Volume VII, Issue 1
Author: Amal Kiran
Editor’s Note: Launching of a fortnightly paper called Mother India in 1949 was one of the ways to disseminate the The New Ideal that Sri Aurobindo placed before a New India that was raising itself to a new light after a long dark night of colonial rule. India’s rise was never meant for India alone, but before she could give to the world her spiritual light she had to discover it for herself. This was the work she had to do for the coming New Age.
The specific aim of Mother India was to examine all concerns and problems related to the multi-faceted contemporary life and explore solutions in the light of the highest spiritual ideal of integrating matter and spirit. In the very first issue (February 19, 1949, Vol. 1, Issue 1, p. 1), Amal Kiran, the editor, described the paper’s objectives under the title ‘What is Mother India?’ The most remarkable part of this writing is that it also provides a to-the-point description of the essence of Mother India, Ma Bharati – “the face and form of our presiding genius”. We feature an extract from this writing in the current issue.
India is more than a collection of human beings: India is a living entity, a presiding genius, the one self of all these human beings and the one consciousness that is at work in them. You cannot make a nation with a mere aggregate of individuals. A nation is a single being. It is this single being, the life of our life, that we have to serve. It is the one Mother of whom we are the myriad children. Until we realise this, we shall never achieve greatness.
Our first requirement is to live for and look up to a presiding genius which animates us, which unites us, which alone has made our culture and civilisation persist through thousands of years and which alone can make us fulfil our destiny.
Watch:
The Master Idea of India
The sense of India the living Mother is what we are aiming to kindle everywhere in this country. But to kindle this sense is not to answer the whole need of the times. Every country has a presiding genius, whether openly acknowledged or not. But every country has predominant qualities, a typical nature, a central function. We must realise what exactly is the face and form of our presiding genius. What is Mother India?
Mother India is manifold. Art, philosophy, science, politics, industry—all these she has been known for through the ages. Yet brighter than her fame for these has been her fame for seeking the Godhead secret within earth’s life. Her art, philosophy, science, politics and industry have been inspired directly or indirectly by this seeking. And unless we realise that Mother India is a spiritual light we shall either fumble in the dark or run after delusive gleams. We cannot fulfil our destiny without following the instinct of divinity in us.
Does this mean we must be religious zealots, fanatics of a creed? Certainly not. The spiritual light that is Mother India is wider than religiosity. It has room for a thousand different ways of worship. Inasmuch as it is not limited to a narrow sectarianism, it makes for a secular view of the State.
But by “secular”, we must not understand indifference to the instinct of divinity. To be secular can be for Indians nothing except being widely spiritual rather than narrowly religious. The instinct of divinity we must never lose hold on: without it, we shall be false to our whole historical development and to the power that has made us great in the past and led to our survival while all other ancient civilisations have died. It shows us our “swabhava”, our real fountainhead of action. If we deny our “swabhava,” we shall miss our goal.
Also read:
India Between Memory and Myth:
Resurrecting the Future of Sri Aurobindo’s Dream
There is, of course, in every nation the instinct of divinity. It is, however, not the master-instinct and has not played so fundamental a part. That is why, more than any other nation, we Indians have to keep it burning if we are to fulfil ourselves and be to the entire world a source of illumination. Many things today work to dim this instinct.
Perhaps the most dangerous of all things is the idea assiduously spread that it is unworldly and impoverishes earth-life. We have to admit that there has been a trend in India to look too much beyond the world and renounce earth-life. But it is not the only trend, and spirituality can be dynamic as so often spirituality has been in India. The full flowering, the full richness, of life on earth is what we aim at when we point to the instinct of divinity as the “swabhava” of the Indian nation.
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The Godhead secret within man is the truth of man and most keenly the truth of the Indian nation, the truth that has to be lived out as much as possible.
~ Design: Beloo Mehra
