What about “whataboutism”?

Sri Aurobindo on World War II, the Mother on Winston Churchill

By 1939, public opinion in India was so anti-British that many hoped for a German victory in the war that seemed inevitable. On September 1 of that year, Hitler attacked Poland. Realizing that further appeasement was futile, Britain and France declared war against Germany on September 3. The same day, the Viceroy of India announced that India too was at war. By the middle of May 1940, German armies controlled Poland, Denmark, and the Low Countries, had a stranglehold on Norway, and had broken through the French line at Sedan. The remnants of the French army and the British Expeditionary Force were trapped at Dunkirk and seemed doomed.

It was at this point, Sri Aurobindo later wrote, that he began to act against the German war machine. In public gestures, he and the Mother donated to the French National Defense Fund in May, the Viceroy’s War Fund in June, and the Madras War Fund in September. Accompanying the third donation was the following letter, dated 19 September 1940, to the governor of Madras:

We are placing herewith at the disposal of H.E. the Governor of Madras a sum of Rs. 500 as our joint contribution to the Madras War Fund. This donation, which is in continuation of previous sums given by us for the cause of the Allies (10,000 francs to the French Caisse de Défense Nationale before the unhappy collapse of France and Rs. 1000 to the Viceroy’s War Fund immediately after the Armistice) is sent as an expression of our entire support for the British people and the Empire in their struggle against the aggressions of the Nazi Reich and our complete sympathy with the cause for which they are fighting.

We feel that not only is this a battle waged in just self-defence and in defence of the nations threatened with the world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of civilisation and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations and a better and more secure world-order. [AN¹ 453]

What irked some of his disciples was that Sri Aurobindo, once the “most dangerous” person in India, should now appear to sing the praises of the British.

It was Edward Baker, the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, who had considered Sri Aurobindo “one of the most dangerous factors in the present situation.” It was F.W. Duke, chief secretary of the Government of Bengal, who had called Sri Aurobindo “the most dangerous of our adversaries now at large.” And it was none less than Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, who had written to the Viscount John Morley, Secretary of State for India, that “I can only repeat what I said to you in my letter of April 14th [1910] that [Sri Aurobindo] is the most dangerous man we now have to reckon with.”

What made Sri Aurobindo so dangerous was, in his own words, that he had been “the first Indian who had the courage to declare openly that the aim of political action in India was complete and absolute independence.” The newspaper he founded, the Bande Mataram, “was almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of a people and preparing it for revolution,” he later recalled.

Yet here was Sri Aurobindo writing that it is “only by Britain’s victory in the struggle to which she has challenged this destructive Force that the danger can be nullified, since she alone has shown at once the courage and power to resist and survive,” that the only material force now averting the danger “is the obstinate and heroic resistance of Great Britain and her fixed determination to fight the battle to the end,” and that “the victory of Great Britain in this war is not only to the interest of the whole of humanity including India, but necessary for the safeguarding of its future.”

Having settled in the French enclave of Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo at first thought to return to politics after completing his yoga in a year or two at most. But soon “the magnitude of the spiritual work set before him became more and more clear to him.” It was no longer a question of “revolt against the British government; he was now waging a revolt against the whole universal Nature.”

What some of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples did not grasp was that “Hitler and Nazism and its push towards world domination” was “an assault by a formidable reactionary Force, a purely Asuric force, on the highest values of civilisation,” an assault whose “success would mean the destruction of individual liberty, national freedom, liberty of thought, liberty of life, religious and spiritual freedom in at least three continents.” This assault was in a very real sense universal Nature’s reaction to Sri Aurobindo’s revolt against her established ways. This is how he came to write letters like the following:

You have said that you have begun to doubt whether it was the Mother’s war and ask me to make you feel again that it is. I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother’s war. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance. It is no use concentrating on the defects or mistakes of nations; all have defects and commit serious mistakes; but what matters is on what side they have ranged themselves in the struggle. It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room to think and act according to the light in them and grow in the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot be the slightest doubt that if one side wins, there will be an end of all such freedom and hope of light and truth and the work that has to be done will be subjected to conditions which would make it humanly impossible; there will be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. [AN 463–464]

What we say is not that the Allies have not done wrong things, but that they stand on the side of the evolutionary forces. I have not said that at random, but on what to me are clear grounds of fact. What you speak of is the dark side. All nations and governments have been that in their dealings with each other, — at least all who had the strength and got the chance. I hope you are not expecting me to believe that there are or have been virtuous governments and unselfish and sinless peoples? But there is the other side also. You are condemning the Allies on grounds that people in the past would have stared at, on the basis of modern ideals of international conduct; looked at like that all have black records. But who created these ideals or did most to create them (liberty, democracy, equality, international justice and the rest)? Well, America, France, England—the present Allied nations. They have all been imperialistic and still bear the burden of their past, but they have also deliberately spread these ideals and spread too the institutions which try to embody them. Whatever the relative worth of these things—they have been a stage, even if a still imperfect stage of the forward evolution. [AN 464]

We made it plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished. That is the whole question and all other considerations are either irrelevant or of a minor importance. The Allies at least have stood for human values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical (e.g. the virtues of the Herrenvolk, the master race). That does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless angels nor the Germans a wicked and sinful race, but as an indicator it has a primary importance. [AN 465–466]

In his book 12 Years with Sri Aurobindo, Nirodbaran, who had been the personal physician and literary secretary to Sri Aurobindo, recounts to following episode (pp. 127–129). Unbeknownst to B., A. had reported to the Mother B.’s reactions to Sri Aurobindo’s recent contribution to the War Fund. Subsequently B. noticed that the Mother was ignoring him [I assume that it was a “he”] and begged her to tell him the reason for her coldness. This was her response:

There are things that were settled long before you were even born. We have been working on them for a long time. Now you with your infinitesimally small mind believe that all that is nothing, that Sri Aurobindo and I are wrong, and that you are right in your judgment!

