THE INDIAN RENAISSANCE
Prof. Kittu Reddy
By the early
decades of the 19th century almost the whole of the Indian subcontinent had
come under the control of the British. As already seen, the economic
exploitation of India had reached very great proportions. The Indian nation was
thus facing a great crisis. The historian T.B. Macaulay thought that India was
at the point of dissolution. The society was steeped in superstition, manacled
by primitive customs, and it seemed that the sense of community had all but
vanished. The country was facing a crisis of immense proportions. The situation
was similar to what India faced in the 14th century. At that time, the question
was the continuity of India’s life — whether her separate identity in culture,
social organization, religion and thought would be maintained or whether she
would be merged in the expanding Commonwealth of Islam. Then, India was saved
by the spiritual revival of the 14th and 15th centuries. This time the question
was different — it was not the continuance of the Hindu culture. Rather, the
problem facing India now was the confrontation of a superior, expanding and
highly dynamic civilization with an old, static and, as it appeared, decaying
culture. Here was a civilization, which was convinced not only of its own
incomparable greatness, economic strength, and technological and scientific
superiority but was moved by a firm belief that the form of life it represented
was the final one to which all others must conform. Along with this there was
another problem that confronted Indian culture — it was the relationship of
Hinduism with Islam and the problem of their co-existence in the new
circumstances under the domination of a people alien to both. It was at this
critical moment that the Indian renaissance began and this was essentially due
to the manner in which Hinduism reacted to the foreign domination. This
reaction, which first started in Bengal, spread to all other parts of the
country and included all the fields of culture. The sole exception was in the
political field; for, till the end of the nineteenth century, British rule was
accepted as a beneficent development. Raja Rammohan Roy publicly thanked God
for having placed India under the British rule. Prasanna Kumar Tagore declared:
“If we were asked what government we would prefer, English or any other, we
would one and all reply English by all means, even in preference to a Hindu
government.”
However,
despite all this there was a re-awakening in almost every other field. One of
the key factors in this renaissance was the recovery of Indian history. Prior
to this, nothing was known of Indian history before the Muslim invasion. It was
the discovery of Mohenjadaro and Harappa and the deciphering of the language of
Ashoka’s inscriptions that slowly unfolded the majestic history of a most
ancient and glorious civilisation. It showed the Hindus as a people with very
deep roots in history that had built empires and carried the message of
civilisation far and wide. At the same time the translation of Kalidas’s
Sakuntala by Sir William Jones and of the Bhagavad Gita by Charles Wilkins had
a tremendous impact. The interaction between Hindu and British culture had
begun. The Hindu mind was very receptive to the impact of European
civilisation. The renaissance that followed went through two immediate stages.
The first
step was the reception of the European contact; the consequences of this
contact was the inevitable and radical reconsideration of many of the prominent
elements of the old culture; in some cases it was even a revolutionary denial
of the very principles of the old culture. This was most manifest in the social
reforms that took place. Here, there was an attempt to harmonise the
incompatibility between the Hindu social system and the social organisation of
the West. Raja Rammohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar were the two most
prominent figures in this field. A relentless crusade was waged against such
social customs as Sati, caste system, widow remarriage, etc. However, the Hindu
mind being essentially religious and spiritual, the movement of social reform
spread inevitably to the religious field. Thus Raja Rammohan Roy started the
Brahmo Samaj to bring about a reconciliation of the three prominent religions
in India — Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Sri Narayan Guru started a similar
movement in the South. In the North, Dayananda Saraswati started the Arya
Samaj. An important point to note is that all these religious movements laid
stress on the implementation of a social message derived directly from the
ancient texts. There was a denunciation of the inequalities of the caste system
and social practices which went against modern ideas. A strong egalitarian
basis in society was one of the fundamental drives of these religious
movements.
Raja Rammohan
Roy represents the epitome of this age. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, it
was the acceptance of Vedanta, preaching of patriotism and the love that
embraced the Mussalman equally with the Hindu that were the three important
points in Rammohan’s message. Nolini Kanta Gupta sums up thus: “Rammohan was
the first to draw the country’s consciousness from ages past, from the ancient
ways, out into the free light and air of the modern day, the first to initiate
the country into the new religion of the new age; in him appeared in seed-form
the potentialities of all the future, creation; sparks of his illumined mind
entered into every important domain of the collective life of the
race-politics, society, religion, education, literature, language, etc and brought
to the country a new birth, a new life, a new creation.”
Two other
names need to be mentioned in this context. They are Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
who played a great role in the social reformation, and Keshab Chandra Sen who
was one of the luminaries of the Brahmo Samaj.
In the second
phase there was a reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence.
There was a stressing of the essentials of the national past. This stage was
epitomised by Sri Ramakrishna. And as always in the history of India, it was in
religion first that the soul of India awoke and triumphed. India was then
steeped in the age of denial. It was at that stage that Sri Ramakrishna came.
