To Evaluate my Assignment
Assignment
Name : mori utsavi bharatbhai
Roll No : 44
Enrollment No. : 2069108420180037
M.A Sem-1
Year : 2017-2019
Email id : utsavibarajput18@gmai.com
Paper No. : 4
Submitted To. : Department
of English bhavnagar
Topic : Aurobindo was a social reformer
· Introduction : ~ Aurobindo
(Bengali: [Sri Ôrobindo]) (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December
1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet, and nationalist.[2] He
joined the Indian movement for independence from British rule, for a while was
one of its influential leaders and then became a spiritual reformer,
introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution.Aurobindo
studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, Cambridge, England.
After returning to India he took up various civil service works under the
maharaja of the princely state of Baroda and began increasingly involved in
nationalist politics and the nascent revolutionary movement in Bengal. He was
arrested in the aftermath of a number of bomb outrages linked to his
organisation, but in a highly public trial where he faced charges of treason,
Aurobindo could only be convicted and imprisoned for writing articles against
British rule in India. He was released when no evidence could be provided, following
the murder of a prosecution-witness during the trial. During his stay in the
jail he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to
Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work. During
his stay in Pondicherry, Aurobindo developed a method of spiritual practice he
called Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of
human life into a life divine. He believed in a spiritual realisation that not
only liberated man but transformed his nature, enabling a divine life on earth.
In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (referred
to as "The Mother"), he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He died on
5 December 1950 in Pondicherry. His
main literary works are The Life Divine, which deals with theoretical aspects
of Integral Yoga; Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with practical guidance to
Integral Yoga; and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, an epic poem. His works also
include philosophy, poetry, translations and commentaries on the Vedas, Upanishads
and the Bhagavad Gita. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize
in Literature in 1943 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.[3]
Sri
Aurobindo
Social
reformer of Aurobindo : ~
~ Aurobindo
was a Reform is not an excellent thing in itself as many Europeanised
intellects imagine; neither is it always safe and good to stand unmoved in the
ancient paths as the orthodox obstinately believe. Reform is sometimes the
first step to the abyss, but immobility is the most perfect way to stagnate and
to putrefy. Neither is moderation always the wisest counsel: the mean is not
always golden. It is often an euphemism for purblindness, for a tepid
indifference or for a cowardly inefficiency. Men call themselves moderates,
conservatives or extremists and manage their conduct and opinions in accordance
with a formula. We like to think by systems and parties and forget that truth
is the only standard. Systems are merely convenient cases for keeping arranged
knowledge, parties a useful machinery for combined action; but we make of them
an excuse for avoiding the trouble of thought.
One
is astonished at the position of the orthodox. They labour to deify everything
that exists. Hindu society has certain arrangements and habits which are merely
customary. There is no proof that they existed in ancient times nor any reason
why they should last into the future. It has other arrangements and habits for
which textual authority can be quoted, but it is oftener the text of the modern
Smritikaras than of Parasara and Manu. Our authority for them goes back to the
last five hundred years. I do not understand the logic which argues that
because a thing has lasted for five hundred years it must be perpetuated through
the aeons. Neither antiquity nor modernity can be the test of truth or the test
of usefulness. All the Rishis do not belong to the past; the Avatars still
come; revelation still continues.
Some
claim that we must at any rate adhere to Manu and the Puranas, whether because
they are sacred or because they are national. Well, but, if they are sacred,
you must keep to the whole and not cherish isolated texts while disregarding
the body of your authority. You cannot pick and choose; you cannot say “This is
sacred and I will keep to it, that is less sacred and I will leave it alone.”
When you so treat your sacred authority, you are proving that to you it has no
sacredness. You are juggling with truth; for you are pretending to consult Manu
when you are really consulting your own opinions, preferences or interests. To
recreate Manu entire in modern society is to ask Ganges to flow back to the
Himalayas. Manu is no doubt national, but so is the animal sacrifice and the
burnt offering. Because a thing is national of the past, it need not follow
that it must be national of the future. It is stupid not to recognise altered
conditions.
We
have similar apologies for the unintelligent preservation of mere customs; but,
various as are the lines of defence, I do not know any that is imperiously
conclusive. Custom is shishtachar, decorum, that which all well-bred and
respectable people observe. But so were the customs of the far past that have
been discontinued and, if now revived, would be severely discountenanced and,
in many cases, penalised; so too are the customs of the future that are now
being resisted or discouraged, — even, I am prepared to believe, the future no
less than the past prepares for us new modes of living which in the present
would not escape the censure of the law. It is the achar that makes the
shishta, not the shishta who makes the achar. The achar is made by the rebel,
the innovator, the man who is regarded in his own time as eccentric,
disreputable or immoral, as was Sri Krishna by Bhurisrava1 because he upset the
old ways and the old standards. Custom may be better defended as ancestral and
therefore cherishable. But if our ancestors had persistently held that view,
our so cherished customs would never have come into being. Or, more rationally,
custom must be preserved because its long utility in the past argues a
sovereign virtue for the preservation of society. But to all things there is a
date and a limit. All long-continued customs have been sovereignly useful in
their time, even totemism and polyandry. We must not ignore the usefulness of
the past, but we seek in preference a present and a future utility.
