Sri Aurobindo's brother Barindra

The political situation in India when Sri Aurobindo came to Baroda, was one where little resistance was offered to the British colonial powers. The Indian National Congress, composed of "moderates" like Surendranath Banerjea, Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Mahadeo Govind Ranade, believed in constitutional change and "steadfast loyalty to the Crown". Sri Aurobindo believed that British rule in India was an alien imposition, that India was a living entity with its law of becoming founded in the Spirit, that this law had an inherent right to freedom and that it was possible for the dormant mass to awaken to this truth and overthrow the British. In his words, the threefold plan for his political agenda was,

• "a secret revolutionary propaganda and organization of which the central object was the preparation of an armed insurrection;
• secondly, a public propaganda intended to convert the whole nation to the ideal of independance which was regarded by the vast majority of Indians as unpractical and impossible...
• thirdly, an organization of the people to carry on a public and united opposition and undermining of the foreign rule through an increasing non-cooperation and passive resistance."

To these ends, he sought out the many splintered revolutionary groups in Bengal and elsewhere with an eye to co-ordinating and uniting them and arranged for them to be trained in the use of arms and in military guerrilla practices. He sought out also and was himself sought by leaders on a national level and found ready collaborators in Tilak, Bepin Pal, Lajpat Rai, Sister Nivedita, his brother Barindra and many others. Thus was started the Nationalist movement in India.

He had Barindra start the revolutionary Bengali journal "Yugantar", over which he exercised general control, while he co-edited with Bepin Pal the English daily "Bande Mataram". "Bande Mataram" became the official organ of the Nationalist party. It put forward India's political goal as complete Independance, and the means to achieve this as Non-cooperation, Passive Resistance, Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education. In August 1906 Sri Aurobindo left the Baroda Service and joined the newly started National College at Calcutta as its Principal. Sri Aurobindo's life as a Yogi has close connections with his Nationalism. sriaurobindocenter-la.org