a post of professor in the college with a salary of Rs. 150; so he was
now free to give his whole time to the service of the country. Bepin Pal, who
had been long expounding a policy of self-help and non-cooperation in his weekly
journal, now started a daily with the name of Bande Mataram, but it was
likely to be a brief adventure since he began with only Rs. 500 in his pocket
and no firm assurance of financial assistance in the future. He asked Sri
Aurobindo to join him in this venture to which a ready consent was given, for
now Sri Aurobindo saw his opportunity for starting the public propaganda
necessary for his revolutionary purpose. He called a meeting of the forward
group of young men in the Congress and [they] decided then to organise
themselves openly as a new political party joining hands with the corresponding
group in Maharashtra under the proclaimed leadership of Tilak and to join battle
with the Moderate party which was done at the Calcutta session. He also
persuaded them to take up the Bande Mataram daily as their party organ
and a Bande Mataram Company was started to finance the paper, whose direction
Sri Aurobindo undertook during the absence of
Bepin Pal who was sent on a tour in the districts to proclaim the purpose and
programme of the new party. The new party was at once successful and the
Bande Mataram paper began to circulate throughout India. On its staff were
not only Bepin Pal and Sri Aurobindo but some other very able writers, Shyam
Sundar Chakravarty, Hemendra Prasad Ghose and Bejoy Chatterji. Shyam Sundar and
Bejoy were masters of the English language, each with a style of his own; Shyam
Sundar caught up something like Sri Aurobindo’s way of writing and later on many
took his articles for Sri Aurobindo’s. But after a time dissensions arose
between Bepin Pal on one side and the other contributors and the directors of
the Company because of temperamental incompatibility and differences of
political view especially with regard to the secret revolutionary action with
which others sympathised but to which Bepin Pal was opposed. This ended soon in
Bepin Pal’s separation from the journal. Sri Aurobindo would not have consented
to this departure, for he regarded the qualities of Pal as a great asset to the
Bande Mataram, since Pal, though not a man of action or capable of political
leadership, was perhaps the best and most original political thinker in the
country, an excellent writer and a magnificent orator: but the separation was
effected behind Sri Aurobindo’s back when he was convalescing from a dangerous
attack of fever. His name was even announced without his consent in Bande
Mataram as editor but for one day only, as he immediately put a stop to it
since he was still formally in the Baroda service and in no way eager to have
his name brought forward in public. Henceforward, however, he controlled the
policy of the Bande Mataram along with that of the party in Bengal. Bepin
Pal had stated the aim of the new party as complete self-government free from
British control but this could have meant or at least included the Moderate aim
of colonial self-government and Dadabhai Naoroji as President of the Calcutta
session of the Congress had actually tried to capture the name of Swaraj, the
Extremists’ term for independence, for this colonial self-government. Sri
Aurobindo’s first preoccupation was to declare openly for complete and absolute
independence as the aim of political action in India and to 
insist on this persistently in the pages of the journal; he was the
first politician in India who had the courage to do this in public and he was
immediately successful. The party took up the word Swaraj to express its own
ideal of independence and it soon spread everywhere; but it was taken up as the
ideal of the Congress much later on at the [Lahore]4 session of that body when it had
been reconstituted and renovated under Nationalist leadership. The journal
declared and developed a new political programme for the country as the
programme of the Nationalist Party, non-cooperation, passive resistance,
Swadeshi, Boycott, national education, settlement of disputes in law by popular
arbitration and other items of Sri Aurobindo’s plan. Sri Aurobindo published in
the paper a series of articles on passive resistance, another developing a
political philosophy of revolution and wrote many leaders aimed at destroying
the shibboleths and superstitions of the Moderate Party, such as the belief in
British justice and benefits bestowed by foreign government in India, faith in
British law courts and in the adequacy of the education given in schools and
universities in India and stressed more strongly and persistently than had been
done the emasculation, stagnation or slow progress, poverty, economic
dependence, absence of a rich industrial activity and all other evil results of
a foreign government; he insisted especially that even if an alien rule were
benevolent and beneficent, that could not be a substitute for a free and healthy
national life. Assisted by this publicity the ideas of the Nationalists gained
ground everywhere especially in the Punjab which had before been predominantly
moderate. The Bande Mataram was almost unique in journalistic history in
the influence it exercised in converting the mind of a people and preparing it
for revolution. But its weakness was on the financial side; for the Extremists
were still a poor man’s party. So long as Sri Aurobindo was there in active
control, he managed with great difficulty to secure sufficient public support
for running the paper, but not for expanding it as he wanted, and when he was
arrested and held in jail 
for a year, the
economic situation of Bande Mataram became desperate: finally, it was
decided that the journal should die a glorious death rather than perish by
starvation and Bejoy Chatterji was commissioned to write an article for which
the Government would certainly stop the publication of the paper. Sri Aurobindo
had always taken care to give no handle in the editorial articles of the
Bande Mataram either for a prosecution for sedition or any other drastic
action fatal to its existence; an editor of The Statesman complained that
the paper reeked with sedition patently visible between every line but it was so
skilfully written that no legal action could be taken. The manoeuvre succeeded
and the life of the Bande Mataram came to an end in Sri Aurobindo’s
absence.
