Introducing a Post
The Science,
Culture and Integral Yoga Website (SCIY: http://www.sciy.org/)
has started serialising the letters of those who first brought to the attention
of the Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram the highly controversial biography
of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. One writer
and commentator on the SCIY, under the pseudonym of Angiras, is determined to
tear to shreds all criticism unfavourable to this biography. The first letter
of complaint to the Trustees that he takes up for a point by point rebuttal
begins with the following introductory note:
http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2009/1/15/4058078.html
A
document, headed “The Role of Peter Heehs in the Archives,” was circulated
anonymously and is undated. It has been attributed on some websites to
Ranganath Raghavan. Ranganath is reported to have given a letter (presumably
this one) to the Trustees around the beginning of September 2008 along with
Raman Reddy, the compiler of the “Extracts,” who is also a member of the
Archives; “we” in the letter probably includes Raman. Ranganath and Raman are
referred to below as R&R. The comments… are intended to correct
misstatements and present an alternative viewpoint.
Now the first question I
would like to ask Angiras is, “What was the necessity of coming down to such a
personal level of argument? Why take names and target particular persons?” I
can anticipate the knee-jerk reaction to my question, “Because you guys have
attacked Peter Heehs in the same way!” I would then answer, “We attacked Heehs
because he was the author of a book which went into the public domain on highly
sensitive issues. And may I know why do you hide behind a pseudonym, as if you
do not have the courage to reveal your identity to your readers on the
Net?”
I
begin to wonder who this Angiras could be, hiding such irrepressible virulence
under the beautiful name of a Vedic Rishi. It has to be first of all
someone interested in the Veda to have chosen this name. Secondly, he has to be
a close colleague and a diehard supporter of Heehs at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Archives. Thirdly, he has to have access to entries in Cold Storage registers
(which he mentions later in his rebuttal) to be able to allege that Ranganath
and me are liars. Now I cannot think of anybody else but Richard Hartz! If I
have indeed made a mistake, may God bless his soul! If it is him, which is more
likely the case, I would advise him not to meddle with this controversy and be
dragged down to this low level of argument, which can continue till the end of
Time and Space. Barring a few points, most of them can be easily brushed aside and
are the kind of “tit for tat” arguments, which you do not want to waste your
precious time on. But what I would like to tell Angiras (or Richard Hartz?) is that this thankless industry hardly befits his scholarship, which
until now has produced admirable articles in the Ashram’s monthly magazine, Mother
India.
Regarding Cold Storage
Access
I will now take the
trouble to answer the allegations regarding my access to the Cold Storage. I
quote the relevant portions from Angiras’s rebuttal:
Ranganath: Extremely private, confidential and sensitive material
is at his disposal long before others, even in the Archives, have access to
it.
Angiras:
R&R know that this is a lie. The Archives Manuscript Issue Register reveals
that most of the manuscripts removed from the Archives Cold Storage in recent
years were taken by Raman Reddy, who has had free access to letters and private
diaries. During the same period, Peter Heehs took no manuscripts out of Cold
Storage. The records showing this have been made available to the Trustees.
Raman has also published articles making use of information found in Purani’s
notes, the most controversial source cited in Heehs’s biography.
Ranganath: And he is using all these letters, diaries of sadhaks
for his own personal commercial use. The availability of such sensitive
documents to him must be put an end to.
Angiras:
The allegation of “commercial use” is false. In any case, new rules restricting
access to such materials (not only “to him” but in general) have been adopted
by the Archives in the last few months. This has been one of the few
constructive outcomes of the present controversy.
First
of all, this whole issue regarding the use of the Cold Storage documents is
totally irrelevant to the main objections regarding Heehs’s biography. It is
simply diversionary tactics to obfuscate the main issue. Ranganath’s letter was
written specifically to the Trustees, expressing a certain legitimate concern
regarding the use of manuscripts at the Archives. So to refute it in the public
domain as a lie is somewhat unintelligent, because the general reader will
neither understand the intricacies of the particular situation, nor will he
ever be interested in these side issues.
Next,
Ranganath did not refer only to material in the Cold Storage, where only the
original documents of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and their disciples are kept,
but also a whole lot of secondary but important biographical material,
especially cards and databases, without which the same material is unusable. Any
historian of some calibre would know their importance. He suspects
that this latter type of material, apart from plenty of Xeroxes of all sorts of
documents, are still in the custody of Heehs, who will now surely say that they
are his personal research notes. This is only partially true! So many of us
have collected data for him in the past under the impression that we were
contributing to the Ashram Archives collection! Moreover, even the fruits of
his own labour belong to the Ashram and not to him personally, as all work done
by the sadhaks of the Ashram in its departments is supposed to be dedicated to
the larger interests of the institution. In fact, Heehs used to boast at
one time that he did not make any distinction between public and private use because
his own interests converged with the work entrusted to him at the Archives.
What finally happened was that he treated the public collection of the Ashram
Archives as his private one. No one else but he had any clue or free access to
the material under his care, even if it was kept at the Archives main office.
This is precisely the reason why his colleagues are now at a total loss to go
ahead with the pending publication of Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Works.
