One

The Current Hindu Upsurge in Sri Aurobindo's Light

There is undoubtedly a Hindu upsurge in the country today. But whether we seize the tide at its
flood and use it to bring about a spiritual renaissance or let it peter out into a mere religious
revival will decide the future of this country. There are many who see this upsurge as a strong
mandate for a religious revival which, they hope, will lift the country from its present
lackadaisical and self-destructive ways and put it on the path to fulfilment and glory. Ranged
against them are those who decry the whole phenomenon as a regressive and unhealthy
development.1 Many in this latter group are convinced that all spirituality is obscurantism and
they are therefore hostile to any attempt to see this as a call for the spiritual renaissance of the
country. My aim in this paper is not so much to take sides with the critics of this upsurge or with
its champions as to see the whole phenomenon in a different light—the light of Sri Aurobindo.

Let me begin by stating my thesis in this paper as briefly as possible and then go on to expatiate
on it. A spiritual civilisation like the Indian one does not endure and progress by sticking to or
reviving its old forms, whether in religion, arts or socio-economic institutions, but by breaking
their mould and creating new ones which are appropriate to the changing times and true to its
innate trend and genius. What is popularly known as Hinduism today is the religious
manifestation of a spiritual civilisation during the last 1,100 years or so, generally recognised as
the period of decline of this spiritual culture. Whether as a religion this manifestation is better or
worse than other religions is a matter in which I am not interested at the moment. But why
anybody who understands the genius of this culture would want to revive such an obsolete
manifestation is beyond my comprehension. Therefore, a Hindu religious revival is to my
thinking an absurdity and the sad thing is that many of us believe that we are fighting for this
absurdity. Those who want to resurrect a particular manifestation of Hinduism, in this case a
medieval one, lose sight entirely of the predominantly spiritual nature of this culture. Some of
their critics decry this upsurge because they mistrust spirituality and are convinced that India's
destiny is to be a faithful camp follower of the grossly commercial, materialistic and insufficient
Western civilisation either of the currently buoyant American variety or of the obsolete and
moribund communist variety.

There were two important spiritual figures in the Indian renaissance movement—Swami
Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo. They recognised the spirit as the truth of the Indian civilisation
and hoped for a renaissance of Indian spirituality. They worked for it not only because it is the
soul of Indian culture and no true development in India can be based on any other foundation
but also because they were convinced that it is the supreme gift India can make to the world to
save it from chaos and destruction. One of the famous utterances of Sri Aurobindo which is
most relevant for the present time is: When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the
Sanatan Dharma that shall rise.... it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall be great. When it is said
that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and
extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists.2
But there seems to be among some of us a strange reluctance, if not a feeling of
embarrassment, in drawing attention to this statement. This is harmful because if those who
understand what Sri Aurobindo meant by it do not speak up, those who do not fully understand it
will exploit it to strengthen their agenda. In fact, Sri Aurobindo has himself explained what he
meant by the terms 'Hindu', 'Sanatana' and 'Dharma'. He said,
That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal
religion which embraces all others.... This is the one religion that can triumph over materialism
by including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy.3

It is easy to twist a statement like this and jump to the conclusion that since Sri Aurobindo
wanted the Sanatana Dharma to be the one religion for the whole of mankind, he was a
champion of Hindu religion, and was even a Hindu revivalist. This is absolute nonsense since Sri
Aurobindo condemned the very idea of one institutional religion for the whole world as "a
grotesque creation of human unreason, the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty, obscurantism
and aggressive fanaticism" and said that such an obsession had never been able to take hold of
the free and supple mind of India.

Sri Aurobindo regarded Hinduism primarily as the name of a civilisation, of a set of values and
not as a credal religion. As he once put it,

