Bagha Jatin: The Bengal Tiger Whom The British Feared – swarajyamag.com

Saswat Panigrahi - September 10, 2016, 11:45 am

 
Exactly 101 years ago, on this day, the nationalist-revolutionary succumbed to severe bullet injuries in Balasore hospital following a gallant battle with the British-controlled police.

 
Indian history has discounted the significant contributions of Bagha Jatin towards the freedom movement, thanks to the Left-leaning historiographers. This, despite the fact that there is no dearth of well documented historical records available on the vast revolution the great freedom fighter had conceived!

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Dr. Hedgewar (founder of the R.S.S) met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry

In January 1920, Dr. L.V. Paranjpe started the Bharat Swayamsevak Mandal. Doctorji [Dr. Hedgewar] was his chief colleague. Efforts began in the month of July that year to organise a corps of some 1000-1500 volunteers for the Congress session. Doctorji threw himself heart and soul into that task.

While such fervent efforts were afoot, the tragic news of the passing away of Lokmanya Tilak at Bombay on the night of 31st July came like a bolt from the blue. The entire nation was plunged in indescribable grief. And more so the people of Nagpur. With a heavy heart, Doctorji attended to the work for organising hartal, mourning and condolence meetings on the tenth day, and offered his tearful homage.

Consequent on Lokmanya’s demise, the organisers were faced with the task of finding another Extremist leader for the presidentship. It was decided that a deputation should go to Pondicherry and bring Babu Aurobindo Ghose for the session. Dr. Moonje accordingly set out for Pondicherry. Doctorji also accompanied him as a representative of the youth of Nagpur.

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Sri Aurobindo's Response to K.R. Kripalani's Article on the Swadeshi Movement

Did you enjoy the article “Fifty Years of Growth” by K. R. Kripalani in the Visva-Bharati?[i] Fifty years of growth refers by the way to the Congress. About the Swadeshi period he writes: “Along time was to elapse before we were to appreciate the infinite possibilities of the muddy waters at hand. In the meantime something startlingly romantic happened. . . .

“The fountain [of undefiled water] was cut by the fiery shafts of Tilak, Vivekananda, and Aurobindo, among others. They gave to Indian Nationalism its fiery basis in India’s ancient cultural glory and its modern mission. . . . It is always more beautiful and more inspiring to contemplate the Idea  and be drunk with it than to face the actual facts and touch the running sores. . . .

“But this spirit, fiery and beautiful as it was, was fraught with grave dangers. The glory that it invoked and the passion that it aroused were so intensely Hindu that Muslims were automatically left out. Not that they were deliberately excluded. . . . However that may be, it seems now not unlikely that had the influence of Tilak and Aurobindo lasted in its original intensity, we might have had two Indias today— a Hindu-istan and a Pak-istan, both overlaying and undermining each other. . . .

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Sri Aurobindo was certainly not for the Disintegration of India – by Raman Reddy

Secular intellectuals obfuscate the obvious, by which I mean, they use every intellectual argument to undermine what is pretty obvious to the common man. Of late, the idea of breaking India has been so flaunted about by the secular brigade under the cover of free speech (especially in the columns of a national newspaper) that one wonders what is happening to the country. Why would one support free speech when it undermines national security, especially when it supports criminals and Asuras and denigrates Hindu goddesses?  Fortunately, the majority of Indians will not give much credence to this outright falsehood, so that we can rest in peace and not bother about its practical consequences.

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Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of the Nation-Soul (2) – Kishor Gandhi

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Admitting that the society or group, like the individual has, besides its soul, also a mind, life and body, the important question immediately arises: What exactly is the nature of the group-mind, group-life, group-body? We have a fairly clear idea of the mind, life and body of the individual man by direct experience aided by scientific knowledge, but our notions of these parts of the group-being, even when we admit their real existence, are altogether vague and un­certain. Taking first the most external part, the physical body, what really is meant by the body of a society or a group?

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Sri Aurobindo’s Concept of the Nation-Soul – Kishor Gandhi

“Mother India is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi supporting their separate existence and keeping it in being. Such beings are as real and more permanently real than the men they influence, but they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic consciousness and being and act here on earth by shaping the human consciousness on which they exercise their influence. It is natural for man who sees only his own consciousness individual, national or racial at work and does not see what works upon it and shapes it, to think that all is created by him and there is nothing cosmic or greater behind it.”[1]

[Extract – read full article below. Title provided by Compiler and references updated. From Kishor Gandhi’s “Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and The New Age”, pp 33-36 (First Edition in 1965).]

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Praise for “The Battle for Sanskrit” by Rajiv Malhotra

“Is Sanskrit political or sacred, oppressive or liberating, dead or alive?”

For the past sixty years my primary activity has been to interpret Sanskrit and sanskriti. Indeed, Malhotra and I are sailing in the same boat. This book provokes a debate between the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ of our heritage. It exposes that many outsiders pretend to be insiders, but their hidden agenda is to convince ignorant Hindus that the Vedas are myths and that the traditional claims are nonsensical. They pretend to know our traditions even better than our highest exponents.

