The Invisible Enemy: Fighting Colonial Power through Colonial Episteme

Abstract

Born on 15 August 1872 in Calcutta, Aurobindo ‘Ackroyd’1 Ghose turned to be one of the most influential thinkers of twentieth century and laid out what some term as ‘the last serious attempt to revive the premodern Hindu traditions. Not only he is amongst the finest political-philosophical ideologues of Colonial South Asia, but is also among the few thinkers whose ideological imprint affected the trajectory of postcolonial South Asia (even if its not widely recognized). Through this essay, I will try to critically analyze the first three chapters of Sri Aurobindo’s ‘The Human Cycle’ (New York: 1950) in order to explain the theoretical canons that formed the undercurrent of them, which I argue were deeply connected with the racial/civilizational lens of history. I will use the theoretical framework of Edward Said’s Orientalism2 to do so and will demonstrate that how colonial narrative of history shaped his understanding of Indian past.

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