No legal cover for journalists refusing to divulge source Times
of India
In another stirring instance from the colonial era,
Bipin Chandra Pal, who ran a daily called Bande Mataram, refused to confirm if
Sri Aurobindo was the author of an anonymous article for which the latter was
being tried for sedition. While Aurobindo was acquitted in 1907, Pal himself
was sent to jail for six months for refusing to depose against him. The
sacrifices made by Pal and Kavyabirsharad appear to have been in vain as
independent India has not so far redressed the statutory lacuna that had landed
them in jail during the colonial period…
Kaliprasanna Kavyabisharad, editor of Bengali publication
Hitabadi, refused to name the author of a poem published in his paper. He was
jailed for nine months Bipin Chandra Pal, who ran a daily called Bande Mataram,
refused to confirm whether Sri Aurobindo was author of an anonymous article.
Pal was jailed for six months… The rationale of the privilege otherwise
recognized around the world is that journalists will be unable to play the role
of a watchdog unless they can guarantee confidentiality to their sources. It is
a departure from the general rule that everybody has a legal obligation to give
evidence.
There is in Sri Aurobindo
a revolutionary, a poet, a philosopher, a visionary of evolution. He is not only
the explorer of consciousness, but the builder of a new world. For evolution is
not over: “Man is a transitional being,” he wrote at the beginning of the
century. This now classic introduction to Sri Aurobindo (in a new edition and
translation) not only tells us the story of his life, in itself a remarkable
adventure; Satprem also takes us along in a methodical exploration of Sri
Aurobindo’s “integral yoga,” showing how it leads to a “divine rehabilitation
of Matter” and gives our painful evolution its meaning and hope.
“We have denied the
Divinity in Matter to confine it in our holy places, and now Matter is taking
its revenge — we called it crude, and crude it is. As long as we accept this
Imbalance, there is no hope for the earth: we will swing from one pole to the
other — both equally false — from material enjoyment to spiritual austerity,
without ever finding our plenitude. We need both the vigor of Matter and the
fresh waters of the Spirit…. Now the time may have come at last to unveil the
Mysteries and to recover the complete truth of the two poles within a third
position, which is neither that of the materialists nor that of the
spiritualists.” Satprem
Contemporary Literary Review: India SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2012 AnInterview with Jitendra Sharma by Khurshid Alam
Khurshid Alam engages
Jitendra Sharma in an interview with his concept of Man in Aurobindo's poetry
on his recently released title, Concept of Man in Sri Aurobindo's Poetry. CLRI
Que 1: Hi Jitendra, can you share the reason why you selected Sri Aurobindo
Ghose’s works as your research topic while there are so many Indian writers in
English? Particularly now there are a good number of Man Booker Prize winners
also.
Ans: Sri Aurobindo, a great
politician, philosopher, freedom-fighter, mystic, literary critic and Yogi,
considered himself primarily a poet. He had an integral vision of life and
spirituality. Sri Aurobindo’s poetry has already carved a niche for itself. His
vast poetry, encompassing many forms and moods, expresses an enormous variety
of emotions. All this provided me with a wide creative space for research…
In the psyche of
humanity, Superman has always been an archetype. Around 1900, the notion of the
superman became common in European philosophy. Many philosophers along with
Friedrich Nietzsche tried to put forth theories and suggestions to alleviate
human misery and improve the human condition. But it is extremely difficult to
transform matter, the earth and Man.
Sri Aurobindo, based on a
great and perfect philosophy, advocated an ideal world of social equality,
fraternity and freedom. He showed how to perceive politics from the standpoint
of spirituality. After clearing the incompleteness of Marx’s philosophy, he
presented his integral philosophy in which the elements of the east and the
west, past and future, science and religion, heart and mind, which seem
contradictory to us, are presented in a beautifully synthesised image. Sri
Aurobindo has a vision of the possibility of a divine life for man upon the
earth. Sri Aurobindo emphasises
the complementarities rather than the oppositions of Eastern and Western
philosophies. He believes that all humans are of the same divine origin.
Criticism by Bhaskar Roy Barman - Contemporary Literary Review ...
SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2012 Savitri and Satyavan by
Bhaskar Roy Barman
I shall discuss in this
paper Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem, Savitri, based upon the Savitri-Satyavan
legend in the Mahabharata, one of the two epics that India
As I have hinted at,
Aurobinda Ghosh (universally known as Sri Aurobindo), considered one of the
greatest minds of the twentieth century, presented the literary world with the
epic poem Savitri developed on the marrow of the Savitri-and-Satyavan episode…
The central myth in
Aurobindo’s poetry, the myth of freedom, based, as it is, upon the dialectical
struggle between the worlds of appearance and reality, matter and spirit, evil
and good, and death and divine life, presses home the evolutionary value of
human life and points up, as well, the quest of the soul for the state of being
to be realized through an intuitive process of self-discovery and awareness of
the infinite. It aims to ascend from the inconsistent state to the wakeful
state through spiritual journey up the stairs of the world, the manifold planes
of existence, the states of becoming, thus to experience, while ascending the
stairs of the world, complete identity with substantive reality and the
totality of being through inward expansion and synthesis. This Indian and
romantic view of the soul’s ability to experience infinitude and to attain
liberty from the deterministic order of lower nature inaugurates the core of
Savitri. In fact Sri Aurobindo’s imagination foreglimpses and conjures up the
idea of earth being a humankind’s ideal home, where one’s soul, by eschewing
its egotistical selfhood in order to completely surrender itself to, and, by
merging through common humanity with, universal consciousness, experiences joy
and fulfilment.
Hence, Sri Aurobindo’s
Savitri is often described as quintessentially an epic for the modern man, as
it epitomizes his primary concerns and his existential angst. By ‘modern man’
is universally meant humanity which has reached a stage where he has achieved
the highest and best consciousness; but he has not found himself rid of the
age-old problems of death, suffering, inadequacy and ignorance. The inadequacy
and the ignorance of man manifest themselves in the display of inequality,
corruption, terrorism which brings about their suffering. Born out of Sri
Aurobindo’s concern for humankind and its future, Savitri portrays the precise
nature of the crisis humankind has come to grips with and suggests a way to
tackle it. It is often said of Savitri with immunity that it deals with such a
vast and grand theme –the revelation of the ranges of consciousness - as no
other epic before has ever attempted.
The Hindu: TAMIL NADU: COimbatore April 1, 2012
Sri Aurobindo Devotees Prayer Centre: Pushpanjali
and prayers to Sri Annai, Sasibalika Vidya Mandir, Azad Road
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