As
for my frequenting the Cold Storage when Heehs himself had stopped going to it,
I may inform the readers that I never sneaked in without anybody’s permission,
as our wise (or not so wise) Angiras gives the impression. I was actually one
of the officially authorised persons taking care of a certain section of the
original manuscripts since many years. My Cold Storage work was that of a
storekeeper of manuscripts and consisted of endless search errands to find out
the right manuscripts for specific purposes. Even physically, it meant climbing
ladders in the stack rooms and diligently shuttling to and fro with big boxes
of manuscripts in my hands.
Coming
now to my own usage of the material at the Cold Storage, I admit freely that I
have indeed done some useful and absolutely harmless research work with regard
to the Ashram main building after obtaining permission from the Trust.
Incidentally, the Ashram Trust itself has published the output of my research
in the form of a book which is now being sold through SABDA, the official book
distributing agency of the Ashram. Besides this and other research projects, I
have also done some work on when and how exactly the name “Sri Aurobindo” was
used instead of “A.G. or Aurobindo Ghose”. Heehs himself has acknowledged me
for this information which I published in the Mother India, after
taking due permission from the Trust. Until date, nobody has raised any
objections to my articles.
Finally,
if Ranganath’s allegation of “commercial use” is false, then it is obligatory
that Angiras should come out with the full facts and figures relating to the
publication of Heehs’s book—the copyright permission, the arrangements with the
publishers, the royalties in one form or other offered to the author, the
payments or donations made by him to the Ashram, etc. Instead of answering
these important questions, why does he divert the reader’s attention to
non-issues, such as my access to the Cold Storage? Moreover, the constitution
of a new committee to manage the affairs of the Ashram Archives is totally an
internal matter of the Ashram and bringing it to the public forum by saying
that “new rules restricting access to such materials… have been adopted” is a
betrayal of the code of conduct its members are expected to follow. In any
case, it seems to be the classic case of locking the stable after the horse has
bolted!
But
the real question is not about who had access to the original documents in the
Cold Storage, but as to how they have been used. A biography which has created
such an emotional and intellectual storm among the followers of Sri Aurobindo
is proof enough of the utterly irresponsible way Heehs has used the
above-mentioned material.
A Brief Comment Regarding Cultural Differences
I
would now like to point out that most Indian members of the Ashram have never
developed any phobia against Westerners in general, and Americans in
particular, which is what Angiras seems to be projecting—an East-West divide,
cultural differences, religious reactions, etc. So many articles have been
written by Westerners from the last few decades in the numerous magazines of
the Ashram and related institutions, but rarely have they produced any
commotion of the kind and magnitude that Heehs has caused. You could even
attribute this to an exceptional talent he seems to have to make so many people
unhappy at the same time. The Ashram itself has been running for more than half
a century and I don’t know of a single instance of a Westerner trumpeting the
uniqueness of his identity as is being done now. It is almost like a band going
through the streets of Pondicherry and on the digital highways of the Internet
creating a loud fanfare of “American identity”, announcing to everybody, “We
are different from Indians”, “We are intellectuals”, “We are not senseless
devotees”, etc. I would therefore request my Western (and Westernised
Indian) friends
not to be carried away by this ridiculous argument. The objections are only
against Heehs’s book, not even Heehs the individual, and only because he has
vilified Sri Aurobindo in his own Ashram and projected the illegitimacy of his
views into the public domain. Had Heehs been an Indian, he would have been
evicted from the Ashram long ago without any hesitation or delay. It is only
out of sheer consideration for the feelings of other Westerners who are genuine
spiritual seekers that strong action seems to have been eschewed and great
restraint exercised.
If
Heehs’s committed supporters do not see anything wrong with the biography,
then they should at least try to understand why a whole lot of people have been offended by it. After all, Indians have a
right to be understood and respected in their own country! This is the least that they can demand! The problem with
Heehs and his defendants is that they are not even aware that Indians have
understood them far better than they have understood Indians. We, the English
educated Indians, have mostly understood, enjoyed and imbibed other cultures
not only due to the inbuilt catholicity of our minds, but also by the sheer
force of historical circumstances. Several factors have contributed to the
almost compulsory assimilation of Western culture, such as the British
colonisation of India which gave the English language and culture, the lack of
a viable alternative national language after the rejection of Sanskrit, tremendous
economic backwardness because of which our best brains have migrated Westwards,
and centuries of world-negating Yoga which has made our best men go away to the
forests and mountains in search of their souls. Yet we have no regrets about it
and consider ourselves lucky, because it has forced us to progress towards a
more synthetic and global culture. At present, we, as a nation, stand at the cultural crossroads trying to figure out what
to accept and what to reject, and on what basis to accept or reject! Whereas
most Westerners, and Americans in particular (not the genuine seekers who have
understood or assimilated Indian values and risen beyond) are pretty ignorant
about other cultures. To them, “culture” means American culture and they assume
others to accept what seems natural to them, because they do not even know, or
rather refuse to know, that other “cultures” exist, cultures which are far
different from theirs if not superior, especially in spiritual matters. So when
a few Americans insist vociferously on their “cultural values” right in the
heart of Tamilnadu and assert that the freedom to criticise the Guru in his own
Ashram is one of the most cherished values of America, all that we can politely
tell them is, “We generally don’t do that because fidelity to the Guru is one
of the most cherished values of India. But if indeed you have to criticise Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother, then why don’t you simply start your own Ashram?” We
will definitely pay you a visit after it gets well-established and you can
certainly count on us not to criticise you further.
3 February
2009