The Unexplored Connection Between Sri Aurobindo, Sayajirao Gaekwad, And Babasaheb Ambedkar

This 15 August is the 148th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo.

Here, we take a look at the possible influence of Sri Aurobindo on another one great son of India: Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

Outwardly, they seem to have worked in unrelated domains. But a closer scrutiny into deeper aspects beyond the superficial hints strongly at a possible influence.

The Raja connection

Sayajirao Gaekwad III (1863–1939), the Maharaja of Baroda State from 1875 to 1939, emerges as the connection between the two.

In 1892, the Maharaja and Aurobindo met. Sayajirao Gaekwad asked him to take up a teaching job in Baroda University.

From February 1893 to February 1906, Sri Aurobindo spent full thirteen years in Baroda. He ended up as both the Vice-Principal of the college as well as the king’s personal secretary.

In this capacity, Sri Aurobindo also wrote the speeches for the king. This was also the time Sri Aurobindo was contributing to the magazines run by freedom fighters in Bengal.

The British already had their doubts about the Baroda king as being sympathetic to the Hindu revolutionaries. British officials, including the regent, started giving trouble to the ruler and Aurobindo being in the employ of the princely state was one of the major causes.

But far from being disturbed by that, the king was defiant. For example, the British had banned Bengalis from joining the military. But the Baroda king gave military training to Jatin Bannerji, one of Aurobindo's friends, making him join the Baroda cavalry.

Sri Aurobindo, not wanting to cause any problem for the king, left Baroda. The king requested Sri Aurobindo not to leave. But Aurobindo was already determined. He took up a job in Bengal that paid only one-fifth of the salary of what he got in Baroda.

Even after Sri Aurobindo left, the British viewed the king with strong suspicion.

In his secret letter to the British government, Viceroy Hardinge traced the hostility that the king had for the British 'to the pernicious influence of the Poona Brahmins’ who 'with a concerted object ...kept up a constant glorification of the Gaekwad.'

The letter also speaks of the influence Aurobindo had on the king even years after he had left, observing that 'his employment in the State gave a great impetus to the anti-British movement.'

Then there was an 'akhara', a wrestling club in the heart of Baroda that was run by Hindu monks, which the report pointed out, was where 'sedition has been openly preached ... without any opposition from the State police.'

The intelligence reports of the British also spoke about Shankar Wagh, a barber in the employ of the palace who was 'known to be an extremist and a great friend of V.D. Savarkar.' (Fatesinhrao Gaekwad, 'Sayajirao of Baroda, the prince and the man', 1989)

It was this seditious king of Baroda under the ‘pernicious influence of the Poona Brahmins’ and Sri Aurobindo, who also gave a young Bhimrao Ambedkar a scholarship initially for his studies in India.

In 1913, aged 22, the young Ambedkar was supported by the Baroda State Scholarship of £11.50 per month for three years, for his post-graduation in Columbia University.

Later, when Dr Ambedkar returned India, the king nominated him as a member of Baroda Legislative Assembly and a special electoral law was passed that only those who would share the assembly along with the Scheduled Communities could contest for the election.

This then provides the historical context of the possible channel of influence for Sri Aurobindo on Dr Ambedkar.

Views on caste: original conception and later devolution

Let us consider the views Sayajirao-III expressed on the caste system. Historian Dr Ruma Bhattacharya explains:

This thought-process has an ‘Aurobindonian’ signature to it. Sri Aurobindo writes:

In the writings of Dr Ambedkar also this narration comes out. In his reply to Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Ambedkar once wrote:

Even the rejection of varnavyavastha for which Dr Ambedkar gives an elaborate reasoning - mainly on the practical impossibility of classifying people belonging to ‘four thousand castes based on birth’ into four categories based on worth, is anticipated in the thought process of Sri Aurobindo.

