Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
27 December 1938
Sri Aurobindo himself opened the talk by addressing Purani: “I hear X is going about in his car with a guard by his side and two policemen on cycles front and back.” The talk continued regarding Pondicherry politics, most of it being by us. Then Sri Aurobindo remarked:
Sri Aurobindo: When I see Pondicherry and the Calcutta Corporation I begin to wonder why I was so eager for Swaraj. They are the two object lessons against self-government and one’s enthusiasm for it goes away.
Nirodbaran: Was the Calcutta Corporation so bad before the Congress came there?
Sri Aurobindo: No, there was not so much scope for corruption; at least we didn’t know of such scandals. It is the same with other municipal governments. In New York and Chicago the whole machinery is corrupt. Sometimes the head of the institution is like that. Sometimes one or another mayor comes up with the intention of cleaning out the whole institution but one doesn’t know after the cleansing which state was better. The gangster Al Capone of Chicago was a great criminal, but all the judges and police officers were in his pay.
In France also it is the same thing. It is not surprising that people get disgusted with democracy. England is comparatively less corrupt. The English are the only people who know how to work out the parliamentary system. Parliamentary government is in their blood.
Purani: It seems then our Indian system was the best. How did it succeed so well?
Sri Aurobindo: The Indian system grew out of life. It had room for everything and every interest. There were monarchy, aristocracy, democracy. Every interest was represented in the Government, while the Western system grew out of mind. In Europe they are led by reason and want to make everything cut-and-dried without any chance of freedom or variation. If it is democracy, then democracy only and no room for anything else. They can’t be plastic.
India is now trying to imitate the West. Parliamentary government is not suited to India. Sir Akbar Hydari wanted to try a new sort of government with an impartial authority at the head. In Hyderabad the Hindu majority complains that though the Mohammedans are in a minority they occupy most of the offices in the State. By Sir Akbar’s method almost every interest would have been represented in the Government and automatically the Hindu would have come in but because of their cry of responsible government the scheme failed. They have a fixed idea in the mind and want to fit everything to it. They don’t think. And we take up what the West is throwing off.
Savoor: It is possible in Hyderabad which has a Nizam, but how to do the same in an all-India constitution? What then is your idea of an ideal government for India?
Sri Aurobindo: Sir Akbar’s is as good as any. My idea is like what Tagore once wrote. There may be one Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to secure a continuity of policy and an assembly representative of the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation, united at the top, leaving ample scope to local bodies to make laws according to their local problems. Mussolini started with the fundamentals of the Indian system but afterwards began bullying and bluffing other nations for imperialistic reasons. If he had persisted in his original idea, he would have been a great creator.
Purani: Dr. Bhagawan Das suggested that legislators should be above the age of forty and completely disinterested like the Rishis.
Sri Aurobindo: A chamber of Rishis? That would not be very promising, for they would at once begin to quarrel – “Nana munir nana mat1,” as they say. The Rishis in ancient times could guide the kings because they lived in various places.
Purani: His idea is like R’s idea of gathering all great men together.
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): And let them quarrel like Kilkenny cats, I suppose. The Congress at the present stage – has it not the look of a Fascist dictatorial organisation? There is no opportunity for any difference of opinion except for the Socialist members who are allowed to differ provided they don’t seriously differ. Whatever resolutions the Congress passes are obligatory on all the provinces, whether the laws suit the provinces or not. There is no room for any other independent opinion. Everything is fixed beforehand and the people are only allowed to talk it over – like Stalin’s parliament. When we started the movement, we began with the idea of throwing out the Congress oligarchy and opening the whole organisation to the general mass.
Purani: Srinivas Iyengar retired from Congress because of his differences with Gandhi. He objected to Gandhi’s giving the movement a religious turn and bringing religion into politics.
Sri Aurobindo: He made the Charka a religious article of faith and excluded all people from the Congress membership who could not spin. How many even among his own followers believe in his gospel of Charka? Such a tremendous waste of energy just for the sake of a few annas is most unreasonable.
Purani: He made that rule perhaps to enforce discipline.
Sri Aurobindo: Discipline is all right but once you begin to concentrate on a particular thing you tend to go on concentrating on it.
Purani: The Charka failed in agricultural provinces but seems to have succeeded in other places, especially where people had no occupation.
Nirodbaran: In Bengal it didn’t succeed.
Sri Aurobindo: In Bengal it didn’t. It may be all right as a famine palliative but when it takes the form of an all-India programme it looks absurd. If you form a programme that is suited to the condition of agricultural people, it sounds reasonable. Give them education, technical training, and give them the fundamental organic principles of organisation, not on political but on business lines. But Gandhi doesn’t want any such industrial organisation, he is for going back to the old system of civilisation and so comes in with his magical formula, “Spin, spin, spin.” C.R. Das and a few others could act as a counterbalance. It is all a fetish. I don’t believe in that sort of autarchy, for that is against the principle of life. It is not possible for nations to be like that.
In what a well-ordered way have Denmark and Ireland organised their agriculture! Only now they are beginning to suffer because other nations are trying to be self-sufficient.
Purani: What do you think of Hindi being the common language? It seems to me English has occupied so prominent a place that it will be unwise and difficult to displace it.
