Foreword

Someone very wisely said, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live for can bear any ‘how’.” Perhaps that is why Surendra Nath Jauhar could make light of his jail sentence and the tortures in jail—and enjoy jail life.

In his reply dated 10.4.1973 to a letter from Shri K.C. Pant, the then Minister of State in the Home Ministry, about grant of ‘political sufferer’s pension’, he had this to say:

“I do not wish to be called a ‘political sufferer’. To struggle and fight for the Motherland was an absolute joy and not a suffering in any manner. And it was never done for...reward.”

When the country became free and a fight for political freedom was no longer needed, the valiant Jauhar, in answer to a higher call, jumped into the ‘fire’ of world-transforming Yoga lit by Sri Aurobindo. He gave his all to the cause of the Aurobindonian thrust in education, life and yoga. As Prof. K.R.Srinivasa Iyenger said in his homage, “Chachaji was a man of God, but thrown among frail human beings to raise them to the extent possible to his own level of consecration.”

This interview is a gripping account of a life richly lived, in service—service of the Motherland, of society, of the Divine. And ‘service’ in the truest and highest sense of the word.

We are grateful to Dr. Hari Dev Sharma for this document of historical importance—he had recorded the interview on 29.4.1970 for the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.