of every apparent evil in his life.
The same truth applies to the life of the nation.Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 3rd July 1909 — No.3
Opinion and Comments
Our contemporary does however seem to doubt these qualities in the Ruler of all.
He holds it to be a fatal doctrine “that we are none of us necessary, that everything that is happening or can happen is for the best, that God is seeking His fulfilment in inscrutable ways, that He will Himself lead the country when our prominent men are removed from the arena”.
This, he says, is fatalism, and by flinging the word fatalism at Srijut Aurobindo, he thinks he has damned his position.
The word fatalism means usually a resigned passivity, and certainly any leader who preached such a gospel would be injuring the country.
That would be indeed a fatal doctrine.
But our contemporary admits that it is a fatalism of action and not of inaction he is censuring, he blames the speaker for advocating too much action and not too little.
All that the “fatalism” censured means is a firm faith in the love and wisdom of God and a belief based on past experience that as it is His purpose to raise up India, therefore everything that happens or can happen just now will tend to the fulfilment of His purpose.
In other words, there is now an upward tendency in the nation with an immense force behind it and, in such conditions, it is part of human experience that the force makes use of every event to assist the progress of the tendency until its contribution to human development is fulfilled.
That is the idea of kāla or the Zeitgeist working, and, put religiously, it means that God being Supreme Wisdom uses everything for His supreme purposes and out of evil cometh good.
This is true of our private life as every man of spiritual insight can testify; he can name and estimate the particular good which has come out of every apparent evil in his life.
The same truth applies to the life of the nation.
Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo: Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 8.- Karmayogin: Political writings and speeches. 1909-1910.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997.- 471 p.