Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Letters
To Joseph Baptista1
Pondicherry
Jan. 5, 1920
Dear Baptista,
Your offer is a tempting one, but I regret that I
cannot answer it in the affirmative. It is due to you that I should state
explicitly my reasons. In the first place I am not prepared at present to return
to British India. This is quite apart from any political obstacle. I understand
that up to last September 
the Government of Bengal (and probably the Government of Madras also) were
opposed to my return to British India and that practically this opposition meant
that if I went back I should be interned or imprisoned under one or other of the
beneficent Acts which are apparently still to subsist as helps in ushering in
the new era of trust and cooperation. I do not suppose other Governments would
be any more delighted by my appearance in their respective provinces. Perhaps
the King’s Proclamation may make a difference, but that is not certain since, as
I read it, it does not mean an amnesty, but an act of gracious concession and
benevolence limited by the discretion of the Viceroy. Now I have too much work
on my hands to waste my time in the leisured ease of an involuntary Government
guest. But even if I were assured of an entirely free action and movement, I
should yet not go just now. I came to Pondicherry in order to have freedom and
tranquillity for a fixed object having nothing to do with present politics – in
which I have taken no direct part since my coming here, though what I could do
for the country in my own way I have constantly done,– and until it is
accomplished, it is not possible for me to resume any kind of public activity.
But if I were in British India, I should be obliged to plunge at once into
action of different kinds. Pondicherry is my place of retreat, my cave of
tapasya,– not of the ascetic kind, but of a brand of my own invention. I must
finish that, I must be internally armed and equipped for my work before I leave
it.
Next in the matter of the work itself. I do not at all
look down on politics or political action or consider I have got above them. I
have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the
spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic
withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing
secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete
spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very
great. But my line and intention of political activity would differ considerably
from anything now current in the field. I entered into political action and
continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind
of the people a settled 
will for freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the
futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. That is now done and the
Amritsar Congress is the seal upon it. The will is not as practical and compact
nor by any means as organised and sustained in action as it should be, but there
is the will and plenty of strong and able leaders to guide it. I consider that
in spite of the inadequacy of the Reforms, the will to self-determination, if
the country keeps its present temper, as I have no doubt it will, is bound to
prevail before long. What preoccupies me now is the question what it is going to
do with its self-determination, how will it use its freedom, on what lines is it
going to determine its future?
You may ask why not come out and help, myself, so far
as I can, in giving a lead? But my mind has a habit of running inconveniently
ahead of the times,– some might say, out of time altogether into the world of
the ideal. Your party, you say, is going to be a social democratic party. Now I
believe in something which might be called social democracy, but not in any of
the forms now current, and I am not altogether in love with the European kind,
however great an improvement it may be on the past. I hold that India having a
spirit of her own and a governing temperament proper to her own civilisation,
should in politics as in everything else strike out her own original path and
not stumble in the wake of Europe. But this is precisely what she will be
obliged to do, if she has to start on the road in her present chaotic and
unprepared condition of mind. No doubt people talk of India developing on her
own lines, but nobody seems to have very clear or sufficient ideas as to what
those lines are to be. In this matter I have formed ideals and certain definite
ideas of my own, in which at present very few are likely to follow me, since
they are governed by an uncompromising spiritual idealism of an unconventional
kind and would be unintelligible to many and an offence and stumbling block to a
great number. But I have not as yet any clear and full idea of the practical
lines; I have no formed programme. In a word, I am feeling my way in my mind and
am not ready for either propaganda or action. Even if I were, it would mean for
some time ploughing my lonely 
furrow or at least freedom to take my own way. As the editor of your paper, I
should be bound to voice the opinion of others and reserve my own, and while I
have full sympathy with the general ideas of the advanced parties so far as
concerns the action of the present moment and, if I were in the field, would do
all I could to help them, I am almost incapable by nature of limiting myself in
that way, at least to the extent that would be requisite.
Excuse the length of this screed. I thought it
necessary to explain fully so as to avoid giving you the impression that I
declined your request from any affectation or reality of spiritual aloofness or
wish to shirk the call of the country or want of sympathy with the work you and
others are so admirably doing. I repeat my regret that I am compelled to
disappoint you.
Yours sincerely,
Aurobindo Ghose