In his economic interpretation of history, the
prophet of Communism, Marx, regards the proletarian, the working class, as the
true and only builder of national life, and ignores the spiritual genius, the exceptional
man. India, through the ages of her history, has stood up for a different
ideal: India has always offered the reverent homage of her heart to her seers
and sages and has acclaimed them as the true heroes of her history. India has
frankly stood up for God and God-men. This, it seems to me, is the reason of
India’s continued existence, while other nations–great and mighty in their own
days–have, one after another, crumbled to their fall. Rome and Greece and
Babylonia ran after the things of the world, temporary, transient, passing:
today, they are but dim memories of an ancient past. But India, building her
life on the firm bed-rock of spiritual idealism, still lives on, still declares
the ancient truth that history is more than prices and wages, more than the
shouts and shows of politicians and statesmen, more than the was and victories
of kings and emperors. History is made by supermen–seers and sages, thinkers
and artists, Yogis and Saints–who declare the Divine Principle of life and
mould men into instruments of the Eternal.
Age after age have such great ones appeared and
kept up the process of India’s renewal and rejuvenation. India today, has
fallen on dark days. Long-continued slavery, sectarian strife, communal
warfare, deep misunderstandings, daily friction and contradiction seem to sap
the life of this great and gifted country. But not yet have the real guardians
of her destiny deserted her. For even in our own day we have had men like
Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, Pandit Malaviyaji and Subhas Chandra
Bose, Sri Aurobindo and T. L. Vaswani,–great ones, mighty ones such as the most
gifted among the nations of the earth may be proud of.
Born sixty-seven years ago, Vaswaniji has spent the
best years of his life in awakening the youth of India whom he has loved to
call “the greatest guarantee of the future”. “An eternal shakti lies
locked up within you, young men!” his words ring clear and sharp. “Call it up
and use it for the service of India, and India’s chains will break. And She who
led civilisation, will march on again to Her great mission. She will be a
teacher of the national and a healer of humanity.” He urges upon young men to
build up their manhood. “Freedom”, he says, “will not come as a gift received
at alien doors. Freedom can only be the creation of India’s blood and
determination to work out her salvation out of her own eternal strength.”
Carrying this message, he moves on from place to place with the Flame of
Freedom in his soul, the Dream of Independence in his eyes.
He was Principal of the Dyal Sing College, Lahore:
he was still in his thirties when the call came to him to give up everything at
the altar of service. “Why do you give up such a lucrative job?” they said to
him. “You are still young; you have a bright future before you; you can make
money, heaps of money.” “Life is not given to make money,” he replied. And they
asked him, “What is the purpose of life?” He replied, “To dedicate it to Love
Divine: to serve and be poured out as a sacrifice!”
Over 37 years ago, Vaswaniji–then senior Professor
in the D. J. Sind College, Karachi,–went to Berlin as one of India’s
representatives to the World Congress of Religions. His speech before that
august assembly and his subsequent lectures in different parts of Europe on India’s
message to the nations aroused deep interest in Indian thought and religion,
and linked up many with him in India’s mission of help and healing to
humanity,–so much so, that his name came to be coupled with those of Mahatma
Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore as one of the three leaders of India.
India, he profoundly believes, has a message to
give to the modern nations. Addressing a meeting of the “Association of Indian
Culture” at Calcutta two years ago, he said:
“To a Europe in ruins, to a West in the flames of
war, India’s message is of renewal and freedom from greed and violence, so that
the technical civilisation of today may become one of brotherliness, sympathy
and service. The restless energies of Europe lead to fever and frustration;
these energies need to be used in the service of Man by being linked up to the
spirit!”
He teaches by precept and example that life is
larger than livelihood. He urges that character, not money, should rule the
world: and character must grow out of courage. He is careful to point out that
courage must be distinguished from the will-to-power, which makes men and
nations aggressive and selfish. He asks young men to study the truths of modern
life, but he pleads with them not to forget their own culture. He warns them that
schools and colleges in India are a home neither of English culture nor of
Indian wisdom: they are at best so many ‘caves’ in which students receive
‘blurred images’. “Come out of the caves,” he says to them, and “turn to the
light of the sun, the light of Indian culture, and you will know what I share
India can have in the international exchange of thought and life.”