Custom
and Law may then be altered. For each age its shastra. But we cannot argue
straight off that it must be altered, or even if alteration is necessary, that
it must be altered in a given direction. One is repelled by the ignorant
enthusiasm of social reformers. Their minds are usually a strange jumble of
ill-digested European notions. Very few of them know anything about Europe, and
even those who have visited it know it badly. But they will not allow things or
ideas contrary to European notions to be anything but superstitious, barbarous,
harmful and benighted, they will not suffer what is praised and practised in
Europe to be anything but rational and enlightened. They are more appreciative
than Occidentals themselves of the strength, knowledge and enjoyment of Europe;
they are blinder than the blindest and most self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon to its
weakness, ignorance and misery. They are charmed by the fair front Europe
presents to herself and the world; they are unwilling to discern any disease in
the entrails, any foulness in the rear. For the Europeans are as careful to
conceal their social as their physical bodies and shrink with more horror from
nakedness and indecorum than from the reality of evil. If they see the latter
in themselves, they avert their eyes, crying, “It is nothing or it is little;
we are healthy, we are perfect, we are immortal.” But the face and hands cannot
always be covered, and we see blotches.
The
social reformer repeats certain stock arguments like shibboleths. For these
antiquities he is a fanatic or a crusader. Usually he does not act up to his
ideas, but in all sincerity he loves them and fights for them. He pursues his
nostrums as panaceas; it would be infidelity to question or examine their
efficacy. His European doctors have told him that early marriage injures the
physique of a nation, and that to him is the gospel. It is not convenient to
remember that physical deterioration is a modern phenomenon in India and that
our grandparents were strong, vigorous and beautiful. He hastens to abolish the
already disappearing nautchgirl, but it does not seem to concern him that the
prostitute multiplies. Possibly some may think it a gain that the European form
of the malady is replacing the Indian! He tends towards shattering our
cooperative system of society and does not see that Europe is striding
Titanically towards Socialism.
Orthodox
and reformer alike lose themselves in details; but it is principles that
determine details. Almost every point that the social reformers raise could be
settled one way or the other without effecting the permanent good of society.
It is pitiful to see men labouring the point of marriage between subcastes and
triumphing over an isolated instance. Whether the spirit as well as the body of
caste should remain, is the modern question. Let Hindus remember that caste as
it stands is merely jat, the trade guild sanctified but no longer working, it
is not the eternal religion, it is not chaturvarnya. I do not care whether
widows marry or remain single; but it is of infinite importance to consider how
women shall be legally and socially related to man, as his inferior, equal or
superior; for even the relation of superiority is no more impossible in the
future than it was in the far-distant past. And the most important question of
all is whether society shall be competitive or cooperative, individualistic or
communistic. That we should talk so little about these things and be stormy
over insignificant details, shows painfully the impoverishment of the average
Indian intellect. If these greater things are decided, as they must be, the
smaller will arrange themselves.
There
are standards that are universal and there are standards that are particular.
At the present moment all societies are in need of reform, the Parsi, Mahomedan
and Christian not a whit less than the Hindu which alone seems to feel the need
of radical reformation. In the changes of the future the Hindu society must
take the lead towards the establishment of a new universal standard. Yet being
Hindus2 we must seek it through that which is particular to ourselves. We have
one standard that is at once universal and particular, the eternal religion,
which is the basis, permanent and always inherent in India, of the shifting,
mutable and multiform thing we call Hinduism. Sticking fast where you are like
a limpet is not the dharma, neither is leaping without looking the dharma. The
eternal religion is to realise God in our inner life and our outer existence,
in society not less than in the individual. Esha dharmah sanatanah. God is not
antiquity nor novelty: He is not the Manava Dharmashastra, nor Vidyaranya, nor
Raghunandan; neither is He an European. God who is essentially Sachchidananda,
is in manifestation Satyam, Prema, Shakti3, — Truth, Strength and Love.
Whatever is consistent with the truth and principle of things, whatever
increases love among men, whatever makes for the strength of the individual,
the nation and the race, is divine, it is the law of Vaivaswata Manu, it is the
sanatana dharma and the Hindu shastra. Only, God is the triple harmony, He is
not one-sided. Our love must not make us weak, blind or unwise; our strength
must not make us hard and furious; our principles4 must not make us fanatical
or sentimental. Let us think calmly, patiently, impartially; let us love wholly
and intensely but wisely; let us act with strength, nobility and force. If even
then we make mistakes, yet God makes none. We decide and act; He determines the
fruit, and whatever He determines is good.
