NANDHIVARMAN OPINES

BREAKING NEWS THAT MEDIA WILL NEVER BREAK

 It is needless to state that ashrams in India are always in the habit of landing themselves in controversies, especially when the founders are no more, those who step into their footsteps cannot win battles within their minds to earthly temptations for power, money and women. In some places more than woman children are at receiving end. This general trend in India is mostly unreported in media, which finds only politicians as villains in real life and exonerates heads of ashrams from their sins on earth as if they have divine license to indulge in such crimes.

 Introduction : CNN-IBN, known for its bold coverage too had to bow before the influences exerted on them to kill a story titled Divine Trap which its own reporters meticulously caught in camera after 6 months of hard work within Aurobindo Ashram. After advertising the promotion for two days in eleventh hour it was stalled. I complained to Press Council of India that after feeling it is news worthy the CNN-IBN had informed Indian public about the telecast, then without assigning reason had killed the story, and I sought public had a right to know what made them stop the telecast. The reply of Press Council of India which is in visual states that they have jurisdiction over print media only and not electronic media. Technically CNN-IBN got reprieve from Press Council of India, but not morally or ethically. So many Court cases against Aurobindo Ashram go unreported, in spite of alerting crime reporters of High Courts and Supreme Courts. May be they are busy chasing politicians or may be they did the story which was killed , or may be before publication some old Maharaja must have passed a feudal order to kill that story.

DEPORTATION DEMAND IN HIGH COURT

Mr.Peter Heehs is an American historian living in Pondicherry for more than 35 years and is in charge of Aurobindo Ashram Archives. One bold lady Ms.Sureka Jain had filed a Writ Petition [W.P.24599 of 09] in the High Court of Madras seeking cancellation of his Visa and Deportation to USA. The petitioner’s petition had the Foreigner Regional Registration Officer Chennai and Foreigner Regional Registration Officer Puddicherry as first and second respondent. The third Respondent is the Managing Trustee of Aurobindo Ashram Mr.Manoj Das Gupta and the fourth respondent is Superintendent of Police North Puducherry. Now let us go in the Court and look what happened on 21 st December when the case was heard by the Chief Justice of High Court of Madras. As all reporters of High Court are aware , when the case was taken up lawyers of all parties were present. Mr.Peter Heehs in true style of politicians came with 25 or so supporters of him, all being foreigners who had come to express solidarity with him. He alone was allowed to enter the Court room while others were asked by the watch and ward to wait outside. The Secretary of Aurobindo Ashram, Mr.Mathriprasad, a Machiavellian manipulator of inside affairs came along with Mr.Peter Heeh’s counsel and Ashram Counsel.

The counsel of the petitioner, highlighted in the High Court that Mr.Peter Heehs has breached all visa conditions in connivance with the third respondent, namely Managing Trustee of Aurobindo Ashram. The petitioner through her counsel demanded that the first and second respondents should cancel the visa and initiate immediate steps to deport him. The notable plea before the High Court was that the fourth respondent, namely Superintendent of Police North of Puducherry has failed to execute the live arrest warrant pending against Mr.Peter Heehs in Puducherry.

The counsel representing Mr.Peter Heehs expressed before the Court that Peter Heehs is a world renowned scholar and historian. He further added that for 35 years he had been in Ashram spreading the teachings of Aurobindo Ghosh.

[ The readers of this blog can visit www.peterheehs.com to know about this scholar and his works ]

The counsel of Peter Heehs pointed out that the Managing Trustee of Ashram had  praised the invaluable contribution of Mr.Peter Heehs and that he enjoys the total support of the Managing Trustee of Aurobindo Ashram.

The legal counsel representing Manoj Das Gupta and Aurobindo Ashram Trust said that he was in full agreement with what had been said by the counsel of Mr.Peter Heehs, and the petitioner was motivated by personal animosity towards Peter Heehs as such the petitioner and her complaint had nothing to do with Aurobindo Ashram.

Legal Counsel representing Mr.Peter Heehs declared that the book “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” is most authentic and academic portrayal of the life of Aurobindo Ghosh that has emerged out of the Ashram and its Archives headed by Mr.Peter Heehs. At this point the Chief Justice was keen to have a copy of the book. To which the legal counsel for Peter Heehs submitted that neither he nor his client were allowed to carry  the copy of the book as the book has been proscribed within the territory of India. On hearing this the Chief Justice sarcastically remarked in that case the book could not be as wonderful as portrayed by the counsel.

