![]() ![]() ![]() “We in India fell under the influence of the foreigner’s Maya which completely possessed our souls. No other measure could have stirred national feeling so deeply or roused it so suddenly from the lethargy of previous years.” Nevinson puts it in his book, The New Spirit in India: “He (Sri Aurobindo) regarded the Partition of Bengal as the greatest blessing that had ever happened to India. Sri Aurobindo hailed the Partition as a blessing in disguise, for he saw in it the hammering blows of benign Providence beating the torpid nation into a new life, a new aspiration, and a new shape. Besides, the full significance of the manifold political life of Sri Aurobindo cannot be properly grasped until we put it in its true context, and study it against the tossing background of the national resurgence, which the Partition quickened and intensified on a wider scale. A long night of serfdom, oppression, cultural emasculation and economic strangulation, seemed to end for ever, and the first roseate glow of a new dawn of national liberation flushed the eastern horizon.Īs many Indians, let alone foreigners, are not fully aware of the causes of the Partition of Bengal and the national forces that sprang up in reaction to it, we propose to pause upon it for a while before proceeding to take up the narrative of Sri Aurobindo’s political activities in the post-Partition period of the history of Bengal and India. The Partition of Bengal was the reawakening and self-affirmation of a very ancient nation. Since the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which put its seal upon the fate of India and gave her over to the possession of the British for about two hundred years, nothing had happened in the country, not even the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, of comparable political significance till the Partition of Bengal on the 16th of October, 1905. Without suffering there can be no growth…” We are iron upon his anvil and the blows are showering upon us not to destroy but to re-create. ![]() What is this storm that is so mighty and sweeps with such fury upon us? And I said in my heart, ‘It is God who rides abroad on the wings of the hurricane, it is the might and force of the Lord that manifested itself and his almighty hands that seized and shook the roof so violently over our heads today.’ A storm like this has swept also our national life… Repression is nothing but the hammer of God that is beating us into shape so that we may be moulded into a mighty nation and an instrument for his work in the world. I saw it come, I saw the striding of the storm-blast and the rush of the rain, and as I saw it an idea came to me. It has never so happened in the history of a nation, nor will it so happen in the history of India. “…It is a strange idea, a foolish idea… to think that a nation which has once risen, once has been called up by the voice of God to rise, will be stopped by mere physical repression. ![]()
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