Is the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Trust in Pondicherry bent upon destroying the spiritual legacy of Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother? If not, how do you explain the sudden reinstatement of Peter Heehs
as the head of its Archives & Research Department on the 29th of June?
30 Jun 2019
30 May 2019
29 May 2019
"Deliberate Distortions of Sri Aurobindo's Life and Yoga" – edited by Raman Reddy
The
above book is freely available at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iWfRqqqmDLirSQyWkax9V8-q-3zipaop/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iWfRqqqmDLirSQyWkax9V8-q-3zipaop/view?usp=sharing
Preface
This book is a counter to the vicious attack on Sri
Aurobindo’s spiritual stature that came in the form of a hostile biography of
him by Peter Heehs entitled The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, published by
Columbia University Press in 2008. All the articles in this book are in defence
of Sri Aurobindo and many of them have been written by well-known historians
and academicians. Though the book is written in support of the disciples and
followers of Sri Aurobindo and their spontaneous rejection of the gross
distortions of their Master’s life and teachings, the refutations themselves
are based on a scholarly study of Sri Aurobindo’s works and a thorough
examination of the historical facts of his life. I hasten to make here a
necessary clarification with regard to the study of great spiritual
personalities such as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
15 Apr 2019
Challenging the Ashram Trust’s Stand on Relics
[The Notice below has been issued in the name of
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust in the January 2017 issue of the Oriya monthly magazine
“Navaprakash”, published by Navajyoti Karyalaya, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.
Below is an English translation of the original Notice in Oriya.]
Facts One Should Urgently
Know About Relics
(Notice on Relics published in
Navaprakash)
Words are
insufficient to express the spiritual significance of the sacred Relics of Sri
Aurobindo. It can only be realised through profound faith, devotion and
sadhana.
Usually,
as per the arrangement of The Mother, the Relics are given in Sri Aurobindo Ashram
from Sri Aurobindo’s Room. They are well-kept in a series of containers
specially prepared and provided by the Ashram. The approval of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Trust is indispensable regarding the details of the institutions that take
them, the places of their installation, the persons who receive them from the
Ashram and those who remain in charge, the way in which they are taken and the
persons who install them.
28 Nov 2017
Deconstructing Peter Heehs – by a Zombified Disciple
Peter
Heehs was born & educated in USA (says his bio-data on the inside cover of
his India’s Freedom Struggle, OUP,
1988). In 1971, at the age of 22, he settled
in Pondicherry [=not in the ashram
Aurobindo founded]. He is a research
scholar [=not member of S.A Ashram]
at the Sri Aurobindo [=not S.A Ashram’s]
Archives & Research Library, specializing in the life & politics of Sri
Aurobindo. In an earlier form the present book was awarded a State Prize in a
competition sponsored by the Delhi administration. Since then he has published many uninhibited
books, booklets & ‘papers’ on Aurobindo in his native English-English for
his type of non-disciples, & at least one in an inhibited Indian ungrezi
for Aurobindo’s Indian disciples. [Click here to read full article.]
2 Sept 2017
Manoj Das Gupta Interrogated by the Police ─ Anirjeet
On
the 25th of August 2017 the Pondicherry Police whisked off Manoj Das Gupta in a
Police jeep around 7 a.m. from the Ashram Dining Room, where he had gone to
collect his breakfast. The Police took him to the station for questioning with
regard to the rape of a minor girl by a minor boy committed in the premises of
the Ashram School on 21 July, 2017. Manoj Das Gupta happens to be the Managing
Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the Registrar of the Ashram School, which
is a powerful and influential position to hold in Pondicherry, so it is
extremely surprising that the Police dared to treat him like a common citizen. He
was even made to undergo the utter humiliation of waiting in the Police Station
for two hours and told to come the next day for interrogation. The next day he
was accompanied by Dr. Dilip Datta (Trustee and head of the Ashram Medical
Services) and Matriprasad Satyamurthy (Secretary of the Ashram Trust) to the
Police station. The same week writer Manoj Das (Sahitya Academy award winner
and recipient of Padma Shri) was summoned to Chennai and interrogated by the
Intelligence Bureau. All of a sudden the long delayed karmic hand has caught up
with the actions of this nefarious group of the Ashram and the fortress of
invincibility they had built up in the public domain over the last twenty years
seemed to fall like a house of cards.
19 Aug 2017
Relinquishing Responsibilities – Anirjeet
Our last post of 7th August,
2017 (Two Shocking Incidents – by Anirjeet) has set the alarm bells ringing,
not in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, as much as in the Sri Aurobindo
Centres closely connected with it. The inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram will naturally
pretend ignorance and vehemently deny these incidents out of sheer fear of retribution
from the Trustees, for whom it is a question of public shame and accountability. And even if the
inmates reluctantly admit in private a watered-down version of the two incidents,
they would gallantly come to the rescue of the Trustees by saying that these
were after all isolated incidents in the otherwise island of peace and psychic
growth of the children in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Centre of Education. But
then if you look backwards, these kinds of incidents (relating to drugs,
sex and alcohol) have happened before, and it is only recently that the
skeletons are tumbling out of the musty and suppressed annals of Ashram history.
