Sri Aurobindo was dismissed by his contemporaries as a misguided enthusiast

[But history does not follow a predictable linear path, and we may recall an incident from India’s history when at the very beginning of the last century Aurobindo Ghose gave a call for ‘purna swaraj’, or full independence for India. The Indian National Congress was then just a deliberative body and the British Empire sat securely over nearly two-thirds of the globe. Aurobindo was surely dismissed by his contemporaries as a misguided enthusiast. After many turns of fortune both in India and the world, none of which could have been predicted in their detail on the day of that call to freedom, India finally got her full Independence, on the day Sri Aurobindo predicted, his birthday—15th of August 1947. The cultural logic of a nation and a people that has a past and a present is that it will have a future: the current task is to keep the door open for that future to emerge. Organiser Home > 2008 Issues > April 20, 2008
Insight - Tibet and China: Divergent routes to harmony By Madhuri Santanam Sondhi (The writer is director, ML Sondhi Institute for Asia-Pacific Affairs and can be contacted at mssondhi@hotmail.com)]

A nice portrayal of Sri Aurobindo's vision and its relevance in the present day political maneuvers. However, a small correction is called for: Sri Aurobindo never “predicted” that India will be Independent on August 15, 1947. [TNM]