In 1926, a few years before Dr Ambedkar penned down his Annihilation of Caste, Sri Aurobindo pointed out how the four-fold system could be viewed as a kind of failed experiment that 'sought to develop different types and marriage within the same caste was intended to help this system.‘:

Sri Aurobindo also introduces another notion - that of dynamic psychological types which are more fluid and flexible and which is more individualistic than social - a dimension ignored by Dr Ambedkar.

However, there is a striking similarity between the way Sri Aurobindo and Dr Ambedkar see how the system became more and more rigid with the passage of time. Sri Aurobindo scholar and psychiatrist Dr Soumitra Basu explains:

Now this process is also narrated by Dr Ambedkar, through a scholarly speculative scenario:

One need not concern with the micro-factual accuracy here. But the gradual rigidity that sets in into the Varna system can be seen in the ideas of both Dr Ambedkar and Sri Aurobindo.

Caste rigidity against democracy

This is the next more striking parallel. The core of Dr Ambedkar’s criticism of the caste system is that it is fundamentally undemocratic and hence against the very spiritual basis of what he called ‘Brahmaism’ based on the Upanishad Mahavakyas .

One of the earliest Indian seers of the last century to make this connection was Sri Aurobindo:

Here one can note that Sri Aurobindo sees in the rigidity of the caste system an inherent anti-democratic element which he rejects as ‘un-Hindu’.

The same spirit and even key words can be seen in Sayajirao-III talking about caste system. He spoke about the “rigidity” of the caste system that led to ‘ignorance and superstition’. He considered caste as an obstacle in the context of the emerging 'national consciousness'.

His critique of caste thus foresees many of the thoughts developed by Dr Ambedkar.

Sayajirao rejected the essentialist argument that caste is unique to Hinduism and its core. According to him, Shri Krishna, had he lived in the modern era, would not have tolerated 'the rigidity of the caste system that sentences millions of our fellow men to life of misery, subjugation and degradation.'

Dr Ambedkar echoes the same spirit in his own words. He speaks of caste spirit as being anti-democratic. But he sees the core spiritual values of ancient India - enshrined in the Upanishadic Mahavakyas - as the very basis of democracy.

Social democracy and fraternity

In his final speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November, 1949 Dr Ambedkar defined social democracy and emphasised its importance. He said:

Of all these three values, the greatest importance he attached was to fraternity. To him 'without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.'

This led Dr Ambedkar, who had rejected both the words 'socialism' and 'secularism' in the preamble of the Constitution, to introduce the word ‘fraternity’ in the Objective Resolution which is now permanently enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution.

It is again amazing how closely this resonates with the vision of Sri Aurobindo.

In his Ideal of Human Unity, (1915-18) Sri Aurobindo stated that ‘freedom, equality, brotherhood are three godheads of the soul.’ Of these fraternity formed ‘the real key to the triple gospel of the idea of humanity.’

According to him the peoples’ movements that did not make fraternity as their basis, had ultimately failed. Taking French Revolution as the example, he explained:

For both Sri Aurobindo and Dr Ambedkar, this sense of belonging or fraternity should be ultimately spiritual.

In his Thoughts on Pakistan, Dr Ambedkar pointed out : “If unity is to be of an abiding character it must be founded on a sense of kinship, in the feeling of being kindred. In short it must be spiritual.”

Sri Aurobindo saw the triple principles of liberty, fraternity and equality as having a deep spiritual basis:

Both Sri Aurobindo and Dr Ambedkar derived the cardinal principles of ‘liberty, fraternity and equality’ from Indic and not Western sources.

Dr Ambedkar was born in the Kabir-panth which in turn derived itself from the Sri Ramanuja tradition. Thus, on one side he had the influence of Sri Ramanuja tradition of socio-spiritual influence. On the other side, through his benefactor, the Maharaja of Baroda, he seemed to have been also influenced by Sri Aurobindo’s socio-spiritual thoughts.

Though he chose conversion to the Buddha Dharma as a cathartic experience for the suppressed sections of India and as a shock-message for the Hindu society at large, to speed up social reforms towards a fraternity-based Sanghathan, his own positive and nation-building thought processes drank from the same spiritual fountain of Dharma that is eternal.