Aurobindo Ghose Research Articles

DEMONS IN HINDUTVA: WRITING A THEOLOGY FOR HINDU NATIONALISM

This article explores the vast body of English language works on Hinduism published since 1981 by Voice of India—an influential right-wing Hindu publishing house headquartered in New Delhi, but contributed to by Indians at “home” and in diasporic communities, as well as Europeans and North Americans. Focus on the construction of the Hindu “Self” and the non-Hindu “Other” shows the manner in which European thought, primarily represented by the contributions of colonial-era British and German indologists, but bolstered by evangelicals, Utilitarians and Arabo-Islamicists from the same era, has become an important feature of postcolonial forms of Hinduism. In particular, the influence of fin de siècle German indologist Paul Deussen, mediated by such colonial-era Hindu thinkers as Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Ghose and Mahatma Gandhi, not only defines Voice of India's theology, but leads to the construction of a Hindu Self that is the personification of “Aryan godliness” and a non-Hindu Other that is essentialized as a “Semitic Demon.” Although closely associated with and often serving the political initiatives of the Sangh Parivar, the authors of this theology have been kept at arm's length by the organization for reasons of political expediency. Both the growing network of contributors to and consumers of this view, and its periodic use by the Sangh Parivar, insure that it represents a significant development in the ideology of Hindutva.

Book Review: "The Quest for Postmodern Ethics: A Phenomenological Comparison of the Philosophies of Martin Heidigger and Sri Aurobindo Ghose"

Book Review: "The Quest for Postmodern Ethics: A Phenomenological Comparison of the Philosophies of Martin Heidigger and Sri Aurobindo Ghose"

Colonial and Post‐Colonial Elaborations of Avataric Evolutionism

Abstract.Avataric evolutionism is the idea that ancient Hindu myths of Vishnu's ten incarnations foreshadowed Darwinian evolution. In a previous essay I examined the late nineteenth‐century origins of the theory in the works of Keshub Chunder Sen and Madame Blavatsky. Here I consider two major figures in the history of avataric evolutionism in the early twentieth century, N. B. Pavgee, a Marathi Brahmin deeply involved in the question of Aryan origins, and Aurobindo Ghose, political activist turned mystic. Pavgee, unlike Keshub, used avataric evolutionism in expounding his nationalistic goals for an independent India. His rationale was bolstered by the idea that India was the fountainhead of all science and civilization. Aurobindo saw in avataric evolutionism a possible key to understanding the involution and evolution of the supreme spirit in the realm of matter as taught in traditional Vedanta. This material‐spiritual evolution represented for Aurobindo the necessary knowledge for the true liberation of India, transcending purely political independence. Such knowledge he also saw as the means for the spiritual liberation of the whole of humankind. The processes of involution and evolution he claimed were not in conflict with modern science, and Western evolutionary thinking seems to have inspired many of his own evolutionary reflections, even though in the end he rejected the Darwinian transmutation of species. I conclude with an overview and assessment of recent, post‐colonial Hindu assimilations of avataric evolutionism.

THE SPIRIT AND FORM OF AN ETHICAL POLITY: A MEDITATION ON AUROBINDO'S THOUGHT

This article elucidates the meaning of Indian nationalism and its connection to religious universalism as a problem of ethics. It engages in that exercise of elucidation by interpreting a few of the key texts by Aurobindo Ghose on the relationship between ethics and politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Both secularist and subalternist histories have contributed to misunderstandings of Aurobindo's political thought and shown an inability to comprehend its ethical moorings. The specific failures in fathoming the depths of Aurobindo's thought are related to more general infirmities afflicting the history of political and economic ideas in colonial India. In exploring how best to achieve Indian unity, Aurobindo had shown that Indian nationalism was not condemned to pirating from the gallery of models of states crafted by the West. By reconceptualizing the link between religion and politics, this essay suggests a new way forward in Indian intellectual history.

'A Truthful Impression of the Country': British and American Travel Writing in China, 1880-1949 by Nicholas R. Clifford (review)

