Teachings of Swami Vivekananda Relevant to Modern Era.
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
Monday, 9 March 2015
Sunday, 8 March 2015
"The more, therefore, the Hindus study the past..." - Swami Vivekananda.
CWCD 4/320
REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF THE MAHARAJA
OF KHETRI
India--The
Land Of Religion
During the residence of the Swamiji in
America, the following Address from the Maharaja of Khetri (Rajputana), dated
March 4th, 1895, was received by him:
My dear Swamiji,
As the head of this Durbar (a formal stately
assemblage) held today for this special purpose, I have much pleasure in
conveying to you, in my own name and that of my subjects, the heartfelt thanks
of this State for your worthy representation of Hinduism at the Parliament of
Religions, held at Chicago, in America.
I do not think the general principles of
Hinduism could be expressed more accurately and clearly in English than what
you have done, with all the restrictions imposed by the very natural
shortcomings of language itself.
The influence of your speech and behaviour in
foreign lands has not only spread admiration among men of different countries
and different religions, but has also served to familiarise you with them, to
help in the furtherance of your unselfish cause. This is very highly and
inexpressibly appreciated by us all, and we should feel to be failing in our
duty, were I not to write to you formally at least these few lines, expressing
our sincere gratitude for all the trouble you have taken in going to foreign
countries, and to expound in the American Parliament of Religions the truths of
our ancient religion which we ever hold so dear. It is certainly applicable to the
pride of India that it has been fortunate in possessing the privilege of having
secured so able a representative as yourself.
Thanks are also due to those noble souls whose
efforts succeeded in organising the Parliament of Religions, and who accorded
to you a very enthusiastic reception. As you were quite a foreigner in that
continent, their kind treatment of you is due to their love of the several
qualifications you possess, and this speaks highly of their noble nature.
I herewith enclose twenty printed copies of
this letter, and have to request that, keeping this one with yourself, you will
kindly distribute the other copies among your friends.
With best regards,
I remain,
Yours very sincerely,
RAJA AJIT SINGH BAHADUR OF KHETRI
The Swamiji sent the following reply:
"Whenever virtue subsides, and wickedness
raises its head, I manifest Myself to restore the glory of religion"-- are
the words, O noble Prince, of the Eternal One in the holy Gita, striking the
keynote of the pulsating ebb and flow of the spiritual energy in the universe.
These changes are manifesting themselves again
and again in rhythms peculiar to themselves, and like every other tremendous
change, though affecting, more or less, every particle within their sphere of
action, they show their effects more intensely upon those particles which are
naturally susceptible to their power.
As in a universal sense, the primal state is a
state of sameness of the qualitative forces -- a disturbance of this
equilibrium and all succeeding struggles to regain it, composing what we call
the manifestation of nature, this universe, which state of things remains as
long as the primitive sameness is not reached -- so, in a restricted sense on our own
earth, differentiation and its inevitable counterpart, this struggle towards
homogeneity, must remain as long as the human race shall remain as such,
creating strongly marked peculiarities between ethnic divisions, sub - races
and even down to individuals in all parts of the world.
In this world of impartial division and
balance, therefore, each nation represents, as it were, a wonderful dynamo for
the storage and distribution of a particular species of energy, and amidst all
other possessions that particular property shines forth as the special
characteristic of that race. And as any upheaval in any particular part
of human nature, though affecting others more or less, stirs to its very depth
that nation of which it is a special characteristic, and from which as a centre
it generally starts, so any commotion in the religious world is sure to produce
momentous changes in India, that land which again and again has had to furnish
the centre of the wide - spread religious upheavals; for, above all, India is
the land of religion.
Each man calls that alone real which helps him
to realise his ideal. To the worldly - minded, everything that can be converted
into money is real, that which cannot be so converted is unreal. To the man of
a domineering spirit, anything that will conduce to his ambition of ruling over
his fellow men is real -- the rest is naught; and man finds nothing in that
which does not echo back the heartbeats of his special love in life.
Those whose only aim is to barter the energies of
life for gold, or name, or any other enjoyment; those to whom the tramp of
embattled cohorts is the only manifestation of power; those to whom the
enjoyments of the senses are the only bliss that life can give -- to these,
India will ever appear as an immense desert whose every blast is deadly to the
development of life, as it is known by them.
But to those whose thirst for life has been
quenched forever by drinking from the stream of immortality that flowers from
far away beyond the world of the senses, whose souls have cast away -- as a serpent
its slough -- the three - fold bondages of lust, gold, and fame, who, from
their height of calmness, look with love and compassion upon the petty quarrels
and jealousies and fights for little gilded puff - balls, filled with dust,
called "enjoyment" by those under a sense - bondage; to those whose
accumulated force of past good deeds has caused the scales of ignorance to fall
off from their eyes, making them see through the vanity of name and form -- to
such wheresoever they be, India, the motherland and eternal mine of
spirituality, stands transfigured, a beacon of hope to everyone in search of
Him who is the only real Existence in a universe of vanishing shadows.
The majority of mankind can only understand power
when it is presented to them in a concrete form, fitted to their perceptions.
To them, the rush and excitement of war, with its power and spell, is something
very tangible, and any manifestation of life that does not come like a
whirlwind, bearing down everything before it, is to them as death. And India,
for centuries at the feet of foreign conquerors, without any idea or hope of
resistance, without the least solidarity among its masses, without the least
idea of patriotism, must needs appear to such, as a land of rotten bones, a
lifeless putrescent mass.