By his spiritual realisation and seeing God face-to-face, and going through the
inner disciplines known as Yoga, he completely changed the course of Indian
history. His life and teachings represented the first and most important phase
of preparation for the coming of the Age of the Spirit. In the words of Sri
Aurobindo: “Of all these souls, Sri Ramakrishna was the last and greatest, for
while others felt God in a single or limited aspect, he felt Him in His
illimitable unity as the sum of an illimitable variety. In him the spiritual
experiences of the millions of saints who had gone before were renewed and
united. Sri Ramakrishna gave to India the final message of Hinduism to the
world.” What was that message? In the words of Swami Vivekananda: “Do not care
for doctrines, do not care for dogmas, or sects or churches, or temples; they
count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is
spirituality, and the more this is developed in man, the more powerful is he
for the good. Show by your life that religion does not mean words, or names or
sects, but that it means spiritual realisation.” But his life was not limited
only to his spiritual realisation. It had a great impact on the whole of
society, when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed down at his
feet, — the feet of an illiterate Hindu ascetic, a self-illumined ascetic and
mystic without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon
him. It was then that the battle was won and in a sense marked the turning
point of the Indian renaissance. The educated elite of Calcutta came to him.
They included such personalities as: Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, Keshub
Chandra Sen, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Bejoy
Krishna Goswami. It is said that even Lala Lajpat Rai drew his inspiration from
the teachings of Ramakrishna. Each one of these personalities contributed in a
big way to the Renaissance that took place in the nineteenth century.
Another giant
personality who contributed to the Indian Renaissance was Dayananda Saraswati.
Sri Aurobindo says of him: “As I regard the figure of this formidable artisan
in God’s workshop, images crowd on me which are all of battle and work and
conquest and triumphant labour. Here, I say to myself, was a very soldier of
Light, a warrior in God’s world, a sculptor of men and institutions, a bold and
rugged victor of the difficulties which matter represents to spirit. And the
whole sums itself up to me in a powerful impression of spiritual
practicality. The combination of these two words, usually so divorced from
each other in our conceptions, seems to me the very definition of Dayananda.”
The main
contribution of Dayananda Saraswati was that he seized on the Veda as India’s
Rock of Ages and had the daring conception to build on what his penetrating
glance perceived in it: a whole education of youth, a whole manhood and a whole
nationhood. Rammohan Roy who had preceded him stopped short at the Upanishads,
while Dayanand looked beyond and perceived that our true original seed was the
Veda.
Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee was another resplendent personality who contributed greatly
to the Renaissance. His contributions may be summed up thus:
·
He gave the Bengali race a great and satisfying language.
·
He sowed the seeds of Indian Nationalism by bidding India to
leave the canine method of political agitation for the leonine.
·
The third and supreme service of Bankim was that he gave us
the vision of the Mother through the song of ‘Bande Mataram’. The bare
intellectual idea of the motherland is not in itself a great driving force, the
mere recognition of the desirability of freedom is not an inspiring motive; it
is not till the motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something
more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes
shape as a great and divine and maternal Power in a form of beauty that can
dominate the mind and seize the heart that all petty fears and hopes vanish in
the all-absorbing passion for the Mother and her service, and the patriotism
that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born.
But probably
the most powerful contribution in the reawakening of India was that of Swami
Vivekananda. Sri Ramakrishna’s unique sadhana and realisation had left an
indelible mark on the consciousness of India and quickened its inherent
spirituality. But this inner work had to be energised and developed into a
dynamic factor in a resurgence of the national life by which India could
recover her freedom and greatness as a nation. It was for this that the Master
gave Vivekananda all the light and the strength that he had received from the
Mother. His work was to be not only for the Mother but also for the
re-awakening of India. A mere sense of political nationalism based on common
subordination to foreign rule would not have saved India from break-up like in
the Balkan Peninsula. What gave Indian Nationalism its dynamism and ultimately
enabled it to weld at least the major part of India into one state was the
creation of a sense of community among the Hindus; and for this the credit
should go to a very large extent to Swami Vivekananda. This new Shankaracharya
may well be claimed to be the unifier of Hindu ideology. Travelling all over
India he not only aroused a sense of a universal feeling but also taught the
doctrine of a universal Vedanta as the background of the new Hindu reformation.
He stressed always on the spiritual aspect and he once said: “India is immortal
if she persists in her search for God. But if she goes in for politics and
social conflict, she will die.”
Sister
Nivedita writes of him: “Throughout these years in which I saw him almost
daily, the thought of India was to him like the air: he breathed. True, he was
a worker at foundations. He never used the word ‘nationality’ nor proclaimed an
era of ‘nation making’. Man-making he said, was his own task. But he was a born
lover, and the queen of his adoration was his Motherland. He was hard on her
sins, unsparing of her want of wordly wisdom, but only because he felt these
faults to be his own. And none, on the contrary, was so possessed by the vision
of her greatness.”
Sri Aurobindo said of him: “A radiant
glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he
came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.”
This powerful
spiritual awakening had its impact on other fields of cultural activity. In the
field of literature, starting with Rabindranath Tagore, there was a tremendous
efflorescence not only in Bengal but also in all the different regional
languages of India.
