IV. CORRECTIONS OF WRONG STATEMENTS
IN THE PRESS
¹This is my answer
to the questions arising from your letter. Except on one point which calls for
some explanation, I confine myself to the plain facts.
1.
I was the writer of the series of articles on the "Passive
Resistance" published [in the Bande Mataram} in April 1907 to which
reference has been made; Bepin Pal had nothing to do with it. He ceased his
connection with the paper towards the end of 1906 and from that time onward was
not writing any editorials or articles for it. I planned several series of this
kind for the Bande Mataram and at least three were published of which
the "Passive Resistance" was one.
2.
The articles published in Dharma during February and March 1910 were not
written by me. The actual writer was a young man on the sub-editorial staff of
the paper. This is well known to all who were then in the office or connected
with it, e.g., Nolini Kanta Gupta who was with me then as he is now still with
me here.
3. I did not go to the Bagbazar Math on my way
to Chandernagore or make praṇāma to Sri Saradeshwari Devi. In fact
I never met her or even saw her in my life. It was not from Bagbazar but
another Ghat (Ganga Ghat) that I went straight by boat to Chandernagore.
4.
Neither Ganen Maharaj nor Nivedita saw me off at the Ghat. Neither of them knew
anything about my going: Nivedita learned of it only afterwards when I sent a
message to her asking her to conduct the Karmayogin in my absence. She
consented and from that time to its cessation of publication was in control of
the paper; the editorials during that period were hers
¹ Girija Shankar Roy Chaudhuri, a Bengali
literary critic, wrote a series of articles on Sri Aurobindo in the Bengali
journal Udbodhan. One issue especially (Ashadh 1351 B.S. June,
1944) contained a number of inaccurate statements. Some points in this article
were referred to Sri Aurobindo for verification by the late C. C Dutt. This
letter is Sri Aurobindo's reply to him giving right factual information on
these points. Sri Aurobindo also dictated a few notes correcting some wrong
statements in Girija Shankar's article referred to him. These notes along with
the wrong statements (shown in italics) are placed after the letter.
5. I did not take my wife for initiation to Sri
Saradeshwari Devi; I was given to understand that she was taken there by
Sudhira Bose, Debabrata's sister. I heard of it a considerable time afterwards
in Pondicherry. I was glad to know that she had found so great a spiritual refuge,
but I had no hand in bringing it about.
6. I did not go to Chandernagore on Sister
Nivedita's advice. On a former occasion when she informed me that the
Government had decided to deport me, she did urge me to leave British India and do my work
from outside; but I told her I did not think it necessary, I would write
something that would put a stop to this project. It was in these circumstances
that I wrote the signed article "My Last Will and Testament".
Nivedita afterwards told me that it had served its purpose, the Government had
abandoned the idea of deportation. No occasion arose for her to repeat the
advice nor was it at all likely that I would have followed it: she knew nothing
beforehand of the circumstances that led to my departure to Chandernagore.
7.
Here are the facts of that departure. I was in the Karmayogin Office
when I received the word, on information given by a high-placed police
official, that the Office would be searched the next day and myself arrested.
(The Office was in fact searched but no warrant was produced against me; I
heard nothing more of it till the case was started against the paper later on,
but by then I had already left Chandernagore for Pondicherry.) While
I was listening to animated comments from those around on the approaching
event, I suddenly received a command from above, in a Voice well known to me,
in three words: "Go to Chandernagore." In ten minutes or so I was in
the boat for Chandernagore. Ramachandra Majumdar guided me to the Ghat and
hailed a boat and I entered into it at once along with my relative Biren Ghose
and Moni (Suresh Chandra Chakravarti) who accompanied me to Chandernagore, not
turning aside to Bagbazar or anywhere else. We reached our destination while it
was still dark: they returned in the morning to Calcutta. I
remained in secret entirely engaged in Sadhana and my active connection with
the two newspapers ceased from that time. Afterwards, under the same
"sailing orders" I left Chandernagore and
Page - 57
reached Pondicherry on April
4, 1910.
I
may add in explanation that from the time I left Lele at Bombay after the
Surat Sessions and my stay with him in Baroda, Poona and Bombay, I had
accepted the rule of following the inner guidance implicitly and moving only as
I was moved by the Divine. The spiritual development during the year in jail
had turned this into an absolute law of the being. This accounts for my
immediate action in obedience to the ādeśa received by me.
