UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 3

UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 3

The white man has dominated the world for a long time and still dominates. The rest of the world are yet to develop to their full potential and protect their own interests. The Mongoloid races are showing the way. A showdown could be in the offing but must be avoided.

Competition leads to conflict. It is the animal way. This Darwininan trend of evolution must be combated with enlightenment that replaces it with cooperation and harmonic coexistence. Education can mould the human race and lead to the understanding of its underlying integration. Indian thought must penetrate Western thinking and bring about higher understanding. The Vedanta must be widely dispersed in much the manner Swamiji had wanted it to be, though, despairing of its forthcoming success very much. He had said that it would take several millenia before humanity would be psychologically ready for its lofty message. He had initially pinned great hopes in the United States of America but on his second visit to that country had been disillusioned by its 'dollar imperialism' and given up on it as being the instrument for disseminating the universal principles of the Vedanta that would usher in a new age. Swamiji was horrified by the material gluttony of the West and despairing of the regeneration of the world in the short run but hopeful of it in the long run. And his hope lay in the rise of the masses.

Thus far the historical process has seen the rise of the clergy, the feudal lords and the capitalist. One more stage in social evolution is being awaited, that of the proletariat. Two such major revolutions in Russia and China, and other like revolutions in their countries of influence have after initial success, sustained for decades, failed and given way to counter-revolution. Capitalism with a vengeance has returned to these lands. The world is thus in the grip of the capitalist whose power to explore, extract and exploit the resources of the earth including human resource is increasing by the day with the help of ever-modernising technology. These dollar imperialists, as Swamiji put it, are the emperors of the day.

Swamiji was keenly aware of the social movements in gestation during his time and wanted such revolutions to be guided by assimilation of the best of the previous three epochs, although, he was sceptical of such harmonic success. In the absence of such absorption, culture would diminish in the age of the labouring class, he could clearly see.

Anyhow, coming to the earlier account and analysis of white domination and its reaction. With the spread of education globally, these large differences between the powers of nations will largely diminish and a better world order emerge unless, of course, the world goes to pieces before that through nuclear conflict between the current contenders for global domination or humanity ceases to be in the wake of an environmental catastrophe. Should these two extreme possibilities be averted by human wisdom, then we are in for an age of wide international cooperation which should lift Africa and Latin America out of economic chaos and render life hospitable in decent human terms there as everywhere else.

Einstein had long back suggested a World Government for administering the world. There are hindrances on the way to it, mainly cultural differences with medieval hangovers, that of race, religion, colour and what not. The League of Nations was a failure and the United Nations has been no great a success either. The human gene is selfish, indeed, as Richard Dawkins has pointed out, but humanity need not be subservient to it. Humanity must rise above the genetic plane through spiritual training and this is eminently possible as the brain responds favourably to ideas fed into it. At its worst it leads to indoctrinated fanaticism but at its best it leads to enlightenment. 

Swamiji was well aware of the implications of education and its influence in fashioning human behaviour. What he was more concerned about, though, was as to what would constitute the core content of such education. Here he wished to bring to the door of humanity the message of the Vedanta in all its comprehensiveness so that human perspectives would change and with it human direction and destiny. This mission that he left behind with his followers has, however, not been adequately fulfilled on account of a lack of global vision and a consequent lack of energy and enterprise in carrying it out. This is, therefore, a task for us to do now in the larger interests of humanity and each one of us must contribute to it.

Race, colour, religion, nation, power, profit and all their dubious derivatives spring from ignorance. They have held humanity in thraldom for ages and do so even now despite the tallest of pretensions to the contrary. Here is work at hand, combative destruction of the forces of evil, the ill-begotten progeny of ignorance. 

The social revolution that Swamiji had wished to see in his lifetime did not happen  in his homeland. The independence that he had aspired for his motherland, undivided and whole, did not happen either. India was betrayed into a truncated dominion status and has since never recovered from its ill effects. The motherland was mutilated by the British and the fanatical Muslims who carved two nation states out of the dismemberment of India. Swamiji had never wanted it nor would he have ever approved of it. And herein lies the hope of a future reunion, the ancient motherland rising out of her severed status, individed and whole. This will come to pass as Hinduism is comprehensively regenerated in the vast body of the subcontinent.

