Response to FIRSTPOST on the Scheme Suit issue – by Bireshwar Choudhury

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:

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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.

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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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An Interview with Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in May 1991 (3)

Interviewer(s): Pranab-da, you said that on the 24th April, 1945 you marched in front of Sri Aurobindo. Where and how was it?

Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya: It was in 1948. It was in the Darshan Room. He was sitting in the Darshan Room and we did the march past in the hall that is above Meditation Hall [downstairs]. We came in by the staircase door that is nearer to the staircase, and then took a round and came out by the other door. Two in a row and we told everybody not to do pranam and all that, as that will spoil the march past. Just turn your head and see. In bhakti, you know, if they did pranam, they would spoil everything (laughter).  So the whole march past took some three or four minutes and we got the advantage of going again for the second time, so we had two Darshans.

Interviewer(s): She said anything after that?

PKB: She liked it very much. Sri Aurobindo was amused, that is what Mother said. There was a little smile on his face, we could see that. And when it was finished, I went and told him that it was over and he gave me a nod. Then Mother told me that the way I had come and said the thing was over was liked very much by Sri Aurobindo.

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An Interview with Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in May 1991 (2)

Interviewer(s): How did your family come here?

Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya: My family? All that I have given in my paper. My grandfather died and my father and uncle wanted to have some spiritual guidance, they were looking for a Guru. All that I have said, I need not repeat.

Interviewer(s): When you first came here, did Mother say anything?

PKB: That also I have said, there was no talk, but I felt that she liked me from the beginning. I had a plan about which I have not spoken in that paper. I have told you that I opened a physical culture club there, and though it was a physical culture club, I was moulding the character of the boys. It was my idea that I would prepare good specimens of men who would make the country rich by their experience and their service. That was my idea, and it worked quite well. I was at that time 17 or 18 years old, and it worked very well.

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An Interview with Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in May 1991 – History Desk

[Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya (1922-2010) was one of the closest attendants of the Mother and the Director of the Physical Education Department of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. Physical Education is taken very seriously in the Ashram, far more than what most people would expect in an institution dedicated to spiritual growth. Literally all the members of the Ashram have a daily routine of physical exercise interspersed with work and meditation. All the students of the Ashram School have compulsory physical education every day for an hour and a half. The Dept. of Physical Education is thus very well-organised and pools the talent of more than a hundred voluntary captains, coaches and helping instructors, without mentioning those who maintain its numerous grounds for playing football, basketball, hockey, volleyball and other games. There is also enough infrastructure for the regular practice of Athletics, Swimming, Gymnastics and even Combatives. Competitions are held every year in which older Ashramites vie with the young students of the Ashram School. Ashram records are timed with stop watches, carefully measured with tapes, and systematically noted down. These are then databased and preserved for posterity so that you can get an analysis of your athletic performance twenty years back at the touch of a button. One would actually wonder as to whether the Ashram is a Yogic or a sports institution! But no, in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, sports can be turned towards Yoga, and the perfection of the body can become a Yogic ideal. At the same time, physical health undoubtedly imparts a great stability to life, whether you choose to do Yoga or not.

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Response to Auroville Today Report on Ashram Affairs (1) ― Sridharan

The Auroville Today report on Ashram affairs in the issue of October, 2013 is a “thoroughly researched” (!) presentation of facts by a lawyer who has been given the job of defending the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. He has therefore necessarily presented only one side of the story and has left out all the events and documents that are not compatible with his whitewashed picture of the Ashram Trust. The foundation of his thesis is predetermined: the Trustees are angels fallen from the sky and those who are protesting against them are hostile forces attacking the Mother’s work. In that case, Auroville should also be considered as part of that falsehood because the Mother had originally given the task of building Auroville to Sri Aurobindo Society and not to those who rebelled against it and brought about a Govt. intervention! Navajat Poddar has indeed been so much demonised by Aurovillians that I would now like to believe that he was the Mother’s instrument! Why don’t the Aurovillians don’t even mention him as the man who first proposed Auroville to the Mother, who then used him as an instrument to execute it? It is high time that he should be given due credit for his role.

I will quote below some of the salient passages in the Auroville Today report and give my response.

