REVIEWS

The Avadi Socialists by “Vighneswara” (N. Raghunathan) (SOTTO VOCE: Third Series). B. G. Paul & Co., 4, Francis Joseph Street, Madras-1. 1964. Pp. 392. Ordinary Edition Rs. 5; Library Edition Rs. 6.

If the late Mr. Khasa Subba Rau had not done anything but discover Mr. Raghunatha Iyer’s genius, which for ten years kept going the most astonishing column that ever figured in a weekly newspaper, he would have deserved well of posterity. Was it not Prof. Hardy’s modest boast that the discovery of the genius of Ramanujam was the greatest satisfaction that he derived from his pursuit of mathematics? From the time the first issue of Khasa Subba Rau’s Swatantra appeared, carrying “Vighneswara’s” column, under the unassuming but intriguing title SOTTO VOCE, it was clear that here was something which was an event in Indian journalism. Week after week for ten continuous years, Mr. Raghunatha Iyer wrote for the Swatantra scintillating pieces, replete with the lore of ages, on a myriad themes, ranging from the most commonplace to the most abstruse, all handled with the masterly ease of a superb craftsman and all pregnant with perennial significance. It is this quality that has made Vighneswara’s writings dateless. In translating them into book form and giving them a permanent habitation and a name, the publishers have done a great service not only to the numerous readers of “Vighneswara” who would like to keep his writings in handy form, but also to countless others to whom he can be a source of perpetual discovery and delight.

Two volumes in this series have already appeared, covering the years from 1946 to 1952. The present volume covers a period of 45 months from August 1952 to April 1956. As in the case of the two earlier volumes, Mr. Raghunatha Iyer has contributed a Preface to the present volume which seeks to provide, as it were, the connecting thread and the philosophy that suffuses most of the articles written in this period. Mr. Raghunatha Iyer is an unrepentant liberal in the broadest sense of the term, who believes that freedom is the highest good and that a society which has not learnt how to conserve its traditional values is unlikely to cherish liberty as an end in itself. It is this amalgam of conservatism and true liberalism which endows all that he writes with a unique appeal.

The title of the present volume, as well as the preface, might suggest that the main pre-occupation of the articles brought together here is with Congress Socialism as it evolved from the Avadi session of the Congress. This would be a very misleading inference; because here we have, as in the earlier volumes, writings on an amazing variety of subjects ranging from the ancestry of Valmiki, with which the volume opens, to an allegorical piece entitled Satya Yagna with which the volume ends. In between, we have pieces on diverse topics–education, art, music, politics and personalities–each of which is illumined by a wisdom that passeth understanding.

While Mr. Raghunatha Iyer’s encyclopaedic scholarship is apparent on every page, what is really characteristic about these articles is the way in which he can lift you from the commonplace to the sublime by a single phrase. For instance, writing on a recital of Indian folk dances in Madras, he concludes: “In all folk art the referent, proximate or remote, is God, whom our secularists would lock up in their little cupboard. How do you hope to get at Beauty, by-passing the Brahman that is Satyam, Sivam, Sundaram?”

Mr. Raghunatha Iyer is at his best when he is applying a moral drawn from ancient or recent history or some episode in the classics of the East or the West to the current situation. To give but one example, in the brilliant piece on “Secularism’s Current Favourite”, he writes: “India in the past has known monarchs who were spectacular converts to a faith other than their fathers’, as well as those who set forth as propagators of new creeds. We had Asoka and Vishnuvardhana as well as Akbar with his Din-liahi. The Congress rulers of Independent India have made yet another precedent. Their proclaimed allegiance is to Secularism. In practice, Secularism has shown itself as intolerant and arbitrary as any other State religion of the past, but with a significant difference. The excesses of those crusading faiths proceeded from a generous warmth of emotion; this new religion of Secularism has ice water in its veins…..Hinduism is being bleached and sterilised of such unfashionable ideas as the living of life as a sacrament, the acceptance of pious obligations and the sacredness of the marital tie. The ambition of our mentors is to make us as unlike ourselves as possible.”

