The Uttarpara Speech of #SriAurobindo

If there is one speech that every Indian must read, and not once but again and again, it is Sri Aurobindo’s speech in Uttarpara on May 30th, 1909, after his release from Alipore Jail. It is greater in significance for the nation than Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ or Gandhi’s Ahmedabad trial in 1922 where he ‘plead guilty’ to the Chauri Chaura incident. And it is equal in relevance to some of the greatest speeches that changed the world in modern times, including Churchill’s ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ and Roosevelt’s ‘a date that shall live in infamy’ or Swami Vivekananda’s speech in Chicago conference of religions in 1892.

Kashmiriyat, Sufism and pretense of Secularism

A polity that systematically discriminate against citizens on the basis of religious identity must cast away any pretense of secularism. Its time we should have a hard look at the concept of kashmiriyat and put it on table for debate.

The Evolution of Sankhya

Sankhya darshana is a distinctive contribution of India to world philosophy. It is a pity that it is not studied globally since it impacts not only metaphysics, but psychology, cosmogony, epistemology and soteriology. And it is one of the singular leaps in human thought that eventually, I believe, led to the flowering of Indic civilization, its world-view, its arts and sciences and its continued uniqueness.

What Is the Mantra? – The mantra is the highest possibility of poetry.

It is the sound of the syllables and the words, the rhythm and the harmonies, and the music in the background, the sound behind the sound. One needs to listen to it with utmost attention, silence, not with the physical ear, but in a deeper listening, srotrasya srotram. Let it vibrate through the marrow, be heard with the diaphragm, resonate layer by layer down to the toes and into the ground, and reverberate into space, endlessly. As if it is eternal, which, in reality, it is.