He goes from place to place, giving knowledge to
all, not seeking the honours of the earth but rejoicing in wisdom as his
wealth, and in the service of the poor and lowly as the treasure of his quest.
Of such as him the Chinese pilgrim to India centuries ago declared: “For them
there is no honour except in knowing truth and no disgrace in being destitute.”
This great one, whom the Irish poet, Dr. Cousins,
greeted many years ago as India’s modern mystic, is a seer. What does he see?
In his heart he sees the grandeur of an India going upon a mission of help and
healing to the nations. He sees India being accepted by the nations of the East
and the nations of the West as their teacher and preceptor. In his heart he
sees the birth of a new India “strong in the strength of her ancient wisdom and
in touch with modern science and culture”. These and other things he sees in
his heart more clearly than a man beholds a distant star through a telescope.
But he is not blind to the realities of the situation around him. A great and
mighty future awaits this ancient land, it is true; but what is the situation
in India today? In a recent letter to a friend, he summed up the situation
thus:
“I confess my heart becomes sad, sometimes, as it
surveys the situation. The tragedy of today is that chaotic elements are
rising; the structure of a society and morality reared by poets and prophets,
whose vision embraced the Hindu and the Muslims, the believer and the agnostic,
is being engulfed in a rising sea of accumulated rage and inflamed
sectarianism. The peasant and the village-folk are falling, alas! into the
hands of the priest; the industrialists, enslaving the workers, accumulate and
exchange, while the sense of beauty and worship decays in the cities where
money becomes Lord and there is no soul.”
How can such an India find its place in the
counsels of the nations? How can such an India make her message heard in the
modern world? India must become herself before she can be honoured by the
nations of the earth. And, to be herself, India must be free. This freedom is
to be not merely political: it is also freedom from the bondage of customs,
institutions, creeds which for centuries have choked the current of our life.
If India is to be born anew in vigour and in strength, India must be truly
free. Passionate is his love for Indian freedom. He expresses it in his social,
political and religious views and, above all, in his actions. Love of freedom
is, perhaps, the strongest passion of his soul,–freedom not of action merely,
but of thought.
Today politics is the passion and pursuit of the
nation. According to Vaswaniji politics is merely one of the four aspects of freedom,–the
other three being civil, social and religious. In his Apostles of Freedom,
he urges that a nation to be free must take note of all the four aspects.
Politics is only one channel of a nation’s life. Home, workshop, school,
profession,–all are to him symbols of the National Spirit. When, in our
enthusiasm for the political, we neglect the other spheres and they cease to be
organs of the spirit of Freedom, then, indeed, politics get easily corrupted
and the country wanders from distraction to distraction.
His message is so simple. He preaches no abstruse
philosophy, advocates no unintelligible theology. His teaching, in brief, is
that in the love of God and the Service of man is the secret of true life.
The modern man, be knows, fights shy of God and
religion. To Vaswaniji, God is the supreme reality of life. The modern world,
he says, has divorced God and has forgotten the golden rule of Love, and so is
unhappy, restless. “Our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in
Thee,”–declared the Jewish seer. “Call Him by any name you will,” say Vaswaniji
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, Joy. His is the power that thrills the worlds from
end to end. In his outlook upon life, he is profoundly religious. But religion
to him is not a creed, not a dogma, not submission to any external authority,
priest, dictator, temple or scripture. Religion is a Way of Life, a Way of
Understanding. He believes that behind economics lie ethics and right ethics
spring from spiritual life. He feels that man needs a religion, spiritual chart
to lead him through darkness into light. The dream is in his eyes,–of a New
Religion,–a Religion cleansed of creeds and dogmas, a New Religion essentially
practical, a Religion building on this earth, and not merely promising in
Heaven, a Kingdom of Happiness.