How again can Hinduism be called a religion when it admits all beliefs, allowing even a
kind of high-reaching atheism and agnosticism and permits all possible spiritual
experiences, all kinds of religious adventures?4
In his Foundations of Indian Culture, and also in The Human Cycle, he makes a clear distinction
between two aspects of religion; religion as spirituality, the seeking of oneness with the
supreme reality and with all one's fellow men; and religion as creed, a system of dogmas, moral
codes and social customs. This is formal religion. He never maintains that things which
constitute formal religion are unnecessary. According to him they too are needed because the
lower members of man's being have to be exalted before they can be spiritualised. Thus an
intellectual formula is needed by the thinking and reasoning mind, a ceremony is needed by the
aesthetic part of our being and a set of moral codes is needed by man's vital nature to purify and
chasten it. But these things are aids and supports of religion, not its essence. Hinduism as a
spiritual entity knew the purpose of these aids and never mistook them for the essence of
religion. Thus it was less a creed or cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the Godward
endeavour of the human spirit. It is this spiritual aspect of this religious culture that Sri
Aurobindo refers to as Sanatan Dharma.
But at the same time Sri Aurobindo never assumed even for a moment, as some of us tend to
do, that true spirituality is the exclusive turf of the Hindus. As his collaborator, the Mother, once
pointed out, "Genuine spirituality is found in all religions. In every religion there are some who
have evolved a high spiritual life."

It is ironic that the Hindu religionist and most of his critics, in part, both share the same
misconception about the Hindu religious culture and fight over it. The Hindu religionist respects
the great rishis and founders of the spiritual culture of India out of deference for his ancestors
and not because he understands and appreciates this heritage; he looks upon himself not so
much as the inheritor of a great spiritual legacy but as a defender of credal Hinduism, its forms,
ceremonies and temples and of the socio-political institutions connected with this identity. This
is the same part of the Hindu culture which his critics also see as the essential Hindu religion.

In fact, this is the only aspect of Hinduism that these critics understand because they are of a
progressive rationalist persuasion. For them Hindu spirituality is some kind of folk belief, an
irrational fantasy about soul-states and visions—in brief, gobbledygook of some kind. They are
convinced that Hindu spirituality has been the bane of this country. Many of these progressive
critics have a very low opinion of the ancient culture of this country, which as they see it, is little
more than the product of a series of invasions beginning with the Aryans and ending with the
British, and between these two, a series of Islamic invasions about which they feel rather
embarrassed. The secularist credo is that India had no civilisation of its own; what she has is a
gift of the Aryans who came from southern Europe and then of the Mongol, Turkish and Afghan
invaders, with the final finishing touches being given, of course, by the British.

Indian nationalism, since the early years of the Indian renaissance, has undergone various
mutations. K. D. Sethna5, one of the finest scholars and thinkers this country has produced in
our life time, has pointed out how the shock of sheer spirituality in the figure of Sri Ramakrishna,
who summed up in his life the whole spiritual history of India, gave birth to Indian nationalism by
kindling in the nation a consciousness of its own typical genius. The second phase of our
nationalism was not directly spiritual but socio-cultural, charged with indigenous history; the
stress was more on the collective soul of the country as expressed in the traditional ideals and
institutions, its characteristic customs and festivals. This nationalism was fostered by the great
Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In the third phase, our nationalism became ethical as Mahatma Gandhi set
up certain moral doctrines for the patriot's guidance, chiefly the doctrines of non-violence and
what he called 'truth'. Out of this came a fourth kind of nationalism. This brought in the
rationalism of the West and cut the ethical completely off from the mystical. This phase of our
nationalism was fostered by Jawaharlal Nehru. It was non-religious, wholly secular. During the
early years of independence under Nehru's patronage, India became a socialist, secular
democracy and an intelligentsia favouring dialectical materialism and the economic view of
history entrenched itself in our universities. Thus what started as a spiritual renaissance ended
up as an anti-spiritual establishment controlling the press and academic institutions.
All these developments have brought us to a point when the traditional defences of Indian
culture have almost lost their hold over people. Multinationals and modern technology have
encouraged the glut of Western cultural influences in the country. The ubiquitous television has
invaded the privacy of our bedrooms, kitchen and drawing rooms. The mass media is
glamourising and glorifying the Western lifestyle which has, in the long run, such deleterious
effects as the homogenisation of human wants and the rise of unachievable expectations. What
we call globalisation results in the spread of a single culture—the same wants, the same
institutions, the same sets of values everywhere. The culture of money is obliterating all other
cultures; even spirituality has become a commodity that can be sold and bought and even
mass-produced during weekend retreats in 5-star hotels. This spread of the mono-culture of
McDonalds, Coca Cola, blue jeans and stereos is taken as a rise in living standards but this new
lifestyle threatens to devastate the inner landscape of art, culture and spirituality. This may turn
out to be a disaster of an even greater magnitude than the destruction of our ecology.
Global business presents a challenge to spirituality everywhere because the mono-culture it
promotes is a materialistic culture. With its sponsoring of junk food, movies saturated with sex
and violence and its naive adulation of athletes and movie stars as the most adorable and
desirable human types, it impresses on the minds of people only two of the four purusharthas,
namely, kama and artha, enjoyment and the making of money, to the total neglect of dharma
(righteous living) and moksha (spiritual liberation).
Sri Aurobindo was never dazzled by this Western culture. Granted that he lived in the West at a
time when external life had not yet been transformed by technology to the extent it has been
since, he knew the trend of this culture and the direction in which it was moving. His critique of
this culture is worth reading even today, more than 90 years after it was written in the Bande
Mataram days. He said 6:

