Debashri Banerjee

Sri Aurobindo's thesis of Village Reconstruction & Resistance Debashri Banerjee

To provide a proper understanding about Sri Aurobindo's idea of politics we need to examine his ideas and their implications meticulously without any preconceived bias. In the present century to speak about politics and spiritualism in the same breath would undoubtedly sound most ridiculous and absurd. It is hard to believe that politics and spirituality can ever have any sort of inter-relatedness. But in the view of Sri Aurobindo, politics remains instrumental for bringing the destined spiritual freedom of India. He declared that India should gain its past spiritual mastery lacked by several materialistic nations like Europe. Hence for the attainment of spiritual liberty of India, securing its political freedom seemed indispensable to Sri Aurobindo. However, in spite of the inherent spiritual overtone in his social-political thought I have tried to establish Sri Aurobindo's viewpoint among the most relevant ones. Sri Aurobindo did not provide any thoroughly worked out model for social-political philosophy. Nor any such attempt has been made to develop a full-fledged political and social theory out of Sri Aurobindo's writings. The present dissertation picks up some of the political tools that were frequently used by the colonized subjects and tries to explore how such practices were viewed by Sri Aurobindo basing upon certain normative presuppositions. The vision of a better polity was closely tied up with the idea of a better society with well-educated and morally enlightened citizens with unity of hearts. This discussion may be viewed as an attempt to vindicate after Sri Aurobindo how to establish a link between the hardcore social-political and the supposedly esoteric spiritual theories. Is there ultimately any conflict at all between these two domains - political and spiritual - is another question that I have also touched upon in my book.