CHAPTER SIX PART 2

inclined to do, but as national reconstruction, mainly in the educational sphere6 Vivekananda’s teachings had been neglected by his own followers-by the Ramakrishna Mission which he had founded—and we were going to give effect to them. We could therefore be called the neo-Vivekananda group, and our main object was to bring about a synthesis between religion and nationalism, not merely in the theo- retical sphere but in practical life as well. The emphasis on nationalism was inevitable in the political atmosphere of Calcutta of those days. When I left Cuttack in 1913 my ideas were altogether nebulous. I had a spiritual urge and a vague idea of social service of some sort. In Calcutta I learnt that social service was an integral part of Yoga and it meant not merely relief to the half, the maimed, and the blind, but national recon- struction on modern lines. Beyond this stage, the group did not travel for a long time, because like in myself it was groping for more light and for a clarification of its practi- cal ideals. There was one thing highly creditable about the group——its members were exceedingly alert and active, many of them being brilliant scholars. The activity of the group manifested itself in three directions. There was a thirst for new ideas; so new books on philosophy, history, and nationalism were greedily devoured and the infor- mation thus acquired was passed on to others. Members of the group were also active in recruiting new members from different institutions in various cities, with the result that before long the group had wide contacts. Thirdly, the members were active in making contacts with the promi- nent personalities of the day. Holidays would be utilised for visiting the holy cities like Benares or Hardwar with the hope of meeting men who could give spiritual light and inspiration, while those interested in national history would visit places of historical importance and study history on the spot. I once joined a touring party who journeyed for seven days, book in hand, in the environs of Murshidabad, the pre-British capital of Bengal, and we thereby acquired more insight into the previous history of Bengal than we would have done if we had studied at home or at school for months. On some important questions the ideas of the group were in a state of flux. Such was the question of our rela- tions with our respective families. The name, constitution, plan of work, etc. of the group were not settled either. But our ideas slowly moved in the direction of a first-class educational institution which would turn out real men and would have branches in different places. Some members of the group interested themselves in the study of existing educational institutions like Tagore’s Santi-Niketan and the Gurukul University in Upper India. In recruiting new members, attention was given to enlisting brilliant students studying different subjects, so that we would have trained professors in all the subjects when the time came for us to launch our scheme. The group stood for celibacy and the leaders held that a breach with one’s family was inevitable at some stage or other. But the members were not given any clear direction to break with their families, though the way they moved about made it inevitable that their families would be estranged. Most of the week-ends were spent away from home, often without permission. Sometimes institu- tions like the Ramakrishna Mission’s Muth at Belur would be visited. Sometimes important personalities7 generally religious people, would be interviewed. Sometimes our own members in different places would invite us and we would spend a day or two with them. Outside college hours most of my time would be spent in the company of members of the group. Home had no attraction for me———for it was a world quite different from that of my dreams. The dualism in my life continued and it was source of unhappiness. This was accentuated whenever unfavourable comments were made at home about my ideas or activities. Politically, the group was against terroristic activity and secret conspiracy of every sort. The group was therefore not so popular among the students, for in those days the terrorist-revolutionary movement had a peculiar fascination for the students of Bengal. Even those who would keep at a safe distance from such an organisation would not withold their sympathy and admiration, so long as they did not land themselves in trouble. Occasionally there would be fric- tion between members of our group and members of some terroristrevolutionary organisations engaged in recruiting. Once a very interesting incident took place. Since our group was very active, the C.I.D. became very suspicious about its real character, wondering if there was anything hidden be- hind a religious exterior. Steps were taken to arrest a 1nen- 1ber whom they considered to be the leader of the group. At this juncture the police intercepted some correspondence passing between members of a terrorist—revolutionary organisation, in which there was a proposal to liquidate the above leader of our group for luring away some of its members into the path of non—violence. The correspond- ence revealed our real character to the