1: Alok
Pandey and Sraddhalu Ranade Write
10 May 2009
Dear friends,
1. It has been a week since Alok Pandey’s and Sraddhalu
Ranade’s detailed letters were issued in response to the personal attacks by
IYF activists. The reaction from the spokesmen of Peter Heehs has again ignored
critical issues which were outlined, and instead, further abuses have been
heaped on us. While this does not help the general atmosphere already thick
with hurt emotions, confusion and divisive tensions, such reactions in no way
help Peter Heehs’ cause either. Therefore, it was felt that a note of
clarification is in order.
2. Let it be placed on record that Alok Pandey and
Sraddhalu Ranade have never been the authorised spokesmen of the vast majority
of silent and deeply anguished devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at the
Ashram, Auroville, in
3. It is the belief of Alok Pandey and Sraddhalu Ranade
that solutions to problems faced by a community, however complex their nature,
are to be found within and by the affected community, and to that end the role
and involvement of the elders and leaders of the community in question are sine qua non.
4. If Peter Heehs wishes to reintegrate himself into
the community, the following practical steps are proposed in all humility:
a) Peter Heehs must speak for himself and avoid proxies
who have at best a dubious stake in the matter. He owes answers to the
community that he has so long been a part of.
b) He must enter into serious, direct and transparent
discussion with the Ashram Trust and make a sincere attempt to understand and
address the concerns of Shri Manoj Das Gupta, Dr Dilip Datta, and Shri Dilip
Mehtani. If these senior sadhaks and Trustees thought it fit to express their
anguish and disappointment in writing and initiate disciplinary action against
Heehs, surely they must have had good reason to have done so.
c) Peter Heehs must have an open and constructive
interaction with Pranab-da in order to understand what led to his being
disbarred from the Physical Education Department. Should not an attempt be made
to find out what, if anything at all, may be done to remedy the situation?
d) The simplest way to deal with allegations of
copyright violation would be to obtain a written clarification regarding the
matter from the Ashram Trust, and make the document public.
e) Allegations of Intellectual Property theft can be
countered by obtaining a written and signed clarification regarding the matter
from Peter Heehs’ erstwhile colleagues at the Archives, and making the document
public.
f) If Peter Heehs is of the view that Columbia
University Press (CUP) has erred in labelling him “founder” of the Ashram
Archives and that he is not himself in any way responsible for it, a letter to
this effect may be obtained from CUP and made public.
g) Sri Manoj Das may be consulted on factual
distortions and offensive or objectionable passages, and signed summaries of
these consultations be made public.
h) Devotees cannot be faulted for filing criminal cases
as an expression of extreme anguish when all other options have failed—this is
an accepted, normal and civil way of dispute resolution. Peter Heehs owes it to
himself, more than anybody else, to respond to Court Summons, defend himself,
and come clean of the charges levelled against him.
i) Lastly, the book in question was proscribed in
It is incumbent on Peter Heehs to make an attempt to
understand the causes of this serious Government action, and all ridiculing of
courts and Government agencies involved must be avoided.
5. The above steps are all independent of Alok Pandey
and Sraddhalu Ranade, and in no way require their involvement. The solutions to
Heehs’ predicament are entirely in his hands without reliance on anybody else.
6. We remain available in all humility and sincerity to
render any support or assistance as may be required at any point if called upon
to do so.
Sincerely,
Alok Pandey taijasalok@yahoo.co.in
Sraddhalu Ranade sraddhalu@auromail.net
2: Response
from Richard Carlson, David Hutchinson, Debashish Banerji
12 May 2009
Dear Sraddhalu and Alok,
In your letter of May 10th 2009 you say that you speak
only for yourselves, but then propose what Peter and the Trustees should do, as
if you speak for the entire Integral Yoga community. Since you both made the
allegations against Peter in the first place, you cannot disassociate yourself
from the discussion or process.
