Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
Here is the letter to Jayantilai. Please show it to Mother as she will have to deal with the publisher henceforth. I felt a great joy to be able to make over the right also of handling money. Because Guru, I sincerely do not like money – from my youth I conceived a deep aversion to it. That is why I did not go to America in 1927 when I was invited by Edison Co. to record. I would have earned a lot.
But to give you and Mother is a joy. But still to have to worry about tax etc. I don’t like. I would work hard to increase your income with great joy but take over the charge of money.
Apropos, I was thinking yesterday why not make just such an arrangement with Gurudas. I think the income will be more than Rs. 150 a month from them alone – net. For I am going to publish more books. (I will offer Mother some Rs. 800 in a week’s time – sale of my books.) But what about the tax, etc. ? I thought over it and came to the conclusion that I will write to Gurudas too – through Sotuda – to make just such a legal document – money goes straight to Mother from them as offering. I hope the Gurudas people will accommodate me hereanent.
I have to confess one bad point of my character I discovered in this connection. I found myself worrying a little of what will happen to my personal expenses – pocket expenses. Now I can’t manage with less than Rs. 50 or Rs. 60. I keep a little money in the Calcutta Bank as you know to spend from it. I give presents also to people – buy books, etc. So it is about Rs. 2 a day, Rs. 60 a month. I can manage with that. But if all goes to Mother how shall I manage? Ask her? But if she doesn’t give? I felt hurt in imagination even. “Very funny surrender this,” I thought, “if she doesn’t give I should accept it as gladly as if she did give. That is the spirit. Why do I make a reservation here ? I must throw myself unconditionally on her mercy.” But you see little things like this still bind – how can I have real bhakti till I surrender my little self-will too? There is a lurking self-indulgence, I detected yesterday and thought I must make a clean breast of it to Mother. And that is why I want to be quite surrendered here, too, to her will. If she gives me Rs. 50 or Rs. 60, good. If not, I must manage with whatever she gives. Please show her this, I am very much ashamed of myself.
I am afraid the proposed arrangements will not serve the purpose you have in mind. For the publisher to deal direct with the Mother and send his accounts to her would turn the offering into a business transaction or at least a business arrangement. If the income tax officers poke their astute noses into the matter, they will at once smell a trick and pounce upon a tempting prey. If they did so, they might insist in regarding the Mother as a foreigner taking profits from a British India business and tax her, in which case the tax could be, I believe, higher even than your twenty-seven and a half percent. A fortiori this would apply to a documentary arrangement with a publisher such as you propose with Gurudas. We have had to consider such difficulties before and the Mother decided not to have any direct dealings with publishers who are not our own people.
The whole difficulty lies in the fact that the British Income tax office are keen to get more out of profits that go out of the domain than those that stay in it, charging exorbitant rates. If you received your profit in British India you would be charged only ten or twelve percent (I am told) and you would be able to do what you liked with it afterwards. I hear that this is Sotuda’s idea, that you should give a power of attorney which will enable Sachin or someone else to draw your money for you from the publishers which can be sent by hand or otherwise to the Ashram. We have to wait his promised letters and till then it is not much use imagining what to do. That is for the latter. As for the Bombay affair, it must have the character of an offering pure and simple from the publisher, any business dealing with the Mother coming in would not do.
It is not that Mother is not prepared to accept what you offer. Also, of course the pocket money question should not count on either side. But there is the necessity to avoid direct business dealing by the Mother with outsiders apart from the advisability of everybody being clear of the whirlpool of excess profits for the Income Tax Office.