On 14 January 2016,
the Editor of the FIRSTPOST has referred in passing to the petitioners of the
Scheme Suit in a most disparaging manner in an article titled “SC has shown great foresight in striking against proxy PILs as instruments of intimidation”. As
an admirer of this website, which has dared to take on the likes of Wendy Doniger, it is strange that it has now decided to support one of “Wendy’s
children” – Peter Heehs (read this post). But I hope I can attribute this error
to factual ignorance and unfamiliarity with the recent problems in Sri
Aurobindo Ashram. If that be the case, I would like to point out a few outright
errors in the write-up for the clarification of the larger readership connected
with the FIRSTPOST, which hopefully would set the record right or at
least give us a chance to give our version of events on its website. I quote
from the article:
Showing posts with label Bireshwar Choudhury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bireshwar Choudhury. Show all posts
28 Jan 2016
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.
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]
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.
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
19 May 2015
Did Sri Aurobindo Lie in the Uttarpara Speech? – Extract from Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s Letter
[The following extract from Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s first letter to the Ashram
Trustees in June 1986 shows that Matriprasad Satyamurthy (the present secretary
of the Ashram Trust) has been colluding with Peter Heehs for a long time. Peter
Heehs was then editor of the Ashram’s Archives and Research magazine in which
he first published his “great discoveries” on how Sri Aurobindo was a coward,
on how he played a double game with the British police, on how he lied to the
public with regard to instructing his lawyer Chittaranjan Das who defended him
in the Court, etc, etc. This particular extract deals with the last distortion
– that Sri Aurobindo continued to give advice to Chittaranjan Das in the
Alipore Bomb Trial despite what he said in the Uttarpara speech on having left
everything to God during his year-long confinement in Alipore Jail! – Bireshwar
Choudhury]
At times, in the
pages of our Journal Archives and
Research, accounts of events given by some sundry persons are made use
of in order to prove Sri Aurobindo wrong!! Sri Aurobindo’s own
spiritual statements are controverted and are sought to be proved false –
and that, too, on the authority of our young friend MATRIPRASAD! Too
strange to believe? – Yes, so is it. Let me explain.
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.
18 Jul 2014
Reply to Manoj Das’s Letter to Niranjan Naik (2) – by Bireshwar Choudhury
Manoj Das suffers from an uncontrollable itch to
put down his critics. It would have been so much better had the writer’s itch
channelised itself in a more fruitful manner in his own realm of creative writing. But
I have been told that from the last decade or two his literary creativity is
ebbing in inverse proportion to his mounting desire to be honoured by all sorts
of awards. The last big award he successfully managed to canvas for was the
Padma Sri award, accorded by the Govt. of India in 2001. Now I suppose
he is eying for the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan. But what is he doing
at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, and how does the Ashram help him in his
enterprise?
No, he has certainly not thrown fame
to the winds to attain the Supramental Transformation or even to achieve a Yogic
poise! If he had really done so, why would he rush out for a fresh round of
self-promotion each time he receives an invitation from literary circles? Why would he criticise other awardees who
have outshone him in literary output and perhaps deprived him of the award that
he might have won instead? And why is he so keen on saving his reputation which
has recently plummeted in his home state of Orissa after this site published
the less known details of his activities in Pondicherry?
9 Dec 2013
Reply to Samir Sarkar – by Bireshwar Choudhury
[Samir Sarkar,
son of Kalu Sarkar, objected to the publication of the letter of Kalu Sarkar to Manoj Das Gupta on this website. The following is a reply to his letter by Bireshwar
Choudhury.]
Samir Sarkar: Dear Administrator,
I write to you
on behalf of my father, Kalu SARKAR, after having consulted him.
I know that my
father was disturbed a few years ago in regards to Peter Heehs' book. Most
of his opinion was built on hearsay. Having said that he DOES NOT subscribe to
the views in the above letter any longer.
