At the request of All India Radio, Tiruchirapalli, Sri Aurobindo wrote a message for broadcast on the eve of 15 August 1947, the day India achieved independence. It was simply titled, ‘The Fifteenth of August 1947’. He began with the words, “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 a significance not only for us, but for Asia and the whole world; for it signifies the entry into the com – ity 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 hu – manity.

To me personally it must naturally be gratifying that this date which was notable only for me because it was my own birthday celebrated annually by those who have accepted my gospel of life, should have acquired this vast significance. “As a mystic, I take this identification, not as a coincidence or fortuitous accident, but as a sanction and seal of the Divine Power which guides my steps on the work with which I began life. Indeed, almost all the world movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though at that time they looked like impossible dreams, I can observe on this day either approaching fruition or initiated and on the way to their achievement.”

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At age 75, Sri Aurobindo felt that rather than write a message, he would make a personal declaration of “the aims and ideals conceived in my childhood and youth and now watched in their beginning of fulfilment, because they are relevant to the freedom of India, since they are a part of what I believe to be India’s future work, something in which she cannot but take a leading position. For I have always held and said that India was arising, not to serve her own material interests 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 leader of the whole human race.

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“Those aims and ideals were in their natural order these: a revolution which would achieve India’s freedom and her uni ty; the resurgence and liberation of Asia and her return to the great role which she had played........

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