Our last post of 7th August,
2017 (Two Shocking Incidents – by Anirjeet) has set the alarm bells ringing,
not in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, as much as in the Sri Aurobindo
Centres closely connected with it. The inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram will naturally
pretend ignorance and vehemently deny these incidents out of sheer fear of retribution
from the Trustees, for whom it is a question of public shame and accountability. And even if the
inmates reluctantly admit in private a watered-down version of the two incidents,
they would gallantly come to the rescue of the Trustees by saying that these
were after all isolated incidents in the otherwise island of peace and psychic
growth of the children in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Centre of Education. But
then if you look backwards, these kinds of incidents (relating to drugs,
sex and alcohol) have happened before, and it is only recently that the
skeletons are tumbling out of the musty and suppressed annals of Ashram history.
Showing posts with label Administrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Administrative. Show all posts
19 Aug 2017
15 Dec 2015
The Necessity of Proper Procedures in Sri Aurobindo Ashram – by Baikunth
It
is therefore high time that some proper procedures are introduced in the
current administrative setup of the Ashram without, at the same time,
paralysing it with procedures as we see in various Government institutions. It
is true we have made a parody of democracy in our country, but that cannot be a
justification for not introducing basic democratic structures in the Ashram. It
is also true that spirituality and democracy may be incompatible, but in the
present predicament of the Ashram when the Integral Yoga has become an excuse
to enjoy the ordinary life at other people’s expense, it is time to put in
place a few checks and balances on the unlimited powers of the Trustees to
prevent the most arrogant human errors in the name of divine justice. [read full article below]
13 Nov 2015
Peter Heehs on the Crisis in Sri Aurobindo Ashram – by Bireshwar Choudury
Peter Heehs says
that the crisis in the Ashram can be solved by offering career “advancement
prospects” to the senior sadhaks who are unhappy with the present
administration of the Ashram. The Ashram Trust could also establish daughter
Ashrams which could provide “new job opportunities for young men anxious to
obtain leadership positions upon finding themselves blocked by a lack of
available positions, with older men holding onto their positions for life”! [read full article below]
27 Jul 2015
Reply to Benimadhav Mohanty – by Bireshwar Chowdhury
Yesterday Benimadhav
Mohanty took a nasty swipe at a friend of mine who (along with many others) had
the gumption to take on the Ashram Trustees when they shamelessly supported the
denigration of Sri Aurobindo in his own Ashram by Peter Heehs. As we all know, the crisis in Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, Pondicherry, still continues, and perhaps by the end of this month the
Supreme Court of India will give a major judgment in the Enquiry Case pending against
the Ashram Trust. It is in this backdrop that I am replying to Benimadhav
Mohanty who made the silly accusation of “self-aggrandisement” on those who
have stood up to the Trust instead of whimpering down like puppies, as most
Ashramites have done, to the insidious threats of the Ashram Trustees
25 Apr 2015
Sampdas on Jayantilal Parekh’s Article on Sri Aurobindo Ashram
It is
no surprise then that the Wellwishers
of the Ashram Trust, knowing too well which side of the bread is buttered, have
no qualms about keeping quiet when Sri Aurobindo himself is derated, but take
up cudgels and loudspeakers on behalf of the Trustees. The guidepost for them is that those who
question the wrong actions of the Trust are necessarily heretics and their
actions are blasphemous. However, on their part, they are prone to take the
easy path of “we see no wrong, we hear no wrong, we speak no wrong” on the
actions of the Trust. They expect that wrongs against the Divine and sadhaks be
not addressed at all by chanting the rhetoric, “the Trustees can do nothing
wrong and people should accept everything that they do with the non-questioning
maxim of conduct that “thou shalt not think or reason or question the Trustees
even if they are wrong.” Their fundamental fallacy owes to the misplaced
identification of the administrative outfit of the Ashram Trust with the Ashram
itself. [extract – read full article
below]
22 Mar 2015
Response to Jayantilal Parekh’s Article – by An Irrational Ashramite
Jayantilal Parekh’s
article “The Sri Aurobindo Ashram and its Administration” posted on the
Well-wishers’ site is rather outdated. It applies perhaps to the first two
decades of Ashram life after the Mother’s passing away in 1973, but certainly
not to the next two decades, and especially to the present situation. Given the
undeniable fact that the Ashram is going through a process of deterioration of
values and motivations, we can hardly keep justifying all that happens here
under the name of spirituality and Integral Yoga! How long are we going to
repeat that “the Ashram is the cradle of a new world” and “not a religious
monastery” in order to justify our human frailties? The question therefore is
of the proportion of sadhana and human weaknesses, of when and how much their
precarious balance tilts to the wrong side rather than a clear definition of
what exactly qualifies us for the Ashram life. What I mean is that everybody in
the wide world knows that “staying in the Ashram despite human weaknesses
so that one day we can outgrow them” is different from “staying in the Ashram in
order to fulfil our physical propensities and make the best of the
facilities provided by the institution for that very purpose”.
