Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
26 January 1939
Purani: Barcelona is going! The French people are waking up at the eleventh hour.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. The democracies are not showing much courage at present at any rate.
Satyendra: It seems political ideas are not worth fighting for. Today one fights for democracy, tomorrow for monarchy or dictatorship.
Sri Aurobindo: Quite so. All human values are half-values. They are relative. They have no permanence or durability in them.
Satyendra: Perhaps if men became more mentalised they would understand better.
Sri Aurobindo: Mentalised? No! The difficulty is that they don’t follow the principles of life.
Satyendra: How is that?
Sri Aurobindo: Life compromises between elements but mind acting on its own doesn’t. Mind takes up one thing and makes it absolute, considers it as apart from and opposed to all other things and sets it above all. Hegel boasted that in Europe they had succeeded in separating reason from life – and you see what their philosophy has become. It has nothing to do with life; it is all intellectual gymnastics without forming a part of living reality. On the contrary, in India philosophy has always been a part of life; it had an aim to realise everything. So in the political philosophy of the West you find that if they accept democracy, it is democracy alone; all the rest is set against it. If they take to monarchy, then monarchy is all in all. The same thing happened in ancient Greece. They fought for democracy, aristocracy, monarchy – and in the end they were conquered by the Romans.
Satyendra: Then what is the truth in all these attempts at political organisation?
Sri Aurobindo: If you want to arrive at something true and lasting, you have to look at life and learn from it: that is to say, learn the nature of the oppositions and contradictions and then reconcile them. As regards government, life shows that there is a truth in monarchy whether hereditary or elective. In other words, there is a man at the top who governs. Life also shows that there is a truth in aristocracy whether of strong men or rich men or intellectuals. The fiction is that it is the majority that rules, but the fact is that it is the minority, the aristocracy. Life shows again that the rule of the monarch or the aristocrats should be with the consent, silent or vocal, of the people. In addition, life shows that there is a Vaishya class (the merchants and industrialists). This class too has a play in government.
In ancient India the truth of these things was recognised. That is why India has lasted through millenniums – and China also.
English politics is successful because the English have always found one or two men who had the power to lead the minority ruling class. During the Victorian period, it was either Gladstone or Disraeli. And even when one party changes, the one that comes into power does not follow a radically changed policy. It continues the same policy with a slight modification.
In France no government lasts. Sometimes it changes within a few days. The new government becomes a repetition of the one it replaces. Blum is the only man who wanted to do something radical and he was knocked out.
Purani: Have you seen X’s (an Indian political leader) statement?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. He seems to have a queer logic. Because the rightists have a majority, he says that the president should be elected from the leftists! And there is also no sense in his saying, “We will fight the government to the end.” When there is a revolution, there can be no compromise. But once you have accepted a compromise, what meaning is there in such a statement? One has to work out things on the basis of what one has gained. Satyamurti’s idea of Federation seems all right to me. If the States people are given seats in the Centre and if the Government exercises no veto in the provinces, then it is practically Home Rule.
Purani: The Viceroy’s long stay at Bombay seems significant. I think there is something behind it. He perhaps wants to make Dr. Kher or Rajagopalachari head of the Central Assembly in a Federation.
Sri Aurobindo: Is that so? Dr. Kher seems to be a very able man. He appears to have escaped the Socialist trap.
Purani: Vallabhbhai Patel is terribly anti-Socialist. He crushed the Socialists at Baroda.
Sri Aurobindo: These Socialists don’t know what Socialism is.
Purani: There were very humorous speeches in the Sind Assembly. The Muslim League has been exposed.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. The Sind Premier – I always forget his name – strikes me as a strong man. He stands up for his ideas at the risk of unpopularity. That means some strength. The Sind Muslims were anxious to join the Congress. The Congress should try to do something to make a coalition there. The Congress Ministry is successful almost everywhere. That shows the capacity to govern if the powers are given.
Nirodbaran: Only Bengal and the Punjab remain now under the Muslim League.
Sri Aurobindo: The Muslim League is not so strong in Bengal, for there is the Praja Party. And in the Punjab, Sikander Hyat Khan looks like an able man. Only in the United Provinces does the Muslim League seem strong. If the Congress could win in Sind, then the Bengal and Punjab Premiers will stand on two sides of India and make faces at each other.
