Sri Aurobindo’s five dreams, delivered in his address on August 14, 1947, on All India Radio, Thiruchirapalli, are well-known. But they always yield new insights on re-reading. What better occasion than the 77th anniversary of India’s freedom to do so? Especially because August 15, 2024, is also the 152nd birth centenary of Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo’s first dream was India’s freedom. This was achieved, but with a bloody and tragic Partition, which he believed had to be reversed. With the current events in Bangladesh, the wounds of the Partition have been opened again. We will return to this issue.
His second dream was the freedom of Asia. This too had been realised in most part during Sri Aurobindo’s own lifetime. But today Asia is deeply divided, with China having grabbed so much of India’s territory and continuing divisions between North and South Korea, besides tensions and conflicts elsewhere, especially in the Middle East.
World Unity was the third dream. Despite the partial success of the United Nations and the European Union, we are still some distance away from this. Of course, we have not had a Third World War or even a nuclear conflagration. But for how long? The world is on the brink, even right now, with Cold War 2.0 already underway and dangerous conflicts, with nuclear-armed powers, already in dangerous stages in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Sri Aurobindo’s fourth dream was India’s spiritual gift to the world. While this is happening in various channels and measures, there seems to be a dire deficit in India itself. Despite a Hindu resurgence, even the basic rights of the Hindus to their own temples have not been secured. Spirituality does not seem to be a priority, but sectarianism is.
This brings us back to the first dream, the unfinished promise of Independence. Sri Aurobindo is quite categorical and unambiguous here: “The partition must go.” He is disappointed that “the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country.”
He continues, “It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled forever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possibly even a new invasion and foreign conquest.”
We are seeing the recurring damage caused by the Partition in the renewed violence against Hindus in Bangladesh and the opening of a possible third front on our eastern borders.
Sri Aurobindo anticipated this: “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…
What is the way out?
He says, “Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way, unity may finally come about under whatever form—the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance.”
Then, he also adds, “But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India’s future.” Is it time for India to act decisively in Bangladesh? Not only to protect our interests but with the larger view to heal the wounds of Partition.
Unity need not be the forced formation of one large and unwieldy political entity, but the removal of those elements that violate, divide, and harm the soul of India. For, Sri Aurobindo believed that all Indians, including those who are at present Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, have one soul.
The facilitation of economic, cultural, and, ultimately, spiritual unity through the understanding that our past, present, and future are so deeply intertwined may be the way forward.
For that to happen, however, we must turn to the fifth and final dream of Sri Aurobindo.
Given the present circumstances, it is not only the most ambitious, but also the most needed: an evolutionary leap in global consciousness.
Forget about Supramentalisation or the ascension of Man to Superman, we seem to be in a dangerous and disturbing regression, with AI threatening the end of humanity as we know it. With artificial intelligence and robots doing most of our work, human beings themselves may become useless, dispensable, or even obsolete.
Yet it is only by spiritualising the physical, vital, and mental parts of our being that we can move forward to lasting peace within and harmony outside.
For the unity of man is possible only in the spirit, not in politics, economics, culture, even religion, and least of all, in conflict and war.
The writer is an author and columnist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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