It is not a usual coincidence but a providential tribute to the Yogi Aurobindo that India enters 75th year of her independence on the very day when one of the shining apostles of Indian Nationalism enters his sesquicentenary year. Yogi Aurobindo was in many ways a quintessential Bharatiya Rishi who embodied a revolutionary zeal when his country expected it from him and eventually assumed his destined path of spiritual quest and in the process contributed immensely in ushering a spiritual renaissance in the modern Indian history. But much alike Vivekananda, even Aurobindo was innately connected with the nationalist discourses and it flowed through many of his writings. Also, he saw the distinctiveness of Indian soul – the nation – and one of his undying endeavours was to bring it to the masses and make them aware of this distinctive ‘national soul’, the roots of which were in India’s civilizational ‘religious’ moorings.
Before getting to his views about Indian nation and nationalism, it is crucial to understand how he viewed the prominence of the native religion, to which he alternatively used the word Hindu and Sanatan Dharma, in understanding the core of the India. Aurobindo maintained,
“religion in India limited itself by no one creed or dogma; it not only admitted a vast number of different formulations, but contained successfully within itself all the elements that have grown up in the course of the evolution of religion and refused to ban or excise any…” he further adds “religion which is itself a congeries of religions and which at the same time provides each man with his own turn of inner experience, would be the most in consonance with this purpose of Nature: it would be a rich nursery of spiritual growth and flowering, a vast multiform school of the soul’s”
What Aurobindo is alluding to is the fact that religion in India is not in conventional dogmatic sense a organized religion but essentially a ‘congeries of religion’, implying that it is indeed a ‘value system’ where values of plurality, individual freedom and culture of seeking and acceptance becomes defining aspects of the religion. It is this nature of religion which he considers as the ‘soul of India’ and essentially the most indistinguishable content of Indian nation. He thus believes that the core of the nation is religion, and at time is insistent on the word ‘Hindu-nation’. This utterance of Hindu nation is not in the theocratic sense but has civilizational and geographical connotation. Aurobindo dwells on this matter in one of his most popular deliverances, the Uttarapa Speech he delivered in Bengal in 1909. Aurobindo begins with a fundamental question,
“what is the Hindu religion? What is this religion which we call Sanatan, eternal? It is the Hindu religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it, because in this Peninsula it grew up in the seclusion of the sea and the Himalayas, because in this sacred and ancient land it was given as a charge to the Aryan race to preserve through the ages.”
Two points here become extremely crucial. One is the identification of a distinct sub-continental geography to explain the contours of the Nation. And second is the mention of the word, ‘Aryan race’. The first point highlights the fact that this Indian Nation has specific civilizational and geographic boundaries, the geography defined by Himalayas and the seas, and its identification is integral to understand the contours of the nation. The second is the invocation of Aryan race which should not be confused with its pejorative racist sense. Aurobindo consistently uses the term Aryan or Arya in his writings is not to denote a particular race but as it is used in the ancient Indian scriptures like Vedas. For instance, Aurobindo himself explains what the word Arya actually means in his journal which he started in Pondicherry appropriately named Arya. In its second issue he made it explicit that the term stood for certain characteristics of culture which had been accepted by the Vedic people as their ideal:
“…the word in its original use expressed not a difference of race, but a difference of culture. For in the Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration.”
Similarly, in The Secret of Vedas, he dwells into various modern interpretations of Vedas and there philological interpretation. Here again, he distances with any racial essence to the term “Aryan”, restricting its meaning to culture and language when he says the following,
“the indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of any such invasion. The distinction between Aryan and un-Aryan on which so much has been built, seems on the mass of the evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference
Hence, “Aryan race” here should be taken as describing a people who share a common history and culture. Understanding his idea of Religion, in that the Hindu religion specifically and the people that formed the Hindu nation, helps us distinguish it with the conventionally understood connotations for the similar terms. The nationalistic implications of Aurobindo’s thoughts become easier to comprehend once these ideas are clear.
Considering the thoughts on Nationalism, Aurobindo accords the spiritual grounds, much like Vivekananda, to be the most potent to form the basis of National consciousness. Though Aurobindo did not reject the role of external factors, i.e. geography, language and common objectives in the emergence of nation-state idea, for India his emphasis was more on spiritual principle. His take on Nationalism for instance is indicative of this idea when he says
“nationalism is not mere a political programme; nationalism is a religion that has come from God. If you are going to be a nationalist, if you are going to give assent to the religion of nationalism, you must do it with religious spirit”.
In the Indian context, he is clear that the source of the spiritual principle is the Sanatan Dharma when he says the following
“I said then that this movement is not a political movement and that nationalism is not politics but a religion…. I say it again today, but I put it in another way. I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it moves and with it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma, it would perish. The Sanatan Dharma – that is nationalism. This is the message that I have to speak to you.”
Here again when he is using the word religion, he is meaning it in a sense of India’s developed value system through historical process of spiritual and philosophical synthesis. To dub this idea as a crude revivalism – as some tend to view it so – would be highly misleading. Also, notable point is that Aurobindo’s nationalism is neither aggressive nor expansionist rather his identification of national identity with religion is to give it the foundation of philosophical base of the religion which calls for an accommodative and deliberative way of living.
Another significant aspect of Sri Aurobindo’s vision of nationalism is that his ideas of nationalism are not aimed at creating just a political entity of nation-state (in this case it may be assumed by some as nation-state created in the name of religion) but for Aurobindo, nationalism is a precursor or an intermediate stage towards a larger international unity. It is like a transition phase in a process of creating a broad international community. For him nation-state system is not the ultimate aim of the formations of human civilization, rather it is an intermediary phase for the ultimate ideal human unity. Even when he demanded complete independence for India and for the achievement of that purpose when he advocated for spiritual nationalism, it was not in the aggressive sense, but it was a call for arousal of national consciousness for India’s freedom. That national consciousness, according to him, would be best appealed through the religion.
Sri Aurobindo therefore foresees an evolution of different nations towards a single community. This internationalist thought is again an expression of his conviction to Indian values which according to him forms also the basis of Indian Nationalism. Aurobindo’s analysis thus has three important components – first, he saw that there exists – and it always existed – an Indian nation, and that the spirituality and religion are the associating principle of Indian Nation. Second, he viewed Nationalism as an important ideology that can be used to work towards a more united nation based on the ideals of Indian religion and spiritual ethos. And third, for him Nationalism was not just the means of creating a political entity of nation-state, but it was an intermediate stage necessary for greater systemic international co-operation.
Nice and well defined article should be read by every nationalist hindu.