Defending Academic Freedom – Peter Heehs visits Pondicherry University

One of my former students of Pondicherry University in the mid 90s by name Arindam das , who also happened to be  the student of Aurobindo  Ashram school  came to campus and told about the controversy surrounding the lives of Sri Aurobindo , authord by Peter Heehs in 2008. While talking , he made an observation that Pondicherry , being and becoming the hub of educational institutions , the university should take the initiative and defend the academic freedom of  serious researchers and scholars , who are becoming the victim to moral policing and high handedness of vested interests.

In a matter of few days  a small meeting was arranged and we succeeded in bringing the author to our campus and despite our best efforts and good intention a detailed  objective  and health discussion could not take place , largely due to  the recalcitrant and highly arrogant attitude of one student , who tried to hijack the discussion and the personal level .

The positive fallout of the meet during the last week was that I did some home work for nearly a week and attempted to  understand the life and teachings of Aurobindo, as narrated by Peter Heehs and enjoyed reading it  and also  articulating the same on the stage in my own characteristic way .The author clarified  a few doubts  on questions , which were of trivial nature .

Being a pondicherian  for long , I neither  knew French nor tasted any hot  drink  .Over time, I had an occasion to enjoy social drink in a very very moderate dose but not picked up the french language. Nor did I bother to learn more about Sri Aurobindo , one of the finest  rebels  and revolutionaries in the early stage  before culminating  into a spiritual guru and practitioner of Yoga .Ig God wills, I might write a detailed review of this book , which  appears to be a well wriiten treatise with lot of proof and documentary evidences . As an insider  for more than four decades and as a critical historian by training , Peter Heehs  has done reasonable justice in humanizing Aurobindo to the common man and making people like us, who are not deeply religious but nevertheless very  keen to go into the realm of diving grace with all our doubt  and ignorance .