22 Feb 2015
Evicted sisters observe token fast
The Hindu
Sunday, February 22, 2015
PUDUCHERRY: The sisters, who have been evicted
from Sri Aurobindo Ashram-run premises, along with members of civil society
organisations on Saturday observed a token fast in front of the BSNL office
here demanding the Centre to direct the Puducherry government to take over the
administration of the Ashram.
21 Feb 2015
27 Jan 2015
Who Represents the Ashram? – The Hornet’s Sting
The other day, while having lunch in
the Dining Room, someone asked me if I have done right in going against the
Ashram. I was completely taken aback at such an absurd question. I answered
back as to how one could ever think of going against our most revered Guru’s Ashraya [refuge] which He and the Mother have founded with so much pain and struggle against all possible odds. I always
think of our Ashram to be the nucleus of a greater world. If anyone thinks that
going against the present Trustees is equivalent to going against the Ashram,
then he or she is mistaken one hundred percent.
18 Jan 2015
Centre for probe in Ashram case
Deccan
Chronicle / Chennai, Saturday, 17 January 2015
SC
urged to appoint retd judge for investigation
J. Venkatesan / DC
New Delhi, Jan. 16
The Centre on
Friday urged the Supreme Court to order a fair probe by a retired high court
judge into the allegations of sexual harassment of women and children in
Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry.
The allegations,
through a number of complaints by the inmates of the ashram and local MLA,
include misappropriation of ashram funds, illegal sale and lease of ashram
properties for personal gain by the managing trustees of Aurobindo Ashram
Trust.
Attorney General
Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, told a bench of the Chief Justice H.L. Dattu
and Justice A.K. Sikrit that the centre had filed its reply to the notice on a
writ petition filed by Dr. Gayatri Satapathy and others seeking a probe into
various allegations.
The petitioners
alleged that the acts of omissions and commissions of the trustees of the
ashram had resulted in sexual harassment of women who were associated with the
trust either as inmates or otherwise; against minor inmates; medical negligence
in providing hospital facilities; and denial of food, shelter, medical support
and other basic facilities to the inmates.
They alleged that
the Union of India and the Puducherry government, though had an obligation, had
failed to intervene in the abysmal state of affairs in the ashram and the
serious plight of the inmates. They wanted the Centre to frame an appropriate
law to impart transparency and accountability into the administration of the
ashram and till such time the law was enacted, to administer the affairs of the
ashram.
They also sought a
proper enquiry into the various allegations against the trustees.
The bench took on
record the Centre’s reply and posted the matter for further hearing on January
27.
6 Dec 2014
On Manoj Das’s Clarification with Regard to the Seashore Chit Fund Scam – by an Inmate of the Ashram
We, the devotees of the Mother and
Sri Aurobindo in Odisha, read on 28.10.2014 in the Odiya dailies about Shri
Manoj Das’s clarification “Kinchit hatachakita jane lekhakara prashna o pratibedana”
[a befuddled writer’s question and
submission] regarding his involvement with the scam-tainted Seashore Chit Fund.
Since we feel sorry for such a famous writer like him getting involved in such
dubious money matters, and as we found some discrepancies in the submission of
his position to the dailies, we request him to provide further clarifications.
Besides, since we are associated with Sri Aurobindo Ashram for a long time, the
magical word craft of Shri Manoj Das cannot sway us enough to lose sight of the
reality staring at us.
Here are the following
discrepancies: -
1 Dec 2014
More Facts on the Domestic Bills of Ashram Aristocrats — by An Irrational Ashramite
Fact 1: The Trust provided a measly allowance for engaging
domestic workers only to Ashramites permitted by the Mother or by any Managing Trustee.
Not to each inmate as Bireshwar unwittingly put it (see this post); e.g. among those deserving
it but who were denied, is a 60+ year old whose arthritic hands don’t let him
to wash his clothes.
The term ‘inmate’ craftily legitimised by the present Trust Board is another
can of worms – it covers the full, half, quarter, and occasional ‘inmate’!
Fact 2: First, the Trust blamed its sudden “dire need of
funds” on the Government for forcing it to decriminalize its allowance partly built
on the pretext: “Most domestics are fat and irregular, hence well-off”. Sly as
ever, it sweet-talked the unworldly inmates to “voluntarily reduce” their
allowances, then capriciously hacked it – “often despite the inmate’s old age
infirmities” as Bireshwar says.
27 Nov 2014
Review of “An Atrocious Biography” – Aron Aronite
From the grammatically inaccurate
term ‘Lives’ gets unleashed this narrative style of insinuations about Sri
Aurobindo – as if the Mystic led double lives, one imagined for him by himself
which his followers and the world began believing as well, while the other
‘human aspect’ to be exclusively discovered through this self-appointed and
ambidextrous style of writing pseudo history. Deshpande shows how each left
handed compliment accompanies a dismissive, negativist, suggestive insinuation
about Sri Aurobindo.
In
fact only when we read R.Y. Deshpande’s Atrocious
Biography, it gets clear how academia and intellectuals get honey trapped
by this irreverence towards a Spiritual Stalwart, forgetting the fact that the
gems they hurry to attest as scintillating insights are from someone who has no
academic grounding, no formal education in history writing and doesn’t even have a
post graduation, least of all a PhD in historiography or any mentionable
qualifications in any other discipline. If we are to go by R.Y. Deshpande, we
are hearing the "brilliant" (!) take of an American ‘taxi cab driver and a high
school dropout’ on one of twentieth century’s most profound Mystic, and a
Cambridge alumni who was proposed the Noble prize for Literature.
20 Nov 2014
The Domestic Bills of the Ashram Aristocrats – by Bireshwar Choudhury
The
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust pays each inmate of the Ashram a monthly allowance
for engaging domestic workers to help them in their daily chores. Recently the
minimum wages of domestic workers has been hiked up by the Government to around
Rs 150 rupees a day, which comes to around Rs 4500 a month. As the Ashram Trust
could not afford to pay the higher wages, it drastically reduced the number of
hours of domestic help for the inmates. For example, those inmates who had been
sanctioned eight hours of domestic help have now been re-sanctioned only four
hours to match their existing allowance. Those who had only four hours have now
got only two hours despite, in a few cases, their old age infirmities. But what
is really shocking is that the allowances of Jhumur Bhattacharya and Gauri
Pinto, two elderly highfalutin ladies of the Ashram, have not been touched at
all! Why? Because they enjoy the favour of the present administration and were
once upon a time in the early days of the Ashram School “very close to the
Mother”, which now seems to be the standard excuse for being thoroughly spoilt.
Guess
how much they receive as allowance for their domestic helpers – more than Rs
20.000/ each!
14 Nov 2014
Forgotten Values and Upholding the Ideal – by the Speaking Tree
These days some of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, Pondicherry, seem to be living in a fool’s paradise. They think of
themselves as sadhaks and sadhikas of Integral Yoga without even knowing what
it means. They are buried under the weight of their own ego without letting any
opening for the entry of Light. They boast with great pride that our Ashram is
a laboratory, the cradle of the new race and think that one fine morning we will get
transformed without any personal effort. Yes, no doubt, the Divine Mother with
Her infinite compassion has given us a golden chance to participate in this
great advent and be in the Ashram in the “Hour of God”. But have we ever
introspected to find out whether we are using or misusing this unprecedented
privilege?
9 Nov 2014
Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya on Peter Heehs
Pranab
Kumar Bhattacharya: I don’t trust this Peter
you know, if he goes out of the archives, then I will be happy. Then I know
all our boys will do good work.
He
did not give much importance to Sri Aurobindo [in his history of the Freedom Movement in India]. Only twice or
thrice he mentioned his name, and the way he is changing the writings of Sri
Aurobindo, even the line that could not be read, he has put. I saw afterwards,
the line that was not possible to read in Sri Aurobindo’s handwriting, he put
his own line. Have you seen that? noticed? It is there that I protested and I
don’t trust this man. You have asked a question as to whether I have antipathy
towards the foreigners. It is not so. I have many foreign friends. But I want
to meet them on the same footing. I don’t want to show my superiority nor would
I allow them to show their superiority. If they are arrogant and if they want
to show their superiority, I will act. That’s what I have done.
