Déjà vu moment for Sri Aurobindo Ashram again

Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry had a déjà vu moment of sorts. With the abrogation of Article 370, the Ashram relived the times of 1954 when it hoisted a flag it describes as the 'Spiritual Flag of United India'.

The flag was first hoisted on 15th August 1947. According to sources in the Ashram, the last time the flag was hoisted was in the year 1954 when Puducherry (erstwhile Pondicherry) and other French settlements in India were transferred to the Indian Union. The flag with Mother's symbol at the centre was hoisted atop the Ashram library building on Saint Martin street.

"The flutter of our flag on high is answered by a flutter of joy in every Indian heart. Our flag is the symbol or our fulfilment. It is intended to hold aloft in victory all that is most dear in our national life. With absolute devotion, we stand under its happy flying sign, and wherever it beckons we are prepared to follow. But our love for it does not imply that the pattern it bears is completely satisfying. No matter what the pattern, it can count upon our allegiance. And yet we have the right to question whether those who have designed it have dipped their imagination sufficiently into the true heart of our land," said a member of the Ashram.

"In Sri Aurobindo's flag of Mother India and her spiritual mission we have also the promise of India's unity. For, the genuine indefeasible unity can come only of a sense in all men of the one God within, the God in whom alone are eternal liberty, equality and fraternity, the three grandest ideals that a country can pursue, the sole ideals that can make one harmonious country of all the countries constituting the world.

"If India wishes to be great by fulfilling her true genius and if she wishes to be the missionary of a world-union, no flag but this can ever be the symbol of her victorious emergence as an independent nation," he added.