Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghosh) in 1916.

Date of Birth: August 15, 1872

Place of birth: Kolkata (Calcutta), India

Birth: Aurobindo Akroyd Ghosh

Date of death: December 5, 1950 (aged 78)

Place of death: Puducherry (Pondicherry), India

Quote: The spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze. And matter
shall reveal the spirit’s face.

Biography:

Early life:

Sri Aurobindo was born Aravinda Akroyd Ghose in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, on 15 August, 1872 to Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose, District Surgeon of Rangapur, Bengal and Swarnalata Devi, the daughter of Brahmo religious and social reformer, Rajnarayan Basu.[6] Dr. Ghose chose the middle name Akroyd to honour his friend Annette Akroyd.[7]
Aurobindo spent his first five years at Rangapur, where his father had been posted since October 1871. Dr. Ghose, who had previously lived in Britain and studied medicine at King’s College, Aberdeen, was determined that his children should have an English education and upbringing free of any Indian influences. In 1877, He therefore sent the young Aurobindo and his siblings to the Loreto Convent school in Darjeeling.

England:

Aurobindo spent two years at Loreto convent. In 1879, Aurobindo and his two elder brothers Manmohan and Benoybhusan were taken to Manchester, England for a European education. The brothers were placed in the care of a Rev. and Mrs. Drewett. Rev. Drewett was an Anglican clergyman, who Dr. Ghose knew through his British friends at Rangapur. The Drewetts tutored the Ghose brothers privately. The Dewitts had been asked to keep the tuitions completely secular and to make no mention of India or its culture.
In 1884, Aurobindo joined St Paul’s School. Here he learned Greek and Latin, spending the last three years reading literature, especially English Poetry. Dr. K. D. Ghose had aspired that his sons should pass the prestigious ICS, but in 1889 it appeared that of the three brothers, only young Aurobindo had the chance of fulfilling his father’s aspirations, his brothers having already decided their future careers. To become an ICS official, students were required to pass the difficult competitive examination, as well as study at an English university for two years under probation. With his limited financial resources, The only option Aurobindo had was to secure a scholarship at an English university, which he did by passing the scholarship examinations of King’s College, Cambridge University. He stood first at the examination.[8]. He also passed the written examination of ICS after a few months, where he was ranked 11th out of 250 competitors[9]. He spent the next two years at the King’s College.[10]
By the end of two years of probation, Aurobindo became convinced that he did not want to serve the British, he therefore failed to present himself at the horse riding examination for ICS, and was disqualified for the Service. At this time, the Maharaja of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad III was travelling England. One of Aurobindo’s professors and well-wishers secured for him a service in Baroda State Service and arranged a meeting between him and the prince. He left England for India, arriving there in February, 1893.[2]. In India Aurobindo’s father who was waiting to receive his son was misinformed by his agents from Bombay that the ship on which Aurobindo had been travelling had sunk off the coast of Portugal. Dr. Ghose who was by this time frail due to ill-health could not bear this shock and died.[11]

Baroda:

In Baroda, Aurobindo joined the state service, working first in the Survey and Settlements department, later moving to the Department of Revenue and then to the Secretariat, writing speeches for the Gaekwad.[12] At Baroda, Aurobindo engaged in a deep study of Indian culture, teaching himself Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali, all things that his education in England had withheld from him. Because of the lack of punctuality at work resulting from his preoccupation with these other pursuits, Aurobindo was transferred to the Baroda College as a teacher of French, where he became popular because of his unconventional teaching style. He was later promoted to the post of Vice-Principal.[12] He published the first of his collections of poetry, The Rishi from Baroda.[13] He also started taking active interest in the politics of India’s freedom struggle against British rule, working behind the scenes as his position at the state of Baroda barred him from overt political activity. He linked up with resistance groups in Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, while travelling to these states. He established contact with Lokmanya Tilak and Sister Nivedita. He also arranged for the military training of Jatindra Nath Banerjee (Niralamba Swami) in the Baroda army and then dispatched him to organise the resistance groups in Bengal. He was invited by K.G. Deshpande who was in charge of the weekly Induprakash and a friend from his days in Cambridge to write about the political situation. Aurobindo started writing a series of impassioned articles under the title New Lamps for the Old pouring vitriol on the Congress for its moderate policy[14]. He wrote:
“Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism”
further adding:
“I say, of the Congress, then, this, - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.”
The Congress which practised more mild and moderate criticism itself, reacted in a way which frightened the editors of the paper who asked Aurobindo to write about cultural themes instead of Politics. Aurobindo lost interest in these writings and the series was discontinued.[12] Aurobindo’s activities in Baroda also included a regimen of yogic exercises and meditation, but these were minor in comparison to the work he would take up in his later life. By 1904 he was doing yogic practices for five-six hours everyday [11]