Bireshwar Choudhury: Dear Samir, first of all, why should you write on behalf of your
father Kalu Sarkar? Why cannot he speak for himself? He is after all the son of
a revolutionary who faced the wrath of British rule in pre-independent India!
He should not withdraw a statement that he undeniably made when the Peter Heehs
issue rocked the entire Ashram community in the year 2008. Moreover, you
seem to be patronising your father, pooh-poohing him like an excitable kid, who
had gone berserk in a state of emotional frenzy. This is exactly what the
Managing Trustee said and did at that time with those who rightly and bravely
reacted against Peter Heehs’s derogatory book on Sri Aurobindo. He also put on
an air of “dignified silence” and pretentious samata, when he was actually dictated by other compulsions. Can you
also be more explicit about how your father does not subscribe to the views that
he had expressed earlier? If he now thinks that Peter Heehs should be given the
Nobel Prize for literature for the Lives
of Sri Aurobindo, let him say so himself, and we will publish his statement
on this very blog! He might now withdraw his criticism of the Managing Trustee,
but that does not exonerate Peter Heehs. His harsh criticism of Manoj Das
Gupta was made in relation to the Peter Heehs issue, so the two cannot be
easily separated! Finally, it has come to our knowledge that it was because of
the admission of his grandchild (meaning your child) that he stopped roaring like
a wounded lion and started whining like a cat waiting for its daily quota of
milk. If this is right, shame on him and shame on you!
23 Nov 2013
A Comparison of Sexual Assaults – Bireshwar Choudhury
While
the whole nation follows the discussion on the Tarun Tejpal sex scandal, have
the Ashramites forgotten that far more serious incidents have happened at Sri
Aurobindo Ashram? Or will they still pretend like Manoj Das Gupta (the Managing
Trustee) that nothing untoward has ever happened in the Ashram? I quote below
the statements of two victims of alleged sexual assault: (1) that of the young Tehelka lady reporter who accused the
chief editor of Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal,
of sexually assaulting her, which led to an unconditional apology by him and the
decision to recuse himself for the next six months; and (2) that of a young Oriya lady who was molested by one Mukesh Shah in one of the guest houses of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram. The emotionally shattered victim went weeping to the
concerned authorities of the Ashram, but no action was taken on Mukesh Shah
because he happened to be one of the key henchmen of the Trustees. Instead
the lady was told by the Managing Trustee to either bear with or concede
to the sexual solicitations of the Guest House manager or to go back to her native
place, because this was the unalterable way of life at the Ashram!!! I suppose
this is one of the finest examples of Manoj Das Gupta’s remarkable
administration of the Ashram Trust!
The
comparison between the two statements below is striking. In fact, the sexual
offence of Mukesh Shah is far more serious than the alleged sexual misconduct
of Tarun Tejpal.
12 Oct 2013
New enquiry officer to probe Aurobindo Ashram case (The Hindu, 10 October 2013) – Bireshwar Choudhury
Justice T.L.
Viswanatha Iyer, a former Judge of the Kerala High Court, will be the enquiry
officer (EO) in the place of Justice P.R. Raman, to look into allegations of
sexual harassment of women and children in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in
Puducherry.
By consent,
in an order on August 30, Justice K.K. Sasidharan appointed Mr. Justice Raman,
also a former Judge of the Kerala High Court, to probe the allegations.
Pursuant to the order, Mr. Justice Raman conducted a preliminary enquiry. The
next enquiry is scheduled from October 23 to 26.
The EO
appeared to have received a representation from 165 persons from Odisha, stated
to be ashram devotees, and who had some information regarding the issues under
consideration. The original understanding was that the enquiry would be
confined to complaints from the inmates of the ashram and the local MLA, and as
such, it would take at least three months. The EO was of the view that it would
take a minimum six months to complete the process. He, therefore, expressed his
difficulty to continue as he had to come from Kochi frequently. He requested
that he be relieved from the engagement.
Mr. Justice
Sasidharan ordered that the enquiry would be in relation to the complaints
received by the District Collector.
