[The following letter was written by three senior Ashramites – Kittu Reddy, Ranganath Raghavan & Sumita Kandpal
(retired Collector) – to Manoj Das Gupta, Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Trust. The letter stated the views and concern of most of the Ashramites and devotees
of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother regarding the Peter Heehs issue. The letter is still
relevant to the present situation which has more or less remained unchanged as far
as the intransigent attitude of the Managing Trustee is concerned.]
28 Dec 2012
22 Dec 2012
Letter to the Ashram Trustees – by Nanjappa
The
senseless writings of Heehs will be countered by real scholars even outside the
Ashram and without its patronage, as it has been done in the case of Sri
Ramakrishna vis-a-vis Jeffrey Kripal.
The spiritual stature of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and their philosophical
insights will stand the test of time as they are based on profound Truth.
Sadly, what stands exposed is the lack of vision and courage on the part of the
present Trustees of the Ashram. [extract]
16 Dec 2012
Togo Mukherji Passes Away – Baikunth
Togo Mukherji
passed away on 14 December, 2012 at Puducherry. An excellent article covering
the notable aspects of his life has been written by Anurag Bannerji on his
site, which I would recommend for reading to all those who are interested to
know the details of his life.
I will limit
myself here to the most prominent aspect of Togo, his bravery and audacity to
challenge the powers that rule, which he obviously inherited from his
grandfather, the legendary Bagha Jatin (Jatin Mukherji, one of the two Jatins who were
contemporaries of Sri Aurobindo and fought in the first freedom struggle of
India). His grandfather challenged the British, the grandson challenged the
present Trustees of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Togo flouted the authorities by
openly discussing with pusillanimous Ashramites the issue of Peter Heehs in the
Ashram Dining Room and circulated articles exposing the distortions and misrepresentations
in the Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Manoj
Das Gupta, Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the present counterpart
of the British Viceroy during his grandfather’s times, deprived him of his food
as a punishment. Togo could have apologised and got back his Dining Room
facility, but he did not give in. Not only he participated in the two dharnas
that were held in protest against the support of the Trustees for Peter Heehs,
but he even deposed in the Puducherry Collector’s enquiry on the Ashram
Trustees. This enquiry has been temporarily stayed by the High Court of Chennai,
but once the stay is lifted, Togo’s signed statement along with thirty other
depositions will be of great use to dethrone the present Trustees and bring a
new era of peace and justice in Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Thus Togo Mukherji would continue
to fight injustice even after his demise.
11 Dec 2012
Radhikaranjan Das Wins Court Case – by Sridharan
On
the 5th of December, 2012 the Puducherry Court granted relief to
Radhikaranjan Das who was abruptly deprived of his Sanskrit classes in the middle
of the last academic year by Manoj Das Gupta, Registrar of the Ashram School cum
Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The Court granted an injunction
restraining the Registrar and the Ashram Trustees from disturbing or depriving
Radhikaranjan of his classes in the Ashram School. The court case was hard-fought
by two of the best lawyers of Puducherry, Cyril Mathias Vincent and
Palaniappan, who represented respectively the plaintiff (Radhikaranjan Das) and
the respondents (Manoj Das Gupta, Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram and four
other Trustees). Despite the false allegations of the Managing Trustee on
Radhikaranjan Das spoiling the minds of the children, the line of argument that
the Trust lawyer took up in the Court was totally different. The point that was
stressed by him was that there was no contractual or employer-employee relationship
between Radhikaranjan Das and the Ashram Trust like in regular educational
institutions. That whenever the inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram voluntarily came
forward to offer their services to the Ashram as a means of their sadhana, the
Trustees gave them work without assigning any reasons and without any written
appointment. Therefore whenever the Trustees likewise felt that the inmate
should be removed from his existing work, they could so without any written
explanation whatsoever. This arbitrary method of administration was hotly
contested by Radhikaranjan’s lawyer saying that it went against the basic principles
of natural justice which required of the Registrar to give at least a chance to
the aggrieved party to explain his position and demand a written explanation
for the punishment meted out to him. As no reasonable and fair procedure was
followed by the Registrar in dismissing Radhikaranjan from his work, it was
prayed that the latter should not be deprived of his teaching work in the
Ashram School. The Court granted this prayer after hearing out lengthy
arguments from both the lawyers during the last six months.
29 Nov 2012
Lokpal for Sri Aurobindo Ashram – An Ashramite
Considering the present impasse in Sri Aurobindo Ashram
in which the Trustees are locked in a grim battle with some of the inmates and
beneficiaries, how much better it would have been to have an independent Lokpal
within the organisation to adjudicate matters? Had there been a quasi-judicial
body which enjoyed the confidence and support of the community, and if this
body were independent from the influence of the Trustees with the right to rule
over their decisions, how easily matters could have been settled internally! I
would therefore suggest a Lokpal for the Ashram community in the future.
23 Nov 2012
Squint-Eyed Scholarship – by Nileen Putatunda
Earlier this year, former New York taxi driver Peter
Heehs, based in India since the 1970s, was in the news for his controversial
book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
published by Columbia University Press. There was an attempt made by devotees
of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who were outraged by this book, to deny Heehs
an extension of his Indian visa. Some supposedly-eminent Indians rushed to the
rescue of Heehs by appealing to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, and
Heehs was allowed to stay on.