activist,and Aurobindo Ghose, a Cambridge-educatedBengaliwho was for a while activelyengaged in nationalistpolitics:'Itwas surelynot coincidentalthat the development of campaigns based on boycott and swadeshi (the locally made) occurred in Bengal not long afterthe onset in Irelandof the Celtic Revival'(p. Io9) and Sinn Fein's supportof native Irishtrades.For both campaigners,the worshipof Kali, the destroyingmother, was synonymouswith love of nation. The South African Solomon Plaatje,whose polyphonic writing 'is in many ways reminiscentof the multivoicedbricolage'(p. 15I)of TheWaste Land,is shown to have learnt from African American resistance, as the American situation of race-based oppressionwas comparablewith South Africanexperience. EllekeBoehmer argues that the discourses of self-representationof the colonized subject at this period, drawn as she shows they are from cross-national encounters, resemble some key modernist texts. Finally, she turns to the work of two writers associated with metropolitanmodernism, LeonardWoolf and W. B. Yeats, looking for evidence of cross-borderintertextuality.In Woolf s letters from Ceylon and in his fiction the contradictionsof empire are exposed; as he writes in a letter: 'We treat them as inferiors& tell them that they are their own equals' (pp.I90-9I). Yeats collaborated brieflywith RabindranathTagore, the Bengali poet. Like Tagore, Yeats was preoccupied by questions of cultural nationalism, and of retrieving the myths and stories of dispossessed people: 'Breaking inherited moulds becomes the radical recaptureof native myth and an uncolonized spirituality'(p. 200). The key words in the book's argument and strategy are 'interdiscursivity'and 'interbraiding'.Interdiscursivityis used in preferenceto intertextualityto signal the inclusion of fluid and unscripted channels of communication such as orature, hearsay, and performative tactics of resistance. Interbraiding signifies crossings upon crossings, as for example when the English-educated Aurobindo Ghose's thoughtwas shapedby the Irish-bornNivedita'sbook on Kali worship.A significant trope of shuttlingin-betweenness recurs significantlyin the form of voyages. Both Gandhi and Plaatje wrote major books on ships travellingbetween continents, a liminalspace in which time seemed suspendedand racialand classbarrierscould be either highlightedor to some extent broken down. Questions can be raised about the choice of case studies.Two of the five, Woolf and Yeats, are icons of metropolitan modernism and are not examples of interaction between peripheries.There is a largerquestion,posed for instancein Tabish Khair's BabuFictions,of whether interference rather than interdiscursivityoccurs when a native elite speaksfor non-English speakingmasses. This readerwondered why was there no concluding chapter to the book, possibly opening out further areas of enquiry. But the queries lead to a productive conversation between the reader and the text. UNIVERSITY OFSTIRLING ANGELA SMITH 'ATruthful Impression of theCount?y': BritishandAmerican TravelWriting in China,i88oI949 . By NICHOLAS R. CLIFFORD. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2001. xxi + 231 pp. $39.50; 725. ISBN:0-472-11197-3. A Truthful Impression oftheCountypresentsan analysisof travelwritingin China from the end of the nineteenth century up to 1949. Although there were instances of writingbefore 1895,the defeat of China byJapan in that year acted as a triggerfor an increase in Western visitors. Nicholas Clifford differentiateshis material from activist,and Aurobindo Ghose, a Cambridge-educatedBengaliwho was for a while activelyengaged in nationalistpolitics:'Itwas surelynot coincidentalthat the development of campaigns based on boycott and swadeshi (the locally made) occurred in Bengal not long afterthe onset in Irelandof the Celtic Revival'(p. Io9) and Sinn Fein's supportof native Irishtrades.For both campaigners,the worshipof Kali, the destroyingmother, was synonymouswith love of nation. The South African Solomon Plaatje,whose polyphonic writing 'is in many ways reminiscentof the multivoicedbricolage'(p. 15I)of TheWaste Land,is shown to have learnt from African American resistance, as the American situation of race-based oppressionwas comparablewith South Africanexperience. EllekeBoehmer argues that the discourses of self-representationof the colonized subject at this period, drawn as she shows they are from cross-national encounters, resemble some key modernist texts. Finally, she turns to the work of two writers associated with metropolitanmodernism, LeonardWoolf and W. B. Yeats, looking for evidence of cross-borderintertextuality.In Woolf s letters from Ceylon and in his fiction the contradictionsof empire are exposed; as he writes in a letter: 'We treat them as inferiors& tell them that they are their own equals' (pp.I90-9I). Yeats collaborated brieflywith RabindranathTagore, the Bengali poet...

Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial: 1890-1920. Resistance in Interaction

1. ANTI-IMPERIAL INTERACTION ACROSS THE COLONIAL BORDERLINE Introduction Cross-national Intertextuality Networks of Resistance The Irish Boer War and The United Irishman 2. INDIA THE STARTING POINT: CROSS-NATIONAL SELF-TRANSLATION IN 1900S CALCUTTA 'From all points do the paths converge': A Unique Encounter A Warlike Spirituality The Cross-Meshed Calcutta Context Interdiscursivity: Of Kali and the Gita 'She is in me as she is in you': Nivedita's Kali-Worship 3. 'BUT TRANSMITTERS'?: THE INTERDISCURSIVE ALLIANCE OF AUROBINDO GHOSE AND SISTER NIVEDITA Aurobindo Ghose in England: 'the spirit alone that saves' The Young Margaret Noble: 'the ocean through an empty shell' A Joint 'Cry for Battle' 'To assail and crush the assailant': Intertextual Links 4. 'ABLE TO SING THEIR SONGS': SOLOMON PLAATJE'S MANY-TONGUED NATIONALISM A Barolong, a Gentleman: An Exemplary Career Nationalism and the Transatlantic 'People's Friend' 5. 'IMMEASURABLE STRANGENESS' BETWEEN EMPIRE AND MODERNISM: W. B. YEATS AND RABINDRANATH TAGORE, AND LEONARD WOOLF Towards a Theory of Modernism in the Imperial World Leonard Woolf: Reluctant Imperialism The Cultural Nationalist as Modernist Conclusion: A Narrative Claim upon the Jungle