It is sad -- the fittest alone survive. How is it,
then, that this most unfitted of all races, according to commonly accepted
ideas, could bear the most awful misfortunes that ever befall a race, and yet
not show the least signs of decay? How is it that, while the multiplying powers
of the so - called vigorous and active races are dwindling every day, the
immoral (?) Hindu shows a power of increase beyond them all? Great laurels are
due, no doubt, to those who can deluge the world with blood at a moment's
notice; great indeed is the glory of those who, to keep up a population of a
few millions in plenty, have to starve half the population of the earth, but is
no credit due to those who can keep hundreds of millions in peace and plenty, without
snatching the bread from the mouth of anyone else? Is there no power displayed
in bringing up and guiding the destinies of countless millions of human beings,
through hundreds of centuries, without the least violence to others?
The mythologists of all ancient races supply
us with fables of heroes whose life was concentrated in a certain small portion
of their bodies, and until that was touched they remained invulnerable. It
seems as if each nation also has such a peculiar centre of life, and so long as
that remains untouched, no amount of misery and misfortune can destroy it.
In religion lies the vitality of India, and so long
as the Hindu race do not forget the great inheritance of their forefathers,
there is no power on earth to destroy them.
Nowadays
everybody blames those who constantly look back to their past. It is said that
so much looking back to the past is the cause of all India's woes. To me, on
the contrary, it seems that the opposite is true. So long as they forgot the
past, the Hindu nation remained in a state of stupor; and as soon as they have
begun to look into their past, there is on every side a fresh manifestation of
life. It is out of this past that the future has to be molded; this past will
become the future.
The more, therefore, the Hindus study the
past, the more glorious will be their future, and whoever tries to bring the
past to the door of everyone, is a great benefactor to his nation. The
degeneration of India came not because the laws and customs of the ancients
were bad, but because they were not allowed to be carried to their legitimate
conclusions.
Every
critical student knows that the social laws of India have always been subject
to great periodic changes. At their inception, these laws were the embodiment
of a gigantic plan, which was to unfold itself slowly through time. The great
seers of ancient India saw so far ahead of their time that the world has to
wait centuries yet to appreciate their wisdom, and it is this very inability on
the part of their own descendants to appreciate the full scope of this
wonderful plan that is the one and only cause of the degeneration of India.
Ancient India had for centuries been the
battlefield for the ambitious projects of two of her foremost classes -- the
Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.
On the other hand, the priesthood stood
between the lawless social tyranny of the princes over the masses, whom the
Kshatriyas declared to be their legal food. On the other hand, the Kshatriya
power was the one potent force which struggled with any success against the
spiritual tyranny of the priesthood and the ever - increasing chain of
ceremonials which they were forging to bind down the people with.
The tug of
war began in the earliest periods of the history of our race, and throughout
the Shrutis it can be distinctly traced. A momentary lull came when Shri
Krishna, leading the faction of Kshatriya power and of Jnana, showed the way to
reconciliation. The result was the teachings of the Gita -- the essence of
philosophy, of liberality, of religion. Yet the causes were there, and the
effect must follow.
The ambition of these two classes to be the
masters of the poor and ignorant was there, and the strife once more became
fierce. The meagre literature that has come down to us from that period brings
to us but faint echoes of that mighty past strife, but at last it broke out as
a victory for the Kshatriyas, a victory for Jnana, for liberty -- and
ceremonial had to go down, much of it for ever. This upheaval was what is known
as the Buddhistic reformation. On the religious side, it represented freedom
from ceremonial; on the political side, overthrow of the priesthood by the
Kshatriyas.
It is a
significant fact that the two greatest men ancient India produced, were both
Kshatriyas -- Krishna and Buddha -- and still more significant is the fact that
both of these God - men threw open the door of knowledge to everyone,
irrespective of birth or sex.
In spite of its wonderful moral strength,
Buddhism was extremely iconoclastic; and much of its force being spent in
merely negative attempts, it had to die out in the land of its birth, and what
remained of it became full of superstitions and ceremonials, a hundred times
cruder than those it was intended to suppress. Although it partially succeeded
in putting down the animal sacrifices of the Vedas, it filled the land with
temples, images, symbols, and bones of saints.
Above all, in the medley of Aryans, Mongols,
and aborigines which it created, it unconsciously led the way to some of the
hideous Vamacharas. This was especially the reason why this travesty of the
teaching of the great Master had to be driven out of India by Shri Shankara and
his band of Sannyasins.
Thus even the current of life, set in motion
by the greatest soul that ever wore a human form, the Bhagavan Buddha himself,
became a miasmic pool, and India had to wait for centuries until Shankara
arose, followed in quick succession by Ramanuja and Madhva.
By this time, an entirely new chapter had
opened in the history of India. The ancient Kshatriyas and the Brahmins had
disappeared. The land between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, the home of the
Aryas, the land which gave birth to Krishna and Buddha, the cradle of great
Rajarshis and Brahmarshis, became silent, and from the very farther end of the
Indian Peninsula, from races alien in speech and form, from families claiming
descent from the ancient Brahmins, came the reaction against the corrupted
Buddhism.
