By Prof. V. Sitaramiah, M.A.
THE title is neither grandiose nor frivolous. It is
a vital question for us now. We have launched ourselves into freedom and have
to shape a new life worthy of a great past–ambitious of a greater future. We
might, therefore, start with ‘a full look at the worst’, as they say and
proceed to build our destiny. When in bondage the glory of the past was all we
could be proud of. The ‘crumbs from others’ tables was almost all the food we
could get. We are free now and we should cook all the dishes we liked. For
seven hundred years we have not created any new or first-rate thought. Those
who do not create do not contribute. Much scholasticism, some spurts of
particular thought, consolidations of position, clarification and comment,
amendment or refinement have been all the substance of our effort during this
time. Positive, fundamental thinking there has not been; even in philosophy,
which is known to be our field.
We are known to be a religious people also. Even
Roman Catholicism and ritualistic Buddhism and Jainism cannot score points over
us. I am not thinking here of them.1 A fate seems to dog the history
of all human institutions which make them rise as pure forces and founts of
life with vision and voice of something superlative. They then begin to gather
body and momentum; try to stabilise and insulate themselves; gradually lose
virtue, decay and become corpses of what once was life and faith! And Religion,
which men have built up for their deliverance and salvation, seems to be
singularly liable to such a fate. Indeed, no other institution has gathered
round it so much mass as to immobilise, so much obscurantism as to cloud and to
weaken it. Or, it is developed into a dangerous tyranny fatal to the health of
the Spirit. For almost all the fine visions of Godhead and the structures built
on them as means of human redemption have ended as exploitations and drugs.
Contact with the masses no doubt adds to their influence and power, but that
has vulgarised them, attenuated or watered them so thin as to leave nothing
which could sustain the spirit or create for it a joyous dwelling on earth.
When pure, these are the possession of single individuals–few, select. When
they try to flow into and spread over society with intent to fertilize they
become encrusted; able to survive only by losing their sattva. This
process has been in operation in India as elsewhere, for a long time past. Such
a state is oppressive. And there is urgent need to revivify it.
I speak here only of Hinduism. This term is largely
unreal but is a convenient designation. In the strictest sense it is a total or
general name which, desperately, is given to that loose mass of people who,
negatively, are not Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews etc., who dwell in
this land; and, positively, to those who believe in the Vedas, the Upanishads,
the Dharmasastras and the order of existence approved by these. Even here sects
like the Virasaiva, the Buddhist, the Sikh, and, in respects, the Jain, do not
believe in all the features of the main religion. But, roughly, their idea of
Purusharthas, the paths and discipline, the belief in a similar sort of heaven
and hell, the efficacy of Karma, the cycles of birth and reincarnation, the
method and training of Yoga, the approval of a Samnyasic order, the
Guruparampara, the types of institutions set up and the techniques of worship,
the daily routines of life and impulsation to conduct,–in these, they have many
common features. To that extent, broadly, they can be classed ‘Hindu’.
And,–this also is certain–from crudest Animism to the highest adventure of the
Spirit with dreams of being one with the Absolute stretches the extent of the
Hindu fold.
Are we religious today? Yes and No. Yes, in an
inert, routine sense. No, because our religion is not live and creative. It is
often a dull habit, one of unthinking acceptance. If we analysed ourselves or
the composition of our population to see how much Religion inspires or
vitalises conduct, we feel the show is empty. Hide the truth how much we may,
Religion has lost its savour for the intelligentsia.2 It has an
uncertain hold on the middle classes who can be disturbed by the most trivial
circumstance basically. Among the masses it is a blind faith, as always, and it
works on them like a dope. With them it is an amalgam of tribal beliefs,
traditional practices, mumbo-jumbo and almost animal devotion with the thinnest
veneer of Religion. Designating it so is no snobbery. If any faith and
acceptance and the sense of anything holy and devotion-like could make a
Religion, theirs is religion all right. But this is not what we mean when
asking the question: Is there a future for Religion in India? Religion is a
faith and a devotion and a life lived in them. It involves a felt affection for
the highest recognised as the activating force of all life and movement. But
Faith and devotion are irrational and the sense of holiness can pertain to
anything in the life of a person or of a community,–to things, places, customs,
conventions. Yet there is a difference between the average man’s faith and
religion and the positive, progressive, creative faith of a thoughtful person.
It is the religion of such a person in India in the Hindu fold that I am
speaking.