The Nationalist programme could only achieve a partial
beginning before it was temporarily broken by severe government repression. Its
most important practical item was Swadeshi plus Boycott; for Swadeshi much was
done to make the idea general and a few beginnings were made, but the greater
results showed themselves only afterwards in the course of time. Sri Aurobindo
was anxious that this part of the movement should be not only propagated in idea
but given a practical organisation and an effective force. He wrote from Baroda
asking whether it would not be possible to bring in the industrialists and
manufacturers and gain the financial support of landed magnates and create an
organisation in which men of industrial and commercial ability and experience
and not politicians alone could direct operations and devise means of carrying
out the policy; but he was told that it was impossible, the industrialists and
the landed magnates were too timid to join in the movement, and the big
commercial men were all interested in the import of British goods and therefore
on the side of the status quo: so he had to abandon his idea of the organisation
of Swadeshi and Boycott. Both Tilak and Sri Aurobindo were in favour of an
effective boycott of British goods – but of British goods only; for there was
little in the country to replace foreign articles: so they recommended the
substitution for the British of foreign goods from Germany and Austria and
America so that the fullest pressure might be
brought upon England. They wanted the Boycott to be a political weapon and not
merely an aid to Swadeshi; the total boycott of all foreign goods was an
impracticable idea and the very limited application of it recommended in
Congress resolutions was too small to be politically effective. They were for
national self-sufficiency in key industries, the production of necessities and
of all manufactures of which India had the natural means, but complete
self-sufficiency or autarchy did not seem practicable or even desirable since a
free India would need to export goods as well as supply them for internal
consumption and for that she must import as well and maintain an international
exchange. But the sudden enthusiasm for the boycott of all foreign goods was
wide and sweeping and the leaders had to conform to this popular cry and be
content with the impulse it gave to the Swadeshi idea. National education was
another item to which Sri Aurobindo attached much importance. He had been
disgusted with the education given by the British system in the schools and
colleges and universities, a system of which as a professor in the Baroda
College he had full experience. He felt that it tended to dull and impoverish
and tie up the naturally quick and brilliant and supple Indian intelligence, to
teach it bad intellectual habits and spoil by narrow information and mechanical
instruction its originality and productivity. The movement began well and many
national schools were established in Bengal and many able men became teachers,
but still the development was insufficient and the economical position of the
schools precarious. Sri Aurobindo had decided to take up the movement personally
and see whether it could not be given a greater expansion and a stronger
foundation, but his departure from Bengal cut short this plan. In the repression
and the general depression caused by it, most of the schools failed to survive.
The idea lived on and it may be hoped that it will one day find an adequate form
and body. The idea of people’s courts was taken up and worked in some districts,
not without success, but this too perished in the storm. The idea of volunteer
groupings had a stronger vitality; it lived on, took shape, multiplied its
formations and its workers were the spearhead of the movement of direct action
which broke out from time to time in the
struggle for freedom. The purely political elements of the Nationalist programme
and activities were those which lasted and after each wave of repression and
depression renewed the thread of the life of the movement for liberation and
kept it recognisably one throughout nearly fifty years of its struggle. But the
greatest thing done in those years was the creation of a new spirit in the
country. In the enthusiasm that swept surging everywhere with the cry of Bande
Mataram ringing on all sides men felt it glorious to be alive and dare and act
together and hope; the old apathy and timidity were broken and a force created
which nothing could destroy and which rose again and again in wave after wave
till it carried India to the beginning of a complete victory.
