The Social and Political Vision of Sri Aurobindo
Abstract
As a prophet of Indian nationalism, Aurobindo occupies an important place in the history of Indian political thought.1 When we recall the early Aurobindo, we think of a fiery, aggressive and uncompromising revolutionary who had cast his lot with the larger destiny of India and her people. His active involvement in the struggle against the British Empire in general was an expression of his staunch conviction that imperialism and colonialism, whether mercantile or political, are manifestations of repressive egoism or hubris on the part of a nation or a group who simply happened to possess an expedient superiority of means over its relatively less favored subjects. The Caesars and Napoleons of history have been guilty of exercising this hubris, of perpetuating slavery, tyranny and injustice in the world, of devising and enforcing negative and immoral political, economic and social systems, and, hence, of denying man his basic freedom and individuality. Man, as Aurobindo believed right from the very beginning of his involvement in politics, is entitled to freedom, equality and basic human dignity.
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Notes
See Karan Singh, Prophet of Indian Nationalism: A Study of the Political Thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, 1893–1910 (London: Allen, 1963);
Vishwanath Prasad Varma, The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo (New York: Asia, 1960);
Sisirkumar Mitra, Sri Aurobindo (New Delhi: Indian Book, 1972).
See S. K. Maitra, “Sri Aurobindo and Spengler: Comparison between the Integral and Pluralistic Philosophy of History,” The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo:A Commemorative Symposium, eds. Haridas Chaudhuri and Frederic Spiegelberg (London: Allen, 1960) 60–80.
Kishore Gandhi, Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the New Age, 2 ed. (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Society, 1991).
R. C. Zaehner, Evolution in Religion:A Study in Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971) 4.
For a detailed comparison between Aurobindo and Marx see D. P. Chattopadhyaya, History, Society and Polity: Integral Sociology of Sri Aurobindo (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1976).
For a criticism of Zaehner see K. D. Sethna, The Spirituality of the Future:A Search apropos of R. C. Zaehner’s Study in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin (Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson UP, 1981).
Robert H. Murray, Studies in the English Social and Political Thinkers of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Heifer, 1972) 2. 210.
Moin Shakir observes that Marx had firmly established a correlation between colonialism and capitalism (“Karl Marx on Colonialism,” Colonial Consciousness in Commonwealth Literature eds. G. S. Amur and S. K. Desai [Bombay: Somaiya, 1984] 260).
See Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Cen-tury (London: Allen, 1962) 48.
See Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963) 286–322.
See Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1917) 32.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness: Complete Authoritative Text with Bio-graphical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays, 2nd ed., ed. Ross C. Murfin (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996) 66.
For these two divergent positions, the extremists and the moderates see John R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977) 152–78;
Jim Masselos, Indian Nationalism:An His-tory (New Delhi: Sterling, 1985) 93–118.
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© 2000 K. D. Verma
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Verma, K.D. (2000). The Social and Political Vision of Sri Aurobindo. In: The Indian Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-61823-1_3
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