Monday, September 28, 2015

Idea of India as conceived by Sri Aurobindo

Peter Heehs: Publications
Articles in Magazines, Newspapers and Websites
2014. “India’s Etiquette Police.” Columbia University Press Blog. March 5.

2014. “Banished from the Bookshelves: The Lives of Sri Aurobindo.” Outlook, March 3, p. 56. Online version here

2011. “The Mother’s Evolutionary Vision.” EnlightenNext. Issue 47, 85-94.

2009. “Fisherman’s Cove” and “Hotel de l’Orient.” In Outlook Traveller Getaways: 100 Best Resorts & Retreats in India (New Delhi: Outlook Publishing), 275-276, 383.

2008. “The Bomb that Shook an Empire.” The Pioneer (New Delhi), November 22.

2008. Getting beyond the Conventions of Biography — and Hagiography Too. Columbia University Press Blog. August 4.

2008. “Trial and Error.” The Statesman (Kolkata), May 4, p. 7.

2008. “Creative Anarchy” (Special Feature on Auroville). In Outlook Traveller Getaways: Wellness Holidays in India (New Delhi: Outlook Publishing), 413–424.

2004. “Idea of India.” Life Positive. April–June.
Distorted view
In a speech of 1909, delivered at the invitation of a Hindu group in Uttarpara, Sri Aurobindo did connect his “religion of nationalism” with the sanatana dharma; but he made it clear that he did not mean by this any sectarian religion, but the “eternal religion” that underlay all limited systems of belief. “A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can only live for a limited time and a limited purpose,” he pointed out. The eternal religion would live forever because it was based on the realisation that God “is in all men and all things”.

In contemporary India, political leaders of the past have been turned into tokens that are exchanged by party bosses at election time. It is not surprising that Sri Aurobindo has been subject to this kind of commerce. One party places out-of-context quotations from his works in its manifesto; a rival party says it plans to base its programme on his ideals. A religio-political pressure group features him prominently on its website; a journalist writes that he was “was second to none” in promoting religion-tainted politics. None of these exploiters or critics of Sri Aurobindo’s legacy show adequate familiarity with his works.

A journalist, Jyotirmaya Sharma (in his recent book Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism), draws most of his quotations from edited compilations. In concluding, he perpetrates the following anachronism: “The Maharshi [Sri Aurobindo] has turned into a pamphleteer of the Hindu rashtra concept without being conscious of it.” It certainly is regrettable that proponents of the Hindu Rashtra should selectively appropriate Sri Aurobindo’s works, even when he explicitly stated that he was opposed to the very idea. “We do not understand Hindu nationalism as a possibility under modern conditions,” he wrote in 1909. “Under modern conditions India can only exist as a whole.” It is equally regrettable that opponents of Hindutva should combine out-of-context snippets from Sri Aurobindo’s works in a distorted presentation that excludes key portions of his thought.

Visions of future
On his 75th birthday, Sri Aurobindo sketched the five “world-movements” he had hoped to see fulfilled in his lifetime. During his youth, they had seemed to be “impractical dreams”. Now they were “on their way to fulfillment”. The first was “a revolutionary movement that would create a free and united India”. This (he was speaking on August 15,1947, the day India received independence) was now a reality. But his hopes for a more equitable international order extended beyond the borders of his own country. He dreamed also of “the resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia”, and of “a world-union forming the outer basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind”.

Sri Aurobindo’s nationalism, even while he was active in Indian politics, was not coloured by that smug self-flattery that characterises most modern ‘patriotism’. He noted as early as 1919 that Indians had to have “the courage to defend our culture against ignorant occidental criticism and to maintain it against the gigantic modern pressure”, but that they also had to have the “courage to admit not from any European standpoint but from our own outlook the errors of our culture”. Pride in the accomplishments of one’s motherland should not take the form of an “unthinking cultural chauvinism which holds that whatever we have is good for us because it is Indian or even that whatever is in India is best, because it is the creation of the Rishis”. What India needed was not an isolated self-glorification, but “a unity with the rest of mankind, in which we shall maintain our spiritual and our outer independence”.

Peter Heehs is author of four books, including The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India (OUP, second edition 2004), and editor of The Essential Writings of Sri Aurobindo (OUP, 1997) and Indian Religions: The Spiritual Traditions of South Asia (Permanent Black, 2002). He is based in Pondicherry.

Articles in Professional Journals and Books
2014. “Practices of Non-Theistic Spirituality.” Gandhi Marg 36, 2&3 (July-December): 251-68. (Pdf file available here)


2013. “Aurobindo.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. V, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen. Leiden: Brill, 397-404.

2013. Roots, Branches, and Seeds: The teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo examined in the light of Indian tradition, colonial modernity and one another. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Occasional Paper, History and Society Series, No.14. (Pdf file available here)

2011. “The Kabbalah, the Philosophie Cosmique, and the Integral Yoga: A Study in Cross-Cultural Influence”.Aries 11:2 (September): 219-247 (Pdf file available here).

2010. “Introduction”. In P. Vir Gupta, C. Mueller, and C. Samil, Golconde: The Introduction of Modernism in India. Bangalore: Inform.