You
can on the strength of this letter cite my authority for your statements on
these points to the editor of the Udbodhan.
December 5, 1944
SRI AUROBINDO'S NOTES ON GIRIJA SHANKAR'S ARTICLE
Sister Nivedita was invited in 1904 to Baroda by
the Maharaja and Sri Aurobindo had talks with her about Ramakrishna and
Vivekananda.
I do not remember whether she was invited
but I think she was there as a State guest. Khasirao and myself went to receive
her at the station.
I
do not remember Nivedita speaking to me on spiritual subjects or about
Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. We spoke of politics and other subjects. On the
way from the station to the town she cried out against the ugliness of the
College building and its top-heavy dome and praised the Dharmashala near it.
Khasirao stared at her and opined that she must be at least slightly cracked to
have such ideas! I was very much enamoured at the time of her book Kali the
Mother and I think we spoke of that; she had heard, she said, that I was a
worshipper of Force, by which she meant that I belonged to
the secret
revolutionary party like herself, and I was present at her interview with the
Maharaja whom she invited to support the secret revolution; she told him that
he could communicate with her through me. Sayajirao was much too cunning to
plunge into such a dangerous business and never spoke to me about it. That, is
all I remember.
Page - 58
Earth of
Dakshineshwara was found in Sri Aurobindo's room when the police searched his
house in April, 1908.
The earth was
brought to me by a young man connected with the Ramakrishna Mission and I kept
it; it was there in my room when the police came to arrest me.
the
"Bande Mataram" started on 7th August, 1906. The joint stock company was declared on 18th October, 1906. So from August to October 1906 Bepin Pal was the editor.
Bepin Pal started
the Bande Mataram with Rs. 500 in his pocket donated by Haridas Haldar.
He called in my help as assistant editor and I gave it. I called a private
meeting of the young Nationalist leaders in Calcutta and they
agreed to take up the Bande Mataram as their party paper with Subodh and
Nirod Mullick as the principal financial supporters. A company was projected
and formed, but the paper was financed and kept up meanwhile by Subodh. Bepin
Pal who was strongly supported by C. R. Das and
others remained as editor. Hemendra Prasad Ghose and Shyam Sundar joined the
editorial staff but they could not get on with Bepin Babu and were supported by
the Mullicks. Finally, Bepin Pal had to retire, I don't remember whether in
November or December, probably the latter. I was myself very ill, almost to
death, in my father-in-law's house in Serpentine Lane
and I did not know what was going on. They put my name as editor on the paper
without my consent, but I spoke to the secretary pretty harshly and had the
insertion discontinued. I also wrote a strong letter on the subject to Subodh.
From that time Bepin Pal had no connection with the Bande Mataram. Somebody
said that he resumed his editorship after I was arrested in the Alipore Case. I
never heard of that. I was told by Bejoy Chatterjee after I came out from jail
that he, Shyam Sundar and Hemendra Prasad had carried on somehow with the
paper, but the finances became impossible, so he deliberately wrote an article
which made the Government come down on the paper and stop
Page - 59
its
publication, so that the Bande Mataram might end with some éclat
and in all honour.
Girija Shankar's
statements about Sri Aurobindo cannot be taken as they are; they are often
based on false or twisted information, tend towards misrepresentation or are
only inferences or guesses.
2
¹I am authorised by Sri Aurobindo to contradict the
statement quoted in your issue of the 17th inst. from the Hindustan Standard
that he visited Sri Saradamani Devi on the day of his departure to
Pondicherry (?) and received from her some kind of dīkṣā. There was
a story published in a Calcutta monthly some time ago that on the night of his
departure for Chandernagore in February 1910 Sri Aurobindo visited her at
Bagbazar Math to receive her blessings, that he was seen off by Sister Nivedita
and a Brahmachari of the Math and that he took this step of leaving British
India at the advice of Sister Nivedita. All these statements are opposed to the
facts and they were contradicted on Sri Aurobindo's behalf by Sri Charu Chandra
Dutt in the same monthly.
