Sraddhalu ranade biography template
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Surely this has nothing to do with the Eastern or the Western minds. Some of the least controversial passages of this book are found, on closer scrutiny, to be perversely deceptive.
The kinds of deceptions consistently utilised throughout the book include:
- deliberately concealing the much larger body of information which is contrary to the author’s defamatory thesis;
- presenting as quotations what are Peter Heehs’ own speculations;
- deliberate misrepresentation and distortion of context; distortion of quotations;
- defamation of Sri Aurobindo’s character by use of innuendo, speculation, exaggeration and outright falsehood;
- bias to quote extensively from people who question Sri Aurobindo’s credibility and sanity; outright rejection of any person or quotation offering appreciation or praise of Sri Aurobindo
- preferring speculation against Sri Aurobindo’s own affirmations to the contrary;
- crude application of Freudian analysis to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
To the informed scholars of Sri Aurobindo’s life and teaching, the book is found to be full of twists – on an average of at least one per page.
But for internal reasons, the Ashram Trust did not make a public statement, although it privately expressed its “displeasure” and even disgust at the contents and conclusions of The Lives. This is the main reason why it is so important to expose the distortions in this book.
There have been other “scholars” who also have distorted Sri Aurobindo’s teaching to suit their own agendas, but they have little authority and do not claim to represent the Sri Aurobindo Ashram’s views, and hence can be ignored and allowed to fade into academic irrelevance.
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In January this year, soon after a case of impersonation was filed in Orissa courts, Heehs made an abrupt volte-face and publicly announced that he had never claimed to be “founder” and that the designation was affixed by “a writer at the publisher’s publicity department, who based herself on a biographical sketch
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I [Heehs] had submitted”.
Subsequently the promoters of Kripal went to these very educational institutions and asked for books by Ramakrishna Paramahansa to be removed from their libraries to protect children from the writings of a known paedophile!
All the while the Ramakrishna Mission did nothing hoping the problem would fade away on its own. The IYF campaign to slander us as “initiators” of court cases is another attempt to misdirect attention from Heehs’ multiple crimes of academic fraud, impersonation, copyright and IPR violations.
But if Heehs has broken international laws, should he not face the consequences of his actions?
But this fact is known to every 8th Standard student in India for the last 50 years! When the book first came out, the Ramakrishna Mission treated it as an aberration and kept silent expecting it to fade away. They have sown seeds of division in the IY
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community by false charges and have orchestrated hate campaigns for nearly eight months.
There were further degrees and finer distinctions of grades that he subsequently mapped out in detail, all of which he fully attained and wrote about from his own experience. But the body of evidence consistently points to deliberate intent in promoting these distortions.
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True to the style of scholarly writing, every paragraph or major statement in The Lives has an endnote with a reference.
This is the intention of Peter in writing this book as revealed through his chosen reviewer, close personal friend, financier and partner in research on Sri Aurobindo!
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Heehs’ statements have larger ramifications and are part of a wider strategy of certain global interests to misrepresent and discredit Sri Aurobindo along with other spiritual giants of our age.
When Kripal’s book appeared, he was an unknown small-time scholar seeking cheap publicity.
Little has changed through the intervening 24 years. When placed in the proper context, are not the critical sentences balanced out equally by praise? Does Heehs really have their support? Most certainly it did her a great disservice by creating the very opposite impression of what happened to Sri Aurobindo on a matter of utmost importance.)
Heehs’ claim to present Sri Aurobindo to the “Western” and “scholarly” mind is untenable on account of his many factual distortions.
Readers and scholars will blindly trust its contents as being representative of the Ashram’s views and as acceptable scholarly conclusions.
It is therefore imperative that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram itself should publicly declare the book as not representative of its authority or its views. The only purpose the book might serve is as a limited database of historical references to Sri Aurobindo’s life.
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Religious fundamentalism: My colleagues and I have only criticised the deliberate distortion of facts and quotations in The Lives with factual evidence to support our criticism.
Sadly they would also be left with wrong impressions on several matters of serious importance, but would remain oblivious to the deception unless they took the trouble to read other biographies and widened their perspective and set right their facts.
The argument of mindsets is intended only to deflect attention from the real issue.
Q 3.
Not surprisingly it was hastily abandoned as damaging to Heehs’ public relations.)
- Position 5: The problem is that readers from India do not understand nuances of English, and literary devices such as irony. How can a book ever harm Sri Aurobindo or his work?