You have concocted a story that the book defames Sri
Aurobindo when many more who have read it do not even remotely sense this to be
true. Your voices were among the first to condemn Peter while ignoring his
claim that you misread the text. Instead of attempting to engage him in a
dialog on the book you have, as detailed in your writing, favored the
incitement of collective actions against him that has included a petition to
have him removed from his work at the archives and to have his ties with the
Ashram severed.
These sensational collective actions were then followed
by court cases against Peter for which you both have voiced clear support. Your
support for the lawsuit in banning The
Lives of Sri Aurobindo, and your public calls against the book are contrary
to the spirit of harmony dvocated by Sri Aurobindo and have sown widespread
anger among the community that has caused divisiveness and confusion.
Peter has voluntarily suspended his work because of the
pressure brought by your campaign against the book and himself. You now allege
copyright infringement and intellectual property theft. To begin with, it is
the Ashram Trust and not you who are the copyright holders of Sri Aurobindo and
the Mother's writings. How can you usurp the role of the Ashram in this matter?
Secondly, you present your allegations as facts. In other words, you declare
that Peter and his book have infringed on copyright laws as if this has already
been proven when in fact these are simply allegations of yours. In all these
cases, the onus is on you to prove these allegations, otherwise they are merely
unsubstantiated allegations that libel and defame Peter.
When we wrote our first letter it was to inform centers
in the
Sincerely,
Richard Carlson
David Hutchinson
Debashish Banerji
This seems to be an interminable battle, of words,
going on for the last six months and one doesn’t know how long it will go on.
But if RC-DH-DB’s is in response to AP-SR’s, the question is: does it answer it
in any way? I don’t see any connection between the two, certainly no meaningful
connection, and absolutely without any possibility of a harmonious rapport if
that is the cherished hope of the great IY Community.
About three weeks ago my friend and ex-colleague at the
sciy, Rich, approached me,—of his own, and that could surely have been a
gainful step had it progressed,—for a ‘dialog’ on the issue that has been
harassing everyone for months now. I took it as a definite positive move,
assuming that it was not a tactical move, and made a proposal for an open
discussion on the Lives of Sri Aurobindo,
going through the weighty book paragraph by paragraph and page by page. But
Rich stepped back—which means that the open ‘dialog’ will continue to languish
and the parties will continue to operate in their own ways, moral, ethical,
civic, political, literary, academic, legal, spiritual, and what not. Perhaps
this has got to get exhausted before something in the nobility of the IY
Community appears on the horizon. It is sincerely hoped that it will be sooner
than later. But beyond this terrible ‘human potential’ there is another Hand
and, true to the IY Ideal, the best, and reassuring, for us is to firmly hold
it, rather to let it do unhindered its work in us:
If you
desire this transformation, put yourself in the hands of the Mother and her
Powers without cavil or resistance and let her do unhindered her work within
you. Three things you must have,—consciousness,—plasticity and unreserved
surrender. For you must be conscious in your mind and soul and heart and life
and the very cells of your body, aware of the Mother and her Powers and their
working; for although she can and does work in you even in your obscurity and
your unconscious parts and moments, it is not the same thing as when you are in
an awakened and living communion with her. All your nature must be plastic to
her touch,—not questioning as the self-sufficient ignorant mind questions and
doubts and disputes and is the enemy of its enlightenment and change; not
insisting on its own movements as the vital in the man insists and persistently
opposes its refractory desires and ill-will to every divine influence; not
obstructing and entrenched in incapacity, inertia and tamas as man's physical
consciousness obstructs and clinging to the pleasure in smallness and darkness
cries out against each touch that disturbs it soulless routine or it dull sloth
or its torpid slumber. The unreserved surrender of your inner and outer being
will bring this plasticity into all the parts of your nature; consciousness
will awaken everywhere in you by constant openness to the Wisdom and Light, the
Force, the Harmony and Beauty, the Perfection that come flowing down from
above. Even the body will awake and unite at last its consciousness subliminal
no longer to the supramental superconscious Force, feel all her powers
permeating from above and below and around it and thrill to a supreme Love and
Ananda. (The Mother: Sri Aurobindo)
RY Deshpande