LIBERALISM, FANATICISM, REASON AND REALISATION
The liberal movement has to be intensified but in a liberal way. Fanaticism wins in the savage state of evolution but must yield eventually before the forces of reason and enlightenment.
Mere rationality is not wisdom, though. There are dark forces lurking there, too. Thus have we witnessed the brutality of communism in the name of reason and revolution, the Reign of Terror unleashed by Robespierre at the height of the French Revolution and the savage march of European civilisation post-Enlightenment, all in the name of reason and light.
The human nervous organisation is complex and needs more than reason to clarify or satisfy its cravings. The mind itself is literally a lunatic asylum of battling ideas, conflicting currents and savage impulses. Add to that the unseen forces of the subconscious and you have the picture perfect of man in all his monstrosity. To posit, therefore, the view that reason alone will resolve the existing anomalies of the human situation will be to overstate the power of reason as the tool of instrumental change in life. Let us admit then that reason has its refined endowments and reason has its crude limitations, too.
Life is not all reason. Life is emotion as well. There must be poetry in life, -- art, beauty, music, -- culture in all its delightfully dispersed colours. Love, that primordial impulse that draws man to man, yet dominates the landscape that is humanity even as its aberration in hate destroys human hopes. The situation is complex, the problem profound and merits a solution that is far more comprehensive than the modern messiahs of reason offer. Hence, the problem remains largely unattended even today and humans engage ceaselessly in savage resolutions of their problems in the 'light' of ancient darkness.
But all is not dark of the past. Great gleams of light stream through the corridors of bygone ages and even now illumine our path as we tread the uncharted terrain of our expanding horizons. Herein lies the significance of history, herein lies our creative and continuing link to the past, our hoary heritage holding us, what our Hrishis have so aptly articulated as the Dharma. It is this Dharma that has held us together through the dark ages of interminable tyranny and it is this Dharma that has withstood the shocks of savage incursions into the citadels of our civilisation and saved its strongholds from ultimate destruction to perpetuate yet our civilisation for posterity. And this Sanatan Dharma is not all based on mere reason. It is realisation that runs through its nerve fibre, never contradicting reason but ever transcending it. If ever liberalism there has been, it is here in the Vedic Dharma that it has reached its acme of perfection. Liberals, learn !
In his San Francisco lecture 'Is Vedanta the Future Religion' Swami Vivekananda had said that liberalism dies. He meant that in the existent state of the world till date liberalism has struggled to survive against the current of fanatical movements which have held sway over humanity in every sense of the term. Thus, every time a truly liberal voice was heard in the vast wilds of evolving humanity, it was silenced brutally and the fledgling movement for the liberation of the human spirit died its unnatural death. But the voice of freedom could neither be stifled nor stilled for good and again and again sounded the clarion call for freedom from the shackles of orthodoxy, from the chains of cultural corruption that held humans in captivity.
Thus, human society has evolved through the complex resolution of historical forces, through the combating of conflicting currents and through the progressive clarification of confused consciousness as to the higher imperatives of life. But 'sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth' -- these were the words of Vivekananda in his opening Chicago address. And it is these forces of the dark that have thwarted the attempted advances of liberalism.
India has been a glorious exception to this animal principle of Darwinian evolution in socio-cultural terms. Swami Vivekananda had once explained the Hindu theory of human evolution beyond the animal physical level. He had shown how our ancient thinkers like Patanjali had elucidated evolution in terms of 'prakrityaapuraan' or the infilling of nature. As if in fulfilment of this evolutionary principle, the Indian civilisation has for millenia not undergone animal conflict and competition, elimination of the weaker species and the consequent survival of the fittest has never been the dominant theme of social existence of the Indian people. Blessed by the spirit of the Hrishis, India has apparently defied this animal principle of evolution to highlight the higher principle of spiritual evolution by enlightened living and treading the path traversed and illuminated by the sages down the country's historical timeline.
The Indian civilisation stands singularly distinct in this respect from the civilisations of the rest of the world. While other civilisations triumphed by the power of the sword for the hour and disappeared when that power was exhausted, leaving behind relics of their vanishing grandeur, the Indian civilisation drew its strength from the eternal fountain of the Vedas, which are the repository of all spiritual truths, to withstand the shocks of alien thrusts into its culture and emerge as the only surviving ancient civilisation with a cultural continuity to this day. While ephemeral material orders came into transient existence elsewhere, ancient India came into close contact with the touchstone of the eternal being and gained immortality. Thus, Hinduism, a verbal aberration of the Sanatan Dharma, saved India from crude cultural corruption and elevated her temporal life to a plane higher than mere matter can ever envisage. As such, the Sanatan Dharma emanating from India has made liberalism its core principle as illustrated by the worship of one's Ishta or the Chosen Deity, universal acceptance its mode and humanity above all ritualistic forms of worship. To label the Hindu as fanatical is, thus, a contradiction in terms and must be effectively countered.
