contrast to the English image of the weak and effeminate
‘babu’. Paradoxically however, this very counter-image
represented a submission to a Western concept of
masculinity in diametric opposition to the traditional tantric
identification of the divine masculine (Shiva) with ‘Purusha’
- a ‘zero-point’ state of pure awareness, absolute stillness
and non-action – from and through which alone the
boundless power (Shakti) of the divine feminine rises. It
seems that this paradox was not lost on Sri Aurobindo,
who, after withdrawing from militant, religiously-fuelled
political activity re-established in his own life and
philosophy the earlier tantric identification of the divine
masculine with ‘Purusha’ or Pure Awareness, and of the
divine feminine, personified by Kali, as a Pure Power of
universal embodiment and manifestation. Aurobindo
nationalist spiritual universalism counterposed the spiritual
culture of India to the degenerate materialist culture of the
capitalist West.
Such sentiments were echoed in the writings of colonial
judge Sir John Woodroffe, alias ‘Arthur Avalon’, who
sought to rescue ‘Tantra’ from the defamations of his
British Imperial peers, arguing in contrast to Monier-
Williams that – above all in the form of Tantrism – “India
possessed a wonderful solvent, a solvent of irreligious
materialism.” Western civilization on the other hand was:
“a great eater. We consume. What is called a ‘higher
standard of life’ has meant that we consume more and