Rooted in the past, and full of pride in India’s heritage, Vivekananda was yet modern in hie approach to life’s problems, and was a kind of bridge between the past of India and her present.
—Jawaharlal Nehru
The 15th of August, 1947, so far as India is concerned, may be said to mark the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.
Foreign domination which began with Plassey in 1757 ends today—exactly 190 years later. This epoch of political slavery is but a short interregnum viewed against -the background of India’s long history. The real significance of this interlude in our history can be assessed only when we are at a little distance in time from it, when alone an objective consideration of events becomes possible. It is difficult for any but the greatest thinkers to view events dispassionately even while living them. Any such event, therefore, will appear to have a different value to such a thinker from what will bear to an average person.
Political slavery, to an average person, may mean nothing unusual if it does not affect the routine within the little horizon of his daily life. But it becomes galling when the same person becomes politically conscious —when its restrictions impinge upon his newly acquired sense of values of freedom and self-respect. With the dawning of the consciousness of these values he becomes a political entity—a being who values freedom above mere material and physical security. This marks the emergence of a spiritual and moral value in the life of man and the evolution of a rudimentary moral and spiritual personality. It is this rudimentary personality that, later on, through political education in life, and through the intense pursuit of the value of freedom, grows into that finished social product, the citizen. The evolution of this citizen is the end of politics as it is also the highest social end.
Political subjection in the nineteenth century with its promise of an era of peace was more or less accepted by the vast mass of Hindus and Muslims of this country, urged by considerations of physical and material security and as an escape from the uncertainties of the earlier centuries. But this was but a phase and a short phase at that. Political slavery becomes a challenge as much when it tends to uproot the cultural inheritance, as when it tends to restrict the scope of functioning, of a people. A people who possess inner reserves of vitality rise to meet this challenge while those who are bereft of it take it easy and court extinction as a people, though continuing to live as individuals with new souls and new bodies. The history of the world is not without examples of the latter type. The challenge to India came from both the fronts—cultural as well as socio-political. India rose to meet the challenge first on the cultural front, then on the political—broadly speaking the 2nd half of the 19th century evidenced the first while this century up-to-date evidenced the second—thus demonstrating the abiding vitality of the people and their legacy. In the arresting story of this double process and the phenomenal successes it has attained even in so short a period lies the romance of recent Indian history and its significance to the world at large.
One noteworthy feature of India’s rise to meet the new cultural challenge from the West needs to be well emphasized; for it contains a quality of dynamic synthesis which has also imparted its tone to her response to the second challenge, namely, to her fight for political independence, and which contains promise of fruitful application in the spheres of her domestic and foreign relations as well. This striking feature is the note of affirmation and synthesis, inclusion and not exclusion, characteristic of new India’s awareness and activity. What was but reactionary (used in the literal sense only) in the early phases, and often apologetic and negative, becomes transformed into a creative movement of thought seeking to affirm and to synthesize any tested human value whether evolved in the East or in the West, whether scientific or religious, political or social.
Swami Vivekananda stands as the most effective spokesman and representative of this phase of our cultural movement. He was one of those who found in the British connection a potent means for breaking our crystallized society and civilization with a view to making it expansive. In his personality was fused the past and the present, ancient wisdom and modern knowledge ; he knew the glory of our past; he felt intimately the degradations of our present day; he was a Hindu to the backbone; he loved and revered other religions as well. He was a lover of the social gospel of Islam and Christianity and of their value to Indian life and thought. Above all, he was deeply imbued with the spirit of modern thought with its theoretical and practical contributions in the field of science, and political and economic contributions in the field of life and society. Last but not the least, he was fully aware of the international character of human relationships in the modern context. His was not the role of a reactionary patriot who would take his country away from the contamination of other peoples, or who would ride his chariot of nationalism roughly over the freedom of other nations. He loved India but he loved humanity too with equal passion.’ What is India or England or America to us ? ’ He asks in one of his letters (Letters of Swami Vivekananda, p. 223) and proceeds to affirm his faith in the glory of man as such, undivided by narrow domestic walls: ‘ We are the servants of that God who by the ignorant is called Man, ’ And we may as well add, ‘ and whom the more ignorant call Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Indian, Russian, American, etc. ’
Jawaharlal Nehru pays a tribute to this aspect of Swami Vivekananda’s personality:
Rooted in the past and full of pride in India’s heritage, Vivekananda was yet modern in his approach to life’s problems and was a kind of bridge between the past of India and her present. (The Discovery of India, p. 400).
