Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest
1. Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters
(1890–1926)
Letters and Telegrams to Political and Professional
Associates 1906–1926
To Balkrishna Shivaram Moonje [1]1
Pondicherry
Aug 30. 1920
Dear Dr. Moonje,
As I have already wired to you, I find myself unable to
accept your offer of the Presidentship of the Nagpur Congress. There are reasons
even within the political field itself which in any case would have stood in my
way. In the first place I have never signed and would never care to sign as a
personal declaration of faith the Congress creed, as my own is of a different
character. In the next place since my retirement from British India I have
developed an outlook and views which have diverged a great deal from those I
held at the time and, as they are remote from present actualities and do not
follow the present stream of political action, I should find myself very much
embarrassed what to say to the Congress. I am entirely in sympathy with all that
is being done so far as its object is to secure liberty for India, but I should 
be unable to identify myself with the programme of any of the
parties. The President of the Congress is really a mouthpiece of the Congress
and to make from the presidential chair a purely personal pronouncement miles
away from what the Congress is thinking and doing would be grotesquely out of
place. Not only so, but nowadays the President has a responsibility in
connection with the All India Congress Committee and the policy of the Congress
during the year and other emergencies that may arise which, apart from my
constitutional objection and, probably, incapacity to discharge official duties
of any kind or to put on any kind of harness, I should be unable to fulfil,
since it is impossible for me to throw over suddenly my fixed programme and
settle at once in British India. These reasons would in any case have come in
the way of my accepting your offer.
The central reason however is this that I am no longer
first and foremost a politician, but have definitely commenced another kind of
work with a spiritual basis, a work of spiritual, social, cultural and economic
reconstruction of an almost revolutionary kind, and am even making or at least
supervising a sort of practical or laboratory experiment in that sense which
needs all the attention and energy that I can have to spare. It is impossible
for me to combine political work of the current kind and this at the beginning.
I should practically have to leave it aside, and this I cannot do, as I have
taken it up as my mission for the rest of my life. This is the true reason of my
inability to respond to your call.
I may say that in any case I think you would be making
a wrong choice in asking me to take Tilak’s place at your head. No one now alive
in India, or at least no one yet known, is capable of taking that place, but
myself least of all. I am an idealist to the marrow and could only be useful
when there is something drastic to be done, a radical or revolutionary line to
be taken, (I do not mean revolutionary by violence) a movement with an ideal aim
and direct method to be inspired and organised. Tilak’s policy of “responsive
cooperation”, continued agitation and obstruction whenever needed – and that
would be oftener than not in the present circumstances – is, no doubt, 
the only alternative to some form of non-cooperation or passive
resistance. But it would need at its head a man of his combined suppleness,
skill and determination to make it effective. I have not the suppleness and
skill – at least of the kind needed – and could only bring the determination,
supposing I accepted the policy, which I could not do practically, as, for
[ ]2 reasons of my own, nothing could induce me to set my
foot in the new Councils. On the other hand a gigantic movement of
non-cooperation merely to get some Punjab officials punished or to set up again
the Turkish Empire which is dead and gone, shocks my ideas both of proportion
and of common sense. I could only understand it as a means of “embarrassing the
Government” and seizing hold of immediate grievances in order to launch an acute
struggle for autonomy after the manner of Egypt and Ireland,– though no doubt
without the element of violence. All the same, it could be only on a programme
involving an entire change of the creed, function and organisation and policy of
the Congress, making it a centre of national reconstruction and not merely of
political agitation that I could – if I had not the other reason I have spoken
of – re-enter the political field. Unfortunately the political mind and habits
created by the past methods of the Congress do not make that practicable at the
moment. I think you will see that, holding these ideas, it is not possible for
me to intervene and least of all on the chair of the President.
Might I suggest that the success of the Congress can
hardly depend on the presence of a single person and one who has long been in
obscurity? The friends who call on me are surely wrong in thinking that the
Nagpur Congress will be uninspiring without me. The national movement is surely
strong enough now to be inspired with its own idea especially at a time of
stress like the present. I am sorry to disappoint, but I have given the reasons
that compel me and I cannot see how it is avoidable.
Yours sincerely
Aurobindo Ghose