What had become of the Brahmins and Kshatriyas
of Aryavarta? They had entirely disappeared, except here and there a few
mongrel clans claiming to be Brahmins and Kshatriyas, and in spite of their
inflated, self - laudatory assertions that the whole world ought to learn from
[Sanskrit], they had to sit in sackcloth and ashes, in all humility, to learn
at the feet of the Southerners. The result was the bringing back of the Vedas
to India -- a revival of Vedanta, such as India never before had seen; even the
householders began to study the Aranyakas.
In the Buddhistic movement, the Kshatriyas
were the real leaders, and whole masses of them become Buddhists. In the zeal
of reform and conversion, the popular dialects had been almost exclusively
cultivated to the neglect of Sanskrit, and the larger portion of Kshatriyas had
become disjointed from the Vedic literature and Sanskrit learning. Thus this
wave of reform, which came from the South, benefited to a certain extent the
priesthood, and the priests only. For the rest of India's millions, it forged
more chains than they had ever known before.
The Kshatriyas had always been the backbone of
India, so also they had been the supporters of science and liberty, and their
voices had rung out again and again to clear the land from superstitions; and
throughout the history of India they ever formed the invulnerable barrier to
aggressive priestly tyranny.
When the greater part of their number sank
into ignorance, and another portion mixed their blood with savages from Central
Asia and lent their swords to establish the rules of priests in India, her cup
became full to the brim, and down sank the land of Bharata, not to rise again,
until the Kshatriya rouses himself, and making himself free, strikes the chains
from the feet of the rest. Priestcraft is the bane of India. Can man degrade
his brother, and himself escape degradation?
Know, Rajaji, the greatest of all truths,
discovered by your ancestors, is that the universe is one. Can one injure
anyone without injuring himself? The mass of Brahmin and Kshatriya tyranny has recoiled
upon their own heads with compound interest; and a thousand years of slavery
and degradation is what the inexorable law of Karma is visiting upon them.
This is what one of your ancestors said: "Even
in this life, they have conquered relativity whose mind is fixed in
sameness"-- one who is believed to be God incarnate. We all believe it.
Are his words then vain and without meaning? If not, and we know they are not,
any attempt against this perfect equality of all creation, irrespective of birth,
sex, or even qualification, is a terrible mistake, and no one can be saved
until he has attained to this idea of sameness.
Follow, therefore, noble Prince, the teachings
of the Vedanta, not as explained by this or that commentator, but as the Lord
within you understands them. Above all, follow this great doctrine of sameness
in all things, through all beings, seeing the same God in all.
This is the way to freedom; inequality, the
way to bondage. No man and no nation can attempt to gain physical freedom
without physical equality, nor mental freedom without mental equality.
Ignorance, inequality, and desire are the
three causes of human misery, and each follows the other in inevitable union.
Why should a man think himself above any other man, or even an animal? It is
the same throughout:
[Sanskrit]
--"Thou art the man, Thou the woman, Thou
art the young man, Thou the young woman."
Many will say, "That is all right for the
Sannyasins, but we are householders." No doubt, a householder having many
other duties to perform, cannot as fully attain to this sameness; yet this
should be also their ideal, for it is the ideal of all societies, of all
mankind, all animals, and all nature, to attain to this sameness. But alas!
they think inequality is the way to attain equality, as if they could come to
right by doing wrong!
This is the bane of human nature, the curse upon
mankind, the root of all misery -- this inequality. This is the source of all
bondage, physical, mental, and spiritual.
[Sanskrit]--"Since seeing the Lord
equally existent everywhere, he injures not Self by self, and so goes to the
Highest Goal" (Gita, XIII. 28). This one saying contains, in a few words,
the universal way to salvation.
You, Rajputs, have been the glories of ancient
India. With your degradation came national decay, and India can only be raised
if the descendants of the Kshatriyas co - operate with the descendants of the
Brahmins, not to share the spoils of pelf and power, but to help the weak, to
enlighten the ignorant, and to restore the lost glory of the holy land of their
forefathers.
And who can say but that the time is
propitious? Once more the wheel is turning up, once more vibrations have been
set in motion from India, which are destined at no distant day to reach the
farthest limits of the earth. One voice has spoken, whose echoes are rolling on
and gathering strength every day, a voice even mightier than those which have
preceded it, for it is the summation for them all. Once more the voice that
spoke to the sages on the banks of the Sarasvati, the voice whose echoes
reverberated from peak to peak of the "Father of Mountains", and
descended upon the plains through Krishna, Buddha, and Chaitanya in all -
carrying floods, has spoken again. Once more the doors have opened. Enter ye
into the realms of light, the gates have been opened wide once more.
And you, my beloved Prince -- you the scion of
a race who are the living pillars upon which rests the religion eternal, its
sworn defenders and helpers, the descendants of Rama and Krishna, will you
remain outside? I know, this cannot be. Yours, I am sure, will be the first
hand that will be stretched forth to help religion once more. And when I think
of you, Raja Ajit Singh, one in whom the well - known scientific attainments of
your house have been joined to a purity of character of which a saint ought to
be proud, to an unbounded love for humanity, I cannot help believing in the
glorious renaissance of the religion eternal, when such hands are willing to
rebuild it again.
May the blessings of Ramakrishna be on you and
yours for ever and ever, and that you may live long for the good of many, and
for the spread of truth is the constant prayer of --
Vivekananda.
Saturday, 7 March 2015
WOMEN OF INDIA - Swami Vivekananda.
