CHAPTER SIX

PRESIDENCY COLLEGE (1)

Little did my people know what Calcutta had in store for me. I was separated from a small group of eccentric school—boys whom I had gathered round myself in Cut- tack. But in Calcutta I found crowds of them. No wonder that I soon became the despair of my parents. This was not my first visit to Calcutta. I had been there several times since my infancy, but every time this great city had intrigued me, bewildered me, beyond meas- ure. I had loved to roam about its wide streets and among its gardens and museums and I had felt that one could not see enough of it. It was like a leviathan which one could look at from outside and go on admiring unceasingly. But this time I came to settle down there and to mix with its inner life. I did not, of course, know then that this was the beginning of a connection which would perhaps last all my life. Life in Calcutta, like life in any other modern me- tropolis, is not good for everybody and it has been the ruin of many promising souls. It might have proved disastrous in my case, had not I come there with certain definite ideas and principles fixed in my mind. Though I was passing through a period of stormy transition when I left school, I had by then made certain definite decisions for myself— —I was not going to follow the beaten track, come what may; I was going to lead a life conducive to my spiritual welfare and the uplift of humanity; I was going to make a profound study of philosophy so that I could solve the fundamental problems of life ; in practical life I was going to emulate Ramakrishna and Vivekananda as far as possible and, in any case, I was not going in for a worldly career. This was the outlook with which I faced a new chapter in my life. These decisions were not the offspring of one‘ night’s thought or the dictation of any one personality. It had taken me months and years of groping to arrive at them. I had looked into so many books and sat at the feet of so many persons in order to discover how my life should be shaped and what the highest ideals were that I could hold up before myself. The discovery would have been easy and the task of translating it into action still easier if I had not been pulled by my lower self in one direction and by family influence in another. Owing to this double tension the latter portion of my school life was a period of intense mental conflict and of consequent unhappiness. The conflict itself was noth- ing new. Everybody who sets up an ideal before himself or endeavours to strike out a new path has to go through it. But my suffering was unusually acute for two reasons. Firstly, the struggle overtook me too early in life. Secondly, the two conflicts came upon me simultaneously. If I had en- countered them consecutively, the agony would have been greatly alleviated. But man is not always the architect of his fate, he is sometimes the creature of his circumstances. The strain of a fight on two fronts was so great for a highly-strung lad like myself that it was quite on the cards that I would have ended in a breakdown or in some mental aberration. That I did not do so was due either to sheer luck or to sonic higher destiny, if one believes in it. Now that I have come out of the ordeal comparatively unscathed, I do not regret what I have been through. I have this consolation to offer myself that the struggle made a man of me. I gained self-confi- dence, which I had lacked before and I succeeded in determining some of the fundamental principles of my life. From my experience, I may, however, warn parents and guardians that they should be circumspect in dealing with children possessing an emotional and sensitive nature. It is no use trying to force them into a particular groove, for the more they are suppressed, the more rebellious they become and this rebelliousness may ultimately develop into rank waywardness. On the other hand, sympathetic understand- ing combined with a certain amount of latitude may cure them of angularities and idiosyncrasies. And when they are drawn towards an idea which militates against worldly no- tions, parents and guardians should not attempt to thwart or ridicule them, but endeavour to understand them and through understanding to influence them should the need arise. Whatever may be the ultimate truth about such no- tions as God, soul and religion, from the purely pragmatic point of view I may say that I was greatly benefited by my early interest in religion and my dabbling in Yoga. I learnt to take life seriously. Standing on the threshold of my col- lege career, I felt convinced that life had a meaning and a purpose. To fulfil that purpose, a regular schooling of the body and the mind was necessary. But for this self-imposed schooling during my school-life, I doubt if I would have succeeded in facing the trials and tribulations of my later years, in view of the delicate constitution with which I had been endowed from my birth. I have indicated before that up to a certain stage in my life I had fitted into my environment splendidly and accept- ed all the social and moral values imposed from without. This happens in the life of every human being. Then there comes a stage of