Aurobindo, Sri

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AUROBINDO, SRI

AUROBINDO, SRI (1872–1950), Indian poet and philosopher Sri Aurobindo was born Aurobindo Ghose. The change in name reflected a profound transformation in the person: from a poet of patriotism, committed to India's freedom, to a philosopher-visionary of the New Age, heralding the ultimate stage of human evolution.

Ghose was born on 15 August 1872 in Kolkata to K. D. Ghose, a physician, and Swarnalata Bose, the eldest daughter of Rajnaryan Bose, a nationalist pioneer. Dr. Ghose was an Anglophile: he loved everything Western. When Aurobindo was seven years old, Dr. Ghose took his wife and three sons to England. Aurobindo was educated at St. Paul's School in London, and graduated from Cambridge University with a first in Classics Tripos, winning all the top prizes the university offered in his field. While attending high school, he developed a passionate interest in the Classical world and its languages, Greek and Latin. Later, he not only mastered these two classical languages, but also learned French, German, Italian, and Spanish in order to read Johann Goethe, Dante Alighieri, and Pedro Calderón in the original texts.

He sat for and passed the Indian Civil Service examination. But he decided not to work for the British government in India. Instead, he accepted an appointment in the Baroda (a princely state, semiautonomous under the Raj) state service in 1893. He spent thirteen years in Baroda and rose to the post of principal of the Baroda State College (later University). These were years of preparation for the work to be done in the near future. He learned Sanskrit and read the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the epics; he learned Marathi, Gujarati, and brushed up on his native language, Bengali. He married Mrinalini Basu in 1901 according to strict Hindu rites.

The partition of Bengal in 1905 brought Ghose into the public limelight. He went to Kolkata and accepted the post of principal of the newly established National College, later Jadavpur University. He started the Bengali daily Yugantar and joined the English daily Bande Mataram, edited by Bipin Chandra Pal. He published in the pages of Bande Mataram his doctrine of passive resistance and the methods of swadeshi (the first major phase of a militant nationalist movement protesting against the British authorities' decision in 1905 to divide the province of Bengal in two parts—one with a Muslim majority, the other Hindu) and boycott. In the 1906 Indian National Congress session held in Kolkata, he declared "complete autonomy free from British control" to be the nationalist agenda, with Bal Gangadhar Tilak as the leader. Ghose was arrested in 1907 for publishing inflammatory articles in Bande Mataram. His bold and dignified self-defense prompted Rabindranath Tagore to pen one of his most famous congratulatory poems, which begins, "Aurobindo! Accept the salutations of Rabindra."

Ghose was arrested again in 1908 and he spent a year as an under-trial prisoner. The experience totally transformed him. Nationalism seemed to acquire a deeper, more integral meaning to him. In the English weekly Karmayogin and the Bengali weekly Dharma, he wrote articles on the transcendental significance of Indian nationalism. In 1910 at the office of the Karmayogin, he received word that he would be arrested for sedition. He made a quick decision, took a boat to Chandernagore, a French concession outside Kolkata, and from there to Pondicherry, the French concession in South India, on a French boat under an assumed name. The British attempted to get him out of Pondicherry but failed.

In Pondicherry, Ghose withdrew from political activity altogether. Instead, he devoted himself to yoga, meditation, and intensive study of the sacred texts. His patrons were a French couple, Paul Richard and his wife Mirra Alfassa Richard (later the Mother of the Pondicherry Ashram). With assistance from his French friends, Ghose started to publish the monthly journal Anya, in which he articulated his basic philosophical positions: the divine destiny of humankind, unification of the human race, and the spirit and significance of Indian civilization and culture. Later, these articles appeared in Ghose's magnum opus The Life Divine. Soon after, Aurobindo wrote his supreme epic poem Savitri in 23,813 lines of blank verse, the longest poem in the English language. It prompted Sir Herbert Read to call the epic poem "great by any standard."

In 1926 Aurobindo retired to complete seclusion. He broke his isolation a few times. In 1928 he met the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who saw Aurobindo's face radiant with inner light. Many others followed Tagore to seek his counsel or urge his intervention in nationalist politics. Aurobindo turned down all requests, pleading that few in the popular platform would understand his ideals and ideas.

Aurobindo in his complex and extensive body of writings privileged consciousness from within over material, economic, and political spheres. His system of yoga empowers the individual to transform life, mind, and body. It is a dynamic of integral cultural consciousness that helps bring about the transformation, and the only power that can transform is the supreme one, above the mind, which he calls "supermind." It will manifest itself in a class of "supermen," the truth-conscious beings. Following Charles Darwin's trajectory to its deterministic future, Aurobindo predicts this to be evolution's ultimate destination for humankind.

Aurobindo had a five-part vision. He wished to see a free and independent India, which he witnessed on his birthday on 15 August 1947. His second vision was the resurgence of Asia, the third a "world union," the fourth the spiritual gift of India to the world, the fifth "a step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness."

On 5 December 1950, Aurobindo left this world. His work was continued by the Mother, and after her death by her successors at the Pondicherry Ashram. Auroville, an international community established on the outskirts of Pondicherry, to this day celebrates Aurobindo's revolutionary utopian vision. His collected works, written in an elegant inimitable prose and verse, have inspired authors and scholars to probe their metaphysical and philosophical wealth. One such scholar, the late Haridas Chaudhuri, founded the Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco in 1971. It is now a full-scale accredited graduate school with a curriculum modeled on Sri Aurobindo's cultural and East/West integral philosophy.

Dilip K. Basu