Assignment of Renaissance in India : Sri Aurobindo

Name:- Ekta Jayswal

Respected Sir,
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Class:- M.A. Sem: 1

Roll No:- 13

Topic:- Renaissance In India : Sri Aurobindo

Paper No:- 4 [ Indian Writing In English ]

Enrolment No:- PG 2069108420180027

Year:- 2017/19

Email ID:-ektajayswal12@gmail.com

Submitted to:- Dr. Dilip Barad

             S.B.Gardi English Department .        

                      M.K.B.U.

*Renaissance in india: Sri Aurobindo*

# Introduction:-


Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. He stood first in King’s College, Cambridge in England. He also passed the final examination of the Indian Civil Service.When he was professor in Baroda College, he joined revolutionary society....

Sri Aurobindo was Indian Hindu nationalist, philosopher, scholar, poet, evolutionary, yogi and guru. After a short political career in which he become one of leader of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule, Sri Aurobindo turned to the development and practical of a new spiritual path which he called the “integral yoga”, the aim of which was further the evolution of life on Earth by establishing a high level of spiritual consciousness which he called the super mind that would represent a divine life.


In the19th century, India had lots of superstition, blind faith, ignorance, evil customs, and the class system. People were narrow minded and conservative. The condition of women was worst the evil customs like female infant, sati ban on widow, remarriage etc. stared. This reforms bought culture and religion awareness and as a result, this event may be considered as Indian renaissance. It is believed that Raja Rammohan Roy has started it.


# How renaissance began in India:-

The Indian Renaissance begins with the Modern period. In addition, the modern period starts with the British domination in India. The British rule brought political unity to India, which she was lacking for centuries. It also brought with it a new and expanding religion, a different culture and civilisation, which has had enormous impact the life and mind of the people of India.

# The Renaissance in India:-

The essay was written in 1918. In it he presented the old Indian spirit and how it should be converted into renaissance. It also shows the Indian culture and its soul, the creativity in it. The strength due to the spirit, the outcome of it is shown in this essay.

“Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. The sense of infinity is native of it.”

He believes that Indian civilization is the best civilization as it stands on spirituality which is infinite. The sole creativity and sheer intellect are the children of it. It has its own high spiritual aim. With the help of effective mannerism, it forms & effect the rhythm of life. In his words:

“A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this culture”

Sri Aurobindo also believes that the spirituality is the highest aspect of life as it tries to be and ruling the passion of a single man. And he also turns the core of the man towards it.

For him ‘Renaissance’ is the new birth of India. It is very important for her. Here he personified India as ‘Mother India’. He wants to put her on the world in such a way that it evokes the new creativity in the mentality. She should relearn the age-old ideas and light up the spirit within and emboss herself among other nations’ eye. So that it help her to govern her future. The important is what India makes her own life must precede the wider question what her new life may be mean to human race.

He also compares the term of renaissance with the European ones due to Greek-Latin with special reference to India. He denies the likeness with European renaissance. It is the long period of eclipse as India is under the baseless and confusing influences of different culture of West. There are various loop-holes in it and it gives new self-consciousness or just it creates an illusion of modernization.

But the wholeness, the feeling of fulfillment, from within is not there. The influence can’t touch the soul of every common man. But the louder call of the pioneers had shaken the inner soul of the“general minds of the people”. They represent the advanced movement. On the whole we see is a giant Shakti who is awakening the whole world a new and alien environment. In doing so India finds herself bond with past strings and scratches, wounds and weakened minds. She tries herself to be free from it, to arise and proclaim herself. And impose her importance and set her seal on the world. “The bud of the soul” is partly open.

He further adds that none can come from outside with the knowledge and reforms India. It is not the basic need of it. It should break the shackles of other countries’ influences. Her true reawakening is that gave her rebirth as a whole and enlightens the spirit.

He praises the Indian spirit. The spirituality is very vital & is always maintains itself. It is that which saved India always at every critical moment of her destiny. It has been the starting point of the renaissance. It is the vitality of the spirit that saves India every time and under the rule-its soul and body soon destroyed. The spirit is the strength of India to fight and stand against the circumstances.