CWCD – 8/54
WOMEN OF
INDIA
Swami Vivekananda: "Oh, yes, those things
I would be very glad to tell you. So you want to know about Indian women
tonight, and not philosophy and other things?"
The
Lecture
I must begin by saying that you may have to
bear with me a good deal, because I belong to an
Then, again, there is caste. Each caste has
become, as it were, a separate racial element. If a man lives long enough in
India, he will be able to tell from the features what caste a man belongs to.
Then, between castes, the manners and customs are different. And all these
castes are exclusive; that is to say, they would meet socially, but they would
not eat or drink together, nor intermarry. In those things they remain
separate. They would meet and be friends to each other, but there it would end.
Although I have more opportunity than many
other men to know women in general, from my position and my occupation as a
preacher, continuously travelling from one place to another and coming in
contact with all grades of society --(and women, even in northern India, where
they do not appear before men, in many places would break this law for religion
and would come to hear us preach and talk to us)-- still it would be hazardous
on my part to assert that I know everything about the women of India.
So I will try to place before you the ideal.
In each nation, man or woman represents an ideal consciously or unconsciously
being worked out. The individual is the external expression of an ideal to be
embodied. The collection of such individuals is the nation, which also
represents a great ideal; towards that it is moving. And, therefore, it is
rightly assumed that to understand a nation you must first understand its
ideal, for each nation refuses to be judged by any other standard than its own.
All growth, progress, well - being, or
degradation is but relative. It refers to a certain standard, and each man to
be understood has to be referred to that standard of his perfection. You see
this more markedly in nations: what one nation thinks good might not be so
regarded by another nation. Cousin - marriage is quite permissible in this
country. Now, in India, it is illegal; not only so, it would be classed with
the most horrible incest. Widow - marriage is perfectly legitimate in this
country. Among the higher castes in India it would be the greatest degradation
for a woman to marry twice. So, you see, we work through such different ideas
that to judge one people by the other's standard would be neither just nor
practicable. Therefore we must know what the ideal is that a nation has raised
before itself. When speaking of different nations, we start with a general idea
that there is one code of ethics and the same kind of ideals for all races;
practically, however, when we come to judge of others, we think what is good
for us must be good for everybody; what we do is the right thing, what we do
not do, of course in others would be outrageous. I do not mean to say this as a
criticism, but just to bring the truth home. When I hear Western women denounce
the confining of the feet of Chinese ladies, they never seem to think of the
corsets which are doing far more injury to the race. This is just one example;
for you must know that cramping the feet does not do one - millionth part of
the injury to the human form that the corset has done and is doing -- when
every organ is displaced and the spine is curved like a serpent. When
measurements are taken, you can note the curvatures. I do not mean that as a
criticism but just to point out to you the situation, that as you stand aghast
at women of other races, thinking that you are supreme, the very reason that
they do not adopt your manners and customs shows that they also stand aghast at
you.
Therefore there is some misunderstanding on
both sides. There is a common platform, a common ground of understanding, a
common humanity, which must be the basis of our work. We ought to find out that
complete and perfect human nature which is working only in parts, here and
there. It has not been given to one man to have everything in perfection. You
have a part to play; I, in my humble way, another; here is one who plays a
little part; there, another. The perfection is the combination of all these
parts. Just as with individuals, so with races. Each race has a part to play;
each race has one side of human nature to develop. And we have to take all
these together; and, possibly in the distant future, some race will arise in
which all these marvelous individual race perfections, attained by the
different races, will come together and form a new race, the like of which the
world has not yet dreamed. Beyond saying that, I have no criticism to offer
about anybody. I have travelled not a little in my life; I have kept my eyes
open; and the more I go about the more my mouth is closed. I have no criticism
to offer.
Now, the ideal woman in India is the mother,
the mother first, and the mother last. The word woman calls up to the mind of the
Hindu, motherhood; and God is called Mother. As children, every day, when we
are boys, we have to go early in the morning with a little cup of water and
place it before the mother, and mother dips her toe into it and we drink it.
In the West, the woman is wife. The idea of
womanhood is concentrated there -- as the wife. To the ordinary man in India,
the whole force of womanhood is concentrated in motherhood. In the Western
home, the wife rules. In an Indian home, the mother rules. If a mother comes into
a Western home, she has to be subordinate to the wife; to the wife belongs the
home. A mother always lives in our homes: the wife must be subordinate to her.
See all the difference of ideas.
Now, I only suggest comparisons; I would state
facts so that we may compare the two sides. Make this comparison. If you ask,
"What is an Indian woman as wife?", the Indian asks, "Where is
the American woman as mother? What is she, the all - glorious, who gave me this
body? What is she who kept me in her body for nine months? Where is she who
would give me twenty times her life, if I had need? Where is she whose love
never dies, however wicked, however vile I am? Where is she, in comparison with
her, who goes to the divorce court the moment I treat her a little badly? O
American woman! where is she?" I will not find her in your country. I have
not found the son who thinks mother is first. When we die, even then, we do not
want our wives and our children to take her place. Our mother!-- we want to die
with our head on her lap once more, if we die before her. Where is she? Is
woman a name to be coupled with the physical body only? Ay! the Hindu mind
fears all those ideals which say that the flesh must cling unto the flesh. No,
no! Woman! thou shalt not be coupled with anything connected with the flesh.