doubt——not merely intellectual doubt like that of Descartes—but doubt embracing the whole of life. Man begins to question his very existence—why he was born, for what purpose he lives, and what his ultimate goal is. If he comes to a definite conclusion, whether of a permanent or of a temporary nature, on such problems, it often happens that his outlook on life changcs—he begins to view everything from a different perspective and goes in for a revaluation of existing social and moral values. He builds up a new world of thought and morality within himself and, armed with it, he faces the external world. Thereafter, he ei- ther succeeds in moulding his environment in the direction of his ideal or fails in the struggle and succumbs to reality as he finds it. It depends entirely on a man’s psychic constitution how far his doubt will extend and to what extent he would like to reconstruct his inner life, as a stepping stone towards the reconstruction of reality. In this respect, each individual is a law unto himself (or herself). But in one matter we stand on common ground. No great achievement, whether internal or external, is possible without a revolution in one’s life. And this revolution has two stages—the stage of doubt or scepticism and the stage of reconstruction. It is not absolutely necessary for revolutionising our practical life- whether individual or collective—that we should tackle the more fundamental problems, in relation to which we may very well have an agnostic attitude. From the very ancient times, both in the East and in the West, there have been schools of philosophy and ethics based on materialism or agnosticism. In my own case, however, the religious pursuit was a pragmatic necessity. The intellectual doubt which as- sailed me needed satisfaction and, constituted as I then was, that satisfaction would not have been possible without some rational philosophy. The philosophy which I found in Vive- kananda and in Ramakrishna came nearest to meeting my requirements and offered a basis on which to reconstruct my moral and practical life. It equipped me with certain principles with which to determine my conduct or line of action whenever any problem or crisis arose before my eyes. That does not mean that all my doubts were set at rest once for all. Unfortunately, I am not so unsophis tieatcd as that. Moreover, progress in life means a series of doubts fol- lowed by a series of attempts at resolving them. Perhaps the most bitter struggle I had with myself was in the domain of sex-instinct. It required practically no effort on my part to decide that I hould not adopt a career of self-preferment, but should devote my life to some noble cause. It required some effort to school myself, physically and mentally, for a life of service and unavoidable hardship. But it required an unceasing effort, which continues till today, to suppress or sublimate the sex—instinct. Avoidance of sexual indulgence and even control of active sex-desire is, I believe, comparatively easy to at- tain. But for one’s spiritual development, as understood by Indian Yogis and Saints, that is not enough. The men- tal background—the life of instinct and impulse—out of which sex-desire arises has to be trans formed. When this is achieved, a man or woman loses all sex-appeal and becomes impervious to the sex—appeal of others; he transcends sex altogether. But is it possible or is it only midsummer mad- ness? According to Ramakrishna it is possible, and until one attains this level of chastity, the highest reaches of spiritual consciousness remain inaccessible to him. Ramakrishna, we are told, was often put to the test by people who doubted his spirituality and mental purity, but on every occasion that he was thrown in the midst of attractive women, his reactions were non-sexual. In the company of women, he could feel as an innocent child feels in the presence of its mother. Ram- akrishna used always to say that gold and sex are the two greatest obstacles in the path of spiritual development and I took his words as gospel truth. In actual practice the difficulty was that the more I concentrated on the suppression or sublimation of the sex-instinct, the stronger it seemed to become, at least in the initial stages. Certain psychophysical exercises, includ- ing certain forms of meditation, were helpful in acquiring sex-control. Though I gradually made progress, the degree of purity which Ramakrishna had insisted on, seemed impossible to reach. I persisted in spite of ten1po1•ary iits of depression and remorse, little knowing at the time how natural the sex—instinct was to the human mind. As I de- sired to continue the struggle for the attainment of perfect purity, it followed that I had to visualise the future in terms of a celibate life. It is now a moot question whether we should spend so much of our time and energy in trying to eradicate or sublimate an instinct which is as inherent in human nature as in animal life. Purity and continenee in boy hood and in youth are of course necessary, but what Ramakrishna and Vivekananda demanded was much more than that, nothing less than complete transcending of sex-consciousness. Our stock of physical and