This sort of Religion exists at least at two
levels: the individual and the community. The former is likely to be,
qualitatively finer than the latter. The sum of good things that may flow into
the community from the latter may be larger. But it can be at the cost of the
Spirit. Any technology can confer such a good and create an attitude of faith
and gratitude to it. But the pure flame of Religion can burn only in the heart
of the chosen, of those few who form ‘the light and leading’ among a people.
The Master, the first seer, glimpses the Truth, thrills to it, develops it as
the operative principle of his being. He knows its vital essence, its moods,
its contour and limbs and what distinctively animates it. He can see all its
implications and compulsions. It is a fluid condition of his soul, a continuous
function in his mind, under every chance of fortune, while he communicates it
or reacts to other forces from without. The next disciple usually fails to get
into its heart for, he is, after all, an outsider. His grasp is, likely, gross;
likely, literal. It was given to him, he takes it from a master on authority:
therefore, second-hand. When it goes beyond to the many it, naturally, loses
its uniqueness and all the exquisiteness of its personality. This, perhaps,
cannot be helped, for it seems next to impossible 3 that all can at
all stages of development be educated into sensitivity and be made equal in
understanding or in the range and depth of perception so as be able to get into
its heart. The world of Religion is a world of essence and function at a point
beyond the stars or in the invisible depths of the human soul radiating light
and wisdom, quickening all that is and moves, approachable on its own terms and
grace. It is above the scientific and the metaphysical, not accessible to
sense, nor to the intellect; but to a faculty ‘higher’ and intuitive than
either or both of them. Neither in aspiration nor reference is it primarily
secular. It touches the secular zone, if at all, by an inward or a superior
sanction, totally different from the normal.
What is the condition of the finest people in India
with regard to such aspiration and reference today? The best of them do not
seem to be minded religiously at all. One aspect of it which sought single
salvation away from society does not appeal to them. If they could promote
social weal any other way they would withdraw from the orthodoxies and take ‘a
holiday from’ religion. There is, in many among them, a divided personality
which is almost a malady of all civilised mankind today. Many have conflicting
loyalties and idealisms; doubts about the validity of ancient
practices–doctrinal, institutional–which hurt and impede movement. The new ones
are as wanting as the old in the power to guide, to assure, to convince. An
atmosphere of coarseness, strife, activism and violence unsettles them.
Old voices were at least integral, with a solid
ring and assurance. With the going of that assurance has gone the positiveness
and the courage of tone and feeling. Other particular inflexions and accents
attract and open out fields of tangible benefit, while a total map of the
intellectual and the spiritual is found difficult to draw. For one thing, the
fields of study and specialisation are today so vast that without knowledge of
the established facts therein even philosophical generalisation goes wrong.
What was deemed inscrutable or divine has become explicable in some matters,
or, is being cut into every day by observation and study and by the discoveries
of mental or other analysis. Against all its weak defence is ranged the
artillery of science and secularism. Authoritarian cults are demanding
suffrage. Unreason stalks the field. The whole, therefore, is a sight of
disintegration and danger.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” (W. B. Yeats.)
This stage has been partly passed through elsewhere. We are passing
through it here. This mental situation must be understood and faced. Else
self-delusion and break of heart will result.
To take only one aspect of the Indian scene: The
Vedas, the Upanishads, etc., are being studied closely in a modern way,
critically, comparatively, historically. The mere sanctity attaching to them
has been lost; their awesomeness, if any, continues only among the ignorant and
the sentimental. Both as philosophy and loyalty in behaviour their teaching is
found diverse, leading through many Darsanas to conflicting stresses and
directions. Their philosophical implications are not clearly or fully
understood by those born and bred to them. Any growth, therefore, or live
sensing of value based on them is not in the picture. If they were, they do not
seem to have relevance in the mental climate of the age. The situation of the
Dharma-Sastras, is, again, as perilous. With the loosening of the Caste system
and the discredit it has drawn on itself, obedience to their injunctions is
wholly undermined. Their place is being taken by Civil Law made in the
Legislature, moulded by discussion and public opinion, based on current needs,
influenced by imitation, and the needs of adjustment to a current and changing
environment. The claim that they were sacred and should not be meddled with
because of a divine sanction–is gone, and with this has fallen the whole
edifice of Vidhi and Nishedha and the penalties enumerated in them. Kings who
were to have been the champions and protectors of the Varnasrama Dharma either
have ceased to be that or are themselves on the scrap-heap. The Varna concept
with its confused origins in birth, profession, quality of soul, colour or
samskara–half sociological, half religious–is no longer a cohesive force but
has caused grave social inequities. Its discriminations are resented. The
Asrama ideal with its samskaras and growth of individual worthiness is more
than ever a fiction. The Ithihasas–like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata–have
ceased to be binding forces in our religious and social life except loosely.
