Opinion | Why Sri Aurobindo’s Uttarpara Speech Is So Relevant In West Bengal Today

In a widely publicised debate at the Calcutta Club recently, lawyer J Sai Deepak made a reference to Aurobindo Ghosh’s (Sri Aurobindo) famous Uttarpara Speech.

The speech, delivered on May 30, 1909, shortly after his release from Alipore Jail, is a treatise which did not just sound the conch shell of Hindu nationalism from Bengal’s soil for the whole of Bharat, it has become deeply relevant for the decaying state as it goes to elections this year. Torn by decades of deracination and stagnation under the communists, and appeasement of Islamists and wanton corruption by the Mamata Banerjee government now, West Bengal seems to have forgotten its profound spiritual legacy from which sprung its fierce nationalistic instincts.

Which makes every word

of Sri Aurobindo’s Uttarpara speech so pertinent. He says:

“We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed but lived. This is the dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from the old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself, and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.”

In his speech, Aurobindo talks about his transformation during his days in prison. He begins by recalling the cloud of agnostic doubts upon his arrest, questioning why God did not protect him and let him continue his nationalist quest.

But in solitude, God speaks to him through the Gita, teaching him to surrender self-will, renounce desire for fruits of work, and see Narayan in all beings. Aurobindo describes visions where the jail, guards, judge, and prosecutor all appear as forms of Vasudev.

The Vasudev, the Narayan, the Krishna in him tells him:

“When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall rise. When it is said India shall be great, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world.”

The communists who ruled the state for 34 years rewrote history to the point that textbooks scorned the very spiritual roots of Bengal’s nationalism. If the Left Front threw Bengal’s revolutionary inspiration from Sanatan Dharma into the pit of silence, the TMC wants to bury that strain.

But this is precisely the moment that West Bengal and the rest of India needs to rekindle that desire to completely surrender to the Divine Will, and again fearlessly take up nation-building as God’s work.

As Sri Aurobindo says at the end of his speech: “It is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. The Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows… The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism.”

Abhijit Majumder is the author of the book, ‘India’s New Right’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.