After arguments by both sides the legal counsel for petitioner conveyed strongly that this case was not about the book in any way but was about the breach of visa conditions by Peter Heehs and Manoj Das gupta.

The Chief Justice asked the legal counsel of the FRRO authorities their views regarding visa extension and deportation of Peter Heehs. The counsel for FRRO declared that based on documents available to them they were of the view that no further extension of visa of Peter Heehs was possible. But they could not take a decision  his immediate deportation as there were several criminal cases pending against Peter Heehs in Orissa, and as such they would have to take into account before taking action for deportation or cancellation. They prayed for time to study and revert to the court on the matter.

Then the case was adjourned to January 18 th of 2010, on which date respondents were asked to submit written replies.

HEARING OF 19 th JANUARY 2010

Case instead of 18 th was taken up on 19^th. The legal counsel for petitioner pointed out in strongest terms, that the four respondents have failed so far to give written depositions/submissions to the court regarding specific plaints made by the petitioner. He conveyed to the Court that the four respondents are delaying/avoiding written submissions as their failures are indefensible in the matter. He pleaded to the Court that no further arguments should take place till written are made by the respondents.

The Chief Justice of Madras High Court ordered that the respondents to give written submissions on next date and posted to 2 nd February 2010.

MY APPEAL TO INDIAN AND INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISTS

This is a case about an American historian before High Court of Madras . Do you think that only cases involving politicians or film stars are news worthy, and this case should not be reported ?

The scholar wrote a book which is sold throughout the world, yet in India through Court orders it is banned. DMK, the parent party of Dravida Peravai launched the Right To Free Expression Agitation soon after it was founded by Aringnar Anna. We wanted ban lifted on all of our banned books. In emergency under dynamic leadership of Dr.Kalaignar M.Karunanithi, me and few writers fought in official organs of DMK defending free speech. So we are keen to debate what Peter Heehs wrote, and why it is banned in India.

At the same time what is happening within Aurobindo Ashram must be reported in media. Ashram has no Guru, hence it is not an Ashram as defined by Philosopher Aurobindo Ghosh. It is a Trust without a President, chair vacant for decades, and with no rules. My petition in local courts to frame proper rules for ashram trust was unnumbered but came up for nearly a decade before local court to die a natural death, hence one cannot pursue an unnumbered case for decade with 4 lawyers getting changed in mid way. The rule of law as it applies to Indian Prime Minister must apply to Trustees of Aurobindo Ashram. If Dr.Karan Singh thinks his clout can cover up , we say that democracy is strong, and everything should be debated in public domain, be what happens in Courts or closed door meetings.

Journalists of India, assert your rights  as you are custodians of free society.

N.Nandhivarman

General Secretary

Dravida Peravai

53 B Calve Subburayar Street

Puducherry 605001

August 4th, 2008 at 10:43 am

Getting beyond the Conventions of Biography � and Hagiography Too: A Post by Peter Heehs

The following post is by Peter Heehs, author of The Lives of Sri�Aurobindo

How do you write about a man who is known to some as a politician, to others as a poet and critic, to still others as a philosopher, and to a not inconsiderable number as an incarnation of God? This is one of the problems a biographer of Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950) has to face. Known in the West mostly to specialized audiences (people interested in South Asian history, literature, philosophy, and spirituality), Aurobindo is renowned in his native India as one of the most outstanding, and most many-sided men of the twentieth century. This has not prevented his legacy from being bitterly disputed.

Some historians and politicians see him as one of the forerunners of Mahatma Gandhi, others as a precursor of today�s aggressive Hindu nationalists. Admirers of his writings see his epic in iambic pentameter as the harbinger of a new kind of poetry, but most contemporary poets and critics dismiss it as a throwback to the Victorian era. The opinions of amateur and professional philosophers are polarized along the same lines. There is general agreement among students of religion that Aurobindo was a remarkable mystic, but few are willing to swallow the claim of some of his followers that he was an avatar, like Krishna, Chaitanya or Christ.