Nirodbaran: I wonder how Fazlul Huq could become a Premier. Nazimuddin appears to be more capable.
Sri Aurobindo: Nazimuddin can’t make a popular figure.
Purani: Gandhi has definitely said that any compromise with the Muslim League is impossible now.
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t understand why the Congress opened negotiations with the League. The League has been given undue importance. How is it that the Congress is so weak in the Punjab?
Purani: Because of the Socialists and the Old Group.
The Jaipur affair is starting again. Bajaj is going to offer Satyagraha and Gandhi is giving his approval.
Sri Aurobindo: Since he is a Congressman I suppose the Congress will have to back him. If the States people get power, the Princes will have no work except to sign papers and shoot animals. The Gaekwar will have to stop making buildings.
Nirodbaran: Where will they shoot animals? The forests are being destroyed nowadays.
Sri Aurobindo: Forests have to be preserved. Otherwise animals will become extinct. China has lost her forests and there is a flood every year.
Nirodbaran: There are so many Maharajas, Chiefs, Nawabs and other rulers dotting India everywhere.
Sri Aurobindo: Germany was like that at one time. Napoleon swept away one half and Hitler the other half – not Hitler exactly but the post-war period. Japan also had the same thing, but the princes voluntarily abdicated their powers and titles for the sake of duty – duty to their country.
Nirodbaran: How far back in history do the Japanese rulers go?
Sri Aurobindo: The Mikado claims to be a descendant of the Goddess of the sun. The Mikado named Magi used to believe that and feel that the inspiration above was doing whatever was necessary.
There are two types of men in Japan. One is tall, with a long nose and finely cut aristocratic face. It was they who gave the Samurai culture to Japan. I met at Tagore’s place one of this type: he had magnificent features. The second type is the usual Mongol type. They haven’t a particularly handsome face.
Purani now brought in the question of the dictator and traced Hitler’s genealogy, as it were.
Purani: The dictator’s psychology is centred in the authority-complex. People feel that they are great and Hitler is fighting for them, not that they are fighting for Hitler. The dictators also find a competitor in God and religion.
Sri Aurobindo: But Mussolini didn’t, though Mustafa Kamil did. Mussolini has, on the contrary, given more powers to the Pope and the Vatican. He has recognised the Roman Catholic Church as the State religion.
Purani: I read somewhere that Kamil in one of his drinking moods slapped an Egyptian because he came to the party with a fez on.
Sri Aurobindo: You haven’t heard the story of the journalist?
Purani: No.
Sri Aurobindo: Well, a young journalist criticised the government of Turkey, saying that Turkey was governed by a number of drunkards. Kamil came to know about it and sent him an invitation to dinner. After the dinner was over, Kamil said, “Young man, you have written that Turkey is governed by a number of drunkards. It is not a number of drunkards but just one drunkard.”
Purani: Kamil at one time tried to play off Italy against Russia.
Sri Aurobindo: But Russia has all along helped Turkey.
Purani: Stalin, in order to enforce collectivisation starved the Ukraine to death because the Ukrainians didn’t pay their dues. He said, “Once we submit to the peasants, they will catch hold of us.”
Sri Aurobindo: That is what happens when Socialism comes. Communism – the system of communes – is quite a different thing. If they had been successful in carrying out the original idea of the Soviet, it would have been a great success. Mussolini at the beginning tried to form a corporate State but he gave up.
Purani: In Ahmedabad the Socialists didn’t succeed in breaking the trade unions. The Indian agriculturists won’t have them.
Sri Aurobindo: Socialism has no chance with the Indian peasant. He will side with you so long as you promise him land and want to end the landlord system. But once he has got the land, no more of Socialism. Communism is another thing. In Socialism you have the State which intervenes at every step with its officials who rob you of money.
Nirodbaran: They know the Government machinery and so manipulate it as to keep power in their own hands.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is the State bureaucracy that dictates its policy irrespective of the good of the commune; while in Communism the land is held as the common property of the whole unit and each one in it is entitled to labour and have his share from the produce.
In our country they had a kind of Communism in the villages. The whole country was like a big family and the lowest had his right as a member of the family. The washerman, the carpenter, the blacksmith, all got what they wanted.
Each such commune can be independent and many such communes can be scattered all over the country and combine or coordinate their activities for a common purpose.