READERS who have seen Mr. A. Ranganatham's and Mr. L. W. Rogers'
admirable papers on ' A World in Distress,' in Adyar Pamphlets Nos. 171 and 172, will,
we believe, read with interest the present booklet.
Mr. Rogers concludes thus: “Although the distress is world-wide, and
although the situation has for many months been growing worse, not a single
statesman anywhere has proposed any remedy that shows the slightest grasp
of the fundamental principles involved in the problem.
None of them seems to have, the slightest conception of where the trouble
lies; so they talk of modifying the tariff, the rearrangement of war-debts,
and how to revive foreign trade . . . Any plan to be successful must embody
certain fundamental principles. It must test all its measures by the rule
of the greatest happiness of the greatest [Page ii] number
and see every problem from the viewpoint of the common welfare of the race”.
The present paper endeavours to expound such fundamental principles, drawn from
ancient Indian traditions, and to apply them to modern problems in the way rightly
stated by Mr. Rogers as requisite.
Mr. Ranganãtharn's closing words are: “If people of different
persuasions and castes . . . only realise that they are all parts of one
organic whole ... we shall have proved to the world that spirituality and
material prosperity are not exclusive of each other but always go together”.
This paper indicates how the ancient social organisation of India is the
actual way of realising in daily life
{and not merely vague feeling )
that “we
are all parts of one organic whole”.
1-6-33 T. P. H.
Dear Friends,
The affection which has subsisted between
your present Vice-Chancellor [Pandit
Iqbal Narain Gurtu, M.A., LL.B. ] and
me, for nearly thirty years now, since the day when he became my colleague in
the work of carrying bricks for the Central Hindu College of Benares, has compelled
me to present myself before you today. Instead of taking a refusal, he threatened
to take mortal offence if I did not comply with his demand. The consequence is
that despite all my unwillingness I find myself in this difficult position.
To enter the precincts of a modern University, humming and buzzing with the latest technicalities [Page 2] of all sorts of wonderful and ever progressive western sciences, mathematical, chemical, physical, biological, economical, political, sociological, and what not, for the purpose of addressing a highly cultured and even more highly critical audience, when one has nothing better to offer than a few rusty old world ideas and ideals, is surely to find oneself in a very awkward position. I felt like declining at the last moment.
But the name of the ' University Arya Association; whose Secretary sent me the over-powering invitation through the Vice-Chancellor, put some heart in me. If an Association with such a name could live in its atmosphere, the University could not be so wholly up-to-date and modern; my ancient ideas might not be thought quite out-of-date ; I would perhaps not feel an utter stranger. I took some more heart when I learnt that another dear friend, of even longer standing, almost fifty years, your ex-Vice-Chancellor, [Mahãmahopãdhyaya LLD., D. Litt. Dr. Garigãnãtha Jha, M.A., ] who, I know, holds views even more antiquated than mine, was to take the chair for me. [Page 3]
Finally,
I fortified myself with the very encouraging reflection that a growing
number of those experts themselves who had created these various sciences,
and thereby built up modern civilization, were voicing, more and more
strongly, serious dissatisfaction with the consequences of the marvellous
progress in discoveries and inventions. They seem to be realizing that
this western civilization, which they have created, has become a Gigantic
Rake's Progress, rushing headlong towards World-Bankruptcy and World-Suicide,
through repeated World-Wars of mutual economic and physical destruction,
by means of tariff-devices and of solid, liquid, and, more dreadful
than all others, gaseous weapons.
To bring into relief the special features of ancient Aryan Culture by
needed contrast, I propose to dwell awhile on the results of modern
Western Culture. I will illustrate my meaning with a few quotations,
picked up at random from recent papers. The medieval division of the
branches of learning in Europe was into the two broad classes of the
'divinities' and the 'humanities'. Sir Oliver Lodge has suggested the
addition of a third class, the 'realities', to cover the physico-chemical
and biological sciences of recent origin and growth. It seems that the [Page 4] 'realities'
have been annihilating the 'divinities', and turning the 'humanities' into
the 'brutalities'. Sir Oliver Lodge himself has been trying to contend against
this perversion. But I will not quote him. I will quote Mr, Lloyd George and
Profs. H. E. Armstrong and Crew.
Mr. Lloyd George
is a super-eminent practical exponent of 'the humanities' as concentrated
in economics and politics. He is a 'practical politician' — the
exact opposite of the 'practical mystic', though he can always quote the Bible
for his purposes — and, now out of power, talks bravely, but, when in
power, often acted very badly. After the world-war, he was, for some time,
one of the Big Ten, then one of the Big Four, and then, finally, the sole Big
One of Europe, before passing into obscuration, from which he seems to be re-emerging.
Also, he has crossed beyond the Biblical span of life, is seventy-one years
of age, and can scarcely tell lies, or talk clap-trap, or make thoughtless
or exaggerated utterances. He must be taken seriously, as one of the best authorities
on what he is talking about. Speaking not only of the [Page
5] government of Britain, which must surely be manned by the politicians
and economicians next most expert after himself in that country, but also of
present world-conditions in general, he said the other day ( vide Leader, dated
15-2-1933):
“The Government has been rummaging all the ancient precedents of reactionary
governments in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, to find out expedients
for meeting the emergency — viz., tariffs, trade restrictions,
imprisonment for speeches they dislike. They are like a dog digging
up old bones; and the older and rottener the bones, the more tasty they find
them. It is a Government that looks back to the failures of the past for its
inspiration, and not to the ideals of the future — a
Lot's wife Government. It does not seem to have the slightest comprehension
of the character of the problem, with which it has to deal . . . The existing
industrial, financial,, and economic order, with its blind and cruel
greed, with its extravagance and its poverty, its luxuries and miseries,
its waste and its chaos, with its tens of millions of workers reduced to eating
the bread of charity whilst the riches of Providence are rotting in
the fields because they are not permitted to reach the needy;
with its slums where no humane man would house his cattle, with nations organising
to starve and slaughter each other — this system has
been tried and found wanting. The evidence against it is accumulating, and
the proofs are as high as the heavens. Behold, the judge standeth before the
gate”.
Thus spoke Mr. Lloyd George, ex-Premier of the premier empire of this sphere
of sorrows, though he does not suggest any other and better system. Mahatma
Gandhi has said nothing stronger against the 'system' which is crashing the
life, the soul, out of humanity. Surely Mr. Lloyd George must know. If there
were any doubt left it would be brushed away by the corroborations supplied
by other experts, which appear from time to time in the papers.
Prof. Armstrong is
said to be the doyen of British Chemists, and may be regarded as super-eminent
representative of the 'realities', as Mr. Lloyd George of the 'humanities'.
In a letter to Ãcarya P.
C. Rãy, ( vide Leader, dated 27-2-1933), he says: “I
am now nearly eighty-five, and just beginning to write the story of the past
fifty years in education . . . We are worse off than we were fifty years
ago — slaves
of examinations. Even intellectual freedom is going out of us. Most of our
science is religious faith — not a reasoned
knowledge. Pursuing the electron, we are losing [Page
7] our souls. I am with Gandhi in feeling that
man is now the slave of the machine. How are we to raise his level
? All our research work is of no account compared with that”.
Writing in Nature, the same Professor Armstrong said, a few months earlier: “A
century of science seems to have brought us to a wonderful understanding
of things that do not matter, while telling us little that will help
to fill our bellies and suffer one another with equanimity, let alone gladly
and with Christian amity ... In future, the scientific worker, to
be worthy of the name must justify himself through social service in
the first instance.'
Another scientist
of note, Prof. Crew of Edinburgh, said (in December, 1931), in an address
on 'Science and Society'; “Science
has been prostituted through man's greed to serve his lusts .
. . The greatest problems of the day relate to spiritual as opposed to material adjustment
... In this world, there is the knowledge and there is the power to refashion
society. But there is not the will to do so, and we have no ideal toward
which to aim. We know a little of the methods of supporting life . . . but
not how to live nor [Page 8]
what to live for , . . Science has
become the servant of man's lust for power
and is now the tool of the tyrant. We need to discover what
is good for mankind, and then to see to it that the power that knowledge
gives is used for that end. Knowledge without affection . . . has
set the world alight in a blaze of hatred and misery ...
A new moral outlook is
demanded. Whence will it come ?”
Thus Prof. Crew propounds the great problem of the day. He does not supply
the answer. We have all also heard the pair of resounding and tremendously
conflicting phrases: 'How to make the World safe for Democracy', and 'How
to make Democracy safe for the World'. Haply, Ãryan Culture may have
some suggestions to make, on all such matters.
The west has learnt to fiy in the air, to rush beneath the waters, to flash along the surface of the earth; but it has forgotten how to live in peace upon that surface, forgotten to honour ' the bread of life' and the producer of that bread, and to divide justly, for the welfare and the happiness of all, the bread-power, which makes possible and nourishes the mind-power whose small bye-products are coal-power, oil-power [Page 9] steam power, powder-power, gas-power, electricity-power and all other such powers; and the consequence of that forgetting is internecine war.
An Iranian Ãryan said, many centuries before these aeroplanes
and submarines and automobiles were invented,
Agar bar hawã parî, magasé bãsî
Agar andar ãb rawî, sumuke basT ;
Dil ba dast f.r, ta kasé bãsî,
(Fly in the air, and you are but a fly;
Swim 'neath the waters, you are but a fish;
Control your selfish heart — then are you Man.)
The Christian Bible asked two thousand years ago: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul ?” The most practical scientists of today, in both branches of science, the sociological and the physical, confirm that it shall profit him nothing, nay, shall mean his ruin. Science is for life, not life for science. The Indian Bible, the Vaidika Upanisad, said the same thing many more thousands of years earlier:
Ãtmanas tu kâmâya sarvam vai priyam bhavati;
Ãtrna vai S'rés'has' ca Presthas' ca.
“For the sake of the Self, the Soul, the Spirit, the Principle of Life and Consciousness which pervades all things and in which all things live [Page 10] and move and have their being — for Its sake is dear whatever is dear; nothing else, nor art, nor science, nor wealth, is dear for its own sake; only the Soul, the Self, is dear for its own sake; this Supreme Self is the Best, the Truest, the Greatest Good, and also the Dearest, the Most Beautiful.”