Sri
Aurobindo's departure to Chandernagore was the result of a sudden decision
taken on the strength of an ādeśa from above and was carried
out rapidly and secretly without consultation with anybody or advice from any
quarter. He went straight from the Dharma Office to the Ghat — he did
not visit the Math, nobody saw him off; a boat was hailed, he entered into it
with two young men and proceeded straight to his destination. His residence at Chandernagore was kept quite secret; it was known only to Srijut Motilal Roy
who arranged for his stay and to a few
1The Sunday Times, a weekly
paper of Madras, reproduced in its issue of the 17th June, 1945 a news item
from the Hindustan Standard saying that Sri Aurobindo received
initiation from Sri Sarada Devi, wife of Sri Ramakrishna, prior to his
departure to Chandernagore. This was a completely baseless story and was contradicted
by this statement which appeared in the issue of the 24th June of The Sunday
Times. The statement appeared under the name of the Secretary of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram but was dictated by Sri Aurobindo himself.
Page - 60
others. Sister Nivedita was confidentially
informed the day after his departure and asked to conduct the Karmayogin
in place of Sri Aurobindo to which she consented. In his passage from
Chandernagore to Pondicherry Sri Aurobindo stopped only for two minutes outside
College Square to take his trunk from his cousin and paid no visit except to the
British Medical Officer to obtain a medical certificate for the voyage. He went
straight to the steamship Dupleix and next morning was on his way to Pondicherry.
It
may be added that neither at this time nor any other did Sri Aurobindo receive
any kind of initiation from Sarada Devi; neither did he ever
take any formal dīkṣā from anyone. He started
his Sadhana at Baroda in 1904 on his own account after learning from a friend the
ordinary formula of prāṇāyama. Afterwards the only help he
received was from the Maharashtrian Yogi, Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, who instructed
him how to reach complete silence of the mind and immobility of the whole
consciousness. This Sri Aurobindo was able to achieve in three days with the
result of lasting and massive spiritual realisations opening to him the larger
ways of Yoga. Lele finally told him to put himself entirely into the hands of
the Divine within and move only as he was moved and then he would need no
instructions either from Lele himself or anyone else. This henceforward became
the whole foundation and principle of Sri Aurobindo's Sadhana. From that time
onward (the beginning of 1909) and through many years of intensive experience
at Pondicherry he underwent no spiritual influence from outside.
November,
1945
3
¹In his reply to
Suresh Chakravarty's article, my old friend Ramachandra Majumdar congratulates
himself on the strength of his memory in old age. His memory is indeed so
strong that
'Suresh Chandra Chakravarty, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, wrote an article on Sri Aurobindo in
the Bengali journal, Prabasi (issue of Baisakh 1352 B.S. April,
1945). Ramachandra Majumdar who was on the staff of the Karmayogin
wrote a reply to this article contradicting what seemed to him to be the wrong
statements in S. Chakravarty's article. Majumdar's reply was not only based on
wrong memory but also included a number of entirely fictitious statements. This
note was dictated by Sri Aurobindo to correct Majumdar's wrong and fictitious statements;
it was translated into Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta who also wrote an article
in Bengali (published in Prabasi
and Bartika) which was practically a translation of this note.
Page - 61
he not only recollects, very inaccurately,
what actually happened, but recalls also and gives body to what never happened
at all. His account is so heavily crammed with blunders and accretions that it
may provide rich material for an imaginative and romantic biography of Sri
Aurobindo in the modern manner but has no other value. It is a pity to have to
trample on this fine garden of flowers, but historical and biographical truth
has its claim. I shall correct some of the most flagrant errors in this
narrative.
First
of all, Suresh Chakravarty's article about the journey to Chandernagore
confined itself to inaccurate statements of the facts and denied the story of a
visit to Sri Sarada Devi in the course of that journey. This point has now been
practically conceded for we see that the alleged visit has been transferred to
another date a few days earlier. I may say that Suresh's narrative of the facts
was brought to the notice of Sri Aurobindo who certified that it was true both
as a whole and in detail.
