Netaji and Sri Aurobindo: Claims and counterclaims over legacies

Political competition has curdled the simple pleasure of straightforward pride in the achievements of national icons, the latest being the controversies over who exerted what pressure and why to get the Narendra Modi government to install a temporary hologram of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on the vacant pedestal at India Gate and the "merging" of the Amar Jawan Jyoti after its removal to the National War Memorial where another eternal flame was already alight. The timing of the fights deflects attention away from the moments that deserve reflection to petty politicking.

In the year of the Amrit Mahotsav marking 75 years of India's independence, the hurly-burly of celebrations ranging from rangoli and deshbhakti geet competitions and the bevvy of birth anniversaries of great national leaders, it is noteworthy that some are greater than others. It is not possible nor seemly to measure what makes some greater than others because all the great national leaders and patriots and the less noteworthy and virtually nameless others made immense sacrifices and contributed to the cause of freedom.

The greats do not eclipse each other; contemporary politics does. However, the politics of greatness and appropriating legacy creates hierarchies; who gets more public attention in terms of the controversies that have erupted vis-à-vis the quieter, even if a contentious commemoration of others contributes to creating perceptions about the relative ranking of the greats.

This is the year of Bose's 125th birth anniversary, as it is Sri Aurobindo's 150th. Both were ardent nationalists and contributed in their own unique ways to the fight for freedom. Both succeeded in challenging the status quo within the Congress and broke away from the party. The similarities are superficial because the impact of Bose and Aurobindo contributed to the freedom movement but did so in different ways.

To pronounce, as Union Home Minister Amit Shah did that neither Bose nor Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel received "due recognition, respect and importance for years" is an exercise in scoring a political point against the Congress and one set of interpretations of the history of India's freedom movement. To claim that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is correcting the skew and the wrong done to Bose is also part of settling scores against the Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

The BJP has an axe to grind; as a party with multiple avatars but short on lineage, it still falls short of having directly supplied a galaxy of participants to the freedom movement. That explains its particular politics of appropriating the 'neglected' leaders in order to give them the respect and importance they deserved. If this were simple corrective action, the flavour of settling scores would not be quite so emphatic.

Recognition, respect and importance of political legacies are not a simple matter of statues, holograms and flames. Legacies are complicated by the expectations and aspirations of the people who bequeathed their work to the nation. Bose had a specific set of prescriptions for India's future as an independent country beset by poverty, illiteracy, underdevelopment and the burden of British imperialism.

So did other leaders, including Aurobindo, hailed as "the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity." Through his active participation in the freedom movement was short-lived, most historians argue that it spanned less than a decade, his influence on Indian nationalism had a long afterlife. "With Aurobindo, Indian politics crossed the Rubicon; the religious dimension became an integral part of the political scene of the country," MK Haldar wrote in his assessment of the contribution of the mystic and leader's political thoughts on the subject of freedom.

The religious dimension of Aurobindo was not the Hindutva politics of the BJP-RSS. Scholars like Sugata Bose are insistent that the Uttarpara address of Aurobindo is "a speech hugely misunderstood by historians thoroughly imbued with the secular ideology of the postcolonial Indian state." In that speech, Aurobindo declared, even as he signed out of actively leading the political movement, "that this movement is not a political movement and that nationalism is not politics but a religion, a creed, a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another way. I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, faith; I say that it is the Sanatana Dharma which for us is nationalism."

Experts will probably continue to examine what Aurobindo meant by Sanatana Dharma and nationalism. For the rest, Aurobindo was a political leader. He was also a philosopher, a poet, a mystic and perhaps India's first modern-day global guru. Therefore, it is time, on the occasion of his 150th anniversary for his devotees living in and around the Ashram, as well as the otherwise disengaged citizens living in Puducherry and around the sprawling acres of the still incomplete plan for the development of Auroville and its futuristic design, to reflect on what has been achieved and what remains to be done. It is also time when the Government of India has to assess its role in developing Auroville's infrastructure and how far the project, started in 1968, has moved towards completion.

The controversy around Auroville's infrastructure and development is a clash between those who live within the premises and those outside it, be it the government or the neighbourhood locals. The usual elements of a land mafia, vested interests and intrepid devotees or followers of the great leader are all part of the complicated face off. The original plan for the place envisaged a community of 50,000, "a city of relatively dense urban proportions," the progress has been slower than a slow crawl. Since the Centre is invested in the Auroville Foundation and it is public money that is being spent, there is an obligation to get on with the work and complete what has to be done to implement the plan in full.

Political leaders bequeathed their legacies of work and sacrifice, vision and ideals to the nation. It is perhaps time to abandon hollow worship at the feet of imposing statues or holograms and get down to the business of accounting what independent India has done to fulfil the expectations and aspirations of the greats and the lowly who participated in the freedom movement.

Common to every participant, cutting across the spectrum of ideological positions, was a simple promise to give people a life of dignity as part of a free and independent nation. That promise remains unfulfilled as hunger, poverty, discrimination, repression impact the lives of the overwhelming majority, even as the rich get richer. Claiming to have put Bose on a pedestal as a significant achievement hardly comes close to fulfilling his vision for independent India.

Including yoga in the UN calendar of days celebrated globally does not fulfil Aurobindo's vision for a great and moral nation, nor is that vision fulfilled by completing the unfinished business of developing Auroville. These are distracting sideshows that divert attention from the basics of ensuring that every Indian lives a life of dignity.

(The writer is a journalist based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

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