Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on Indian Affairs (1930 – 1946)

Prospects for India after Independence [4]

Can’t you say something a little more definite about independence than that it “will evolve itself”? Such a phrase can stretch itself out to the end of the cosmos. When the yogi Baroda Babu was asked about this, he replied “Independence? Not within 50 years!” We live in time and space and would like to hear something in terms of time.

I am not a prophet like Baroda Babu. All I can say is that the coming of independence is now sure (as anyone with any political sense at all can see). As you do not accept my “play of forces”, I can say no more than that — for that is all that can be said by the “human time-sense”.

20 September 1935