Himself an internationalist, he quotes with deep appreciation the following statement of the unity of mankind from Swami Vivekananda’s lectures :
Even in Politics and Sociology, problems that were only national twenty years ago can no longer be solved on national grounds only. They are assuming huge proportions, gigantic shapes. They can only be solved when looked at in the broader light of international grounds. International organisations, international combinations, international laws are the cry of the day. That shows solidarity …. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is becoming everyday clearer that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial or national, or narrow grounds. Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity, nay, the whole of life, within its scope
(Quoted in The Discovery of India, pp. 401-2).
applying this criterion to the recent past of India and pointing a lesson and a warning to his countrymen, both Hindu and Muslim, Swami Vivekananda affirms:
I am thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by holding itself apart from the community of others, and whenever such an attempt has been made under false ideas of greatness, policy or holiness—the result has always been disastrous to the secluding one. The fact of our isolation from all the other nations of the world is the cause of our degeneration and its only remedy is getting back into the Current of the rest of the world. Motion is the sign of life. (Quoted in The Discovery of India, p. 402).
The words quoted above were uttered fifty years ago ; they carry a freshness and a vigour even today. In Swami Vivekananda’s day India was not an active factor in world affairs. Her past glory was a subject of sympathetic comment and study with several Western scholars. But the world in general pitied her in her plight. Her own children also felt a sort of self-pity for their aged and battered mother.
But all this quickly changed. The shock of conquest and the shame of subjection were a challenge which far from extinguishing her inner fires, as happened in the case of many other nations, and as was anticipated by many even in hers, on the contrary, led to her blazing forth in an outburst of thought and activity initiating a real process of national rejuvenation. This awakening was a process first, of self-discovery and second, of self-expression.
The process of self-discovery on the part of India may be said to attain its culmination today—15th of August 1947—with the attainment by her of full political freedom; the energies so released from now onward issue forth in a more intensified process of creative self-expression. Vivekananda as person led India into the current of world cultural forces. Vivekananda as idea seeks to guide India into the world community of nations after making her a well-knit people. In Vivekananda’s conception India had in her the requisite historically acquired capacity to function as the moral leader of nations. The new world situation also demands a strong moral guidance to the energies of nations. But India, he held, could not assume that role and discharge it effectively without first effecting certain vital changes within herself. Herein lies the scope of what he characteristically termed his ‘ domestic policy ’, leading to the assumption and discharge by her of that world responsibility which he called his ‘foreign policy’.
Political freedom, economic advancement and social solidarity are the three preconditions of effective Indian participation in world affairs. With the accomplishment of the first item today the second and third remain to be tackled. Vivekananda was the first to point out the harm that has been done to the spiritual and moral personality of our people by economic backwardness and social division. Involuntary poverty, to him, is unspiritual and immoral. Religion, he held, is not for empty bellies. Social inequalities and unwholesome hierarchies are a disease on the body-politic. In his wanderings through the length and breadth of India he came into intimate personal contact with the emaciated and dismembered body and mind of India, as he had earlier come into contact with her undying and eternal unity of spirit through his contact with his master,Sri Ramakrishna, and through his own studies of her literature and history. He found the ideal and the real far apart; and he set his heart and hands to make the real approximate to the ideal. He wrestled through sorrow and anguish to lay bare the problem of modern India and to find its solution and he worked himself to an early death in imparting to his countrymen his passion and his resolve. The mind and face of India today bears unmistakably the impress of Vivekananda’s heart and resolve. To quote the Sister Nivedita, Vivekananda’s gifted English disciple :
There was one thing, however, deep in the master’s nature, that he never knew how to adjust. This was his love of his country and his resentment of her suffering. Throughout those years in which I saw him almost daily, the thought of India was to him like the air he breathed. True he was a worker at foundations. He neither used the word “nationality”, nor proclaimed an era of “nation-making.” “Man-making,” he said, was his own task. But he was born a lover, and the queen of his adoration was his Motherland. Like some delicately-poised bell, thrilled and vibrated by every sound that falls upon it, was his heart to all that concerned her. Not a sob was heard within her shores that did not find in him a responsive echo’. There was no cry of fear, no tremor of weakness, no shrinking from mortification, that he had not known and understood. He was hard on her sins, unsparing of her want of worldly wisdom, but only because he felt these faults to be his own. And none, on the contrary, was ever so possessed by the vision of her greatness.