But
now another story has been brought up which is full of confusions and
unrealities and is a good example of how myth can be established in place of
the truth. Sri Aurobindo never spoke with Sister Nivedita about any case
intended to be brought against him by the Government in connection with the
murder of Shamsul Alam, for the good reason that no such intention was ever
reported to him by anybody. Sister Nivedita never directed or advised him to
go into hiding. What actually happened had nothing to do with the departure to Chandernagore. What happened was this: Sister Nivedita on a much earlier
occasion informed Sri Aurobindo that the Government intended to deport him and
advised him "not to hide", but leave British India and work from
outside; Sri Aurobindo did not accept the advice. He said that he would write
an "Open Letter" which he thought would make the Government give up
its idea; this appeared in the Karmayogin under the title "My Last
Will and Testament". Afterwards Sister Nivedita told him that it had had
the desired effect and there was no more question of deportation.
Sri
Aurobindo did not see Sister Nivedita on his way to
Page - 62
Chandernagore; this is only a relic of the
now abandoned story of his visit to the Math at Baranagar on that occasion in
which it was related that she had seen him off at the Ghat. She knew nothing
whatever of his departure to Chandernagore until afterwards when he sent her a
message asking her to take up the editing of the Karmayogin in his
absence. Everything happened very suddenly. Sri Aurobindo, as he has himself
related, while at the Karmayogin Office, heard of an approaching search
and his intended arrest; he suddenly received an ādeśa to go
to Chandernagore and carried it out immediately without informing or consulting
anybody — even his colleagues and co-workers. Everything was done in fifteen
minutes or so and in the utmost secrecy and silence. He followed Ram Majumdar
to the Ghat, Suresh Chakravarty and Biren Ghosh following at a little distance;
a boat was hailed and the three got in and went off immediately. His stay in
Chandernagore also was secret and known only to a few like his later departure
to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo never asked Ram Majumdar to arrange for a hiding
place; there was no time for any such arrangement. He went unannounced, relying
on some friends in Chandernagore to arrange for his stay. Motilal Roy received
him first in his own house, then arranged in other places, allowing only a few
to know. This is the true account of what happened according to Sri Aurobindo's
own statement.
The
new story now told that Devabrata Bose and Sri Aurobindo both asked to be
admitted into the Ramakrishna Mission and Devabrata was accepted but Swami
Brahmananda refused to accept Sri Aurobindo, is another myth. Sri Aurobindo
never even dreamed of taking Sannyasa or of entering into any established order
of Sannyasis. It ought to be well known to everybody that Sannyasa was never
accepted by him as part of his Yoga; he has founded an Ashram in Pondicherry but its
members are not Sannyasis, do not wear the ochre garb or practise complete
asceticism but are Sadhaks of a Yoga of life based on spiritual realisation.
This has always been Sri Aurobindo's idea and it was never otherwise. He saw
Swami Brahmananda only once when he went on a boat trip to visit the Belur
Math; he had then about fifteen minutes' conversation with Swami Brahmananda
but there was no talk about spiritual things. The
Page - 63
Swami was preoccupied with a communication
from the Government and consulted Sri Aurobindo as to whether there was any
need of an answer. Sri Aurobindo said no, and the Swami agreed. After seeing
the Math Sri Aurobindo came away and nothing else happened. He never by letter
or otherwise communicated with Swami Brahmananda before or afterwards and
never directly or indirectly asked for admission or for Sannyasa.
There
have been hints or statements about Sri Aurobindo taking or asking for
initiation from certain quarters about this time. Those who spread these
legends seem to be ignorant that at this time he was not a spiritual novice or
in need of any initiation or spiritual direction by anybody. Sri Aurobindo had
already realised in full two of the four great realisations on which his Yoga
and his spiritual philosophy are founded. The first he had gained while
meditating with the Maharashtrian Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele at Baroda in January
1908; it was the realisation of the silent, spaceless and timeless Brahman
gained after a complete and abiding stillness of the whole consciousness and
attended at first by an overwhelming feeling and perception of the total
unreality of the world, though this feeling disappeared after his second realisation
which was that of the cosmic consciousness and of the Divine as all beings and
all that is, which happened in the Alipore jail and of which he has spoken in
his speech at Uttarpara. To the other two realisations, that of the supreme
Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the
higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind he was already on his
way in his meditations in the Alipore jail. Moreover, he had accepted from Lele
as the principle of his Sadhana to rely wholly on the Divine and his guidance
alone both for his Sadhana and for his outward actions. After that it was
impossible for him to put himself under any other guidance and unnecessary to
seek help from anyone. In fact Sri Aurobindo never took any formal initiation
from anyone; he started his Sadhana on his own account by the practice of prāṇāyāma
and never asked for help except from Lele.
