Re: 05: A Many-hued inner Dawn by RY Deshpande
Does it not remind us of Douglas Bader, the legless British pilot shooting down Nazi planes in the Battle of Britain? His squadron's first sortie during the Battle of Britain was on 30th August 1940, which shot down of 12 German aircraft over the Channel in just over an hour. Bader himself was responsible for downing two Messerschmitt 110. His 23 victories made him the fifth highest ace in the RAF. Bader advocated the concentration of fighters into large packs, an experiment that paid off, and his special unit knocked down 152 German planes in a month. After screening the movie Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, the Mother said: “That is exactly the kind of determination one must have to practise the yoga of integral perfection.” (7 June 1963)
During the early phase of the War, Hitler was marching triumphantly with his panzer divisions destroying Paris. “Having won the Battle of France decisively,” reports Nirodbaran, “Hitler now turned his attention to winning the Battle of Britain. He fixed 15 August 1940 as the day on which he would complete his conquest of Western Europe and broadcast from Buckingham Palace. When Sri Aurobindo heard of this he remarked ‘that is the sign that he is the enemy of our work…’ But 15 August turned out to be a turning point for Britain. On that day 180 German planes were shot down in British skies… A month later, on the same date, 15 September 1940, Sri Aurobindo said smiling: ‘England has destroyed 175 German planes, a very big number. Now invasion will be difficult. Hitler lost his chance after the fall of France. He has really missed the bus!’ ” Another force was set up against him.
In the Mother’s War Sri Aurobindo took full charge of the situation. Behind Hitler’s success he saw the working of a powerful Asura in the task of “enslavement of mankind to the tyranny of evil.” This would have been a setback for the course of spiritual evolution for which Sri Aurobindo was working. None knew about it. The Last Turn was well negotiated. Not only did he apply his yogic force when such catastrophic events were taking place; he and the Mother also made a monetary contribution to the War fund. In their letter to the Governor of Madras dated 19 September 1940 they declared: “We feel that not only is this a battle waged in just self-defence and in defence of the nations threatened with the world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of civilisation and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations and a better and more secure world-order.”
Who in this land of ours had the idea of the disaster that was waiting for mankind in the victory of the Nazi way of life, of Hitler’s running over nations and countries? None. It seems that we had lost our heads and our souls. If at all, there was the charismatic appeal to the gullible to side with the devil in his doings. The one who had proclaimed himself as the Lord of the Nations, the Asuric power of Falsehood, had found in Hitler his perfect instrument in the gruesome task of annihilation of the world. Here was Mahatma Gandhi with the ethico-religious mind recommending submission to the Falsehood that was at the basis of this dark creation. His Times letter in July 1940 addressed to the Britishers runs as follows: “I want you to fight Nazism without arms, or, if I am to retain the military terminology, with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”
Putting such an ultra-Christian doctrine on the highest pedestal of ethical excellence, making it an eminent principle of administration in the daily mode of life of the individual as well as of a whole society is not only to dwarf them; in fact, in its cruellest sense it is to turn all towards anti-humanity. And what is the efficacy of such a doctrine in its functioning? It sucks away the life-blood of a nation; it strangles the spirit of freedom and happy enterprise; it kills with a dark knife the very soul of man.
A great humane and respectable virtue meant for another kind of pursuit is converted into a deadly weapon of destruction to push everything into the abyss of spiritual oblivion, into the sunless worlds that are enveloped in blind gloom, andhena tamasāvratah, as the Isha Upanishad would declare. Was the Mahatma promoting the Rule of the Asura? It seems so, if not consciously and deliberately but unwittingly. Did not the same thing happen at the time of Cripps’s Mission in 1942? Woe to the nation who turns its blind eye to the Rishi dedicated to the Divine cause. India’s willing participation in the War effort was necessary and the British Prime Minister of the time, Winston Churchill, had made a proposal through Sir Stafford Cripps to the Indian leaders with the possibility of Dominion Status to the country after the War. But it was turned down. This Last Turn led to a calamitous result. We are reaping fruits of it even today and we don’t know how long we shall. RYD
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