A Girl of 19

‘Make a Wish and it will be Granted’ when said by a King can be a great opportunity. We can ask for treasures, land, titles, privileges, amnesty and anything that our imagination can conjure. But when such a wish was granted to a 19 year old girl in 1431, all that she asked for was freedom from taxes for her village, Domremy, France. This wish was promptly and happily granted by King Charles VII and even on his insistence, the girl refused to ask for anything else. This grant was honored for next 350 years. 

When her country was besieged by enemies and was on the verge of losing the hundred-year war, when her King had lost all hope for regaining his crown, and when Saints appeared in her dreams and said, march forward and save your country, she simply followed the words of Saints against all odds and won battles after battles and regained her country from the clutches of enemies and gave back the crown to the King Charles VII. 

When all around her were feeble and weak, had lost all hope for life and light, had spent themselves on politics and war games and yet it was defeat that stared at them squarely at their face, she gave them hope and faith, in innocence, in sincerity of purpose, in conviction, and above all else in God. When she was accused of lying of her visions and voices of God that she heard clearly and was threatened to punishment by death, she still stood by her word and preferred herself to be burnt at the stake to recanting her statement.

Joan of Arc, a village girl from the village Domremy, Vosges, France was born in 1412, burnt for heresy and sorcery in 1431 by the then Church, was rehabilitated in 1456, designated venerable in 1904, declared Blessed in 1908 and finally proclaimed a Saint in 1920. She is the most notable warrior saint in human history and most studied figure from the middle ages. 

She displayed a strange superiority over people in her midst, superiority akin to that of Jesus Christ and of Socrates. When she made War Generals and Commanders look like fools by her strategy and stupefied courtiers and lawyers with her arguments that belied fine understanding of the times and situation, she only made herself their enemy. She was still a young rustic girl and was unable to understand the fury with which they got back at her. It is also this fury which made people in power and so the called superior wits, force Socrates to drink hemlock and shout cries of “Crucify Him” for Christ. 

Joan was the daughter of a working farmer who was also a headman of his village. As a child, Joan played being the young lady of a castle, her mother and her brothers went along and played with her these childlike games. It is a popular romantic artifice that turns every heroine into either a princess or a beggar maid. Joan of Arc was most decidedly neither. She was absolutely illiterate and did not know A from B. However she was not ignorant. She could not write letters but dictated them to be sent to Generals and Kings and attached excessive importance to them, when she was called shepherd lass, she warmly resented it. She also understood the political and military situation of her country much better than most of our today’s newspaper-fed university graduates. 

It may or may not be of much importance as to how did she look. Was she beautiful in the conventional sense? Not one of her comrades in village court or camp or even when they were praising her, alluded to the fact that she was beautiful. Most men declared her to be sexually unattractive despite her being in the bloom of her youth. Nevertheless there is one reason for crediting her with an extraordinary face. A sculptor of her time in Orleans made a statue of a young woman with a face that is unique in art in being a portrait that is so uncommon as to be unlike any real woman one has ever seen. It is surmised that Joan served unconsciously as the sculptor’s model. There is no proof of this however those who have seen those extraordinarily spaced eyes cannot but raise this question most powerfully, “If this woman be not Joan, who is she?”

Man, Superman and Supraman

A glasshouse must not be a very attractive place to live. Everything inside is clean and beautiful, neatly arranged, proportionate and artificial. Every leaf is plastic, smell of soil non-existent, sunlight filtered, growth calibrated and death sanitized. A man uprooted from his roots and placed in an alien culture is little better than a plant inside a glasshouse. Life today makes such demands on us that almost necessitate a deracination. A life in a foreign culture is likely to create admiration for it and at the same time engender contempt for our own culture. It may also work in the opposite direction however the likelihood of emergence of a harmonious sonata that combines the best of both cultures is rare and precious. Indian and British cultures came together to create a master who gave meaning to both the cultures and also transcended both in giving prototype of a man who will be beyond these and every other cultures. 

Aurobindo Ghosh was born on 15^th August 1872 in Calcutta India however was promptly shifted by his father first to Loreto Convent, Darjeeling and within 2 years to England to prevent him from contracting any strand of Indian culture. His father wanted his sons to grow up in England and prepare themselves to join the elite Indian Civil Service. Aurobindo Ghosh stood 11^th in the prestigious ICS examination though he was getting increasingly convinced that he does not wish to serve the British. He left the shores of England and took up various jobs in Baroda, Gujarat before he plunged into Indian politics and the freedom movement. He also took up deep study of Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, and Indian Scriptures. He believed in aggression and wanted the Indian National Congress to engage into an active confrontation with the British Government. His impassioned speeches, inflammatory articles in various magazines and supposed involvement in Alipore Bomb Case made him spend numerous months in jail. Lord Minto, the then Governor General of India famously remarked, "I can only repeat that he is the most dangerous man we have to reckon with."

Anandamath of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee had a great influence on Aurobindo Ghosh. He idolized the character of the monk who fights the soldiers of East India Company for India’s freedom. He was also guided by Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. He retired from politics to Pondicherry in 1910 and began his outward spiritual journey. 

Sri Aurobindo as he came to be known later was able to see man as an evolving species. He took off from where Darwin had left. His man was to develop into another man that would be as different and superior to the present man as he is today to an animal. Its physical form would be more luminous, flexible and adaptable and his mind would not need thoughts and experiences to learn but a light would enter his mind and illuminate his being. Sri Aurobindo called it the Supramental Being. The man as a species today will evolve and the limitations of his body and mind will become vestigial as he attains the status of Supramental Being. 

Sri Aurobindo interpreted Indian scriptures in the light of supreme logic and with a touch of sublime beauty. His epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol in 12 books and 24,000 lines is an enduring contribution to not only philosophy but also to English literature. He critiqued the works of Shakespeare with meter of sound and rhythm of meaning and explained Kalidas with a familiarity that only a supramind can fathom.