Was life always so trivial, always so vulgar, always so loveless, pale and awkward as the
Europeans have made it? This well-appointed comfort oppresses me. The perfection of
machinery will not allow the soul to remember that it is not itself a machine.

Is this then the end of the long march of human civilisation, this spiritual suicide, this
quiet petrifaction of soul into matter? Was the successful businessman that grand
culmination of manhood toward which evolution was striving? After all, if the scientific
view is correct, why not? An evolution that started with the protoplasm and flowered in
the ourang-outang and the chimpanzee, may well rest satisfied with having created hat,
coat and trousers, the British Aristocrat, the American Capitalist and the Parisian
Apache. For these I believe, are the chief triumphs of the European enlightenment to
which we bow our heads. For these Augustus created Europe, Charlemagne re-founded
civilisation, Louis XIV regulated society, Napoleon systematised the French Revolution.
For these Goethe thought, Shakespeare imagined and created, St. Francis loved, Christ
was crucified. What bankruptcy! What a beggary of things that were rich and noble!...

It is a very pleasant inferno they have created in Europe, a hell not of torments but of
pleasures, of lights and carriages, of balls and dances and suppers, of theatres and
cafes and music-halls, of libraries and clubs and Academies, of National Galleries and
Exhibitions, of factories, shops, banks and Stock Exchanges. But it is hell all the same,
 not the heaven of which the saints and the poets dreamed, the new Jerusalem, the
golden city. London and New York are the holy cities of the new religion, Paris its golden
Paradise of Pleasure.7

The onslaught of the aggressive Western pop culture that is sweeping all over the world has
already caused an upsurge in religions, particularly in Islamic and Christian countries. "Christian
fundamentalism in America itself," as David Frawley reports, "is a pop religion of TV preachers
accompanied by country and western singers, with instantaneous conversion at football
stadiums or even in front of the television, with wild prophecies, and make-believe miracles. Its
preachers are often found to be involved in financial and sexual improprieties of various
types..Such religion is hardly the piety of the middle ages and is accompanied by little soul
searching. And no real spiritual practices, much less any asceticism." Frawley also mentions in
this context Islamic fundamentalism which he describes as "more militant and traditional, and
perhaps more dangerous as it does not hesitate to resort to violence, not only in Islamic
countries but all over the world."8

The fundamentalist reaction may have a justifiable cause—the fear that Western culture lacking
spiritual values may change life into a spiritual and moral wasteland—but religious
fundamentalism is not a proper answer to it. Religious fundamentalism is an anti-evolutionary
force because it makes the religious cultures in which it breeds regressive and sterile. Moreover,
as David Frawley points out, it makes materialism look more human and progressive by
countering it with a force of superstition.9

The Hindu revivalist movement so far has not become fundamentalist in its mainstream. This
itself is a miracle when we consider that there is abundance of very grave provocations abound.
Take, for instance, the peculiar role the English-language press in India has been playing in this
regard. Time and again, it has raised certain issues in a way that provokes and incites the Hindu
revivalist; it has at the same time tended to marginalise the influence of the spiritual leaders of
the Indian renaissance such as Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo. It has thus the peculiar
distinction of turning Hindus into fundamentalists in their own country. Some credit for this
must also go to our electoral politics. The magic wand that is used to belabour the majority
community in India is called secularism. The one country in the world that has been traditionally
hospitable to the followers of all religions has now to learn lessons in secularism in its new
form. The secularism cherished by our press is the noble concept that denies the majority
community even the normal democratic rights of protest. If Hindus protest against a film like
Water press. But the same press doesn't object to the banning of a book by Salman Rushdie
because it offends the sentiments of the minority community. Ideally, no book or film should be
banned for such reasons but there should be avenues for protest for the majority community as
well as for the minority community. The legitimate interests of no community should be
trampled upon.

