17 Sept 2008

Letter of Alok Pandey to the Ashram Trust

The Trustees
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry - 605002

Dear Trustees,

You may be already aware by now of the ‘backlash’ on Peter Heehs’ biography of Sri Aurobindo: ‘The Many Lives…’ When faced with such a controversy, there is a general tendency in a certain kind of intelligentsia to take such reactions as ‘over-reaction’, ‘sentimentality’, etc and justify the diabolic nature of the writings by using terms such as ‘we should be broad-minded’, ‘Sri Aurobindo is not affected by these things’, ‘everyone has his freedom of expression’, ‘we should give people chance to change’ so on and so forth. The purpose of this note is to point out the fallacy of this argument in the present context.

Hence, put forth below are some reasons as to why the book is objectionable and the intent behind it a diabolic one.

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