Aurobindo's views on Modern Indian Culture

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University Bhavnagar

Smt. S. B. Guardy Department of English

Topic: Aurobindo’s views on Modern Indian culture

Paper: 4: Indian Writing In English

Written by: Poojaba G. Jadeja

Roll No.: 25

Year: 2013, Semester: 1^st

Aurobindo’s views on Modern Indian Culture

Introduction of Sri Aurobindo:

   Sri Aurobindo is the one incontestably outstanding figure in Indo – Anglican literature. Aurobindo in so far as, he was a writer, was not only a writer but poet, the teacher, the fighter or the patriot, the yogi, the philosopher, the prophetic engineer of Life Divine. India recognised him not only as accomplished ‘yogi’ but as an Avatar of new age. 

Views on Modern Indian Culture:

     Sri Aurobindo presents his views on modern Indian culture. He gives views about Indian civilization and also its revolutionary future. S. R. Sharma presents Sri Aurobindo’s views on different subject in his book-“Life and Works Of Sri Aurobindo”. We can summarise his views that way...

     Sri Aurobindo replied on the culture issue from the view point of the past and the valuation of different cultures as acquired contributions to the growth of the human race, that Indian civilization has been the form and expression of a culture as great as any of the historic civilizations of mankind, great in religion, great in philosophy, great in philosophy, great in science, great in thought of many kinds great in literature, art and poetry, craft and trade and commerce.

     From the view point of the present and the fruitful workings of the progressive time-spirit, we can say that even here in spite of our downfall, all is not in the debit side.

Human Progress:

     In spite of all drawbacks and in spite of downfall the spirit of Indian culture, its central ideas, its best ideals have still their message for humanity and not for India alone. Besides the comparisons of the past and the needs of the present there is too view point of the ideal future.

     The very idea of progress is an illusion to some minds; for they imagine that the race moves constantly in a circle. When we look too much upon the highlights of the past and forget its shadows or concentrate too much on the dark spaces of the present and ignore its powers of light and its aspect of happier promise, but that is an illusion creates in our mind.

      Human progress is very much an adventure through the unknown, full of surprises and baffling obstacles; it stumbles often, it misses its way at many points it codes here in order to gain there it references its steps frequently in order to get more widely forward.

Western civilization:

     Western civilization is proud of its successful modernism. But it has lost in the eagerness of its gains and much that which men of old strove towards that it has not even accomplish.

     Aurobindo would be overcome and stupefied rather than surprised and charmed by the enormous stir and pulsation of modern life. But at the same time he would draw back repelled from its unashamed mass of ugliness and vulgarity, its unchastened external utilitarianisms, its vitality riots and the morbid exaggeration and unsoundness of many of its growths. He would see in it much ill-disguised evidence of the uneliminated survival of the triumphant barbarian.

     An unbiased view will prefer to regard this age of civilization as an evolutionary stage, an imperfect but important turn of human advance. There is not only a greater generation of knowledge and more through use of intellectual power activity in multiple fields.

     Sri Aurobindo tried to differentiate between the philosophical systems of the West and East, between western metaphysics and the yoga of the Indian Saints. With his faculty of reason that man tries to grasp the name and nature of reality. But he is himself in it and of it and therefore he cannot stand aside and seize it in its unity and totality. These are also his views on reality.

Views on Civilized India:

     Sri Aurobindo’s views are important as it raised with great point and power the whole question of the survival of Indian civilization and the inevitability of a war of cultures.

     In the stupendous rush of change which is coming on the human world as a result of the present tornado of upheaval ancient India’s culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish forever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping.

     It is for India now to recover herself, defend culture existence against the alien penetration preserve her distinct spirit, essential principle and characteristic forms for her own salvation and the total welfare of the human race.

     At the end, Aurobindo writes about India, civilized India, its culture its evolutionary future. His views open out a prospect beyond the battle of cultures.