B. was taken aback. He still did not realize his mistake. He asked: “Is it something about the War that I spoke to A.?” The Mother signaled a Yes, to which he responded by saying, “Oh, it was nothing. I just spoke to him casually; it was not at all serious.” To which the Mother replied: “Not serious? It was almost unbelievable that you of all persons could speak like that about Sri Aurobindo! Haven’t you read all that He has given out to the Press?” B. answered: “Yes, Mother, I have. But have not the British done anything wrong to India?”

This is an instance of what today is referred to as “whataboutism.” A contemporary instance would be responding to a certain twice-impeached ex-President’s squirreling away classified documents to his beach resort by saying: “What about Hilary’s emails?” Here is the Mother’s response to B.:

We never said that they had not, nor do we say that in the future they will not do so any more. But today the question is not that; don’t you understand it? When you see your neighbour’s house on fire, and yet you do not go to help to put it out because he has done wrong to you, you risk the burning of your own house and the loss of your own life. Do you not see the difference between the forces that are fighting for the Divine and those for the Asuras?

To which B. replied: “‘Yes, Mother, I do see; only what baffles me is that Churchill, whom you and Sri Aurobindo have chosen as your direct instrument, wants today India’s help for his own country’s existence; and yet says that His Majesty’s government has no intention of liquidating its Empire!”

Here I should interject that after the fall of Singapore and Rangoon, Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent Sir Stafford Cripps, a socialist member of the war cabinet, to Delhi with the following offer.² After the war India would become a self-governing dominion, like Canada and Australia. Provinces and princely states could opt out if they chose. Meanwhile, “the principal sections of the Indian people” were invited to participate in the counsels of war. After meetings with Indian leaders, Cripps announced the proposal over the radio on March 30, 1942. Sri Aurobindo was listening. Breaking his self-imposed rule of keeping silence on political matters, he telegraphed Cripps to say that he welcomed the offer “as an opportunity given to India to determine for herself, and organise in all liberty of choice, her freedom and unity, and take an effective place among the world’s free nations.” He concluded by offering his “public adhesion” in case “it can be of any help in your work.” Cripps immediately thanked Sri Aurobindo for allowing him to inform the country that one who occupied a “unique position in [the] imagination of Indian youth” felt that the offer “substantially confers the freedom for which Indian Nationalism has so long struggled.” When negotiations failed, Sri Aurobindo returned to his reliance on the use of spiritual force alone against the aggressor.

Winston Churchill and Stafford Cripps

The Mother responded to B. by saying:

Leave all that to the Divine. Churchill is a human being. He is not a yogi aspiring to transform his nature. Today he represents the Soul of the Nation that is fighting against the Asuras. He is being guided by the Divine directly and his soul is responding magnificently. All concentration must be now to help the Allies for the victory that is ultimately assured, but there must be no looseness, not the slightest opening to the Asuras. After the battle is won, if Churchill’s soul can remain still in front and he continues to be guided by the Divine, he will go very fast in the line of evolution. But generally on earth it doesn’t happen like that. His human mind and vital will take the lead after the crisis is over, and then he will come down to the level of the ordinary human being, though one of a higher order.

What follows are excerpts from Never Give In: The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (selected and edited by his grandson Winston S. Churchill, Pimlico, 2003).

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. [p. 206]

Side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them — behind us — behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France — gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians — upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall. [p. 209]

If we can stand up to [Hitler], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.” [p. 229]

I will say that he must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honour to be the faithful servants. [p. 323]

Personally, I sense much the same indomitable spirit in President Zelenskyy’s famous words to Putin:³

Without gas or without you?
Without you.

Without light or without you?
Without you.

Without water or without you?
Without you.

Without food or without you?
Without you.

Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst aren’t as scary and deadly 4 us as your “friendship and brotherhood.”

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, or so they say. 81 years ago, on December 26, 1941, after a horrendous bombing campaign on the UK’s civilian population, Churchill addressed the US Congress. Yesterday, on December 21, 2022, after a (still ongoing) horrendous bombing campaign on Ukraine’s civilian population, President Zelenskyy addressed the US Congress. Ultimately it is the same battle still being waged against the same foe.

1. Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 2006).

2. For a detailed account of the affair see Sudeep Paul, 1942: An Indian Tragedy — The price we paid for the failure of the Cripps Mission eighty years ago, Open, 11 Aug, 2022.

3. Posted on Twitter by Defense of Ukraine, @DefenceU (the Official page of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine) on September 12, 2022.