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India's Rebirth
AUROBINDO ON INDIA:
India's Rebirth
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AUROBINDO WAS BORN : AUG. 15 1872
(From 1900 onward, Sri Aurobindo began contacting revolutionary groups
in Maharashtra and Bengal, and tried to coordinate their action with
the help of his brother, Barindra Ghose, and Jatindranath Banerjee; at
Sri Aurobindo's initiative, P. Mitter, Surender Tagore, Chittaranjan
Das and Sister Nivedita soon formed the first secret council for
revolutionary activities in Bengal. Although an effective coordination
between the various groups remained elusive, some of them, such as P.
Mitter's Anusilan Samiti, played a considerable part in spreading the
Nationalist ideal. Their chief weapon was the establishment of
centers in numerous towns and villages, where young men were given
intellectual, moral and physical training, and were inspired to work
for India's liberation.
Around this time, Sri Aurobindo wrote Bhawani Mandir, a pamphlet "for
the revolutionary preparation of the country." Thousands of copies of
it were distributed clandestinely. A few excerpts:)
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1904(?)
India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving
with agony and tears, but she strives in vain. What ails her, she who
is after all so vast and might be so strong? There is surely some
enormous defect, something vital is wanting in us, nor is it difficult
to lay our finger on the spot. We have all things else, but we are
empty of strength, void of energy. We have have abandoned Shakti and
are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts, in
our brains, in our arms.
If India is to survive, she must be made young again, rushing and
billowing streams of energy must be poured into her; her soul must
become, as it was in the old times, like the surges, vast or of force.
Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of
inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is
decayed, bloodless, lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race
is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying, no man or
nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.
For what a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of
earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a
mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units
that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into
being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one
mass of force and weldedinto unity of the Shaktis of three hundred
million people, but she is self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her
sons/daughters..
We have to create strength where it didn't exist before; we have to
change our natures, and become new with new hearts, to be born
again... We need a nucleus of men with in whome the shakti is
developed to its uttermost extent, in whome it fills every corner of
the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having
the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and
carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land.
By Sri Aurobindo
From: Out of the ruins of the West... INDIA'S REBIRTH
Institut De Recherches Evolutives, Paris
"India of the ages is not dead nor she spoken her last creative word;
she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human
peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised
oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the
cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient
immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head
higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to
discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma"
- Sri Aurobindo
Chandan
cbando@lynx.neu.edu
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* "This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they *
* alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive" *
* - Vishwa Vivek *
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