Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
4 February 1940
Nirodbaran: Anilbaran has forwarded a letter from some Rajkumar Bhattacharya of Dacca, who seems to be a permanent invalid from asthma and bronchitis and has no energy left for sadhana. He has half a dozen children. His wife died last year. He says that strangely enough he didn’t cough a single time while writing the letter.
Sri Aurobindo: Then he can go on writing such letters. But why did he spend all his energy in creating and rearing children, so that none is left for sadhana?
Nirodbaran: Do you think birth control would have helped? People say birth control has no religious sanction. Children are supposed to be given by God.
Sri Aurobindo: So is asthma then. Why take any treatment for it?
Nirodbaran: Birth control is an artificial means. Gandhi is against it.
Sri Aurobindo: I know. But civilisation is also artificial, and even Gandhi’s loin-cloth. What do you say?
Nirodbaran: But the loin-cloth is such a small artificiality. Gandhi says one should practise self-control instead of birth control. The latter is likely to create more indulgence.
Sri Aurobindo: Of course if one can exercise self-control, it is best. But why didn’t this man do that instead of producing six children and causing the death of his wife? Birth control is not creating more indulgence in Europe. Indulgence in which respect? Legitimate or illegitimate?
Nirodbaran: Even in legitimate relationships, it is said that birth control will remove the restraint imposed on people by the fear of having a large family.
Sri Aurobindo: Does Gandhi say that?
Nirodbaran: I don’t know precisely, but he says that such artificial means cause more harm than good.
Sri Aurobindo: That is a different matter. But I don’t think any fear can stop indulgence. People will indulge all the same in spite of fear of consequences when they have an impulse.
Nirodbaran: Under present economic conditions it is better, I think, to adopt birth control.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, since most people can’t exercise restraint.
Nirodbaran: There is a divergence of medical opinion on the subject. Some say that restraint produces neurasthenia.
Sri Aurobindo: But plenty of doctors hold the opposite view, and that is now almost accepted.
Nirodbaran: Some doctors say that early marriage is bad, especially for the woman because her body is still immature and undeveloped and the strain of pregnancy will tell on her health, and that the children born will also be unhealthy. But in ancient India early marriage was the custom and yet people seem to have lived to a ripe old age.
Sri Aurobindo: The long life was due to the early state of mankind.
Purani: There was no economic struggle then.
Sri Aurobindo: Apart from that, their habits were vigorous and natural. What, according to medical science, should be the marriage age?
Nirodbaran: Twenty or after. Of course, there is again another school. One famous authority says that early marriage is good and very healthy. After twenty the bones become fixed and rigid. Flexibility of the organs is lost and this causes great difficulty during labour.
Sri Aurobindo: That is true. No rules can be fixed for these things. Formerly sixteen to eighteen was the age for marriage. I know about someone in my uncle’s family. I mean Hatkhola Dutta’s children. The girl was only thirteen when she first delivered. She got a boy, who I saw when he was thirteen or fourteen. He was very tall, healthy and handsome. The rest of the children, among them three girls, were a little shorter but all handsome. The three girls were the most beautiful I have ever seen and all the children were remarkable specimens of humanity. You know the story of Akshay Maitra?
Nirodbaran: No.
Sri Aurobindo: He was a great social reformer. Once at a meeting he was holding forth against early marriage. After his speech, his father who was present got up and said, “The lecture was very interesting, but the lecturer is my son and was born out of my early marriage. You see how tall and strong and healthy he is? Then he has himself married early and he too has a son who is so strong and rowdy that it is difficult for us to stay at home.” (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: The old man must have carried the meeting. Another point in favour of early marriage is that the girl being quite young can be moulded and adapted to the family and there is thus more prospect of happiness.
Satyendra: That is a point because of the joint-family system.
Nirodbaran: No, even otherwise it tends to make the married life of the couple happy. If the girl is already grown up, she has an individuality of her own and is no longer plastic.
Sri Aurobindo: You mean that the girl should always be educated with a view to marriage and she should have no individuality of her own? Most women, of course, think only of marriage and in India they do not have their own individuality.
Nirodbaran: Another interesting argument against birth control is advanced by people who ask: “In cases where an illustrious son is born after the second or third child, what would have happened if birth control had been practised?”
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): What about the majority of people who are not illustrious? Or the majority of parents who have no illustrious sons?
Satyendra: Huxley says that everything on the human level is evil.
Nirodbaran: But it is the few illustrious people who raise the level of humanity.
Sri Aurobindo: Some say illustrious people are insane. One valid argument against birth control is the diminution of population. In France, because of the universal practice of it, the population is very low.
Satyendra: Besides, birth control is still only in an experimental stage. It is too early to say what effects it will have.
Nirodbaran: All the same, it is more extensively practised now.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, in Europe it is practically universal.
Satyendra: There is an increased number of lunatics in the West, probably due to excessive indulgence.
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t think lunacy is due to indulgence. Besides, indulgence is not more now than, say, in the eighteenth century. That period was remarkable for licentiousness.
Satyendra: If we are to believe what is said in the papers, there is much indulgence today, especially among the aristocrats.
Sri Aurobindo: Not only among them but among the common people too.
Satyendra: When one reads Balzac, one wonders why people in France marry at all.
Nirodbaran: As Sri Aurobindo once said, “To love another!”
Sri Aurobindo: Marriage among the French is more for an economic advantage.
Satyendra: Chastity doesn’t seem to exist in France.
Nirodbaran: That is why modernists say chastity is a superstition.
Sri Aurobindo: Bertrand Russell? Chastity is considered a moral need which one outgrows as soon as the need is over.
Nirodbaran: Morality is also regarded as a superstition. But isn’t there something good in chastity?
Sri Aurobindo: Any restraint gives one power and strength. Half of Hitler’s energy comes from his restraint, though his opponents say that he is a sexual pervert and a lunatic.
Nirodbaran: They call his condition of mind schizophrenia – a psychological disease due to sex-repression.
Sri Aurobindo: I suppose they will call spiritual sex-control mystical schizophrenia.
Nirodbaran: Anthony West and others will say that about Huxley.
Sri Aurobindo: “Spiritual failures!”