Our own Ãcãrya
Rãy,
we all know, is now much more an exponent of the carkhã (the
spinning-wheel) than of the secrets of chemistry. He is “justifying
himself by social service”. For this cult of the carkhã, which
symbolises the samsãra-cakra, the 'cyclicity' of the whole
World-Process, which spins out the warp and the woof of Nature, the Garment
of God, the Veil of the Hidden Life, we may find high motto in the Bhagavad-Gita:
:
Évam pravartitam cakram,
N-ânu-vartayat-îha yah,
Aghâyur - indriyâ -râmo,
Mogham, Pârtha! sa jîvati.
(He who helps not to turn the wheel of Life
Set going thus by Me, the Supreme
Self,
Pervading all — he lives his life in vain.)
Very curiously, the working of vast mines and of huge machinery,
Sarvâkarésv -adhikâro, mahã - yantra -pravartanam
- Manu [Page
11] is counted, by antediluvian Manu, in a list of the upa-pâtakas,
the subsidiary sins and crimes, which feed, and through ever higher
an ever faster living in the few great towns, and correspondingly ever
lower and ever slower living in the very, very, many villages, inevitably
lead on to the mahâ-pâtakas,
the great sins and crimes,
Brahma-hatyã, Surâ-pãnam, Stéyam Gurv-an-ganã-gamah.
(Manu)
To grasp the full significance of this verse, we have to read it with two
other verses of Manu, which describe the conduct, the ways of life, that
ensue from the fostering of the ' lust ' kãma, and the 'hatred'
krodha, that are mentioned in the quotations just made
from western experts:
Mrgayâ, akso, divâ-svapnah,
parivãdah, striyo, madah.
Tauryatrikam, vrth-âtya, ca,
kãma-jo das'ako ganah.
Pais'unyam, sãhasam, drohah,
irsya, asüyã, artha-dusanam,
Vâg-danda-jam ca pârusyam,
krodhajo 'pi gano 'stakah.
(Manu)
Let us translate these into modern terms.
The great
sin are: (I) the extensive and intensive brutalisation. the degradation,
the de-spiritualisation, of human nature, the slaying [Page
12] of 'the Brahma in man', 'the God in man, Brahma-hatyâ by
(2) the intoxication, the poisoning, the toxin-ing, of whole nations with
alcohol and blood-meats, involving the daily slaughter of countless millions
of animals and the daily conversion and perversion of most precious (in
modern terms, millions of pounds worth of) human-labour and whole-some
nutritious substances into oceans of spirituous liquors, Surâ-pânam,
by (3) the 'night-side' of the life of the huge modern Babylons, the enormous
towns, the 'great harlots' of the Bible, 'wasting in each night's bout
the wealth of kings', the Sex-Slave Traffic, the moral and physical ruin
and worse than murder of millions upon millions of innocent girls and women,
Gurv-anganâ-gamah,
and, finally, by (4) the wholesale butcheries of human bodies, the 'abodes
of Brahman', the ' temples of God', in world-wars, entered upon for the
sole purpose of robbing one another's goods and territories, Brahma-hatyâ
again, and for Stéyam.
“The ways of living born of Lust are: Hunting, racing, betting upon
living and non-living things, dicing, gambling of all sorts, sleeping by
day and waking by night, scandal-mongering, club-chatter, false advertisements,
adulterous sex-indulgence, running after each other's wives and husbands,
drinking and drugging, balls and dances, music halls and theatres, often
obscene cinemas and talkies, and aimless shopping, gadding about, and rushing
to [Page 13]
and fro, by land and sea and air. (The American triad is 'meals,
movies, motors'.)
“The bye-products, in social life, of Hatred are: Malicious slander,
false propaganda, reckless dare-devilry, intensive competition, frenzied
finance, rancorous ambitions, rapacities, jealousies, envies, robbing and
stealing in all ways, verbal and physical violence, and the flourishing
of bullies, gunmen, and gangsters.”
Perhaps we may recognise a rough picture of the life of the vast modern
capitals of today in these verses. The description, in the Rãmãyana,
of the banqueting halls of Rãvana, and of the food and drink of
Kumbha-karna, is but an allegory of the daily consumption of meat and wine
of a huge town of the Ãsurî-sampatti, the ' titanic type of
civilisation', of which Vulcan's subterranean forges, vast mines, and vast
machinery are necessary factors. Indeed, if we look at the daily bill of
fare of the thousand-headed and million-handed Titan Londonensis, eldest
son of the Giantess Britannia-Lanca-shiria, and of various cousins and
step-brothers of his, Berlinos, Parisinus, Romus, Novo-Yorkus, Chicagonus,
San-Franciscus, the children of his aunts and step-mothers, Germania, Franconia,
Italia, Americia, we find that ten-headed and twenty-handed Rãvana
and Kumbha-karna and old Lanka, or hundred-handed Briareus and Enceladus,
or even thousand-handed Kãrta-vîrya
and Ban-isura, are but poor pygmies. [Page 14]
Life in enormous mines and factories is described, by those who know,
as life in purgatory and hell; and the latest experience of scientist
is that machinery, invented and expected to save labour, has
began to starve
the laborer on a vast scale. The present Prince of Wales, to acquaint
himself at first-hand, as a good prince should, with the conditions of
life of his people, once went down into one of the mines of Britain; what
he saw filled him with horror; he tried to speak about it openly to rouse
the public conscience; but a clapper was promptly put upon his mouth by “vested
interests” and their “safe-guardsmen”.
The total of the Unemployed is now reported to be 30 millions — for
the civilised west. For the submerged east, no one has thought it worth
while to count. Far worse, far more dangerous for humanity, than these
Unemployed, are the Mis-employed — Mis-employed for Satan's own infernal
work of war. The present total of the standing armies of the world, including
reserves, was declared, lamentingly but helplessly, by President Hoover
of the United States of America, in a public speech, about two years ago,
to be 30 millions also, as against 20 millions before the world-war. [Page
15]
The cost of maintaining this vast total of 30 million Mis-employed in
utterly wasteful and non-productive idleness now, and for fearfully destructive
work later, is said to be some 900 million pounds sterling annually, or
30 pounds per man. This seems to be very greatly an underestimate, as
compared with the state of things in India, where a varying total of less
than a quarter million soldiers, British and Indian taken together, costs
some 40 million pounds a year, or an average of about 160 pounds per man,
though the average cost of the British soldier in India is four or five
times that of the Indian. 30 pounds per year would scarcely cover the bare
food of a western soldier, much less his clothing, arms, ammunition, and
all the other vast paraphernalia and infernalia of war by land, sea, and
air, including six-million pound super-dreadnoughts, with a life of only
a few years, and liable to be scrapped at a moment's notice, by some new
discovery or invention. The probable average may therefore be safely
put at half the Indian average at least, the full figure of which is due
to “special
reasons”, of course.
The total cost on the Unemployed, I have not seen reported anywhere. Britain
alone has spent just over 120 million pounds on 3 million persons, in
one year, or 40 pounds per person. Putting it at 20 pounds per annum per
person for all countries taken together — which is probably too low
in [Page 16] view of the high seals
of living in the west— it comes, in round
figures, to a total of 600 million pounds. And the whole burden of these
1,500 (or, at the higher estimate of 80 pounds for the Mis-employed, 3,000)
million pounds per year for maintaining the Mis-employed and the Unemployed,
and also of supporting all the high and fast life of the enormous towns
besides, falls ultimately on the broken shoulders of the actual Producer
of Food and Clothing, the prime necessaries of life, who cannot
retain half enough food and clothing for himself. These figures illustrate
the quotations from the western experts.
Such is the picture of modern western civilisation and culture. Such is
the pass to which the very clever, the very 'practical,' politicians and
economicians and statesmen of the west have brought the human world. They
are all crying for Disarmament and Distariffing, but they are all also
full of lust and greed and mutual mortal fear and hate, all the time, and
none will begin. Capitalist greed for money and luxury, bureau-cratist
and militarist greed for power and glory, universal craving for sense-indulgence,
prostitution of science to these — such is the root-cause
of all the troubles of the human world. When eyes are 'veiled',
'blinded,' by lust and hate and greed (which constitute the Ãvarana-s'akti
of Maya) and are ' forcibly turned in the erroneous' [Page
17] direction (by the viksépa-sakti of the same),
then, naturally, they cannot see the true cause and the right remedy.
THE ' PRACTICAL' STATESMEN AND POLITICIANS OF
THE DAY
Your brilliant Chancellor [Sir Malcolm Hailey, Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, ex-officio Chancellor of the University ] has recently perpetrated two epigrammatic definitions: “A statesman is a person who desires to do something for his country; a politician is one who desires his country to do something for him”. They are worthy of G. B. Shaw himself. Even so, while the second definition is perfect, that of the present day politician, the first seems to be capable of some improvement: “A modern statesman is a person who desires to do something for his country, at the ruthless expense of as many other countries as possible”, or, “is one who desires that other countries should do something for his country”. 'Patriotism', 'nationalism', etc., mean today (as they have unhappily meant throughout most well-known history), (1) for subject nations, struggle to escape from the boa's coils, (2) for the dominant nations, stronger constriction with those coils, (3) for others, sabre-rattling, flag-waving, slogan-blustering, perpetual trying to swallow, or avoid being swallowed by, [Page 18] neighbours. For none, today, apparently, do those words mean 'humanism,' and knowledge of the science and art of peaceful and happy social and individual life, and ability to bring about real and lasting cure of domestic and economic ills (which are the main root of political ilia) consistently with the maxim of 'live and let live'.
The soul of present day western civilisation and culture seems to be a ghoul born of the misunion of capitalism and militarism, and this ghoul has succeeded, by its serpent-wiles, in deceiving, coaxing, compelling, and degrading into its service Sacred Science, which is only now, after the world-war, beginning to realise, and to make groan and moan, that it has prostituted and enslaved itself to this obsessing demon, this Frankenstein monster, which it has itself helped unwittingly to create.
