Sir Aurobindo's view on Ancient India & Modern Indian

BHUMI N. VAJANI

ROLL NO :  06

YEAR :2012-2013

Paper no :Indian Writing in English

M.A.I

SEM – I

TOPIC: Sri Aurobindo's View on Ancient India and Modern India

SUBMIT TO : 

Dr. Dilip Barad

Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji

Bhavnagar University

               Sri Aurobindo's Views on ancient and modern India   :

Ê   Aurobindo is one of the great philosophers of India. India wants' forget the remarkable contribution of the formation of India. The writers like Tagore, Sharatchandra, Bankimchandra, sri Aurobindo etc. Bengal has given great leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose.  

Ê   "God is a great and cruel torturer because he loves"

Says Arobindo in an aphorism.

Ê   "Each plate all climbed is but a stage on the way and reveals endless heights beyond it"

This sentence is a warning of an experienced wayfarer regarding the dangers and perils of the way to the Gove-Province.

Ê   Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15th August 1872. At the age of seven he was taken to the England for education. In 1890 he went up to king's college, Cambridge. He stood 1st in the class in his college, further he passed the final examination for the Indian civil services. Here, it shoud be noted that very few Indians passed this examination. Once any Indian. Passes this exam. He would get higher post in the government and would get a good payment. This was impossible for Britiser to tolerate. This system was implemented at all places wherever Britisher ruled – even French followed the same policy in its colony-vietnam. On the name of civilizing they emptied that country.

Ê   After passing this ICS exam. Sri Aurobindo returned to India. He come to Barod. He worked for the next thirteen years in the princely state of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in Baroda college, shouldn't we be prouch of having such a person serving in Gujarat and of course a king life Maharaja – a modernist – a thinker and a person of revolutionary ideas. During the period of his service he joined a revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the Britiser Government in India.

Ê   After the partition of Bengal in 1905, Sri Aurobindo left his post in Baroda and went to Kolkata. There he soon become one of the leaders of the Nationalist movement. During these years of early nineties many revolutionaries gathered and stood unitedly against the British rule all over India. The literature of these days also show the stretch marks of the revolutionary activities. He was the first political leader in India to openly put forward in his journal "Bande Mataram", the ideal of complete independence for the country. Prosecuted twice for sedition and once for conspiracy, he was released each time for lack of evidence. While he was in Baroda since 1905 he started practicing Yoga. In 1910 he withdrew for politics and went to several fundamental spiritual realizations. He went to Pondicherry in order to devote himself entirely to his inner spiritual life and work. During fouty years life in Pondicherry he evolved a new method of spiritual practice ealled "Internal Yoga", In 1926, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Asharam. Aurobindo left this word on 5 december 1950.

Ê   In his essay written in 1918 entitled "The Renaissance in India", Sri Aurobindo presents a fabulous view of India's culture through the ages. He talks widely about India's essential spirit and characteristics soul, her unique genius and powers which depects her notably long periods of greatness and an unusually profilic creativity that which allowed her to survive for so long when other ancient civilizations faded away. He explains the bases of Indians strengter – that enabled her to resist so many attempts at crushing her to resist so many attempts at crushing her ancient traditional culture.

Ê   According to Aurobindo "Spirtuality" is the master key of the Indian mind. The sense of infinity is native to it." Here, Sri Aurobindo is seen in defense of Indian civilization and culture with essays of Indian spirituality, religion, art, literature and polity.

Ê   In Aurobindo's view India is one of the greatest of the world's civilizations. He thinks so because India has higher spiritual aim and the effective manner in which it has impressed this aim on the forms and rhythms of its life. Aurobindo believes that – A spiritual aspiration was governing force to this culture. He writes its care of thought, its ruling passion. Not only did it make spirituality the highest aim of life, but it even tried to turn the whole of life towards spirituality. Aurobindo opposed the materialistic western world's modern culture. He defends Indian ancient culture. He is against westernization.

Ê   "Renaissance in India" consists of four essays were first published in "Arya" from August to November 1918. In Renaissance of India the first essay in quite long. It's the longest of all four essays. Sri Aurobindo discusses the aptness or lack there of the term "Renaissance" for what happened in India. He defends Indian ancient culture agains English criticism. He refutes some common European misconceptions on the nature of Indian civilization. Bearing so many blows of foreign invasion Indian culture could stand while history witnesses many cultures destruction. He refutes some westernized Indians on this matters, too.

Ê   He makes his concept clear doing so he outlines three features of ancient India society. He says that spirituality is indeed the masterkey of the Indian mind", His ancient India is marked by

Ê   "her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life".