police and thereby not only prevented the arrest but saved us from police persecution which would otherwise have been unavoidable. In the winter of 1913 we had a camp at Santipur, a place 50 miles from Calcutta on the river Hooghly, where we lived as monks wearing orange-coloured cloths. We were raided by the police and all our names and addresses were taken down, but no serious trouble followed beyond an enquiry into our antecedents. In my undergraduate days Arabindo Ghose was easily the most popular leader in Bengal, despite his voluntary exile and absence since 1909. His was a name to conjure with. He had sacrificed a lucrative career in order to devote himself to politics. On the Congress platform he had stood up as a champion of left-wing thought and a fearless advo- cate of independence at a time when most of the leaders, with their tongues in their cheeks, would talk only of colo- nial self-government. He had undergone incarceration with perfect equanimity. His close association with Lrokamanya B. G. Tilak8 had given him an all—India popularity, while rumour and official allegation had given him an added prestige in the eyes of the younger generation by connect- ing him with his younger brother, Barindra Kumar Ghose, admittedly the pioneer of the terrorist movement. Last but not least, a mixture of spirituality and politics had given him a halo of mysticism and made his personality more fascinating to those who were religiously inclined. When I came to Calcutta in 913, Arabindo was already a legend- ary figure. Rarely have I seen people speak of a leader with such rapturous enthusiasm and many were the anecdotes of this great man, some of them probably true, which travelled from mouth to mouth. I heard, for instance, that Arabindo had been in the habit of indulging in something like auto- matic writing. In a state of semi-trance, pencil in hand, he would have a written dialogue with his own self, giving him the name of ‘Manik’. During his trial, the police came across some of the papers in which the `conversations` with ‘Man- ik’ were recorded, and one day the police prosecutor, who was excited over the discovery, stood up before the Court and gravely asked for a warrant against a new conspi1•ator, ‘Manik’, to the hilarious amusement of the gentlemen in the dock. In those days it was freely rumoured that Arabindo had retired to Pondicherry for twelve years` meditation. At the end of that period he would return to active life as an ‘enlightened’ man, like Gautama Buddha of old. To effect the political salvation of his country. Many people seriously believed this, especially those who felt that it was well nigh impossible to successfully contend with the British people on the physical plane without the aid of some supernatural force. It is highly interesting to observe how the human mind resorts to spiritual nostrums Wllttll it is confronted with physical difficulties of an insurmountable character. When the big agitation started after the partition of Bengal in 1905, several mystic stories were in circulation. It was said, for instance, that on the final day of reckoning with the British there would be a ‘n1arch of the blanketeers’ into Fort william in Calcutta. Sannyasis or fakirs with blankets on their shoulders would enter the Fort. The British troops would stand stock—still, unable to move or fight, and power would pass into the hands of people. Wish is father to the thought and we loved to hear and to believe such stories in our boyhood. As a College student it was not the mysticism surrounding Arabindo’s name which attracted me, but his writings and also his letters. Arabindo was then editing a monthly journal called Arya in which he expounded his philosophy. He used also to write to certain select people in Bengal. Such letters would pas. rapidly from hand to hand, especially in circles interested in spirituality—cum-polities. In our circle usually somebody would read the letter aloud and the rest of us would enthuse over it. In one such letter Arabindo wrote, we must be dynamos of the divine electric- ity so that when each of us stands up, thousands around may be full of the light-—full of bliss and Ananda.’ We felt convinced that spiritual enlightenment was necessary for effective national service. But what made a lasting appeal to me was not such flashy utterances. I was impressed by his deeper philosophy. Shankara’s doctrine of Maya was like a thorn in my flesh, I could not accommodate my life to it nor could I easily get rid of it. I required another philosophy to take its place. The reconciliation between the One and the Many, between God and Creation, which Ramakrishna and Vivekananda had preached, had indeed impressed me but had not till then succeeded in liberating me from the cobwebs of Maya. In this task of emancipation, Arabindo came as an additional help. He worked out a reconciliation between Spirit and Matter, between God and Creation, on the metaphysical side and supplemented it with a synthesis of the methods of attaining the truth•—a synthesis of Yoga, as he called it. Thousands of years ago the Bhagavad Gita had spoken about the different Yogas--Jnana Yoga or the attainment of truth through knowledge; Bhakti Yoga