Written by Sugata Bose
The liberal movement has to be intensified but in a liberal way. Fanaticism wins in the savage state of evolution but must yield eventually before the forces of reason and enlightenment.
Mere rationality is not wisdom, though. There are dark forces lurking there, too. Thus have we witnessed the brutality of communism in the name of reason and revolution, the Reign of Terror unleashed by Robespierre at the height of the French Revolution and the savage march of European civilisation post-Enlightenment, all in the name of reason and light.
The human nervous organisation is complex and needs more than reason to clarify or satisfy its cravings. The mind itself is literally a lunatic asylum of battling ideas, conflicting currents and savage impulses. Add to that the unseen forces of the subconscious and you have the picture perfect of man in all his monstrosity. To posit, therefore, the view that reason alone will resolve the existing anomalies of the human situation will be to overstate the power of reason as the tool of instrumental change in life. Let us admit then that reason has its refined endowments and reason has its crude limitations, too.
Life is not all reason. Life is emotion as well. There must be poetry in life, -- art, beauty, music, -- culture in all its delightfully dispersed colours. Love, that primordial impulse that draws man to man, yet dominates the landscape that is humanity even as its aberration in hate destroys human hopes. The situation is complex, the problem profound and merits a solution that is far more comprehensive than the modern messiahs of reason offer. Hence, the problem remains largely unattended even today and humans engage ceaselessly in savage resolutions of their problems in the 'light' of ancient darkness.
But all is not dark of the past. Great gleams of light stream through the corridors of bygone ages and even now illumine our path as we tread the uncharted terrain of our expanding horizons. Herein lies the significance of history, herein lies our creative and continuing link to the past, our hoary heritage holding us, what our Hrishis have so aptly articulated as the Dharma. It is this Dharma that has held us together through the dark ages of interminable tyranny and it is this Dharma that has withstood the shocks of savage incursions into the citadels of our civilisation and saved its strongholds from ultimate destruction to perpetuate yet our civilisation for posterity. And this Sanatan Dharma is not all based on mere reason. It is realisation that runs through its nerve fibre, never contradicting reason but ever transcending it. If ever liberalism there has been, it is here in the Vedic Dharma that it has reached its acme of perfection. Liberals, learn !
In his San Francisco lecture 'Is Vedanta the Future Religion' Swami Vivekananda had said that liberalism dies. He meant that in the existent state of the world till date liberalism has struggled to survive against the current of fanatical movements which have held sway over humanity in every sense of the term. Thus, every time a truly liberal voice was heard in the vast wilds of evolving humanity, it was silenced brutally and the fledgling movement for the liberation of the human spirit died its unnatural death. But the voice of freedom could neither be stifled nor stilled for good and again and again sounded the clarion call for freedom from the shackles of orthodoxy, from the chains of cultural corruption that held humans in captivity.
Thus, human society has evolved through the complex resolution of historical forces, through the combating of conflicting currents and through the progressive clarification of confused consciousness as to the higher imperatives of life. But 'sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth' -- these were the words of Vivekananda in his opening Chicago address. And it is these forces of the dark that have thwarted the attempted advances of liberalism.
India has been a glorious exception to this animal principle of Darwinian evolution in socio-cultural terms. Swami Vivekananda had once explained the Hindu theory of human evolution beyond the animal physical level. He had shown how our ancient thinkers like Patanjali had elucidated evolution in terms of 'prakrityaapuraan' or the infilling of nature. As if in fulfilment of this evolutionary principle, the Indian civilisation has for millenia not undergone animal conflict and competition, elimination of the weaker species and the consequent survival of the fittest has never been the dominant theme of social existence of the Indian people. Blessed by the spirit of the Hrishis, India has apparently defied this animal principle of evolution to highlight the higher principle of spiritual evolution by enlightened living and treading the path traversed and illuminated by the sages down the country's historical timeline.
The Indian civilisation stands singularly distinct in this respect from the civilisations of the rest of the world. While other civilisations triumphed by the power of the sword for the hour and disappeared when that power was exhausted, leaving behind relics of their vanishing grandeur, the Indian civilisation drew its strength from the eternal fountain of the Vedas, which are the repository of all spiritual truths, to withstand the shocks of alien thrusts into its culture and emerge as the only surviving ancient civilisation with a cultural continuity to this day. While ephemeral material orders came into transient existence elsewhere, ancient India came into close contact with the touchstone of the eternal being and gained immortality. Thus, Hinduism, a verbal aberration of the Sanatan Dharma, saved India from crude cultural corruption and elevated her temporal life to a plane higher than mere matter can ever envisage. As such, the Sanatan Dharma emanating from India has made liberalism its core principle as illustrated by the worship of one's Ishta or the Chosen Deity, universal acceptance its mode and humanity above all ritualistic forms of worship. To label the Hindu as fanatical is, thus, a contradiction in terms and must be effectively countered.
Written by Sugata Bose
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