A PARTIAL READING INTO HISTORY
True enough that Bose admired Aurobindo in youth and had looked up to him as a leader who, perhaps, had sought temporary hibernation in exile but would return to active politics after a period of twelve years of spiritual austerity to lead the motherland to freedom. That was an idea afloat those days and many including the boy Subhas fell for it. But as the boy matured, his intelligence prevailed over such boyish naivety and his discerning eye could now pick the grain from the chaff.
Tagore in 1928, en route abroad, paid a visit to the subject of his celebrated poem 'Namaskar' (নমস্কার) and exhorted him to return to the world but it did not transpire. Bose, now grown to political maturity and a certain sense of wisdom regarding the destiny of India, certainly did not entertain such hopes and must have by now had a cleat insight into the psychological make-up of the self-exiled erstwhile politician. While writing his memoirs in Austria in December 1937, Bose recollected his early days and recounted his boyhood idealisation of Aurobindo Ghosh, and in this he was merely being true to his cast as an honest chronicler of his attitudes and aspirations then and of his psychological leanings which later radically changed in regard to Aurobindo. His effusive praise and almost pious adulation of the leader then in self-exile was symptomatic of his deeper idealism centred on his motherland. While his former adoration of Aurobindo waned with time and his awareness of the latter's failure to discharge his revolutionary duties grew on him, his own unbounded patriotic fervour only grew with time. In point of fact, Bose repudiated in no uncertain terms such renunciation of one's commitment to the national cause to serve even sacrificial self-interest in sannyasa (monasticism) and could never from his heart accept such flight from struggle in the name of fanciful reclusive self-serving.
Thus, one may only say that, despite the terrible let-down of the motherland by Aurobindo, if Bose yet chose to record his boyhood adulation of the escaped leader in his autobiography, 'The Indian Pilgrim', it was but proof of the essential magnanimity of his spirit and sincerity as a self-chronicler of life rather than his approval of Aurobindo's dereliction of duty towards the freedom movement which, courtesy his flawed leadership, had cost many a martyr's life and resulted in inhuman torture in deportation. It was, thus, magnanimous of Bose to act the way he did towards the failed leader and it was Aurobindo who in turn, and quite out of turn, cast the greatest aspersion on the patriot premier before whose contribution the critic's supposed contributions to the freedom movement paled into insignificance, a fact, I dare say, the discerning deserter was acutely sensitive to and which prompted him to belittle Bose. The entire set of letters exchanged between Dilip Kumar Roy and Sri Aurobindo reveal the latter's barbed criticism of Bose which could only be expected from one who revelled in commenting on the freedom movement from the sidelines on men who struggled to free India sacrificing their all while the critic in comfort stayed out of it all in the cushy atmosphere of his hermitage in exile.
It seems, my friend, you have read Bose's comments on the supposed sage only in part and not wholly. In his latter days in the late thirties Bose had categorically denounced this attitude of Aurobindo of criticising from the sidelines thus : "What is he doing out there making caustic comments on us from Pondicherry? Let him come over and join us in the struggle instead of commenting on us thus." (The English translation has been done by me here from the Bengali version, remembered and quoted. So, very minor errors in language but not in sense are possible.)
The autobiography states Bose's attitude towards Aurobindo in his early youth and not as it turned out to be in his later life. Remember that the autobiography ends when Bose was in his 25th year and had not even entered active politics. Therefore, his latter day mature reflection and observation about Aurobindo abrogates his earlier youthful effusive statements in terms of his final considered outlook and sets the record straight historically regarding the 'renounced' revolutionary. As for my attitude towards Aurobindo, I need not counter-comment on your observation and proceed to perfect it, for it is extraneous to the debate.
Written by Sugata Bose
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