India the Mother

  • By Mira Aditi
  • July 2002
  • 34823 views

Copyright  Mira Aditi                     

Dear email friend Pramod Kumar sent me another book titled, India the Mother. It is a selection of Mother’s Words from 1916 to 1973, which strikes at the heart of what ails India. Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s companion, shows how India can overcome her perilous situation and fulfill her destiny. Courtesy and copyright Mira Aditi, Mysore.

“India is a place where the fate of the earth will be decided. The world conflict, the ISSUE will be played out over India. The whirl of forces is here, over India---- It’s becoming urgent. And falsehood, duplicity---- oh, everything seems to be rising to the surface – its hideous---- It’s like a conflict between the forces that want to destroy the earth and the terrestrial transformation”. 1969.

“India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern mankind. India will be the land of its resurrection – the resurrection to a higher and truer life”.1968

For Mother, as for Sri Aurobindo, India is more than a piece of land, however lovable it may be; it is the Ancient Mother, a form of the Shakti who fashions worlds and ages as well as her recalcitrant children, and pursues her goal through progress, defect or even destruction. When the world is experiencing the last years of the West’s “long decomposition,” when we are being compelled to understand that Man is not the ultimate product of our Evolution and that this earth is not meant to satisfy our petty destructive greeds, the dormant strengths of India’s civilization are destined to shape the path of our future humanity and give the world the inner impetus and vision that the West’s fast-fading glitter failed to provide.

Extracts from the book are divided into three chapters – periods.

1. 1916 to 1950.
2. 1951 to1958.
3. 1959 to 1973.

1916 to 1950       

1938 ( ? )
(Mother was asked, “What is India?”)

India is not the earth, rivers and mountains of this land, neither is it a collective name for the inhabitants of this country. India is a living being, as much living as, say, Shiva. All the countries have their own spirit and if politically you make any changes, they would be unreal. For example, although Austria has become a part of Germany, still they are quite separate and the spirit of Austria is in agony. India is a goddess just as Shiva is a God. If she likes, she can manifest in human form.

It is France that can connect Europe with India. There are great spiritual possibilities for France. She will play a big part in spite of her present bad condition. It is through France that the spiritual message will reach Europe. That is why I chose France for my birth although I am not French.

August 28, 1945
(A letter to a disciple, following the use of the atomic bomb in Japan.)

The atomic bomb is in itself the most wonderful achievement and the sign of a growing power of man over the material Nature. But what is to be regretted is that this material progress and mastery is not the result of and in keeping with a spiritual progress and mastery which alone has the power to contradict and counteract the terrible danger coming from these discoveries. We cannot and must not stop progress but we must achieve it in equilibrium between the inside and the outside.

June 3, 1947
(Mother wrote this note after hearing on the radio the declaration of the Viceroy to Indian leaders, announcing Britain’s final transfer of power to a partitioned India.)

A proposal has been made for the solution of our difficulties in organizing Indian independence and it is being accepted with whatever bitterness or regret and searching’s of the heart by Indian leaders.
But do you know why this proposal has been made to us? It is to prove to us the absurdity of our quarrels.
And do you know why we have to accept these proposals? It is to prove to us the absurdity of our quarrels.

Clearly, this is not a solution; it is a test, an ordeal which, it we live it out in all sincerity, will prove to us that it is not by cutting a country into small bits that we shall bring about its unity and its greatness; it is not by opposing interests against each other that we can win for it prosperity; it is not by setting one dogma against another that we can serve the spirit of Truth. In spite of all, India has a single soul and while we have to wait till we can speak of an India one and indivisible, our cry must be:

LET THE SOUL OF INDIA
LIVE FOREVER!

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