THE
FUTURE OF INDIA
This
is the ancient land where wisdom made its home before it went into any
other country, the same India whose influx of spirituality is represented,
as it were, on the material plane, by rolling rivers like oceans, where
the eternal Himalayas, rising tier above tier with their snowcaps, look as
it were into the very mysteries of heaven. Here is the same India whose
soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived.
Here first sprang up inquiries into the nature of man and into the
internal world. Here first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the
soul, the existence of a supervising God, an immanent God in nature and in
man, and here the highest ideals of religion and philosophy have attained
their culminating points. This is the land from whence, like the tidal
waves, spirituality and philosophy have again and again rushed out and
deluged the world, and this is the land from whence once more such tides
must proceed in order to bring life and vigour into the decaying races of
mankind. It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries,
of hundreds of foreign invasions of hundreds of upheavals of manners and
customs. It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the
world, with its undying vigour, indestructible life. Its life is of the
same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end, immortal; and
we are the children of such a country.
Children of India, I
am here to speak to you today about some practical things, and my object
in reminding you about the glories of the past is simply this. Many times
have I been told that looking into the past only degenerates and leads to
nothing, and that we should look to the future. That is true. But out of
the past is built
the
future. Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal
fountains that are behind, and after that, look forward, march forward and
make India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was. Our ancestors
were great. We must first recall that. We must learn the elements of our
being, the blood that courses in our veins; we must have faith in that
blood and what it did in the past; and out of that faith and consciousness
of past greatness, we must build an India yet greater than what she has
been. There have been periods of decay and degradation. I do not attach
much importance to them; we all know that. Such periods have been
necessary. A mighty tree produces a beautiful ripe fruit. That fruit falls
on the ground, it decays and rots, and out of that decay springs the root
and the future tree, perhaps mightier than the first one. This period of
decay through which we have passed was all the more necessary. Out of this
decay is coming the India of the future; it is sprouting, its first leaves
are already out; and a mighty, gigantic tree, the Urdhvamula, is here,
already beginning to appear; and it is about that that I am going to speak
to you.
The problems in
India are more complicated, more momentous, than the problems in any other
country. Race, religion, language, government — all these together make
a nation The elements which compose the nations of the world are indeed
very few, taking race after race, compared to this country. Here have been
the Aryan, the Dravidian, the Tartar, the Turk, the Mogul, the European
— all the nations of the world, as it were, pouring their blood into
this land. Of languages the most wonderful conglomeration is here; of
manners and customs there is more difference between two Indian races than
between the European and the Eastern races.
The one common
ground that we have is our sacred tradition, our religion. That is the
only common ground, and upon that we shall have to build. In Europe,
political
ideas
form the national unity. In Asia, religious ideals form the national
unity. The unity in religion, therefore, is absolutely necessary as the
first condition of the future of India. There must be the recognition of
one religion throughout the length and breadth of this land. What do I
mean by one religion? Not in the sense of one religion as held among the
Christians, or the Mohammedans, of the Buddhists. We know that our
religion has certain common grounds, common to all our sects, however
varying their conclusions may be, however different their claims may be.
So there are certain common grounds; and within their limitation this
religion of ours admits of a marvellous variation, an infinite amount of
liberty to think and live our own lives. We all know that, at least those
of us who have thought; and what we want is to bring out these lifegiving
common principles of our religion, and let every man, woman, and child,
throughout the length and breadth of this country, understand them, know
them, and try to bring them out in their lives. This is the first step;
and, therefore, it has to be taken.
We see how in Asia,
and especially in India, race difficulties, linguistic difficulties,
social difficulties, national difficulties, all melt away before this
unifying power of religion. We know that to the Indian mind there is
nothing higher than religious ideals, that this is the keynote of Indian
life, and we can only work in the line of least resistance. It is not only
true that the ideal of religion is the highest ideal; in the case of India
it is the only possible means of work; work in any other line, without
first strengthening this, would be disastrous. Therefore the first plank
in the making of a future India, the first step that is to be hewn out of
that rock of ages, is this unification of religion. All of us have to be
taught that we Hindus — dualists, qualified monists, or monists, Shaivas,
Vaishnavas, or Pâshupatas — to whatever denomination we may belong,
have certain common ideas
behind
us, and that the time has come when for the well-being of ourselves, for
the well-being of our race, we must give up all our little quarrels and
differences. Be sure, these quarrels are entirely wrong; they are
condemned by our scriptures, forbidden by our forefathers; and those great
men from whom we claim our descent, whose blood is in our veins, look down
with contempt on their children quarrelling about minute differences.
