Friday, December 29, 2006

We, the blind people and leaders

Editorial Ananda Reddy [ Central Page Journal Main Page ]
"Sri Aurobindo Darshan: The University of Tomorrow " August 2006 Volume VII Issue II
After a self-preparatory period of thirteen years at Baroda, Sri Aurobindo shifted to Bengal in 1906 to actively participate in the freedom movement of India. To “create a free and united India” through a revolutionary movement was his first dream, nay it was his mission. He once wrote:
“I know I have the strength to deliver this fallen race. This feeling is not new in me, it is not of today. I was born with it, it is in my very marrow. God sent me to earth to accomplish this great mission.”
The method of his revolt was to use the power of his word, especially through the Bande Mataram, which shook up the very slumbering soul of India! As the Mother said later: “His words inspired them [the revolutionaries] to sacrifice their lives for the glory of India.” Whatever he had to do for the Indian politics he did in five brief years from 1906 to 1910. He laid out the programmes for the future leaders of the country to take up and provided the momentum necessary for the work of the freedom struggle to continue. Once he was assured of India’s freedom (which he declared in his prediction of January 1910), he withdrew to Pondicherry to continue with his greater mission of liberating the human race itself and not just India, though India’s liberation was the first and most needed step in his plan of liberating humanity!
A hundred years have passed since Sri Aurobindo played his role as the leader of Indian Nationalism, and almost fifty nine years since India’s independence. The seer-politician has given his vision of a resurrected India and has lent us his ‘strength’, but we, the blind people and leaders, have not been able to carry forward the work and have landed in the very situation that Sri Aurobindo had been apprehensive about:
“But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India’s internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated.”
The present day reality of the country’s security and the terrorism that is spreading unabated has certainly weakened us and impeded our prosperity—all because of the first division into two nations!

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