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. 

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Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya’s letter regarding Peter Heehs

[Many senior sadhaks of the Ashram rang early warning bells and amply cautioned the Trustees with regard to Peter Heehs and Richard Hartz, the two American editors of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s [1] two long letters (1 & 2) addressed to the Trustees in 1986-87 have already been published on this site. We now publish a letter of Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya [2] dated July 1987, written in the same context and shortly after Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s letter of June 1987. His letter raises doubts and suspicion regarding the editing of the Archives & Research journal and the revised Edition of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri. What is most interesting is that PKB foresaw twenty-one years back the insidious attack of “The Enemy Within”. He wrote the following:

“If the [my] suspicions could be proved they would not remain suspicions, they would become facts. But clever people know how to hide their true colour for a long time. That is why time is considered to be the best judge. So, until then, one should be on one’s guard, watch the suspects, and wait for the time when the truth reveals itself. If it is found that my suspicions are baseless, I shall be, too, happy to correct myself. It gives a very unpleasant feeling to be suspicious about people and things.” [emphasis added]

Well, Time has indeed proved to be the best judge when Peter Heehs revealed his true colours in 2008 with the publication of his derogatory book on Sri Aurobindo. If only the Trustees had paid heed to PKB’s early warning, how much trouble and controversy the Ashram Trustees could have averted, apart from nipping the mischief in the very bud! – Bireshwar]

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Who is Gaining from Legal Battles? – Sridharan

The Well-Wishers of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Forum is active again. This Forum can be considered as the unofficial mouthpiece of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust with Matriprasad Satyamurthy (secretary of the Ashram Trust) and Richard Hartz (controversial editor of Sri Aurobindo’s publications) hiding behind pseudonyms and spewing hatred at what they call anti-Ashram elements. Let me remind you once more that we had made a clear distinction between the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust in our last response to this forum. Therefore the Ashramites who have filed this “new case” are not against the Ashram but the Ashram Trust, which runs the Ashram in the most irresponsible manner. Their demand is to revamp the present administration through a Government intervention without which no structural changes can be brought about in the governance of the Ashram. The changes will ensure transparency and accountability, the utter lack of which is the hallmark of the present setup. The introduction of some democracy into the highly autocratic functioning of the present Trustees would also be a welcome measure. All these demands are fundamental to any institution in modern times and, if the excuse for not conceding to them is that the Ashram is a spiritual institution and not a secular one, then show me these “highly spiritual disciples” among the present Trustees who can guide the Ashram to its spiritual destiny!

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Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s Second Letter to the Trustees in 1987

[The is the second of two letters. The first is here.]

[After Jugal Kishore Mukherji wrote his letter to the Trustees in June 1986, Jayantilal Parekh, former head and founder of the Archives Dept. of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, wrote a letter to the Trustees in defence of Peter Heehs’ research and the publication of his Archival Notes in the Archives and Research magazine of the Ashram. Jugal Kishore Mukherji then wrote a second and final letter to the Trustees in June 1987 on the same matter, referring frequently to portions from what he called J.P.’s Statement (Jayantilal Parekh’s letter), after which he kept silent. Heehs got away with Jayantilal solidly protecting him not because he approved the former’s opinions, but because he needed him for the material organisation of the Department. Later, Jayantilal warned Heehs to be careful in whatever he writes because he would have to face one day the results of his actions. The slow wheel of Karma caught up with Heehs twenty years later, in 2008.]   ...full text...

Jugal Kishore Mukherji's First Letter to the Trustees in 1986

[This is the first of two letters. The second is here]

[“History repeats itself if you do not learn its lessons”, is the message that clearly comes across when you read Jugal Kishore Mukherji’s letter to the Trustees written in June 1986, twenty two years before the Heehs controversy became a big public issue in August/September 2008. Jugal-da has now withdrawn himself from the administration of the Higher Course – the final three years of higher education that is given to the students of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram School, apart from himself teaching Sri Aurobindo’s major works to them. The Mother once remarked about the clarity of his mind and the way he could project his thoughts on the stage when she had directed a play in the fifties. It is the same exceptional clarity of mind that we see in this letter, exposing not only the wrong attitude of Peter Heehs vis-à-vis Sri Aurobindo, but his equally bad scholarship in his Archival Notes in the Archives and Research magazine, published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the eighties. Incidentally, what many of us have recently written in protest against the Lives of Sri Aurobindo is all there in seed form in Jugal-da’s arguments. We have written nothing new, and even what has been of late written by Heehs’ supporters is a repetition of what was written then in his defence. The story of Heehs has simply repeated itself, like a politician’s scandal on a much larger scale, for people to be convinced more than ever that there always was something wrong about it. In short, had Heehs’ work been editorially supervised from that point of time when Jugal-da shouted himself hoarse, a lot of unpleasantness would have been avoided now.]   ...full text...