7 Aug 2017
Two Shocking Incidents – Anirjeet
The following post, dated 6 August, 2017 on indiatoday.in with the title “SC rejects plea of woman ‘abused’ at Puducherry’s Aurobindo Ashram” is highly misleading, even going by the report that follows underneath.
On 28 July 2017, Chief Justice Khehar dismissed the impleadment petition of
Hemlata Prasad in the Writ Petition filed by Gayatri Satpathy & Others against
the Ashram Trustees in August 2014 for a number of complaints, including sexual
harassment of minors, death by medical negligence, shady land dealings and other
financial irregularities. The Chief Justice however granted the liberty to
Hemlata Prasad to “initiate proceedings if the applicant is so advised in her
own right”. In other words, the Chief
Justice did not reject her plea of being abused but instructed her to file it
separately on her own. So while the title gives the impression of the Ashram
Trustees coming out clean in the eyes of the Supreme Court, the actual content
of the story should hardly make them comfortable, especially when the Centre (MHA
is a party to the Writ Petition) has “favoured an independent inquiry into
the affairs of the Ashram”.
In the meanwhile two more shocking
incidents have come to light in the Ashram, which should make the Ashram Trustees
literally squirm in their seats and regret why they ever sat on them.
4 Mar 2017
The Wrong Notion that Sri Aurobindo Rejected Hinduism – Raman Reddy
(With
specific reference to The Clasp of
Civilisations (2015) by Richard
Hartz, published by Nalanda International,
and Nationalism,
Religion, and Beyond (2005), a
compilation of Sri Aurobindo’s writings on Politics, Society and Culture, edited
by Peter
Heehs.)
I was rather disappointed
after reading The Clasp of Civilisations
by Richard Hartz because I expected from him a better understanding of Hinduism
than most Western scholars.[1]
The book starts off well with a sense of universality in spiritual matters
which justifies the title, but gets caught halfway through with the usual
antipathy towards Hinduism that is so common among secular scholars of India. The
chapter on Vivekananda’s famous address in the Parliament of Religions held in
Chicago in September 1893 is indeed well-written and the circumstances of the historic
event depicted in a most interesting manner with an undercurrent of humour. But
the chapter on Hinduism titled “Untold
Potentialities: Jawaharlal Nehru, Sri Aurobindo and the Idea of India”, in
which Nehru is elevated into a spiritual figure and Sri Aurobindo converted
into a secular icon, shows the fundamental flaws of Richard’s scholarship. One immediately gets the impression of
encountering one more Hinduphobic armchair scholar, who meticulously builds his
arguments on the works of other Hinduphobic scholars who also have never
empathised with Indian culture. Ironically, Richard Hartz has studied the Vedas
and is an expert in Sanskrit, but this only shows that mere scholarship does
not open the gates of spiritual comprehension. After all, Peter Heehs, his
colleague, did the same, wasting forty years of research on Sri Aurobindo and producing
such a hostile biography that the disciples of Sri Aurobindo had to go to the
Court to take him to task. But let us come back to Richard Hartz who could have
easily come to his own conclusions instead of following the path of Peter Heehs
with regard to Hinduism, or what is in fact the path of leftist secular
scholars of India and abroad which Peter Heehs himself follows faithfully for
the sake of his academic career. After all, for him academic success is more
important than stating the fundamental truth of Hinduism!
17 Oct 2016
Timeline of the Controversy
1978
Nirmal Singh’s rejoinder to Peter Heehs on the birthplace of Sri
Aurobindo. According to Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo was wrong about where he
was born.
12.02.1984
Appointment
of Manoj Das Gupta as Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust after the passing
away of Nolini Kanto Gupta. He was recommended as Trustee by Nolini Kanto
Gupta through a dubious note signed (or made to sign) in his last days and
left in the custody of Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya. We do not know why Nolini
did not give the note to Padmanabhan Counouma, who was then the Managing
Trustee of the Ashram, and why he did not recommend Manoj Das Gupta earlier through
a formal meeting of the Board of Trustees. Manoj Das Gupta’s policy of not
rocking the boat even when the boat is about to be wrecked, as in the controversy
over the Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter
Heehs, makes him undoubtedly the most vehemently criticised Trustee in the
history of the Ashram. He is also known to protect the guilty and punish the
victims or those who have raised the alarm.
|
11 Sept 2016
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!
4 Jul 2016
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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