2009. “Revolutionary Terrorism in British Bengal”. In E. Boehmer and S. Morton, eds., Terror and the Postcolonial. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

2008. “Sri Aurobindo and Hinduism”. Published online in AntiMatters 2.2 (April).

Books
2013. Situating Sri Aurobindo: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press.

2013. Writing the Self. New York: Bloomsbury. Named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2013 by Choice.

2008. The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Evergreen essays by Sachidananda Mohanty

SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY


«  ‹  1 2 3 4  ›  »

Meditations on life


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | MAY 2, 2015

Two collections that explore the kaleidoscopic experience of life. »

Men who freed us from ‘majoritarian modernity’


M. S. NAGARAJAN | MARCH 16, 2015

A good deal of terms such as nationalism, multiculturalism, the local, and the global is afloat in the current discourse on culture studies of the academia. These terms do not necessarily... »

An original contribution to Tagore studies


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | NOVEMBER 11, 2014

In the popular mind, Rabindranath Tagore is synonymous with Gitanjali for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. And yet, very little is known about the background to thi... »

An original contribution to Tagore studies


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Sachidananda Mohanty In the popular mind, Rabindranath Tagore is synonymous with Gitanjali for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literatur...»

Ode to the self


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | NOVEMBER 2, 2014

A well-crafted collection of poems lays bare one’s fragility and vulnerability. »

Ode to the self


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | NOVEMBER 2, 2014

A well-crafted collection of poems lays bare one’s fragility and vulnerability. Sachidananda Mohanty »

A reader’s delight


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY looks at the different styles and idioms in modern poetry. »

A reader’s delight


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | SEPTEMBER 6, 2014

The writer looks at the different styles and idioms in modern poetry. »

A battered, heroic sister


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | FEBRUARY 23, 2014

Sachidananda Mohanty recalls the American-born Indian nationalist Agnes Smedley on her 122 {+n} {+d} birth anniversary today. »

A battered, heroic sister


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | FEBRUARY 22, 2014

Recalling the American-born Indian nationalist Agnes Smedley on her 122 birth anniversary. »

Migrant memory


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | FEBRUARY 2, 2014

Poems with an eclectic world view matched by intense lyricism. SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY »

Migrant memory


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | FEBRUARY 1, 2014

Poems with an eclectic world view matched by intense lyricism. »

Iconoclast till the end


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | NOVEMBER 10, 2013

Albert Camus’ opposition to tyranny and emphasis on personal responsibility have lessons for the contemporary world. »

A literary trail in Taos


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | OCTOBER 6, 2013

Sachidananda Mohanty visits a beautiful town in New Mexico that drew an endless stream of artists, writers, poets and musicians. »

A literary trail in Taos


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | OCTOBER 5, 2013

The author visits a beautiful town in New Mexico that drew an endless stream of artists, writers, poets and musicians. »

A revolutionary from across the seas


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | AUGUST 11, 2013

He was the voice of the Indian freedom struggle in the U.S. but little is known about him. Based on research for a forthcoming book, SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY profiles Taraknath Das, best known for his debate with Leo Tolstoy on non-violence. »

A revolutionary from across the seas


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | AUGUST 10, 2013

He was the voice of the Indian freedom struggle in the U.S. but little is known about him. Based on research for a forthcoming book, a profile of Taraknath Das, best known for his debate with Leo Tolstoy on non-violence. »

Tales across time


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY. | AUGUST 4, 2013

Short stories that critique tradition without irreverence, says Sachidananda Mohanty. »

Tales across time


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | AUGUST 3, 2013

Short stories that critique tradition without irreverence, says Sachidananda Mohanty. »

An ‘Indo-Anglian’ legacy


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | JULY 21, 2013

Vice-President at Kalakshetra. Muse to Sri Aurobindo. Friend of Tagore. And yet, James Cousins lies forgotten today, says Sachidananda Mohanty. »

Requiem for a revolutionary


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | APRIL 20, 2013

With the passing of Binod Bihari Chowdhury (1911-2013), a curtain has been drawn on one of the most spectacular chapters of the history of militant nationalism in undivided India. A colleague o... »

The house of thousand lives


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | NOVEMBER 16, 2012

In focus Huma Kidwai’s book mirrors the city and its changing fortunes through a perspective from ‘Hussaini Alam House’ »

‘English language learning must go hand in hand with multilingualism’


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | OCTOBER 13, 2012

In the classic Odia short story of the late 19th Century called “Daka Munshi,” Fakir Mohan Senapati’s memorable character, Gopal Babu, the English educated postmaster, treats his father Har... »

‘English language learning must go hand in hand with multilingualism’


SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY | OCTOBER 13, 2012

In the classic Odia short story of the late 19th Century called “ Daka Munshi ,” Fakir Mohan Senapati’s memorable character, Gopal Babu, the English educated postmaster, treats... »

A portrait of the activist as a woman


M. S. NAGARAJAN | MARCH 12, 2012

John Ruskin observed, “Shakespeare has no heroes; he has only heroines.” Almost all his major women characters — Desdemona, Cordelia, Imogen, Rosalind, to mention just a few — were ‘conceived in t... »

Cosmopolitan Modernity in Early Twentieth Century India and ...

https://overmanfoundation.wordpress.com/.../cosmopolitan-modernity-in-e...
Jan 19, 2015 - Dr. Sachidananda Mohanty's Cosmopolitan Modernity in Early 20th-Century ... James Cousins, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Taraknath Das.

