THE IMPERATIVES THAT IMPELLED AUROBINDO TO QUIT REVOLUTION ... 1

THE IMPERATIVES THAT IMPELLED AUROBINDO TO QUIT REVOLUTION ... 1

Aurobindo Ghosh was the Voltaire and Rousseau combined of the Indian revolution and more. His fiery editorials sent simmering waves of patriotic fervour among the youth of Bengal of the day and shivers down the spine of the Raj as to what would transpire in case of armed action by the proteges of the eloquent professor fined-tuned in British ways, modes and means. The Raj feared Aurobindo for he was one who, with his superfine intellect and British training in his protracted stay in England, could not be fooled into believing fanciful narratives of the Occidental spreading of civilisation by them and could see through the ulterior motives of British colonisation of India.

Aurobindo's powerful pen hammered home the seeds of revolution just when the Swami Vivekananda had left for his celestial sphere after galvanising the youth of Bengal with his own brand of fiery nationalistic idealism. The Swami left, but handed his baton to Nivedita and Aurobindo, and the duo carried on from there what may be termed the baptism of the Bengal youth into the fire of armed revolution.

Aurobindo was henceforth implicated in the Alipore Bomb Case and would certainly have kissed the noose were it not for Satyen Bose and Kanailal Dutta who shot down the traitor Naren Gosain within the precincts of the Presidency Jail before the latter could testify before the magistrate proving Aurobindo's being the mastermind behind the entire revolutionary activity of the ones accused in the case. Fate provided Aurobindo Chittaranjan Das as defence counsel and in an impassioned speech he proved the utter insufficiency of evidence to in any way implicate his esteemed client with the heinous charge levelled against him. The Judge Beechcroft, an ex-Cambridge colleague, acquitted him of the conviction thus and Aurobindo escaped the certain fate of the hangman's noose, for he was, after all, the mastermind behind the whole plot for which his co-revolutionaries were deported to the Andaman islands for incarceration in the dreaded Cellular Jail.

The British had missed their man but were on the lookout for another excuse to apprehend him and for sure send him to the gallows with better evidential preparedness this time. The plot to assassinate him was also there which prompted Nivedita to convince Aurobindo to quit British Indian soil and seek refuge in the French Indian territory of Chandannagore. When the news leaked unto him that the British had issued an arrest warrant against him again and were on the move to apprehend him, Aurobindo, by now highly spiritually kindled, left for Chandannagore. But Pondicherry being a safer haven for him, he then promptly departed for it where he spent the rest of his days an illumined soul, a sage and an author of epic proportions whose light in the word written is yet to bear its significance on the whole of humanity for ages to come.

The men back home had imagined that Aurobindo would return to revolutionary activity after a hiatus of twelve years when he would contemplate the spiritual imperatives of revolution, strengthen himself by yogic means and then plunge into the struggle for freedom. Even the boy Subhas thought so. But, alas, that was not to be ! Aurobindo Ghosh, revolutionary redoubtable, had transformed into Sri Aurobindo the prophet, seer, sage and redeemer of the whole of humanity for the whole of the advancing times that as yet lay in the womb of futurity.

But Sri Aurobindo did pass his pronouncements on the freedom movement from his seaside habitat in distant Pondicherry and herein began the disputation in dialogue via letters, with Dilip Roy intermediary, in which Dilip played the instrumental part in communicating the contents of Subhas' letters to him, to his own Guru Aurobindo, and Subhas merely got caught in the whirl of the verbal process thereby. But more of that later. Adieu for now !

End of Part 1
To be continued ...

Written by Sugata Bose [Sugata Bose]