This document summarizes Sri Aurobindo's views on culture and the renaissance in India. It discusses that Aurobindo believed India had a great spiritual culture and civilization due to its emphasis on spiritual aims. He saw ancient India as having great vitality, creativity, and intellectuality. Aurobindo felt a true renaissance would be a revival of the Indian spirit through embracing aspects of the past while also assimilating modern ideas. He advocated for education that nurtured students' capacities rather than repressing them, and saw potential in a fusion of Indian spirituality and modernity.

1. Department of English
Name: Dave Nimesh B.
Roll NO.- 20
M.A.
Sem -1
Paper no.- (4)Indian Writing In English
Presentation topic: Aurobindo’s views
on Culture
(Renaissance in India)

2. Sri Aurobindo
• Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August
1872. at the age of seven he was taken to
England for education and he also passed the
final examination for the Indian civil service
• Returning to India in 1893 he worked for next 13
year in Baroda as a professor in Baroda college
• He was the first political leader in India to openly
put forward , in journal Bande Mataram, the
ideal of complete independence for the country

3. Aurobindo’s writing
“The life Devine”
“The synthesis of Yoga”
“Savitri”

4. tradition
culture
Religion,
spirituality
Way of
living life
education

5. Renaissance in India
• An essay Renaissance in India published in
1918 with a masterly view of India's culture
through ages- her essential spirit and her
characteristic soul, her unique genius powers
which gave her remarkably long periods of
greatness and an unusually prolific creativity.

6. Aurobindo’s views….
• India is one of the greatest of world’s
civilization because of its high spiritual aim
and the effective manner in which it has
impressed this aim on the forms of rhythms of
its life.
• “ A spiritual aspiration was the Governing
force of this culture”

7. Ancient India is marked by..
“ her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible
power of life and joy of life”
“ her almost unimaginably prolific
creativeness” and
“ ancient Indian spirit was a strong
intellectuality”

8. Quotations :
• “ this great and ancient nation was once
foundation of human light, the apex of human
civilization, the exemplar of courage and
humanity, the perfection of good government
and settled society, the mother of all religion,
the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has
suffered much at the hands of inferior
civilizations and more savage peoples; it has
gone down into shadow of night and tasted
often the bitterness of death. Its pride has been
trampled into….

9. • ….. The dust and its glory has departed. Hunger
and misery and despair have become the master
of this fair soil, these noble hills, these ancient
rivers , these cities whose life story goes back
into prehistoric night. But all our calamities have
been but a discipline of suffering, because for
the great mission before us prosperity was not
sufficient, adversity had also its training, to
taste the glory of power and beneficence and joy
was not sufficient, the knowledge of weakness
and torture and humiliation was also needed”

10. spirituality
• “ Spirituality is the master key of the Indian
mind. The sense of infinity is native to it”
• To him..
True spirituality rejects no new light
It means simply to keep our centre , our
essential way of being, our inborn nature and
assimilate to it all we receive.

11. Western impact on India
The western impact reawakened
“ a free activity of the intellect”
“modern ideas into the old culture”
“ desire fore new creation”
According to him, true Renaissance is a revival of
the Indian spirit by the turning of the national
mind to its past.

12. Education
• In India, he said, “ the
students generally have
great capacities , but the
system of education
represses and destroys that
capacities”
• unique fusion of ancient
Indian spirituality and
modernity.
• Not blind imitation of west,
accept whatever best is in
west and assimilate it in
Indian context.

13. His main idea
• We must therefore save
India all that she has
stored up of knowledge,
character and noble
thought in her
immemorial past.
• Recovery of old national
spirit and ideas.
• Social and political
liberty and eqality.

14. •Thank you