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Subramanian Swamy on "Breaking India" by Rajiv Malhotra

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDkjFc1Muc

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The Right and Left in India - Dr. David Frawley - India Inspires Talks

https://youtu.be/EMY6lwj52dw

Published on Nov 26, 2015

In this Talk, Dr. Frawley clearly explains the intellectual roots of "The Right" and "The Left" in India. He states that in India, the political terminology of right and left is defined by Marxists, who like to call anyone that opposes them right-wing or fascists. According to their view anything traditionally Hindu would have to be right-wing on principle, just as only their views are deemed progressive, even if supporting Stalinist tactics. This means that in India such subjects as Yoga, natural healing, vegetarianism and animal rights are all automatically right-wing because they are causes of the Hindu mind, with antecedents in ancient Indian culture. Great Hindu yogis and sages from Shankaracharya to Sri Aurobindo are classified by modern Marxists as right-wing, if not fascist.

However, the Indian left is mainly the Old Left, emphasizing a failed communist ideology and state economic planning such as dominated Eastern Europe in the decades following World War II and took it nowhere. It wreaked the same havoc with the economy and educational systems of India and kept the country backward. Indian communists are among the few in the world that still proudly honor Stalin and Mao (while warning of the danger of Hindu fundamentalism)! 

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Tarak Fateh - Partition of India and the forgotten question of Baluchistan

https://youtu.be/tlrEHJ3jlY4

Published on Dec 7, 2015

While India is known to have taken birth in 1947 as a modern state, the civilisational ethos of India has survived for ages. Mr. Fatah proposes the need to develop a grand narrative of the Indian civilisation that extends beyond the geographical boundaries of the Indian Territory. Narrating the horror of the continuing conflict in Baluchistan, Tarek Fatah supports the cause of Baloch nationalists to be liberated from the control of Pakistan.

Writer, Broadcaster, a Secular and Liberal Activist. Tarek Fatah is a scholar par excellence with command over a range of subjects.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

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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.

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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]

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Culture wars – By Swapan Dasgupta

It's more a clash of lifestyles than a battle of ideas

In 1961, in a monograph woefully difficult to locate today, the Chicago sociologist Edward Shils studied the predicament of the Indian intellectual in the high noon of the Nehruvian era. His approach was sympathetic but his larger conclusions were not terribly flattering to a community that saw itself as the vanguard of India’s journey to modernity. 

Despite its near-uninterrupted Brahmanical tradition of scholarship and sustained exposure to the West, India, Shils felt, “has not yet developed the traditions which are essential to intellectual life.”

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The flawed logic of the award-returnees – By Swapan Dasgupta

Let me state at the outset that I have a great deal of respect and admiration for writer Nayantara Sahgal who I have had the privilege of knowing for the past 37 years. I have also had very convivial conversations with Ashok Vajpeyi, poet and culture apparatchik, during various literary festivals over the years. I may not have shared all their political likes and dislikes — and Sahgal has occasionally teased me about my “wrong politics”— but there is more to life than common voting intentions, or so I hope. 

Therefore, when Sahgal takes it upon herself to publicly disavow her Sahitya Akademi award, a gesture that Vajpeyi and some others have emulated, the least I can do is to seriously examine the rationale of their protest.

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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]  

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Why India must embrace Modi like the Hindus of America – David Frawley

It has been remarked how well Indians do outside of India. It could also be said how well Hindus do outside of India, and additionally how well Hindu-based teachings like yoga do outside of India.

The Hindu-American community has been rated as one of the most affluent and educated religious communities in America over the last more than ten years, far above the dominant Christian population. Perhaps more importantly, Hindus have been able to maintain their traditions and their families better than other religious groups.

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It is time to speak up against the Hinduphobia of foreign writers: Vamsee Juluri

March 29, 2015, 6:00 am IST Narayani Ganesh in Treasure Hunt | India | Times of India

Vamsee Juluri, professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco, speaks up for the anonymous Hindu who, he says, was silent all those years of colonial rule only to be criticized as an ‘oppressor’ post-Independence. His new book ‘Rearming Hinduism’ seeks to restore to the millennia-old faith its intellectual heritage by reintroducing Hinduism to Hindus. Juluri tells Narayani Ganesh that foreign ‘experts’ have only contributed to the misconceptions

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S. Gurumurthy speech at IIT Bombay Hindustan Times Avenue 2010 (Full)

Gurumurthy on how economics is connected with culture and why Indians should think for themselves instead of aping the West. He mentions an incident in Sri Aurobindo's life -- check 49th minute of his talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOckPPmdekE

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70 Arrested for Bid to Picket Ashram

The New India Express

By Express News Service

Published: 10th January 2015 06:03 AM 

An activist, trying to jump the barricade; and (right) activists staging a protest march in front of ashram on Friday | k ramesh 

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VCK for judicial probe into ashram ‘irregularities’

 The Hindu

PUDUCHERRY, January 8, 2015 

Cadres of the VCK on Wednesday staged a protest here urging the government to order a judicial inquiry into the allegations of sexual harassment and other irregularities at the Aurobindo Ashram.

CPI’s Puducherry unit secretary R. Viswanathan and CPI (M) secretary R. Rajangam also participated in the agitation.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/vck-for-judicial-probe-into-ashram-irregularities/article6766558.ece

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