The Indian imagination: critical essays on Indian writing in English

The Indian Imagination focuses on literary developments in English both in the colonial and postcolonial periods of Indian history. Six divergent writers - Aurobindo Ghose (Sri Aurobindo), Mulk Raj Anand, Balachandra Rajan, Nissim Ezekiel, Anita Desai, and Arun Joshi - represent a consciousness that has emerged from the confrontation between tradition and modernity. The colonial fantasy of British India was finally dissolved in the first half of this century, only to be succeeded by another fantasy, that of the reinstituted sovereign nation-state. This study argues that the two phases of history - like the two phases of Indian writing in English - together represent the sociohistorical process of colonization and decolonization and the affirmation of identity.

Aurobindo Ghose and revolutionary terrorism

Aurobindo Ghose and revolutionary terrorism

Personal Identity and Rebirth

Western philosophers are generally very unsympathetic to the notion of reincarnation, especially the idea of rebirth in another body in this world. This paper will argue that retributive rebirth as it is traditionally understood in Hindu thought involves serious problems given the ambiguousness of personal identity in the conception, difficulties which are born out in a moral tenuousness and which bring the reasonableness of the belief into question. However, though this conception of rebirth is the culturally and historically dominant version in Indian thought, it is not the sole conception. The ‘soul-making’ version I will develop and defend in this paper does not overcome the ambiguity associated with personal identity in the retributive version, but it nevertheless reasonably overrides the problems retributive rebirth encounters in such an association. And though soul-making rebirth is quite different in tone and in emphasis from the traditionally dominant retributive version, it can be found in varying degrees in certain Hindu philosophies, most vividly perhaps in Aurobindo Ghose. Moreover, this conception is not exclusive to Hinduism and is compatible even with some Christian theologies.

On the Uttarpara Speech delivered by Aurobindo Ghose

On the Uttarpara Speech delivered by Aurobindo Ghose

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on the Nature of “Hindu” Tolerance

t is commonplace to characterize Hinduism, when treated as a reified tradition, as tolerant. Though this characterization is often ambiguous, /1/ it has been heralded as one of Hinduism's most positive features in the religious positions advocated by modern apologists such as Swami Vivekananda, the founder of the Ramakrishna Mission, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, the yogin (Minor, 1979), and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. During his full life (1888-1975) as philosopher, religious thinker, educator, statesman, president of UNESCO, vice-president and president of the Indian republic, and Spaulding Professor of Comparative Religions at Oxford, among his other professorships, Radhakrishnan became the chief spokesman of Hindu to the intellectual West. His proclamation of the of the as the solution to the world's problems increasingly centered around the use of the term tolerance as he approached his latter years (Minor, 1981)./2/ It made Hinduism, he often declared, the model for religion in the present and coming age and was one of the key requirements of any viable religion of the future. In contrast, Radhakrishnan criticized the all too common intolerance of religions as the major barrier to world progress: The barriers of dogmatic religions are sterilising men's efforts to coordinate their forces to shape the future. If religions are to heal humanity's divisions, if they are to bring peoples nearer one another, they must take themselves seriously, forget their partisan strife, affirm that religion is a matter of spirit and not form and its loyalty is to the whole world and not simply to the members of any one community. Such a view of religion' will help us to develop the quality of (Radhakrishnan, 1951:219: 1967a:33; 1961:39-40). This study attempts to clarify Radhakrishnan's definition of tolerance and its limits. Though Radhakrishnan attempted to define tolerance in what

Sri Aurobindo's Integral View of Other Religions

Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950), the Indian Nationalist and yogi, developed in the period of his life at Pondicherry in Southeast India a system of thought, practice and experience which he called ‘Integral Yoga’. The title indicated, he said, that ‘it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas — its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method’. In the development of Integral Yoga Aurobindo believed he was speaking and acting as a ‘realized yogi’ or, better still, a yogi who was in the process of realization. He had not attained a final experience of jñāna, but he believed he had experienced levels of supra-mental consciousness which would lead to the higher level of Supermind itself.