The local police immediately raided Sri Aurobindo's property at Maniktolla Garden in Muraripukur of Calcutta where revolutionaries were trained by his organisation and along with many Revolutionary Activists, Sri Aurobindo was himself arrested on charges of planning and overseeing the attack and for some time was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore Jail. After an intense manhunt, Khudiram Bose was arrested though Prafulla Chaki shot himself rather than fall into the hands of the police. The case came up before the Alipore Sessions Court and the Judge Mr Beachcroft, ICS, who interestingly enough had been a classmate of Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge. While the trial went on, a series of dramatic events took place. One of the accused turned approvar. But he was shot dead inside the Jail in broad day light. The Officer who caught Profulla Chaki was killed. Public Prosecutor Biswas, the able Assistant of Barrister Norton who was Counsel for the Crown, was shot at on the stairs of the Court. Surprisingly when all these developments were taking place, Sri Aurobindo who was in his solitary cell, was approaching the turning point in his life. He spent most of his time in reading the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads and in intensive Meditation and practice of Yoga. He was constantly hearing the voice of Vivekananda speaking to him for a fortnight in the Jail in his solitary Meditation and felt his immediate presence. Although he had taken up Yoga since 1904, it was now that the spiritual life and realisation which had continuously been increasing in intensity and magnitude, entirely claimed his whole being. Recalling this spiritual experience, Sri Aurobindo later said that while in Jail he saw the convicts, jailers, policemen, the prison bars, the trees, the judge, the lawyers as different forms of Vishnu in the spiritual experience of Vasudeva. This meteoric spiritual experience in jail culminated in his attaining the mystic experience of the all-pervading Supreme Reality. |
Sri Aurobindo's defence was taken up by a brilliant rising young Lawyer named Chittaranjan Das (1870-1925), one of Sri Aurobindo's Nationalist Collaborators, who put aside his large practice and devoted himself for months to the defence of Sri Aurobindo. Chittaranjan Das's speech for the defence of Sri Aurobindo was spread over 8 days and was a masterpiece of forensic eloquence and juridical wisdom. On April 13, 1909, the two Assessors nominated by the Sessions Court returned a unanimous verdict of 'Not Guilty' and about a month later, District and Sessions Judge Mr. Beachcroft accepted the verdict and honourably acquitted Sri Aurobindo. It was a moment of great triumph not only for Sri Aurobindo but also for Chittaranjan Das. Sri Aurobindo, however, was brilliantly defended by the young lawyer Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das who concluded his defence in the following immortal words:
'My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History.'
Chittaranjan Das later became one of the foremost leaders in India's Freedom Movement and came to be hailed as Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das.
It was at this turning moment in our national history that Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) paid a visit to Sri Aurobindo and wrote the now very famous lines:
Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!
O friend, my country's friend,
O Voice incarnate, free, Of India's soul....
The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God
Hath come...
Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee.
After his acquittal, Sri Aurobindo started two new weeklies: the Karmayogin in English and the Dharma in Bengali. However, it appeared that the British government would not tolerate his nationalist programme as Lord Minto, the then Viceroy of India, wrote about him: 'I can only repeat that he is the most dangerous man we have to reckon with'.
Thus Government were determined to get rid of Sri Aurobindo as he was the only formidable obstacle to the success of their repressive policy and decided to deport him. Sister Nivedita (1867-1911) came to know about this Government Plan and she informed Sri Aurobindo in advance and urged him to leave the British India. Sri Aurobindo wrote a signed article in Karmayogin in which he spoke of the Government Plan of his forced deportation and left behind for the country what he called his Last Will and Testimony. As Sri Aurobindo had rightly anticipated, his brilliant manoeuvre foiled the British Government's plan of his deportation. However, the British Government now decided to implicate him in a Sedition Case.
During one night when Sri Aurobindo was working at the 'Karmayogin' office, he received information regarding Government's intention to search his office and arrest him. At that moment he received a Divine Command to leave British India for the French territory of Chandernagore and accordingly in a few hours he went into secret residence in Chandernagore. He sent a very urgent message to Sister Nivedita, asking her to take upon herself the responsibility of editing the Karmayogin. At Chandernagore, while in meditation, he received another Divine Command to proceed to Pondicherry. A boat manned by some young Revolutionaries of Uttarpara took him to Calcutta where he boarded the boat Duplex and reached Pondicherry on 4 April, 1910.
After reaching Pondicherry in 1910, Sri Aurobindo's life became more and more absorbed in spiritual practices than in political or public activities. To begin with he kept some private communications with the Revolutionary Forces he had led in British India, through one or two individuals. The Extremist and Nationalist Leaders like Mahakavi Subrahmanya Bharathi (1882-1921) and Sri V V S Iyer (1881-1925) used to meet Sri Aurobindo every day for Vedic Studies.
It is a poignant fact of Modern Indian History that ten years after Sri Aurobindo withdrew from the political scene and settled down in Pondicherry, two very prominent leaders wrote to him in 1920 to return to British India and resume his leadership of Indian Politics. One was Joseph Baptista, who was a freedom fighter, and a right hand man of Lokmanya Tilak who requested Sri Aurobindo to take up the Editorship of an English Daily which was being planned in Bombay as the organ of a new party which Lokmanya Tilak and his supporters were then trying to form.
The second was Dr Munje, one of the extremist leaders from Maharashtra. Dr Munje went to Pondicherry in 1920 to persuade Sri Aurobindo to preside over the Nagpore Session of the Indian National Congress. Sri Aurobindo declined to return to British India. It should be noted that it was Dr Munje who along with Dr K B Hedgewar, later founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in October 1925.
Thus Sri Aurobindo's withdrawal from political life was complete in 1920. However, Sri Aurobindo intervened in Indian politics twice afterwards, on special occasions. The first was during World War II when he declared himself publicly on the side of the Allies, because he saw Hitler and Nazism as two dark Asuric Forces, the success of which would lead to the enslavement and set back to the evolutionary process of progress of mankind. The second was when he supported the Cripps's offer in 1942 because he felt that by its acceptance India and Briton could stand united against Asuric Forces and that the proposal of Cripps could be used as a step towards Indian independence.
Sri Aurobindo was prophetic when he wrote as follows against the Partition of India on August 15, 1947: 'But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may always remain possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India's internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go.'
Sri Aurobindo, a great Prophet of Indian Nationalism, attained Mahasamadi on 5 December, 1950. His great dream for Akhand Bharat remains to be fulfilled by the new generation that is now emerging.
(To be contd...)
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