Ê   her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness" and, finally.

Ê   That the "third power of the ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality".

Ê   He then outlines "there movements of retrogression" : first, a

Ê   "Shrinking of that superabundant vital energy and a fading of the joy of life and the joy of creation",

Ê   Secondly, "a rapid cessation of the old free intellectual activity," and, finally.

Ê   The dimination of the power of Indian spirituality.

Ê   In his second essay, he rephrases 'impulses' that arise from the

Ê   'impact of European life and culture'. According to him the western impact and education reawakened.

Ê   'a free activity of the intellect'.

Ê   'It threw definitely into ferment of modern ideas into the old culture".

Ê   "It made us turn our look upon all that our past contains witer new eyes."

Ê   These are the effects of 'the dormant intellectual and critical impulse', the rehabilitation of life and an awakened 'desire for new creation' and a revival of the Indian spirit by the turning of the national mint to its past. It is this 'awakening vision and impulse' that Sri Aurobindo feels in the Indian renaissance.

India's past or ancient culture was very rich. India had democracy before 2500 years. People used to choose the chief for a particular time period. Then there was election. If the chief was shillful and efficient he continued for the second time as the chief of the people otherwise he would loose in the election. This system of rule was called Genarajja male and female were partners in real sense. Then came invaders and then foreign rule. British French, potuguese etc started coming to India for the raw material for their industries. The 'Dark Age' got over there. New enthusiasm overwhelmed the people of European continent First they started doing increased. Indian kings started becoming weaker. They were lost in wine, women and wars. Jealousy and luxuries overruled them. It wan't that all kings were weak of course we had many powerful and efficient rulers too. But British took the advantage and followed divide and rule policy. One by one they started different provinces of our country. It started different provinces of our country. It seemed as if the European Dark Age in every was come to our country. People started losing jobs and trades. The famine and British ruled the country. There was no escape for ordinary people.

British introduced English Education in India. Indian started going abroad for studies. Intellectuals took interest in the country's political matters. The got involved in the smallest matter. Newspaper and periodicals started awaking the thinker Indians started reading and thinking Swami Vivekanand, Swami Dyanand, Raja Rao, Gandhiji, Subhashchandra, Sardar Patel and Many thinkers and writer implored the minds of the people. Indians felt inferior to British and thus were eager to follow their life style. They tried to be like them forgetting their of all the prevailin cultures. From this Aurobindo wanted them to come out and he discusses ancient and modern Indian culture. Modern India is the shawdow of British rule and ancient India. Both can be compared and thus rebirth of the country is possible.

For Sri Aurobindo the first step was the reception of the European contact, a redical reconsideration of many of the prominent elements and some revohtionary denial of the very principles of the old culture. The second was a reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence, sometimes with a total denial of what it affered and a stressing both of the essential and the strict letter of the national part. Which yet masked a movement of assimilation. The third only noa beginning or recently begun is rather a process of new creation in which the spiritual power of the Indian mind remains supreme, recovers its truth, accepts whatever it find sound or true, accepts whatever it find sound or true, useful or inevitable of the modern idea and form but so absorbs and transforms it entirely into itself that its foreign character disappears and it becomes another harmonious element in the characteristic working of the ancient goddess, the shakti of India mastering and taking possession of the modern influence, no longer possessed or overcome by it.

Sri Aurobindo predicts that if the last were to happen,

"The result will be no more Asiatic modification of western modernization, but same great, new and original things of the first importance to the further of human civilization. Sri Aurobindo says that the rise of India is necessary for future of humanity itself. The most difficult task for the Indian renaissance has been the new creation that will come from a unique fusion of ancient Indian spirituality and modernity.

He explaining the Indian spirituality "we are sometime asked what on earth we mean by spirituality rejects no new light, no added means or materials of our human self-development. It means simply to keep our centre, our essential way of being, our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive and evolue out of it all we do and create.

To achieve India's "renaissance" Sri Aurobindo boldy and repeatedly' called on his countrymen to develop the kshatriya spirit, almost lost after centuries of subjection'.

The Kshatriya of old must again take his rightful position in our social politly to discharge the first and foremost duty of defending its interests. The brain is impotent without the right aim of strength".

"What India needs especially at this moment is the aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack, of the passive 'tamasic' spirit of inertia we have already too much. We need to cultivate another training and temperament, another habit of mind."

               For youngsters he hopes :

          "Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world-not those who accepts the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materealistic communism of the west as India's future ideal, not those who are enslaved to old religious formaulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all who are free in mind and heart to accept a complete truth  and labour for a greater ideal."