In such conditions, a person who has some faith left in
the underlying principles of ancient Ãryan Culture, may perhaps
hope that he will not be regarded as altogether impertinent, if he comes [Page
19] into one of the houses of science, a great University,
and places before the occupants, for mere consideration, and to be flung
aside, of course, if not thought suitable, after such consideration, some
suggestions which that culture embodies, for the solution of the problems
that are now vexing humanity, and for rescuing both the older and the newer
cultures from complete degeneration, by combining the best elements
of both, in the light of the principle of the golden mean,
the middle path,
via media, avoidance of excess, moderation.
It should be clearly understood that it is not my intention, by any means,
to offer apologia for medieval or latter-day Indian conditions, the degeneracy
of which is patent; nor to condemn everything of the modern west, in which,
on the contrary, I see many most valuable sciences, which need only to
be well-applied by philanthropy to make of earth a heaven, instead of being
misapplied by satanic misanthropy to make of earth a hell. Neither do I
pretend or presume to say that everything, or even anything, of the ancient
east was perfect; I only believe that it possessed some philosophical and
psychological fundamental principles which can enable
science to be well-applied; and I wish and hope that modern experts may
take them into due consideration'. [For
evidence that thoughtful persons of the west also recognise the possibility
and desirability of such limited and discriminate ' modernisation' of Asiatic
outer forms of life-activities, while the essential
principles are retained, see C. Delisle Burns, A Short History of the
World,
1918-1928, Oh. XVIII.] [Page
20]
The hope is greatly
strengthened when I find that there are already congenial spirits in that
house who have banded themselves into an “University
Arya Association”. The name is very promising. A well selected name
is a word of power. It becomes a bîja-mantra, a motto, a key-note,
a constant reminder of the duty that has to be done, of the high aim that
has to be achieved, and a perpetual encouragement to do and achieve them.
Nivâran-ârtham ârtinam
Artum yogyo bhavét tu yah,
Aryaté satatam e-ârtaih,
Sa Ãrya iti kathyaté.
'He to whom people in trouble go for help — he is an Ãrya.'
That culture, (from cultus, colere, to plough, to till, also
to worship), that cultivation, ploughing and tilling and reverent and worshipful
educating, of the mind, which makes human beings Ãryas, which causes
the feeling of unselfish helpfulness to prevail over the feeling of selfish
aggressiveness in the breast of the large majority of the members of society — that
is Ãryan culture. [Page 21]
Other old definitions, which only indicate the consequences, in conduct,
from this essential principle, are:
Kartavyam âcaran kâmam,
akartevyam an-âcaran,
Tis hati prakrt-âcâré,
yah sa Ãrya iti smrtah.
(Vasistha)
“Who does the right thing at the right time, never a wrong or irrelevant
or purposeless thing - he is an Ãrya.”
Na vairam uddîpayati pras'antam,
na darpam ãrohati n-ãstam-éti,
Na durgato'sm-îti karoty-akãryam,
tam Arya sllam param ãhur-Ãryãh.
Na sve sukhé vai kuruté praharsam,
n-anyasya duhikhé bhavati prahrs'ah,
Na c-ãpi dattvã kurute-'nutãpam,
tam Ãrya-s'iIam param âhur-Ãryâah
.
“Who does not arouse hostilities, is neither arrogant nor cringing,
does no unseemly act even when driven by ill fortune, is not elated by prosperity
nor depressed by reverse, who never rejoices over another's sorrow, and never
regrets a gift well made to the deserving — he is an Ãrya”.
In the words of the Gita, sthita-prajna, sthita-dhîh,
sthira-buddhih, sthira-matih.
The other Aryan word, Insâm, has a similar significance. It
means 'the man of uns', sympathy for fellow-men. The words 'gentleman',
'nobleman', 'bhalâ-adami', ' bhadra-loka', ought to mean
in practice, as they mean by etymology, [Page 22] '
the man of goodness and worth', not of fine clothes or mere birth; and worth
is nothing else than helpfulness. Sharif, he who deserves sharf,
honor, means the same, for only helpfulness deserves honor.
As to the other important word in your name, the word 'University', it struck
me that I should examine its precise meaning, only about a year and a half
ago, when I was revising my book, The Science of Social Organisation,
or the Laws of Manu, for a new edition, and was dealing with the chapters
on Education. The biggest dictionaries available told me that it came from
two or three Latin words, unus, one, and versus, vertere,
to turn, and meant “all
turned or combined into one”, hence “a place where the whole
of knowledge was gathered”. I was not quite satisfied. I noticed that versus implied opposition, turning against, as in the only too familiar
'A versus B' of the law-courts. So I decided to apply the methods
of the Nirukta [A Samskrt work on the Science of Interpretation ] , and made up a meaning for myself, which
I recommend for your acceptance also.
A Uni-versity is a place where the endless Di-versity of God's
Nature is shown to inhere systematically in the Unity of Nature's
God; [Page
23] where the countless pairs of opposites, contradictions, dvam-dvam, ziddain,
one versus another, which make up Nature, are shown to be reconciled
in the being of the Primal Unity by the laws of that being; where it is
learnt and taught that the law of cyclic periodicity, of turning round and
round, prevails in all departments of the World-process, Samsãra-cakra,
Carkh-i-gardün,
that all things whatsoever are ever turning round the Central Spiritual Sun,
the One Source of the Light and Heat of Consciousness and Life, that all
the Physical sciences of the Finite are subordinate to and revolve around
and are held together by Metaphysics, the Science of the Infinite, that the
Unity of the Anima Mundi pervades all the Multiplicity of the Corpus
Mundi,
which is ever emerging out of and merging back again into that
Unity.
I arn afraid this conception is not embodied by all modern Universities,
may perhaps be even repudiated as an absurd conceit instead of a rational
conception, by many of them. But the instinctive progress towards it is there,
and discernible, in almost every university worth the name. Any way, I am
confirmed in my conception of that a university ought to mean, whether it
actually does or not, by many worthies, both ancient and modern.
The Rsi of the Upanisads says:
Brahma-vidyâ sarva - vidyâ - pratisthã. [Page
24]
“The Science of the Infinite Brahman is the foundation
of all the sciences of finite material things”. If the experts of the
different sciences will scrutinise carefully the root concepts of their respective
sciences, they will very soon discover that all these are purely metaphysical
concepts. To mention only one or two: “A point is that which has position
but no magnitude”; formerly an atom and now 'an electron or proton
is something which is indivisible'. Position without magnitude, indivisibility, etc., are metaphysical, and not physical, ideas. Krsna says:
Adhyãtma-vidyã vidyânâm
Vâdah pravadatâm Aham,
“Of all the sciences, I am the Science of the Infinite and Eternal
Self”. And again:
Yadâ bhüta-prthag-bhâvam Éka-stham anu-pas'yati
Tata eva ca vistâram, Brahma
sampadyaté tadâ.
“When the seer seeth all Diversity proceeding out of Unity, and again
receding back into the same Unity, then is Brahman, knowledge, science, Véda,
fulfilled in him, then he has truly realised Brahman, the primal, all-pervading
and all-including Self.”
An Iranian Aryan says:
Gauharé jua khud-sinâsi
Nist dar bahré wujüd;
Mâ ba
girdé khwés mi
Gardém cün girdâb-hâ. [Page
25]
“Self-knowledge is the only pearl
In the sea of life;
Like whirlpools round our Self we whirl
In incessant strife.”
A western thinker, Herbert Spencer, I believe, has defined science as
organised knowledge, the seeing of similarity in diversity, and philosophy
as completely organised, completely unified, knowledge, which would be
the seeing of Unity in Diversity. Another scientific thinker, Prof. Arthur
Thomson, has written that it is the function of metaphysics to assign
its proper value and place in the total scheme of knowledge as subservient
to human life, to each of the sciences dealing with finite things. Sciences
are not many, Science is one — this notion is coming into vogue,
more and more.
This conception of a university is all contained, with other important things besides, in the old words, Guru-kula and Brahma-carya, which two words name the most important factor in Ãryan Culture, nay the very factory wherein that culture was manufactured. The word Guru-kula, “the Family-Home of the Teacher”, is fragrant with the sweet perfume of the atmosphere of paternal and filial relationship and spiritual [Page 26] affection which pervaded that home; and the word Brahma-carya means the pursuit of Brahman in its three aspects and meanings, viz., (1) the recognition of the all-pervading Immortal Self, (2) the gathering of the higher and the lower knowledge, metaphysical and physical science, and (3) the conserving and maturing of the seed of life wherein dwells the sacred potency of infinite multiplication. Only those who have seen, however feebly and faintly, that the One Life runs through all forms, only they have established within their hearts, the rational basis for the Golden Rule of Christ, and are truly regenerate, twice-born, dvi-ja, Ãrya,
Dear friends, the work of expounding Âryan Culture
which you have set me, is not for one brief paper, but for many volumes,
not for one incapable person but for very many very capable ones. I have
very feebly tried to contribute my mite of rough spade-work towards it
elsewhere. Here I am attempting just to sketch the background for relief,
and to put into the foreground some broad outlines, in the shape of principles
and contrasts.
But I should make it clear again that while, for purposes of relieving contrast,
I have emphasised [Page
27]
the darker side, due to excesses, of the newer, or rather younger, civilisation,
I see well that it has a very bright side also, which can show forth only
if the dust and dirt of the excesses be removed. It is the old, old, story
of the freshness, beauty, liveliness, glory and romance of youth, ruined
by its mistakes and turbulences and consequent diseases, on the one side,
and, on the other side, the mature wisdom of age made ineffective by decay
of vitality and feebleness of body. To put the Ancient Wisdom into the
youthful body of the new generations of both east and west — is what
is needed.
As the human body has three prominent features, head, heart or trunk, and
limbs, as consciousness or mind has three main functions, cognition, emotion,
and volition, so a distinctive culture or civilisation has three main aspects,
(1) its distinctive philosophy and science, (2) its distinctive religion
and art, (3) its ways of living.
