Sri Aurobindo, India, and ideological discourse

The first part of this essay considers Sri Aurobindo’s nationalism and contextualizes it within the colonial-national interchange and the modern understanding of the nation. It then problematizes Hindutva’s attempts to reductively appropriate Sri Aurobindo’s pluralistic and evolutionary nationalism. In the second part, a close reading is conducted of a well-known nationalist speech of Sri Aurobindo, the Uttarpara Speech, to draw out the significance of his ideas of “nation soul”. The third part applies the implications of this nationalism to a consideration of Sri Aurobindo’s social ideas – concerning nations and communities in their modern and postmodern trajectories. The paper concludes by considering instances of spiritual communities such as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville which exemplify the social context of the Integral Yoga in Sri Aurobindo’s global vision of the future.