With the giving up
of quarrels all other improvements will come. When the life-blood is
strong and pure, no disease germ can live in that body. Our life-blood is
spirituality. If it flows clear, if it flows strong and pure and vigorous,
everything is right; political, social, any other material defects, even
the poverty of the land, will all be cured if that blood is pure. For if
the disease germ be thrown out, nothing will be able to enter into the
blood. To take a simile from modern medicine, we know that there must be
two causes to produce a disease, some poison germ outside, and the state
of the body. Until the body is in a state to admit the germs, until the
body is degraded to a lower vitality so that the germs may enter and
thrive and multiply, there is no power in any germ in the world to produce
a disease in the body. In fact, millions of germs are continually passing
through everyone's body; but so long as it is vigorous, it never is
conscious of them. It is only when the body is weak that these germs take
possession of it and produce disease. Just so with the national life. It
is when the national body is weak that all sorts of disease germs, in the
political state of the race or in its social state, in its educational or
intellectual state, crowd into the system and produce disease. To remedy
it, therefore, we must go to the root of this disease and cleanse the
blood of all impurities. The one tendency will be to strengthen the man,
to make the blood pure, the body vigorous, so that it will be able to
resist and throw off all external poisons.
We have seen that
our vigour, our strength, nay, our national life is in our religion. I am
not going to discuss now whether it is right or not, whether it is correct
or not, whether it is beneficial or not in the long run, to have this
vitality in religion, but for good or evil it is there; you cannot get out
of it, you have it now and for ever, and you have to stand by it, even if
you have not the same faith that I have in our religion. You are bound by
it, and if you give it up, you are smashed to pieces. That is the life of
our race and that must be strengthened. You have withstood the shocks of
centuries simply because you took great care of it, you sacrificed
everything else for it. Your forefathers underwent everything boldly, even
death itself, but preserved their religion. Temple alter temple was broken
down by the foreign conqueror, but no sooner had the wave passed than the
spire of the temple rose up again. Some of these old temples of Southern
India and those like Somnâth of Gujarat will teach you volumes of wisdom,
will give you a keener insight into the history of the race than any
amount of books. Mark how these temples bear the marks of a hundred
attacks and a hundred regenerations, continually destroyed and continually
springing up out of the ruins, rejuvenated and strong as ever! That is the
national mind, that is the national life-current. Follow it and it leads
to glory. Give it up and you die; death will be the only result,
annihilation the only effect, the moment you step beyond that
life-current. I do not mean to say that other things are not necessary. I
do not mean to say that political or social improvements are not
necessary, but what I mean is this, and I want you to bear it in mind,
that they are secondary here and that religion is primary. The Indian mind
is first religious, then anything else. So this is to be strengthened, and
how to do it? I will lay before you my ideas. They have been in my mind
for a long time, even years before I left the shores of
Madras
for America, and that I went to America and England was simply for
propagating those ideas. I did not care at all for the Parliament of
Religions or anything else; it was simply an opportunity; for it was
really those ideas of mine that took me all over the world.
My idea is first of
all to bring out the gems of spirituality that are stored up in our books
and in the possession of a few only, hidden, as it were, in monasteries
and in forests — to bring them out; to bring the knowledge out of them,
not only from the hands where it is hidden, but from the still more
inaccessible chest, the language in which it is preserved, the
incrustation of centuries of Sanskrit words. In one word, I want to make
them popular. I want to bring out these ideas and let them be the common
property of all, of every man in India, whether he knows the Sanskrit
language or not. The great difficulty in the way is the Sanskrit language
— the glorious language of ours; and this difficulty cannot be removed
until — if it is possible — the whole of our nation are good Sanskrit
scholars. You will understand the difficulty when I tell you that I have
been studying this language all my life, and yet every new book is new to
me. How much more difficult would it then be for people who never had time
to study the language thoroughly! Therefore the ideas must be taught in
the language of the people; at the same time, Sanskrit education must go
on along with it, because the very sound of Sanskrit words gives a
prestige and a power and a strength to the race. The attempts of the great
Ramanuja and of Chaitanya and of Kabir to raise the lower classes of India
show that marvellous results were attained during the lifetime of those
great prophets; yet the later failures have to be explained, and cause
shown why the effect of their teachings stopped almost within a century of
the passing away of these great Masters. The secret is here. They raised
the lower classes; they had all the wish that these should come up, but
they did not apply
which
it has a particular bearing with regard to Madras. There is a theory that
there was a race of mankind in Southern India called Dravidians, entirely
differing from another race in Northern India called the Aryans, and that
the Southern India Brâhmins are the only Aryans that came from the North,
the other men of Southern India belong to an entirely different caste and
race to those of Southern India Brahmins. Now I beg your pardon, Mr.
