First about the facts. Mr Sonam Wangchuk is not inspired by Sri Aurobindo. There is nothing even remotely common between him and Sri Aurobindo whose name he has used as if he is going through a similar process. It is his wife who is a devotee and hence she thought of giving him the book ‘Tales of Prison Life’. If you see his profile, the fact that a movie was made around him and then the beginning of agitation after the removal of Article 370, especially when India thought of starting development projects to counter Chinese construction and military on the other side, the involvement of Nepalese and the violence against the local military establishment all point towards the diabolic nature of his work. Many NGOs work as moles of the foreign powers especially of the Deep State that do not want to see the rise of India. They use the cover of activism and take advantage of the democratic government to undermine it. Why has he never stood up and spoken against the developments on the other side by the Chinese? Is that not causing concern to the environmentalists? After all the onus of maintaining environmental balance cannot rest only with India. NGOs can and should work transcontinental. Very clearly it is a ploy to weaken India’s defences against China. Sri Aurobindo had cautioned in 1948 about the threat India has from Red China through Tibet. The then government of India did not listen and paid the price. The danger is not gone and India can ill afford to ignore the warning now when the situation is even more perilous and precarious. Even if the choice is between saving the nation and saving the environment, India should defend the nation first. All the rest comes later. Here is Sri Aurobindo’s warning, as valid today as earlier.
‘In Asia a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply across the way to any possibility of a continental unity of the peoples of this part of the world, in the emergence of Communist China. This creates a gigantic bloc which could easily englobe the whole of Northern Asia in a combination between two enormous Communist Powers, Russia and China, and would overshadow with a threat of absorption South-Western Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the whole frontier of India, menacing her security and that of Western Asia with the possibility of an invasion and an overrunning and subjection by penetration or even by overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political and social institutions and dominance of this militant mass of Communism whose push might easily prove irresistible. In any case, the continent would be divided between two huge blocs which might enter into active mutual opposition and the possibility of a stupendous world-conflict would arise dwarfing anything previously experienced: the possibility of any world-union might, even without any actual outbreak of hostilities, be indefinitely postponed by the incompatibility of interests and ideologies on a scale which would render their inclusion in a single body hardly realisable. The possibility of a coming into being of three or four continental unions, which might subsequently coalesce into a single unity, would then be very remote and, except after a world-shaking struggle, hardly feasible.’
As to right and wrong, all governments have their own interests. But the present government, despite whatever its shortcomings (who doesn’t have them), has its heart in the right place. It does not compromise with India’s national interests and security concerns. Rest is of secondary importance.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
