Birth anniversary of Aurobindo ghosh

Brief history of Aurobindo Ghosh-

• Sri Aurobindo was a renowned and important personality in the history of the Indian resurgence and Indian nationalism.
• Born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872, Sri Aurobindo was drawn to the Indian freedom movement as a revolutionary leader.
• His father Krishna Dhun Ghose was a surgeon in Rangpur, Bengal and had sought to provide his five children English education considering British culture to be superior to Indian culture.
• Aurobindo was schooled at the Loreto House Boarding School in Darjeeling.
• In 1879, the whole family moved to England as Krishna Dhun Ghose wanted his sons to pursue the Indian Civil Service (ICS). There, Aurobindo was taught History, French, Latin, Arithmetic and Geography.
• He passed the ICS examination securing the 11th rank out of 250 candidates. He joined King’s College for the training but had himself disqualified for an exam by arriving deliberately late as he had no interest in the ICS.
• He returned to India and secured employment in the Baroda State Service with the help of an acquaintance.
• In 1897, he joined Baroda College as a French teacher. He also taught himself Sanskrit and Bengali during this time.
• He wrote copiously and his greatest literary achievement was ‘Savitri’, an epic poem with about 24000 lines.
• Some of his literary works include: Bases of Yoga, Bhagavad Gita and Its Message, The Future Evolution of Man, Rebirth and Karma, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Hour of God, etc.
• He was also a journalist and his first philosophical magazine called Arya was published in 1914. His newspaper Vande Mataram got him enormous fame.
• His work got him nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1943. He was also nominated in 1950 for the Nobel Prize for Peace.
• He passed away on 5 December 1950 in Pondicherry aged 78.

Role of Aurobindo Ghosh in Indian National Movement-

• He had started taking an interest in politics and associated with resistance groups in Madhya Pradesh and Bengal. He travelled throughout Bengal to establish resistance groups. Although in public, he favoured passive non-cooperation, in private he prepared for an aggressive revolution in case the passive revolt did not yield results.
• He attended Congress sessions and at the same time, helped establish the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta in 1902.
• He and his brother revolutionary Barin Ghose contributed articles to the magazine Jugantar which inspired many young people to take up revolutionary work.
• In 1905, Aurobindo started an English newspaper called Bande Mataram.
• In May 1908, Aurobindo was arrested in connection with the Alipore Conspiracy Case or Alipore Bomb Case.
• This was in the wake of the attempt to assassinate the Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingford by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki.
• Aurobindo was released after a year of solitary confinement in prison owing to the case collapsing when the chief prosecution witness was murdered.