Philosophy of Hinduism

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Contents

Chapter 1 Philosophy of Hinduism

Does Hinduism recognize Equality?
How does Hinduism stand in this matter?
Does Hinduism recognise Fraternity?
What is the value of such a religion to man ?
On what level does Hindu morality stand?
Of what use is this philosophy of the Upanishadas?

(The script published in the Writings and Speeches, vol. 3 published by

Government of Maharashtra did not have any chapter names. It was
divided in I to VI parts. For the sake of readership convenience we are
providing additional hyperlinks to some paras by way of projecting
some questions in the text. )

Editorial Note:
This script on Philosophy of Hinduism was found as a well-bound copy which
we feel is complete by itself. The whole script seems to be a Chapter of one
big scheme. This foolscap original typed copy consists of 169 pages.—
Editors

CHAPTER I
Philosophy of Hinduism
I
What is the philosophy of Hinduism? This is a question which arises in its
logical sequence. But apart from its logical sequence its importance is such
that it can never be omitted from consideration. Without it no one can
understand the aims and ideals of Hinduism.
It is obvious that such a study must be preceded by a certain amount of
what may be called clearing of the ground and defining of the terms involved.
At the outset it may be asked what does this proposed title comprehend? Is
this title of the Philosophy of Hinduism of the same nature as that of the
Philosophy of Religion? I wish I could commit myself one way or the other on
this point. Indeed I cannot. I have read a good deal on the subject, but I
confess I have not got a clear idea of what is meant by Philosophy of
Religion. This is probably due to two facts. In the first place while religion is
something definite, there is nothing definite * as to what is to be included in the
term philosophy. In the second place Philosophy and Religion have been
adversaries if not actual antagonists as may be seen from the story of the
philosopher and the theologian. According to the story, the two were engaged
in disputation and the theologian accused the philosopher that he was "like a
blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat which was not there". In
reply the philosopher charged the theologian saying that "he was like a blind
man in the dark room, looking for a black cat which was not there but he
declared to have found there". Perhaps it is the unhappy choice of the title —
Philosophy of Religion—which is responsible for causing confusion in the
matter of the exact definition of its field. The nearest approach to an
intelligible statement as to the exact subject matter of Philosophy of Religion I
find in Prof. Pringle-Pattison who observes :—
"A few words may be useful at the outset as an indication of what we
commonly mean by the Philosophy of Religion. Plato described philosophy
long ago as the synoptic view of things. That is to say, it is the attempt to see
things together-to keep all the main features of the world in view, and to grasp
them in their relation to one another as parts of one whole. Only thus can we
acquire a sense of proportion and estimate aright the significance of any
particular range of facts for our ultimate conclusions about the nature of the
world-process and the world-ground. Accordingly, the philosophy of any
particular department of experience, the Philosophy of Religion, the
Philosophy of Art, the Philosophy of Law, is to be taken as meaning an
analysis and interpretation of the experience in question in its bearing upon
our view of man and the world in which he lives. And when the facts upon
which we concentrate are so universal, and in their nature so remarkable, as
those disclosed by the history of religion—the philosophy of man's religious
experience—cannot but exercise a determining influence upon our general
philosophical conclusions. In fact with many writers the particular discussion
tends to merge in the more general."
"The facts with which a philosophy of religion has to deal are supplied by
the history of religion, in the most comprehensive sense of that term. As Tiele
puts it, "all religions of the civilised and uncivilised world, dead and living", is a
`historical and psychological phenomenon' in all its manifestations. These
facts, it should be noted, constitute the data of the philosophy of religion; they
do not themselves constitute a `philosophy' or, in Tiele's use of the term, a
`science' of religion. `If, he says, 1 have minutely described all the religions in
existence, their doctrines, myths and customs, the observances they
inculcate, and the organisation of their adherents, tracing the different
religions from their origin to their bloom and decay, I have merely. Collected
the materials with which the science of religion works'. 'The historical record,
however complete, is not enough; pure history is not philosophy. To achieve a
philosophy of religion we should be able to discover in the varied
manifestations a common principle to whose roots in human nature we can