(1) The science of Modern Civilisation as manifesting in its chief loci and
foci, the huge towns, is Material Science; its theoretical philosophy
is the Philosophy of Change, Force, Energy, Libido, Élan
Vital,
Sakti; and the essence of its practical philosophy, its moral outlook,
its ideal, is contained in the slogan, ' Struggle for existence'. [Page
28] 'Individualism'; (2) its outer religion is hierarchical
Christianity; its real religion and art are the Worship of (vãma-mãrga)
Sakti, Kalî, Power, Might, Thor, Odin, Mammon, Mars, Eros, Bacchus
; (3) its Way of Living is 'Organising for War', economical and martial,
'organising for mutual starvation and slaughter'; all its enterprises,
its colonisations, its roads by land, sea, and air. its means of communication,
its post and telegraph and wireless, its trade and transport, are governed
by military considerations and by motives of exploitation of the weaker
and poorer classes and peoples, in the background; it is predominantly
mechanical, industrial, and urban, and embodies applied material science;
and it believes in free indulgence of the senses and multiplication of
outer wants and their satisfactions by outer possessions and machines
worked by physico-chemical forces.
(1) The science of Âryan Culture was Spiritual Science, with Material
Science by no means neglected, but subordinated, otherwise there could
not have been ' The Wealth of Ormuz and of Ind ' to tempt invaders; its
theoretical philosophy was that of the Universal Self, the Philosophy of
the Changeless, the Spirit which re-solves and absolves within Itself the
two opposite Poles of Progress and Regress, Action and Reaction, between
which Energ-ic Change is ever working cyclically, the Philosophy of S'iva
the Own-er of [Page
29] S'akti; its practical philosophy was embodied in the mantra 'abhéda-buddhi',
the sense of non-separateness and non-separatism.'Alliance for existence',
loka-sangraha, 'social organisation', i.e., Socialism including Individualism
as subordinate; its ideal, which to live for, was abhyudaya or dharma-artha-kãma,
virtue-profit-pleasure, refined and lawful 'sense-enjoyment' through 'lawful'
possessions here on earth, and moksa, spiritual happiness, hereafter;
(2) its inner religion was the balanced Worship of three deities, Sarasvati,
Laksim, and Gaurî-Annapurnã, for Al-Allm, Al-Malik, and Ar-Razzãq-al-Jamil) i.e.,
the deities of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, or Knowledge, Wealth, and Powerful
and Joyful Health — all in subordination to the worship
of S'iva, the ' Sleeper within all, the worship of S'anti, Peace, of Truth
and Right, Rtam-Satyam; its outer religion was worshipful communion with
the manifest Facts and Forces of Nature, 'the gods ' of the elements
and of the heavens, Sûrya, Candra, Indra, Vãyu, Agni, Varuna,
Mahî, and of hill and dale, forest and mead, river and sea; (3) its
Way of Living was 'Organising for Peace', external and internal, 'peace
on earth and good will among men'; it was predominantly rural, pastoral,
and agricultural and embodied applied psychology and spiritual science;
and it believed in simplification of the outer life, the control of the
senses, multiplication of inner experiences and possessions, [Page
30] development of biological and psychical powers, of superphysical
sensor and motor organs, and acquisition of yoga-siddhis, which
led to inner planes and worlds where there was no such over-population,
or intriguing, or struggle, where, indeed, 'the more the souls the more
the heavens,' as Swedenborg discovered for himself.
Please bear in mind that this characterisation of the two cultures is only
by predominant, and not exclusive, features. The difference between them
is only that between youth and age. The modern has in it all the possibilities
of the ancient. The ancient has in it many of the actualities of the modern,
but with the outward exuberances and excesses, the assertivenesses and
aggressivenesses, toned down greatly, and thoughtful inwardness and accommodativeness
developed highly.
Loka-sangraha, the Organisation of Society for Peace, was its out-standing
feature. By such organisation, it solved the problems of humanity, including
those of defensive war, and managed the main concerns of life, education,
domesticity, economics, politics, and recreation and religion.
Organisation means that different organs, performing different functions,
bound together in relations of subordination, co-ordination, and [Page
31] super-ordination, subserve a single purpose, the life of the organism in
which they all inhere.
Human Society, the Human Race, is the organism for our
purpose here. Its organs are groups of the individuals which compose
that society. Individualism and Socialism are interdependent by nature;
conflict between them is wholly artificial, due to absurd extremism.
'I' means selfish-separatism; 'We' means unselfish collectivism.
The old culture reconciled them lay a double organisation; ' the organisation
of the individual life' or Âs-rama-dharma, and
'the organisation of the social life' or Varna-dharma. For the
purposes of this dual organisation, the old culture distinguished four
main temperamental natural types of human beings, viz., the differentiated
men and women (1) of knowledge, (2) of action, (3) of acquisitive desire,
(4) the undifferentiated men and women of unskilled or little skilled labor.
These make up the head, arms, trunk, and legs of the social organism. I
am trying to avoid the well known technical Samskrt names because they
at once bring up the idea of rigidly hereditary
caste, which, I am convinced, was not among the [Page
32] principles
of the old culture. The Law of
Heredity is only half the truth; the Law of Spontaneous Variation or Mutation
or Exfoliation, or however else it may be named, is the equally important
other half of the whole truth. The principle of Unity, uniformity, continuity,
running through nature, is the source of the one law; that of Multiplicity,
multiformity, discontinuity, which is, if possible, more patent, is the
cause of the other law. It is absolutely necessary that each should be
given its due share in the organisation of society. Wholesale suppression
of the second is the main cause of the degeneration of the Indian people.
With this clearly understood, we may see that the four temperamental types
are facts in human nature. (1) Functions, (2) rights and corresponding duties (with
greater stress upon the duties), (3) means of livelihood, and (4)
the prizes of life, were all partitioned between the four types of human
beings of the four corresponding professions. For prime test of temperament
and vocational aptitude, let every educable and educated person select one
of the first three prizes, (1) honor, or (2) power, or (3) wealth; the non-educable
will of course receive the fourth (4) amusements. Now. let us attack this older system of Daivi-sampatti,
(we mast not say 'god-like', but we may surely say) 'godly' civilisation,
thus very briefly outlined, in contrast with the 'titanic' civilisation
of Asurî-sampatti — let
us attack it in terms of modern problems at random, and see what answers
it makes. Avas'yam
bharanîyo hi “The eldest-born,
who takes over the three-fold 'social'
debts and duties of the father, is the child of Dharma -Virtue; the others
are the children of Passion”. Parents should have only as many children
as they can care for and bring up properly. 11. Should a Government
own or control an Imperial Bank, a Reserve Bank, etc, ? No. The function
of the ruler must not be adulterated with the function of the wealth-manager.
Otherwise, serious mischief. The balance of power between the classes will
be fatally disturbed. Martial power and money power in the same hands will
ruin the people. Governments today have become the worst fakers, stock-jobbers,
and gambling speculators, issuing paper-currency ad lib, without
adequate coin-reserve, running the administration, just from year to year,
recklessly, on ever-increasing national debts, squaring the budgets with
loan, without considering who has to pay interest and repay capital ultimately,
on the principle of 'make merry while we may', 'tide over the moment anyhow',
' let tomorrow and the younger generation take care of themselves', 'after
me the deluge'; and because they are able to gamble with loaded dice, they
always win at the moment, against the people. Mr. L, George spoke of 'old [Page
50] expedients'. Debasing the coinage was a favourite one in
medieval times. Today, 'debasing the prices ' of coin and of paper, or
raising them at will, making securities utterly insecure, by wholly artificial
inflations and deflations and jugglings, is the favourite dodge — to
the ruin of whole countries. For the same reason, all State-monopolies of
any sort of trade and industry and 'money-making business' are undesirable.
They mean the most terrible bureaucracy and autocracy ultimately. The clothing,
the food, the light-supply, even the drinking water, and even the breathing
air would come into the octopus-grip of a handful of individuals — the
Big Ten, and Four, and One. It is said that about 40,000 millionaires and
billionaires own practically the whole money of the world today. [ Much
more startling is the statement of “Ambassador Gerard, who represented
the U.S. A. at Berlin prior to the World War”, that “Twenty men
(of wealth) in America have it within their power to control the national
policies of that country”, (vide p. 14 of Adyar Pamphlet, No.
172, Mr. L. W. Rogers' admirable paper on ' A
World in Distress,'
published April, 1933) ] Another
40,000 probably would include all the higher ranks of the armies, the bureaucracies,
and the police-forces of the world. Imagine the two coalescing, or combining,
or the one getting the other under its thumb — not to help but to oppress
the remaining 2,000 millions of humanity. Satan would be visibly installed
in the seat of the All-Highest. Fortunately, certain Psychical Laws [Page
51] make the complete or lasting effectuation of such an awful
arrangement impossible. [An illustration of these Laws appears in
the Indian papers of the first week of May, 1933: “A correspondent
in Japan, of a British paper, describing the most powerful minister of the
Mikado says, ' General Araki is the idol of the young officers
and the Mussolini of Japan. He hates capitalist groups
in proportion to their wealth. In this ... he has the approval
of the military
group who, under
a representative government, see the danger of wealth supplanting
valour as a dominating influence in the counsels of the empire. The
seethings and boilings going on in all the nations, today, point to the
acute need for regularising the nature-craved balance of power between
the four natural classes within each people; so only will the jealousies
between them, which inevitably, naturally, and rightly tend
to bring about that balance, be rationally adjusted,
abated, satisfied. ] The
Bolshevik idea of State-monopoly of vast industries and factories, suffers
from this radical psychological defect — of adultery
of functions which should be kept separate. So long as the ' Dictator' (Dictator
and Bolshevik — is
a contradiction in terms) is selfless and benevolent, his 'Despotism' (and
not 'Bolshevism', which word seems to be etymologically allied to the Skt. bahula, ' majority'-rule) will be beneficent. But so soon as the dictator
becomes selfish and malevolent, Satan gets holds of the reins, and the government
becomes the usual autocratic-bureaucratic tyranny. Though as much a one-man-show
as the Bolshevism of Russia under Lenin and now Stalin, or the Republicanism
of Turkey-Angora under Mustafa Kamal, the Fascism [Page
52] of Italy under
Mussolini seems to be against state-monopolies. The historian Villari [ The
Awakening of Italy, pp. 134-5, quoted by Prof. J. S. Mackenzie in The
Fundamental Problems of Life, p. 284 ] '
says : “The state
must be reduced to its proper function, viz.,
the maintenance of order, the enforcement of the law, the defence of the
country against foreign aggression, and the general encouragement of civilisation,
education, and progress ... It must not be a merchant, a manufacturer, a
farmer, or even a railway owner . . . These activities produce disastrous
effects on the bureaucracy, and on the people as a whole”. In other
words, the state should not be a 'money-making ' vais'ya, but a 'defence-making' ksattriya pure
and simple, which should 'defend' the people from external as well as internal
exploiters, and should merely see that 'moneymakers' do not swindle, but
make money only reasonably and fairly, and that 'science-making' — brãhmanas flourish.