The name has been called holy once and for ever, for what name is there which
no lust can ever approach, no carnality ever come near, than the one word
mother? That is the ideal in India.
I belong to an Order very much like what you
have in the Mendicant Friars of the Catholic Church; that is to say, we have to
go about without very much in the way of dress and beg from door to door, live
thereby, preach to people when they want it, sleep where we can get a place --
that way we have to follow. And the rule is that the members of this Order have
to call every woman "mother"; to every woman and little girl we have
to say "mother"; that is the custom. Coming to the West, that old
habit remained and I would say to ladies, "Yes, mother", and they are
horrified. I could not understand why they should be horrified. Later on, I
discovered the reason: because that would mean that they are old. The ideal of
womanhood in India is motherhood -- that marvellous, unselfish, all -
suffering, ever - forgiving mother. The wife walks behind -- the shadow. She
must imitate the life of the mother; that is her duty. But the mother is the
ideal of love; she rules the family, she possesses the family. It is the father
in India who thrashes the child and spanks when there is something done by the
child, and always the mother puts herself between the father and the child. You
see it is just the opposite here. It has become the mother's business to spank
the children in this country, and poor father comes in between. You see, ideals
are different. I do not mean this as any criticism. It is all good -- this what
you do; but our way is what we have been taught for ages. You never hear of a
mother cursing the child; she is forgiving, always forgiving. Instead of
"Our Father in Heaven", we say "Mother" all the time; that
idea and that word are ever associated in the Hindu mind with Infinite Love,
the mother's love being the nearest approach to God's love in this mortal world
of ours. "Mother, O Mother, be merciful; I am wicked! Many children have
been wicked, but there never was a wicked mother"-- so says the great
saint Ramprasad.
There she is -- the Hindu mother. The son's
wife comes in as her daughter; just as the mother's own daughter married and
went out, so her son married and brought in another daughter, and she has to
fall in line under the government of the queen of queens, of his mother. Even
I, who never married, belonging to an Order that never marries, would be
disgusted if my wife, supposing I had married, dared to displease my mother. I
would be disgusted. Why? Do I not worship my mother? Why should not her
daughter - in - law? Whom I worship, why not she? Who is she, then, that would
try to ride over my head and govern my mother? She has to wait till her
womanhood is fulfilled; and the one thing that fulfils womanhood, that is
womanliness in woman, is motherhood. Wait till she becomes a mother; then she
will have the same right. That, according to the Hindu mind, is the great
mission of woman -- to become a mother. But oh, how different! Oh, how
different! My father and mother fasted and prayed, for years and years, so that
I would be born. They pray for every child before it is born. Says our great
law - giver, Manu, giving the definition of an Aryan, "He is the Aryan,
who is born through prayer". Every child not born through prayer is
illegitimate, according to the great law - giver. The child must be prayed for.
Those children that come with curses, that slip into the world, just in a
moment of inadvertence, because that could not be prevented -- what can we
expect of such progeny? Mothers of America, think of that! Think in the heart
of your hearts, are you ready to be women? Not any question of race or country,
or that false sentiment of national pride. Who dares to be proud in this mortal
life of ours, in this world of woes and miseries? What are we before this
infinite force of God? But I ask you the question tonight: Do you all pray for
the children to come? Are you thankful to be mothers, or not? Do you think that
you are sanctified by motherhood, or not? Ask that of your minds. If you do
not, your marriage is a lie, your womanhood is false, your education is
superstition, and your children, if they come without prayer, will prove a
curse to humanity.
See the different ideals now coming before us.
From motherhood comes tremendous responsibility. There is the basis, start from
that. Well, why is mother to be worshipped so much? Because our books teach that
it is the pre - natal influence that gives the impetus to the child for good or
evil. Go to a hundred thousand colleges, read a million books, associate with
all the learned men of the world -- better off you are when born with the right
stamp. You are born for good or evil. The child is a born god or a born demon;
that is what the books say. Education and all these things come afterwards --
are a mere bagatelle. You are what you are born. Born unhealthful, how many
drug stores, swallowed wholesale, will keep you well all through your life? How
many people of good, healthy lives were born of weak parents, were born of
sickly, blood - poisoned parents? How many? None -- none. We come with a
tremendous impetus for good or evil: born demons or born gods. Education or
other things are a bagatelle.
Thus say our
books: direct the pre - natal influence. Why should mother be worshipped?
Because she made herself pure. She underwent harsh penances sometimes to keep
herself as pure as purity can be. For, mind you, no woman in India thinks of
giving up her body to any man; it is her own. The English, as a reform, have
introduced at present what they call "Restitution of conjugal
rights", but no Indian would take advantage of it. When a man comes in
physical contact with his wife, the circumstances she controls through what
prayers and through what vows! For that which brings forth the child is the
holiest symbol of God himself. It is the greatest prayer between man and wife,
the prayer that is going to bring into the world another soul fraught with a
tremendous power for good or for evil. Is it a joke? Is it a simple nervous
satisfaction? Is it a brute enjoyment of the body? Says the Hindu: no, a
thousand times, no!
But then, following that, there comes in
another idea. The idea we started with was that the ideal is the love for the
mother -- herself all - suffering, all - forbearing. The worship that is
accorded to the mother has its fountain - head there. She was a saint to bring
me into the world; she kept her body pure, her mind pure, her food pure, her
clothes pure, her imagination pure, for years, because I would be born. Because
she did that, she deserves worship. And what follows? Linked with motherhood is
wifehood.
