Sri Aurobindo spared no one, not even Gandhi for whom he reserved his harshest criticism

Election 2009: The BJP got what it deserved – III
Abandoning Kurukshetra before the war is won Radha Rajan 20 May 2009

The BJP’s loss in 2004 cast a pall of gloom over Hindu nationalists; for some of us even in 2004, the gloom came with intense anger. Five years later, the BJP’s loss in 2009 has caused more anger than gloom because five years is a long time for a determined person wielding state power to implement several agendas; and the BJP, criminally culpable for allowing the destructive ambitions of a few to subvert its raison d’etre, handed the Hindu nation back into the hands of the Italian Christian for another term of five years. The Congress, a British creature, may take Sonia Gandhi in its stride and look upon her as another Wedderburn or Hume, but for the Hindu nation, it was alien and oppressive colonial rule all over again. It is this knowledge that causes the despondency and the rage. There is an African-American adage which goes likes this: If you are cheated once, shame on them; if you are cheated again, shame on you.

Hindus, who are familiar only with Aurobindo the spiritualist, would be astonished by the content of a hitherto less known corpus of his political writings; Aurobindo’s writings from 1893 until 1908 are those of an angry Hindu nationalist. But it was an anger that produced his finest writings, a fiery, eternally inspirational nationalism that raises the mind from despondency and prepares it for war. Aurobindo was at war as much with the Indian National Congress of which he was a part, as he was with the colonial British government. He spared no one whom he considered serving the nation ill, organization or individuals – the Indian National Congress, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Dadabhai Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjea – Aurobindo spared no one, not even Gandhi for whom he reserved his harshest criticism.

In 1903 Aurobindo was confronted by similar heartache and paralyzing gloom that we see descended on us today. But with characteristic anger, he denied himself and us the luxury of depression.

Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible; that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses; no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction. (Bhawani Mandir, India can be Reborn, page 65. Bhawani Mandir sometimes referred to as a ‘tract’ and sometimes as ‘pamphlet’ was written in 1903)

It was obvious to Aurobindo in 1903 that the direction in which these leaders were taking the INC was heading nowhere and spelt only doom for the Hindu nation and that is why, exasperated by the general wimpishness of the leaders of the INC, he roared in anger – Politics is the work of the kshatriya; by implication Aurobindo meant politics was not for the faint-hearted or the opportunist. He also implied that politics essentially is the ever-preparedness for war. The brilliance of Aurobindo’s political writings is in the brevity. The sutra, Politics is the work of the kshatriya, is pregnant with an entire treatise on rajadharma and rajanithi.

That which Aurobindo saw in 1903, Hedgewar saw in 1920. On the eve of the Nagpur Congress, Dr. Hedgewar with Dr. Moonje, realizing with great disquiet the direction in which Gandhi was leading the INC, pleaded with Aurobindo to return to active politics and assume Presidentship of the Nagpur Congress. But Aurobindo, who for inexplicable reasons chose to abandon his political Kurukshetra to seek refuge in the safe haven of the French colony of Pondicherry, refused to return and Gandhi led the freedom struggle towards vivisection.

Election 2009: The BJP got what it deserved – IV
RSS – unwilling parent Radha Rajan 22 May 2009

As Aurobindo put it in Bhawani Mandir, “Our beginnings are mighty, but they have neither sequel nor fruit”. The BJP had stopped delivering; there was no sequel to 6 December 1992, and no fruit after RSS labour; there was only wishful thinking. Hindu fury which erupted against Muslim offence over the Amarnath yatra did not yield benefits for the BJP even in Jammu. The RSS must ask itself why. The Somnath-Ayodhya BJP rath of the 1990s decade is today only a rocking horse.

“The wish to be reborn we have in abundance, there is no deficiency there. How many attempts have been made, how many movements have been begun, in religion, in society, in politics! But the same fate has overtaken or is preparing to overtake them all. They flourish for a moment, then the impulse wanes, the fire dies out, and if they endure, it is only as empty shells, forms from which the Brahma has gone or in which it lies overpowered with Tamas and inert” (Aurobindo, Bhawani Mandir).

The Hindu nation must rue the day Aurobindo abandoned our Kurukshetra in 1909; the RSS must take some visibly decisive step to stem the rot in the Parivar if Hindus have to stop thinking the RSS too has deserted the war; or Aurobindo’s lament about great beginnings and empty shells, true as they are of the BJP today, may become just as true of the RSS if it fails to act now.

But if the RSS has to act, there has to be a re-orientation of its goals, its methods. It is not course correction that is required of the RSS; it is altering the course itself. The RSS has not lost direction, it is still plodding along on the same path as it had marked for itself in 1925; it needs new goals and new roads. [...]

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh went into a limbo after Dr. Mukherjee’s death. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, thinker and scholar, was also not a kshatriya. Integral humanism cannot and therefore did not put a Hindu face to Indian polity; neither did it make the effort to study the ideal nature of polity to protect the Hindu rashtra. Hindu intellectualism had no clear and well-defined goal. It produced nothing of value by way of political doctrines and theories to serve the Hindu nation.

Hedgewar, Golwalkar, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and even other intellectuals in the parivar may all be described as social thinkers, but they had no political orientation and were therefore not political ideologues in the same mould as Aurobindo and Savarkar. At least, their political philosophy did not set pursuit of state power to protect and defend the Hindu nation from all threats to its national character. They did not think state power was important; not as important as social transformation. The RSS made social transformation and capturing state power as naturally mutually exclusive goals. RSS ideologues believed in and promoted the idea that politics like power and money corrupts; and so an ordinary swayamsevak is not imparted the training to handle big money, big power and big politics. 22nd May, 2009. The author is Editor. www.vigilonline Radha Rajan Election 2009: BJP got what it deserved - I 17 May 2009 Election 2009 – The BJP got what it deserved - II 18 May 2009

BJP at crossroads: Back to basics or irrelevance?
Virendra Parekh 25 May 2009

"Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he so chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction” – Aurobindo, “Bhawani Mandir” ...

Finally, BJP must prepare for a long haul and develop the strength to sustain the effort. As Sri Aurobindo put it,

"in India the breath moves slowly, the afflatus is long in coming. India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving with agony and tears, but she strives in vain. What ails her, she who is after all so vast and might be so strong? There is surely some enormous defect, something vital is wanting in us, nor is it difficult to lay our finger on the spot. We have all things else, but we are empty of strength, void of energy. We have abandoned Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti."

In strengthening the motherland, BJP will strengthen itself. In reclaiming its glory, it will glorify itself. The author is Executive Editor, Corporate India, and lives in Mumbai