In The Lives of Sri Aurobindo I made Aurobindo�s many-sidedness the foundation of the structure of the book. Each of the five parts deals with one of his �lives�: the family man, the scholar, the revolutionary, the yogi and philosopher, and the spiritual guide. The first three go together pretty well, since the conventions of literary and political biography are similar. The writer is expected to present the significant events of a notable life in a chronological narrative, supporting the story with a scholarly apparatus based on primary sources. It was easy for me to do this when I wrote about Aurobindo�s life in politics. Discussing his role at the Surat Congress of 1907, for example, I was able to draw on government files, police reports, newspaper stories, Aurobindo�s reminiscences, and the reminiscences of others in English, Bengali, and Gujarati. But what was I to do with the information that a few days after the Congress, Aurobindo sat with a guru who taught him a meditation technique, and that, as Aurobindo later put it, �In three days � really in one, my mind became full of an eternal silence� � by which he meant the mental stillness and freedom from ego known as Nirvana.

It certainly is legitimate to cite Aurobindo�s own statements about this and other inner experiences. But personal reminiscences don�t count for much in scholarly biographies unless they are backed up by objective data and analysis. But what sort of objective data was I to look for? (Nobody knew what was going on in Aurobindo�s head.) If I wanted to discuss this inner event, did I have to switch (in mid stream) from the conventions of scholarly biography to the conventions of spiritual biography, that is, hagiography? Or could I get beyond the conventions of both genres?

Hagiography in its original sense, writing about the lives of saints, has been practiced since the first century CE (the Gospels, the Buddhacarita). What distinguishes the hagiographic from the critical approach is not that hagiographers are sympathetic to their subjects, but that they base their accounts on unverifiable assumptions that are likely to be accepted only by members of the discursive community that they belong to. Few modern non-Catholic readers are likely to take seriously the claims of Angelo Pastrovicchi that Joseph of Cupertino could fly. On the other hand, Pastrovicchi�s eighteenth-century work remains a vital source for any anyone wishing to write about the Italian saint. A scholar may reject levitation as inconsistent with what we know about gravity but still accept that Joseph had visions, as Pastrovicchi claims.

Aurobindo spent the last forty years of his life immersed in the practice of yoga. He wrote about his yogic experiences in a diary, the Record of Yoga, and in letters to his followers. Are these the sort of sources that a scholarly biographer can cite? It certainly would be uncritical to accept at face value all that Aurobindo wrote about his inner life; but it would be a different sort of negligence to refuse to consider accounts of inner experience a priori grounds, or to explain them away according to the assumptions of one or another social-scientific orthodoxy.

�

I think that William James had the right approach to this sort of material. �One cannot criticize the vision of a mystic,� he wrote in �A Pluralistic Mystic,� �one can but pass it by, or else accept it as having some amount of evidential weight.� I couldn�t simply close my eyes to Aurobindo�s accounts of his mystical experiences, so I accepted them as evidence of a vivid, if sometimes enigmatic inner life. I wonder however whether James got it right when he said we �cannot criticize the vision of a mystic.� Many spiritual traditions � the Catholic Christian and Tibetan Buddhist, for example � recognize a distinction between true and misleading visions. I don�t have the necessary discernment to criticize Aurobindo�s visions as visions; but I recognize � as Aurobindo himself did � that inner visions and experiences are open to different interpretations.

�

What about the assertion that Aurobindo was an avatar? I can�t say that the question interests me very much. Aurobindo never claimed the distinction for himself, and I don�t think anyone alive is in a position to say one way or the other. The Aurobindo that interests me is the one who turned from a life of hectic action to a life of contemplation, but was able, during his forty-year retirement, to write a shelf full of books on philosophy, political theory, and textual criticism, along with thousands of letters and, yes, that epic in iambic pentameter. People will continue to differ about the significance of his work, but its very mass is there for all to see. His life as a yogi and spiritual leader is more difficult to quantify, but it certainly will not be forgotten soon. I tried to do justice to all sides of this versatile man, but to do so I had to be unconventional in more ways than one.

Posted by Columbia University Press in Asian Studies, Postings by Authors, Religion

��[ The impact of Thirumoolar who wrote 3000 poems in his Thirumanthiram�and the French philosopher Paul Richard's [the ex-husband of Mirra Alfasa] writings had on Aurobindo Ghosh should be areas of�research Universities must undertake… N.Nandhivarman]