Philologist, this is entirely unfounded. The only proof of it is that
there is a difference of language between the North and the South. I do
not see any other difference. We are so many Northern men here, and I ask
my European friends to pick out the Northern and Southern men from this
assembly. Where is the difference? A little difference of language. But
the Brahmins are a race that came here speaking the Sanskrit language!
Well then, they took up the Dravidian language and forgot their Sanskrit.
Why should not the other castes have done the same? Why should not all the
other castes have come one after the other from Northern India, taken up
the Dravidian language, and so forgotten their own? That is an argument
working both ways. Do not believe in such silly things. There may have
been a Dravidian people who vanished from here, and the few who remained
lived in forests and other places. It is quite possible that the language
may have been taken up, but all these are Aryans who came from the North.
The whole of India is Aryan, nothing else.
Then there is the
other idea that the Shudra caste are surely the aborigines. What are they?
They are slaves. They say history repeats itself. The Americans, English,
Dutch, and the Portuguese got hold of the poor Africans and made them work
hard while they lived, and their children of mixed birth were born in
slavery and kept in that condition for a long period. From that wonderful
example, the mind jumps back several thousand years
homes
so many lunatic asylums, and that they are to be treated with derision by
every race in India until they mend their manners and know better. Shame
upon them that such wicked and diabolical customs are allowed; their own
children are allowed to die of starvation, but as soon as they take up
some other religion they are well fed. There ought to be no more fight
between the castes.
The solution is not
by bringing down the higher, but by raising the lower up to the level of
the higher. And that is the line of work that is found in all our books,
in spite of what you may hear from some people whose knowledge of their
own scriptures and whose capacity to understand the mighty plans of the
ancients are only zero. They do not understand, but those do that have
brains, that have the intellect to grasp the whole scope of the work. They
stand aside and follow the wonderful procession of national life through
the ages. They can trace it step by step through all the books, ancient
and modern. What is the plan? The ideal at one end is the Brahmin and the
ideal at the other end is the Chandâla, and the whole work is to raise
the Chandala up to the Brahmin. Slowly and slowly you find more and more
privileges granted to them. There are books where you read such fierce
words as these: "If the Shudra hears the Vedas, fill his ears with
molten lead, and if he remembers a line, cut his tongue out. If he says to
the Brahmin, 'You Brahmin', cut his tongue out". This is diabolical
old barbarism no doubt; that goes without saying; but do not blame the
law-givers, who simply record the customs of some section of the
community. Such devils sometimes arose among the ancients. There have been
devils everywhere more or less in all ages. Accordingly, you will find
that later on, this tone is modified a little, as for instance, "Do
not disturb the Shudras, but do not teach them higher things". Then
gradually we find in other Smritis, especially in those that have full
power now, that if the Shudras imitate the
Now as to the
details, they of course have to be worked out through generations. But
this is merely a suggestion in order to show you that these quarrels
should cease. Especially do I regret that in Moslem times there should be
so much dissension between the castes. This must stop. It is useless on
both sides, especially on the side of the higher caste, the Brahmin,
because the day for these privileges and exclusive claims is gone. The
duty of every aristocracy is to dig its own grave, and the sooner it does
so, the better. The more it delays, the more it will fester and the worse
death it will die. It is the duty of the Brahmin, therefore, to work for
the salvation of the rest of mankind in India. If he does that, and so
long as he does that, he is a Brahmin, but he is no Brahmin when he goes
about making money. You on the other hand should give help only to the
real Brahmin who deserves it; that leads to heaven. But sometimes a gift
to another person who does not deserve it leads to the other place, says
our scripture. You must be on your guard about that. He only is the
Brahmin who has no secular employment. Secular employment is not for the
Brahmin but for the other castes. To the Brahmins I appeal, that they must
work hard to raise the Indian people by teaching them what they know, by
giving out the culture that they have accumulated for centuries. It is
clearly the duty of the Brahmins of India to remember what real
Brahminhood is. As Manu says, all these privileges and honours are given
to the Brahmin, because "with him is the treasury of virtue". He
must open that treasury and distribute its valuables to the world. It is
true that he was the earliest preacher to the Indian races, he was the
first to renounce everything in order to attain to the higher realisation
of life before others could reach to the idea. It was not his fault that
he marched ahead of the other caste. Why did not the other castes so
understand and do as he did? Why
did
they sit down and be lazy, and let the Brahmins win the race?