It is very encouraging and refreshing to find ancient ideas thus receiving
unexpected modern support. At the same time it may be noted that these ideas
provide rules for sampat-kãla, 'normal times'. The conditions
of Russia, Turkey, Italy, have been those of ãpat-kãla,
'abnormal times' — and “God
fulfils himself in many ways”. A vitally
important difference between the laissez faire school and the
ancient [Page
53] system is that the latter requires the State not only to
maintain order generally, but also particularly an orderly and specific
Social and Individual Organisation”. Here, as everywhere, between 'let
everything alone' and 'let nothing alone,' between 'King Log' and 'King Stork,'
'too little government' and “too much government', 'wholly Free Trade'
and, 'intense Protection' — there is a just and rational middle course,
which should be sedulously followed. 12. Who should Legislate ? The ' men of wisdom ' obviously. Sarvésãm
yah suhrn nityam, “He who wishes well to all, and also knows what is conducive
to the good of each, and is ever trying to help others with thought, word,
and deed, he who is himself good and wise, he alone can make good and wise
laws, and he alone should legislate”; not persons with special beer-interests,
or whisky-interests, or enhancement-of-official-salaries-interests, or gold
or silver or steel-interests, or mills-interests, or any particular creed
or caste or sect or color or race or sex interests, but persons without any
interests, disinterested, with all just interests at heart. [Page
54] Khudã-tars rã bar ra'iyat gumãr, (Only the man who loves and therefore fears The same brilliant
Chancellor of your University, whom I quoted before, advised the staff
and students, in his first Convocation address here, to think out carefully
what sort of Sva-raj was most suitable for India. Somehow the advice was
not well-received. Some writers fell foul of him in the leading paper of
the Province. It seems the sins of the Governor were visited upon the Chancellor.
Yet the advice, in the terms in which it was given, was thoroughly sound.
It did not lay down what kind of Sva-raj he thought most suitable. It only
asked the members of the University to study the question. Latterly, as
Governor, he has been going round these provinces, and advising the public
at large to make sure that they send in the right
sort of persons to the next legislatures. So far, again, the advice is
quite correct; but, of course, the ideal of the legislator which he has been
putting forward is in accord with the traditions in which he has grown up,
and not with those of Ãryan Culture. Our 'right sort' is
very different from his 'right sort'. The ancient culture clearly says that
Raj, government, by the higher Sva, the Higher Self, of the people, is the
only true Sva-raj, and is suitable for and most urgently [Page
55] needed
by, not only India, but by the whole of suffering humanity, in every country.
The best and wisest, most philanthropic and most experienced, among the people,
constitute its higher Self. They should be carefully discovered, selected,
elected, persuaded, into the Legislatures. They alone should be invested
with the sovereign power of making laws. I have quoted elsewhere the more
brilliant and very modern but very incomplete Mr. G. B. Shaw, on this point.[ See
Adyar Pamphlet No. 147,' The Ethico-Psychological
Crux in Political Science and Art, or Who should become Legislators'. ] All
the other details of the constitution will follow of themselves, logically
and correctly, from this fundamental principle. If the Ãs-rama-dharma were duly observed, the country would always have, in ample numbers, ' retired'
men and women of leisure, inspired by philanthropy, and full of all the needed
experience of human affairs, who would make 'good and wise' legislators,
and promulgate good and wise laws. 13. How should Education be spread? Tapo
vidyã ca viprasya “Self-denial and science — these
are the wealth of the man of wisdom, the educator. The ruler who fails
to support the true educationist and lets sound education languish — he and his state shall
also starve and perish before long, falling into barbarism for lack of uplifting
knowledge. But the educator must not accept support from the lawless and
bad ruler or vicious citizen for then he will lose power to
reprove him, and, helplessly abetting sin, will fall into purgatory with
the sinners, here and hereafter”. The
economic bias is all-powerful, and educators paid out of and fed with, e.g.,
excise-revenues could not have the courage to fight against a blood-nourished
and drink-excited civilisation. According to the old traditions, any ruler or citizen who,
directly or indirectly, derives revenue or income from prostitution, intoxication,
gambling, meat-trade, etc., is a vicious ruler or citizen, nay,
a degraded criminal of the lowest sort, like a person making money by the
debauching of his [Page 58] own daughters
and sons, sisters and brothers. Perhaps that is why the heart of India relegated
to oblivion for long centuries, despite its other very valuable features,
the perversion of Raja- “Dharma”-s'ãstra, 'the
Science of the Ruler's Duty', into mammonist Artha-s'ãstra,
' the Science of grabbing money and stocking the king's Treasury' by that
processor of Machiavelli, Cãnak-ya,- Kautilya, “the
crooked”,
the very great (and himself personally ascetically pure) minister of the
Emperor Candragupta the Great, contemporary of Alexander the Great. 14. Should Executive and Judicial functions be combined ? No, for that would be adulterating the functions of the man of wisdom with
those of the man of action. 15. Should Civil Servants and other executive officials, or even Cabinet
Ministers, drawn from 'public men' but salaried, have power to vote in the
Legislatures ? No, again, for the same reason. Laws must be made only by disinterested,
non-competitive, non-money-making, persons, of the type of men of wisdom,
and not by interested persons of the type of men of action engaged in salaried
work. In the latter case, the unavoidable result is that the public- servant'
becomes 'public- master', legislates to increase his salaries
and powers, to [Page 59] multiply sinecures and
parasitical wasteful offices, to make the administration ever more and more
top-heavy, to make the public subserve at every turn the convenience and
the comfort of the 'public-servant ' turned 'public-master', instead of
the 'public-servant ' subserving the convenience and the welfare of the
'public'. The system of government is said to be steadiest in Switzerland
because the Executive there is completely subordinate to the Legislature. 16. How
solve the Untouchability question ? and the Communal Problem ? By recognising the principle of Karmanã varnah 'caste-class-type
by individual vocational temperament,' rather than Janmanã,
'by rigid exclusive heredity' ; that there is no effect without adequate
rational cause; that untouchability can be due only to dirt or contagious
disease, and not to birth as such. The same principle of 'class-type by
temperament', and not 'exclusive caste rigidly by birth', will solve the
communal problem also. All creeds and all communities of all countries can
come into the social organisation of elastic Vary-Ãs'rama-dharma. Nãsti tu pancamah.
(Manu) “There is no
fifth class-type, besides these four, anywhere.” Incidentally, we
may bear in mind that the 'communal riots' of India (mostly engineered
by [Page 60] religional
and political' schemers) make a very much easier problem than the vast 'National
and Racial Riots' called the Great War or the World War, etc. (mostly
engineered by ' capitalist and militarist' schemers). An external '
peace-imposer' can only make matters worse. A real genuine League has to
be evolved from within, in the case of each of these two problems;
and this can be done only by grappling with the psychical causes,
as suggested above, and by diligently teaching in all educational institutions,
the essentials which are common to all religions. 17. What about the Agrarian problem and the Rent question
? The old way was for
the state, the ruler, to take a proportion of the produce, in kind. The
proportion was ordinarily one-sixth. But it varied, from one-fourth to
one-fiftieth, according as the need, at any particular time, of the state
was great or small; also according to the nature of the produce and the
conditions of the industry. This is the only way to assure ' a happy people
and a smiling land,' with automatic adjustment of
amount of tax, and perfect sympathy and equality of joy in good fortune and
sorrow in ill-fortune, between ruler and ruled, or, better, between 'Minister'
(which means 'servant') and 'Ministered'. When the gods of the rains and
the rivers, the wells and the canals, the great artificial [Page
61] reservoirs
and lakes, are kind, then both rejoice; otherwise, both sadden equally,
and help each other diligently — instead of the rulers and princes
luxuriating in palaces amidst balls and dances and dinners and suppers of
one thousand and two thousand guests, and objecting to 10 p.c. and 5 p.c.
cuts in salary, and to remissions of revenues and rents and taxes, while
the cultivator and the general trading public are groaning under 50%.
and 75%. 'cuts' in their incomes in consequence of the 'economic depression'
brought about by these very clever statesmen-rulers and princes and 'sovereigns'.
It is one of the very key-principles for the maintenance of the balance of
power between the four classes, which are the four natural estates of every
civilised realm, that the producer of necessaries should not be compelled
to sell his produce for ' money', but should give only a
portion, and a fairly small portion, of that produce, in kind, to the State,
as income-tax. 18. What about Land-holder and Tenant ? The land-holder was bhü-pa, bhümi-pãla,
exactly translated later by zamîn-dãr (dãstan),
'protector (not proprietor) of the land'; he had more duties than rights,
the duties of himself carrying out, or getting carried out, as public-servant,
not proprietor, the functions of patwari, (patel, Skt. pãtalika)
caukidãr,
health-officer, pancayati arbitrator [Page
62] and
munsif-magistrate, taqavi supplier of seed, cattle, implements, etc., and
collector of the state-share. All these duties have been taken away from
the landholders; enormous private incomes have been left to a few hundreds,
for sinful extravagance, a competence to a few thousands, and the remaining
hundreds of thousands are no better off, on the whole, than the hundreds
of millions of the cultivators. The Aryan culture suggests that the present
very highly-salaried 'executive' should be replaced by the system of bhümi-pãlas,
paid with a portion of the produce, to secure more 'humanity' and less ruthless
'efficiency' in administration, which 'efficiency' is of the same kind as
that of the surgical operations, of which they pay, heartlessly, that “the
operation was quite successful, but the patient died of shock”. Existing
governments are, in many places, 'killing the goose which lays the golden
eggs', or, as the Skt. proverb says, ' cutting out the udder of the cow to
get all the milk at once'. [See p. 25, Adyar
Pamphlet No. 172. Hundreds
of land-properties are reported by the papers as being sold in Bengal for
default of Government revenue ] 19. Will it be possible to carry on Railways, Telegraphs,
Ocean-liners, and other -needed minimum, machinery with such an arrangement
of collecting state-revenue in kind? [Page 63] Yes, and better than at present, if the spirit is
cultivated, of doing public service on such rates of salaries as even to-day
are said to prevail in such widely-different systems as those of Japan, Italy,
Russia. Of course, some system of token-currency, duly backed by
'kind' or even 'metal', (not by hollow 'credit'), will be needed,
and will not be inconsistent by any means with the old ideas. Many modem
socialist Utopias are advancing similar ideas, some trying to dispense with
money altogether, while advocating even greater use of machinery ; and the
actual revival of 'barter' has been mentioned before. If the State collects
its one income-tax in kind, it is obvious that ' necessaries' will always
be available, in ample quantities for all public servant?. The right spirit is
everything, in all departments of life. If the militarist - capitalist -
bureaucrats insist upon having every grain of their pound of flesh, upon
all the incidents of their present ways of high life being left intact, then,
of course, 'revenue in kind' will not do. If the sick man will keep up all
his dissipations, no medicine is of any use. 30. How Reduce ill-health and especially Venereal Diseases,
Insanity, Suicides, and Crimea? The percentage of the last four is higher in Europe; as also,
of course, of deaths and destructions by 'accidents,' collisions, and explosions,
[Page 64] caused by loose screws, or dropped
matches and cigar-ends, etc., which, incidentally, reveal how delicate
as well as powerful is the life of the monster-machine, how the colossus
of brass is standing on feet of clay. That of other diseases is higher in
Asia. The reason is fairly obvious. In Europe, the 'moral outlook' is different,
and the 'nervous strain' of competition in luxury and temptations for sense-enjoyments
much higher and ever-increasing. In India, poverty is the main cause, and
of course over-population; and the nervous strain is increasing in a different
sense — the strain due to
'carking care' for tomorrow's meal (now, in Europe and U.S.A. also). The
cure is to be found in the educational inculcation of the righteous and spiritual
moral outlook and of corresponding habits of life and the reduction of poverty
and limitation of population in the ways suggested before. Crime can be reduced,
and also ill-health, by making the magistracy and the police and the sanitation
officials really ' responsible'. Today, “very
responsible officer” means an “officer who can very cleverly
and confidently shift responsibility from his own shoulders to that of some
one else, preferably that of the public by whom he is paid”. Manu expressly
commands that the ruler must pay compensation out of his own
private money to private citizens for goods stolen by thieves and not recovered
by the police, and [Page 65] enjoins condign
punishment for oven the negligent and much more the corrupt public servant.
Thereby hangs an illustrative tale of King Rama-candra, the slayer of Rãvana.
Rãm-ji
(as he is fondly and familiarly called by the Indian people) became so angry,
once, with the Health Officer of Ayodhya, named S'ambüka, for grossly
neglecting his duties and pretending to be engaged in religious i austerities,
while the accumulated dirt was causing an epidemic of infant mortality,
that he even had S'ambüka's head sliced off. Ram-ji was very fond of
the roly-poly babies of the citizens, and was very grieved to see the dear
little things dying, and naturally and rightly held the hypocritical S'ambüka
guilty of their murder. Aryan culture says that “If a hundred
men of the people complain against any public servant, he shall be dismissed
forthwith”. Today, instead, any lying informer can send a hundred
good men to jail, and be rewarded by the 'state' in various
ways, for doing so. Prajã-s'atena
vidvistam 21. How reduce Ignorance in especial, and ail other evils,
mostly consequent on it, in general? By giving the highest place, among the subdivisions
of the two main functions of the state, viz., nigraha and anugraha,
constituent and ministrant, preventive and promotive, to the [Page
66] ministrant and promotive function of Education. And
this function should be discharged, not by too minute and excessive organisation
and mechanisation and officialisation of education and subordination of the
man of wisdom to the man of action (whence disastrous evils of bureaucracy
and hierarchical ' Churchianity ') but mostly by free public and private
subsidies, presents of 'necessaries' rather than cash, honoraria,'pious'
provision of all needed educational buildings and apparatus, as well as free
quarters, to all persons continuously judged and regarded by the public
as true men of wisdom, self-denying, philanthropic, learned, in short true
spiritual and scientific ministers, not priest-crafty priests. The difference between
free, spontaneous, elastic organisation, through moral plus intellectual
culture and consequent perpetual righteous impulsion from within, on the
one hand, and cast-iron and hide-bound mechanical organisation on the other,
is the difference between a self-repairing, self-lubricating, self-renewing
living organism, on the one hand, and a dead machine, requiring oiling,
patching, changing by others, on the other; or that between a hive of bees,
or a hill of ants, or an army of guerilla warriors, on the one hand, and
a collection of soldiers regimented and perpetually directed and ordered
about by martinets, and having no will and no judgment of their own and no
power to decide for themselves [Page 67] in
emergencies, on the other. The ancient idea seems to have been for the ruler,
the state, to maintain the broad social organisation of the four type-classes,
to see that there was no varna-sankara no 'adulteration' o£ functions,
rights-and-duties, livelihoods, and prizes of life, to see that there was
no shirking of its own duties and encroachment on any other's rights by any
class, generally, and to leave the more detailed internal organisation within
each broad type-class-vocation to the ' e(a)lders ' and 'leaders' of each.
The idea of ' self-governing universities' and of 'the guild-system', trade-unions',
'associations', is much the same at bottom, but warped by greater or lesser
excess of self-protective, self-aggrandising, other-exclusive and other-depressing
motive. Manu has many things to say, and warnings to give, against extending
and multiplying bureaucracies, and making them, or letting them become, irresponsible
to the men of wisdom. Under these conditions, the enslaving 'examinations' complained
of by Prof. Armstrong, (with their consequence in hundreds of thousands of
'machine-stamped' 'educated' unemployed, at least in India), would be
automatically replaced by ' estimations ' and ' vocational certificates '
by the teachers themselves, with the help of which every person would be
able to secure, and fit into, his proper niche in Society.[Page 68] Such are a few samples
of the answers given by the ancient culture to modern questions. As I said before, it is a task for many and much abler men and many volumes
to expound and illustrate Aryan Culture, and suggest, in detail, solutions,
based on its principles, for each of the many problems with which Humanity
is faced and harried today. I have already taken up too much time and
must close. Briefly, Manu founds his Home of Civilisation on 'the scientific
and benevolent men of wisdom', walls and pillars it with 'the men of
valorous protective action', stocks and stores it with 'the men of charitable
and righteous desire' and 'of well-nourished cheerful happy labor'. He creates
an army of true missionaries, the opposite of mercenaries,
as diligently as modern statesmen create armies of hired slaughterers.
The missionary-hearted educationist-legislator is the very foundation
of
Ãryan Culture and Civilisation. The positive promotion of virtue
and of the right spirit of socialist unselfishness (1) by right education,
and (2) by right social organisation through 'social legislation' is
better and more effective, far more so, than futile effort at mere negative
prevention of countless vices born of individualist selfishness, (1)
by 'penal legislation', and that too, based ultimately on (2) wrong education.
All the work of all the inexhaustible and therefore futile 'Don'ts' is
done by a few simple [Page
69] 'Do's',
and much else is done besides. All the negative commandments of Moses
are implicitly contained, and far more else, in Christ's Golden Rule. “Achieve
Righteousness and all things else will be added”. This
is the true spirit of Ãryan Culture. Hinduism has been described
by some globe-trotting observers as the worship of the Cow and the
Brãhmana.
It could scarcely be better described in brief. Gãvas tu mãtr-vãtsalyam, “The Brahmana, not by birth, but by worth, stands for philanthropic
science, Wisdom; the Cow is Mother-Love incarnate,
which overflows visibly as milk from the maternal heart for the nourishing
of the baby. Where these two, Mother-Love and Wisdom, prosper and are
honoured, there the gods rejoice and shower all their choicest blessings”.
And remember that Mother-Love is greater far than Father-Wisdom. The
Brahmana worships the Cow, not the Cow the Brahmana. Sahasram tu pitrn mãtã gauravén-ãtiricyaté.
(Manu) “The Mother exceedeth the Father a thousand times in the right
to reverence”.The Arabian Ãryan [The Theosophical
belief is that the Semites, Hebrews, Arabs, etc., are an early branch
of the main Aryan Race. ] [Page 70] said, Al jannato tahata qadam-il-Umm. (Quran) “Heaven unfolds beneath the feet of the mother”.
An auspicious instinct, implanted in your heart by beneficent Nature,
impels you to call your University your Alma Mater, your “Benign
Mother”.
Vandé Mataram. Reverent Salutation to the Mother! If you pursue this idea you
will find all that is valuable in Ãryan
Culture. May your Association flourish,
may you all become true Ãryas,
may you be able to assimilate the best of the 'realities' and the 'humanities'
of the modern West into the body of the 'divinities' of the ancient East,
for the uplift of Mother India — this is the heartfelt prayer of
an old man for you of the younger generation.
Brahma vaktram, bhujau ksattram,
Krtsnam ürü-daram vis'ah,
Pãdau Yasy-ãs'ritãh S'udrãh,
Tasmai varn-ãtmané namah. (M.-bh.)
“In the composition of the Oversoul of collective Humanity, the head
is constituted by the men of wisdom, the arms by those of valorous action,
the trunk by those of charitable and generous wealth-making desire, and
the legs by those of helpful and cheerful labor. We offer salutation to this
Oversoul.”
Bani Âdam ã'zãi yak digar and,
Ke dar afrînis ze yak
jauhar and. [Page 33]
“The children of Adam, Âdi-Manu, the First Man, Macro-cosmus,
are all as limbs and members of one and the same body.”
This conception of the “identity” of all human beings in one
vast organism, Virãt-purusa, Âlam-i-kabir, Macro-cosm, appears
to some to be a nobler and truer ideal than that of even “fraternity,
equality, and liberty”, which all involve separateness.
Tafraqã dar nafs-i-haiwãni buwad,
Rüh-i-wãhid ruh-i-insãni
buwad.
