Originally posted on sciy.org by Debashish Banerji on Sat 10 Jan 2009 09:45 AM PST
That the views expressed here are not "popular" is well known. But I am wondering how many others who have read the book share any of these views. I would encourage them to express themselves in the comments following this posting.
Dear X,
When I first heard of the controversy surrounding the book, The Lives of Sri
Aurobiondo, my natural instinct was not to be drawn into it. But over time, I realized
that the net effect was that a one-sided and completely false view of the
matter was being allowed to authorize itself in the ashram and outside it as
the truth. A few people who teach Sri Aurobindo texts and have enormous
influence in the ashram and outside were using the book as an opportunity
to mobilize support for their personal and political agendas in the name of the
divine. Had I even roughly agreed with them about the "danger" of the
book or its "blasphemous" character, I would have allowed this show
of power and crude fanaticism to proceed without caring. But I have read the
book, now several times over, as a result of this fiasco, and found it
impossible to agree with them. This is what made their medieval behavior even
more outrageous.
I agree that it is possible to construe some instances of cultural
insensitivity, dubious interpretation or expression of doubt in the work. But
to me, these instances were in most cases, matters of “reader response†and entirely insignificant in a 500 page
biography, which was over-all very positive (if restrained), well researched
and shot through with a theoretical argument regarding the need for the rational
academic mind to come to serious grip with the life of one whose experiences
and activities engaged fully with the context and problems of modernity and yet
expanded the scope and horizons of human consciousness far beyond its present
definition. I saw it clearly as a work of the author's love for his spiritual
teacher (though the quality and expression of this love was very different from
some authorized mainstream version). Try as I might to find fault, repeatedly,
I only found new things to learn and admire about Sri Aurobindo and never felt
that my devotion was being compromised in any way. What the responses of the
anti-Lives critics (the term “clerics†is more appropriate than “criticsâ€
here), brought home clearly to me was the weakness of their faith, an insecurity
which feels frightened to look at the vastness of the divine and see how He may
accommodate an infinite number of representations and interpretations
(including denial) and still remain the Same. And the other thing it brought
home even more powerfully was the bankruptcy of an educational culture where
teachers can get away with this kind of distorted and fanatical reading and the
masses can swallow it without questioning or even feeling the need to read the
book.
If there were even a few voices of dissidence to this tyranny of mediocrity and
obscurantism, I would have kept quiet. If a healthy debate arose about the
values and demerits of the book, or if a dialog between proponents of different
perspectives of the book was fielded in the ashram school, even the author
invited to explain his approach and the questions he has tried to answer, it
would have been at least civilized. But to see Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother's ashram subjected to this kind of mob phenomenon, rhetorical propaganda
and distortion used to demonize a text without any opportunity for an alternate
representation, was the sign of a hurtling descent into
the pit of the Dark Ages, with no voice raised even in its protest. Are we to
conclude then that this is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother taught? Is this
what we would like the world to know? I couldn't allow this to pass without at
least leaving a scratch in the ground to show that this is not the only
interpretation of how "the avatars" expected their devotees and
disciples to behave when another follower of their teaching wrote a biography
of one of them.
Sincerely,
Debashish Banerji
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