I.
EARLY LIFE IN ENGLAND:
1879-1893
aurobindo
was born on August
15th, 1872,
in
Calcutta. His father, a man of great ability
and strong personality, had been among the first to go to
England for his education. He returned
entirely anglicised in habits, ideas and ideals,— so strongly that his
Aurobindo as a child spoke English and Hindustani only and learned his
mother-tongue only after his return from
England. He was determined that his children
should receive an entirely European upbringing. While in
India they were sent for the beginning of
their education to an Irish nuns' school in
Darjeeling and in 1879 he took his three sons
to
England and placed them with an English
clergyman and his wife with strict instructions that they should not be allowed
to make the acquaintance of any Indian or undergo any Indian influence. These
instructions were carried out to the letter and Aurobindo grew up in entire
ignorance of
India, her people, her religion and her
culture.
Aurobindo never went to
Manchester
Grammar School. His two brothers studied there, but
he himself was educated privately by Mr. and Mrs. Drewett. Drewett was an accomplished
Latin scholar; he did not teach him Greek, but grounded him so well in Latin
that the headmaster of
St. Paul's school in
London took up Aurobindo himself to ground
him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school.
Austen Leigh was not Provost at that
time; the Provost's name was Prothero.
Aurobindo gave his attention to the
classics at
Manchester and at
St. Paul's; but even at
St. Paul's in the last three years he simply
went through his school course and spent most of his spare time in general
reading, especially English poetry, literature and fiction, French literature
and the history of ancient, mediaeval and modern
Europe. He spent some time also over
learning Italian, some German and a little Spanish. He spent much time too in
writing poetry. The school studies during this period engaged very little of
his time; he was already at ease in them and did not think it necessary to
labour over them any
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longer. All the same he
was able to win all the prizes in King's College in one year for Greek and
Latin verse, etc.
He did not graduate at Cambridge.
He passed high in the First Part of the Tripos (first class); it is on passing
this First Part that the degree of B.A. is usually given; but as he had only
two years at his disposal, he had to pass it in his second year at Cambridge;
and the First Part gives the degree only if it is taken in the third year; if
one takes it in the second year one has to appear for the Second Part of the
Tripos in the fourth year to qualify for the degree. He might have got the
degree if he had made an application for it, but he did not care to do so. A
degree in English is valuable only if one wants to take up an academical
career.
St.
Paul's was a day school. The three brothers lived in London
for some time with the mother of Mr. Drewett, but she left them after a quarrel
between her and Manmohan about religion. The old Mrs. Drewett was fervently
Evangelical and she said she would not live with an atheist as the house might
fall down on her. Afterwards Benoybhusan and Aurobindo occupied a room in the
South Kensington Liberal Club where Mr. J. S. Cotton, brother of Sir Henry
Cotton, for some time Lt. Governor of Bengal, was the
secretary and Benoy assisted him in his work. Manmohan went into lodgings. This
was the time of the greatest suffering and poverty. Subsequently Aurobindo also
went separately into lodgings until he took up residence at Cambridge.
NAME IN ENGLAND
The name given by his
father was Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose.
Sri Aurobindo dropped the
"Ackroyd" from his name before he left England
and never used it again.
HARDSHIPS DURING SCHOOL LIFE IN LONDON
During a whole year a
slice or two of sandwich, bread and butter and a cup of tea in the morning and
in the evening a penny saveloy formed the only food.
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FAILURE TO APPEAR FOR THE RIDING TEST IN THE I.C.S. EXAMINATION
Nothing detained him in
his room. He felt no call for the I.C.S. and was seeking some way to escape
from that bondage. By certain manoeuvres he managed to get himself disqualified
for riding without himself rejecting the Service, which his family would not
have allowed him to do.
.
After being
disqualified for the Indian Civil Service Sri Aurobindo turned his full
attention to classical studies.
These
studies were already finished at that time
Two
years after the Indian Civil Service examination he graduated from
King's College with a First Class in Classical Tripos.
This happened earlier, not
after the Civil Service failure.
Aurobindo, even before
he was twenty years old, had mastered Greek and Latin and English and had also
acquired sufficient familiarity with continental languages like German, French
and Italian.
This should be corrected
as: "...mastered Greek and Latin, English and French and had also
acquired some familiarity with continental languages like German and
Italian."
In England
at an early age he took the firm decision of liberating his own nation.
Not quite that; at this
age Aurobindo began first to be interested in Indian politics of which
previously he knew nothing. His father began sending the newspaper The
Bengalee with passages marked relating cases of maltreatment of Indians by
Englishmen and he wrote in his letters denouncing the British Government in India
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as a heartless Government.
At the age of eleven Aurobindo had already received strongly the impression
that a period of general upheaval and great revolutionary changes was coming in
the world and he himself was destined to play a part in it. His attention was
now drawn to India
and this feeling was soon canalised into the idea of the liberation of his own
country. But the "firm decision" took full shape only towards the end
of another four years. It had already been made when he went to Cambridge and
as a member and for some time secretary of the Indian Majlis at Cambridge he
delivered many revolutionary speeches which, as he afterwards learnt, had their
part in determining the authorities to exclude him from the Indian Civil
Service; the failure in the riding test was only the occasion, for in some
other cases an opportunity was given for remedying this defect in India itself.