The present
and former inmates of the ashram were at liberty to approach the EO, if they
were aggrieved. It was open to the EO to take a decision with regard to
participation of third parties, provided they satisfied that they were inmates
of the ashram at a particular point of time. The EO should conclude the enquiry
as early as possible and file a report before the High Court preferably by
December 31. The matter has been posted for January 2, 2014.
Comment: Retired
High Court Judge P.R. Raman, who was the previous Enquiry Officer, had called for the depositions of not only the inmates of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram but of all other disciples and devotees of Sri Aurobindo staying in or
outside Pondicherry. The enquiry was to be conducted in several stages and
different notifications were to be issued to address the different categories
of devotees and disciples of Sri Aurobindo. So how can the enquiry be limited
to only the inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram?
The preamble of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Trust Deed states that “Sri Aurobindo
Ashram is the home of persons who are the followers and disciples of Sri
Aurobindo having faith in his philosophy and yoga.” That the beneficiaries of
the Trust are the “disciples, devotees and inmates” is mentioned no less than
half a dozen times in the Trust Deed. This
was sufficiently clarified in the last and only meeting of 27th
September, 2013 presided by P.R. Raman when the question of a letter from
Orissa signed by 165 devotees had come up. The scope of the enquiry had been even
written into the minutes of the meeting by the honourable retired High Court
Judge. How can the scope of the enquiry be changed now to exclude the
non-inmates?
The information
provided by the Hindu news reporter seems to be biased and incorrect because it
sends the wrong information to the public and paves the way for a quick and
sham probe, which is what the Ashram Trustees want to get away with. A large
number of devotees and disciples apart from the inmates fully maintained by the
Ashram Trust are actually quite eager to depose in front of the Commission in
order to set things right in Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Below is a scan of a
true copy of the minutes of P.R. Raman’s first meeting at Ananda Inn on the 27th
of September 2013.
Bireshwar Choudhury26 Jul 2013
Bireshwar Choudhury Replies to "World Union"
[Bireshwar
Choudhury has replied to the comments of a netizen who calls himself “World
Union” – may God bless the latter in this great endeavour! His comments were made in
reference to the previous post on this site, “An Analysis of the Preface of Peter Heehs’s “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo,
CUP, 2008 ― A Zombified Disciple”.]
Bireshwar Choudhury: I am facilitating the World Union
by pointing out the differences of opinion between self-respecting Indians and spiritually
insensitive Westerners like Peter Heehs. These Westerners assume that everybody
thinks the way they do, and when Indians disagree with them, they immediately dismiss
them as fundamentalists because they generally have no other answer.
World Union: Since this controversial book has
come out and your site created, you've written long, extremely long posts
trying to counter Peter's book. You are free to have your viewpoint just as
anybody else. I'm sure you're free to write a book just like Peter did.
Bireshwar: I am also free not to write a book and continue this
fight on the Internet if it pays more dividends. The Internet is much more
accessible to us and others.
World Union: Instead of pouring out all your
anger on your site, I suggest you write a whole book countering Peter's book
and proving through it how great Sri Aurobindo actually is, for it seems you
believe that the world needs to be proved how great Sri Aurobindo is.
Bireshwar: If you call what we write merely the expression of anger,
then why don’t you stop reading it and complaining about it?
18 May 2013
Reply to Manoj Das – by Bireshwar Choudhury (2)
[This is the second and final part of Bireshwar Choudhury’s
reply to Prof. Manoj Das’s response to Sricharan Singh’s “Manoj Das has Sold his
Soul to the Devil”. See the previous posting to read the first part of Bireshwar
Choudhury’s reply. The text of Manoj Das's response is indented and in italics while Bireshwar's reply is without indentation and in Roman.]
“Sricharan Singh” has repeated that old old lie about the Ashram lawyer
saying at the Krishnanagore court that the Mother did not understand Savitri!
The lawyer said nothing of that kind. He has also given a statement challenging
this allegation against him. Still the drum-beaters of that lie do not stop.
