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TAPASYA FOR KNOWLEDGE IN BARODA

Sri Aurobindo experienced immense peace and tranquillity the moment he set his foot on the soil of the port (Apollo Bunder) in Bombay (6 February 1893). Perhaps, he realised the greatness of his motherland. His relatives rejoiced at his return, though his affectionate father was not alive to see the return of his son from abroad. The kinsfolk and the acquaintances were surprised to see that Sri Aurobindo had not changed into an Englishman. The poet, Suresh Chandra Chakraborty, has thus written¹⁵:

A fresh Indian youth

Passing fourteen years in a country called Britain

Returned to the lap of Saraswati, the Indian Goddess of learning,

Adored with fragrant Juthika, Mallika and Shefali flowers In the courtyard bedecked with white rice-powered paintings

sketched by gracious hands,

Embalmed with the aroma of incense sticks kindled by auspicious hands—

Aurobindo, young and fresh—not in the garb of Grandiflora—

Came back to the lake-water of Bengal like a full-bloom lotus,

Aurobindo, the Mother’s child, came back to the bosom of the Mother—

Springing forth a joy resplendent rouge

And of enrapturing and mellifluous raga Iman-Kalyan played on Shehnai.

Just as Lord Rama who lived fourteen years in the forests before returning to his own kingdom, Sri Aurobindo, after living fourteen years abroad, came back to his motherland, settled in the well-known state of Baroda in western India, and plunged himself in the pursuit of liberating his own country from the shackles of bondage of foreign rule. Baroda is one of the principal centres of Gujarati culture. One can experience a wonderful feeling of peace in this city despite the fact that it is situated so near the hustle and bustle of Ahmedabad and also Bombay. The wide open fields around the city, a solitary hillock nearby, a few decorated palaces of the Maharaja in the midst of the city and the grand public roads bordered with shady trees—all contribute to create here a dreamy atmosphere. Next to the railway station is the college where Sri Aurobindo taught for about twelve years. He lived, I suppose, in a place not very far from the college.¹⁶ The place is quite secluded.

A large memorial statue of the late Maharaja Sayajirao has been erected near this college. Around this are the sprawling lawns; everything looks so beautiful in the evening! The statue reminds us effectively of the great achievements of the successful king. The latter had profound love and respect for Sri Aurobindo. When Sri Aurobindo left Baroda and came to Bengal—towards his next field of activity—some emissaries of the Maharaja came to Calcutta and stayed tenaciously at his door for a few days with a view to persuading him to return to Baroda.

Sri Aurobindo continued his tapasya for knowledge, his literary works, and political planning in this pleasant ambience. Thanks to his sojourn of fourteen years in England, he collected priceless treasures from the ocean of knowledge of the West; in Baroda, he remained immersed for over a decade in the eternal and infinite ocean of Eastern knowledge. Yes, it was indeed a tapasya and his seeking here was as intense and untiring as pursued in England. Let us briefly discuss the characteristics of this pursuit of knowledge and the atmosphere of the age.

When Sri Aurobindo was studying in England, half of the Victorian age had already passed. The scattered wavelets of the French Revolution had spread in various countries of Europe. The Industrial Revolution was bearing fruit, science was taking refuge in the materialistic ideology, philosophy was becoming proud of certitude and the general public was under the intoxicating spell of individual freedom and democracy. In literature, the impulse towards the unknown, the inspiration for new creation was evaporating, the romantic obsession of the literary creators with man and universe was gradually diminishing. As a consequence, the English poets of the age such as Tennyson, Browning, and others, were all moralists. Although there was at that time a certain amount of attachment towards the renowned poets like Shelley, Keats, and others of that era, yet in literature, the influence of novels was on the rise compared to that of poetry.

In spite of the fact that Sri Aurobindo lived for fourteen years in such an atmosphere, he did not accept the zeitgeist (the spirit of the age). His discerning intelligence analysing all these political, social, moral, and literary movements came to this conclusion that this was not the path of shreyah (the supreme good), the path of perfection, and completeness. It was nothing but a mode of manifestation of the changing age.

As Sri Aurobindo deeply realised this truth, he did not get enchanted by the illusory charm of the West; he turned towards eternal India and delved deep in Indian culture seeking reality and truth. It is therefore absolutely wrong on our part to think that he was studying so much just to acquire profound scholarship or that he got immersed in literature just to enjoy the rasa of it.

However, in our country too, the infatuation towards the Western culture began to wane at that time. A large section of our country’s eminent personalities considered for a certain period of time this blind imitation of the West as the best means of attaining salvation. But against this demeaning mentality stood people like Raja Rammohan, Maharshi Debendranath, Rishi Rajnarayan and, above all, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda. A new age in literature was ushered in by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay, Nobinchandra Sen, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, and Rabindranath Tagore. The essential fact is that during this era the spirit of revolution was incarnated, which, in later years, spread in all fields of life. In the field of politics, the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, and political heavyweights like Surendra Nath Bannerjee, Dadabhai Naoroji, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale got engaged in awakening the masses.

Averse to self-publicity, Sri Aurobindo, then living in Baroda away from public view, continued observing with unswerving sincerity these developments unfurling over the entire country and at the same time searching for a path to attain the shreyah (the supreme good)—not for himself, not even for the country but for mankind as a whole. We see subsequently the results it brings forth in the next twelve or thirteen years.