Any talk of an Indian cultural nationalism or of working towards a uniform civil code is branded
as communal, while the openly religious and caste-based parties that create religious and social
divisions are certified as secular. The government is applauded for its secularism when it diverts
Hindu temple funds for its own use, but any questioning of the accountability of overseas
funding to mosques and churches is fiercely attacked as communal and non-secular. When the
Supreme Court passes a verdict not palatable to a minority community, the secularist
government overturns it by a legislative fiat as has been seen in the Shah Bano case. The plight
of 400,000 Kashmiri Hindus rendered refugees in their own country does not disturb our
national conscience, but any call for a review of the temporary Article 370 is not tolerated. Pope
John Paul II chooses India to announce that a "great harvest of faith will be reaped" in Asia in
the third millennium. Conversions on a large scale go on even today because India is still a
comparatively poor country, and there is a liberal flow of funds from abroad to support this
proselytising activity. One could just go on listing the provocations against Hindus. But if you are
a Hindu, pluralism comes naturally to you, and you cannot hate enough to be a fundamentalist,
except when you are caught up in a mass frenzy. Otherwise in a country where dozens of
innocent people are routinely being killed through bomb explosions by Islamic fundamentalists,
the reaction from the Hindu majority community has so far been very mild. On most occasions,
a call is given for a bandh. I would be the last person to suggest we emulate Israel in response
to violence. I am only trying to show how the majority community in our country feels attacked
from all sides and yet is doing its best not to get provoked into taking retaliatory action.

There are, of course, fringe groups among Hindus who have been clamouring for strong
measures of retaliation. In this connection the recent upheaval in Gujarat comes to mind. No
Hindu in his right mind would approve of what happened after the Godhra carnage, but I would
like to quote what of K.D. Sethna said in 1949.
Sethna was a political analyst and had Sri Aurobindo as his mentor10 and he often commented
on national and international events in the years immediately after February 1949. These words
have a relevance even today, more than 50 years after they were written:
People who call themselves progressive look upon all revivalist tendencies as if they
were the plague; they understand these tendencies to be pure and unadulterated
communalism. Intolerant Hindu sectarianism on the rampage is their notion of whoever
seems to be a revivalist. It must be admitted that there is a good number of Hindu bigots
and we cannot sufficiently emphasise their harmfulness. But two things must be kept in
view when we condemn them. Most of these bigots are a reaction to the fanaticism that
was the father of the Muslim League and therefore the progenitor of Pakistan. They are
the unnatural consequences of a most unnatural phenomenon and are to a large extent a
sort of defence mechanism against a menace that has kept on growing. To discourage
them is indeed our duty but if our stand is not equally strong against the root cause of
their upsurgence we fail to be realists. To expect that no section of the Hindu community
would indulge in reprisals for acts of injustice and brutality committed against the
Hindus in Pakistan [and in Godhra in recent times even in our own country] is simply to
be ignorant of human nature: the way to avoid retaliations is not merely to preach
Gandhism to the masses or to punish those who take the law in their own hands but to
add to all genuinely preventive or deterrent measures an attempt to stop the occasions
of provocation.11 [material in brackets added by this author]

It can't be denied that among people in general in the majority Hindu community, a certain
religiosity is on the rise. People are becoming more 'traditional', they are going on more
pilgrimages and performing ritualistic worship with greater fervour and at a greater cost than
did people of my generation. The pomp and show with which certain festivals such as Ganesh
Chaturthi and Diwali are observed, is another instance of this. Jagarans are held in which
playback singers and prominent people from the world of entertainment are invited to
participate. Consider how many television channels are now dedicated to this religionism. The
music market is flooded with renderings of popular devotional songs, chantings of the Gayatri,
Mrityunjaya japa and other mantras. Luxury liners are chartered for holding the recitation of the
Ramayana Katha and the Bhagavat Purana on the high seas. The protests launched against
beauty contests, fashion shows and the observance of Valentine's Day by certain Hindu groups
show the fundamentalist facet of this revival.
These events are the expression of revivalists who seek to revive old forms of Hinduism in order
to preserve its spirit. But very often, in taking things literally in order to materialise the essence,
there is a tendency to lose sight of the deeper Spiritual significance of things. Take cow
protection, for example. The Vedas give a most honourable place to the cow, but the popular
cow-protection movement has very little to do with the Vedas. The Vedic cow is not the
four-legged animal which we keep ill-treating all the time. If there are sound arguments in favour
of sparing every cow, why not extend the same protection to dogs and other domestic animals?
Let us at least spare our bullocks from the cruelty of yoking them to carts. Why be partial to
cows? The Vedas revere and worship cows, but then in the Vedas the cow—gou—is the symbol
of illumination in the human mind. The two fruits of the Vedic sacrifice are the wealth of cows
and the wealth of horses, symbolising mental illumination and vital energy respectively.12 It is
not enough to be passionate about reviving Hinduism, we must know what part of Hinduism is
worth reviving.