Years ago when two small groups of people distributed leaflets against me on
this issue, I was surprised that while these people believed somebody from far
who transmitted that blatant lie as a gift for them, they did not have the
patience or a bit of respect for truth to ask me about it though I was amidst
them, an inmate of the Ashram like them. They even sent a lawyer’s notice to
the Trust to expel me from the Ashram on this account.
By and by it became clear to me that all they wanted was to create an
atmosphere of hatred against me. But what for? It remains inexplicable to him.
I was for a while representing the Ashram in the courts where several cases
were filed against the Trust because it brought out a revised version of the
Master’s epic, Savitri. It was
‘revised’ in the sense that errors (typographical, punctuation, omission, words
not properly deciphered in corrected proofs, etc) were removed through years of
study and scrutiny. When, as a purely academic exercise a booklet was published
by the Ashram Archives listing the changes, it suddenly struck a gentleman to
drag the Trust to the court alleging that it had tampered with Sri Aurobindo’s
writing. (What may sound incredible to many, he even discovered an unknown
nephew of Sri Aurobindo and made him go to court and suggest by insinuation
that he was the copyright-owner of all the works of Sri Aurobindo, not the
Ashram. By implication, all the earnings from the works of the Master over the
past years were his!)
I was convinced that the
Revised Edition of the epic is the most authentic one. Once again it is a
matter of common sense that the Ashram had no reason to alter a single word of
Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand it had a responsibility to see that error-free
versions of His works were available before the copyright period expired. That
is what Ashram did despite the illogical and superfluous commotion made by some
people. (Manoj Das)
Things always
seem inexplicable to Manoj Das whenever he courts a controversy, as if the
people who are against him are inexplicably bad and he himself is inexplicably
good! The Savitri revision
controversy has rocked the Ashram for a decade or two, and even now there are
senior scholars of the Ashram who are not satisfied at all with the way it has
been handled by the Trustees. R.Y. Deshpande was part of the team that
finalised the Savitri revisions and
he says that even Nirodbaran (on whom the final decisions depended) expressed
his unhappiness over some of the revisions. Deshpande himself was extremely
unhappy over some of the revisions suggested by the Archives editors. The late
Jugal Kishore Mukherji, former head of the Higher Course of the Ashram School,
wrote a fifty page letter to Amal Kiran on these revisions and some of his
suggestions were accepted by Amal Kiran! Why was Jugal Kishore Mukherji disgusted
with the whole affair? If after all this discontentment, Manoj Das still finds things
inexplicable, then I will simply call him a hypocrite! Even here, I will throw
him a challenge which R.Y. Deshpande has long been insisting upon: Make all the
Savitri manuscripts public. Put them
up on the Net for all to see and judge for themselves the legitimacy of the
revisions of the Archives editors. Moreover, after the Peter Heehs controversy,
who is going to trust the Archives editors?
12 May 2013
Reply to Manoj Das – by Bireshwar Choudhury (1)
Manoj Das has
replied at great length to the article, “Manoj Das has Sold his Soul to the Devil” by Sricharan Singh. The fact that his reply is interminably long and touches
upon all the major controversies he was involved in, shows that the arrow shot
by Sricharan Singh has found its target. This is exactly what Sricharan wanted
to do, having no other method to counter the proud professor. Right now, Manoj
Das and the Trustees backed by wealth and power are all-powerful and have the administrative
power of the Ashram in their hands, so what else can poor Sricharan Singh do
except condemn Manoj Das for his outright betrayal of Sri Aurobindo!
Manoj Das has
requested the editors of this site to publish his long exercise in verbosity. We
have consented to his request only after giving our own point of view on the
issues raised by him. He has also suggested that Sricharan Singh should do some
introspection. I can only say that it is time that Manoj Das himself
introspects a little instead of repeating the same old arguments like a parrot in
his self-defence. I quote below passages from his letter (in italics and with indentation);
these are followed by my comments (in Roman and without indentation).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)