One or two less important points have to be mentioned to show how little
reliance can be placed on the details of Ramchandra's narrative. His statement about
the automatic writing
Page - 64
is only an imaginative inference and
in fact quite groundless. Sri Aurobindo totally denies that he used the
automatic writing for any kind of moral or other edification of those around
him; that would have meant that it was spurious and a sort of a trick, for no
writing can be automatic if it is dictated or guided by the writer's conscious
mind. The writing was done as an experiment as well as an amusement and nothing
else. I may mention here the circumstances under which it was first taken up.
Barin had done some very extraordinary automatic writing at Baroda in a very
brilliant and beautiful English style and remarkable for certain predictions
which came true and statements of fact which also proved to be true although
unknown to the persons concerned or anyone else present: there was notably a
symbolic anticipation of Lord Curzon's subsequent unexpected departure from
India and, again, of the first suppression of the national movement and the
greatness of Tilak's attitude amidst the storm; this prediction was given in
Tilak's own presence when he visited Sri Aurobindo at Baroda and happened to
enter first when the writing was in progress. Sri Aurobindo was very much struck
and interested and he decided to find out by practising this kind of writing
himself what there was behind it. This is what he was doing in
Calcutta. But the results did not
satisfy him and after a few further attempts at
Pondicherry he dropped these experiments
altogether. He did not give the same high value to his efforts as Ramchandra
seems to have done, for they had none of those remarkable features of Barin's
writings. His final conclusion was that though there are sometimes phenomena
which point to the intervention of beings of another plane, not always or often
of a high order, the mass of such writings comes from a dramatising element in
the subconscious mind; sometimes a brilliant vein in the subliminal is struck
and then predictions of the future and statements of things known in the
present and past come up, but otherwise these writings have not a great value.
I may add that Ramchandra's details are incorrect and there was no guide named
Theresa, in fact no guide at all, though someone calling himself Theramenes
broke in from time to time. The writings came haphazard without any spirit
mentor such as some mediums claim to have.
Page - 65
A smaller but
more amazing myth presents Sri Aurobindo as a poet in Tamil — and this
apparently after only a few days of study. Far from writing Tamil poetry Sri
Aurobindo never wrote a single sentence even of Tamil prose and never spoke a
single phrase in the Tamil language. He listened for a few days to a Nair from
Malabar who read and explained to him articles in a Tamil newspaper; this was a
short time before he left Bengal. At Pondicherry he took up the study of Tamil, but he did not go very far and his
studies were finally interrupted by his complete retirement.
ABOUT SRI AUROBINDO'S QUESTION
OF
BECOMING A KING
Ramchandra's
whole account is crammed with reckless inaccuracies and unreal details. Sirish
Goswami has pointed out in a letter that the astrological writings of Sri
Aurobindo of which Ramchandra speaks were only some elementary notes and had no
importance. Sri Aurobindo drew them at Baroda to refresh
his memory when he was studying the subject with the idea of finding out what
truth there might be in astrology. He had never any intention of figuring as an
astrologer or writer on astrology. These notes did not form a book and no book
of Sri Aurobindo on this subject appeared from the Arya Publishing House.
It
is not a fact that Sri Aurobindo's wife, Mrinalini Devi, was residing at Sj. K.
K. Mitra's house in College Square; Sri Aurobindo himself lived there
constantly between the Alipore trial and his departure to French India. But she
lived always with the family of Girish Bose, Principal of Bangabasi College.
One is unable to understand the meaning of the saying attributed to Sri
Aurobindo that he was a man rising to humanity unless we suppose that he was
only the animal man rising towards the status of a thinking being; certainly
Sri Aurobindo never composed such a resonant and meaningless epigram. If it
had been to a Divine Humanity it might have had some meaning but the whole
thing sounds unlike what Sri Aurobindo might have said. In fact all that Ramchandra puts into Sri Aurobindo's mouth
Page - 66
is of a character foreign to his habits of speech, e.g., his alleged
Shakespearean and Polonius-like recommendation to Ramchandra himself while departing to Chandernagore. He may have enjoined
silence on Ramchandra but not in that flowery language.