They are just studied as works in literature or as social documents. Anyone who
sees a Bhajana party or witnesses a car-festival or procession on a city street
could see how unreal and how uncomfortably it shows against the surroundings or
in the glare of the midday sun. The two do not agree; nor strike as spiritual.
Centuries of Santipatha, daily Parayana and expositions of the Bhagavad Gita
etc., have brought people no nearer humanity nor helped to cleanse private and
public life. What godliness can then sprout out of them or thrive? Are men
educable at all fundamentally? Can human impulses be cleansed, the way we are
going?
Meanwhile, the study of Science and Technology has
opened up new vistas of knowledge. While enlarging and enriching vision this
has cut at the roots of superstition and prejudice. These are able to deliver
goods. Their ways are open their theory measurable, verifiable. They are able
to spread benefits of a kind which, for human purposes, were beyond the dreams
of the past centuries. So that humane persons are being more easily persuaded
to throw in their lot with their cultivation and promotion. What if religious
men call it at best an ethical idealism or mere humanitarianism? The jibe has
no edge and passes by, un-harming. With the aid of science and technical
organisation we could take up the work of social amelioration for large masses
of men and women sunk now in ignorance, disease, debt and squalor. The needs of
competitive existence in economic, political, military and technical fields
have made nations direct energies to redeeming the secular situation
everywhere,–thus drawing attention away from Religion. Even the spiritual must
yield results either in the type of men created or in the good that these men
create.
All this while the Biological sciences, Sociology,
Ethnology and Psychology in their turn, have cut away mainly tracts of
territory from the preserves of Religion. And day-light has rushed into many a
dark room in its mansions.
A study of the components of religious experience
and comparative Religion has exposed cobwebs seeming sacred. So many items
which looked like solid facts establishing a divine dispensation or origin are
shown as grounded in illusion, projections of universal tribal fancy, enlarged
inductions or mere dreams of desire. The religious, therefore, is made to
shrink in stature from being an all-embracing, all-ordaining force into just
one type of Phenomenology like the aesthetic, the epistemological, the
sociological or the technical or the merely mental. The religious as distinct
from these with its concepts of glory, hierarchies, of wisdom and validity,
worship, heaven and hell, acts of creation, sin piety, and grace have lost
importance, at least their overriding sanction. These are today considered
doctrines and creeds just as tenable theory or dogma as any other: more real to
some, less tenable than their own to others. The plight of the religious men
and women themselves with their Achara, Upavasa, etc., not being any the better
than others in chasteness, stability or largeness of life, the condition of the
priest class, and the practices in the temples and Matthas show nothing to
admire or inspire in them.
This is not a happy or healthy sign for a people
who once saw clearly and spoke directly with an authority that was born of
realisation. India’s is a pristine vision of the spiritual unity of all life.
Its concept of godhead and wisdom is metaphysically one of the soundest; its
description of the paths and processes and stages of realisation one of the
most precise and concrete. With its doctrine of peace and maitri, its
hatelessness born of discipline and strength, its tolerance and inclusiveness
of view, it inspired imagination. Whether one looked at it as a wisdom of
divine ascent or descent, a doctrine of emanation or advent of grace, it looked
at all life as sacred. It accepted Lokasangraha–service–as obligatory on all
who strive for Moksha; Lokakalyana, as the purpose of all endeavour;
Lokakarunya, as applicable to plant, bird, beast and man. Its citizenship is
one of all the three worlds, freed from narrow national loyalties. What a far
cry from the suffocations and the darkness which now prevail in the human
situation!
For how many does such a vision–ethical if you
like, spiritual if you prefer–call to action? How many feel its live urgency?
How would they shape the terms and the instruments of modern existence to
translate such vision into reality? This surely can, again, be the faith of a
free India. But the half-gods must die, they say, before any real gods emerge.
Religion deals with God, with man’s relation to God
and to the rest of creation, and with the modes of realising Godhead. The
concept of God has undergone a change in modern philosophy and with this change
has come a radical need to reinterpret life in terms of it. Bosanquet once said
that it takes the whole Mind to call the whole of Reality. As truly, it needs
all Faith to accept the integrity of all Being and Becoming. Religion in this
sense asks for perpetual faith and perpetual endeavour here and how, hereafter
and ever, till the last bondage snaps for the last created thing and total
ripeness and fulfillment so satisfies God that He might end this and take up
another experiment to divert Himself with. A modern Indian could be content
with nothing less without cramping his style.
