THE SPIRIT OF TOLERANCE
ACHARYA
VINOBA BHAVE
If
we look at the history of India without a bias, we find that, despite the many
wars fought in India and despite much that has been cruel,
this land has been tolerant of and welcoming to all. It has borne many a heavy
burden.
There
are some who think this is a sign of weakness. But look at the fate today of
those who did not have the spirit of tolerance and accommodation and who
believed in the aggressive posture, and you know the enormous power of the spirit
of tolerance and accommodation. Rome and Greece lacked
the spirit of tolerance and lived by and large on aggression. Where are these
Great Powers of ancient times? India,
in contrast, still is the good old India. Time had its impact, it is
true, but India’s
language, thinking, philosophy of life, literature and
much else have stood the test of time. The India of old has certainly not
vanished like the aggressive societies of old.
At
the same time, we find pervading squalor in India. This is hundreds of years
old. When foreign rule began in this country, the time-honoured
village organisation broke up, and as a result the
value given in Indian culture to cleanliness vanished. Today the situation is
that the scientific cleanliness brought by the West has not pervaded Indian
society, and the spiritual cleanliness that was the hallmark of our culture has
vanished. The Vedas were so conscious of cleanliness that they said – on
getting up in the morning one should wash one’s eyes before looking at the
stars and planets. The idea was that one should be mentally, physically and
sensually clean before doing anything sacred–and the stars and planets were
considered sacred. Cleanliness was a unique part of Indian culture and
religion, so much so that to be unclean was considered irreligious and
un-Indian. The scriptures had as a rule whole sections devoted to cleanliness,
just as hygiene and sanitation have their inevitable niche in modern social
values.
This
is no longer so, and there is a lot of uncleanliness in India. Yet, surprisingly, the
thinking and culture of this country still have a
certain Indianness in them. It is the power of
the spirit.
Here
is an old story about India’s
power of the spirit. Alexander invaded India and was one day walking in
the streets of a town he had conquered when he met a fakir on the roadside. He
was a spiritual man and such men were called rishis
in those days, though later they came to be known as fakirs. Those were times
2200 years ago. Alexander hailed the man and asked him who
was the king of the earth on which he was standing, whereupon the fakir replied
that he knew: it was the man to whom Alexander was talking. He said it
with such conviction that Greek thinkers accompanying Alexander concluded there
must be another, more painless, way of conquering the world than Alexander’s,
or else how could this lonely man make such a claim? And yet this
self-proclaimed king of the earth on which he was standing had no contention
with Alexander, the other claimant to the conquest.
It
is this spirit of tolerance that is India’s pride and power. In modern
times, Gandhiji showed us the power of this spirit of
tolerance and suffering. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had defined this spirit thus regard yourself as
humble as a straw and be tolerant like the tree.
All
kinds of creeds have come to India,
and not all have come through aggression. Some came
seeking shelter and succour. Nearly thirteen or
fourteen hundred years ago the Parsis came from Iran to the Bombay coast seeking shelter, and they did
get shelter and protection. They came condemning the gods and praising the
demons, for in Persian God is called demon and the demon is called God. It must
have sounded strange to people here, and even sacrilegious, yet these
expatriates were welcomed with love and allowed to follow their creed
absolutely unhampered and with complete freedom.
People
in Europe and elsewhere have only now started
talking of co-existence. Co-existence means that peoples of different cultures
should live together and in harmony. No one should attack anyone’s way of life.
India
has innumerable castes – castes which no one wants now and to obliterate whom
it is the duty of each of us. But if we take the historical perspective, the
birth of these castes can be traced to the spirit of co-existence. It was in India that East
and West met. It was in India
that people with diametrically opposed scales of values – one considering
something sacred and holy, the other considering the same thing unholy –
coalesced and learnt to live together not only in one country but in the same
village. Sometimes there are different localities in the same village for
different sections of the population, sometimes adjacent villages have been
settled with different sections of the population but living in harmony. Today
this may look sectarian, but in those far off days such harmonious living was a
unique example of Indian culture. No society should attack us, and our society
should attack no other, and the two should be assimilated into each other by love
and mutual accommodation–this is the essence of humane social behaviour. Of course everything suits a particular time and
may look incongruous and harmful in another context. But the point is that even
the origin of caste is a sign of co-existence in the particular context of
those times.
The
Upanishads say: “Stand like a tree, do not budge even when somebody is cutting
you down.” The reason behind this edict is that tolerance has the power to win.
The verb “saha” in Sanskrit has appropriately two
meanings: one, to brave or stand up to something, and the other to win. The
Vedas use this word and in fact the word “singh”, or
victor, emanates from “saha”. The one who can
tolerate or stand up to things can alone win. This is India’s
philosophy. The problem today is how to express this power collectively.
But
while India
had these virtues, there were vices also. Contact and assimilation with the new
modern culture is working to cure Indian culture of the vices it has
contracted. If the Indian people keep this in mind, a whole vista of
progress will open up before them.