psychic energy is, after all, limited. Is it worth while expending so much of it in an endeavour to conquer sex? Firstly, is complete conquest of sex, that is, a complete transeending or sublimation of the sexinstinct, indispensable to spiritual advancement? Secondly, even if it is, what is the relative importance of sex-control1 in a life which is devoted not so much to spiritual development as to social service--the greatest good of the greatest number? whatever the answer to these two questions may be, in the year 1913 when I joined College, it was almost a iixed idea with me that conquest of sex was essential to spiritual pro- gress, and that without spiritual uplift human life had little or no value. But though I was at grips with the demon of sex—instinct, I was still far from getting it under control. If I could live my life over again, I should not in all probability give sex the exaggerated importance which I did in my boyhood and youth. That does not mean that I regret what I did. If I did err in overemphasising the importance of sex—contro1 , I probably erred on the right side, for certain benefits did accrue therefrom ——though perhaps inci- dentally. For instance, it made me prepare myself for a life which did not follow the beaten track and in which there was no room fo1• ease, comfort, and self—aggrandisement. To resume 1ny story, I joined the Presidency College, then regarded as the premier College of the Calcutta Uni- versity. I had three months’ holiday before the colleges were to reopen after the summer vacation. But I lost no time in getting into touch with that group, an emissary of which I had met a year ago in Cuttack. A lad of sixteen usually feels lost in a big city like Calcutta, but such was not the case with me. Before the College opened I had made myself at home in Calcutta and found a number of friends of my choice. The first few days of College life were interesting to a degree. The standard of the Matriculation Examination being lower in Indian than in British Universities, Indian matriculates enter College earlier than British boys do. I was barely sixteen and a half years old when I walked into the precincts of Presidency College ; nevertheless, like so many others, I felt as if I was suddenly entering into man`s estate. That was indeed a pleasurable feeling. We had ceased to be boys and were now men. The first few days were spent in taking stock of our class—mates and sizing them up. Eve- rybody seemed to be anxious to have a look at those who had come out at the top. Hailing from a district town I was inclined to be shy and reserved at first. Some of the students coming from Calcutta schools, like the Hindu and Hare Schools, had a tendency to be snobbish and give themselves airs. But they could not carry on like that, because the majority of the higher places at the Matriculation Exami- nation had been captured by boys from other schools and, moreover, we were soon able to hold our own against the metropolitans. Before long I began to look out for men of my own way of thinking among my class-mates. Birds of a feather flock together-—so I managed to get such a group. It was unavoidable that we should attract a certain amount of at- tention because we consciously wore a puritanic exterior; but we did not care. In those days one could observe several groups2 among the College students, each with a distinctive character. There was firstly a group consisting of the sons of Rajas and rich folks and those who preferred to hobnob with them. They dressed well and took a dilettante interest in studies. Then there was a group of bookworms---well- meaning, goody-goody boys with sallow faces and thick glasses. Thirdly, there was a group similar to ours consist- ing of earnest boys who considered themselves the spiritual heirs of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Last but not least, there existed a secret group of revolutionaries about whose existence most of the students were quite unaware. The character of Presidency College itself was different from what it is now3 . Though it was a Government institution, the students as a rule were anything but loyalist. This was due to the fact that the best students were admitted into the College without any additional recommendation and regardless of their parentage. In the councils of the C.I.D.,4 the Presidency College students had a bad name——so ran the rumour. ‘1`he main hostel of the College, known as the Eden Hindu Hostel, was looked upon as a hot-bed of sedi- tion, a rendezvous of revolutionaries, and was frequently searched by the police. For the first two years of my College life I was greatly under the influence of the group referred to above and I developed intellectually during this period. The group consisted mainly of students, the leaders being two students of the Medical College.5 It followed generally the teachings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda but emphasised social service as a means to spiritual development. It interpreted social service not in terms of building hospitals and chari- table dispensaries, as the followers of Vivckananda were

  

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