Here we are faced with the problem of understanding Swamiji in his comprehensive wholeness.  On one side he  considers God and Truth to be his only politics and on the other side he is deeply concerned about the socioeconomic and political emancipation of the whole of humanity which principally to his mind consisted in the emancipation of the masses held for ages under beastly servitude. The spiritual in Swamiji here overlaps the social and makes reading into him a complex task. It requires great erudition and understanding to unravel this complexity of motivations in Swamiji and the world has been woefully short in doing so thus far. Swamiji has been understood fractionally thus far owing to vested interests. A near comprehensive study was made, though, by Sister Nivedita and by Dr. Bhupendranath Datta. But the latter's analysis, brilliant and thorough, comprehensive and all-encompassing, has been largely neglected by the Ramakrishna Mission owing to organisational compulsions, whatever one may construe of it.

There is this tendency in men to extract meaning out of an event that suits their specific convenience. Hence, interpretation  and emphasis on aspects of a great human event such as Swamiji also follows this dubious fractional pattern. The spiritual person seeks in him pure spirituality devoid of revolutionary sympathies in all its extreme connotations while the revolutionary seeks in him revolutionary content overriding his essential spiritual call to humanity, labelling it as the imperative of an unripe age where religion must necessarily play its part in quickening the masses to action. Each party claims exclusive understanding of the message of the prophet and looks upon the other as being in error. This is the problem. However,  a rare intellect like Nivedita can see through these opposed viewpoints and arrive at a deeper synthesis which is what makes 'The Master As I Saw Him' such a seminal literary enterprise, such a profound statement on Swamiji. But even this seminal study is misinterpreted by these shallow thinkers and Swamiji lies in gestation in the womb of Time for delivery at its fullness.

The essay may be seen to be drifting from the macroscopic to the microscopic as it deals in alternate terms with nation states and races, and then veers back to Swamiji, a mere person of however great a stature. But it must be understood that a prophet like Swamiji encapsulates the hopes and aspirations of the age and his thinking and works, message and directives are intimately entwined with the destiny of the race he represents which in Swamiji's case is the whole human race. Hence, discussing Swamiji is akin to discussing the future and fate of humanity. 

There are two ways to understand a phenomenon like Swamiji. One is to posit mythological attributes and locations as Saptarshi to him and the other is to see him as the human response to the challenges of the times, thrown up from the sea of humanity itself, following the age-old adage, 'Necessity is the mother of invention.' These are radically opposed viewpoints, one a simplistic explanation of complex evolutionary phenomenon and the other the apparently truer explanation of it but only, perhaps, apparently so. Both miss the mark in as much as they emphasise one aspect of an indivisible truth. The material and the spiritual are wedded together to make such a partition unnecessary. Phenomenon is deeper than any explanation, analysis or theorising make of it.

Now coming to the central aspect of Swamiji's truest aspirations for humanity. It was the wholesale emancipation of humankind from material bondage, from primeval ignorance holding it down. Was this to be achieved only through social service, through spiritual practice or through social revolution? What did Swamiji mean when he said that earlier reformers were content to making superficial adjustments to society but  what he wanted was the 'root and branch reform' of society? Did he thus imply that he was for social revolution of the proletariat, of the shudra, as he would put it? What kind of a revolution? A violent one, a la French Revolution? Why then did he aver that the entire country must be flooded first with spirituality before any worthwhile social change was to be effected?

On the other hand, did Swamiji's brother disciples understand him quite? Did they have any inkling of what he was up to in his formative years of wanderjahre as an itinerant monk? Did they ever quite grasp his social philosophy in all its revolutionary significance? Why was Swamiji so frustrated with them in terms of understanding him and his ideas, in terms of giving expression to them in quite the way he wanted? His epistles are replete with his sheer exasperation at his brother disciples and his own early disciples in this regard. Why did Swamiji, just months before his final departure, so give vent to his despair when he said, "If through the workings of Providence this body came into being, it came to be of no use. Brooding on this my mind becomes heavyladen with despair. The intelligent youth have all entered marital life or are of ill-health or enslaved to name and fame."? When the disciple, Sarat Chandra Chakravarty asked him if those who were joining the Ramakrishna Mission were not upto the mark in following him correctly, Swamiji lamented in affirmation that, alas, they were not so. He said, "Where do I find any such who can follow the drift and the range and the scope of my ideas? Those that are joining the Order are unenthusiastic about absorbing lofty ideas. However, if Thakur so wills it, out of these itself in course of time valorous ones will be born who will carry out my ideas and give them concrete shape." These words of Swamiji are of momentous significance in understanding him in essence and in all his comprehensive depth.

Written by Sugata Bose