5 October 2010
Dear Deshpandeji
I was deeply shocked to read your most indecent comments on Jhumurdi which you have put up on the Internet. It is absolutely not permissible for any member of the SAICE to make adverse comments against another member in any public forum.
I have therefore no other options but to ask you to either:
1. apologise for your rash and thoughtless action and promise never to repeat it;
or
2. severe all connections with the SAICE from the next session.
I feel extremely sad that I have, at all, to write such a letter to you.
Sincerely,
(Sd/)
Manoj Das Gupta
Registrar
Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
(Seal)
12 October 2010
To
The Registrar
Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Dear Mr Manoj Das Gupta
I am in receipt of your letter dated 5 October 2010, asking me to apologise for my “rash and thoughtless” statement vis-à-vis Ms Jhumur Bhattacharya and “promise never to repeat it”; you further state that in the event of my failing to do so I will no more be associated with the Centre of Education.
In the present case, I need not really reply to your ill-conceived letter. You may like to read again my letter dated 8 September 2010 addressed to the Knowledge-in-Charge, a copy of which I had given to you. It is this letter which is posted as a comment on the Internet.
Let me quote what she had written to me on 25 August 2010: “Certain students have complained about the way you conduct the classes, that you use those periods to discuss matters that do not pertain to the subject studied. Naturally, you are entitled to your own opinions regarding the controversies that are raging in the Ashram now, but classes are not the place to air these views. Please restrict yourself to the subjects being studied. They are not light ones and should take up all your time.” She wrote without checking and counterchecking the facts. Who are the students she is speaking of? and which were the periods? She is unable to tell. Also perhaps she is writing this, being unaware of my thirty years of teaching here! Never was such a note sent to me nor was I ever told orally anything to this effect.
And yet, you are writing this letter to me without conducting detailed internal inquiry. If you have already done such an internal inquiry I should have been first given a copy of your findings. Procedurally this was absolutely essential, something expected of any competent administrator; but you have not done this. It gives more the impression to me that you are going by your whims and fancies.
Instead of you demanding an apology from me, it is I who should rather be asking it from Ms Bhattacharya, and now from you also. In my said letter of 8 September 2010 I had exposed fully her lies and my expectation was that you would check all the facts before shooting out this outrageous letter of yours, dated 5 October 2010.
I can only say that both of you are wasting time and consciousness. I have not come here to do that. I have come here to make the values I cherish purer and brighter, kindle them in the fire of the Mother’s consciousness.
You will recollect that every cordial attempt was made during the last two years to warn you the disastrous path of falsehood you had been adopting in the context of the infamous Lives of Sri Aurobindo. You did not heed Pranab; you disregarded what Huta had written to you,—just to give two examples of those who were intimately connected with the Mother. Any number of letters from within the Ashram and outside has been written to you; but all along you have been adopting “dignified silence”. Instead of making effusive and emotional proclamations which more expose the falsehood they contain than conceal, you ought to have taken the entire community into confidence and come out with facts and logically consistent statements. Yet alert souls of the Ashram cannot be dumb witnesses to such things.
About this appalling biography, a French scholar and historian of repute tells in a private conversation the following: “Academically, Heehs is not known in the West at all. I tried to publish this book’s review in an international journal and the editor asked me who this Peter Heehs was! When I requested the Ashram’s Mother India to publish it, it went unheeded.” My articles also have met the same fate, articles on the present biography and the flawed editing of Savitri.
Such are the dubious ways in which things move here, under your cover; but these cannot remain covered up. One of the natural means of meeting such a situation is to go public. That is also the accepted mechanism of any open-ended and democratic system. Public institutions are bound by it. You must realise that a distinction has to be made between the Ashram—a spiritual centre—and a Public Institution which must follow the Law of the Land. In this respect, I don’t see any reason to regret what I did, or what I will be doing whenever an occasion should arise. I am simply following the democratic principle. Regarding matters spiritual, it is the question only between my soul and the Mother, and there nobody else has any place.
So let us talk about the Institutional issues. Ashram as an Institution is bound by the Law of the Land, as I just mentioned. There are checks and counterchecks for its functioning. There is answerability and none can simply claim that he is “providentially appointed”; it will be preposterous if one should go by this proposition of being appointed providentially. The Institution comes under the category of Public Charitable Trusts, and is bound to legal stipulations. It is not anybody’s inherited fief of the feudal era, not a Private Ltd firm at all. Most importantly it is my democratic right to speak out openly if something should be going wrong with such a public institution. No one can snatch that right away from me, and nobody is going to prevent me from using it.
About the said Internet post, let me inform you that there are already more than three thousand hits on it, with its readership spread all over the world; there are at least 130 comments. Be also informed that its intellectual-academic-professional audience will not tolerate impropriety if it should be there anywhere. This audience is not such a dim lot to get carried away by my innuendos. In fact, had my arguments been flawed in any way I would have been torn to pieces by now.
But why should you be afraid if things become public? If you are managing a public institution by just means you have nothing to worry about; if you are clean, if you are well above the board, the question of distress would not be present. Besides, you can always build your own communication channels in the cyber world; through them you can make the institutional position known to the world, an aspect of sound public relations. But, sadly, you do not have any such mechanism. Instead you believe that you can get away by planting seeds of confusion in the minds of people.
Let us look at the questions to be answered: why should there be a number of court cases against the Institution? why should the Hon Lt Governor summon you and demand certain explanations from you? what occasioned the Parliament to ask for details regarding The Lives of Sri Aurobindo? You threaten the inmates that in the event of internal conflicts, the government might take over the Ashram management. You should realize also that, in the process, you are squandering the Mother’s precious money away. Your acts are proving ruinous to the Institution. But the solution is simple, and it lies in your own hand—if you have the concern for the Ashram as an Institution. The solution is, you step down from your official positions.
If I mention something openly about Ms Bhattacharya’s wrong action, you get angry with me and wish to shoot me down. But you go all the way out to support a book which on every page denigrates the Mother and the Master. The loyalty of both of you seems to be more towards that author, of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, than towards them who have taken us under their spiritual wings.
A hundred years ago CR Das was fighting in the Alipore Case more for the Doctrine of Nationalism than defending an accused; the beauty is, for preaching such a Doctrine none can be held guilty. Should that not hold true when it is the matter of psychic and spiritual reverence to the Mother and the Master who attempted all and did all for us? We have to be at least grateful for all that we receive from them. Let me tell you that what I am fighting for are these basic spiritual verities. This is what the Ashram as an Institution should uphold. If it fails in it, then it has no reason to exist.
I cannot keep quiet seeing the Mother and the Master being trampled under the dirty feet which you both seem to support and enjoy. Sorry, this cannot remain unexposed and if I have to go to the world-wide Internet for that purpose, I shall go to the world-wide Internet which none can prevent.
However, before I close let me quote Sri Aurobindo: “The children should be helped to grow up into straightforward, frank, upright and honourable human beings ready to develop into divine nature.”
Sincerely
(Sd/)
RY Deshpande