He
is already determining it. Men have long been troubling themselves about social
reform and blameless orthodoxy, and orthodoxy has crumbled without social reform
being effected. But all the time God has been going about India getting His
work done in spite of the talking. Unknown to men the social revolution
prepares itself, and it is not in the direction they think, for it embraces the
world, not India only. Whether we like it or not, He will sweep out the refuse
of the Indian past and the European present. But the broom is not always
sufficient; sometimes He uses the sword in preference. It seems probable that
it will be used, for the world does not mend itself quickly, and therefore it
will have violently to be mended.
But
this is a general principle; how shall we determine the principles that are
particular to the nature of the community and the nature of the Age? There is
such a thing as yugadharma, the right institutions and modes of action for the
age in which we live. For action depends indeed on the force of knowledge or
will that is to be used, but it depends, too, on the time, the place and the
vessel. Institutions that are right in one age are not right in another.
Replacing social system by social system, religion by religion, civilisation by
civilisation God is perpetually leading man onwards to loftier and more
embracing manifestations of our human perfectibility. When in His cosmic
circling movement He establishes some stable worldwide harmony, that is man's
Satya Yuga. When harmony falters, is maintained with difficulty, not in the
nature of men, but by an accepted force or political instrument, that is his
Treta. When the faltering becomes stumbling and the harmony has to be
maintained at every step by a careful and laborious regulation, that is his
Dwapara. When there is disintegration, and all descends in collapse and ruin,
nothing can stay farther the cataclysm that is his Kali. This is the natural
law of progress of all human ideas and institutions. It applies always in the
mass, continually though less perfectly in the detail. One may almost say that
each human religion, society, civilisation has its four Ages. For this movement
is not only the most natural, but the most salutary. It is not a justification
of pessimism nor a gospel of dumb fate and sorrowful annihilation. It is not,
as we too often think in our attachment to the form, a melancholy law of
decline and the vanity of all human achievements. If each Satya has its Kali,
equally does each Kali prepare its Satya. That destruction was necessary for
this creation, and the new harmony, when it is perfected, will be better than
the old. But there is the weakness, there is the half success turning to
failure, there is the discouragement, there is the loss of energy and faith
which clouds our periods of disintegration, the apparent war, violence,
ragging, tumult and trample to and fro which attends our periods of gradual
creation and half-perfection. Therefore men cry out dismally and lament that
all is perishing. But if they trusted in God's Love and Wisdom, not preferring
to it their conservative and narrow notions, they would rather cry out that all
is being reborn.
So
much depends on Time and God's immediate purpose that it is more important to
seek out His purpose than to attach ourselves to our own nostrums. The Kala
Purusha, Zeitgeist and Death Spirit, has risen to his dreadful work —
lokakshayakritpravriddhas — increasing to destroy a world, — and who shall stay
the terror and mightiness and irresistibility of Him? But He is not only
destroying the world that was, He is creating the world that shall be; it is
therefore more profitable for us to discover and help what He is building than
to lament and hug in our arms what He is destroying. But it is not easy to
discover His drift, and we often admire too much temporary erections which are
merely tents for the warriors in this Kurukshetra and take them for the
permanent buildings of the future.
The
Pandits are therefore right when they make a difference between the practice of
the Satya and the practice of the Kali. But in their application of this
knowledge, they do not seem to me to be always wise or learned. They forget or
do not know that Kali is the age for a destruction and rebirth, not for a
desperate clinging to the old that can no longer be saved. They entrench
themselves in the system of Kalivarjya, but forget that it is not the
weaknesses but the strengths of the old harmony that are being subjected to
varjanam, abandonment. That which is saved is merely a temporary platform which
we have erected on the banks of the sea of change awaiting a more stable
habitation; and it too must one day break down under the crash of the waves,
must disappear into the engulfing waters. Has the time arrived for that
destruction? We think that it has. Listen to the crash of those waters, — more
formidable than the noise of assault, mark that slow, sullen, remorseless
sapping, — watch pile after pile of our patched incoherent ramshackle structure
corroding, creaking, shaking with the blows, breaking, sinking silently or with
a splash, suddenly or little by little into the yeast of those billows. Has the
time arrived for a new construction? We say it has. Mark the activity,
eagerness and hurrying to and fro of mankind, the rapid prospecting, seeking,
digging, founding — see the Avatars and great vibhutis coming, arising thickly,
treading each close behind the other. Are not these the signs and do they not
tell us that the great Avatar of all arrives to establish the first Satya Yuga
of the Kali?
For
in the Kali too, say the secret and ancient traditions of the Yogins, there is
a perpetual minor repetition of Satya-Treta-Dwapara-Kali subcycles, the
subSatya a temporary and imperfect harmony which in the subTreta and subDwapara
breaks down and disappears in the subKali.
