Fundamentalism and the Future

Indian Political Thought

A Reader

Edited by Aakash Singh, Silika Mohapatra

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• ISBN: 978-0-415-56294-2
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 31st December 2009 (Available for Pre-order)
• Pages: 312

Table of Contents

Foreword Amartya Sen Introduction: What is Contemporary Indian Political Philosophy? Aakash Singh and Silika Mohapatra Part 1: Provocation 1. The Poverty of Indian Political Theory Bhikhu Parekh Part 2: Evocation 2. Gandhi’s Ambedkar Ramachandra Guha 3. The Quest for Justice: The Gandhian Perspective Neera Chandhoke 4. The Making of the Mahatma Shahid Amin 5. In Search of Integration and Identity: Indian Muslims since Independence Mushirul Hasan Part 3: Secularization 6. Is Secularism Alien to Indian Civilization? Romila Thapar 7. Secularism Revisited: Doctrine of Destiny or Political Ideology? T.N. Madan 8. The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism Rajeev Bharghava Part 4: Consecration 9. Sikh Fundamentalism: Translating History into Theory Harjot Oberoi 10. The Blindness of Insight: Why Communalism in India is about Caste Dilip M. Menon 11. Dalit Political Theologyand Its Reception in Indian Academia Aakash Singh Part 5: Modernization 12. Gandhi, Newton and the Enlightenment Akeel Bilgrami 13. Scientific Temper: Arguments for an Indian Enlightenment Meera Nanda 14. Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity Sudipta Kaviraj Part 6: Revolution 15. Reconstructing Childhood: A Critique of the Ideology of Adulthood Ashis Nandy 16. Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism Gyan Prakash 17. The Commitment to Theory Homi Bhabha Part 7: Emancipation 18. Justice of Human Rights in Indian Constitutionalism Upendra Baxi 19. Imperial Parody Ratna Kapur 20. Righting Wrongs Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Part 8: Conclusion 21. Contemporary Political Philosophy in India: Concluding Remarks on Concepts East andWest Partha Chatterjee

About the Author(s)

Aakash Singh is Research Professor at the Center for Ethics and Global Politics at Luiss University, Rome, Italy.

Silika Mohapatra is Research Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Delhi, India.

Savitra > Savitra on Auroville

Savitra
Savitra received his name from the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and lived at the Ashram and Auroville, where he spent 21 years (1969–1990) apprenticing “applied spirituality,” community-building, and environmental restoration in the interface of first-world/third-world realities. In 1990, he relocated to America where he currently lives in Ashland, Oregon. He is an extended research associate with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and has been a guest on Michael Toms’ New Dimensions Radio as well as a presenter at numerous conferences, universities, and institutes including Esalen, Matthew Fox’s University of Creation Spiritualiy, the IONS 30th Anniversary Conference, and What is Enlightenment journal’s community retreat center. He has written a number of books, the latest being An Evolutionary Agenda for the Third Millennium, published by White Cloud Press. He may be reached via savitra AT earthlink DOT net. → Savitra shares his thoughts on The Lives of Sri Aurobindo and the surrounding controversy.

Luc Venet on Satprem

As the first volumes of the Agenda were being published, a renowned French literary critic, André B., who had praised Satprem’s books in the Parisian press, suddenly wrote to me to convey his “great distress” before some of Satprem’s plethora of comments about the “horror and darkness of the world,” in which he saw mainly a bout of paranoia. I immediately wrote back to reassure him and convey an informed denial about his diagnosis based on “my profound knowledge of Satprem” etc. In the back of my mind, I was shocked that someone so “intelligent” could question Satprem.

Now if I set my mind on the two “revolutionary” encounters in my life — the first with Mother, the second with Satprem — a drastic contrast between them appears. After the first few seconds of bewildered stupefaction in Mother’s presence, under her intense gaze, and the sort of stupefied state I experienced afterward for several days, I can see today that this first encounter with Mother could well have ended up as it began, with nothing more than this stupefaction. In other words, it was UP TO ME to make it into something else, for the simple reason that NOTHING was demanded or expected of me, no commitment of any kind. More precisely, the “demand” would have to come from me, from my own depths, or else it would not exist at all. In Mother’s presence, I was not confronted by a specific “context” or by life’s “contingencies”; I was confronted by myself.

In my encounter with Satprem, on the contrary, I was not asked to take a stand toward myself but toward him and his inner world, toward his quarrels with the Ashram, toward his history of dissent and rebellion. Right there and then, I was summoned to accept unconditionally this whole “package” — or be on my way. At bottom, the real “fault” with Satprem may be that he lead you AWAY from yourself — ultimately to replace yourself with him.

next: The Tragedy

Before closing, I have one last thought for all those friends and comrades whom I sense are still asking the obligatory questions about Satprem: Was he good or evil? Was he right or wrong? All those who await or beg for a sign, a gesture, a letter that will assuage their fear, reassure them about their destiny, give them self-confidence. I have known this sad and sorrowful condition well enough not to cast the first stone. So I just want to say: Get out of the cage; get out of the thoughts that go round and round in circle, which feed on you and cannot find an answer; throw yourself, instead, in the one worthy conquest, without thinking, without intermediary : Sri Aurobindo.

