Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan 31

Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
31

Sri Aurobindo, original name Aurobindo Ghose, Aurobindo also spelled Aravinda, (born August 15, 1872, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died December 5, 1950, Pondicherry [now Puducherry]), yogi, seer, philosopher, poet, and Indian nationalist who propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution.

Aurobindo’s education began in a Christian convent school in Darjeeling. While still a boy, he was sent to England for further schooling. He entered the University of Cambridge where he became proficient in two classical and several modern European languages. After returning to India in 1892, he held various administrative and professorial posts in Baroda (Vadodara) and Calcutta (Kolkata). Turning to his native culture, he began the serious study of Yoga, and Indian languages, including classical Sanskrit.

From 1902 to 1910 Aurobindo partook in the struggle to free India from the British Raj ( rule). As a result of his political activities, he was imprisoned in 1908. Two years later he fled British India and found refuge in the French colony of Puducherry in southeastern India, where he devoted himself for the rest of his life to the development of his “integral” yoga, which was characterized by its holistic approach and its aim of a fulfilled and spiritually transformed life on earth.

In Pondichéry he founded a community of spiritual seekers, which took shape as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926. In that year he entrusted the work of guiding the seekers to his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (1878–1973), who was called “the Mother” in the ashram. The ashram eventually attracted seekers from many countries throughout the world.

The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. In 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed in the Congress.

The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the “Subjects Committee”. Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging programme, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between the Moderates and the Nationalists (called by their opponents Extremists) which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics.

Emperor vs Aurobindo Ghosh and others, colloquially referred to as the Alipore Bomb Case, the Muraripukur conspiracy, or the Manicktolla bomb conspiracy, was a criminal case held in India in 1908. The case saw the trial of a number of Indian nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta, under charges of “Waging war against the Government” of the British Raj. The trial was held at Alipore Sessions Court, Calcutta, between May 1908 and May 1909. The trial followed in the wake of the attempt on the life of Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur by Bengali nationalists Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki in April 1908, which was recognised by the Bengal police as linked to attacks against the Raj in the preceding years, including attempts to derail the train carrying Lieutenant-Governor Sir Andrew Fraser in December 1907.
Among the famous accused were Aurobindo Ghosh, his brother Barin Ghosh as well as 38 other Bengali nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti. Most of the accused were arrested from Barin Ghosh’s Garden house in 36 Murarirupukur Road, in the Manicktolla suburb of Calcutta. They were held in the Presidency Jail in Alipore in the trial, where Narendranath Goswami, approver and crown-witness was shot dead by two fellow accused Kanailal Dutta and Satyendranath Bose within the jail premises. Goswami’s murder led to collapse of the case against Aurobindo. However, his brother Barin and a number of others were convicted of the charges and faced varying jail terms from life-imprisonment to shorter jail terms.

Aurobindo Ghosh retired from active nationalist politics after serving a prison sentence awarded in the trial, beginning his journey into spirituality and philosophy that he described as having started with revelations that occurred to him during his incarceration. He later moved to Pondicherry, establishing an Ashram. For Anushilan Samiti, the incarceration of many of its prominent leaders led to a decline in the influence and activity of the Manicktolla branch, and its activities were overtaken by what emerged to be called the Jugantar branch under the leadership of Baghta Jain.

In Pondicherry Bharati met Aurobindo ‘and they hit it off straightaway’ as both acknowledged. Bharati’s friendship with a like-minded political refugee-cum-intellectual Sri Aurobindo, made him write his essays in English for the monthly journal, ‘Arya’, edited by the latter. Sri Aurobindo learned the Tamil language and translated excerpts from Tamil Classical literature with the help of his poet-friend.

Both of them being well versed in the Sanskrit language, joined their heads for the study of the Vedas and Upanishads. The result was the birth of ‘Vachana Kavithaigal’. These prose poems of Bharati liberate Tamil Literature from the tyranny of prosody. The influence of Walt Whitman’s poetry made him enrich Tamil Literature with soulful poetry. His prose poems pulsate with life and are a real feast for meditative readers.

Bharati found a soulmate in Aurobindo. Aurobindo called Bharati as ‘Ba’ and Bharati called Aurobindo as ‘Ghosh’. Such was their intimacy. It would be appropriate to record here an interesting episode that took place in Aurobindo’s house. One evening, when everybody left, Aurobindo found his shoes missing. It took little time for him to guess who had walked away with them.

Smiling, he pulled out his letter pad and pen and began writing a letter to his brother Barin in Calcutta: “I am in need of a pair of shoes very urgently, for Bharati has walked away with the one you have sent me a few days ago. His need is greater than mine.”

In the middle of 1909 Bharati sent one of India’s correspondents to Calcutta to interview him. The interview was published in India in its issue of 18 September 1909. It was this type of reporting that made India a treasure in Tamil journalism. Sri Aurobindo had also met at Calcutta S. Parthasarathi, ‘Secretary Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company’ That is why when Sri Aurobindo received the adesh (Command) to go to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he had sent Moni with a note addressed to S. Parthasarathi Iyenger, c/o ‘India’ Press. Parthasarathi was away from Pondicherry, so at Moni’s request Parthasarathi’s elder brother Srinivasachari had opened the envelope and learned that Sri Aurobindo “was coming to Pondicherry and wanted a quiet place of residence to be engaged for him where he could live incognito without being in any way disturbed.” That is what Srinivasachari noted. That is how he and Bharati went to receive Sri Aurobindo on 4 April 1910.

Then in November 1910 Varanganeri Venkatesa Subrahmanya Iyer, or V V S Iyer in short, managed to land at Pondicherry, straight from a French ship. He had been one year in France. From India he had gone to England to be trained as a lawyer. But called to the bar, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the British king. He had many adventures in Europe playing hide and seek with the British police. Mind you, he may not have looked for adventures, but adventures were attracted to him like a magnet!
With the coming together of these four men, a nucleus of Swedes his was formed in the French enclave. More importantly, it seems to me, three of them did their most precious works there. Sri Aurobindo, Bharati and WS were all men of letters. They were immensely drawn to Indian culture. They sought to express, each in his own way, India’s soul.

It was here in Pondicherry that WS Iyer wrote in Tamil the biographies of Chandra Gupta Maurya, Rana Pratap, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Napoleon. When he was in England Iyer had become an ‘extremists’ especially after the Curzon Willie episode and in France he came close to Madame Bhaicaji Cama, Shyamji Krishna Verma and Veer Damodar Savarkar, revolutionaries all. In France WS Iyer learnt French and read in the original the War Memoirs of Napoleon. At Pondicherry, based on Napoleon’s method of warfare, he produced a treatise on military strategy which could be used in India to counter the British. To top it all, he translated into English the Tirukkural… just in four months, while waiting to be deported at any moment from French India. Even now V V S Iyer’s translation of Tirukkuralis considered as one of the best.

What a triumvirate Bharathi, Va.Ve.Su Iyer and Aurobindo Ghosh, would have made it or would ever make!

(Author is practising as advocate in the Madras High Court)

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