SITE OF SRI AUROBINDO & THE MOTHER
      
Home Page | Workings | Works of Sri Aurobindo | Autobiographical Notes

Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part Two. Letters of Historical Interest

1. Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters (1890–1926)

Letters and Telegrams to Political and Professional Associates 1906–1926

To Motilal Roy [25]1

Pondicherry
Sept. 2. 1920

Dear M.

My impression about your marriage idea is that you are going too fast. What you say about the commune and the married couple is quite right as our ideal or rather as one side of our ideal, but there is here a question of time and tactics. In our work, especially in the preparatory and experimental part of it, there must be not only spiritual hardihood, साहसं [sāhasaṃ], but skill and prudence, कौशलं [kauśalaṃ]. The question is whether it is necessary or wise and advisable to engage in a battle with society at the moment on a point which it considers to be vital but which is to us subordinate. Our first business is to establish our communal system on a firm spiritual, secondly on a firm economical foundation, and to spread it wide, but the complete social change can only come as a result of the other two. It must come first in spirit, afterwards in form. If a man enters into the commune by spiritual unity, if he gives to it his life and labour and considers all he has as belonging to all, the first necessity is secured. The next thing is [to] make the movement economically self-sufficient, and to do that requires at the present moment all the energy you can command. These two things are, the one a constant, the other an immediate necessity. The institution of a communal ceremony of marriage can only be a future necessity; it involves nothing essential at the moment. The idea is that the family in future is not to be a separate unit, but a sub-unit of the communal whole. It is too early to decide exactly what form the family life will take, it may take many forms, not always the same. The principle is the important thing. But this principle can be observed whatever the form of the marriage ceremony they may have gone through at the time of personal union, whether recognised or not by the present social system. An external necessity does not arise in the present case, as Khagen is not marrying outside his caste.

It remains to be seen whether this step, though not necessary, is advisable. In the first place by your action you declare your commune to be an entirely separate thing from the rest of Hindu society; you will be following in the way of the Brahma Samaj or more exactly in that of Thakur Dayananda. That means a violent scission and a long struggle, which is likely greatly to complicate your other work and put difficulties in the way which need not have been there. My own idea was for our system to grow up in the society, not out of it, though different from it, first bringing in a new spiritual idea,– a field in which opposition and intolerance cannot now long endure,– secondly, justifying itself on the outward plane by becoming a centre of economical regeneration and new power for the country, a work in which we shall have sympathy more than opposition, and getting forward with other matters according to need and opportunity and with a considerable freedom and latitude, meeting social orthodoxy with the plea of reembodying the old free Hindu idea in new forms rather than with the profession of a violent rejection both of the past and the present. In this process a clash will be inevitable sooner or later, but a deliberate precipitation of the conflict in so extreme a form as you suggest was not within my intentions. That was to come, but only when we were strong and had already a hold on the country, so that we might have a strong support as well as enemies.

Your point is that the commune should not depend either on Government or society for the validity of the union. It seems to me sufficient if that is spiritually insisted on or at most given an outward indication. I would suggest that the exchange of garlands should be done before the commune, as it was done in the old Swayamvara before the assembly. The conventional marriage can then be added as a concession to the present society, as in old times the sampradana by the father was added to the swayamvara although in fact the svayamvara itself would have been quite valid without it. If a case should arise in future where the mutual giving would be necessary by itself, we might then go to the more extreme course. This would, it seems to me, satisfy everything immediately necessary or advisable,– first, the assertion of free choice as the principle of marriage, secondly, the formal inclusion of the couple in their united life in the commune, apart from any conventional marriage ceremony, thirdly, the justification of a continuity between our movement and the great past of India. The movement of course is not to stop with the forms of the past or a modernisation of them, but this sort of preliminary advance under cover will prepare more easily its future advance into the open, which we can afterwards make as rapid as we choose. At the same time it will have the advantage of awaking a less vehement opposition at a moment when it seems to me we are not yet ready for a frontal attack in the social field and a decisive battle. If a battle becomes necessary, of course we must not flinch from it, but I should myself prefer to have it after I have reached the proper stage in my Yoga and after I return to Bengal. At present I have so many calls upon an energy which is still largely occupied with pushing forward to its own perfection that I do not quite like the idea of the heavy drain on it such a struggle would entail. This at least is my present view on the matter.

The Standard Bearer is, I am afraid, subject to the criticism passed on it; the criticism is general and I felt it myself. It is a sort of weekly “Arya”; but the Arya style and method are not what is wanted for a weekly paper. What you need to do, is to make the ideas easy to the people and give them a practical direction. At present you give only a difficult philosophy and abstract principles. I shall write more about this matter hereafter as soon as I find time.

A. G.

 

1 2 September 1920. For information on the “marriage idea”, see Light to Superlight, pp. 93–96.

Back