To build this Kingdom of Happiness on earth, men
must work, toil, labour in the “vineyard of the Lord”, helping on each other
along the difficult pathways of life. So the second point emphasised in his
teaching is service of man. He says:
“If there is one religion which India and the
nations need today, it is worship of the poor. Young men! There is the great
work for you. It will sanctify your lives. In the cottages of the poor, there
dwells the great God. In their tears and groans, in their prayers and
aspirations is His call to you, young men!”
His own feeling of unity with the poor is intense.
With child-like, wonder-filled eyes he moves among them, serving them with
singular devotion. In his dress and food he is always simple, and, as the
greatest only are, he is in his simplicity sublime. He eats very little: and
his clothes are of hand-spun, hand-woven khaddar. For years together he has not
known what it is to have one’s stomach full. This prince amongst men has
subjected himself to the discipline of eating very little, because he knows
that millions of his countrymen do not get even that little. It is enough, he
says, if our clothes protect us from cold and our food gives us sufficient
strength to be able to serve the distressed and the needy. In St. Mira’s New
Building which has cost over two and a half lakhs, they wished to build for him
the best quarters that modern architecture could devise; but he would have
nothing of it. “A simple mud hut will do for me”, he said. He is fond of
scratching his back with a small wooden stick. A rich admirer,–a partner in a
well-known firm of Calcutta jewelers,–got a pretty ‘scratcher’ made of silver
for him. “I cannot accept such a useless gift,” he said, “give me things which
I can give away to the poor and needy.” He always feels happy when he gives to
the needy. He gives them his money, his time, his energy. A beggar, whose body
was bare, asked for his shirt; he parted with the shirt on the spot. The beggar
demanded his cap; he gave away the cap also. And on his face played a beautiful
smile, which is visible only on the faces of those who have realised the joy of
a life of renunciation.
He shuns meeting many people; he is happy in the
company of a few simple souls. He speaks to them of the simple life, of how to
walk the little way, avoiding the world’s gilded vanities, and of how to greet
God’s simplicities that wander in the world asking for a home in the hearts of
the poor in spirit. Is it any wonder that those who come in contact with him
get linked up with him in a spirit of tender devotion? They obey him implicitly
and spontaneously: they call him their Dada. We read in one of Hans Andersen’s Tales
about a man who had the mysterious power of opening people’s hearts and
seeing what was inside them. Such a man is T. L. Vaswani; and many of those who
meet him say that he can read the hearts of men like the pages of an open book.
He is a born orator. He addresses large crowds of
men and women. They hear him; they marvel at his words. He awakens new
aspirations in the hearts of those that listen to him. When he speaks he fills
the hall with the rich music of his words and the richer music of his heart.
He works on, day after day,–wanting nothing for
himself, seeking only opportunities to serve the poor and lowly, the distressed
and oppressed. His body is frail but he feels he has the strength of ten,
because in his heart is love and every fiber of his being thrills with faith in
the living Lord. “In His love”, he says, “the Lord has broken, is breaking my
life into innumerable fragments and scattering them in different directions.
May every fragment serve Him, singing His Name,–the Name of the Beloved!”
He heals many sorrowing hearts; and in wisdom and
love he helps many of those who struggle through the dark forest of this life.
His face radiates the love which fills his heart, and on his countenance is the
calm born of deep faith in God. “Happy is my heart”, reads an entry in his Jail
Dairy, “which rejoices in doing simple daily tasks and leaves the rest to God,
the Builder of destiny.”
With this conviction, in this faith, he has gone to
many climes in East and West, carrying everywhere the message of Ancient
Wisdom, voicing everywhere the greatness and glory of Aryavarta, comforting men
and women of hope, cheering them on life’s pilgrim way, encouraging them in the
good path, restraining them from the path of evil, imploring all to believe in
the brotherhood of religions, the unity of all races, the fellowship of all
nations.