“ The soul of separateness is the animal soul; the human soul is
the Soul of Unity ”.
Correspondingly, the old culture distinguished, for the purposes of Varna-dharma,
four main broad classes of vocations, (1) the learned professions, (2)
the executive and active professions, (3) the wealth-producing and wealth-managing
professions, (4) the assistant laboring professions.
The individual life, for the purposes of Âs'rama dharma, was
divided into four main natural stages, (1) the student, (2) the householder,
(3) the honorary public worker, (4) the religious hermit. Selfish Individualism
was allowed to predominate in the first two stages; Unselfish Socialism,
i.e., free unremunerated social service, yajna, was required
to predominate in the last two. In this way was reconciled not only tho
difference between individualism and socialism, but the eternal conflict
between youth and age, modern and ancient, was also allayed. [Page
34]
SAMPLE SOLUTIONS OF MODERN PROBLEMS BY ANCIENT PRINCIPLES
1. How should Disarmament be effected ?
By attacking the cause thereof, instead of paltering with the effect. Armament
is an effect. The causa is national greeds, ambitions, lusts, over-progenition,
jealousies, hatreds, rivalries. The effect is physical; the cause is psychical.
No amount of fumbling and fencing with the effect, and trying to limit its
size by mutual agreement, [Page 35] at Geneva
Conferences, will be of the slightest use. The mutual agreement, in any real
and sincere sense, will be impossible, until the cause is removed. When that
is done, the effect will disappear of itself. Elaborate agreements will be
unnecessary. How destroy the psychical cause? By a twofold psychical remedy:
(1) Educate for peace, not for war; create peace-mentality, not war-mentality.
Education is the root, civilisation is the fruit. (2) Organise for peace,
in the way sketched above.
Karãnam cikitsyam; na tu kãryam. (Caraka)
''The cause of the
disease should be attacked by the physician; not the effects.”
Prayojanesu yé saktãh, na vis' ésésu, Bharata
!,
Tãn aham
panditãn manyé vis'ésãs tu pra-sanginah. (M
-bh., Vidura-nïti)
“They are the wise who concentrate attention on, and hold fast to the
fundamental principles, root-causes, prime motives; the corresponding details
are secondary, and inseparably follow of themselves.”
2. How shall the Balance of Power between the Nations be maintained ?
By establishing a “balance of power between the four classes” within
each nation, and thereby eliminating the present jealousy and hatred between
those classes, after which the rivalry [Page 36] between
the nations will lose all reason for existence. The old culture does this
by partitioning the four prizes of life, viz., honour, power
(in the sense of authority), wealth, and amusement, between the four professions.
When these are dissociated from one another, as far as humanly possible,
by universal opinion and legislation, and wealth is no longer able to purchase
honour and power and amusements at will, but is put in the third place,
and placed in the inverse ratio with honour particularly, it will cease to
be misused or sought for frantically; but will, instead, be used either for
private artistic enjoyment, or for public 'pious' works, in which latter
case only, it will be allowed to bring honour in return. So power or authority,
put in the second place, by duly educated public opinion embodied in law,
unable to grab wealth and honour and amusements at will, will cease to be
abused; it will be allowed to win honour only when well-used for public
good, at self-sacrifices. So, highest 'honour', given in direct ratio to
helpful wisdom, i.e., self-denying, ascetic, philanthropic science,
and carefully dissociated and withheld from wealth, will cease to be misused
for cloaking nefarious practices, for 'trading on reputation', for stealing
wealth and power and amusements surreptitiously; it will be used only to
spread the benefits of sound knowledge and spiritual ministration among the
people, and then it will be [Page
37] eagerly served by the holders of 'power and
authority' and 'wealth'. and will be 'amused' also by benevolently guiding
and watching the healthy amusements of those who need them most.
Brãhmanasya tapo jnãnam,
tapah ksattrasya rakasanam,
Vais'yasya tu tapo vãrttã,
tapah s'üdrasya sévanam. (Manu)
“The spreading (1) of righteous knowledge, (2) of protection, (3) of
necessaries and comforts, (4) of assistance — these are the 'sacrifices'
of the four types of men respectively.”
3. How is the Ideal Partition to be brought into operation ?
(1) Again, primarily, by diligent inculcation in the homes of education.
The 'will to equality', 'the will to refashion society, 'the needed'
change of heart', would be created in this way. (2) Secondarily, by appropriate
legislation. Again, education is the root, civilisation is the fruit. As
prevention is better than cure, so education is better than legislation,
the inner impulsion of spiritual and moral culture is far better than the
outer compulsion of penal codes,
Samath sarvésu bhütèsu
yah pas'yati sa pas'yati . . .
Cãaur-varnyam Mayã srstam
guna-karma vibhãgas'ah. (Gîtã)
“He who sees equality, sameness (of Spirit) in all — he sees
truly, (and therefore does unto [Page 38]
others as he would be done by) . . . The Self's Nature has divided human
beings into four typical classes.”
4. If armaments disappear, how shall Defence in emergencies be ensured ?
Defence, of course, should always be provided for; and for this purpose
the irreducible minimum will always be available and ready, in the second
type of persons, with proper militia training, after the abolition of standing
armies as above,
Tapah ksattrasya raksanam.
“To defend is the sacrificial duty of the Ksattriya.”
5. Who shall decide which class a person should be put into, i.e.,
which type he belongs to ?
The Educator. Instead of saying, B.A., or M.A., or B.Sc., or M.Se., etc.,
on the diploma, the University should say, ' Fit for a learned profession,'
or ' for an executive profession,' or ' a wealth-managing profession'. To
ascertain the vocational aptitude of the student should be the chief duty
of the educator. He will apply the prime test of temperament mentioned before.
Âcãryas tu asya yãm jãtim
vidhi-vad Véda-pãra-gah
Utpãdayati Sãvitryã
sã satyã, sã-ajarã-amarã. (Manu) [Page
39]
“The type, the class, which the Educator, well-versed in Psycho-Physics,
Véd-anta, decides to be that of a pupil — that is his true
class.”
6. How shall necessaries, a 'living wage', be assured to all, and the minimum
ideal of Socialism be realised?
By the partitioning of the means of livelihood: 'Honoraria' of various
kinds, presents, and subsidies by the slate, and by private citizens — for
men of wisdom, the learned professions; one single, simple, graduated 'tax'
on incomes — for the second type, the executive profession, the ruler,
the public servant; agricultural, pastoral, commercial 'profits' — for
the third; 'compulsory supply' of all necessaries by the other three — for
the fourth. No person should earn money in more than one way. The same person
should not be allowed to be a vast land-owning Maharaja as well as an enormous
capitalist as well as an Executive Councillor on many thousands of rupees
per month, all at the same time, or a professor and a money-lender, or a
land-holder and a shop-keeper, or a salaried Minister and a factory-owner,
or a police-officer or army-officer and a bank-shareholder, at once.
Sannãm tu karmanãm asya
trîni karmãni jîvikã,
Adhyãpanam, yãjanam ca,
vis'uddhãc ca pratigrahah;
S'astr-ãstra-bhrttvam ksattrasya;
Vanik-pas'u-krsir-Vis'ah. (Manu) [Page 40]
Varnãnãm s'üdra ucyaté. (M.-bh.)
Individualist 'incentive' to good and hard work, so disastrously absent
from western socialist schemes, will be supplied by the partitioned 'prizes
of life, honour, etc..
7, How will Unemployment be reduced ?
It is coming to be generally recognised that the excessive present unemployment
is due to the tactics of the mephistophelian system of capitalist-militarism
and of ' trading on reputation alone', 'on credit without cash
or kind behind it'. When, wealth loses its present fascination, by divorce
from honour and power, and armament loses its necessity by the growth of
goodwill and common sense, then “the gifts of Providence now rotting
in the fields”, will
be “permitted to reach the needy”, in the words of Mr. L. George;
the extremes of wealth and poverty will both come nearer to the mean; competing
mines and factories will decrease in number down to the useful minimum; cottage
industries will revive; and the immense amounts of money now wasted on the
Misemployed and the Unemployed will be used for transferring them to, and
populating with them, the vast and fertile but now empty spaces of the earth. [Newspapers
report, in April, 1933, that the Italian government, under Mussolini, has
reclaimed seventeen million acres from the Pontine marshes near Home. If
we even quadruple the Irish ideal of “Three acres and a cow” for
one family, this area should support one-and a half million agricultural
families, or about six million human beings, in comfort. Signor Mussolini
takes a small salary for himself, and therefore has, and can afford
to have great ideas and ideals for those whom he regards as his own people,
whatever his views may be as regards other peoples. He dissociates wealth
from supreme executive power, in his own person, and thus sets an effective
example. The present indigenous and exogenous rulers of India have no such
ideas and ideals; the reasons are obvious; yet such dissociation is the
only way to reduce poverty and unemployment. ] [Page
41]
Millions of men were carried across the seas, to and fro, in the days
of the World-War. Much more can and should be done in times of peace.
Also, Manu discourages sale and purchase, in terms of 'money' of, and '
financial transactions in various 'necessaries'. Living commentary on.
these verses is supplied by the manoeuvring in 'trusts', 'corners'.
'combines', of 'wheat-kings', 'cotton-kings', 'oil-kings, etc.,
(Manu has provisions for punishing profiteered) in the last fifty years;
and by the extraordinary revival, in Europe and America, within the last
two or three years, of the more natural system of barter of
goods, in place of the more artificial system of 'coin' and 'credit'
transactions, which has corrupted and befouled itself by extreme excess of
gold-hoarding and of abusing of credit and wholesale swindling by
capitalist governments and individuals.
'Promote foreign trade' — is the cry of some experts. But it is impossible
to act on when [Page 42]
'home trade' is perishing. Both can and will revive, simultaneously, only
when there is a just and rational exchange of one sort of goods produced
more naturally and easily by one people, without any attempt at 'dumping',
and more needed by another people, with another sort of goods similarly
produced by this other, and needed by the one; and when 'money' (coin, or
paper, or other token) is used strictly as 'counter' for goods, never for
' financial transactions, 'strokes of business'. 'coups', and is duly protected,
not only from counterfeiting, forging, and debasing, but even more from inflatings
and deflatings at will. There are provisions, in the Smritis, for fixing
the value of coins.