The temptation to quote from a book which is replete with pregnant passages, pithy epigrams and devastating debunking of the little tin-gods dressed in brief authority, is well-nigh irresistible. But reasons of space forbid me from indulging in this luxury. All that I can say is that for any one who wishes to get the reactions of one of the wisest minds of our generation to the changing scene in India during the years since Independence, there cannot be a better book than “Vighneswara’s” volume. My only regret is that Mr. Raghunatha Iyer has not given us a complete book like Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” which would serve as a seminal classic on the Congress rulers’ blundering experiments in pseudo-democratic socialism. Only a mind, as steeped as his in the wisdom of the Indian Rishis, and a scholarship as wide-ranging as his, can attempt that comprehensive critique of the developments of the past 15 years which the present generation so badly needs before the country goes down the Gadarene slope.

–BHARADWAJA

Kasturi Ranga Iyengar (in the Builders of Modern India Series) by V. K. Narasimhan. Publications Division, Ministry of I & B, Delhi-5. Pages 239. Price Rs. 2-50.

The south of India, the bulk of which was covered by the composite province of Madras, did at no stage lag behind the rest of the country in the national struggle but the political enthusiasm of its people was always marked by a sense of restraint and a balanced view of men and things. No small measure of this informed patriotism was due to the work of organs of enlightened public opinion like The Hindu of Madras which has been going strong, without having to lower its standard, for the last seven to eight decades. But, the transformation of a struggling political news-sheet into a steady and prosperous newspaper was wrought by the almost unaided labours of the late Mr. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar in the early years of this century.

It was indeed a strange conspiracy of fortuitous circumstances that drew Kasturi Ranga Iyengar into journalism, when it was considered neither a safe nor a profitable occupation for anyone who wanted to go far in life. Almost every promising young man of the day used to choose Government service or Law for his profession. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar himself did actually prefer the latter and, after devilling in the crowded chambers of a giant of the Madras bar, set up practice in Coimbatore where he did fairly well in the profession and in public service. After winning his spurs, he returned to the metropolis where his elder brother (Srinivasaraghava Iyengar, who later became Dewan of Baroda) was high up in the official hierarchy. But it soon became clear that his heart was not in the practice of law and he was not satisfied with mere money-making, which then as now, is apt to be invested with the air of a sacred mystique, by those who swear by personal security and prefer to take politics as a profitable hobby, taking care not to overstep the bounds of safety.

Though never prone to rash decisions, Kasturi Ranga Iyengar was not afraid to live dangerously when he had to do it to promote the basic ideals in which he believed. He was a staunch nationalist, and an ardent admirer and close friend of Tilak, whose politics were after his very heart. Like his guru, he firmly believed that the political liberation of the country needed not to wait for the social advancement of its people. In fact the former might help the latter a great deal. He can be said to have been a little ahead of many of his local contemporaries in the unequivocal vigour of his political stand as a wholehogger. It is interesting to note that unlike some bright young men of the succeeding, generations whose Western culture is but skin deep, he had drunk deep at the springs of British liberalism and English literature and was fond of quoting Burke and Bright, Mill and Morley to reinforce his argument. In matters religious and social, he was an enlightened conservative, who observed all the forms of ceremony, without being opposed to intelligent reform, as, for instance, in the measure which sought to raise the age of consent.

The acquisition of The Hindu in 1905 by KASTURI Ranga Tyengar (when he was over 45, an age at which few would like to embark on new ventures) was, perhaps, a calculated risk, which had, in the long run, proved a blessing for all concerned. By his hard work and spirit of dedication and careful husbanding of the limited resources, without compromising his political ethics or personal code of conduct, he changed the fortune of the paper out of all recognition and placed it on a solid foundation in less than two decades, till it came to be regarded as a national institution (like The Times and The Guardian) by the time he died in 1923. He had, on more occasions than one, to cross swords with the powers that be and expose their crimes of commission and omission as in the Tuticorin and Tirunelveli riots and the Arbuthnot affair. He succeeded in keeping the white satraps of the day at all levels on the alert in the dispensation of justice and in other aspects of the administration of the land in general. The Governor and his Executive Councillors downward learned to regard his words with fear and respect. He did not spare even the Lokamanya when he thought he was going too far.

As Editor, he was quite effective and was a power to reckon with, though he believed in the time-honoured tradition of impersonal journalism, which is soon going out of fashion in recent years in many other institutions. He was precise in his writing, meticulous in the presentation of facts, and sound in the marshalling of arguments and had a flair for sarcasm, though he had none of the brilliance and style of his nephew S. Rangaswami (a veritable genius among leader-writers), or the wide constitutional learning of his other nephew A. Rangaswami Iyengar. Like all the great editors, he believed in the classic motto ‘Facts are sacred, but comment is free,’ but made sure that the comment was strong and measured at the same time.

