Off-centre | Vande Mataram: The mother that we adore

Manipur burning, a no-confidence motion in Parliament, communal polarisation, and our elected representatives, whether of the ruling party or Opposition, fighting pitched battles both inside the Parliament and outside, not to mention jeers of “democratic backsliding” from abroad — these are some of the motifs and images that come to mind as we complete 76 years of our Independence. Looking ahead to the general elections next year, it would appear that we are a divided republic, with not only Bharat at war with I.N.D.I.A, but also under attack, whether directly or less perceptibly, from our enemies, near and far. In times such as these, we turn to the founders of our nation, not warrior-kings or, closer to our times, politicians and party bosses, but sages and mystics, the rishis of yore as also of modern India. Of the latter, who better to seek inspiration from than Sri Aurobindo, also born on 15 August, the birthday of independent India. We are about to complete a one-year long commemoration of his sesquicentennial or 150th birth anniversary. As this anniversary draws to a close, I reflect, in a moment of sincere and intense gratitude, of having been so fortunate as to have an opportunity to visit both the place of his advent and ascent, what in normal parlance we might term as birth and death. Pondicherry, where he spent the latter half of his life, the four decades from 1910 to 1950, and where he shed his mortal coil—as well as Kolkata, where he was born in 1872, at 4 Theatre Street, now 8 Shakespeare Sarani. Looking for a message, I chance upon one of Sri Aurobindo’s unpublished essays, The Mother and the Nation, seized as evidence when he was arrested on the night of 2 May from his residence on 48, Grey Street. He was suspected of being the mastermind in the Alipore Bomb Case. Written in 1907 or 1908, this essay was produced as evidence by the prosecution. Published for the first time in Book II of Bande Mataram, volume 7 or edition of his Collected Works, it bears close reading. Why? Because Sri Aurobindo, invoking Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and all the patriots who sacrificed their lives to free Mother India, gives us a clue to India’s spiritual significance and destiny. Sri Aurobindo believed that Bankim had been divinely inspired to give a new mantra to the nation: “The Mother of the hymn is no new goddess, but the same whom we have always worshipped.” Who is this Mother? She is none other than Shakti in her triune aspect of Durga-Lakshmi-Sarasvati. To quote from the later stanzas, those no longer officially sung, of Bankim’s original Hymn to India: “Tvam hee durga dashapraharanadharini, kamala kamaladala viharini,Vani vidyadayini, namami tvam” or “You are indeed the ten-handed Durga goddess, you are the goddess of wealth, Kamala or Laxmi, residing in the lotus, you are the bestower of (power of) speech and knowledge, Goddess Saraswati, I pray to you.” Sri Aurobindo then asks, “What is a nation?” A question he has already answered in his secret, revolutionary pamphlet, “Bhawani Mandir” (1905): “It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha-Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred millions of people.” Here, returning to the same question, he goes much deeper: “The country, the land is only the outward body of the nation, its annamaya kosh, or gross physical body; the mass of people, the life of millions who occupy and vivify the body of the nation with their presence, is the pranamaya kosh, the life-body of the nation. These two are the gross body, the physical manifestation of the Mother. Within the gross body is a subtler body, the thoughts, the literature, the philosophy, the mental and emotional activities, the sum of hopes, pleasures, aspirations, fulfilments, the civilisation and culture, which make up the sukshma sharir of the nation.” It is this causal body of the nation, in which inheres her true character and genius, which are actually universal: “These three are the bodies of the Mother, but within them all is the Source of her life, immortal and unchanging, of which every nation is merely one manifestation, the universal Narayan, One in the Many of whom we are all the children.” To Sri Aurobindo the living soul of India is nothing but the power of manifestation of the Divine: “The millions are born and die; we who are here today, will not be here tomorrow, but the Mother has been living for thousands of years and will live for yet more thousands when we have passed away.” Sri Aurobindo’s one year in jail, part of it in solitary confinement, played a transformative role in his life. It was prelude not only to his experience of visvarupa darshan or seeing the divine everywhere and in all, but his resolve to leave British India. He slipped away to Pondicherry, then a French territory, four days before the authorities issued a warrant for his re-arrest even though he had been acquitted. But before he left, in his famous Uttarpara speech, delivered on 30 May after his release, he declared, “Sanatana Dharma is life itself…. This is the dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.” As India embarks on the 77th year of her Independence, it is to this India we turn, it is this India that we cherish, celebrate, and devote ourselves to seeking and serving. For she is the very soul of humanity. And that is why we say Vande Mataram. The writer is an author, columnist, and professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .