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 Ashram. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ashram. Show all posts
19 Aug 2017
7 Aug 2017
Two Shocking Incidents – Anirjeet
The following post, dated 6 August, 2017 on indiatoday.in with the title “SC rejects plea of woman ‘abused’ at Puducherry’s Aurobindo Ashram” is highly misleading, even going by the report that follows underneath.
On 28 July 2017, Chief Justice Khehar dismissed the impleadment petition of
Hemlata Prasad in the Writ Petition filed by Gayatri Satpathy & Others against
the Ashram Trustees in August 2014 for a number of complaints, including sexual
harassment of minors, death by medical negligence, shady land dealings and other
financial irregularities. The Chief Justice however granted the liberty to
Hemlata Prasad to “initiate proceedings if the applicant is so advised in her
own right”. In other words, the Chief
Justice did not reject her plea of being abused but instructed her to file it
separately on her own. So while the title gives the impression of the Ashram
Trustees coming out clean in the eyes of the Supreme Court, the actual content
of the story should hardly make them comfortable, especially when the Centre (MHA
is a party to the Writ Petition) has “favoured an independent inquiry into
the affairs of the Ashram”.
In the meanwhile two more shocking
incidents have come to light in the Ashram, which should make the Ashram Trustees
literally squirm in their seats and regret why they ever sat on them.
17 Oct 2016
Timeline of the Controversy
1978
Nirmal Singh’s rejoinder to Peter Heehs on the birthplace of Sri
Aurobindo. According to Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo was wrong about where he
was born.
12.02.1984
Appointment
of Manoj Das Gupta as Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust after the passing
away of Nolini Kanto Gupta. He was recommended as Trustee by Nolini Kanto
Gupta through a dubious note signed (or made to sign) in his last days and
left in the custody of Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya. We do not know why Nolini
did not give the note to Padmanabhan Counouma, who was then the Managing
Trustee of the Ashram, and why he did not recommend Manoj Das Gupta earlier through
a formal meeting of the Board of Trustees. Manoj Das Gupta’s policy of not
rocking the boat even when the boat is about to be wrecked, as in the controversy
over the Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter
Heehs, makes him undoubtedly the most vehemently criticised Trustee in the
history of the Ashram. He is also known to protect the guilty and punish the
victims or those who have raised the alarm.
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8 Jan 2016
Dismissal of the Scheme Suit in the Supreme Court – by Bireshwar Choudury
The Scheme Suit
filed against the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust has been dismissed on technical
grounds by the Supreme Court of India on 6 January, 2016. Unlike what
the supporters of Peter Heehs and the cronies of the Ashram Trust are
projecting on the Net, the Supreme Court has not exonerated the author of the Lives of Sri Aurobindo. The Scheme Suit has
been dismissed because the case against the Lives
of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs is still pending in the High Court of
Orissa.
4 Jan 2016
Spiritual Distortions – All Life is Yoga! – by Baikunth
There
is a need to define at present what is
not the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, more perhaps than
the need to define what it is. Of
course, the two functions are interdependent and cannot be dealt in an
exclusive manner, for one often defines something by what it is not. But the
mere positive definition leaves out the hidden distortions which you only come
to know after a long period of gestation, and not in a one-hour lecture on the
Integral Yoga, however inspiring it may be. There have been in the past, and
there still are a number of brilliant speakers who mostly fulfil their role in
the positive definition of the Yoga and philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother, but very few as yet have sufficiently dwelt on its negative definition,
by which I mean explaining elaborately what
it is not.
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]
24 Nov 2015
The Mahabharata in Sri Aurobindo Ashram – by Sampdas
This
has reference to an interesting write-up titled The Bhishmacharya Complex
in Sri Aurobindo Ashram (posted on this site on 25 October, 2015). The write-up
has touched the crux of the matter; to me and a large number of followers of
the Mother, the legend of the Mahabharata looks as being re-enacted at the
Ashram, with variations in content and scope. While the ancient epic is largely
a legend and a symbol, when we ponder on the present state of affairs in the
Ashram, it looks that today’s Mahabharata is for real.
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]
6 Nov 2015
On the Visit of BJP President Amit Shah to Sri Aurobindo Ashram – by Sampdas
It
is both comical and ironical that the Ashram Trustees first took the BJP President,
Sri Amit Shah, to the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and then to the
Archives Cold Storage, where their manuscripts are preserved. It is ironical because the very
supporters of the denigration of Sri Aurobindo posed as earnest
followers of the Master in front of powerful politicians. At the same time, it
is comical that those who insolently tamper with the writings of Sri Aurobindo
are introduced as the ones who reverentially preserve his writings. [read full article below]
25 Oct 2015
The Bhishmacharya Complex – by A Concerned Ashramite
The situation of the old guard of the Ashram is the same as that of Bhishmacharya, who was unable to use his
mighty bow in the service of dharma and was forced to fight on the side of adharma
with an anguished conscience. This inability and helplessness to stand for the
truth, this forced loyalty towards the powers that be, and the apparently
virtuous stand which actually facilitates falsehood is what I call the
Bhishmacharya complex!
[read full article below]
[read full article below]
27 Sept 2015
Indians and Westerners in Sri Aurobindo Ashram – by Baikunth
I see a silver
lining in the clouds in those few Westerners who dared to stand by Sri
Aurobindo at the expense of their national pride and ego. For the true test of the
World Unity that all of us aspire for, is not in how we sing and dance and hold
our hands together in a symbolic circle when all is well, but in how we rise
above national feeling and racial prejudice when differences arise
between people from various nations and cultures. Until we can do so, the
project of the New World, which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother wanted us to build,
will never take off. We will remain on the ground imagining that we are flying
high in the sky! [read full article below]
13 Sept 2015
BJP President Amit Shah’s Visit to Sri Aurobindo Ashram – by Bireshwar Choudhury
The Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, while
pretending to be above politics, has taken full political mileage from the recent
visit of the BJP President Amit Shah to the Ashram on 25 August, 2015. A casual
bystander reported to us on how the Trustees accompanied by their Secretary
Matriprasad Satyamurthy (the Ashram’s best sweet-talker and accomplished sycophant)
went out of their way to please Mr. Shah, fawning over him every second of the
thirty-five minutes flat he spent in the Ashram main building.
3 May 2015
Matriprasad Satyamurthy’s Remark on a Controversial Take on Sri Aurobindo’s Life – by Bireshwar Choudhury
This is with regard to the news story titled “Bengal minister’s Aurobindo
play sitting on a time bomb / Controversial Take On Guru’s Exit From Freedom
Struggle” published in The Times of India
(Mumbai edition) on 25 April, 2015. The controversial take is stated in the
following manner:
“Did Rishi
Aurobindo ‘run away’ from the freedom movement?”
“Standing behind prison bars, Hemchandra bursts out in
anger: “You (Aurobindo) have saved yourself but history won’t forgive you.” In
another scene, Aurobindo’s brother Barin says: “Why did I tell my brother’s
survival lies only in mixing religion with politics? Little did I know he’d
give up politics and take refuge in religion.”
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]
12 Apr 2015
Comment on Jayantilal Parekh's article on Ashram – by Shiva
On 14th March the League of Lost Logicians
a.k.a. Well Wishers of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram reproduced “The Sri Aurobindo Ashram and its Administration”, an
article published in Mother India in
June 2001, which was “explicitly written in the backdrop of adversely critical
articles that were being planted by anti-Ashram elements in the various
newspapers and journals in order to malign the Ashram”, by which it means the
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust (SAAT) of the day. The article, more rightly a
brochure, was undoubtedly compiled-written by the self-appointed ‘archivist-scholars’
of the Archives & Research Department set up by Jayantilal Parekh and since
it was based on his viewpoint, it was hung round his neck.
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”.
16 Mar 2015
21 Feb 2015
12 Feb 2015
The Golden Chain Fraternity – Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust Nexus – by An Alumnus-Disciple
It
is the self-regarding desire-driven leap of faith of alumni and Ashramites and
would-be Ashramites that endorses SAAT’s administration as that of the Mother
Herself. And in return for their defence of its assessments, policies and
actions, SAAT certifies them as truly committed to the Mother and Her Ashram, hence
its legitimate inmates or fit to be admitted as inmates, and admits their
children to its SAICE. The criteria Sri Aurobindo and the Mother demanded for
admission as sadhaks to Their Ashram have thus been clearly overridden. – Extract
5 Feb 2015
Sectarianism or Loyalty ─ by Nolini Kanto Gupta
MODERN culture
demands that one should not be bound to one creed or dogma, swear by one
principle or rule of life or be led blindly by one man. Truth, it is said, has
many facets and the human being is also not a Cyclops, a one-eyed creature. To
fix oneself to one mode of seeing and believing and even behaving is to be
narrow, restricted, sectarian. One must be able to see many standpoints,
appreciate views of variance with one's own, appraise the relativity of all
standards. Not to be able to do so leads to obscurantism and fanaticism.
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