Saturday, July 14, 2012

Propagandists are afraid of Sri Aurobindo

[The Anatomy of an Internet Hindu from Centre Right India by Jaideep Prabhu - Jul 14, 2012 In defence of Hinduism…historically
Although the internet is a modernising factor, it should be noted that the defence of Hinduism is the locus of some of the earliest opposition to foreign rule. Figures like Vishnubawa Brahmachari and Arumuga Navalar challenged Western missionaries on their disrespectful and inaccurate portrayal of Hinduism. The notion that IHs are hijacking the nation is buncombe. There is a tradition of seeing India as a culturally Hindu majority nation, as Subramanian Swamy said on Al Jazeera. There is a tradition from Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Vallabhbhai Patel, to C. Rajagopalachari. While the last two may have disagreed with the vehemence of the first four, none denied India’s history. Admittedly, the IH Samaj may have lost some of the intellectual brilliance since, but that hardly diminishes its right to be in the national debate.]

[During his lifetime Herbert Spencer achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia… Spencer had achieved an unparalleled popularity, as the sheer volume of his sales indicate. He was probably the first, and possibly the only, philosopher in history to sell over a million copies of his works during his own lifetime… Spencer's influence among leaders of thought was also immense, though it was most often expressed in terms of their reaction to, and repudiation of, his ideas. As his American follower John Fiske observed, Spencer's ideas were to be found "running like the weft through all the warp" of Victorian thought…
Savarkar writes in his Inside the Enemy Camp, about reading all of Spencer's works, of his great interest in them, of their translation into Marathi, and their influence on the likes of Tilak and Agarkar, and the affectionate sobriquet given to him inMaharashtra – Harbhat Pendse. From Wikipedia]

It’s not only the secularists who carefully excise any reference to Sri Aurobindo. They are everywhere. In a way, it proves that how propagandists of all hues are afraid of the free-spirit Sri Aurobindo espouses. Bastille Day, by the way. [TNM55]

1 comment:

  1. Sorry, the article was not a hagiography of Aurobindo. Had that been clear, someone would have seen to it that every sentence began with "Aurobindo says..."

    ReplyDelete