This
should be enough; it is unnecessary to deal with all the inaccuracies and
imaginations. But I think I have said enough to show that anyone wanting the
truth about Sri Aurobindo would do well to avoid any reliance on Ramchandra's
narrative. It can be described in the phrase of Goethe, "poetic fictions
and truths", for the element of truth is small and that of poetic fiction
stupendous. It is like the mass of ale to the modicum of bread in Falstaff's
tavern bill. In fact it is almost the whole.
1945
4
¹The account
which seems to have been given to X and recorded by her on pages 317-324 of her
book is, I am compelled to say, fiction and romance with no foundation in
actual facts. I spent the first part of my imprisonment in Alipore jail in a
solitary cell and again after the assassination of Noren Gossain to the last
days of the trial when all the Alipore case prisoners were similarly lodged
each in his own cell. In between for a short period we were all put together.
There is no truth behind the statement that while I was meditating they
gathered around me, that I recited the Gita to them and they sang the verses,
or that they put questions to me on spiritual matters and received instructions
from me; the whole description is quite fanciful. Only a few of the prisoners
had been known to me before I met them in prison; only a few who had been with
Barin had practised Sadhana and these were connected with Barin and would have
turned to him for any help, not to me. I was carrying on my Yoga during these
days, learning to do so in the midst of much
1A French lady, interested
in Indian spirituality, published a book in French on Sister Nivedita's life—Nivedita,
fille de l'Inde—in which she made some statements about Sri Aurobindo and
his contacts with Sister Nivedita. A French disciple of Sri Aurobindo, who
brought these statements to his notice, received from him this reply.
Page - 67
noise and clamour but apart and in silence and
without any participation of the others in it. My Yoga begun in 1904 had always
been personal and apart; those around me knew I was a Sadhak but they knew
little more as I kept all that went on in me to myself. It was only after my
release that for the first time I spoke at Uttarpara publicly about my spiritual
experiences. Until I went to Pondicherry I took no disciples; with those who
accompanied me or joined me in Pondicherry I had at first the relation of
friends and companions rather than of a Guru and disciples; it was on the ground
of politics that I had come to know them and not on the spiritual ground.
Afterwards only there was a gradual development of spiritual relations until the
Mother came back from Japan and the Ashram was founded or rather founded itself
in 1926. I began my Yoga in 1904 without a Guru; in 1908 I received important
help from a Mahratta Yogi and discovered the foundations of my Sadhana; but from
that time till the Mother came to India I received no spiritual help from anyone
else. My Sadhana before and afterwards was not founded upon books but upon
personal experiences that crowded on me from within. But in the jail I had the
Gita and the Upanishads with me, practised the Yoga of the Gita and meditated
with the help of the Upanishads; these were the only books from which I found
guidance; the Veda which I first began to read long afterwards in Pondicherry
rather confirmed what experiences I already had than was any guide to my Sadhana.
I sometimes turned to the Gita for light when there was a question or a
difficulty and usually received help or an answer from it, but there were no
such happenings in connection with the Gita as are narrated in the book. It is a
fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a
fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence, but this
had nothing to do with the alleged circumstances narrated in the book,
circumstances that never took place, nor had it anything to do with the Gita.
The voice spoke only on a special and limited but very important field of
spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it
had to say on that subject.
Then about my
relations with Sister Nivedita — they were
Page - 68
purely in the field of politics.