Consider how a genuine impulse to go back to the foundations of our traditions peters out as a
revivalist gesture. A revealing instance of this is the University Grants Commission's (UGC) move
to introduce Vedic astrology as a subject of study in Indian universities and the loud protests
raised against this move by the country's guardians of rationality. Whether astrology is an
academic discipline or not is a question I do not wish to discuss. I merely wish to point out that
UGC should simply have recommended the study of what may be called the traditional systems
of knowledge (which includes astrology) because there is so much that we need to understand
in diverse fields of traditional knowledge. In many fields—for example, civil engineering, metal
technology, textiles, shipping and ship building, water harvesting systems, forest management,
farming techniques, traditional medicinal systems—India has a fund of traditional knowledge
which for long has been dismissed as mere folklore and superstition. But we can see from the
complex of towns of the Saraswati-Sindhu civilisation to Delhi's Qutab Minar that India's
indigenous technologies were very sophisticated in design, planning, water supply, traffic flow,
natural air-conditioning, complex stone work and construction engineering. Indian textile
exports were legendary. Roman archives contain official complaints about massive cash
drainage because of imports of fine Indian muslin. Our navigation system was famous
throughout the world because India had a thriving ocean trade system for centuries before the
Europeans arrived on the scene. Even Vasco da Gama's ships, which discovered the trade route
to India, were captained by a Gujarati sailor!
The argument in favour of taking up the study of our traditional knowledge systems rests not on
patriotism or false pride in being Indian but in the evidence that these systems are eco-friendly
and allow sustainable growth. The Western life style, as is well-known by now, is not only
destroying local cultures but is degrading the whole earth. Moreover, it gives rise to
unachievable expectations. People everywhere want to live like Americans. But the capital
required to enable billions of poor humans to live like Americans simply does not exist in the
world. Americans can live the way they do because cheap labour is available to them from
somewhere else, and they can buy natural resources cheap from somewhere else. When
Gandhiji was asked whether he would like India to develop a lifestyle similar to that of England,
his reply was something to this effect: The British had to plunder the earth to achieve their
lifestyle. Given India's much larger population, it would have to plunder many planets to achieve
that way of life.

To return to our main point, the argument for studying the traditional Indian systems of
knowledge is not a matter of emotional attachment to our past or any kind of chauvinism but a
recognition that these systems are what we need, what the world needs for economic
betterment in a holistic manner.

Thus it is unfortunate that on the whole the current Hindu resurgence has not brought about any
revival of interest in the great achievements of the Hindu civilisation. The sophisticated and
sublime philosophy of the Upanishads, the mathematics of Pingala or of Brahmagupta, the
sophisticated pluralism of Vedanta, the literary achievements of Kalidasa or Sudraka—all these,
like our traditional knowledge systems, have failed to excite us. It has been recognised that ours
is a civilisation that invented games like the chess and produced classics not only on moksha
and dharma but also on Artha and Kama—political economy and sex-education. The adoration of
Rama and Hanuman and the exploitation of the spell of these legends on the mass mind for
grassroots political work may have something to be said for it. But the entire thrust of the Hindu
resurgence must not end with temple politics; it must also not end with the creation of groups of
unquestioning idolaters and delirious devotees. Sri Aurobindo once said:
There are two Hinduisms; one which takes its stand on the kitchen and seeks its
paradise by cleaning the body; another which seeks God, not through the cooking pot
and the social convention, but in the soul. The latter is also Hinduism and it is a good
deal older and more enduring than the other; it is the Hinduism of Bhishma and Sri
 Krishna, of Shankara and Chaitanya, the Hinduism which exceeds Hindusthan, was from
of old and will be for ever, because it grows eternally through the aeons.13

He further said that the Hinduism of the cooking pot and the lustration have their place, but they
are not for all, nor for ever. It was at a time of calamity, of contraction under external pressure,
that Hinduism fled from the inner temple and hid itself in the kitchen. Do we want to revive the
Hinduism of the kitchen or the Hinduism of the soul? That is the question we have to answer
today.