But it is one thing
to gain an advantage, and another thing to preserve it for evil use.
Whenever power is used for evil, it becomes diabolical; it must be used
for good only. So this accumulated culture of ages of which the Brahmin
has been the trustee, he must now give to the people at large, and it was
because he did not give it to the people that the Mohammedan invasion was
possible. It was because he did not open this treasury to the people from
the beginning, that for a thousand years we have been trodden under the
heels of every one who chose to come to India. It was through that we have
become degraded, and the first task must be to break open the cells that
hide the wonderful treasures which our common ancestors accumulated; bring
them out and give them to everybody and the Brahmin must be the first to
do it. There is an old superstition in Bengal that if the cobra that
bites, sucks out his own poison from the patient, the man must survive.
Well then, the Brahmin must suck out his own poison. To the non-Brahmin
castes I say, wait, be not in a hurry. Do not seize every opportunity of
fighting the Brahmin, because, as I have shown, you are suffering from
your own fault. Who told you to neglect spirituality and Sanskrit
learning? What have you been doing all this time? Why have you been
indifferent? Why do you now fret and fume because somebody else had more
brains, more energy, more pluck and go, than you? Instead of wasting your
energies in vain discussions and quarrels in the newspapers, instead of
fighting and quarrelling in your own homes — which is sinful — use all
your energies in acquiring the culture which the Brahmin has, and the
thing is done. Why do you not become Sanskrit scholars? Why do you not
spend millions to bring Sanskrit education to all the castes of India?
That is the question. The moment you do these things,
you
are equal to the Brahmin. That is the secret of power in India.
Sanskrit and
prestige go together in India. As soon as you have that, none dares say
anything against you. That is the one secret; take that up. The whole
universe, to use the ancient Advaitist's simile, is in a state of
self-hypnotism. It is will that is the power. It is the man of strong will
that throws, as it were, a halo round him and brings all other people to
the same state of vibration as he has in his own mind. Such gigantic men
do appear. And what is the idea? When a powerful individual appears, his
personality infuses his thoughts into us, and many of us come to have the
same thoughts, and thus we become powerful. Why is it that organizations
are so powerful? Do not say organization is material. Why is it, to take a
case in point, that forty millions of Englishmen rule three hundred
millions of people here? What is the psychological explanation? These
forty millions put their wills together and that means infinite power, and
you three hundred millions have a will each separate from the other.
Therefore to make a great future India, the whole secret lies in
organization, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills.
Already before my
mind rises one of the marvellous verses of the Rig-Veda Samhitâ which
says, "Be thou all of one mind, be thou all of one thought, for in
the days of yore, the gods being of one mind were enabled to receive
oblations." That the gods can be worshipped by men is because they
are of one mind. Being of one mind is the secret of society. And the more
you go on fighting and quarrelling about all trivialities such as
"Dravidian" and "Aryan", and the question of Brahmins
and non-Brahmins and all that, the further you are off from that
accumulation of energy and power which is going to make the future India.
For mark you, the future India depends entirely upon that. That is the
secret — accumulation of
will-power,
co-ordination, bringing them all, as it here, into one focus. Each
Chinaman thinks in his own way, and a handful of Japanese all think in the
same way, and you know the result. That is how it goes throughout the
history of the world. You find in every case, compact little nations
always governing and ruling huge unwieldy nations, and this is natural,
because it is easier for the little compact nations to bring their ideas
into the same focus, and thus they become developed. And the bigger the
nation, the more unwieldy it is. Born, as it were, a disorganised mob,
they cannot combine. All these dissensions must stop.
There is yet another
defect in us. Ladies, excuse me, but through centuries of slavery, we have
become like a nation of women. You scarcely can get three women together
for five minutes in this country or any other country, but they quarrel.
Women make big societies in European countries, and make tremendous
declarations of women's power and so on; then they quarrel, and some man
comes and rules them all. All over the world they still require some man
to rule them. We are like them. Women we are. If a woman comes to lead
women, they all begin immediately to criticise her, tear her to pieces,
and make her sit down. If a man comes and gives them a little harsh
treatment, scolds them now and then, it is all right, they have been used
to that sort of mesmerism. The whole world is full of such mesmerists and
hypnotists. In the same way, if one of our countrymen stands up and tries
to become great, we all try to hold him down, but if a foreigner comes and
tries to kick us, it is all right. We have been used to it, have we not?
