Lover of Light Among Luminaries Dilip Kumar Roy

SR No.: 001542
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Amruta Paresh Patel
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 258
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Literature, & Biography
File Size: 16 MB

Page 234

THE CONCLUDING NOTE
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delight. His works of high seriousness had a powerful appeal because they sprang from the author's passion for truth and love of Krishna. What easily touches the hearts of the people is not dry reasoning, but such passion and emotion as those of Dilip Roy. Very few works of non-fictional prose could be so popular, even more popular than fiction, as those of Roy's, those of what may well be called Roy's biographies.
As an individual, Dilip Roy is a very interesting and very complex character. He accepted Sri Aurobindo as his pre-appointed guru and worshipped him as such. Yet, it is clear from his writing that he is least Aurobindonian of all the followers of Sri Aurobindo. In fact, you can call him a non-Aurobindonian, for it seems, he has learnt nothing from Sri Aurobindo as far as his spiritual quest is concerned. He loved to see God as Krishna in traditional Vaishnav sense of the term. We do not see his thinking or understanding of Sri Aurobindo's Integralism or the most ambitious and futurist project of realizing a 'fusion of time and Eternity'. He never talks about it..
It should also be clear from the foregoing pages that Roy is a very mild and humble personality. Such a person, one might expect, should be also docile and tractable, but far from it he is recalcitrant and least accomodating. In Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the Ashramites regarded Sri Aurobindo as the latest incarnation. of God, higher than even Krishna. Sri Aurobindo did not object to this kind of belief. But, Roy plainly refused to regard Sri Aurobindo even as Krishna's equal. much less superior. He told him so plainly. He understood Roy, but Roy by his unbelief antagonised the Ashramites. That is how, he was self-alienated in the Ashram. He could live alone thus but could not oblige his fellow Ashramites with even the slightest profession of the belief he did not actually cherish.
Another issue that sets him at variance with Sri Aurobindonians is his peculiar attitude to the Mother. The Ashramites and the followers of Sri Aurobindo regard the Mother as important as Sri Aurobindo as the caretaker of their sadhana. Sri Aurobindo, himself encouraged such a piety. But, somehow, Roy did not find the Mother acceptable. He himself has confessed it and Nirodbaran and K. D. Sethna, his gurnbhais at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, too, have confirmed it."
Was it simply Roy's male Chauvinism? It is quite likely that he could not. passively believe in anything, and demanded an experiential clarity. But this also cannot be true, for there are number of things such as 'guruvad' which Roy accepted unquestioningly and one may feel, superstitiously. The fact is that Roy: found himself a complete misfit as much in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy as in the ambience of Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Normally, a study of the disciple would reveal chiefly the personality of his master. In case of any other disciple of Sri Aurobindo or of Sri Ramkrishna