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Correspondence between Manoj Das and Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in June 1994 (2)

[We publish the second letter that Manoj Das wrote to Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya on 15 June, 1994 (read the first letter in the previous post). Manoj Das got the rudest shock of his life when Dada wrote back, “I have read your letter dated 15.6.94. Now I am absolutely convinced that you are a fool and an idiot.” [emphasis added] Manoj Das still persisted, “I feel tempted to agree with you. Indeed, had I not been a fool and an idiot, I would not perhaps have made an effort to make you reason our actions in a wider perspective.” He ended with a final call for harmony and reason in a third and final letter to Dada, whom he considered (despite the beating he received from him) “to be someone very special”. He then took up the matter with Harikant Patel, the then Managing Trustee, who did not want to intervene. It is said that Manoj Das then honourably resigned from Trusteeship for “the sake of upholding truth and justice”, but it was not exactly so. According to people close him, he resigned in a dramatic way to make a big public scene and put pressure on Harikant Patel, which unfortunately did not happen as envisaged by him. Instead his resignation was quietly accepted by the Managing Trustee, making it impossible for him to come back again into the Ashram Trust Board. Both Harikant Patel and Manoj Das Gupta, the present Managing Trustee, badly let him down in this matter. It is perhaps because of this humble pie he had to eat, along with the ignominy of having been insulted by one of the closest attendants of the Mother and one of her most respected disciples, that Manoj Das learnt the political lesson of his life ― never to go against the Establishment. The proof of my conjecture is in the fact that he now so faithfully toes the line of the Trustees despite their going astray from the central tenets of the Ashram.  How many times he has repeated that the Trustees can never be wrong despite their human weaknesses, how many times he has defended their wrong decisions with regard to the administration of the Ashram!  But what about his own case of confrontation with Dada in June 1994? If he says he was certainly right in going against Dada at that time, then why should he raise objections now with regard to those who are presently confronting the Trustees? – Bireshwar]

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Correspondence between Manoj Das and Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in June 1994 (1)

[Of late Manoj Das is very much in the public domain writing long-winded letters full of platitudes, without changing a wee bit his crassly subservient attitude towards the Ashram Trustees. But in June 1994 he was a different man and he had dared to challenge Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, the head of the Ashram Physical Education Department. The issue on which he mainly differed with “Dada” was the expulsion of a child, who had been admitted into the Ashram School against the rules of the Physical Education Dept. I will not go into the merits of the rule itself, but I will draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Manoj Das had the guts to challenge in writing the unfairness of the rule in general and its wrong application in this particular case. Dada dismissed Manoj Das’s letter to him as “simply rubbish” and told him to mind his own business. This eventually led to the resignation of Manoj Das from the Board of Ashram Trustees. Perhaps it is because of this shock and the bitter pill of defeat he had to swallow that Manoj Das now faithfully toes the line of the Ashram Trustees and writes miles of foolscap pages in their favour! The correspondence between Manoj Das and PKB is long and will be published in at least two instalments. ― Bireshwar]

  

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Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya's Scheme for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram

[The late Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, who was the director of the Ashram Physical Education Department and the closest aide of the Mother, wrote this long letter in 1978 to Padmanabhan Counouma, the then Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Pranab-da expressed his deep discontent about the Ashram administration after the Mother's passing away and proposed a more broad-based scheme for it. A meeting was called by the Trust and he was given a good hearing, but nothing actually transpired from it. Pranab-da, according to a senior sadhak, remarked after the meeting that he had done his duty and kept quiet henceforth, though he kept insisting all throughout his life on a larger body for the administration of the Ashram. Almost 35 years have elapsed since he wrote this letter, but many of the points that he raises therein are still relevant in the present crisis that the Ashram is facing. ]

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Pranab-da's Relevance to this Site -- Raman Reddy

The role that Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya (Dada) played in the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram is invaluable and, whatever his critics might say, he will be always remembered with love and pride. Articles will now be written and books published showing how faithfully he served the Mother until the very last and how he built up the vast Physical Education Dept. of the Ashram from scratch from 1945 to 2010. He also played the role of a strong and healthy opposition within the community of the Ashram, keeping always in mind its larger good – he confronted the authorities but never really destabilised them. It is with regard to this last function that he is relevant to this site. Let it be recorded here before Time blunts our memories that he unequivocally (to say the least) condemned The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs and took some strong collective decisions with regard to it. As a matter of fact, he felt suspicious about the biographer way back in 1987 and expressed his misgivings to the then head of the Archives Dept. At that time many thought that he was over reacting and he himself said frankly that Time will tell the truth, and that he wouldn’t mind if he were eventually proved wrong. It took more than twenty years for Time to prove that he was one hundred percent right!

