News Highlight:
PM to participate in a programme commemorating Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary on 13th December.
Key Takeaway:
The programme, being held in Kamban Kalai Sangam, Puducherry, under the aegis of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, will witness the Prime Minister releasing a commemorative coin and postal stamp in honour of Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo Ghosh:
- About:
- Sri Aurobindo Ghosh was Born to surgeon Krishna Dhan Ghose and Swarnalata Devi in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. He was a yogi, seer, philosopher, poet, and Indian nationalist who propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution.
- He died on 5th December 1950 in Pondicherry.
- Aurobindo’s pragmatic strategies to eliminate British rule marked him as “the Prophet of Indian Nationalism”.
- Education:
- His education began in a Christian convent school in Darjeeling.
- He entered the University of Cambridge, where he became proficient in two classical and several modern European languages.
- He passed the Indian Civil Service Examination in 1890 but failed in the horsemanship test, due to which he could not enter the service.
- In 1892, he held various administrative posts in Baroda (Vadodara) and Calcutta (Kolkata).
- He began the study of Yoga and Indian languages, including classical Sanskrit.
- His role in Indian Revolutionary Movement:
- From 1902 to 1910, he fought to free India from the British.
- The partition of Bengal in 1905 provoked Aurobindo to leave his job in Baroda and plunge into the nationalist movement. He started the patriotic journal Bande Mataram to propagate radical methods and revolutionary tactics instead of supplication.
- He attended Congress sessions and, at the same time, helped establish the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902.
- He was arrested thrice by the British — twice for sedition and once for conspiring to “wage war”
- As a result of his political activities, he was imprisoned in 1908 (Alipore Bomb case).
- Two years later, he fled British India and found refuge in the French colony of Puducherry, where he devoted himself for the rest of his life to the development of his “integral” yoga with the aim of a fulfilled and spiritually transformed life on earth.
- Spirituality:
- In Puducherry, he founded a community of spiritual seekers, which took shape as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926.
- He believed that the basic principles of matter, life, and mind would be succeeded through terrestrial evolution by the principle of supermind as an intermediate power between the two spheres of the infinite and the finite.
- Teachings:
- The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India. Behind the appearances of the universe, there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal.
- He propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution.
- Literary Works:
- An English newspaper called Bande Mataram (in 1905)
- Bases of Yoga
- Bhagavad Gita and Its Message
- The Future Evolution of Man
- Rebirth and Karma
- Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol
- Hour of God
Pic Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Content Source: Indian Express