Now it’s time for India to shed all her fears & influences as it reaches nowhere and become still.  The stagnation of spirit mars the liveliness of the India. The spirit will keep her going. It sharpens herself with new philosophical, artistic, literary, cultural, political and social forms and rejuvenises itself. It reestablishes the old truths with new undefeated strength, completeness and permanence.

The Spirit is a higher infinite of verities; life is a lower infinite of possibilities which seek to grow and find their own truth and fulfilment in the light of these verities. Our intellect, our will, our ethical and our aesthetic being are the reflectors and the mediators. The method of the West is to exaggerate life and to call down as much - or as little - as may be of the higher powers to stimulate and embellish life..

In the second essay, he rephrases them.  The Western impact reawakened “a free activity of the intellect”; “it threw definitely into ferment of modern ideas into the old culture”; and “it made us turn our look upon all that our past contains with new eyes”.  These are a revival of “the dormant intellectual and critical impulse”; the rehabilitation of life and an awakened “desire for new creation”; and a revival of the Indian spirit by the turning of the national mind to its past.  It is this “awakening vision and impulse” that SriAurobindo feels is the Indian renaissance.  Such a renaissance would have three tasks to accomplish: in the light of Indian spirit, the endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society is one of the most difficult.


In the second essay, Sri Aurobindo goes on to outline the three phases of the renaissance:

The first step was the reception of the European contact, a radical reconsideration of many of the prominent elements and some revolutionary denial of the very principles of the old culture.  The second was a reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence, sometimes with a total denial of what it offered and a stressing both of the essential and the strict letter of the national past, which yet masked a movement of assimilation. The third, only now beginning or recently begun, is rather a process of new creation in which the spiritual power of the Indian mind remains supreme, recovers its truths, accepts whatever it finds sound or true, useful or inevitable of the modern idea and form, but so transmutes and indianises it, so absorbs and transforms it entirely into itself that its foreign character disappears and it becomes another harmonious element in the characteristic working of the ancient goddess, the Shakti of India mastering and taking possession of the modern influence, no longer possessed or overcome by it.

Sri Aurobindo predicts that if the last were to happen, “the result will be no mere Asiatic modification of Western modernism, but some great, new and original thing of the first importance to the future of human civilization”.

In the third essay, Sri Aurobindo offers an overview of some of the movements and figures of the renaissance, all the while pointing to what lies ahead.  Finally, in the fourth essay, he once again stresses that the best course of action to India lies in being herself, recovering her native genius, which is a reassertion of its ancient spiritual ideal.  It only in “the knowledge and conscious application of the ideal” that the future of both India and the world lies.  Whether she can rise up to this task or not is a question that he leaves open.

If we were to evaluate the recent cultural history of India in the light of this essay, we will clearly see that the course of post-independence India has stressed the regaining of material, even military might, not necessarily the reaffirmation of India’s spiritual ideal.  So, to that extent, Sri Aurobindo has been proved both right and wrong.  Right in that the spiritual is realized not in the denial of the material but actually in the robust plenitude of the material subordinated to the spiritual ideal.  We see in present day India a great effort to attain such material prosperity.  But whether the spiritual idea of India remains intact is a question that is not easily answered.  To all appearances, India has gone the way of the rest of the world, worshipping mammon.  Our religion, too, is consumerism.  To say that spirituality is the master key to the Indian psyche these days would seem more the exception than the rule.    



# Conclusion:-

The most important contribution of Sri Aurobindo to the discussion on the Indian renaissance is, as is often the case with his work, in what is yet to be realized.  Sri Aurobindo says that the rise of India is necessary for future of humanity itself.  The third and most difficult task for the Indian renaissance has been the new creation that will come from a unique fusion of ancient Indian spirituality and modernity.  This fusion will be instrumental in spiritualizing. the world and in brining about what many have called a global transformation.  In our present times of the clash of civilizations, such an idea may seem utopian, but the very survival of the planet depends on a hope and belief that something of this sort is  only possible but inevitable.....


# Work Cited By:-

*www.sabda.in*

*www.sriaurobindoashram.org*

*http://ipi.org.in/texts/matthijs/mc-sa-shortbio.php*

..... THANK YOU.... 😊