2 Nov 2014
Strange are the Ways of the Divine! – by Sampdas
Apropos the news about Shri Manoj Das and
the Seashore Chit Fund scam reported in this site on the 28th and 29th
of October 2014, I felt that by Divine Providence the Orissa Seashore Chit
Bounty got channelled back to the flood victims near the Seashore in Orissa.
Prompted by my inner voice, I went through the self assessment given by Shri
Manoj Das in his reply dated 17 September 2014 to the column titled The
Enemy Within in the journal Organiser (dt 21 Sep 2014).
What he wrote angrily there perhaps can be
utilised with minor modifications to reflect on the current theme about Sri
Manoj Das (MD in short).
While Shri MD in his rejoinder to the Organiser
has claimed to be living in Sri Aurobindo Ashram for a little over fifty years,
the tail piece in the site wellwishersofsriaurobindoashram which
republished the same rejoinder, mentions that he has been an inmate of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry since 1973. It is not clear how 1973 to 2014
adds up to 50 years! But possibly Sri Aurobindo’s line in Savitri, “Which less than zero grew and more than one”
has been used in the computation.
24 Oct 2014
Why Sell the Soul for a Mess of Pottage? – by Sampdas
The
brief factual Aide-Memoire on the ongoing debate on the book of Peter Heehs titled
“The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” could serve to focus on the fundamental issues
concerning not just the Sri Aurobindo Ashram commune at Pondicherry but also
the extended Ashram body of devotees, disciples and followers of The Mother and
Sri Aurobindo – living in India as well as overseas.
Though
a large majority of people are aware that there is trouble and mudslinging
between those critical of Peter Heehs and those who defend him, the surprising
thing is that both the groups have their epicentre at Pondicherry. The fact
that the problem has taken a larger dimension about the way matters are handled
by the management of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram leaves us in no doubt that all is
not well over there.
For
the purpose of clarity it is worth mentioning that all who have turned to Sri
Aurobindo and The Mother are sadhaks – though not necessarily living physically
in the precincts of the Pondicherry Ashram in buildings hired or otherwise. And
the Ashram consists of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and all those who have
accepted them as embodiments of the Divine or as spiritual guides on the path
of Integral Yoga, and who reach their offerings in physical or monetary form to
the Masters through the Ashram Trust. Consistent with this fact, the Ashram
Trust exists basically for providing the administrative and managerial support to
look after the interests of The Mother, Sri Aurobindo, as well as to assure the
basic necessities of life to the Ashram inmates and meet with the requests of the
followers of the Masters for correspondence, reaching Blessings to them and logistics
for their stay etc. The Ashram Trust (with the exception of The Mother) is
neither a team of spiritual leaders nor its Trustees are spiritual successors
to The Mother.
10 Oct 2014
Reply to the Rejoinder of Manoj Das to the Organiser – by Bireshwar Choudury
Manoj Das is the proverbial
professor who has sold his soul to the Devil. So his staunch defence of the
corrupt Trustees of Sri Aurobindo Ashram does not come as a surprise. He will
keep on perorating praise for them because of very selfish ends such as getting
the Ashram Trust to pay for his costly medical treatment – he has recently
undergone knee replacement surgery and radiation therapy in corporate hospitals
unlike the other inmates of the Ashram who are sent to Government Hospitals for
medical treatment. He is also the official spokesperson of the Ashram Trust from
which he derives enormous benefit from the point of view of publicity, which he
cleverly uses to climb the ladder of literary fame. We have recently come to
know that many of his stories have been actually picked up from various
anthologies, so he does not even deserve the awards that have been bestowed on
him.
4 Oct 2014
Shiva Responds to Manoj Das's Rejoinder to the Organiser
Shiva’s Hearty Greetings
To Padamshree Prof Manoj-Das-ji
For His Characteristic Tosh Against the Author of “The
Enemy Within”
You dismiss Mr Chari’s
“The Enemy Within” as a “vomit” of the “nasty and naked lies fed to him by
unauthorised hostile elements” – as if Mr Chari had no other sources within and
outside for this thesis.
You claim he “swallowed” this
“dirt” because he has “never visited the Ashram” – as if by a single visit one robotically
“imbibes the spirit sublime dominating its air” and knows all about Sri
Aurobindo, Mother, Their Yoga, Their Ashram.
But you are yourself a proof
that even after “over fifty years” here one can swallow “nasty and naked lies”
fed by elements hostile to Sri Aurobindo, Mother, Their Yoga, and Their Ashram!
For instance:—
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