[It must be said that the preceding text was written between November 2006 and February 2007, well before Satprem’s demise in April 2007. I found it useful — and still relevant today — to reveal this story, not so much because of the context in which it took place, but perhaps more because of the human experiences of a broader nature it entails.]

—Luc Venet

Someone recently cited an example of how there was such a disconnect between his generation and that of his children. While his wife prayed to Lord Krishna every morning and he too would propitiate the gods and goddesses as always done by his ancestors, his son was only interested in a way to get to New York and be able to live the life of those he saw in his Hollywood films—he didn’t pray, had no personal favourites amongst the wide selection of deities and had imbibed none of the humility that a god-loving and god-fearing man such as the father himself possessed. What made it utterly scary for this gentleman was that the dream was not of a teenager but of a man well in his 30s. He asked whether this is the full outcome of so much of history and tradition that the family proudly upheld? He blamed the television for most of his woes and felt globalization was a bad word, signifying chaos and degeneration. The English language according to him was culpable of great upheavals in Indian society and the lack of Indianness in current Bollywood films was only reiterating all the other forces of evil that had descended on Indian soil.

It is not easy to accept change and even more difficult when it is under our own roof. Certainly globalization has its defects and western culture can seem nightmarish for many; English has distanced us from our roots and Bollywood or Hollywood are not where we learn our finest and most enlightening lessons.  Obviously the man was very disturbed but perhaps there was just cause to some of the things that he had an objection to. But the one fact of life which he completely missed was that God does not run in our genes. No matter how saintly our family tree is or how religious our parents are or how spiritual the atmosphere in which we grow up may be, it doesn’t mean anything because He is not a hand-me-down; He is not part of a DNA strand; He is not compulsory curriculum. He devises when to open the window in the souls of His devotees so that they may see Him; He decides when to accept them.

And so, whether the vexed father gains fruit of generations of ancestral worship or the day dreaming son stumbles across the Truth while chasing the American dream, no one can say. The only thing we can say is: You cannot pass God on.

Until the next time…

Sri Aurobindo Society
Apr 2009

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The Lost Cow Nandlal Bose

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© Lori Tompkins

13 March 2009 

After reading the article I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be a godsend if those whose will it has been to protect the yoga and legacy of Sri Aurodindo and the Mother would make such a sincere and public inquiry into the question of what central flaw and subsequent series of mistakes have led to longtime ashramite, Peter Heehs’s betrayal of their cause and to the crisis this betrayal has created in the Integral Yoga community? Would any be willing to recognize and admit that such a flaw exists and inevitably marches them towards collapse from the inside out?’

Those who protest against Heehs and his book The Lives of Sri Aurobindo would like to think that it is only Heehs who is at fault … only Heehs’s mindset and view that has allowed the divergence from and falsification of Sri Aurobindo’s yogic path and its real effect in the world. Yet both they and Heehs form two sides of the same mistake. Both are focused on (in Heehs’s case by de-sanctifying and in the Aurobindonian fundamentalists’ case by protecting) the past accomplishments of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother while rejecting or remaining oblivious to the living present that assures the future of their divine Work. Despite evidence to the contrary presented by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea), Heehs and Aurobindonian fundamentalists share the belief that the descent of transformative knowledge brought into the world by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, stopped with their departures. Certain of this belief, post-1973 they have practiced and/or taught the yoga with no living guide other than their own hearts and minds. They have trusted that the spirit of Sri Aurobindo and the will of the Mother would manifest through them sufficiently enough to sanctify their choices and their creations.

      One of the first ominous by-products of this belief was the choice to diverge from the Mother’s blueprints in the building of Her own temple. The Mother’s vision was treated as if it were something that her students could improve upon and in the end the sacred (truly Vedic) measurements she gave for this ‘Symbol of the Future Realisation’ were disregarded by those in charge of the construction. A similar disregard was displayed in the choice of an Ashram press manager to destroy the first press run of Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet’s book, The New Way, Volumes 1 & 2, which detailed not only the truth, the consciousness-force and the beauty of the Mother’s original temple design, but also the necessity of Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth to fulfill the formula of a four-part descent as the sure foundation of the ‘rise and establishment of a Gnostic society’. The rejection of this book is equivalent to rejecting the vision of how the Supramental Descent continues to evolve, progress, succeed, uplift and illuminate the world. > Peter Heehs’s Betrayal and an Ashram in Upheaval  >  5:58 PM