“O our Mother, O Soul of India, Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other masters and denied thee, now when they have arisen and the light is on thy face in this dawn of thy liberation, in this great hour we salute thee. Guide us so that the horizon of freedom opening before us may be also a horizon of true greatness and of thy true life the community of nations. Guide us so that we may be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all peoples.”
Also, in the morning the Mother hoisted her flag- which was to be called “The Spiritual Flag of India" - blazoning forth India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Ceylon all together, with her own symbol at the centre, over the main Ashram building. There was a record number of visitors to the Ashram, and over two thousand had Darshan in the afternoon. Presently the Mother appeared on the low terrace over Dyuman's room; the courtyard was packed to capacity. The Bande Mataram was sung as it had never been sung before, for now it was a moment of fulfilment, and the Mother responded with 'Jai Hind' and the congregation was to cherish the memory of her marvellous gesture for long afterwards.
The Mother's flag- the Spiritual Flag of India- which since 15th August 1947 has been for us a flaming minister, a symbol of hope and a declaration of faith, has been flying high and serene in the minds and sensibilities of countless number of Indians. The blue flag figuring the great Indian subcontinent stretching from Kashmir to Sri Lanka, from Sind to Burma, environed by the Himalaya in the North, the Indian ocean in the South, the Arabian sea on the West and the Bay of Bengal in the East, and with the Mother's symbol of her Shakti, her four powers and her twelve emanations concentrically arranged as the heart of the living Mother of a seething mass of humanity numbering almost a billion- what is this Spiritual Flag of India but a revelation, an ephiphanic projection, a visual recordation of the deeper reality, the inspiring Truth, of this primordial Asiatic region, the matrix of the stupendous human adventure on the earth, and the destined scene of the next leap forward to the horizons of supermanhood ?
This flag symbolising the spiritual reality and unity of Greater India- the true India- was verily the Mother's answer to the brutal partition of India decreed by the erstwhile British rulers and accepted by the short-sighted and faint-hearted Indian leaders of 1947, for the Spiritual Flag of India with the Mother's symbol as the central design and highlighted by the blue background was the Ashram's flag as well. Explaining the significance, Sri Aurobindo said in 1949:
“The blue of the flag is meant to be the colour of Krishna and so represents the spiritual or Divine Consciousness which it is her work to establish so that it may reign upon earth.”
The world's deep contrasts are but figures spun
Draping the unanimity of the One.
My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,
My body is God's happy living tool,
My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.
Like the human soul, the nation's soul too defies all man-made boundaries - physical, legal, constitutional- and embraces the infinities. Even so, by charging the new Map of India with a spiritual glow and infinitude of connotation, the Mother tried to undo in some measure the mischief of the Partition mentality of self-fragmentation, the surge of mutual suspicion and hatred, and the enthronement of communal and sub-national egoism that were alien to the spiritual ideal of oneness, wholeness and intergrality, Mother was not limited to the head alone, the feet alone, the hands alone or even the visible body alone. The Mother's ambience of protective love and sovereign Grace overflowed the visible boundaries. Salute to the Mother! Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!
India is my true country, the country of my soul and spirit...
“I want to mark this day by the expression of a long cherished wish; that of become an Indian citizen. From the first time I came to India- that is in 1914 - I felt that India is my true country, the country of my soul and spirit... Now the time has come when I can declare myself.
But, in accordance with Sri Aurobindo's ideal, my purpose is to show that truth lies in union rather than in division. to reject one nationality in order to obtain another is not an ideal solution. So I hope I shall be allowed to adopt a double nationality, that is to say, to remain French while I become an Indian.
I am French by birth and early education, I am Indian by choice and predilection. In my consciousness there is no antagonism between the two, on the contrary they combine very well and complete one another. I know also that I can be of service to both equally, for my only aim in life is to give a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo's great teaching in his teaching he reveals that all the nationals are essentially one and meant to express Divine Unity upon earth through an organised and harmonious diversity.”
Commenting on the Mother's declaration, K.D. Sethna wrote: Here is a flaming milestone in a mighty mission- the mission to incarnate the true spirit of this great land and by that incarnation bring forth again and carry to its climax the light of a more than human consciousness that India throughout her history has sought to manifest.
This concept of double citizenship was a challenge to the "Lord of the Nations”, the Asuric being who receives the ready homage of all rabid "national" egoisms. By expressing her wish for 'double citizenship', the Mother planted a potent seed in the human consciousness, and in the fullness of time mankind would want to shed its diverse, divisive, nationalist labels to seek a 'world citizenship' in a world polity as visualised in Sri Aurobindo's seminal treatise, ‘The Ideal of Human Unity’. With this very end in view, the 'World Union' movement was to be launched by A. B. Patel, with its headquarters in the Ashram and the Mother as President.
(Extracts from ‘On The Mother- The Chronicle Of A Manifestation And Ministry’- K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry).
"August 15th is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But it has significance not only for us, but for Asia and the whole world, for it signifies the entry into the comity of nations of a new power with untold potentialities which has a great part to play in determining the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity...
I have always held and said that India was rising, not to serve her own material interest only, to achieve expansion, greatness, power and prosperity, -- though these too she must not neglect --, and certainly not like others to acquire domination of other peoples, but to live also for God and the world as a helper and a leader of the whole human race."
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