(The Master As I Saw Him, pp. 49-50).
Today, when the country is celebrating its day of deliverance from foreign subjection, it is well for us to remember Swami Vivekananda and his conception of the future of our country. He believed in the unity of the Indian people. He believed that our culture is a rich mosaic containing Hindu, Muslim, and other elements. He also believed that the Hindus and the Muslims have certain things to learn from each other which would make them not merely better Hindus and better Muslims but, what is more important, better men. Since man-making was his religion, he exhorted his countrymen to discard narrow loves and narrow hates and grow into that wholeness which is perfection of character. In the same vein, he exhorted the Hindus to discard the sectional loyalties of caste and sect and grow into that fullness and wholeness expressive of the Divine in man. It is as an effective help to this religion of man-making that he upheld the modern theory and practice of democracy with its faith in freedom and equality and the sacredness of personality.
The strength of democracy lies in the citizen. Democracy in India seeks to turn Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis and others into citizens owing allegiance to certain fundamental values which are universal and human. This great process will derive ample sustenance from the inspiration of the great world religions. In fact, political and even economic democracy cannot go long, can also go wrong, without the guidance and inspiration that religion alone can impart. But that inspiration has to be sought not from the dogmas and creeds of religions but from their inner core of essential truths. This work of elevating democracy to a moral and spiritual value is the task that awaits the energies of a Free India.
The above remarks may sound a bit strange, a bit too bold, in the context of present-day India. Our freedom has come to us with a good bit of sorrow in it; the voice that will proclaim freedom today will also be the voice that will proclaim our division into two political entities. But tragic as division is, we shall not make it more tragic by considering it as something more than political and administrative. Superficially, it appears to be a division based on cultural and religious grounds. But on a close view it reveals itself as a mere political division, based on political considerations only, but using cultural and religious badges. It has certainly roused religious and communal passion; it has left behind colossal material and human destruction. But all this does not prove that Islamic culture and religion require to be protected from the contamination of Hindu religion and Culture in a separate sovereign State; all that it proves is that the Muslim intelligentsia had begun to think that it required a separate State to express its political and economic personality. If and when partition will fulfil this desire it is bound to annul itself for want of a basic urge. The people are one whether under one sovereign State or two. And as such, there will always be a large India looming behind the States of India and Pakistan. That India is bound to impinge itself on the social constitution and on the political State, The social composition of the Indian population is bound to assert itself on her social constitution and on the political State. Whatever basic urge there is, therefore, is towards unity ; the social forces can move only in this direction ; the minority problem in both the States, in spite of division, is a powerful factor, in spite of appearances to the contrary, that will tend to eventual unity. And this unity will be on a higher and more enduring plane than on those of political expediency and manoeuvring through pacts and deals of the past few decades.
The pressure of politics has divided us; but the pressure of sociology will unite us; and culture reinforced by social and economic forces and the realities of the world situation will speed up the process. This process which always goes on in a society producing an ever-widening unity of types had to reckon, in the case of India, with an incalculable third factor, the presence of a foreign power pursuing a policy of continual thwarting of healthy national forces in the interest of its own self-perpetuation. The elimination now of this incalculable third factor leaves the field free for the effective operation of social forces. This is the faith that sustains those who, though feeling the pang of partition, are yet not dismayed by it or confused by it. This section even now is large, comprising influential political parties and non-political groups and individuals both among the Muslims and among the Hindus. When the abnormalities of the present situation with its gushing passions and blinding hates will pass away, leaving the Indian sky clear, the country will recognize the correctness and cogency of the above faith and vision; the faith oft a steady few will then become the enthusiasm of the many leading to a reconciliation and re-union of the sundered parts and the unsettling of a settled fact through popular will.