Instead of such life-giving faith what do we really
see? A new Paganism–gross and animal, a Satyrism, if you please–has crept into
our country. It is calling itself freedom and calls alluringly to all. It has
all the glamour of modernity. Habits of life in food, dress, shelter, movement,
courtesy, grace of manner and speech, arts, crafts, theories and fashions, rush
of enthusiasm, group behaviour–all call more and more passionately to the
delights of physical living and away from all those gracing; chastening
disciplines which used to sustain high levels of conduct.
In every age and land the number of people of fine
quality is always limited. The life of the spirit is ever beset with travail
because it asks for self-control, self-criticism, and hard striving. But all
this could be understood and let be if the general direction at least was
sensed and right. Unfortunately our values are getting muddled. Life is once
again, desiring to be lived at the roots of animal being: more at the level of
the instincts, and passion,–appetitiveness of every kind–than of Intelligence
and Reason. Worse. Doctrines which say that pity and grace, love and tolerance
are effeminate qualities, that tough races only have the right to rule, that
the history of man has gone on wrong tracks during the Christian millennia and
that ruthless efforts should be made to make life brutal again, that all means
are right to promote ends, are gaining hold of men. Liquidation of difference
of opinion is the method and mantra. Or, systems where the
State-machinery and its masters occupy the pedestal occupiable only by God are
claiming worship and suppress other modes of thought and behaviour. Violence
deemed a valid sanction is oppressing spirit and destroying the basis of what
was built up with care and loving devotion as culture. In one form or other
this philosophy of violence is throwing up radical modes of feeling and action
which threaten to overwhelm mankind.
Good people who have seen the injustice of an
earlier order are in doubt whether they may not pay the price temporarily to
make possible an overhauling of the system so as ‘to remould it nearer to
heart’s desire’–with equality and brotherhood for man, perfect justice, a
classless society, opportunities open similarly to all, telling that the State
will ‘wither away’ as soon as this is wrought. The while that it tightens coils
using a voice more and more ominous to hear! Which alternative will influence
intelligent and humane men we cannot say. It is a question of temperament,
perhaps, but the drift of tendencies fills one’s mind with fear, and it does
not encourage a hope. Indian religion will have to take note of this situation
as well before it sets to tidy itself and then order a life of its own. Even
for this, it must ‘die to live.’ For old ideas and methods are insufficient and
old cries have become suspect. They must be transformed to suit new aspiration.
People who are unable, for selfishness, ignorance, and passion, to live a life
of Reason cannot live the loftier life of the Spirit. For that is more
exacting: and Spirit is too great a term to be used lightly. A Pharisee or snob
may use it to grind his vanity or vaunt his superiority; but the Grace that
saves, the flue that transmutes, and the light that illumines the darkness will
have to work again in and through the new milieu; work in each life to
redeem each separately. There is no fruitful or immediate future for any other
religion in India.
We have been a subject people far too long and have
had our wings clipped in every flight. Those who have not been permitted to do
things as they like and are forced to obey other bindings lose their power of
initiative and creativeness. We have all these days done well or ill the tasks
set to us; vied with each other in working out the will of the masters; often
believed that as virtue. The English education we received, while it has freed
us in many respects, has done its bit to sterilise us. The country has two
kinds of the educated: Those who received this education and opened their minds
to an international reference and those who kept to the indigenous lore.
Neither has understood the other; nor trusted, nor respected. Those who know
only the ancient have set and case-hardened at the old level; sotted and
begrimed with definition, gloss and polemics, and with defensive and offensive
logic directed to win the ever same victories in argument. They have had no
access to the knowledge which could have brought new air and light and new
accession of riches on other or enlarged premises–which England or some great
European language could bring. The stagnation resulting has been deep and
deplorable. Even as too much inbreeding is said to produce thinness of blood,
this living ever on one’s own spare riches has impoverished us. The English
educated have gained some sort of width of outlook, but they know little of
their own heritage. This has made them helpless and dependent on others for
dear life and for essential movement. Except as they get crutches they cannot
move; except as they see with other’s eyes they cannot see. To keep abreast of
the thought in the books and journals pouring at the speed of thousands every
day–across the Atlantic, across the Pacific–absorbs all their labour and time.