Being a humble admirer of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother over many years, and having delighted in attending a monthly reading session here in Kolkata of Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri, I got hold of a copy of Heehs’ book to see what the din was about. Having read every word of the book, I must say that I was disappointed with the scholarship in this part-serious, part-frivolous effort by Heehs which pop historian, Ramachandra Guha has described as: “The product of a lifetime of scholarship, its empirical depth and analytical sharpness is unlikely to be surpassed. For Heehs knows the documentary evidence on and around Aurobindo’s life better than anyone else.”
16 Nov 2012
Ashram Trustees Criticise the Republication of the First Edition of Savitri – by Sridharan
A letter of the Sri
Aurobindo Ashram Trust has recently been published in the All India Magazine of Sri Aurobindo Society in the issue of
November 2012, strongly criticising the republication of the first edition of Savitri by Helios Books. Not only the letter is written in extremely bad
taste, but totally irrelevant and misleading comparisons and statistics regarding
the various editions of Savitri have
been quoted in it to impress the lay reader without actually touching upon the
central issue.
12 Nov 2012
A Short Note on TLOSA by Seshachalam Dutta
The author is patently ignorant of Indian History and harbours an
obvious, unreformed racist bias. He
calls the “revolutionaries” “terrorists.” Even the British knew the difference in those
days. Heehs ought to know the distinction: terrorists kill their own people or
innocent people to create terror to achieve political ends, the revolutionaries
and freedom fighters are those who fight foreign invaders and occupiers. [extract]
5 Nov 2012
Fifth Letter of the Bengaluru Study Circle to the Trustees of Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pratap Bhanu Mehta admits to “have had a long professional
interest in [Sri] Aurobindo”. Are we to assume that this interest drove him at some
point of time to study for himself Sri Aurobindo’s oeuvre diligently if not comprehensively?
If he had really done so, he would have by now come to know the crucial distinction
between the subconscient and subliminal consciousness and understood where
precisely Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis belongs. And of course he would have
also been more enlightened on the subject of “madness”. This is what happens when people choose to
read about Sri Aurobindo rather than
Sri Aurobindo.
It has calamitously led to uncritical acceptance of Peter’s Book
on its face value almost as an article of faith. Quite surprisingly Peter
Heehs himself seems as confounded on his understanding of Freud, of madness
and yogic experiences. His clumsy effort at connecting all the three in Sri
Aurobindo’s life are the result of this confusion unless of course it is by wicked
design! [extract]
27 Oct 2012
Ashram Trustees Rush to Chennai High Court to Stop Enquiry of Puducherry Govt
On the 5th of October, 2012 the Trustees of Sri Aurobindo Ashram filed a writ petition in the High Court of Chennai and got a temporary stay on the probe/enquiry initiated against them by the Collector of Puducherry. The allegations against the Trustees submitted in a memorandum to the Collector on the 13th of August, 2012 by a group of Ashramites and devotees accompanied by MLA Ashok Anand, ranged from “denial of basic constitutional rights of Ashramites, financial mismanagement” to “denial of security for women inmates who have spoken against sexual harassment and victimization” and “illegal sale and lease of Ashram properties”. Shocking, isn’t it, for those who don’t know what is happening at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram!
20 Oct 2012
Laxmidhar Samantray Passes Away
Laxmidhar Samantray was only sixty when he passed away in the afternoon of 18.10.2012 at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Nursing Home, Puducherry. He died of renal failure but he suffered from thyroid cancer, epilepsy, asthma, constipation and what not! Dr Gayatri once told him that everything was wrong with his body except his heart! One could add that his emotional and psychological heart too never failed him. For his faith in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother never wavered and his will to be on the side of the Truth never faltered or gave clever excuses to his mind. “Tell X to keep up the fight with the Trustees! Don’t leave them!” he told a well-wisher during his last months, while he himself fought undeterred with his own body, going through a period of excruciating physical pain during which he underwent thyroid surgery and daily dialysis.
14 Oct 2012
East and West – Sri Aurobindo
The unification of the East and the West is the religion of today. But in this task of unification, if we consider the West as the foundation or the chief support we shall be making a grievous error. The East is the foundation, the chief support. The outer world is established in the inner, not vice versa. Respect and emotion, or inner attitude (bhavā), are the source of energy and activity, one has to be faithful to one's inner attitude (bhāva) and sense of reverence, but one is not to be attached to the application of force and the external forms and means of activity. The occidentals are busy with the outward forms and means of democracy. But the external form is only for the purpose of expressing the inner attitude; it is this attitude that shapes the form, it is one's reverence that creates the means or the instrument. The occidentals are so attached to the forms and instruments that they are unable to notice that in their external expressions the inner attitude and reverence are languishing. These days in the eastern countries the inner attitude and respect for democracy are becoming fast clearer and creating external means and building its outward forms, while in the western countries that feeling is getting dimmed, that respect is much attenuated. The East has set its face towards the dawn, moving towards the light—the West is moving back towards the dark night.
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