To work towards this glorious consummation silently and steadily is the task that faces the country today. We have to realize that politics is the plaything of social forces. Sociology is more fundamental than politics. In this healthy manipulation of social forces to make them tend towards social solidarity, the country will find inspiration and guidance from the personality and message of Swami Vivekananda.
Economic and cultural advancement of Muslims and the Scheduled Castes will tend to establish a balance of social forces in the country. The impact of democracy on Hindu society will tend to the elimination of its inequalities helping to put it on an even keel. Cultural and economic advancement will make the average Muslim less and less susceptible to communal and fanatical propaganda and make him receptive to those aspects of his religion which are universal and human. The practice and preaching of a tolerant Islam is the task that awaits the Indian Muslim of tomorrow; its recently invoked divisive powers and negative and exclusive attitudes will have to be replaced by its sublime unifying attitudes and programmes. In short, Islamic democracy will have to grow into human democracy. The impact of this democracy on Hindu society will be wholesome for that society and the world. Vivekananda held the view that the beauty of Hindu religion has been marred by its social inequalities. In agony he cried :
No religion on earth preaches the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain as Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism. The Lord has shown me that religion is not at fault but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees in Hinduism, hypocrites, who invent all sorts of engines of tyranny in the shape of Paramathika arid Vyavaharika (absolute and relative truth).
Religion is not at fault. On the other hand, your religion teaches you that every being is only your own self multiplied. But it was the want of practical application, the want of sympathy—the want of heart.
(Letters of Swami Vivekananda, pp. 63-64).
The history of India and the character of Indian Islam and Hindu society would have been different if Islam had come to India as a friend and in peace. It would then have contributed its social gospel to the purification of the social edifices of Hinduism— Hinduism would have gladly learnt these lessons from it while imparting its own tolerant outlook to the sister faith. But the fact that Islam came to India through the military conquerors who professed Islam but practised their own Central Asian savagery, and who ravaged India and battered Hinduism, made Islam an eye-sore to the Hindu mind. It is one of those sad chapters in religious and cultural contacts which yielded bitter fruits but which, in a different form, would have been fruitful of great results for the religion and culture of mankind. Yet, social forces override human frenzies and passions; for once Islam got established in the land, the work of fusion and synthesis commenced and the life and work of the great medieval saints of North India have added a brilliant chapter to our history., Their work, broadly speaking, bore the impress of Hinduism in the field of thought and religion, and of Islam in the field of social life. In the general framework of history, the work of Kabir, Nanak, Dadu and Surdas may appear fugitive and forlorn but they contain a moral and an inspiration for us of this age. If isolated individuals in unpropitious times could produce such glorious results how much greater results in the direction of spiritual stability and social solidarity and the great end of, what Vivekananda called, ‘ Man-making ’ could be achieved if the forces of both the faiths could be canalized into constructive and creative channels through deliberate and self-conscious endeavour ? This endeavour, aided by the theory and practice of modern democracy, and assisted by the impact of world forces, has for its glorious consummation the evolution of an Indian polity based on spiritual foundations, and endued with the moral passion of human welfare. Is this not the end and aim of all religions ? Is this not what would please the hearts of the prophets and founders of the world’s great religions? Is this not the natural issue of modern world forces when directed to human ends? Will not this consummation make India prosperous and powerful and the moral leader of nations? Cannot Indian Islam and Indian Christianity, like Hinduism, issue forth as distinct world forces with characteristic individualities of their own and a message to the other peoples of the world? Religion thrives best in the Indian soil; the Indian—whether Hindu, Christian, or Muslim is deeply religious. Allied with narrow political passions, this religious feeling has exhibited the most brutal aspects. Allied with the passion for spirituality and human service, it has exhibited the most sublime aspects as well. It is up to the Hindus and Muslims to see that their religions exhibit this latter aspect. The average Muslim must learn to consider military conquerors and fanatics as human aberrations and abnormal types who use the name of Islam to cover their blood-thirstiness and egoism. They can at best be military heroes and not religious heroes. He must learn to venerate more the saints and sages of his religion who have imparted cheer and hope to man. This will in turn help the Indian Muslim to cultivate an attitude of reverence to other faiths and their teachers and saints. The Prophet came as a Warner to man; he came to unite; he came, as he has himself affirmed, as a blessing to mankind and not as a curse. Gentle as a lamb, but strong and courageous as a lion, he bent his energies to the moral and spiritual upliftment of his people. In his attitudes and activities he has created a pattern of excellence which remains as a fund of inspiration to those who seek to follow him.