point, whose evolution we can trace by intelligible-stages from lower to higher
and more adequate forms, as well as its intimate relations with the other main
factors in human civilisation".
If this is Philosophy of Religion it appears to me that it is merely a different
name for that department of study, which is called comparative religion with
the added aim of discovering a common principle in the varied manifestations
of religion. Whatever be the scope and value of such a study, I am using the
title Philosophy of Religion to denote something quite different from the sense
and aim given to it by Prof. Pringle-Pattison. I am using the word Philosophy
in its original sense, which was two-fold. It meant teachings as it did when
people spoke of the philosophy of Socrates or the philosophy of Plato. In
another sense it meant critical reason used in passing judgements upon
things and events. Proceeding on this basis Philosophy of Religion is to me
not a merely descriptive science. I regard it as being both descriptive as well
as normative. In so far as it deals with the teachings of a Religion, Philosophy
of Religion becomes a descriptive science. In so far as it involves the use of
critical reason for passing judgement on those teachings, the Philosophy of
Religion becomes a normative science. From this it will be clear what I shall
be concerned with in this study of the Philosophy of Hinduism. To be explicit I
shall be putting Hinduism on its trial to assess its worth as a way of life.
Here is one part of the ground cleared. There remains another part to be
cleared. That concerns the ascertainment of the factors concerned and the
definitions of the terms I shall be using.
A study of the Philosophy of Religion it seems to me involves the
determination of three dimensions. I call them dimensions because they are
like the unknown quantities contained as factors in a product. One must
ascertain and define these dimensions of the Philosophy of Religion if an
examination of it is to be fruitful.
Of the three dimensions, Religion is the first. One must therefore define
what he understands by religion in order to avoid argument being directed at
cross-purposes. This is particularly necessary in the case of Religion for the
reason that there is no agreement as to its exact definition. This is no place to
enter upon an elaborate consideration of this question. I will therefore content
myself by stating the meaning in which I am using the word in the discussion,
which follows.
I am using the word Religion to mean Theology. This will perhaps be
insufficient for the purposes of definition. For there are different kinds of
Theologies and I must particularise which one I mean. Historically there have
been two Theologies spoken of from ancient times. Mythical theology and
Civil theology. The Greeks who distinguished them gave each a definite
content. By Mythical theology they meant the tales of gods and their doings
told in or implied by current imaginative literature. Civil theology according to
them consisted of the knowledge of the various feasts and fasts of the State
Calendar and the ritual appropriate to them. I am not using the word theology
in either of these two senses of that word. I mean by theology natural
theology which is-the doctrine of God and the divine, as an integral part of the
theory of nature. As traditionally understood there are three thesis which
`natural theology' propounds. (1) That God exists and is the author of what we
call nature or universe (2) That God controls all the events which make nature
and (3) God exercises a government over mankind in accordance with his
sovereign moral law.
I am aware there is another class of theology known as Revealed
Theology—spontaneous self disclosure of divine reality—which may be
distinguished from Natural theology. But this distinction does not really matter.
For as has been pointed out that a revelation may either "leave the results
won by Natural theology standing without modifications, merely
supplementing them by further knowledge not attainable by unassisted
human effort" or it "may transform Natural theology in such a way that all the
truths of natural theology would acquire richer and deeper meaning when
seen in the light of a true revelation." But the view that a genuine natural
theology and a genuine revelation theology might stand in real contradiction
may be safely excluded as not being possible.
Taking the three thesis of Theology namely (1) the existence of God, (2)
God's providential government of the universe and (3) God's moral
government of mankind, I take Religion to mean the propounding of an ideal
scheme of divine governance the aim and object of which is to make the
social order in which men live a moral order. This is what I understand by
Religion and this is the sense in which I shall be using the term Religion in
this discussion.
The second dimension is to know the ideal scheme for which a Religion
stands. To define what is the fixed, permanent and dominant part in the
religion of any society and to separate its essential characteristics from those
