ABSTRACT
The ashram became more popular as time went on and consequently it was thought necessary to build a bridge over the canal which separated the village from the ashram. The trees meanwhile were brought to the ashram and chopped up by the labourer. Although meditation was a large part of the young sadhu’s life, so also was devotion. He told them how to collect rice and money and how they should in due course build up a permanent stock of food and materials against some future disaster. Another strand was the awareness that he had the charismatic power to attract the young. Binode then went to the low caste area: scarcely a house in the tumbledown quarter had not been ripped apart by the cyclone. The war – the Great War, as the British began to call it – had raised hopes in India, for Indian troops had fought on the Western Front and in the Middle East.