While Bankim
gave to Bengali prose its first finished literary form, Rabindranath made the
language simpler, more plastic, graceful, and. virile and set it on its course
of unending progress.
Sri Aurobindo
writes of Tagore:
“And at the
subtlest elevation of all that has yet been reached stands or rather wings and
floats in a high intermediate region the poetry of Tagore, not in the complete
spiritual light, but amid an air shot with its seekings and glimpses, a sight
and cadence found in a psycho-spiritual heaven of subtle and delicate soul
experience transmuting the earth tones by the touch of its radiance. The wide
success and appeal of his poetry is indeed one of the most significant signs of
the tendency of the mind and the age.”
Similarly, in
the field of art, there was an outburst of creative activity. It started with
the Bengal school of art in painting and sculpture, which soon had its impact
allover India. Among the great names are Nandalal Bose, Abanindranath Tagore,
O.C. Ganguli and many others. Havell wrote of this artistic movement: “The deeper
significance of the movement lies, however, not so much in its actual
accomplishment, as in the clear evidence it gives of a spiritual resurrection,
of the awakening of the artistic soul of India.” Another contemporary opinion
states: “The artists of the new school are recovering our ancestral heritage
with a new development of spiritual depth, power and originality, which is
prophetic of the future.”
In the field
of science too, starting with the great Jagadish Chandra Bose, there was a
tremendous development; and this had a uniquely Indian characteristic and
approach.
It was
Jagadish Chandra Bose who saw in life what Ramakrishna had seen through his
spiritual experience. This truth was the ‘Unity of Life’ as envisaged in the
Upanishads. He discovered by his power of concentration and inner intuition
that: ‘This whole universe, all that reacts, is born of a life-force and is
quivering with a touch of animation’, Then this seer-scientist proceeded to
prove with the aid of scientific instruments of extreme delicacy and precision
this universal animation of life, which pervades all creation. He was the first
Indian scientist to use the combinations of ancient introspective and the modem
advanced experimental methods to demonstrate the ‘omnipresence of life in
matter’. He was followed by a whole host of scientists all over the country.
Some names are, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Meghnad Shah, C. V. Raman and the later
names of the twentieth century.
We can thus
see that this was a very fruitful period of Indian culture when she awoke from
her slumber and gave a decisive direction for the future evolution. It prepared
the ground for the third stage that is now slowly preparing to manifest.
The third has
only just begun and has not yet taken a sure form and direction; this is rather
a process of new creation in which the spiritual power of the Indian mind will
remain supreme, recover its truths, accept whatever it finds sound or true,
useful or inevitable of the modem idea and form, but so transmute and Indianise
it, so absorb and so transform it entirely into itself that its foreign
character will disappear and it will become another harmonious element in the
characteristic working of the ancient goddess, the Shakti of India mastering
and taking possession of the modem influence, no longer possessed or overcome
by it.
This stage
has just begun and is embodied by the life and vision of Sri Aurobindo.
In this
vision, Indian culture may be regarded as having passed through two complete
external stages, while a third has taken its initial steps and is the destiny
of her future. As Sri Aurobindo describes it:
“The early
Vedic was the first stage: then religion took its outward formal stand on the
natural approach of the physical mind of man to the Godhead in the universe,
but the initiates guarded the sacrificial fire of a greater spiritual truth
behind the form. The Purano- Tantric was the second stage: then religion took
its outward formal stand on the first deeper approaches of man’s inner mind and
life to the Divine in the universe, but a greater initiation opened the way to
a far more intimate truth and pushed towards an inner living of the spiritual
life in all its profundity and in all the infinite possibilities of an
uttermost sublime experience. There has been long in preparation a third stage,
which belongs to the future. Its inspiring idea has been often cast out in
limited or large, veiled and quiet or bold and striking spiritual movements and
potent new disciplines and religions, but it has not yet been successful in
finding its way or imposing new lines on human life. The circumstances were
adverse, the hour not yet come. This greatest movement of the Indian spiritual
mind has a double impulse. Its will is to call the community of men and all men
each according to his power to live in the greatest light of all and found
their whole life on some fully revealed power and grand uplifting truth of the
Spirit. But it has had too at times a highest vision which sees the possibility
not only of an ascent towards the Eternal but of a descent of the Divine
Consciousness and a change of human into divine nature. A perception of the
divinity hidden in man has been its crowning force. This is a turn that cannot
be rightly understood in the ideas or language of the European religious
reformer or his imitators. It is not what the purist of the reason or the
purist of the spirit imagines it to be and by that too hasty imagination falls
short in his endeavour. Its index vision is pointed to a truth that exceeds the
human mind and, if at all realised in his members, would turn human life into a
divine superlife. And not until this third largest sweep of the spiritual
evolution has come into its own, can Indian civilisation be said to have
discharged its mission, to have spoken its last word and be functus officio,
crowned and complete in its office of mediation between the life of man and the
spirit.”
- Courtesy Sri Aurobindo’s Action
Aug,
2002.