Sujit De,
On December 9, 1950, Sri Aurobindo’s body was laid to rest in Pondicherry. He lived in Pondicherry from April 1910 to December 1950. During those forty years, he engaged in a new system of spiritual development which he called the Integral Yoga. As evolutionary progress being central to his philosophy, he let his spiritual force work for it and categorically stated his opinion on many national and international issues.
His far-sighted views on many issues are still relevant and deserve our attention. Now, let us focus on two of them where not only did he declare his stand clearly but also worked for what he viewed would help evolutionary progress.
He had the foresight about the necessity of socialist revolution for our evolutionary progress. He wrote, “There is to be equality of opportunity for all, but also of status for all, for without the last the first cannot be secured; even if it were established, it could not endure (The Human Cycle: The Psychology of Social Development – page 201). On October Revolution he said to AB Purani that he was one of the influences that worked to make it a success (Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo – Page 474).
We cannot deny the contribution of October Revolution towards human evolution. That brute capitalism made poor children die young after working as chimney sweepers, gives us enough reason to tip our hats to his foresight. Let us recall a line of William Blake’s poem, “The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young”, “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”
As a result of October revolution many socialist states emerged to take care of the potentialities in every human being. Human evolution again discarded dictatorship of the proletariat of socialism as it had earlier thrown out laissez-faire liberty of market players. But contribution of socialism in human evolution can never be denied as modern welfare states have come to balance between liberty of capitalism and equality of socialism.
All modern welfare states including the United States of America have accepted the ideas of socialism in their policy of giving social security to the people like health care and handsome allowance for the unemployed. As a matter of fact, a truly welfare state is more inclined to socialism than far right capitalism. The Indian Constitution has embraced the spirit of socialism in the Preamble and in the Directive Principles of State Policy “to secure a social order for the promotion of welfare of the people.”
Again he did not restrict himself by expressing his views against the Nazis but also used his force against it in the Second World War much to the dislike of many people in Pondicherry Ashram in particular and in India in general. They failed to understand why Sri Aurobindo who once suffered at the hands of the British, was opposing an enemy of the British and the Allies. As a matter of fact, many Indians at that time were happy that England was attacked because of their hatred of British domination.
But he clearly wrote in a letter, “Avowedly and openly, Nazi Germany today stands for the reversal of this evolutionary tendency, for the destruction of the new international outlook, the new Dharma, for a reversion not only to the past, but to a far-back primitive and barbaric ideal (Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Page – 215). He followed the second world war in every possible detail from reading newspapers to listening to the news bulletins of the BBC. He did whatever he could spiritually to defeat the Axis Powers. That Nazis used a phobia called antisemitism to kill 6 million Jews in the Holocaust was one of the many reasons to admire his foresight about the danger of Nazism.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote in his long poem, Namaskar, “Aurobindo, take the salute of Rabindra”. Tagore went on to describe him in the poem as the saviour with the lamp of God. That he really was.