An intellectual destination - The Hindu

www.thehindu.com › Cities › Puducherry
Jun 23, 2015 - Puducherry's contribution to intellectual heritage is not known enough, feels author Sachidananda Mohanty, and instead has been relegated to ...

Sachidananda Mohanty
The brilliance of Gangopadhyay's complex novel is effortlessly captured in translation.
A well-documented tribute to the French and their influence in India.
This racy account of Sri Rri Ravi Shankar and the Art of Living movement heralds the arrival of newage spirituality in India.


Sunday, September 13, 2015

People are born with set predispositions and biogenetic destiny

We may wish human beings were more rational but our brains, created for a different time and place, get in the way... You can take the person out of the Stone Age, ... but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person. https://t.co/82SK06vrMz

Leadership. As noted at the outset of this article, evolutionary psychology does not dispute individual differences. Indeed, an increasingly robust body of studies on twins conducted by behavioral geneticists indicates that people are born with set predispositions that harden as they age into adulthood. Genes for detachment and novelty avoidance have been found, for instance, which together appear to amount to shyness. It used to be assumed that shyness was induced entirely by environment—if a shy person just tried hard enough, he or she could become the life of the party. The same was said for people who were highly emotional—they could be coaxed out of such feelings. But again, research is suggesting that character traits such as shyness and emotional sensitivity are inborn.

That personality is inborn is not news to any parent with more than one child. You provide a stable home environment for your brood—the same food, the same schools, the same basic experiences on a day-to-day basis. And yet the first child is introverted and grows up to be an R&D scientist. The second, who never stopped chattering as a child, grows up to become a flamboyant sales executive. And still a third child is as even-keeled as can be and pursues a career as a schoolteacher. Evolutionary psychology would tell us that each one of these individuals was living out his biogenetic destiny.

All three of these children are hardwired for certain dispositions. For instance, each falls somewhere along the continuum of risk aversion described earlier. But each one’s level of aversion to risk differs. The point is, along with each person’s fundamental brain circuitry, people also come with inborn personalities. Some people are more dominant than others. Some are more optimistic. Some like math better than poetry. People can compensate for these underlying dispositions with training and other forms of education, but there is little point in trying to change deep-rooted inclinations.

The implications for leadership are significant. First, the most important attribute for leadership is the desire to lead. Managerial skills and competencies can be trained into a person, but the passion to run an organization cannot. This feeds into the rather unpopular notion that leaders are born, not made. Evolutionary psychologists would agree and, in fact, posit that some are born not to lead.

Second, the theory of inborn personality does not mean that all people with genes for dominance make good leaders. A propensity for authoritative behavior might help, but some organizational situations call more urgently for other traits—such as empathy or an ability to negotiate. There are as many types of leaders as there are leadership situations. The important thing is to have the personality profile that meets the demands of the situation.

Third and finally, if you are born with personality traits that don’t immediately lend themselves to leadership—shyness is a good example, as is high sensitivity to stress—that doesn’t mean you can’t be a leader. Rather, it means that you must protect yourself in certain ways. If you have a low threshold for stress, for instance, you would do well not to lead from the front lines. You could put your trusted senior managers there and position yourself in the corporate office to focus on strategy.

The worst problem an organization can get itself into, this line of thinking suggests, is to have a leader who does not want to lead. Reluctant leaders can survive as symbolic figureheads but will perform poorly if asked to manage other people. The motivation to lead is the baseline requirement for competent leadership. After that, other personality traits and managerial skills matter. They must match the demands of the situation. But if the person in charge is not born wanting to lead, he or she should do everyone a favor and follow or ally themselves with partners who do. 

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review. Nigel Nicholson is a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School.
Nigel Nicholson, Ph.D., has been a professor at London Business School since 1990. Before becoming a business psychologist, his first profession was journalism and he is a frequent commentator in the media on current business issues. He is widely known for pioneering the introduction of the new science of evolutionary psychology to business through a stream of writings, including an article in Harvard Business Review (July/August 1998), and his book: Managing the Human Animal (Thomson Learning, 2000). His current major research interests include the psychology of family business, personality and leadership, and people skills in management. In these fields, as well as others such as innovation, organisational change, and executive career development, he has published over 20 books and 200 articles. He led a major research project on risk and decision-making among finance professionals, culminating in the book, Traders: Risks, Decisions and Management in Financial Markets (Oxford University Press, 2005). His book on family firms, Family Wars, was published in 2008 (Kogan Page). His new book, taking a fresh look at leadership through the lens of biography and the self, is The “I” of Leadership: Strategies for Seeing, Being and Doing (Jossey-Bass, 2013), is the culmination of decades of executive development teaching and practice.