If there is one person to whom we all as Indians should be most grateful to for our existence today as a nation, it is Sri Aurobindo. He is the man who brought it to us in more ways than one. He fought for it. Created a movement that demanded the complete independence of our country. Worked with other men and women as pure and selfless as him. Risked his life and almost gave it away in the yagya of our struggle for freedom.

He was the first to enunciate his dreams for the world and India’s role in the future of earth. Which we are seeing coming to fruition after more than seven decades of confusion and blindness.

There is no aspect of India today that is untouched by his vastness of vision. Article 370. He considered it an abomination. Not aligning with the US. He considered it a strategic error. Abandoning Tibet. A Himalayan blunder. Befriending China. An attempt at Harakiri. Becoming self-reliant with our own Indic models of development. It was he first articulated it.

Whenever we did not listen to him, we muddled through the morass. Until we woke up and saw the light and corrected ourselves. And then realized that he had warned us of this almost a century ago.

We ignored him at our own peril. But he stood by us like the Himalayas, protecting us from the world, reminder of everything we are and could be.

It seems to me now, that he is becoming more and more a reality. His vision for our country, so far ahead of its times, is bearing fruition. The time has come to realize that we are restoring India to his vision of its splendor and greatness.

The Hour of God that he spoke of is here. All we need to do is heed him.

And the simplest thing to do today, the day of him leaving his physical body 70 years ago, though he is always with us would be to aspire for his light, his purity, his truth and his dreams.

And be utterly grateful. To him we owe the unity and whatever is left of our great nation today. To him we owe its renaissance. To him our promise that we will never forget who he is. And the lines of growth he laid down for us.

He is here, more than our own shadow lives. Guiding with his white eon-coiled peaks of realization and ascent. And we know that it is time to invoke him for he saw us decades ago. Reclaiming the victory of our Motherland over its unfettered domain. 

I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.

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