Sri Aurobindo
Photo: 1900 · public domain
His father sent him to England at seven and forbade him to learn any Indian language: the son was to come out an Englishman. He came out a Cambridge classicist, returned to India at twenty-one and within a few years was among the first to demand full independence rather than concessions. A newspaper, the underground, arrest over a bombing and a year in Alipore jail, where by his own account he had the experience that changed everything. Acquitted, he left for Pondicherry, then French, and for forty years took no part in politics at all: he wrote “The Life Divine”, “The Synthesis of Yoga” and the epic “Savitri”, and out of his students grew the ashram he led together with Mirra Alfassa, the Mother. He died in 1950.
He was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872 at 04:53 local mean time: India had no single time zone until 1906. The hour comes from the horoscope cast by the family at his birth.