“More money”, suggested by other experts,
is no solution of Unemployment at all. It
means only “more grabbing” and “more
hoarding” and “more juggling” by plutocrats
and bureaucrats. Better distribution of the
existing money (and there is more than
enough) is what is wanted. Or, rather, more
production, where really needed, of food and
clothing, of necessaries (instead of luxuries),
and better, more equitable and more rational,
distribution of these everywhere, (together with
better distribution of population also), is what
is urgently needed. This is possible only in
the way suggested above — so says the older
culture. [Page
43]
8, But could this Process of Distributing of Population go on for ever, indefinitely,
without Limiting Population ?
Scarcely; the old culture did not believe in too prolific progenition.
The Mahã-bhãrata says expressly that that earlier Great
War, in India, was caused by two causes (1) excessive population, and
(2) the tyrannical rule of Daitya - souled, Titan-natured, kings with huge armies.
A balance has to be maintained between the food production and the mouths
that consume it. While the reckless and feckless countries are groaning under
Unemployment, France has no such problem. Patriarchal Manu, the first law-giver
of this land, wishful that his progeny should 'go forth and multiply', but
also mindful of the ill consequences of all excess, insists on some progeny,
but counsels limitation, though indirectly:
Yasmin rnram sannayati,
yéna c-ãnantyam as'nuté,
Sa éva dharm-jah putrah,
kãma-jãn itarãn viduh. (Manu)
Some children are necessary, to transform carnal passion into spiritual
parental affection, and prevent that passion from growing into insanity
into helpless hypochondria or ravening sensuality, into depressive psychopathia
or violent mania of many sorts. [Page 44]
If human beings must multiply like fish, they
must also swallow one another like fish. The
Omnipotent Himself would be impotent to keep
them all in food and clothing. War there must
be. But it may be within, between the higher
Self and the lower self, as in the men of wisdom,
trying to become saints ; or it must be without,
as between the lower selves, the bodies, of savages,
or, to be polite, let us say, the men of war-action.
There is a third alternative; while the Europeans,
being valiant, die of war, like Titans, the
Asiatics, or, rather, now, only the Indians, being
slaves, die of epidemics, war-fevers, and famines,
like flies and locusts. The fourth alternative
is that of 'the middle course,'partly control and
partly systematic War with Nature, as the Moral
Equivalent of War between men. Nation-wide
education is the means here as elsewhere. If
governments were less absorbed in enhancing the
pays, powers, privileges, prestiges, and pleasures of
their own personnel, they would see that it was
their duty to provide due instruction to the people
in such matters, and arrange for the better
distribution of the population. In most places, in [Page
45] India particularly, at any rate, the salaried public servant
seems to think much more of himself than of the Society he is paid by, and
to regard the public only as means to his own well-being, instead of the
reverse. People should be taught, diligently, that every person, particularly
the paid public servant, should think more of and for Society as a whole
than of and for himself, and that he will thereby best and most easily promote
his own well-being also. The significance of the rna-traya, 'the triple
congenital social debt', and
the panca-mahã-yajna, 'the five daily acts of sacrificial service'
is just this.
9. What form of government is best ?
Very strictly limited monarchy, hereditary, but only under many qualifications
and conditions, and constantly supervised and controlled by the legislature,
unqualified heirs-apparent being debarred, and disqualified vicious rulers
being replaced by qualified ones, 'selected' by the 'men of wisdom' appointed
for the purpose, rãja-kartãrafã, and then 'elected'
and acclaimed by 'the people in general', vis'ah.
Brãhmah prãpténa samskãram
ksattriyéna yathã-vidhi,
Sarvasy-ãsya, yathã-nyãyam
kartavyam pariksanam. (Manu)
Prajãnãm tu nrpah svãmi,
rãjnah svãmi purohitah .
. ,
Sad-bhãga-bhrtyã dãsyatvé
prajãbis tu nrpah krtah.
(S'ukra) [Page 46]
Nityam yas tu sato raksed,
asatas' ca nivarayet,
Sa eva rãjã kartavyah,
tena sarvam idam dhrtam.
Brahma vardhayati ksattram,
ksattrato brahma vardhaté;
Rãjã sarvasya c-ãnyasya
svamî, rãjnah purohitah.
Pratijnãm c-ãdhirohasva
Manasã, karmanã, girã,
Pãlayisyãmy-aham bhaumam
brahma-ity-éva c-ãsakrt;
Yas' c-ãtra dharma ity-ukto,
danda-niti-vyapas'rayah,
Tarn as'ankah karisyãrni
sva-vas'o na katham-cana.
(M.-bh., S'ãnti, chs. 58, 73,78.)
“A person of the type of the man of action, who has received thorough
and high educational consecration, who therefore realises the
sacredness of the office to which he is called and is of righteous and duteous
heart, (and not a lustful and murderous criminal, as so many 'sovereign'
rulers and princes have been and are), should he appointed king, under solemn
oath to defend the people from harm; and while he will rule over the people,
in accordance with the law, not his own caprice, the men of wisdom, elected by
the people to the legislature, shall rule over him. The Spiritual power
and the Temporal Power (Church and State, altar and throne) nourish and
foster one another, but the former must always instruct and direct the
latter. The king is not the lord and master but the chief servant of
the people, paid hire and [Page 47]
wage by them in the shape of a sixth-share of their income, for
the work of protecting them.
Purah, agré, loka-hitãya, prati-nihitah, dharma-karyésu
prati-nidhi-krtah, puro-hitah.
“He who has been put forward, made representative, elected, by the
people, for ministering to the general welfare, in all public works of
piety and matters of legislation and law — he is the puro-hita.”
10. If a Ruler becomes a Misruler. a Government a Misgovernment, as
is perpetually happening in history, what is the Remedy ?
The old culture says that “The man of wisdom appoints the man of
executive action, and must restrain him, punish him, and replace him when
he misbehaves”.
Ksattrasy-ãti-pravrddhasya
brâhmânân ati-vartatah,
Brahma-iva san-niyantr syãt,
ksattram hi Brahma-sambhavam. (Manu)
The great wars of Paras'u-rama and Karta-virya, of Vasistha and Vis'va-mittra,
of the Rsis and Véna, of Agastya and Nahusa, of Bhãrgava
and Dandaka, and many others, described in the Purãnas,
illustrate the theme of the punishing of the corrupt 'temporal power' by
the pure 'spiritual power', of the vicious 'man of action' by the virtuous
'man of science', who is always, in such cases, when he is really virtuous
and self-sacrificing as well as learned, followed and obeyed by the mass
of the oppressed people. [Page
48] If
the scientists and priests of all the countries had been true to their vocation
and had concerted together, the world-war would have been impossible. Wisdom
is 'science plus philanthropy”, 'knowledge
with affection' as Prof. Crew would say. Philanthropic science creates
the sword, in order to guard the purse, in order to support the plough,
in order to feed and clothe the world. The sword does not create science.
That which makes the sword can and should break it, if that sword does
not do its duty of protecting the innocent, but begins to torture them.
The old culture has many great words on the subject of the right use and
the wrong use of danda, the ' rod of power', ' compulsive force',
drawn from itself and entrusted to the ruler by the people, how terribly
it recoils upon him who misuses it unrighteously, and how it promotes the
welfare of all concerned, if guided rightfully and dutifully. But in order
that this may be, the nations should possess, in sufficient numbers, scientists
who shall also be true priests, men of self-sacrifice as well as learning,
teachers of (not high salaries but) high hearts, accustomed (not to high
living and plain thinking but) to high thinking and plain, nay, austere
and ascetic, living, whom the people instinctively revere and follow. Then
only will bad rulers fear and obey. As things are, today, moat of the so-called
self-governments of the world are, not governments of the
people, by the (higher
[Page 49] Self, the 'select and elect “best” of
the people, for the (welfare of the) people, “but”“ of
the people, by the (lower Self, the pushful, cunning, scheming, self
seeking, intriguing, worst of the) people, for the
(aggrandisement of cliques of bureaucrats and handfuls of capitalists and
militarists, and
against) people ”.
sarvésãm ca hite ratah,
Karmanã,
manasã, vãcã,
sa dharmam vaktum arhati. (M.-bh.)
Ke mémãr-i-mulk ast parhéz'gar.
To give offence to God — only
he can
Promote the people's welfare righteously.)
By entrusting it to the men of wisdom,
by assuring necessaries to them and also such comforts as are indispensable
to enable them to do their work of gathering and spreading knowledge, [Page
56] and for the rest, giving them highest honour instead of
high salaries. Also the homes of education need not he costly palaces.
Thus making the education less costly will enable it to spread much more
widely. It is said that some such thine is being done in Russia now. The
true scientist, priest, educator, legislator, the man of wisdom, does not
want money and luxuries; but his heart needs honour, and his body of course,
necessaries. If honour were assured, the best brains, and what is far more
needed for the educational home, the best hearts, would gladly
go to man the homes of education, for mere subsistence allowance, or for
none, if they had private resources of their own. I speak from personal
experience of the Central Hindu College, (and your present Vice-Chancellor
can support me, for he also worked there for many years in return for honour
only) and of other institutions, which have been staffed amply thus, even
now when Mammon has been installed in the seat of the All-Highest by modern
civilisation, and when even educationists, who should be brãhmanas
in head and heart, are seduced into behaving and living like ksattriyas and vais'yas,
and not even true ksattriyas and
vais'yas at that. Persons who really give their hearts to Sarasvati,
seldom reserve any considerable portion of it for Laksmi, either in the east
or in the west, even today. [Page 57]
nis'-s'reyasa-karam param,
Tapasã kilbisam
hanti,
vidyayã amritam as'nuté,
Yasya rãjnas tu visayé
s'rotriyah sîdati ksudhã.
Tasy-ãpi tat-ksudhã rãstram
aciréna-iva sîdati
Yo rãjnah prati-grhãti
lubdhasy - occãstra - vartinah ,
Sa paryãyéna yãt-îmãn
narakãn-éka-vims'atim. (Manu)
santyajéd adhikãrinam. (S'ukra)
Brãhmano jnãna-sancayah;
Étau yatra na hîyété
samrddhés tatra na ksayah.
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