Mr. V. K. Narasimhan, who has spent the best years of his life in an institution which Kasturi Ranga Iyengar had helped to build up, has left no stone unturned to make the account of the latter’s life and work as balanced and comprehensive as he possibly could. In this useful task he has had the advantage of a ready access to personal correspondence as well as to the archives of the newspaper. The result is a well-documented biography, within a limited compass though,–a valuable addition to the Builders of Modern India series. If, however, it seems, in places, rather like a picture of the institution than a vivid portrait of the man, the author is hardly to blame. His subject was inclined, by temperament, to be impersonal in the extreme, rarely amenable to the intimate treatment, full of the gossip and small talk of the fireside and the anecdotes of the dinner table, (with the single exception of the amusing instance during his sojurn abroad in which he swallowed something he took for a piece of brinjal and was harried by repeated doubts as to its real identity). The author will have the reader’s full sympathy in this, by no means easy, job.

–D. ANJANEYULU

Gita and Indian Culture by Sri Jayachamaraja Wadiyar. Published by Orient Longmans Ltd. Rs. 3.

The Gita hardly needs an introduction to any one, but it certainly needs an induction into everyone, of the wisdom enshrined in it. Universal in its appeal, it has a special appeal to every man, according to his own experience and enlightenment. Wisdom is eternal and, therefore, the Gita is a book for all time. How to understand it, how to assimilate it and then how to apply it in life in this ever changing world–that is indeed worth the enquiry. The author has dwelt at some length in particular on two main aspects in the Gita, viz., (1) Dharma, (2) Kshetra and Kshetrajna. He has specially referred to the teaching rendered by Sri Sankaracharya, a greater genius than whom the modern world has not produced. He emphasises that the Gita not merely affords the bedrock of Faith: it also affords the bed of comfort and consolation. It is necessary to understand the whole purpose of the Creator in revealing Himself in this great creation. He dwells in every one. Therefore, a knowledge of the self necessarily leads to the knowledge of the Dweller in the self. This is Vidya which should replace Avidya. The author has pinpointed the site where the conflict arose, the situation in which it arose and the station and status in life of the one representative of man for whom it arose–Arjuna. The author draws special attention to the turmoil of Arjuna which converted his original determination into despair and ambition into frustration. Arjuna was helped to regain himself by the Lord who taught Arjuna how much he owed it to himself and to the world to discharge his duty unmindful of the results, as by doing so he would be fulfilling God’s purpose. As Sri Sankara pointed out, it is the state of confusion and indecision that rendered Arjuna inactive and that was because of Avidya. When once wisdom dawned on him, he was able to see with perfect clarity what his duty was under the circumstances and also that God fulfils Himself in man. The author points out that the Gita does not abhor worldly activity. Man has to attain the four purusharthas–Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. The path should be Dharmic. The author dwells at some length on the Sthitaprajna–the steadfast one. Among the three paths of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti, Sri Sankara emphasises Jnana. It is recognised that all of them lead to the same goal–Moksha. According to Sri Sankara, both Karma and Bhakti lead to Jnana, and knowledge of Brahman automically imports all worthwhile knowledge. It is this unity of Nara and Narayana, Jivatman and Paramatman, Aham and Brahma, that forms the essence of the Advaita Philosophy of Sri Sankara.

The second part of the book is devoted to Kshetra and Kshetrajna. The author deals with culture in general and Indian culture in particular. Culture is born of cultivation (Vyavasaya), of the process of realisation of the oneness of all creation, not merely in its origin but also in its goal–Moksha. The body, the mind, and the soul, (tripod) have to be attuned and surrendered to the Divine. The author exhorts that one should repeatedly study and practise the principles adumbrated in the Gita because the Gita lays down the way of leading a Dharmic life in this world itself and the attainment of Moksha through this body itself. Kshetra is the body and Kshetrajna is the self or the soul which dwells in the body. The author enters into the inner meaning of the very first sloka of the Gita. Kshetra is the body: Kurukshetra is the battle-field of life: Pandavas and Kauravas represent knowledge and non-knowledge. As Dharma has to be established in this life and through this body, the conflict between knowledge and non-knowledge must arise and end up in victory for knowledge. Self-surrender is interpreted as the merger of the one in the All. As the author rightly points out the whole Gita teaches Adhyatma–knowledge of the self. It may rightly be said that the first and last slokas of the Gita understood in their true significance contain the quintessence of the Gita.

