Nolini Kanta Gupta was born on 13 January 1889 at Faridpur (in East Bengal). He has his early education in Nilphamari, a subivisional town in Rangpore district, where his father, Rajani Kanta Gupta, was a distinguished lawyer. He did his School education at Rangpore where his young heart opened to patriotic influences which later developed into a strong urge to work for his country’s freedom. Rangpore was reputed as the first phase of Raja Rammohan Roy’s work for India’s regeneration. It had been from then a centre of various national activities.

All these were among the formative factors in Nolini Kanta’s growth which began to be more definitive when in 1904 he came to Calcutta for his College education. Calcutta then was the seat of the awakening national consciousness created, on the hand, by higher forces one of which was Vivekananda’s, and on the other, by the British Government’s decision to partition Bengal.

Nolini Kanta joined the Presidency College and passed the F.A. Examination with a very high place. While a third year student, he had for his teachers such celebrities as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Roy, H. M. Percival and Monmohan Ghose (Sri Aurobindo’s elder brother). His brilliant essays in English and Philosophy elicited high appreciation from his professors.

When in 1907 he was in his fourth-year class he felt within him the irresistible call of his motherland and decided to dedicate himself to the cause of her freedom. He left the College, and a brilliant academic career, and joined the revolutionary centre at Maniktala garden, Calcutta, started by Barindrakumar Ghose at Sri Aurobindo’s direction.

Here he was one of those engaged in experimenting on bomb-making, and one of the four who tried one such bomb which burst before its time and killed Prafulla Chakravaty of Rangpore, the first martyr to India’s freedom. Sir Aurobindo’s aim in this move was to prepare his country for an armed rebellion. The bombs were an answer to the Governments brutally repressive measures.

With Sri Aurobindo and thirty-eight other Nolini Kanta was arrested on 2 May 1908, and with them, as undertrials, passed one year in jail where he had direct contact with Sri Aurobindo. The British Government’s charges against them were of sedition and waging war against the King. It was the well-known Maniktala Bomb Case.

From 1909 to 1910 Sri Aurobindo edited two weekly papers, the Karmayogin in English, and the Dharma in Bengali, in which appeared Nolini Kanta's first Bengali article on ‘Swadeshi Diksha’ (Initiation in National Idealism)-an earnest of the future master-thinker and outstanding writer that he has been this day.

Nolini Kanta came to Pondicherry in November 1910, six months after Sri Aurobindo’s arrival there. In 1914 he went to Calcutta and met Pramatha Chaudhuri who started the same year the famous literary monthly Sabuj Patra which published some of Nolini Kanta’s early writings. He was in touch with his paper for some years.

Nolini Kanta returned to Pondicherry the same year. After several years he again went to Calcutta and thence to Nilphamari and in 1919 married Indulekha Devi of Mymensingh . Later on, Indulekha became the Headmistress of the Nilphamari Girl’s School, and brought up her three sons, all of whom developed distinct literary taste and ability, and are now, along with their mother, members of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Indulekha taught English and Bengali at the Ashram School for about fifteen years. The sons are now devoted workers of the Ashram.

Though out of Pondicherry from time to time, since early 1926 Nolini Kanta has been in the Ashram as its Secretary.

Over and above several subjects, Sri Aurobindo taught him Greek, Latin, French and Italian. Well-versed in Sanskrit, his keen and illumined

intellect freely moved about the vast ranges of its literature from the Vedic to the classical and has revealed their secret significances in as simple, clear and short words as are open to general readers in Bengali and English. Added to this, his knowledge of the Western classics in the original has given him a literary acumen which, during the last half a century, he has brilliantly employed in some of his masterly studies in modern Bengali and Western literary creations.

His first published Bengali work ‘Sahityika’ came out in 1921. It was highly appreciated by the press and the reading public. As an exponent of Rabindranath’s poetic genius, Nolini Kanta is a recognised authority. ‘He is no inconsiderable poet in French’, says the Mother. He has been rendering into English all the talks and writings of the Mother in French. His mastery of his mother-tongue apart, he is equally at home in English in which he has written fourteen books, one of which, ‘The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo’ (the title given by the Master himself), is in ten parts so far.

Nolini Kanta’s other writings in English and Bengali on art, literature, sociology, history, science, mysticism, etc. are treated from the seer-vision of man’s progress towards the goal in the world of ‘sweetness and light’. These as also his prose-poems are marvels of his literary creation. His style, marked by a masterly ease approach vibrant with a force of conviction and a directness of inner perception, are admired everywhere and have received the best of praises from Rabindranath.

Some of his fifty Bengali works are: ‘Roop O Ras’, ‘Silpa Katha’, ‘Banglar Pran’, ‘Searajer Pathe’, ‘Bharat Rahasya’, ‘Rabindranath’, ‘Navyavijnan O Adhyatmajnan’, ‘Kavirmanishi’ and ‘Smritir Pata’. The last one gives in simple form his reminiscences which he read to the young members of the Ashram. It is an authentic document on his early life and the early days of the Ashram and on the revolutionary movement in Bengali. His English works include ‘The Coming Race,’ ‘The March of Civilization’, ‘Approach to Mysticism’, ‘Poets and Mystics’,’Malady of the Century’, ’To the Heights’, and ‘Towards the Light’ (also a French edition published in France).

In his reminiscences Nolini Kanta recounts his inner experiences of the Force that was
dynamically working in the Ashram when there descended into Sri Aurobindo Sri Krishna’s overmental Consciousness on 24 November 1926.
Around 1940 Sri Aurobindo told Nirodbaran: ‘I always see the Light descending into Nolini’ (Srinvantu, Number Ten, 1375 B.S. ).’His is the pure mind,’ said the Master at another time.

Ever averse to limelight and to any personal reference, Nolini Kanta rarely speaks about himself. His grave personality with its reserve and firmness covers a soft heart a sweet amiability and a humorous temper which only the Yogi in him knows how and when to express.

All his life he has been a lover of physical culture, and today, in his early eighties, he is physically quite fit, taking part in the activities of the Ashram’s Physical Education Department.

Besides being the Secretary of the Ashram, Nolini Kanta is a member of the Ashram Trust, Editor of The Advent, of the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, of Vartika, the Bengali quarterly of Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir, Calcutta, and Editorial Adviser to Srinvantu, a Bengali monthly and English quarterly, Calcutta, connected with the Ashram. He is Dean of the Faculty of Languages of the International Centre of Education.

Not only a master of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga and a consummate thinker and literary artist whose authentic and luminous exposition of Truth and Beauty has given an altogether new turn and a profound richness to the literature of the time, Nolini Kanta, says the Mother, is also one of the foremost of those who under her divine Guidance are now nearer the Goal, nearer the fulfilment of the Master’s vision of the Future. (Written in April 1969.)