Sri Aurobindo was a spiritual leader, poet and campaigner for Indian independence who inspired, among others, Mahatma Gandhi. He lived at 49 St Stephen’s Avenue for three years as a teenager from 1884 until 1887.

ST STEPHEN’S AVENUE

Born Aurobindo Ackroyd Ghose in Calcutta ­(now Kolkata), Sri Aurobindo was sent to England to be educated at the age of seven, along with his elder brothers, Benoybhushan and Manmohan. He lived first in Manchester before moving with his brothers to 49 Stephen’s Avenue in London in 1884, aged 12, to take up a scholarship at St Paul’s School in Hammersmith.

It was while living here that he experienced the first flush of a political awakening, and a sense of injustice at the British rule of India. In his school studies, he made heroes of figures of rebellion, such as Joan of Arc and Giuseppe Mazzini, and developed an admiration for the Romantic poets and for Elizabethan poetry and drama. His education in the language and traditions of his country’s foreign rulers, however, instilled a sense of cultural disinheritance that later influenced his Indian nationalism.

Money was tight during the three years the brothers stayed at number 49, since their father’s allowances arrived infrequently. Fortunately, as Aurobindo later remembered:

Our landlady was an angel … She was long suffering and never asked us for money even we did not pay for months and months.

Less amenable was the evangelical Mrs Drewett, the mother of Aurobindo’s tutor and the brothers’ temporary guardian. When Manmohan, the eldest brother, rebelled against her enforced routine of daily prayers, she left abruptly, saying that ‘she would not live with an atheist’ because ‘the house might fall down on her’.

POETRY AND POLITICS

Aurobindo went on to study at Cambridge University before returning to India in 1893 to join the state service in Baroda (now Vadodara, in the present-day state of Gujarat). He rose to become Vice-Principal of Baroda College, and kept up his literary interests. His first volume of poetry, Songs to Myrtilla, was published in 1898. He also studied Sanskrit and the great Indian epics, some of which he translated into English.

From 1906, Aurobindo became increasingly involved in politics. As editor of the nationalist newspaper Bande Mataram (‘Hail to Mother India’) and the organiser of radical political societies, he was accused of sedition in 1907 and spent a year in jail awaiting trial. During this time, Aurobindo began to practise yoga and meditation, initially to develop inner strength for the political struggle, but increasingly as an end in themselves. Following his acquittal in 1909, he fled to a secret address in French India after he was warned of a further prosecution. This effectively ended his political career, though he maintained an interest in world events.

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND TEACHINGS

In April 1910, Aurobindo arrived in Pondicherry, a French colonial enclave in India, where he remained for the rest of his life. He developed a small community, or ashram, there and in 1920 he was joined by Mirra Alfassa, who became the ‘Mother’ of the ashram. During these years, Aurobindo worked on his own system of yoga, and wrote prolifically. His philosophical and spiritual works included The Life Divine (1939–40), The Synthesis of Yoga (1948), The Human Cycle (1949), The Ideal of Human Unity (1950), and Savitri (1950–51), the longest epic poem in the English language. Although grounded in traditional Indian scripture, Aurobindo’s written output also showed the influence of Western thought, such as evolutionary theory.

In the last two years of his life, Aurobindo received a number of awards, including the Asiatic Society Medal for Peace and Culture. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, shortly before his death the same year.