Indian Nationalism & Sanatan Dharma : Views of the Great Thinkers

“Nationalism is not politics but a religion, a creed, a faith ..... I say that it is the Sanatana Dharma, which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatana Dharma, with it moves and with it grows. When the Sanatana Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatana Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatana Dharma it would perish. The Sanatana Dharma, that is nationalism.”
-- Sri Aurobindo
(‘Uttarpara Speech’, The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, vol. viii, p. 12).

"After a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world, I find none so perfect, none so scientific, none so philosophic, and none so spiritual as the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. The more you know it, the more you will love it; the more you try to understand it, the more deeply you will value it. Make no mistake; without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil into which India's roots are struck, and torn of that she will inevitably wither, as a tree torn out from its place. Many are the religions and many are the races flourishing in India, but none of them stretches back into the far dawn of her past, nor are they necessary for her endurance as a nation. Everyone might pass away as they came and India would still remain. But let Hinduism vanish and what is she? A geographical expression of the past, a dim memory of a perished glory, her literature, her art, her monuments, all have Hindudom written across them. And if Hindus do not maintain Hinduism, who shall save it? If India's own children do not cling to her faith, who shall guard it? India alone can save India, and India and Hinduism are one."
--Annie Besant

“Unless the country is protected, the Hindu Dharma cannot be protected, and unless the Hindu Dharma is protected, the country cannot be protected. ....also, protect the Dharmi to protect Dharma, and remember: ‘Hindu Vote is Sacred: Never Barter it Away’ -- This should be our refrain/campaign all over India, at this critical juncture. We should demand follow-up action on the Historic ‘Tirupati Declaration’ (July 15, 2006), the three cardinal Articles of which are: 1) 'We Hindus assembled here, in Tirupati, declare that we do not support, directly or indirectly, any group, institution, religion, media, or political force, which preaches, practices or works against Hindu Dharma in this country'; 2) 'We appeal to all the Hindus in this country and elsewhere to subscribe to and support this declaration, the Tirupati Declaration'; 3) 'We want all the Hindu religious endowments to be managed by Hindu bodies, and not by the government. We want the secular government to release all religious endowments from its hold.' "
-- Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Vivekananda, Gandhiji and their concept of service-oriented Hinduism

By Jagmohan

On Swami ‘Vivekananda's’ birthday, January 12, it may be both interesting and instructive to recall how he and Mahatama Gandhi viewed Hinduism as a service-oriented cultural force and how virtual abandonment of their views by the Indian State and society have cost the country dearly.

Both Vivekananda and Gandhiji had an original and powerful mind and also an innate faith in the inherent strength of Indian culture. Both believed in practical Vedanta and considered Hinduism as nothing but spiritual secularism based upon the highest principles of ethics and morality. Both argued that a great social and moral order could be built on the shoulders of great individuals alone. “If there is no purity, fairness and justice in your heart, these qualities will not be in your home; if they are not in your home, they will not be in your society; and if they are not in your society, they will not be in your State.”

Both Vivekananda and Gandhiji, in essence, presented a new design for life, a model of contentment, compassion, balance and harmony. They wanted to create an Indian nation that could teach the world, as Will Durant believed “tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things”.

In order to elaborate Vivekananda and Gandhiji’s belief that Hinduism was a positive and elevating force, it would be best to let them speak for themselves. S Radhakrishnan, in connection with his study of religion, posed three questions to Gandhiji. These questions were: “What is your religion? How are you led to it? What is its bearing on social life?”

Gandhiji replied to the first question thus: “My religion is Hinduism which, for me, is the religion of humanity and includes the best of all religions known to me.”

In response to the second question, Gandhiji said: “I take it that the present tense in this question has been purposely used, instead of the past. I am led to my religion through truth and non-violence. I often describe my religion as religion of truth. Of late, instead of saying God is Truth, I have been saying, Truth is God…Denial of Truth we have not known…We are all sparks of Truth. The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as yet unknown Truth, which is God. I am daily led nearer to it by constant prayer”.

To the third question, Gandhiji replied: “The bearing of this religion on social life is, or has to be, seen in one’s daily social contact. To get true to such religion, one has to lose oneself in continuous and continuing service of all in life. Realisation of Truth is impossible without a complete merging of oneself in and identification with this limitless ocean of life. Therefore, for me there is no happiness on earth beyond or apart from it. Social service here must be taken to include every department of life. In this scheme, there is nothing low, nothing high. For all is one, though we seem to be many.”

Gandhiji went on to elaborate: “The deeper I study Hinduism, the stronger becomes the belief in me that Hinduism is as broad as the universe… Something within me tells me that, for all the deep veneration I show to several religions, I am all the more a Hindu, nonetheless for it.”

Gandhiji also made it clear: “My devotion to Truth has drawn me to politics… Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”

For Vivekananda, too, religion in India was a pivotal force. He said: “Each nation, like each individual has one theme in life, which is at its centre. If any nation attempts to throw off its national vitality, that nation dies. In India, religious life forms the centre.”

The first observation which Vivekananda made on December 25, 1892 after meditating deeply on the Kanyakumari rock for three days was: “Religion is the blood of the nation’s body; the impurities of the blood are responsible for all our great maladies, and the nation can rise again if this blood is purified.”

Vivekananda’s message is simple. Jiva is Shiva—in the service of man lies the service of God. One must not forget that if one serves the sick, the poor or any other person in distress, one would be following ‘practical Vedanta’ and offering prayers to God in the highest form.