And slaves must become great masters! So give up being a slave. For the
next fifty years this alone shall be our keynote — this, our great
Mother India. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our
minds. This is the only god that is awake, our own race —
"everywhere his hands, everywhere
his
feet, everywhere his ears, he covers everything." All other gods are
sleeping. What vain gods shall we go after and yet cannot worship the god
that we see all round us, the Virât? When we have worshipped this, we
shall be able to worship all other gods. Before we can crawl half a mile,
we want to cross the ocean like Hanumân! It cannot be. Everyone going to
be a Yogi, everyone going to meditate! It cannot be. The whole day mixing
with the world with Karma Kânda, and in the evening sitting down and
blowing through your nose! Is it so easy? Should Rishis come flying
through the air, because you have blown three times through the nose? Is
it a joke? It is all nonsense. What is needed is Chittashuddhi,
purification of the heart. And how does that come? The first of all
worship is the worship of the Virat — of those all around us. Worship
It. Worship is the exact equivalent of the Sanskrit word, and no other
English word will do. These are all our gods — men and animals; and the
first gods we have to worship are our countrymen. These we have to
worship, instead of being jealous of each other and fighting each other.
It is the most terrible Karma for which we are suffering, and yet it does
not open our eyes!
Well, the subject is
so great that I do not know where to stop, and I must bring my lecture to
a close by placing before you in a few words the plans I want to carry out
in Madras. We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of
the nation. Do you understand that? You must dream it, you must talk it,
you must think its and you must work it out. Till then there is no
salvation for the race. The education that you are getting now has some
good points, but it has a tremendous disadvantage which is so great that
the good things are all weighed down. In the first place it is not a
man-making education, it is merely and entirely a negative education. A
negative education or any training that is based on negation, is worse
than death. The child is taken to school, and the
first
thing he learns is that his father is a fool, the second thing that his
grandfather is a lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are
hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books are lies! By the time he
is sixteen he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result
is that fifty years of such education has not produced one original man in
the three Presidencies. Every man of originality that has been produced
has been educated elsewhere, and not in this country, or they have gone to
the old universities once more to cleanse themselves of superstitions.
Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and
runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building,
man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have
assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have
more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library
— "The ass
carrying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of
the sandalwood." If education is identical with information, the
libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopaedias are the
Rishis. The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of
our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on
national lines, through national methods as far as practical.
Of course this is a
very big scheme, a very big plan. I do not know whether it will ever work
out. But we must begin the work. But how? Take Madras, for instance. We
must have a temple, for with Hindus religion must come first. Then, you
may say, all sects will quarrel about it. But we will make it a
non-sectarian temple, having only "Om" as the symbol, the
greatest symbol of any sect. If there is any sect here which believes that
"Om" ought not to be the symbol, it has no right to call itself
Hindu. All will have the right to interpret Hinduism, each one according
to his own sect ideas,
but
we must have a common temple. You can have your own images and symbols in
other places, but do not quarrel here with those who differ from you. Here
should be taught the common grounds of our different sects, and at the
same time the different sects should have perfect liberty to come and
teach their doctrines, with only one restriction, that is, not to quarrel
with other sects. Say what you have to say, the world wants it; but the
world has no time to hear what you think about other people; you can keep
that to yourselves.
Secondly,
in connection with this temple there should be an institution to train
teachers who must go about preaching religion and giving secular education
to our people; they must carry both. As we have been already carrying
religion from door to door, let us along with it carry secular education
also. That can be easily done. Then the work will extend through these
bands of teachers and preachers, and gradually we shall have similar
temples in other places, until we have covered the whole of India. That is
my plan. It may appear gigantic, but it is much needed. You may ask, where
is the money. Money is not needed. Money is nothing. For the last twelve
years of my life, I did not know where the next meal would come from; but
money and everything else I want must come, because they are my slaves,
and not I theirs; money and everything else must come. Must — that is
the word. Where are the men? That is the question. Young men of Madras, my
hope is in you. Will you respond to the call of your nation? Each one of
you has a glorious future if you dare believe me. Have a tremendous faith
in yourselves, like the faith I had when I was a child, and which I am
working out now. Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself — that
eternal power is lodged in every soul — and you will revive the whole of
India. Ay, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas
will before long be a component of the
