150 Years of Sri Aurobindo: The Pioneer of Integral Consciousness
Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization: The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo
Academic conference hosted by Asian Contemplative and Transcultural Studies (ACTS), co-hosted by Journal of Dharma Studies
Swaraj, Socialism and the origins of Sri Aurobindo’s Political Theology
by Alex Wolfers
Aurobindo first gained wide public prominence as a revolutionary leader during the Swadeshi-Boycott Movement in Bengal (1905-1908). Never fully at ease in the public glare, it was over these three insurgent years of passionate upheaval that Aurobindo first formulated his distinctive evolutionary vision. Under his militant direction the agitation assumed a radical idealism anchored in a spiritual conception of absolute freedom (Swaraj). While the Boycott enabled the emerging ‘Extremist’ leadership to displace an older elite politics of Anglo-centric Liberalism, it also cleared the way for their productive encounter with democratic socialism. Whereas Liberalism masked the materialistic appetites of racial capitalism, Socialism mobilised the utopian courage necessary to advance ‘the moral, intellectual and spiritual perfection of mankind.’ As against the faux-universalist ‘white-manity’ imposed by Liberal modernity, ‘Extremist’ political theology yearned for a truly universal ‘divine democracy’ that would privilege humanity over the ‘cruel…production of commodity.’ But while Aurobindo’s idealistic leadership undoubtedly introduced an insurgent constellation of anarchic possibilities into India’s political firmament, he often stumbled in his attempts to navigate the concrete particularities of caste, class and religion. How might Aurobindo’s earliest attempts to apply his prophetic vision within a hostile political context inform present struggles for collective transformation within the contemporary crisis of capitalism?
Alex Wolfers is researching the early political theology of Aurobindo Ghose at King’s College, University of Cambridge. He works on the intersection between theology and global intellectual history with particular emphasis on conceptions of struggle, sovereignty and revolutionary subjectivity. His publications include ‘Born like Krishna in the Prison-House: Revolutionary Asceticism in the Political Ashram of Aurobindo Ghose,’ South Asia (2016) and ‘The Making of an Avatar: Reading Sri Aurobindo Ghose’, Religions of South Asia (2018).
September 23rd-26th, 2023
Namaste Hall, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
14 окт 2023