You Western people are individualistic. I want
to do this thing because I like it; I will elbow every one. Why? Because I like
to. I want my own satisfaction, so I marry this woman. Why? Because I like her.
This woman marries me. Why? Because she likes me. There it ends. She and I are
the only two persons in the whole, infinite world; and I marry her and she
marries me -- nobody else is injured, nobody else responsible.
Your Johns and your Janes may go
into the forest and there they may live their lives; but when they have to live
in society, their marriage means a tremendous amount of good or evil to us.
Their children may be veritable demons -- burning, murdering, robbing,
stealing, drinking, hideous, vile.
So what is the basis of the Indian's social
order? It is the caste law. I am born for the caste, I live for the caste. I do
not mean myself, because, having joined an Order, we are outside. I mean those
that live in civil society. Born in the caste, the whole life must be lived
according to caste regulation. In other words, in the present - day language of
your country, the Western man is born individualistic, while the Hindu is
socialistic -- entirely socialistic. Now, then, the books say: if I allow you
freedom to go about and marry any woman you like, and the woman to marry any
man she likes, what happens? You fall in love; the father of the woman was,
perchance, a lunatic or a consumptive. The girl falls in love with the face of
a man whose father was a roaring drunkard. What says the law then? The law lays
down that all these marriages would be illegal. The children of drunkards,
consumptives, lunatics, etc., shall not be married. The deformed, humpbacked,
crazy, idiotic -- no marriage for them, absolutely none, says the law.
But the Mohammedan comes from Arabia, and he
has his own Arabian law; so the Arabian desert law has been forced upon us. The
Englishman comes with his law; he forces it upon us, so far as he can. We are
conquered. He says, "Tomorrow I will marry your sister". What can we
do? Our law says, those that are born of the same family, though a hundred
degrees distant, must not marry, that is illegitimate, it would deteriorate or
make the race sterile. That must not be, and there it stops. So I have no voice
in my marriage, nor my sister. It is the caste that determines all that.
We are married
sometimes when children. Why? Because the caste says: if they have to be
married anyway without their consent, it is better that they are married very
early, before they have developed this love: if they are allowed to grow up
apart, the boy may like some other girl, and the girl some other boy, and then
something evil will happen; and so, says the caste, stop it there. I do not
care whether my sister is deformed, or good - looking, or bad - looking: she is
my sister, and that is enough; he is my brother, and that is all I need to
know. So they will love each other. You may say, "Oh! they lose a great deal
of enjoyment -- those exquisite emotions of a man falling in love with a woman
and a woman falling in love with a man. This is a sort of tame thing, loving
each other like brothers and sisters, as though they have to." So be it;
but the Hindu says, "We are socialistic.
For the sake of one man's or woman's exquisite pleasure we do not want
to load misery on hundreds of others."
There they are -- married. The wife comes home
with her husband; that is called the second marriage. Marriage at an early age
is considered the first marriage, and they grow up separately with women and
with their parents. When they are grown, there is a second ceremony performed,
called a second marriage. And then they live together, but under the same roof
with his mother and father. When she becomes a mother, she takes her place in
turn as queen of the family group.
Now comes another peculiar Indian institution.
I have just told you that in the first two or three castes the widows are not
allowed to marry. They cannot, even if they would. Of course, it is a hardship
on many. There is no denying that not all the widows like it very much, because
non - marrying entails upon them the life of a student. That is to say, a
student must not eat meat or fish, nor drink wine, nor dress except in white
clothes, and so on; there are many regulations. We are a nation of monks --
always making penance, and we like it. Now, you see, a woman never drinks wine
or eats meat. It was a hardship on us when we were students, but not on the
girls. Our women would feel degraded at the idea of eating meat. Men eat meat
sometimes in some castes; women never. Still, not being allowed to marry must
be a hardship to many; I am sure of that.
But we must go back to the idea; they are
intensely socialistic. In the higher castes of every country you will find the
statistics show that the number of women is always much larger than the number
of men. Why? Because in the higher castes, for generation after generation, the
women lead an easy life. They "neither toil nor spin, yet Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed like one of them". And the poor boys, they die
like flies. The girl has a cat's nine lives, they say in India. You will read
in the statistics that they outnumber the boys in a very short time, except now
when they are taking to work quite as hard as the boys. The number of girls in
the higher castes is much larger than in the lower. Conditions are quite
opposite in the lower castes. There they all work hard; women a little harder,
sometimes, because they have to do the domestic work. But, mind you, I never
would have thought of that, but one of your American travellers, Mark Twain,
writes this about India: "In spite of all that Western critics have said
of Hindu customs, I never saw a woman harnessed to a plough with a cow or to a
cart with a dog, as is done in some European countries. I saw no woman or girl
at work in the fields in India. On both sides and ahead (of the railway train)
brown - bodied naked men and boys are ploughing in the fields. But not a woman.
In these two hours I have not seen a woman or a girl working in the fields. In
India, even the lowest caste never does any hard work. They generally have an
easy lot compared to the same class in other nations; and as to ploughing, they
never do it."
Now, there you are. Among the lower classes
the number of men is larger than the number of women; and what would you
naturally expect? A woman gets more chances of marriage, the number of men
being larger.