In the State of Baroda, Sri Aurobindo was at first appointed as a probationer in the Settlement Department; thereafter, he worked for some time in the Stamp and Revenue Department and then again in the Secretary’s Office. The Maharaja realised in no time that the best job for Sri Aurobindo was teaching; he was therefore appointed teacher of French in Baroda College. Later, he became Professor of English and finally because of his extraordinary competence he was promoted to the post of Vice-Principal. The Principal of the college was an Englishman. Everyone without exception had a profound respect for Sri Aurobindo’s erudition and divine character. It has now been revealed after quite a long time what opinion this English principal had of Sri Aurobindo.

In 1949, C.R. Reddy, the then Vice-chancellor of the University of Andhra, paid rich tributes to Sri Aurobindo while conferring on him “Sir Kattamanchi Ramalinga National Award” on behalf of the University. In his address, while showering praise on Sri Aurobindo, he mentioned what the English Principal had said to him about Sri Aurobindo. The Principal A.B. Clarke told him,

“So you have seen Aurobindo Ghose. Did you observe his two eyes? They contain as though a mystic fire and a light. They are as if penetrating the higher domain far above this material world.”¹⁷

He also added, “If Jeanne d’Arc could hear divine voices, Sri Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions.”

The Maharaja too was a genuine admirer of Sri Aurobindo’s qualities and, apart from the royal service, there was a warm personal relationship between the two. To cite, once the Maharaja had asked Sri Aurobindo to explain to him some finer points of the English grammar. Dinendra Kumar Roy¹⁸ has written in his book Aurobindo Prasanga (About Aurobindo) that whenever the Maharaja needed to write something in good English, he would send for Sri Aurobindo. Sometimes the Maharaja would ask Sri Aurobindo to visit places outside the state in order to perform some important administrative work. Thus, Sri Aurobindo was once sent to Ootacamund, a hill station of the State of Madras (now Tamil Nadu). On another occasion, he was with the Maharaja at Nainital, the hill station of the United Provinces (now Uttarakhand). Further, he had accompanied the Maharaja as his private secretary at the time of the Kashmir tour. The Maharaja had a good understanding of the temperament of the independent-minded Sri Aurobindo. Therefore, he finally stopped calling him to his royal court and Sri Aurobindo remained absorbed in his studies and teaching.

In his book, Dinendra Kumar has painted a pleasant picture of Sri Aurobindo’s devoted love for knowledge. He has written:

I have never seen such wonderful devotion for studies... seldom did Sri Aurobindo receive his books through Book Post. They used to arrive in huge packing cases through Railway parcels; such parcels would come even more than once in a month. Sri Aurobindo would finish reading all those tomes in a week or ten days. Order for new books would again be placed.

Dinendra Kumar, citing various inconveniences faced by Sri Aurobindo in his house in Baroda, writes:

There was no hesitation or objection from Sri Aurobindo to live in such a dingy house. He lived for a long time unperturbed in that dilapidated house. Sri Aurobindo, ignoring the unbearable mosquito bites, sitting on a chair by his study table till one in the morning in the light of a jewel lamp, would pursue literary studies. I would see him deeply absorbed in a book, sitting in the same place for hours—like a saint lost in his yoga meditation unaware of the external presence. Perhaps, he would not have become aware even if the room caught fire.

In Baroda, Sri Aurobindo studied more, particularly Indian literature, scriptures, yoga, and philosophy. He acquired great mastery in Sanskrit with his own efforts and he learnt quite well a few other Indian languages like Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali. He learnt Bengali very well all by himself. He took a bit of a help from Dinendra Kumar who made him conversant in spoken Bengali. We get a taste of his brilliant mastery of the Bengali language in the pages of his books, namely, Karakahini (Tales of Prison life), Jagannather Rath (The Chariot of Jagannath) and of the weekly, Dharma. In later years, Sri Aurobindo did not write much in Bengali that is worthy of special mention; the need for his message to be heard by the world at large might be the motive. Out of all the languages, it is English that most of the people of the world understand. His well-versed and competent disciples have explained his yoga and philosophy in many other languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, French, German, Italian, Russian, etc. Sri Aurobindo’s deep love for Indian languages has been revealed in many of his writings. We come to know from an article written by Suresh Chandra Chakraborty that Sri Aurobindo was learning Tamil before he came to Pondicherry. Certain essays published in the Arya bear proof that Sri Aurobindo was familiar with Tamil literature, culture, and religious books.¹⁹

This intense tapasya for knowledge in Baroda resulted in awakening in the self of Sri Aurobindo the fount of integral knowledge. The crimson glow of this dawn of knowledge brightened up the firmament of Bengal, the Swadeshi era, and its radiance spread all over India. Today, this sun of knowledge is resplendent in the noon-day sky of the world like the midday mantra of Gayatri. The people of our country first got a glimpse of his wonderful knowledge in the newspaper Bande Mataram, in magazines like Karmayogin and Dharma, and a greater splendour burst forth in the pages of Arya.

Baroda is also the seat of the greater literary pursuit of Sri Aurobindo, the pursuit that began with the dawning of his knowledge. We got some taste of the nectar of his literary creation in Baroda and in Bengal during the period of Swadeshi Movement, but the literary elixir that can be drunk perpetually²⁰ came to us after his migration to Pondicherry. We see in his works that the creation of poetry and lyrics came first and finally the culmination of an epic—Savitri. The initial composition of Savitri, the epic poem, had started in Baroda.