After the Bande Mataram case, Sri Aurobindo
became the recognised leader of Nationalism in Bengal. He led the party at the
session of the [district]5 Conference at Midnapore where there was a
vehement clash between the two parties. He now for the first time became a
speaker on the public platform, addressed large meetings at Surat and presided
over the Nationalist conference there. He stopped at several places on his way
back to Calcutta and was the speaker at large meetings called to hear
him.6 He led the party again at the
session of the Provincial Conference at Hooghly. There it became evident for the
first time that Nationalism was gaining the ascendant, for it commanded a
majority among the delegates and in the Subjects Committee Sri Aurobindo was
able to defeat the Moderates’ resolution welcoming the Reforms and pass his own
resolution stigmatising them as utterly inadequate and unreal and rejecting
them. But the Moderate leaders threatened to secede if this was maintained and
to avoid a scission he consented to allow the Moderate resolution to pass but
spoke at the public session explaining his decision and asking the Nationalists
to acquiesce in it in spite of their victory so as to keep some unity in the
political forces of Bengal. The Nationalist delegates, at first triumphant and clamorous, accepted the decision and left the hall
quietly at Sri Aurobindo’s order so that they might not have to vote either for
or against the Moderate resolution. This caused much amazement and discomfiture
in the minds of the Moderate leaders who complained that the people had refused
to listen to their old and tried leaders and clamoured against them, but at the
bidding of a young man new to politics they had obeyed in disciplined silence as
if a single body.
About this period Sri Aurobindo had decided to take up
charge of a Bengali daily, Nava Shakti, and had moved from his rented
house in Scott’s Lane, where he had been living with his wife and sister, to
rooms in the office of this newspaper, and there, before he could begin this new
venture, early one morning while he was still sleeping, the police charged up
the stairs, revolver in hand, and arrested him. He was taken to the police
station and thence to Alipore Jail where he remained for a year during the
magistrate’s investigation and the trial in the Sessions Court at Alipore. At
first he was lodged for some time in a solitary cell but afterwards transferred
to a large section of the jail where he lived in one huge room with the other
prisoners in the case; subsequently, after the assassination of the approver in
the jail, all the prisoners were confined in contiguous but separate cells and
met only in the court or in the daily exercise where they could not speak to
each other. It was in the second period that Sri Aurobindo made the acquaintance
of most of his fellow-accused. In the jail he spent almost all his time in
reading the Gita and the Upanishads and in intensive meditation and the practice
of Yoga. This he pursued even in the second interval when he had no opportunity
of being alone and had to accustom himself to meditation amid general talk and
laughter, the playing of games and much noise and disturbance; in the first and
third periods he had full opportunity and used it to the full. In the Sessions
Court the accused were confined in a large prisoners’ cage and here during the
whole day he remained absorbed in his meditation attending little to the trial
and hardly listening to the evidence. C. R. Das, one of his Nationalist
collaborators and a famous lawyer, had put aside his large practice and devoted himself for months to the defence of Sri Aurobindo who left the case
entirely to him and troubled no more about it; for he had been assured from
within and knew that he would be acquitted. During this period his view of life
was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring
spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now the
inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in
magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and
his work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded the service and
liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed,
which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned with the whole future of
humanity.
