India’s hard-won freedom emerged not only through political mobilization but also through a profound spiritual awakening. Its journey to nationhood, shaped by the upheavals of British rule and the people’s struggle for emancipation, was essentially a political movement strengthened by a deep spiritual undercurrent. Such momentum, so I would call it, arose from the very Upanishadic aphorisms that had sustained India’s socio-spiritual well-being for eons. While the aspiration for freedom was political, its driving force remained spiritual.
What comes to mind in substantiating this instinctive sense of India’s spiritual nationalism is the words uttered by Sri Aurobindo in his Uttarpara speech, one of his most impactful addresses, delivered soon after his release from jail in the Alipore Bomb Case. The revolutionary-turned-spiritual master spoke from the tranquility of his inner awakening. Incarcerated for almost a year, Aurobindo underwent a transformation that was both deep and unprecedented.
The speech gives us a glimpse of what India’s spiritual essence had been. Aurobindo, to quote his own words, had been experiencing, in the harmony of his mind, its glorious impact, which he believed possessed the power to gain India its independence. Having experienced spiritual visions and communion with the Supreme, he expressed the view conveyed to him through divine intervention. He further states that he had a vision of the Divine assuring him of the country’s freedom, with its mighty young generation capable of striving and struggling to lift India toward emancipation.
In the speech, Aurobindo expresses his experience of being an under-trial prisoner, which he describes not as a punishment but as a moment, indeed a momentum, of spiritual transformation that he had never imagined would occur. Its impact was so profound that it enabled him to envision the future of India in a post-colonial context. What he experienced was extraordinary, something only spiritual luminaries are said to attain. During this period, he realized the depth and transcendental immanence of Sanatana Dharma, its timeless nature and its capacity to awaken a sense of nationhood. He recognized it as a supreme authority, one that religions across the world could not claim to possess.
The genuineness of his realization leads us to an absolute plane of understanding. Sri Aurobindo states that Sanatana Dharma is the one religion that insists on the ultimate truth that he proclaimed the world would one day acknowledge. It is the one religion that enables us not only to understand and believe the truth but to realize it with every part of our being. His address at Uttarpara should not be dismissed as hallucinatory or dreamy; rather, his words emerged from the depths of the immense realization of a spiritual master who grasped the vastness of its ontological nature. His assertions provided essential guidance to the struggle for freedom. This struggle, he argues, is an evolutionary process that India is destined to fulfill and, most importantly, a spiritual mission.
His verbal utterances were not merely a philosophical articulation of India’s essential spiritual depth; rather, he elevates us to a higher plane of reality that promises the redemption of a vast landscape from its oppressive colonial institutions. In essence, the yogi within him further envisions that the struggle for freedom was not a mere political upheaval; instead, it was unfolding on a higher plane as a civilizational goal. He invokes Dharma repeatedly, distinctly distancing the concept from religions that have historically mobilized political movements. Sanatana Dharma, which he insightfully defines as India’s nationalism, may be better understood, in existential terms, as the force that sustains India as a living entity of cultural convergence.
He further states, “This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatana Dharma; with it, it moves and with it grows. When the Sanatana Dharma declines, the nation declines, and if the Sanatana Dharma were capable of perishing, with it the nation would perish.”
Here, I would briefly bring in Swami Vivekananda, referencing his understanding of India and Sanatana Dharma. Almost aligned with Aurobindo, though far more extensive in its impact and coherence, Vivekananda asserted that if Sanatana Dharma were to perish, the moment it ceased to exist would mark the moral destruction of human civilization. Admittedly, Aurobindo, on another occasion, made it clear that his spiritual journey began with the philosophical tutelage he received from Vivekananda through his literature.
Throughout the Uttarpara speech, we find Aurobindo, a spiritual luminary emphasizing the significance of the freedom movement, which he interprets as divine. Gandhi, for that matter, never hesitated to showcase his spiritual inclinations either. However, his vision of freedom was rarely articulated as a spiritual movement facilitating India’s liberation. Here, we see how Aurobindo links freedom with a civilizational perspective, realizing that, if attained, it must function as a process of revival. Without this, the yogi argues, freedom would fail to grant India its ultimate liberation.
Gandhi, too, was deeply spiritual, but he chose to mobilize the movement without explicitly foregrounding India’s civilizational continuity. He aspired for India to grow into a great nation, with its people and villages flourishing, while non-violence and inclusiveness defined its social framework. Both Gandhi and Aurobindo regarded the Bhagavad Gita as an eternal philosophy offering profound solutions to the deepening crises faced by the world. While Aurobindo believed that the spiritual essence and all-encompassing virtues of Hinduism were sufficient to dethrone colonialism, Gandhi embraced another dimension of the same philosophy - compassion, non-violence, and voluntary surrender for the nation.
For Aurobindo, the struggle to decolonize India was his karma. A nation, he believed, was deeply anchored in the principles of karma, which were themselves rooted in dharma. To realize this vision, Aurobindo argued that Sanatana Dharma, beyond all existing religious philosophies, would serve as the foundational plank. Aurobindo’s spiritual transformation marked a moment, one that India had witnessed earlier when Vivekananda brought such consciousness to the surface.
Not only during the era of these yogis but also in the modern, politically tumultuous global scenario, has India continued to advocate the unfathomable nature of its spiritual inclusiveness through aphorisms such as “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”, the world is one family. Aurobindo was a proponent of India’s glorious Dharmic essence, and his intense articulation of India as a Dharmic society and its revival was the anticipated outcome of decolonization. For him, mere political unshackling was insufficient; India, for all practical purposes, had to move beyond it. Political redemption, he believed, could be achieved only through spiritual revival, and spiritual revival, in turn, was possible only through the awakening of Dharma. Today, a re-reading of his seminal utterances could once again provoke India to move in this direction- before it is too late.