But at the same time, I have a word for those in the majority community in the country who
hesitate even to describe themselves as Hindus for whatever reason. We have seen that
Hinduism is not a religion in the Semitic sense but a term descriptive of a spiritual civilisation.
Those who were Hindu in their spirit and traditions made this land, built this civilisation which
has been wide enough to welcome in terms of equality the Muslim and the Christian, the
persecuted Zoroastrian and, in more recent times, the persecuted Bahai's and the Dalai Lama
and his followers. As Sethna once pointed out, "a great truth is enshrined in the statement that
India is the land of Hinduism. If we forget this truth and seek to create a country with all
psychological and metaphysical and spiritual colour of Hinduism wiped off, we shall seriously
thwart India's growth and make the nation either a mediocrity or a monstrosity instead of a light
to the whole world."14

Sri Aurobindo not only made this distinction between Hinduism of the kitchen and of the soul, he
went one step beyond this. He said that what we call the truer and higher Hinduism is also of
two kinds, sectarian and unsectarian, disruptive and synthetic, that which seeks a single aspect
and that which seeks the 'all'. The first is born out of a rajasic or tamasic attachment to an idea,
an experience, an opinion, or a set of opinions, a temperament, an attitude, a particular guru, a
chosen avatar. This attachment is intolerant, arrogant, proud of little knowledge and scornful of
knowledge that is not its own. The Hinduism which rises beyond theology and scriptures,
metaphysical certainties and cultural determinisms is authentic Hinduism which is the spiritual
core of this civilisation.

The truth that India has sought to serve through Hinduism is the truth of the presence of the
divine in the human. This it regards as the master-key to human progress and fulfilment. It is
unfortunately true, as I have mentioned above, that there are grave provocations that surround
us, violent manifestations of religious fundamentalism in our own country and in some of the
neighbouring countries. Many may feel that the path indicated by Sri Aurobindo, the path of
higher Hinduism which rises beyond theology, scriptures and temples, is too idealistic, too steep
a climb for most of us to manage. The ruthless persecution of Hindus for many centuries during
Islamic rule has traumatised the Hindu psyche. This hurt cannot be healed by suppressing facts.
The English language press and certain political parties have not only suppressed Islamic
history in India, but they have also exploited Islamic religious identity and this has had
well-known social and political reverberations. The Hindu community feels that on the one hand
it is being asked to forget completely the atrocities committed against it by the Islamic regime
for nearly 1000 years, which historian Will Durant has described as the "bloodiest story in human
history" and, on the other hand, to ignore events like the recent bomb blasts in Mumbai, which
are explained away as acts of revenge for what happened in Gujarat in the aftermath of the
Godhra train burning. The trauma that the Hindu civilisation suffered for nearly a thousand years
cannot be wished away. It is simply unimaginable what would happen if the majority community
also sought its own share of revenge for almost a millennium of persecution. It must be realised
that revenge is a dangerously ugly motive and journalists must be careful in using it to excuse
the vile acts of one community while decrying the vile acts of another. To say the least, this is
not the way to heal old civilisational wounds.

In the name of preserving the identity of the Muslim community, our secular leaders have
ghettoised that community and given them a mind-set that is suspicious of the majority
community. This has prevented them from joining the mainstream and therefore deprived them
of the economic and political benefits of social integration. The Hindus and the Muslims both
have to face the depth of degradation and intolerance of the Islamic times in Indian history
together. Neither Hindus nor Muslims benefit from a censorship of any critique of Islam and
Islamic rule in India. Muslims should see how most of their ancestors were forcibly converted
from Hinduism. If they understand their history and ancestry, it may be easier for them to
assimilate into the mainstream of Indian society. They will then realise that their lot is cast in
India, and that India has taken them to her bosom as much as much it has taken the Hindus and
the Christians.15 They might then find it less glamorous to identify themselves with the barbaric
Muslim invaders from outside than with their own country men.