Young Aurobindo formed
the secret society—"Lotus and Dagger" — while in England.
This is not correct. The
Indian students in London did once
meet to form a secret society called romantically the "Lotus and Dagger"
in which each member vowed to work for the liberation of India
generally and to take some special work in furtherance of that end. Aurobindo
did not form the society, but he became a member along with his brothers. But
the society was still-born. This happened immediately before the return to India
and when he had finally left Cambridge.
Indian politics at that time was timid and moderate and this was the first
attempt of the kind by Indian students in England.
In India itself Aurobindo's maternal grandfather Raj Narayan Bose formed once a
secret society — of which Tagore, then a very young man, became a member, and
also set up an institution for national and revolutionary propaganda, but this
finally came to nothing. Later on there was a revolutionary spirit in Maharashtra and a secret society was started in Western India with a Rajput
noble as the head and this had a Council of Five in Bombay with several
prominent Maharatta politicians as its members. This society was contacted and
joined by Aurobindo somewhere in 1902-3, sometime after he had
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already started secret
revolutionary work in Bengal on his own account. In Bengal
he found some very small secret societies recently started and acting
separately without any clear direction and tried to unite them with a common
programme. The union was never complete and did not last, but the movement
itself grew and very soon received an enormous extension and became a
formidable factor in the general unrest in Bengal.
While in London
he used to attend the weekly meetings of the Fabian Society.
Never once.
Young Aurobindo was
sensitive to beauty in man and Nature.... He watched with pain the thousand and
one instances of man's cruelty to man.
The feeling was more
abhorrence than pain; from early childhood there was a strong hatred and
disgust for all kinds of cruelty and oppression, but the term 'pain' would not
accurately describe the reaction.
He may have known a
smattering of Bengali till he was five years of age. Thereafter till twenty-one
he spoke only English.
In my father's house only
English and Hindustani were spoken. I knew no Bengali.
In much of Aurobindo's
early English verse written between his eighteenth and twentieth years in England,
included in "Songs to Myrtilla", the derivative element is prominent.
Not only are names and lineaments and allusions foreign in their garb, but the
literary echoes are many and drawn from varied sources.
Foreign to what? He knew
nothing about India
or her culture,
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etc. What these poems
express is the education and imaginations and ideas and feelings created by a
purely European culture and surroundings — it could not be otherwise. In the
same way the poems on Indian subjects and surroundings in the same book express
the first reactions to India
and Indian culture after the return home and a first acquaintance with these
things.
Like Macaulay's A
Jacobite's Epitaph", Aurobindo's "Hic Jacet" also achieves its
severe beauty through sheer economy of words; the theme, the very rhythm and
language of the poem, all hark back to Macaulay.
If so, it must have been
an unconscious influence; for after early childhood Macaulay's verse (The
Lays) ceased to appeal. The Jacobite's Epitaph was perhaps not even
read twice; it made no impression.
Sir Henry Cotton was
much connected with Maharshi Raj Narayan Bose — Aurobindo's maternal
grandfather. His son James Cotton was at this time in London.
As a result of these favourable circumstances a meeting came about with the
Gaekwar of Baroda.
Cotton was my father's
friend — they had made arrangements for my posting in Bengal;
but he had nothing to do with my meeting with the Gaekwar. James Cotton was
well acquainted with my elder brother, because he was Secretary of the South
Kensington Liberal Club where we were living and my brother was his assistant.
He took great interest in us. It was he who arranged the meeting.
For fourteen years
young Aurobindo had lived in England
divorced from the culture of his own nation and was not happy with himself. He
longed to begin all again from the beginning and to try to re-nationalise
himself.
There was no unhappiness
for that reason, nor at that time any
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deliberate will for
re-nationalisation — which came, after reaching India,
by natural attraction to Indian culture and ways of life and a temperamental
feeling and preference for all that was Indian.
He was leaving, he
wished to leave, and yet there was a touch of regret as well at the thought of
leaving England.
He felt the flutter of unutterable misgivings and regrets; he achieved escape
from them by having recourse to poetic expression.
There was no such regret
in leaving England,
no attachment to past or misgivings for the future. Few friendships were ; in England
and none very intimate; the mental atmosphere not found congenial. There was
therefore no need for any escape.
Aurobindo was going
"back to India to serve under the Gaekwar of Baroda; he cast one last look
at his all but adopted country and uttered his parting words in
"Envoi".
No, the statement was of a
transition from one culture to another. There was an attachment to English and
European thought and literature, but not to England as a country; he had no
ties there and did not make England his adopted country, as Manmohan did for a
time. If there was attachment to a European land as a second country, it was
intellectually and emotionally to one not seen or lived in in this life, not England,
but France.
DEATH OF AUROBINDO'S FATHER DUE TO FALSE REPORT OF HIS SON'S DEATH
There was no question of
the two other brothers starting [from England.]
It was only Aurobindo's death that was reported and it was while uttering his
name in lamentation that the father died.
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After his father's demise the
responsibility of supporting the family devolved on him and he had to take up
some appointment soon.
There was no question of
supporting the family at that time. That happened some time after going to India.
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