When he came out from jail, Sri Aurobindo found the
whole political aspect of the country altered; most of the Nationalist leaders
were in jail or in self-imposed exile and there was a general discouragement and
depression, though the feeling in the country had not ceased but was only
suppressed and was growing by its suppression. He determined to continue the
struggle; he held weekly meetings in Calcutta, but the attendance which had
numbered formerly thousands full of enthusiasm was now only of hundreds and had
no longer the same force and life. He also went to places in the districts to
speak and at one of these delivered his speech at Uttarpara in which for the
first time he spoke publicly of his Yoga and his spiritual experiences. He
started also two weeklies, one in English and one in Bengali, the Karmayogin
and Dharma, which had a fairly large circulation and were, unlike the
Bande Mataram, easily self-supporting. He attended and spoke at the
Provincial Conference at [Hooghly]7 in 1909: for in Bengal owing to the compromise at
[Pabna]8
the two parties had not split altogether apart and both joined in the
Conference, though there could be no representatives of the Nationalist party at
the meeting of the Central Moderate Body which had taken the place of the
Congress. Surendra Nath Banerji had indeed
called a private conference attended by Sri Aurobindo and one or two other
leaders of the Nationalists to discuss a project of uniting the two parties at
the session in [Lahore]9 and giving a joint fight to the dominant right wing of the
Moderates; for he had always dreamt of becoming again the leader of a united
Bengal with the Extremist party as his strong right arm: but that would have
necessitated the Nationalists being appointed as delegates by the Bengal
Moderates and accepting the constitution imposed at Surat. This Sri Aurobindo
refused to do; he demanded a change in that constitution enabling newly formed
associations to elect delegates so that the Nationalists might independently
send their representatives to the All-India session and on this point the
negotiations broke down. Sri Aurobindo began however to consider how to revive
the national movement under the changed circumstances. He glanced at the
possibility of falling back on a Home Rule movement which the Government could
not repress, but this, which was actually realised by Mrs. Besant later on,
would have meant a postponement and a falling back from the ideal of
independence. He looked also at the possibility of an intense and organised
passive resistance movement in the manner afterwards adopted by Gandhi. He saw
however that he himself could not be the leader of such a movement.
At no time did he consent to have anything to do with
the sham Reforms which were all the Government at that period cared to offer. He
held up always the slogan of “no compromise” or, as he now put it in his Open
Letter to his countrymen published in the Karmayogin, “no co-operation
without control”. It was only if real political, administrative and financial
control were given to popular ministers in an elected Assembly that he would
have anything to do with offers from the British Government. Of this he saw no
sign until the proposal of the Montagu Reforms in which first something of the
kind seemed to appear. He foresaw that the British Government would have to
begin trying to meet the national aspiration half-way, but he would not anticipate that moment before it actually came. The
Montagu Reforms came nine years after Sri Aurobindo had retired to Pondicherry
and by that time he had abandoned all outward and public political activity in
order to devote himself to his spiritual work, acting only by his spiritual
force on the movement in India, until his prevision of real negotiations between
the British Government and the Indian leaders was fulfilled by the Cripps’
proposal and the events that came after.
Meanwhile the Government were determined to get rid of
Sri Aurobindo as the only considerable obstacle left to the success of their
repressive policy. As they could not send him to the Andamans they decided to
deport him. This came to the knowledge of Sister Nivedita and she informed Sri
Aurobindo and asked him to leave British India and work from outside so that his
work would not be stopped or totally interrupted. Sri Aurobindo contented
himself with publishing in the Karmayogin a signed article in which he
spoke of the project of deportation and left the country what he called his last
will and testament; he felt sure that this would kill the idea of deportation
and in fact it so turned out. Deportation left aside, the Government could only
wait for some opportunity for prosecution for sedition and this chance came to
them when Sri Aurobindo published in the same paper another signed article
reviewing the political situation. The article was sufficiently moderate in its
tone and later on the High Court refused to regard it as seditious and acquitted
the printer. Sri Aurobindo one night at the Karmayogin office received
information of the Government’s intention to search the office and arrest him.
While considering what should be his attitude, he received a sudden command from
above to go to Chandernagore in French India. He obeyed the command at once, for
it was now his rule to move only as he was moved by the divine guidance and
never to resist and depart from it; he did not stay to consult with anyone but
in ten minutes was at the river ghat and in a boat plying on the Ganges, in a
few hours he was at Chandernagore where he went into secret residence. He sent a
message to Sister Nivedita asking her to take up the editing of the
Karmayogin in his absence. This was the end of his active connection with his two journals. At Chandernagore he plunged entirely
into solitary meditation and ceased all other activity. Then there came to him a
call to proceed to Pondicherry. A boat manned by some young revolutionaries of
Uttarpara took him to Calcutta; there he boarded the Dupleix and reached
Pondicherry on April 4, 1910.
