Sri Aurobindo Birth Anniversary : India Needs Spiritual Nationalism

India’s tryst with spirituality is known since time immemorial, but amid beatings of celebratory drums of country’s 70 years of Independence, this has gone somewhere in the background:For example ,Birth day celebrations of Vedic seer Sri Aurobindo yesterday hardly drew any  attention.

Flagging concerns over such a neglect, eminent educationist Pritam B Sharma says that there was no denying fact that Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous Independence Day speech of India’s tryst with destiny is in core of people hearts, but the contributions of such seers in country’s path to freedom and spirituality can’t be glossed over.

According to him,Today when India is struggling to resolve the puzzle of its cultural identity, it would be important to ponder deeply into the spiritual foundation of India’s culture and discover the vital unity in the vast diversity of India’s cultural heritage so well depicted in its multi lingual, multi-religious community. 


"It does not mean that you forget your responsibility to your own Motherland, rather work relentlessly to make it a heaven on planet earth as ordained by Lord Rama in Ramayana “Janani Janma Bhumaschya Swargadapi Gariyasi”. Spirituality unites and inspires human beings to rise above petty regional and national consideration and proclaim the whole world as one family as in “Vashudha eve Kutumbakam” in the Vedas.

"We need Spititual Nationalism to create India of the dream of the founding fathers of our great spiritual civilisation":, says Prof Sharma, himself a noted Scholar on Science and Spirituality.

“Yesterday, while celebrating the Independence Day of India, the people of India, also media almost forgotten the Vedic Seer of our modern times, Sri Aurobindo, the freedom fighter, philosopher, the linguists of the highest order and above all a futurist who envisioned free India to glow its magnificence of both material prosperity and spiritual enlightenment together to show a way forward for everlasting peace and happiness, the terrestrial aim of mankind. “

For Sri Aurobindo, freedom was eminent as the Mother of Civilisation could not be enslaved for long as the call for wakening was already given by Swami Vivekananda, way back in 1893 at Chichago. But for Aurobindo, freedom alone was not the aim, unless we rebuild the India of the dream of the founding fathers of this great civilisation that laid its foundation on spirituality. No wonder that India attained freedom on 15^th August, the birthday of this great Vedic Seer who was born to lead the renaissance of the spiritual India, He said.

“Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it”- Sri Aurobindo in his writings published in his famous volume on “The Foundations of Indian Culture”, wrote Prof PB Sharma, President of Association of Indian Universities, AIU currently the Vice Chancellor of Amity university Gurugram in his well-researched paper on India- A Spiritual Civilisation, abstracted at length in the chapter on Science and Spiritual Quest in his recently published memoirs Path to Excellence.  

“India’s central conception is that of the Eternal, the Spirit here incased in matter, involved and immanent in it and evolving on the material plane by rebirth of the individual up the scale of being till in mental man it enters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma.

 Its social system is built upon this conception; her philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her art and literature have the same upward look; her whole dharma or law of being is founded upon it”, said Sri Aurobindo, while deciphering the foundations of Indian Culture in the early 20th century from his abode in Pondicherry. 

The seer further proclaims about India that “Progress she admits, but this spiritual progress, not the externally self-unfolding process of an always more and more prosperous and efficient material civilization. It is her founding of life upon this exalted conception and her urge towards the spiritual and the eternal that constitute the distinct value of her civilization”. 

India thus is not yet another nation but a Spiritual Civilization. Spiritual Civilization has been and still is the greatest strength of our country and is deeply embedded in the life philosophy of millions of Indian people in India and around the world that inspires them for a perfect harmony between material prosperity and spiritual enlightenment. 

We need to rediscover this innate strength of our culture and make it a life current of this great civilization that has the necessary potential to provide the solutions for ever lasting peace, natural harmony between man and Mother Nature, harmony between various religions and faith, assuring both the astounding material and spiritual progress without sacrificing the interest of man and Mother Nature, as unveiled by Sri Aurobindo as the spiritual foundation of India’s culture that provided it the continuity and vitality to sustain its march of the path of peace and prosperity from time immemorial.

The Spiritual Civilization of India finds its roots in the Vedas, the ancient sacred texts that contain the profound wisdom of the Vedic seers and sages who saw eternity in otherwise perishable existence, conceived life originating from purna, the eternal and returning back to purna and through this cycle of birth and rebirth manifesting the infinite potential of the spirit that ultimately enables man to realize his eternal existence. 

The Vedas clearly emphasize on the eternal aspect of creation, such as, in the opening verses of the famous Isha Upnishad: “Om purnamada purnamidam purnat purna mudatchayte,  Purnasya purna mevaya purnemeva vasishyate” (Isha Upnishad 1.1).      

It is this understanding of the secret of creation being manifestation of eternal into perishable existence and yet, being eternal in its essence that provided the ancient Indian mind to build a great spiritual civilization that gave to the world the eternal principles of unity in diversity, purity, eternity of matter and energy, peace and harmony which in turn enabled the Indian mind to proclaim the whole world as one family, Vasudha ev Kutumbakam. 

Eternity being the foundation of the spiritual civilization of India provided to it both the vitality and continuity as eternity has no beginning and no end. The journey of life is from eternity to eternity, from infinity to infinity, Ananta se Ananta ki aur as is understood by even a common man in India. What is also interesting is the realization that the eternal, the infinite and unperishable, manifest into the vast diversity to fully exhaust its infinite and eternal character. In the Isha Upnishad, we find that the manifestation of purna, the eternal and infinite is further beautifully expressed as:  

Om Isavasyamidam sarvam yatkiñca jagatyam jagat | tena tyaktena bhuñjitha ma grdhah kasyasvid dhanam  ||1||   

Meaning thereby that it is the Ishvara, the eternal, the purna that pervades everywhere in all beings here and everywhere, even on other planets where life may exist. As such, with this realization of the omni-presence of the purna, one is expected to utilize this vast creation for his sustenance practiced with an inbuilt consciousness of detachment. 


It is this realization of the all-pervading eternity in the vast creation that provided the Vedic seers and sages to conceive underlying unity in the vast diversity of creation as proclaimed by the Vedic seers as Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti as in “ Indram mitram varuNam agnim ãhuh, atho divyah sa suparNo garutmãn, ekam sad viprãh bahudhã vadanti, agnim yamam mãtari’švãnam ãhuh”.(Rg Veda 1.164.46).

Having realized the secret of creation through the concept of all pervading nature of the ultimate reality, the purna, the eternal, in all that exists here and beyond and having understood the underlying unity in vast diversity the Vedic seers went ahead to construct their profound understanding of life existence in harmony with nature and its continuum with divinity, the purna. 

The Spiritual Nationalism shall unite India, even rest of the world under the banner of a Humanity United for Peace, Happiness and Well being of the people around the world and then the dream of Sri Aurobindo of Integral Yoga shall find a new expression in Integral Humanism. India can provide leadership to create a new world, but it must put its own house in order by rediscovering its innate strength of its spiritual civilization, saysProf PB Sharma, Founder Vice Chancellor of DTU and also Founder Vice Chancellor of RGTU.