Relative to such questions as to widows not
marrying: among the first two castes, the number of women is disproportionately
large, and here is a dilemma. Either you have a non - marriageable widow
problem and misery, or the non - husband - getting young lady problem. To face
the widow problem, or the old maid problem? There you are; either of the two.
Now, go back again to the idea that the Indian mind is socialistic. It says,
"Now look here! we take the widow problem as the lesser one." Why? "Because
they have had their chance; they have been married. If they have lost their
chance, at any rate they have had one. Sit down, be quiet, and consider these
poor girls -- they have not had one chance of marriage." Lord bless you! I
remember once in Oxford Street, it was after ten o'clock, and all those ladies
coming there, hundreds and thousands of them shopping; and some man, an
American, looks around, and he says, "My Lord! how many of them will ever
get husbands, I wonder!" So the Indian mind said to the widows,
"Well, you have had your chance, and now we are very, very sorry that such
mishaps have come to you, but we cannot help it; others are waiting."
Then religion comes into the question; the
Hindu religion comes in as a comfort. For, mind you, our religion teaches that
marriage is something bad, it is only for the weak. The very spiritual man or
woman would not marry at all. So the religious woman says, "Well, the Lord
has given me a better chance. What is the use of marrying? Thank God, worship
God, what is the use of my loving man?" Of course, all of them cannot put
their mind on God. Some find it simply impossible. They have to suffer; but the
other poor people, they should not suffer for them. Now I leave this to your
judgment; but that is their idea in India.
Next we come to woman as daughter. The great
difficulty in the Indian household is the daughter. The daughter and caste
combined ruin the poor Hindu, because, you see, she must marry in the same
caste, and even inside the caste exactly in the same order; and so the poor man
sometimes has to make himself a beggar to get his daughter married. The father
of the boy demands a very high price for his son, and this poor man sometimes
has to sell everything just to get a husband for his daughter. The great
difficulty of the Hindu's life is the daughter. And, curiously enough, the word
daughter in Sanskrit is "duhita". The real derivation is that, in
ancient times, the daughter of the family was accustomed to milk the cows, and
so the word "duhita" comes from "duh", to milk; and the
word "daughter" really means a milkmaid. Later on, they found a new
meaning to that word "duhita", the milkmaid -- she who milks away all
the milk of the family. That is the second meaning.
These are the different relations held by our
Indian women. As I have told you, the mother is the greatest in position, the
wife is next, and the daughter comes after them. It is a most intricate and
complicated series of gradation. No foreigner can understand it, even if he
lives there for years. For instance, we have three forms of the personal
pronoun; they are a sort of verbs in our language. One is very respectful, one
is middling, and the lowest is just like thou
and thee . To children and servants the last is addressed. The middling
one is used with equals. You see, these are to be applied in all the intricate
relations of life. For example, to my elder sister I always throughout my life
use the pronoun apani, but she never does in speaking to me; she says tumi to me. She should not, even by mistake, say
apani to me, because that would mean a
curse. Love, the love toward those that are superior, should always be
expressed in that form of language. That is the custom. Similarly I would never
dare address my elder sister or elder brother, much less my mother or father,
as tu or tum or tumi. As to calling our mother and father
by name, why, we would never do that. Before I knew the customs of this
country, I received such a shock when the son, in a very refined family, got up
and called the mother by name! However, I got used to that. That is the custom
of the country. But with us, we never pronounce the name of our parents when
they are present. It is always in the third person plural, even before them.
Thus we see the most complicated mesh - work
in the social life of our men and our women and in our degree of relationship.
We do not speak to our wives before our elders; it is only when we are alone or
when inferiors are present. If I were married, I would speak to my wife before my
younger sister, my nephews or nieces; but not before my elder sister or
parents. I cannot talk to my sisters about their husbands at all. The idea is,
we are a monastic race. The whole social organisation has that one idea before
it. Marriage is thought of as something impure, something lower. Therefore the
subject of love would never be talked of. I cannot read a novel before my
sister, or my brothers, or my mother, or even before others. I close the book.
Then again, eating and drinking is all in the
same category. We do not eat before superiors. Our women never eat before men,
except they be the children or inferiors. The wife would die rather than, as
she says, "munch" before her husband. Sometimes, for instance,
brothers and sisters may eat together; and if I and my sister are eating, and
the husband comes to the door, my sister stops, and the poor husband flies out.
These are the customs peculiar to the country.
A few of these I note in different countries also. As I never married myself, I
am not perfect in all my knowledge about the wife. Mother, sisters -- i know
what they are; and other people's wives I saw; from that I gather what I have
told you.
As to education and culture, it all depends
upon the man. That is to say, where the men are highly cultured, there the
women are; where the men are not, women are not. Now, from the oldest times,
you know, the primary education, according to the old Hindu customs, belongs to
the village system. All the land from time immemorial was nationalised, as you
say -- belonged to the Government. There never is any private right in land.
The revenue in India comes from the land, because every man holds so much land
from the Government. This land is held in common by a community, it may be
five, ten, twenty, or a hundred families. They govern the whole of the land,
pay a certain amount of revenue to the Government, maintain a physician, a
village schoolmaster, and so on.
Those of you who have read Herbert Spencer
remember what he calls the "monastery system" of education that was
tried in Europe and which in some parts proved a success; that is, there is one
schoolmaster, whom the village keeps. These primary schools are very
rudimentary, because our methods are so simple. Each boy brings a little mat;
and his paper, to begin with, is palm leaves. Palm leaves first, paper is too
costly. Each boy spreads his little mat and sits upon it, brings out his
inkstand and his books and begins to write. A little arithmetic, some Sanskrit
grammar, a little of language and accounts -- these are taught in the primary
school.