At the same time the Hindus too should not lose track of their civilisational goals by giving in to
the feelings of vindictiveness and tit for tat. They should face the reality of today. It is true that
putting a veil over one's wounds does not help in healing them. But there is a balm for this hurt
and it is to allow themselves to be washed by the purifying waters of their spiritual culture.
Hatred is an altogether alien concept for this ancient civilisation. Political adjustments and
horse trading will not eradicate the ill-will among the Hindus and Muslims in our country. An
attitude of weakness and cowardice will not conciliate our Muslim brethren. Nor is nationalism
which was appropriate for the times of Shivaji appropriate today. We should remember, as Sri
Aurobindo has pointed out, that mother India has given a permanent place to our Muslim
brothers in her bosom. Hinduism must cultivate strength, the strength needed to stop the
religious bully and hooligan in their tracks. But it must also acquire the strength needed to reject
the temptations of the religious and cultural ego which seeks retaliation for wounds inflicted on
us in our history. This is a challenge that no other religion or culture so far has met successfully
but it is my hope and belief that Hindus have the inner resources to meet this challenge
successfully. We as the descendants of Vasishtha and Yajnavalkya can attempt this almost
impossible feat and may even succeed in it. Vishwamitra, as the Puranic legend goes, was
responsible for the death of 100 sons of Vasishtha, yet Vasishtha showed the strength not only
to forgive him but also to lift him to the rare heights of a brahmarshi.

Religion is one of the most attractive masks of the collective ego and it may be the last hurdle
the human mind has to transcend to rise to the new age of supramental consciousness
promised by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is easy to dump religion and with it all its spiritual
commitment, and many in the West have done this successfully. But to remain committed to the
spiritual goals while discarding the religious packaging in which it has come to us is very
difficult. For our own sake, and for the sake of the world, we will have to take up this challenge.
We don't have to wait until others are ready for this great leap forward and upward. This is the
only way to save the world from nuclear jihads or crusades. India ought to hearken to this call of
her destiny.

Do we have the faith in ourselves and our destiny that Sri Aurobindo tried to instil into his fellow
men? Let me conclude with these inspiring words of his:

This great and ancient nation was once the fountain of human light, the apex of human
civilization, the xemplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good government
and settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy.
It has suffered much at the hands of inferior civilisations and more savage peoples; it
has gone down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitterness of death. Its
pride has been trampled into the dust and its glory has departed. Hunger and misery and
 despair have become the masters of this fair soil, these noble hills, these ancient rivers,
these cities whose life story goes back into prehistoric night. But do you think that
therefore God has utterly abandoned us and given us up for ever to be a mere
convenience for the West, the helots of its commerce, and the feeders of its luxury and
pride? We are still God's chosen people and all our calamities have been but a discipline
of suffering, because for the great mission before us prosperity was not sufficient,
adversity had also its training; to taste the glory of power and beneficence and joy was
not sufficient, the knowledge of weakness and torture and humiliation was also needed;
it was not enough that we should be able to fill the role of the merciful sage and the
beneficent king, we had also to experience in our own persons the feelings of the
outcaste and the slave. But now that lesson is learned and the time for our resurgence is
come. And no power shall stay that uprising and no opposing interest shall deny us the
right to live, to be ourselves, to set our seal once more upon the world.16

Notes

1.I have desisted from labelling these groups because I think the blanket appellations given to
them, 'sangh parivar' for the former and 'leftist' for the latter are too sweeping and do scant
justice to ideological differences within each of these groups.
2.Sri Aurobindo: 'Uttarpara Speech' in Karmayogin
3.ibid. p. 9.
4.Sri Aurobindo: The Foundations of Indian Culture
5.K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) India and the World Scene
6.It would be wrong to conclude on the basis of this single quotation that Sri Aurobindo had no
appreciation of the positive aspects of Western culture.
7.Sri Aurobindo: The Harmony of Virtue
8.David Frawley: Hinduism,
9.ibid. p. 34.
10.In the Introduction to the book from which the extract is taken, K. D. Sethna writes: "Not only
were my editorials under his (Sri Aurobindo's) inspiration: they were also sent to him for
approval. Only when his 'Yes', was wired to us did we plunge into publication."
11.K. D. Sethna: India and the World Scene,
12.Sri Aurobindo: The Secret of the Veda
13.Sri Aurobindo: The Harmony of Virtue
14.K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran): India and the World Scene,
15.For a fuller treatment of this subject see the author's monograph entitled The Problem of
Hindu-Muslim Unity in Sri Aurobindo's Light.
16.Sri Aurobindo: Bande Mataram