At Pondicherry, from this time onwards Sri Aurobindo’s
practice of Yoga became more and more absorbing. He dropped all participation in
any public political activity, refused more than one request to preside at
sessions of the restored Indian National Congress and made a rule of abstention
from any public utterance of any kind not connected with his spiritual
activities or any contribution of writings or articles except what he wrote
afterwards in the Arya. For some years he kept up some private
communication with the revolutionary forces he had led through one or two
individuals, but this also he dropped after a time and his abstention from any
kind of participation in politics became complete. As his vision of the future
grew clearer, he saw that the eventual independence of India was assured by the
march of Forces of which he became aware, that Britain would be compelled by the
pressure of Indian resistance and by the pressure of international events to
concede independence and that she was already moving towards that eventuality
with whatever opposition and reluctance. He felt that there would be no need of
armed insurrection and that the secret preparation for it could be dropped
without injury to the nationalist cause, although the revolutionary spirit had
to be maintained and would be maintained intact. His own personal intervention
in politics would therefore be no longer indispensable. Apart from all this, the
magnitude of the spiritual work set before him became more and more clear to
him, and he saw that the concentration of all his energies on it was necessary.
Accordingly, when the Ashram came into existence, he kept it free from all
political connections or action; even when he intervened in politics twice
afterwards on special occasions, this intervention was purely personal and the
Ashram was not concerned in it. The British Government and numbers of people
besides could not believe that Sri Aurobindo had
ceased from all political action and it was supposed by them that he was
secretly participating in revolutionary activities and even creating a secret
organisation in the security of French India. But all this was pure imagination
and rumour and there was nothing of the kind. His retirement from political
activity was complete, just as was his personal retirement into solitude in
1910.
But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he
had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further
interest in the world or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the
very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a
complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world
activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base
life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri
Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India
and actively intervened whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force
and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have
advanced far in Yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind
and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can act and
do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which
can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness,
though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is
greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as
he had attained to it, he used, at first only in a limited field of personal
work, but afterwards in a constant action upon the world forces. He had no
reason to be dissatisfied with the results or to feel the necessity of any other
kind of action. Twice however he found it advisable to take in addition other
action of a public kind. The first was in relation to the second World War. At
the beginning he did not actively concern himself with it, but when it appeared
as if Hitler would crush all the forces opposed to him and Nazism dominate the
world, he began to intervene. He declared himself publicly on the side of the
Allies, made some financial contributions in
answer to the appeal for funds and encouraged those who sought his advice to
enter the army or share in the war effort. Inwardly, he put his spiritual force
behind the Allies from the moment of Dunkirk when everybody was expecting the
immediate fall of England and the definite triumph of Hitler, and he had the
satisfaction of seeing the rush of German victory almost immediately arrested
and the tide of war begin to turn in the opposite direction. This he did,
because he saw that behind Hitler and Nazism were dark Asuric forces and that
their success would mean the enslavement of mankind to the tyranny of evil, and
a set-back to the course of evolution and especially to the spiritual evolution
of mankind: it would lead also to the enslavement not only of Europe but of
Asia, and in it India, an enslavement far more terrible than any this country
had ever endured, and the undoing of all the work that had been done for her
liberation. It was this reason also that induced him to support publicly the
Cripps’ offer and to press the Congress leaders to accept it. He had not, for
various reasons, intervened with his spiritual force against the Japanese
aggression until it became evident that Japan intended to attack and even invade
and conquer India. He allowed certain letters he had written in support of the
war affirming his views of the Asuric nature and inevitable outcome of Hitlerism
to become public. He supported the Cripps’ offer because by its acceptance India
and Britain could stand united against the Asuric forces and the solution of
Cripps could be used as a step towards independence. When negotiations failed,
Sri Aurobindo returned to his reliance on the use of spiritual force alone
against the aggressor and had the satisfaction of seeing the tide of Japanese
victory, which had till then swept everything before it, changed immediately
into a tide of rapid, crushing and finally immense and overwhelming defeat. He
had also after a time the satisfaction of seeing his previsions about the future
of India justify themselves so that she stands independent with whatever
internal difficulties.
Written 7 November 1946;
revised and published 1948
1 This and the preceding paragraph were inserted here when this note was first published in 1948. They incorporate, with some changes, most of a previously written note published on pages 72–73. – Ed.
2 1948 edition seven. See Table 1, page 565. – Ed.
3 This sentence, unlike the final one in this “General Note” (see page 66), was not revised before publication in 1948. – Ed.
4 1948 edition Karachi. See Table 1, page 565. – Ed.
5 1948 edition Bengal Provincial. See Table 1, page 565. – Ed.
6 See Table 2, page 568. – Ed.
7 1948 edition Barisal. See Table 1, page 566. – Ed.
8 1948 edition Hooghly. See Table 1, page 566. – Ed.
9 1948 edition Benares. See Table 1, page 566. – Ed.