Sri Aurobindo, wrote Prof. Sisir Kumar Maitra in 1942, has accomplished the “transfer of the leadership in philosophy from the West to India.” But what we witness today in 2006 is something entirely different. Why?
The whole scenario is not devoid of politics and what is at issue is not philosophy but hegemony. In pursuit of that, there has been constant shifting of goal posts and resorting to gerrymandering. Marginal items have come to occupy the mainstream space in philosophy while the basic metaphysical concerns rank as subaltern. Why?
Sri Aurobindo gave the most full-proof philosophy in the entire human history, but the Westerners are unwilling to accept him at the top. Pseudo-philosophers are lapped up and their books sell in plenty almost as a conspiracy to eclipse Sri Aurobindo. He is discounted simply as a mystic or a revivalist, instead. Why?
Because Sri Aurobindo is an Indian and American hubris can’t digest this. Numerous charts and complicated graphics are being devised in pathetic attempts to cook up all-encompassing philosophies. Many of Sri Aurobindo’s innovations are being recycled. Even then, success eludes such enterprises. Why?
For Sri Aurobindo, as Dr Maitra decreed, stands tall on merit. Every intellectual, every journal and every University will have to swallow this cruel pill. No amount of racial or colonial resistance can suppress the supremacy of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. The whole world, whether today or tomorrow, must turn to it where all the whys are answered. [TNM696MMYP]
The whole scenario is not devoid of politics and what is at issue is not philosophy but hegemony. In pursuit of that, there has been constant shifting of goal posts and resorting to gerrymandering. Marginal items have come to occupy the mainstream space in philosophy while the basic metaphysical concerns rank as subaltern. Why?
Sri Aurobindo gave the most full-proof philosophy in the entire human history, but the Westerners are unwilling to accept him at the top. Pseudo-philosophers are lapped up and their books sell in plenty almost as a conspiracy to eclipse Sri Aurobindo. He is discounted simply as a mystic or a revivalist, instead. Why?
Because Sri Aurobindo is an Indian and American hubris can’t digest this. Numerous charts and complicated graphics are being devised in pathetic attempts to cook up all-encompassing philosophies. Many of Sri Aurobindo’s innovations are being recycled. Even then, success eludes such enterprises. Why?
For Sri Aurobindo, as Dr Maitra decreed, stands tall on merit. Every intellectual, every journal and every University will have to swallow this cruel pill. No amount of racial or colonial resistance can suppress the supremacy of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. The whole world, whether today or tomorrow, must turn to it where all the whys are answered. [TNM696MMYP]
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