Raman Reddy
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A Salutation and a Pledge to Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya (Dada) – by Alok Pandey

A strong pillar of the Ashram life has fallen -- a pillar of strength, a pillar of love, for behind the strong exterior of Dada there always flowed a soothing river of love even as fresh streams reside within and flow from a majestic mountain’s heart. This was not the usual thing that men call love, not something weak and sentimental that human beings often romanticise. It was a strong and mighty current, much like his being and his persona, that derived its truth and force from his unflinching faithfulness and love for the Mother.



[Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya (affectionately called Dada) who first came to the Ashram in 1942, settled in 1945 and became one of the closest attendants of the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, passed away at 2.40 in the afternoon on 8 January 2010.]

A strong pillar of the Ashram life has fallen -- a pillar of strength, a pillar of love, for behind the strong exterior of Dada there always flowed a soothing river of love even as fresh streams reside within and flow from a majestic mountain’s heart. This was not the usual thing that men call love, not something weak and sentimental that human beings often romanticise. It was a strong and mighty current, much like his being and his persona, that derived its truth and force from his unflinching faithfulness and love for the Mother. It was, we may say, the Mother’s love, the love She had abundantly poured on him and all whom She drew close to Herself. Of course, Dada was a special recipient of that Love and Glory. And this special Grace, of which he was the recipient and a strong vessel, was not just because of his straightforward nature, his honesty and fidelity to the truth, his courage and fearlessness, not even for his love for Her. These are no doubt admirable and rare qualities, indispensable for the Yoga and the Divine Life. They are the solid elements of human nature, the best that the old creation could provide, to be used as scaffolding for the Future Work, the New Creation of tomorrow. Dada had these in abundance, qualities that would not only mark one as a hero and a leader in any sphere of life, what the Gita calls as srestha, the very best among men. But that was not the only thing. The deeper reason perhaps lay in the fact that Dada took upon himself the most challenging field of work. Not the subtle regions of the mind, not even the flowing domains of the heart, which respond more easily to the divine touch. Instead he chose to work upon the most obstinate, the most stubborn of all elements, the physical body -- that hard, rock like material, impervious to all Light and which does not allow any Ray to pass through its thick and obscure substance. As we know, the yogis of the past did not even attempt it; most dread this domain that is the very bastion of resistance. Dada consented to enter this dark and dangerous field, dark to any spiritual light, and by Her Grace, with Her as his divine Teacher, did admirable work that will help the coming generations. He established Her fort in the most difficult terrain, the country of fixed dead matter, as we call it. Yet by the power of Her Love, he managed to bring this dead matter to life and awaken it to Her love and compelled it to aspire for Her Light.

Such men never die! Nor does their work go vain. They have inspired the hearts and minds of humanity, they have shaped many lives by their subtle influence and neither the inspiration one has derived from them, nor their occult influence cast upon men by their inner beings cease with their passing on to domains beyond the grasp of our material senses. If anything, freed from the hard grip of the human frame and the limiting cage of embodied nature, they become freer, larger and universal in their action, even as a god bears with his immensity the creation’s load. Their force liberated from the narrow circle of the few and the fortunate reaches out to the many, often even unknown to them. Having done their appointed task, they return to the hill tops of silence from where they came. But what they have gathered within their bodies, they leave behind as a gift to earth. They enrich the earth not only during their life but also through their death. While it is natural that we feel his loss as if some material aspect of our Divine Mother has left us, yet by this very act of sacrifice, if we may say so, this material power universalises itself and enters into hearts and souls that are ready. It even diffuses itself into matter, percolating silently layer by layer and from there awakens it to aspire, increasing and releasing Light from within its dark folds much as the Angirasa sages of old released Light from the caves of darkness by the power of the Mantra. But this is not just the power of the mantra releasing Light from the caves of darkness, but rather converting those very caves into homes of Light, to invade the dark bases upon which the foundations of our earthly life seem to stand. They have been instrumental in establishing upon earth the seeds of the Supramental Truth-Consciousness that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo brought down to earth by Their tapasya.

Indeed it is Their labour, Their Glory, Their Grace and Love that we see fructified in these pioneers that have gone before us in this life. But they needed instruments, earth-natures that are fit and ready or willing to be made ready, surrendering themselves to Her tremendous touch, plastic to Her Force that few can bear or hold. These pioneers and pillars provided that much needed soil to plant the divine seed upon earth. The seeds did take roots and have grown, watered by Her Love and helped by the Sun of Their Grace brooding over our earth. The work done, They withdrew but not before ensuring that the roots are secure. In time to come, many more saplings will emerge out of each of these trees, the seeds of Light will find better and better human vessels, and earth made ready by the Supramental Force ploughing our minds and bodies and life since Its descent on 29th feb 1956....

Alok Pandey

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