The author of this small book, the Maharaja of Mysore and the Governor of Madras, who possesses the rare combination of wisdom and wealth, has expounded the essential teachings of the Gita, sometimes utilising additional information and receiving inspiration from the Upanishads and the like, in an easily understandable and commendable manner.

–V. KAMESWARA RAO

Great Political Thinkers–East & West–by Dr. Ram Chandra Gupta. Published by Lakshmi Narain Agarwal, Educational Publishers, Agra. Pp. 447. Price Rs. 15.

This book is a welcome addition to the existing literature on Political Thought, a subject offered for instruction in several Indian Universities, not only at the Post-graduate but at the Graduate level. It deals with the contribution to political philosophy made by the political thinkers of all ages, both of the West and of the East; and it thus fills the need for a handy text-book on Political Thought, which meets the requirements of the Indian Universities.

If the book under review obviates the need for hunting up several books, it also obviates the need for “cramming” by students in preparing for the University examination in. Political Thought. It is a sad reflection on the standard of attainment of the present generation of Indian students that most of them, especially at the graduate level, find such books as those of Dunning, Gettell, Sabine, Coker, Maxey and Wayper, beyond their comprehension. Dr. Gupta has done great service to the student world by producing a book on Political Thought which makes accessible to the Indian students the contents of those books. He has written in a simple and lucid style and his book is a great aid to understanding.

Another commendable feature of the book is that, as in Maxey’s Political Philosophies, a brief biographical sketch of each political philosopher is given before his contribution to political philosophy is dealt with analytically and succinctly.

The book would greatly gain in value by the use of marginal headings and by the inclusion of Hegel and Bentham among the “Great Political Thinkers.” It is indeed difficult to understand Marx without Hegel or J. S. Mill without Bentham. The author, moreover, makes no mention of Maxey’s Political Philosophies. This is, indeed, a serious omission, for no bibliography on Political Thought can be complete without Maxey. It is hoped that these omissions would be supplied by the author in the second and subsequent editions of his work.

The publishers are to be complimented on the excellent format of the book, notwithstanding the Errata and the discrepancy between the title of the book as printed on the jacket and that of the book itself.

–V. B. R. KRISHNA SASTRI

TELUGU

Prak Paschima Tattva Sastra Charitra (in two volumes). Translated into Telugu from English by Sri Saripalle Visvanatha Sastry. Pages 630 and 670. Price Rs. 10 each volume. Published by Andhra Sarasvata Parishat, Tilak Road, Hyderabad.

Here is an invaluable work, enshrining in itself the wisdom of all the ages, the kernel of the philosophical speculations of the best thinkers allover the world, presented in a systematic and analytical manner, by eminent scholars of erudition, like Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, Dr. T. M. P. Mahadevan, Dr. Gopinatha Kaviraj, Sri Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya, Dr. Volger of Oxford, A. R. Wadia, Dr. Alexander and others, each of whom is an authority on his own subject. The original work in English was got prepared under the direct supervision of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the then Vice-President of India, and published by the Government of India.

The first volume contains essays on the philosophies of the East, philosophies propounded in India, China, and Japan. The section on Indian philosophies runs the whole gamut of philosophical speculations from Pre-Vedic times up-to-date. Sciences and arts in ancient India, like Mathematics, Algebra, Trigonometry, Medicine, Surgery and Music, are also dealt with in this first volume. The chapters on the systems of philosophy discuss at length epistemology, nature of the individual soul, God, World, and Moksha, and the means for attaining salvation according to that system. Similarities and differences between one system and the other are also pointed out. In the last chapters of this section are described the tenets of Sikhism and the spread of Islam in India. Inclusion of the doctrine of Sabdadvita or Sphotavada, of the Samskrit grammarians of ancient India would have rendered this volume quite comprehensive.

The second volume describes the fundamentals of all the philosophies propounded by Western thinkers like Kant, Scopenhaur, Bergson and Karl Marx. Even the latest trends in Western philosophy are not left out. The translation is also well done.

The introduction at the beginning of this work by late Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and the Simhavalokana by Dr. Radhakrishnan at the end of the book, enhance the value of this book. This is one of the best books that our money can buy and we commend it to all libraries.

–B. KUTUMBA RAO

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