Mutual respect will lead to mutual emulation. We have suppressed this great sociological factor of emulation for long; it has led to a distortion of our religions and our personalities. It is time that we give free play to this compulsive factor of social evolution. That is the line of our future advance. It is a happy augury that Indian Christianity, overcoming its erstwhile temptations to the contrary—temptations engendered by political exigencies over which it had no control, has recognized this great truth and is consciously working towards this end. A glorious future for Indian Christianity is assured thereby. When will Indian Islam come to itself ? When will Indian Muslims learn to impart their own genius to this great religion and produce a crop of saints and sages who will command the veneration of all men ? The test of a living religion is this production of saints who bear witness to God and the highest in us. A too close and long association with ‘real politics’ can even destroy the soul of a religion. Society expects this guidance from its leaders today. The nerves cannot stand the strain and tension of hatred and bickering for long. Free India calls for the burying of hatchets; it demands the sending of a current of love all round.
Swami Vivekananda believed in this glorious destiny for India and worked unceasingly to that end. He has left it as a legacy to us. He knew what blessings would flow from a junction of religions on the soil of India. Referring to the interaction of Hinduism and Islam he has written, what Jawaharlal Nehru calls, ‘a remarkable letter’ to a Muslim friend (Discovery of India, p. 403—footnote.). It is dated 10th June 1898. I cannot do better than quote this letter in extenso ;
My Dear Friend,
I appreciate your letter very much and am extremely happy to learn that the Lord is silently preparing wonderful things for our motherland.
Whether we call it Vedantism or any ism, the truth is that Advaitism is the last word of religion and thought and the only position from which one can look upon all religions and sects with love. We believe it is the religion of the future enlightened humanity. The Hindus may get the credit of arriving at it earlier than other races, they being an older race than either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one’s own soul, is yet to be developed among the Hindus universally.
On the other hand our experience is that if ever the followers of any religion approach to this equality in an appreciable degree in the plane of practical workaday life—it may be quite unconscious generally of the deeper meaning and the underlying principle of such conduct, which the Hindus as a rule so clearly perceive— it is those of Islam and Islam alone.
Therefore we are firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of mankind. We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas nor the Bible, nor the Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonising the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are but the varied expressions of THE RELIGION, which is oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best.
For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam—Vedanta brain and Islam body—is the only hope.
I see in my mind’s eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedanta brain and Islam body.
Ever praying that the Lord may make of you a great instrument for the help of mankind, and especially of our poor, poor motherland.
—Yours with love.
VIVEKANANDA.
An India spiritually united, economically strong and socially stable, and imbued with ethical passion, will be a unique force in world affairs. This was Swami Vivekananda’s dream of the future of our country. The world expects much from India. The stability of civilization depends upon the giving of a moral and spiritual direction to powerful world forces. The world calls; will India listen and respond? Vivekananda believed that she can and will respond. Let Free India lay hold of that Faith and Vision and march forward. “Arise! Awake! and stop not till the goal is reached.”
Karachi, 15 August 1947.
Source: Prabuddha Bharata, Oct, 1947.
