ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I draw upon some points of comparison between Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo as philosophers. I do so for two fundamental reasons. For one, in colonial India as well as in contemporary times, philosophy, spirituality and religion represented/represent a consistently important medium of self-understanding and self-representation among Indians. Much of the Hindu cultural renaissance and the intellectual reawakening of the nineteenth century, the values of which both Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi deeply imbibed, rest more on the separation of ‘good’ religion from the ‘bad’, and not, as it were, the ‘secular’ from the ‘religious’. For much of the nineteenth century, the religious consciousness was the vital aspect of Hindu self-understanding. Second, not enough attention has hitherto been shown towards understanding Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo as religious thinkers and as philosophers, far less so in a comparative framework. Both engaged in reinterpreting and reconstructions of most of the Indian Philosophical systems bringing in the experiential aspect, Sri Aurobindo “Bringing Brahman Down to Earth” (Nalini Bhushan and J.L. Garfield) and using the concept of Lila for human evolution towards Brahman may be called as Lila Vedanta and Gandhi bringing ‘absolute’ and ‘devotion’ to every living creature with love and compassion developing his own, may be called as Vaishnava Vedanta.