Vivekananda gave pre-eminent place to the idea of serving “the outcast Narayanas, the starving Narayanas and the oppressed Narayanas”. He posed the question to his own class: “What have we done, we the so-called men of God, the sanyasis? What have we done for the masses?” He bewailed: “India’s doom was sealed the very day it coined the word melechha”. He also criticised the common folk for being fatalist. He urged them to have faith in themselves. “The old religion said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself…It is the coward and the fool who says this is his fate. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate.”

Tragically, apart from paying lip-service, the post-1947 India has all but forgotten what Vivekananda and Gandhiji stood for. Consequently, today the Indian State is a soulless entity and the society is riddled with superstitions and caste and communal prejudices. The rich have become excessively rich and the poor have largely resigned themselves to what they call is their fate. The spiritual vacuum has rendered almost all the organs of governance weak, wayward, casual and even callous and corrupt. The country is facing a huge moral deficit. The conditions have deteriorated to such an extent that there is one molestation case every 15 minutes, one rape case every 29 minutes, one dowry death every 77 minutes and one case of sexual harassment every 53 minutes. Is it not time that the nation should attend to what Vivekananda and Gandhiji had preached and practiced and rebuild itself on the basis of ethics, morality and spiritual secularism which they embodied? If we continue with the business as usual, whatever little remains of Indian culture and civilisation would be extinct, sooner rather than later.

(The writer is a former governor of Jammu and Kashmir and former Union Minister)

Swami Vivekananda--The patriotic saint

By Rajesh Pathak

The time when the nation had fallen into yet another shackle of slavery under the British yoke, there prevailed among the people the utter moral and intellectual confusions. Where, on one side, there were badly mushrooming mutually conflicting religious sects and sub-sects rabidly hell bent in deluding the people with their respective exclusivist theology and obscurantist rituals; on the other, utterly mesmerised with western mode of life, there grew a breed of so-called social-reformers and intelligentsia engaged in their ‘missions’ with their self-denigrating and fantastic notion of rejecting outrightly everything dharma and, ipso facto, recasting the society and everything indigenous in the western moulds. In such a crucial hour Swami Vivekananda was the one to rise on the national horizon to not only guide the people out of this confusion, but also reveal to them what true dharma and its indispensability in the national life is.

After having attained super-conscious revelation, living in the virtues of divine proximity of his master—Ramakrishna Paramhansa, he chose the Vedantic ideals to dispel the myriads of false notions then held on the national and international level regarding India and dharma. Bringing the vivid illustration of dharma to light, he made the people aware of the fact that the dharma basically comprised of Karmakanda and Gyan-kanda. Karmakanda, he told, consists in Smritis and Puranas, which deals mainly with the manners, customs, practices and all forms of worships. These are codified to fulfill the needs of the circumstances prevailing in the particular course of period, hence subjected to modification from time to time. Whereas, Gyankanda is the spiritual portion of dharma comprising the Upanishads, which is also called Vedanta. This expounds all the subtle questions of cycle of life and death and everything universe comprised of. Immutable, this holds good even to this day, for it is based on the eternal truth.

Then, coming to the problems which India was facing those days, he told that what was being practised then in the name of dharma was nothing but an aberration made inroad to it (dharma), which could be well understood in the light of Vedanta. All the customs and practices i.e. Karmakanda is required to be the expression of Vedanta ideals, and, hence, any of them contradicting them (Vedanta ideals) must be rejected. Highlighting in this context the instance of untouchability prevailed then, he exhorted that it was in sheer contravention to what is essentially preached in Gita—a commentary on Vedanta. For, Shri Krishana says in it, “One who sees everyone in himself and himself in everyone, thus, seeing the same God living in all is the sage. And, therefore, the discrimination on the basis of caste is altogether unethical, against the very spirit of dharma.”

As for integrating the different sects, belonging to the cult of dualism, monism, qualified monism and such other, who were then badly indulged in bitter feud to gain supremacy over each other, Vivekananda drew their attention to the doctrines common to them. And, those doctrines, as revealed to them by Vivekananda, are—Doctrine of reincarnation; perfection is in atma (soul); the body consists of, apart from the material body of panchtatva, the mind, the intellect and, atma; infallibility of Vedas; the God is all creating, preserving and destroying power; and also, that the religion means nothing short of divine realisation or anubhuti. So also, it was his firm belief that India with its varied languages, customs and social identities could remain united but only in the virtues of dharma. For, underlying all such diversities, it is only dharma that is common to the various groups.

He, though, unequivocally emphasised for emulating spiritualism, yet he was strongly opposed to the escapist attitude viz. pseudo renunciation, more common a phenomena then. To him moksha (renunciation) means not to turn coward or stagnated to inaction. But, all the more, it is through the action only does one attain the moksha, as is pointed out by Shri Krishna in Gita.

In order to extend globally the pious mission of his elevating the nation and Hindu dharma, he toured a number of countries, representing India in various dharmasabhas (religious assemblies) held on international forums. Availing these occasions, he, through his captivating oratory power and impregnable arguments, debunked all the fallacies and contemptuous views then held by the westerners regarding everything Indian. It was the time when so as to serve their imperialistic motives the colonial-missionary nexus were abjectly indulged in coining and, thus, foisting upon the Indians the host of perverse theories and so-called findings concerning their origin, history and culture etc. In the face of one such theory—the infamous ‘Aryan invasion theory’, Swamiji put forth so many excerpts from the Vedas and other scriptures and disproved its validity. He argued that if there is any truth in it then why not even a single instance comes in its support in the Vedas which have been proved to be the most ancient and authentic source of knowledge.