or the attainment of truth through devotion and love; Karma Yoga or the attainment of truth through selfless action. To this, other schools of Yoga had been added later--Hatha Yoga aiming at control over the body and Raja Yoga aiming at control over the mind through control of the breathing apparatus. Vivekananda had no doubt spoken of the need of Jnana (knowledge), Bhakti (devotion and love) and Karma (self- less action) in developing an all—round character, but there was something original and unique in Arabindo’s con- ception of a synthesis of Yoga. He tried to show how by a proper use of the different Yogas one could rise step by step to the highest truth. It was so refreshing, so inspiring, to read Arabindo’s writings as a contrast to the denunciation of knowledge and action by the later-day Bengal Vaishnavas. All that was needed in my eyes to make Arabindo an ideal guru for mankind was his return to active life. Of quite a different type from Arabindo was Suren dra Nath Bennerji, once the hero of Bengal and certainly one of the makers of the Indian National Congress. I saw him for the first time at a meeting of the Calcutta town Hall9 in connection with Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha10 campaign in South Africa. Surendra Nath was still in good form and with his modulated voice and rolling periods he was able to collect a large sum of money at the meeting. But despite his flowery rhetoric and consummate oratory, he lacked that deeper passion which one could find in such simple words of Arabindo : ‘I should like to see some of you becoming great; great not for your own sake, but to make India great, so that she may stand up with head erect amongst the free nations of the world. Those of you who are poor and obscure—I should like to see their poverty and obscurity devoted to the service of the mothcrland. Work that she might prosper, suffer that she might rejoice’11. So long as politics did not interest me, attention was directed towards two things—meeting as many religious teachers as possible and qualifying for social service. I doubt if there was any religious group or• sect in or near Calcutta with whom we did not come into contact. With regard to social service, I had some novel and interesting experience. When I became eager to do some practical work, I found out a society for giving aid to the poor. This socicty12 used to collect money and foodstuffs every Sunday by begging from door to door. The begging used to be done by studentvolunteers and I became one of them. The collec- tions used to consist mainly of rice, and each volunteer had to bring in between 80 and 160 lbs. of rice at the end of his round. The first day I went out sack in hand for collecting rice, I had to overcome forcibly a strong sense of shame, not having been accustomed to this sort of work. Up to this day I do not know if the members of our family were ever aware of this activity of mine. The sense of shame troubled me for a long time and, whenever there was any fear of coming across a known face, I simply did not look to the right or to the left but jogged along with the sack in my hand or over my shoulders. At College I began to neglect my studies. Most of the lectures were uninteresting13 and the professors still more so. I would sit absent-minded and go on philosophiz- ing about the why and wherefore of such futile studies. Most boring of all was the professor of mathematics whose monotonous drawling out of what appeared to be meaning- less formulae would bring me to the verge of desperation. To make life more interesting and purposeful, I engaged in various public activities of the student community, barring sports of course. I also went out of my way to get acquainted with such professors as Sir P. C. Ray, the eminent chemist and philanthropist, who did not belong to our department but was extremely popular with the students. Organising debates, collecting funds for flood and famine relief, rep- resenting the students before the authorities, going out on excursions with fellow-stiidents-such activities were most congenial to me. Very slowly I was shedding my introvert tendencies and social service was gaining ground on the individualistic Yoga. I sometimes wonder how at a particular psychological moment a small incident can exert a fareaching influence on our life. In front of our house in Calcutta, an old, de- crepit beggar woman used to sit every day and beg for alms. Every time I went out or came in, I could not help seeing her. Her sorrowful countenance and her tattered clothes pained me whenever I looked at her or even thought of her. By contrast, I appeared to be so well—off and comfortable that I used to feel like a criminal. What right had I——I used to think-to be so fortunate to live in a three-storied house when this miserable beggar woman had hardly a roof over her head and practically no food or clothing? what was the value of Yoga if so much misery was to continue in the world? Thoughts like these made me rebel against the exist- ing social system. But what could I do? A social system could not be demolished or transformed in a day. Something had to be done for this beggar woman in the meantime and that un- obtrusively. I