Department of English

Name: Dave Nimesh B.Roll NO.- 20

M.A.Sem -1

Paper no.- (4)Indian Writing In EnglishPresentation topic: Aurobindo’s views

on Culture(Renaissance in India)

Sri Aurobindo

• Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. at the age of seven he was taken to England for education and he also passed the final examination for the Indian civil service

• Returning to India in 1893 he worked for next 13 year in Baroda as a professor in Baroda college

• He was the first political leader in India to openly put forward , in journal Bande Mataram, the ideal of complete independence for the country

Aurobindo’s writing

“The life Devine”

“The synthesis of Yoga”

“Savitri”

culturetradition

Religion, spirituality

Way of living life

education

Renaissance in India

• An essay Renaissance in India published in 1918 with a masterly view of India's culture through ages- her essential spirit and her characteristic soul, her unique genius powers which gave her remarkably long periods of greatness and an unusually prolific creativity.

Aurobindo’s views….

• India is one of the greatest of world’s civilization because of its high spiritual aim and the effective manner in which it has impressed this aim on the forms of rhythms of its life.

• “ A spiritual aspiration was the Governing force of this culture”

Ancient India is marked by..

“ her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life”

“ her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness” and

“ ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality”

Quotations :

• “ this great and ancient nation was once foundation of human light, the apex of human civilization, the exemplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good government and settled society, the mother of all religion, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands of inferior civilizations and more savage peoples; it has gone down into shadow of night and tasted often the bitterness of death. Its pride has been trampled into….

• ….. The dust and its glory has departed. Hunger and misery and despair have become the master of this fair soil, these noble hills, these ancient rivers , these cities whose life story goes back into prehistoric night. But all our calamities have been but a discipline of suffering, because for the great mission before us prosperity was not sufficient, adversity had also its training, to taste the glory of power and beneficence and joy was not sufficient, the knowledge of weakness and torture and humiliation was also needed”

spirituality

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

• To him..True spirituality rejects no new lightIt means simply to keep our centre , our

essential way of being, our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive.

Western impact on India

The western impact reawakened“ a free activity of the intellect”“modern ideas into the old culture”“ desire fore new creation”According to him, true Renaissance is a revival of

the Indian spirit by the turning of the national mind to its past.

Education

• In India, he said, “ the students generally have great capacities , but the system of education represses and destroys that capacities”

• unique fusion of ancient Indian spirituality and modernity.

• Not blind imitation of west, accept whatever best is in west and assimilate it in Indian context.

His main idea

• We must therefore save India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past.

• Recovery of old national spirit and ideas.

• Social and political liberty and eqality.

•Thank you