Village Reconstruction Model: Comparison of Gandhi & Aurobindo

For the revival of our country Sri Aurobindo dreamt of reconstructing our villages. Now what are the steps of village reconstruction? There must remain some necessary steps in this regard. What is the necessity of the villages in the context of nation-building? In its answer is that villages are the base of any nation and without developing its villages we cannot develop any nation. A nation is made up of many groups, be it districts, provinces or villages. A nation is the superior of all these groups. A nation is made up of several groups of districts. Hence district is the subordinate part of a nation. A district is made up of several groups of provinces. Hence province is the subordinate part of a district. A province is again made up of several groups of villages. Hence village remains as the subordinate of all the others, either of nation, or of districts or provinces. Hence the relation between village and a nation is a bottom to top relation or bottom to apex relation. Nation stands at the top or apex and village remains in the bottom or core of it. This system of village reconstruction is thus known to be the apex system.1 Thus it seems that as villages remain as the basis of an entire nation, so that we have to raise the cry for Swaraj from the villages. Hence for attaining Swaraj, we need to advance our national self-help or national self-development programs along with our ongoing national movements. Thus the formation of palli samitis must remain as our practice of Swaraj. In the Kishoregung Speech (Kishoregung area is situated in Mymensingh district, East Bengal) Sri Aurobindo ordered the entire Bengal to guide entire India in this political endeavor.2 Sri Aurobindo on Village Reconstruction: Sri Aurobindo has own unique theory of village reconstruction. Let us go through Sri Aurobindo's explanation for village reconstruction – 1 1 Each group again must feel a part of the life of the district, living in the district unity, so each district must not be engrossed in its own separate existence but feel itself a subordinate part of the single life of the province, and the province in its turn of the single life of the country. Such is the plan of reconstruction we have taken in hand, but to make it a healthy growth and not an artificial construction we must begin at the bottom and work to the apex. The village is the call of the national body and the cell-life must be healthy and developed for the national body to be healthy and developed. Swaraj begins from the village' [ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram, " Palli Samiti " , p.