This incessant impact of matter of the most diverse kind–this ravage–has been
enough to kill independent thinking. Our heritage is, for one thing, in
uncurrent and difficult languages–Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Pali,
Ardhamagadhi–not easily accessible–and for another, scholastic accretions make
it forbidding of approach. If this class of people advanced in thought at all,
it was like the orchids or as parasites with no roots in the soil, lacking
sustenance from the healthful earth. Free life needs free thought and free
modes of spacious living. And when we remember how much leeway has to be made
even to catch up with others, we shall realise how responsible and urgent is
our task.
A land which was in the vanguard of progress in
Philosophy and other branches of thought is pitifully panting behind every new
prophet–still ‘rag-picking at other people’s dust bins.’ This description is as
true in the social and other mental sciences, The first thing to do, therefore,
is to gather the live part of our heritage to build on it; to clear the dead
wood and the jungle; what is wanting in our equipment, approach, and substance,
should be earned and added to stock and a new careering started on the uncharted
seas full of adventure and cheer.
What of Religion in this enterprise? Religion has
roughly two roles to play anywhere, a private, and a public. When India is
declared a secular State, it will have no State Religion to which the rest of
the people must conform.4 All religions will have equal rights in
the body politic to exist and to pursue an even course so long as they do
menace each other or disturb the peace and security of the State. They will be
safeguarded by the law of the land. Their usefulness will have to be in strict
conformity with public law. No religion can claim prerogatives and immunities
which are not granted also to others. Freedom may be enjoyed within their
organisation in so far as their followers accept them privately by free and full
consent. Like, the individual’s right to private freedom, the rights of each
religion will be private. So will its validates and jurisdictions be. Like
corporation, like a municipal or local body, like a University, they will enjoy
a specific, autonomous but limited public status.
And it is best that this be so. For in the highest
sense Religion is an intimate private relation between a man and his God.
5 Qualitative refinements of personality or prayers to and enjoyment of
Grace and communion will be more a reality that way than as public shows and
flourishes. A Religion’s will then be a lawful and good influence than when it
asks to permeate all aspects of social being, to the exclusion of other similar
claims–claiming rigid conformity to its pattern on pain of penalty or
ostracism. “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and unto God what belongs
to God” is, in its kind, a wholesome maxim. But conflicts between the two will
have to be resolved in the normal way. Not by the State enforcing party decrees
on religious matters unless referred to it; nor by Religion arrogating to
itself in secular references a superiority which it cannot digest or claim.
This means that Religion’s domination as
institutional Religion will grow less and less. Sectarianism, ritual, the
choking pieties, the prerogatives and demands, will shrink in value. Already
much of its territory it has had to yield to specialist studies and to the
other departments of doing and being to which they more legitimately belong.
Much of the superstition it has clouded the world with and the gullibility
which it has exploited it must learn to do without. It must be content to be a
more modest claimant to obedience and loyalty. Knowing its limits and that it
can work only through impulses to good and godly conduct, it must inform life
and conduct in its unique way, sweetening, strengthening, cleansing and gracing
all along.
Anything like Religion’s old overwhelming
importance in social and secular life seems, therefore, impossible hereafter
and wrong. What influence it can exercise will have to be used to promote good
life continually in terms of the contemporary environment. Else it will wither
or be cleared away. Or, if it gets loyalty–it will be in defiance of the
State–when it is subject to penalty–or, as weak and hypocritical shows. Or,
Religion becomes a more particular absorption of those only who have a metier
for it, who then withdraw from the world into the fastness of their soul to
seek particular types of deliverance and wisdom and for communion with their
particular description of God. Saivism and Vaishnavism, Saktism and Jainism–all
have put forth their logical possibilities of expression by now. They have to
suit themselves to the new need if they aspire to function for public good, take
their place with the rest of the ordering of things, and pursue their special
ways without dividing men setting them at strife with one another. Or, they
will have to seek cloister and solitude esoterically to minister to minds which
yield to their singular beatitudes. However that be, it must not be beneath
their dignity to work for the common good, each in its individual way; along
with the sciences, the arts, the technologies, the philosophical systems and
the many other agencies which gird up for such task.
1 Though, when we talk
of Religion in India, all religions practised here should come into review.
2 In itself this may be
neither gain nor loss. One might say it is even natural. But we can overdo the
attitude.
3 Though this is the
purpose of education and all cultural endeavour.
4 There will at least
be no such grotesquerie hereafter as a non-votable Church of England charge on
the public revenues of India.
5 The training of the
Free man and the full man is a cherished goal of all endeavour, and when one
such being rises it is a great day in the history of Religion and of mankind.