used to get money from home for going to and returning from College by tramcar. This I resolved to save and spend in charity. I would often walk back from College- -—a distance of over three miles-and sometimes even walk to it when there was sufficient time. This lightened my guilty conscience to some extent. During my first year in College I returned to Cuttaek to spend the vacations there with my parents. My Calcutta record was much worse than my Cuttack record, so there was no harm in letting me return to my friends there. At Cuttack, though I had regularly roamed about with my friends, I had never absented myself from home at night. But in Calcutta I would often be absent for days without obtaining permission. On returning to Cuttack, I got into my old set again. Once, when my parents were out of town, I was invited to join a party of friends who were going into the interior on a nursing expedition in a locality which was stricken with cholera. There was no medical man in the party. We had only a half-doctor, whose belongings con- sisted of a book on homoeopathy, a box of homoeopathic medicines, and plenty of common sense. We were to be the nurses in the party. I readily agreed and took leave of my uncle, who was then doing duty for my father, saying that I would be away a few days. He did not object, not knowing at the time that I was going out to nurse cholera patients. I was out for only a week, as my uncle came to know of our real plans a few days after I had left and sent another uncle posthaste after me to bring me back. The searching party had to scour the countryside before they could spot us. In those days cholera was regarded as a fatal disease and it was not easy to get people to attend cholera patients. Our party was absolutely fearless in that respect. In fact, we took hardly any precautions against infection and we all lived and dined together. In the way of actual medical relief, I do not think we could give much. Many had died before we arrived there and, among the patients we found and nursed, the majority did not recover. Nevertheless, a week’s experience opened a new world before my eyes and unfolded a picture of real India, the India of the villages— where poverty stalks over the land, men die like flies, and illiteracy is the prevailing order. We had very little with us in the way of bedding and clothing, because we had to travel light in order to be able to cover long distances on foot. We ate what we could get in the way of food and slept where we could. For me, one of the most astonishing things was the surprise with which we were greeted when we first arrived on the scene of our humanitarian efforts. It intrigued the poor villagers to know why we had come there. Were we Government officials? Officials had never come to nurse them before. Neither had well-to-do people from the town bothered about them. They therefore concluded that we must have undertaken this tour in order to acquire reputa- tion or merit. It was virtually impossible to knock this idea out of their heads. When I was back in Calcutta the craze for ‘Sadhu’hunting continued. About sixty miles from the city, on the bank of a river near a district town, there lived a young ascetic hailing from the Punjab. Along with a friend of mine14 I would visit him frequently whenever I could get away from Calcutta. This ascetic would never take shelter under a roof, for the ideal which he evidently practised was “The sky the roof, the grass the bed And food what chance may bring.” I was greatly impressed by this man-——his complete renunciation of worldly desires, his utter indifference to heat, cold,15 etc., his mental purity and loving temperament. He would never ask for anything, but as often happens in India, crowds16 would come to him and offer food and clothing, and he would take only his minimum require- ments. If only he had been more intellectually developed, he could have lured me from my worldly moorings. After I came into contact with this ascetic, the desire to find a guru grew stronger and stronger within me and, in the summer vacation of 1914, I quietly left on a pilgrim- age with another friend17 of mine. I borrowed some money from a class friend who was getting a scholarship and repaid him later from my scholarship. Of course, I did not inform anybody at home and simply wrote a postcard when I was far away. We visited some of the well-known places of pil- grimage in Upper India———Lachman-Jhola, Hrishikesh, Hardwar, Muttra, Brindaban, Besnarcs, Gaya. At Hardwar we were joined by another friend. In between we also vis- ited places of historical interest like Delhi and Agra. At all these places we looked up as many Sadhus as we could and visited several “Ashramas” as well as educational institu- tions like Gurukul and Rishiku17 At one of the Ashramas in Hardwar they felt uncomfortable when we went there, not knowing if we were really spiritually minded youths or were Bengalee revolutionaries appearing in that cloak. This tour which lasted nearly two months brought us in touch not only with a number of holy men, but also with some of the patent shortcomings of Hindu society, and I returned home a wiser man, having lost much of my admiration for ascetics