Advice to Students of Bengal National
College
(Sri Aurobindo delivered the following on the 23 August, 1907, before the
students and teachers of the Bengal National College, in a meeting
assembled to record their deep regret at his resignation of the high office of
Principalship of the College.)
I have been told that you wish me to speak a few words of advice to you. But
in these days I feel that young men can very often give better advice than
we older people can give.
The only piece of advice that I can give you now is carry on the work, the
mission, for which this college was created. I have no doubt that all of you
have realised by this time what this mission means When we established this
college and left other occupations, other chances of life, to devote our lives
to this institution, we did so because we hoped to see in it the foundation,
the nucleus of a nation, of the new India which is to begin its career after this
night of sorrow and trouble, on that day of glory and greatness when India
will work for the world. What we want here is not merely to give you a little
Information, not merely to open to you careers for earning a livelihood, but
to build up sons for the Motherland to work and to suffer for her. That is why
we started this college and that is the work to which I want you to devote
yourselves in future. What has been insufficiently and imperfectly begun by
us, it is for you to complete and lead to perfection.
When I come back I wish to see some of you becoming rich, rich not for
yourselves but that you may enrich the Mother with your riches. I wish to see
some of you becoming great, great not for your own sakes, not that you may
satisfy your own vanity, but great for her, to make India great, to enable her
to stand up with head erect among the nations of the earth, as she did in
days of yore when the world looked up to her for light. Even those who will
remain poor and obscure, I want to see their very poverty and obscurity
devoted to the Motherland. There are times in a nation's history when
Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else,
however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now
arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer than her service, when
everything else is to be directed to that end. If you will study, study for her
sake, train yourselves body and mind and soul for her service. You will earn
your living that you may live for her sake. You will go abroad to foreign lands
that you may bring back knowledge with which you may do service to her.
Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in
that one single advice. My last word to you is that if you have sympathy for
me, I hope to see it not merely as a personal feeling, but as a sympathy with
what I am working for. I want to see this sympathy translated into work so
that when in future I shall look upon your career of glorious activity, I may
have the pride of remembering that I did something to prepare and begin it.