Sri Aurobindo: English will be all right and even necessary if India is an international State. In that case English has to be the medium of expression, especially as English is now replacing French as the world-language. But the national spirit won’t allow it as it is a foreign language. At the same time Hindi can’t replace English in the universities, nor the provincial language. When the national spirit grows it is difficult to say what will happen. In Ireland after the revolution they wanted to abolish English and adopt Gaelic, but as time went on and things settled themselves their enthusiasm waned and English came back.
The discussion then drifted to the question of the Jews. Purani said that he didn’t understand why the Jews were being persecuted so much by Hitler.
Nirodbaran: I understand that the Jews betrayed Germany during the First World War.
Sri Aurobindo: Nonsense! On the contrary they helped Germany a great deal. It is because they are a clever race that others are jealous of them. Or for anything that is wrong you point to the Jews – it is so much easier than finding the real cause. People want something to strike at. So the popular cry, “The Jews, the Jews.” Do you remember my telling you about the prophecy regarding the Jews – that when they will be persecuted and driven to Jerusalem the Golden Age shall come?
It is the Jews that have built Germany’s commercial fleet and her navy. And the contribution of the Jews towards the world’s progress in every branch is remarkable.
But this sort of dislike exists among other nations also: for example, the English don’t like the Scotch, because the Scotch have beaten the English in commercial affairs. There was a famous story in Punch. Two people were talking. One said, “Bill, who is that man?” And Bill answered, “Let us strike at him, he is a foreigner.”
And then in Bengal the West Bengal people used to call the East Bengal people “Bangal” and composed a satire, “Bangal manush noy, oi ekjantu.”
Once I used to wear socks at all times of the year. The West Bengalis used to sneer that I was a Bangal. They thought that they were the most civilised people on earth. It is a legacy from the animals, just as dogs of one quarter don’t like dogs of another.
Satyendra: But things will improve, I hope.
Sri Aurobindo: If these things go, we may be sure the Golden Age is coming. All my opinions are naturally on the basis of the present conditions. But, of course, the conditions would be quite different if the Supermind came down.
Nirodbaran: You are tempting us too much with your Supermind. Will it really benefit the whole of mankind?
Sri Aurobindo: It will exert a certain upward pull but in order that it may bring a considerable change, that it may be effective, two hundred sadhaks of the Ashram can’t be enough. There must be thousands whose influence can spread all over the world, who by actual example can prove that the Supermind is something superior to the means hitherto employed.
Purani: Will it have a power over humanity?
Sri Aurobindo: Let us leave it to the Supermind to decide.
Nirodbaran: The materialists and scientists say that Yogis have done nothing for human happiness. Buddhas and Avatars have come and gone, but the sufferings of humanity are just the same.
Sri Aurobindo: Did Avatars come to relieve the sufferings of humanity? It was only Buddha who showed the way to a release from suffering. But his path was to get away from this world2 and enter into Nirvana. Does mankind follow him? And if they don’t and can’t get rid of their sufferings, it is not Buddha’s fault!
Nirodbaran: People say that scientific inventions and medical discoveries have been able to improve the conditions of the world: for instance, by cholera injections and small-pox vaccinations, the death rate has been reduced.
Sri Aurobindo: And are people happy? Vaccination? Intellectual people say that vaccination has done more harm than good.
Nirodbaran: But that is the opinion of intellectuals, not of doctors.
Sri Aurobindo: Why, the intellectuals have surely studied the subject before giving their opinion. Doctors may have reduced cholera, etc., but what about other things that they have brought in? As for suffering, it cannot go so long as ignorance remains. Even after the Supermind’s descent, suffering will remain. If you choose to remain in suffering, how can it go?
Nirodbaran: Doctors can compel people to take injections even against their will and thus benefit them. Can spiritual Force give such benefits? The Yogis have been busy with their own salvation while the world has remained just the same.
Sri Aurobindo: Evolution has proceeded from matter through animal to physical man, vital man, mental man and spiritual man. When mental man or spiritual man appears, the others don’t disappear. The tigers and serpents don’t become men. In this upward growth of the human consciousness you can’t say that Buddha, Christ and others have played no part.
I consider the Supramental the culmination of the spiritual man. In the supramental evolution one is not required to flee from life. It is something dynamic that changes life and nature. It will open the mental, the vital, even the physical to the intuitive and overmental planes.
You want comfort and happiness. In that case Truth and Knowledge are of no value.
The discoveries of modern science have outrun the human capacity to use them. The scientists don’t know what to do with them and the discoveries have been used for the purpose of destruction. Now they are trying to kill by throwing germs from aeroplanes. At least cholera and small-pox end suffering by death, but by bombing you mutilate for life.
Politics, science, even socialism have not succeeded in finding a way out of suffering. They have rallied people to kill one another and thus they have imperilled the State. Is that an improvement, unless you say that murders and massacres are necessary? From this condition of chaos and suffering, there have been shown ways of escape, but about the people who have shown the way out you say they are not useful. Of course I am assuming you are arguing that everybody has to be useful.
No, no, all that is a superficial view of things. One has to consider the whole civilisation before one can pass an opinion.
It is because Western civilisation is failing that people like Aldous Huxley are drawn to Yoga.
1 Many sages, many views.
2 “These Bengalis are not men, they are beasts.”