These days some of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, Pondicherry, seem to be living in a fool’s paradise. They think of
themselves as sadhaks and sadhikas of Integral Yoga without even knowing what
it means. They are buried under the weight of their own ego without letting any
opening for the entry of Light. They boast with great pride that our Ashram is
a laboratory, the cradle of the new race and think that one fine morning we will get
transformed without any personal effort. Yes, no doubt, the Divine Mother with
Her infinite compassion has given us a golden chance to participate in this
great advent and be in the Ashram in the “Hour of God”. But have we ever
introspected to find out whether we are using or misusing this unprecedented
privilege?
14 Nov 2014
9 Nov 2014
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.
2 Nov 2014
Strange are the Ways of the Divine! – by Sampdas
Apropos the news about Shri Manoj Das and
the Seashore Chit Fund scam reported in this site on the 28th and 29th
of October 2014, I felt that by Divine Providence the Orissa Seashore Chit
Bounty got channelled back to the flood victims near the Seashore in Orissa.
Prompted by my inner voice, I went through the self assessment given by Shri
Manoj Das in his reply dated 17 September 2014 to the column titled The
Enemy Within in the journal Organiser (dt 21 Sep 2014).
What he wrote angrily there perhaps can be
utilised with minor modifications to reflect on the current theme about Sri
Manoj Das (MD in short).
While Shri MD in his rejoinder to the Organiser
has claimed to be living in Sri Aurobindo Ashram for a little over fifty years,
the tail piece in the site wellwishersofsriaurobindoashram which
republished the same rejoinder, mentions that he has been an inmate of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry since 1973. It is not clear how 1973 to 2014
adds up to 50 years! But possibly Sri Aurobindo’s line in Savitri, “Which less than zero grew and more than one”
has been used in the computation.
29 Oct 2014
Why did Manoj Das keep mum in June 2013 with regard to the Seashore Chit Fund scam?
[It is not
that Manoj Das did not know earlier about the chit fund scam of the Seashore group, the
literary wing of which he was the adviser and for which he received one lakh
rupees a month. Now he throws up his hands imploring the Heavens for justice
and donates all that he has received to the Odisha Chief Minister’s Relief
Fund, but what did he do when the Seashore group was publicly exposed as early
as June 2013, one and a half year ago? Why did he keep mum at that time? And
why did he continue to receive his honorarium? And why does he now create such
a big scene as if he never knew anything about it? The following post, written
by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak on 17 June, 2013, shows the nexus between writers
like Manoj Das and corrupt business tycoons, who use the services of the former
to establish their own credentials in the general public in order to draw unsuspecting
investors to their fraudulent companies. – Bireshwar]
Posted on June 17,
2013 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Subhas
Chandra Pattanayak
Eminent journalist Prasanta Patnaik
has, in his column in Sanchar, exposed such a thread in the matter of economic
offenses committed by Prasant Das and his Seashore group of companies that
every Oriya who prides in his/her language, writers and scribes, feels ashamed.
28 Oct 2014
Manoj Das and the Seashore Chit Fund Scam
[Manoj Das is in the news again for the
wrong reasons. This time it is for his association with the scam tainted chit
fund company run by the Seashore group in Odisha. As usual he has pretended ignorance
and donated the money that he received from the Seashore group (10 lakhs) to
the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. But is not that simply an eyewash to
exonerate himself? Who will not “offer” or “donate” the money when the law finally
catches up on him? We reproduce below some of the news items that have been
posted on the web. – Bireshwar]
24 Oct 2014
Why Sell the Soul for a Mess of Pottage? – by Sampdas
The
brief factual Aide-Memoire on the ongoing debate on the book of Peter Heehs titled
“The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” could serve to focus on the fundamental issues
concerning not just the Sri Aurobindo Ashram commune at Pondicherry but also
the extended Ashram body of devotees, disciples and followers of The Mother and
Sri Aurobindo – living in India as well as overseas.
Though
a large majority of people are aware that there is trouble and mudslinging
between those critical of Peter Heehs and those who defend him, the surprising
thing is that both the groups have their epicentre at Pondicherry. The fact
that the problem has taken a larger dimension about the way matters are handled
by the management of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram leaves us in no doubt that all is
not well over there.
For
the purpose of clarity it is worth mentioning that all who have turned to Sri
Aurobindo and The Mother are sadhaks – though not necessarily living physically
in the precincts of the Pondicherry Ashram in buildings hired or otherwise. And
the Ashram consists of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and all those who have
accepted them as embodiments of the Divine or as spiritual guides on the path
of Integral Yoga, and who reach their offerings in physical or monetary form to
the Masters through the Ashram Trust. Consistent with this fact, the Ashram
Trust exists basically for providing the administrative and managerial support to
look after the interests of The Mother, Sri Aurobindo, as well as to assure the
basic necessities of life to the Ashram inmates and meet with the requests of the
followers of the Masters for correspondence, reaching Blessings to them and logistics
for their stay etc. The Ashram Trust (with the exception of The Mother) is
neither a team of spiritual leaders nor its Trustees are spiritual successors
to The Mother.
17 Oct 2014
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]
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.
4 Oct 2014
Shiva Responds to Manoj Das's Rejoinder to the Organiser
Shiva’s Hearty Greetings
To Padamshree Prof Manoj-Das-ji
For His Characteristic Tosh Against the Author of “The
Enemy Within”
You dismiss Mr Chari’s
“The Enemy Within” as a “vomit” of the “nasty and naked lies fed to him by
unauthorised hostile elements” – as if Mr Chari had no other sources within and
outside for this thesis.
You claim he “swallowed” this
“dirt” because he has “never visited the Ashram” – as if by a single visit one robotically
“imbibes the spirit sublime dominating its air” and knows all about Sri
Aurobindo, Mother, Their Yoga, Their Ashram.
But you are yourself a proof
that even after “over fifty years” here one can swallow “nasty and naked lies”
fed by elements hostile to Sri Aurobindo, Mother, Their Yoga, and Their Ashram!
For instance:—
29 Sept 2014
An Atrocious Biography – by RY Deshpande
|| The Lives of Sri Aurobindo ||
An Atrocious Biography
A
Preview
An Atrocious Biography by RY Deshpande
An Atrocious Biography by RY Deshpande
[This is a book critiquing Peter
Heehs’s The Lives of Sri Aurobindo published by the Columbia University
Press, US, in May 2008.]
24 Sept 2014
“Well-Wishers of Sri Aurobindo Ashram” Or League of Lapsed Logicians? – by Shiva
On 15th September, Mr
Seshadri Chari’s “The Enemy Within” was published in the Organiser magazine’s issue of September 21, 2014.
This website
reproduced it without any comments for readers to judge it on its merits in
their own light because it realised that Mr Chari’s whole concern is with
India which “is slowly but surely waking
up to the virulent and concerted attacks mounted on its spiritual and cultural
foundations [the Sanatana Dharma] by pseudo Western scholars in the garb of
deceptive academic studies”. It reminds us of Sri Aurobindo’s prophetic words
at Uttarpara on 30 May 1908: “When it is
said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall rise…. It is
the one religion which impresses upon mankind the closeness of God to us and
embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God….
When the Sanatana Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the
Sanatana Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatana Dharma it would
perish.” Mr Chari, like Mr Narendra Modi, is working for that rising India of
Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo.
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