and anehorites. It was well that I had this experience off my own bat, for in life there are certain things which we have to learn for ourselves. The first shock that I received was when, at an eating- house in Hardwar, they refused to serve us food. Bengalees, they said, were unclean like Christians because they ate fish. We could bring our plates and they would pour out the food, but we would have to go back to our lodging and eat there. Though one of my friends was a Brahman, he too had to eat humble pie. At Buddha Gaya we had a similar experience. We were guests at a Muth to which we have been introduced by the head of the Ramakrishna Mission at Benares. When we were to take our food we were asked if we would not like to sit separately, because all of us were not of the same caste. I expressed my surprise at this ques- tion because they were followers of Shankaracharya, and I quoted a verse18 of his in which he had advised people to give up all sense of difference. They could not challenge my statement because I was on strong ground. The next day when we went for a bath we were told by some men there not to draw the water from the well because we were not Brahmans. Fortunately, my Brahman friend, who was in the habit of hanging his sacred thread on apeg, had it on him at the moment. With a flourish he pulled it out from under his cheddar and just to defy them he began to draw the water and pass it on to us. much to their discomfiture.19At Muttra we lived in the house of a Panda20 and visited a her- mit who was living in an underground room on the other bank of the river. He strongly advised us to return home and to give up all ideas of renouncing the world. I remem- ber I was greatly annoyed at a hermit speaking in that fash- ion. While we were at Muttra we became very friendly with an Arya Samajist21 living next door. This was too much for our Panda who gave us a warning that these Arya Samajists were dangerous men since they denounced image-worship. The monkeys at Muttra who could not be kept down in any way, were a regular pest. If any door or window was left ajar for any brief moment they would force their way in and carry away what they found or tear it into bits. We were not sorry to leave Muttra and from there we proceeded to Brindaban where on arrival we were surrounded by several Pandas who offered us board and lodging. To get out of their clutches we said that we wanted to go to the Gurukul institution. At once they put their fingers to their ears and said that no Hindu should go there. However, they were good enough to spare us their company. Several miles away from Brindaban at a place Called Kusum Sarobar, a number of Vaishnava ascetics were liv- ing in single-roomed cottages amid groves where deer and peacocks were roaming. It was indeed a beautiful spot— —‘meet nurse’ for a religious mind. We visited them and were given a warm welcome and spent several days in their company. In that brotherhood was one Mouni Baba who had not spoken a word for ten years. The leader or guru of this colony was one Ramakrishnadas Babaji who was well-versed in Hindu philosophy. In his talks he maintained the position that the Vaishnavic doctrine of Dwaitadwaita22 represented a further progress beyond the Adwaita doctrine of Monism of Shankaracharya. At that time Shankaracha- rya’s doctrine represented to me the quintessencc of Hindu philosophy—though I could not adapt my life to it and found the teaching of Rama- krishna and Vivekananda to be more practical—and I did not relish hearing Shanka- racharya assailed by anyone. On the whole, I enjoyed my stay at KusumSarobar and we left with a very high opinion of the ascetics there. Coming to Bcnares we were welcomed at the Ramakrislma Mission’s Muth by the late Swami Brah- mananda who knew my father and our family quite well. While I was there, a great deal of commotion was taking place at home. My parents who had waited long for my re- turn were now feeling desperate. Something had to be done by my brothers and uncles. But what could they do? To in- form the police did not appeal to them, for they were afraid that the police might harass more than they might help. So they betook themselves to a fort11ne-teller who had a repu- tation for honesty. This gentleman after taking counsel with the spirits announced that I was hale and hearty and was then at a place to the north—west of Calcutta, the name of which began with the letter B. It was immediately decided that that place must be Baidyanath23 for there was an Ash- rama there at the head of which was a wel1—known Yogi. No sooner was this decision made than one of my uncles was packed off there to get hold of me. But it proved to be a wild—goose chase for I was then at Benares. After an exciting experience I turned up one fine morning quite unexpectedly. I was not repentant for having taken French leave, but I was somewhat crestfallen, not hav- ing found the guru I had wanted so much. A few days later I was in bed, down with typhoid——the price of pilgrimage and guru-hunting. Not even the soul can make the body defy the laws of health with impunity. While I lay in bed the Great War broke out.

  

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