Spirituality or spiritual matters did not enter into them and I do not remember
anything passing between us on these subjects when I was with her. Once or
twice she showed the spiritual side of her but she was then speaking to someone
else who had come to see her while I was there. The whole account about my
staying with her for 24 hours and all that is said to have passed between us
then is sheer romance and does not contain a particle of fact. I met Sister
Nivedita first at Baroda when she came to give some lectures there. I went to receive her at
the station and to take her to the house assigned to her; I also accompanied
her to an interview she had sought with the Maharaja of Baroda. She had heard
of me as one who "believed in strength and was a worshipper of Kali"
by which she meant that she had heard of me as a revolutionary. I knew of her
already because I had read and admired her book Kali the Mother. It was
in these days that we formed our friendship. After I had started my
revolutionary work in Bengal through certain emissaries, I went there personally to see and
arrange things myself. I found a number of small groups of revolutionaries
that had recently sprung into existence but all scattered and acting without
reference to each other. I tried to unite them under a single organisation with
the barrister P. Mitra as the leader of the revolution in Bengal and a central council of
five persons, one of them being Nivedita. The work under P. Mitra spread
enormously and finally contained tens of thousands of young men and the spirit
of revolution spread by Barin's paper Yugantar became general in the
young generation; but during my absence at Baroda the council
ceased to exist as it was impossible to keep up agreement among the many
groups. I had no occasion to meet Nivedita after that until I settled in Bengal as Principal of the National College and
the chief editorial writer of the Bande Mataram. By that time I had
become one of the leaders of the public movement known first as extremism, then
as nationalism, but this gave me no occasion to meet her except once or twice
at the Congress, as my collaboration with her was solely in the secret revolutionary
field. I was busy with my work and she with hers, and no occasion arose for
consultations or decisions about the conduct of the revolutionary movement.
Page - 69
Later on I began to make time to go and see
her occasionally at Bagbazar.
In
one of these visits she informed me that the Government had decided to deport
me and she wanted me to go into secrecy or to leave British India and act from
outside so as to avoid interruption of my work. There was no question at that
time of danger to her; in spite other political views she had friendly
relations with high Government officials and there was no question of her
arrest. I told her that I did not think it necessary to accept her suggestion;
I would write an open letter in the Karmayogin which, I thought, would
prevent this action by the Government. This was done and on my next visit to
her she told me that my move had been entirely successful and the idea of
deportation had been dropped. The departure to Chandernagore happened later and
there was no connection between the two incidents which have been hopelessly
confused together in the account in the book. The incidents related there have
no foundation in fact. It was not Gonen Maharaj who informed me of the impending
search and, arrest, but a young man on the staff of the Karmayogin,
Ramchandra Mazumdar, whose father had been warned that in a day or two the Karmayogin
Office would be searched and myself arrested. There have been many legends
spread about on this matter and it was even said that I was to be prosecuted
for participation in the murder in the High Court of Shamsul Alam, a prominent
member of the C.I.D., and that Sister Nivedita sent for me and informed me and
we discussed what was to be done and my disappearance was the result. I never heard
of any such proposed prosecution and there was no discussion of the kind; the
prosecution intended and afterwards started was for sedition only. Sister
Nivedita knew nothing of these new happenings till after I reached
Chandernagore. I did not go to her house or see her; it is wholly untrue that
she and Gonen Maharaj came to see me off at the Ghat. There was no time to inform
her; for almost immediately I received a command from above to go to Chandernagore and within ten minutes I was at the Ghat; a boat was hailed and I
was on my way with two young men to Chandernagore. It was a common Ganges boat rowed by two
boatmen, and all the picturesque
Page - 70
details about the French boat and the
disappearing lights are pure romance. I sent someone from the office to
Nivedita to inform her and to ask her to take up editing of the Karmayogin in
my absence. She consented and in fact from this time onward until the
suspension of the paper she had the whole conduct of it; I was absorbed in my
Sadhana and sent no contributions nor were there any articles over my
signature. There was never my signature to any articles in the Karmayogin
except twice only, the last being the occasion for the prosecution which
failed. There was no arrangement for my staying in Chandernagore at a place
selected by Nivedita. I went without previous notice to anybody and was
received by Motilal Roy who made secret arrangements for my stay; nobody except
himself and a few friends knew where I was. The warrant of arrest was
suspended, but after a month or so I used a manoeuvre to push the police into
open action; the warrant was launched and a prosecution commenced against the
printer in my absence which ended in acquittal in the High Court. I was already
on my way to Pondicherry where I arrived on April 4. There also I remained in secrecy in the
house of a prominent citizen until the acquittal, after which I announced my
presence in French India. These are all the essential facts and they leave no
room for the alleged happenings related in the book. It is best that you
should communicate my statement of facts to X so that she may be able to make
the necessary corrections or omissions in a future edition and remove this
wrong information which would otherwise seriously detract from the value of her
life of Nivedita.
13-9-1946
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