A little book on
ethics, taught by an old man, we learnt by heart, and I remember one of the
lessons:
"For the good of a village, a man ought
to give up his family;
For the good of a country, he ought to give up
his village;
For the good of humanity, he may give up his
country;
For the good of the world, everything."
Such verses are there in the books. We get
them by heart, and they are explained by teacher and pupil. These things we
learn, both boys and girls together. Later on, the education differs. The old
Sanskrit universities are mainly composed of boys. The girls very rarely go up
to those universities; but there are a few exceptions.
In these modern days there is a greater
impetus towards higher education on the European lines, and the trend of
opinion is strong towards women getting this higher education. Of course, there
are some people in India who do not want it, but those who do want it carried
the day. It is a strange fact that Oxford and Cambridge are closed to women
today, so are Harvard and Yale; but Calcutta University opened its doors to
women more than twenty years ago. I remember that the year I graduated, several
girls came out and graduated -- the same standard, the same course, the same in
everything as the boys; and they did very well indeed. And our religion does
not prevent a woman being educated at all. In this way the girl should be
educated; even thus she should be trained; and in the old books we find that
the universities were equally resorted to by both girls and boys, but later the
education of the whole nation was neglected. What can you expect under foreign
rule? The foreign conqueror is not there to do good to us; he wants his money.
I studied hard for twelve years and became a graduate of Calcutta University;
now I can scarcely make $5.00 a month in my country. Would you believe it? It
is actually a fact. So these educational institutions of foreigners are simply
to get a lot of useful, practical slaves for a little money -- to turn out a
host of clerks, postmasters, telegraph operators, and so on. There it is.
As a result, education for both boys and girls
is neglected, entirely neglected. There are a great many things that should be
done in that land; but you must always remember, if you will kindly excuse me
and permit me to use one of your own proverbs, "What is sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander." Your foreign born ladies are always crying over
the hardships of the Hindu woman, and never care for the hardships of the Hindu
man. They are all weeping salt tears. But who are the little girls married to?
Some one, when told that they are all married to old men, asked, "And what
do the young men do? What! are all the girls married to old men, only to old
men?" We are born old -- perhaps all the men there.
The ideal of the Indian race is freedom of the
soul. This world is nothing. It is a vision, a dream. This life is one of many
millions like it. The whole of this nature is Maya, is phantasm, a pest house
of phantasms. That is the philosophy. Babies smile at life and think it so
beautiful and good, but in a few years they will have to revert to where they
began. They began life crying, and they will leave it crying. Nations in the
vigour of their youth think that they can do anything and everything: "We
are the gods of the earth. We are the chosen people." They think that God
Almighty has given them a charter to rule over all the world, to advance His
plans, to do anything they like, to turn the world upside down. They have a
charter to rob, murder, kill; God has given them this, and they do that because
they are only babes. So empire after empire has arisen -- glorious, resplendent
-- now vanished away -- gone, nobody knows where; it may have been stupendous
in its ruin.
As a drop of water upon a lotus leaf tumbles
about and falls in a moment, even so is this mortal life. Everywhere we turn
are ruins. Where the forest stands today was once the mighty empire with huge
cities. That is the dominant idea, the tone, the colour of the Indian mind. We
know, you Western people have the youthful blood coursing through your veins.
We know that nations, like men, have their day. Where is Greece? Where is Rome?
Where that mighty Spaniard of the other day? Who knows through it all what
becomes of India? Thus they are born, and thus they die; they rise and fall.
The Hindu as a child knows of the Mogul invader whose cohorts no power on earth
could stop, who has left in your language the terrible word "Tartar".
The Hindu has learnt his lesson. He does not want to prattle, like the babes of
today. Western people, say what you have to say. This is your day. Onward, go
on, babes; have your prattle out. This is the day of the babies, to prattle. We
have learnt our lesson and are quiet. You have a little wealth today, and you look
down upon us. Well, this is your day. Prattle, babes, prattle -- this is the
Hindu's attitude.
The Lord of Lords is not to be attained by
much frothy speech. The Lord of Lords is not to be attained even by the powers
of the intellect. He is not gained by much power of conquest. That man who
knows the secret source of things and that everything else is evanescent, unto
him He, the Lord, comes; unto none else. India has learnt her lesson through
ages and ages of experience. She has turned her face towards Him. She has made
many mistakes; loads and loads of rubbish are heaped upon the race. Never mind;
what of that? What is the clearing of rubbish, the cleaning of cities, and all
that? Does that give life? Those that have fine institutions, they die. And what
of institutions, those tinplate Western institutions, made in five days and
broken on the sixth? One of these little handful nations cannot keep alive for
two centuries together. And our institutions have stood the test of ages. Says
the Hindu, "Yes, we have buried all the old nations of the earth and stand
here to bury all the new races also, because our ideal is not this world, but
the other. Just as your ideal is, so shall you be. If your ideal is mortal, if
your ideal is of this earth, so shalt thou be. If your ideal is matter, matter
shalt thou be. Behold! Our ideal is the Spirit. That alone exists, nothing else
exists; and like Him, we live for ever."
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