which are unessential is often very difficult. The reason for this difficulty in all
probability lies in the difficulty pointed out by Prof. Robertson Smith when he
says:—
"The traditional usage of religion had grown up gradually in the course of
many centuries, and reflected habits of thought, characteristic of very diverse
stages of man's intellectual and moral development. No conception of the
nature of the gods could possibly afford the clue to all parts of that motley
complex of rites and ceremonies which the later paganism had received by
inheritance, from a series of ancestors in every state of culture from pure
savagery upwards. The record of the religious thought of mankind, as it is
embodied in religious institutions, resembles the geological record of the
history of the earth's crust; the new and the old are preserved side by side, or
rather layer upon layer".
The same thing has happened in India. Speaking about the growth of
Religion in India, says Prof. Max Muller :—
"We have seen a religion growing up from stage to stage, from the simplest
childish prayers to the highest metaphysical abstractions. In the majority of
the hymns of the Veda we might recognise the childhood; in the Brahmanas
and their sacrificial, domestic and moral ordinances the busy manhood; in the
Upanishads the old age of the Vedic religion. We could have well understood
if, with the historical progress of the Indian mind, they had discarded the
purely childish prayers as soon as they had arrived at the maturity of the
Brahamans; and if, when the vanity of sacrifices and the real character of the
old god's had once been recognised, they would have been superseded by
the more exalted religion of the Upanishads. But it was not so. Every
religious thought that had once found expression in India, that had once been
handed down as a sacred heirloom, was preserved, and the thoughts of the
three historical periods, the childhood, the manhood, and the old age of the
Indian nation, were made to do permanent service in the three stages of the
life of every individual. Thus alone can we explain how the same sacred code,
the Veda, contains not only the records of different phases of religious
thought, but of doctrines which we may call almost diametrically opposed to
each other."
But this difficulty is not so great in the case of Religions which are positive
religions. The fundamental characteristic of positive Religions, is that they
have not grown up like primitive religions, under the action. of unconscious
forces operating silently from age to age, but trace their origin to the teaching
of great religious innovators, who spoke as the organs of a divine revelation.
Being the result of conscious formulations the philosophy of a religion which
is positive is easy to find and easy to state. Hinduism like Judaism,
Christianity and Islam is in the main a positive religion. One does not have to
search for its scheme of divine governance. It is not like an unwritten
constitution. On the Hindu scheme of divine governance is enshrined in a
written constitution and any one who cares to know it will find it laid bare in
that Sacred Book called the Manu Smriti, a divine Code which lays down the
rules which govern the religious, ritualistic and social life of the Hindus in
minute detail and which must be regarded as the Bible of the Hindus and
containing the philosophy of Hinduism.
The third dimension in the philosophy of religion is the criterion to be
adopted for judging the value of the ideal scheme of divine governance for
which a given Religion stands. Religion must be put on its trial. By what
criterion shall it be judged? That leads to the definition of the norm. Of the
three dimensions this third one is the most difficult one to be ascertained and
defined.
Unfortunately the question does not appear to have been tackled although
much has been written on the philosophy of Religion and certainly no method
has been found for satisfactorily dealing with the problem. One is left to one's
own method for determining the issue. As for myself I think it is safe to
proceed on the view that to know the philosophy of any movement or any
institution one must study the revolutions which the movement or the
institution has undergone. Revolution is the mother of philosophy and if it is
not the mother of philosophy it is a lamp which illuminates philosophy.
Religion is no exception to this rule. To me therefore it seems quite evident
that the best method to ascertain the criterion by which to judge the
philosophy of Religion is to study the Revolutions which religion has
undergone. That is the method which I propose to adopt.
Students of History are familiar with one Religious Revolution. That
Revolution was concerned with the sphere of Religion and the extent of its
authority. There was a time when Religion had covered the whole field of
human knowledge and claimed infallibility for what it taught. It covered
astronomy and taught a theory of the universe according to which the earth is
at rest in the center of the universe, while the sun, moon, planets and system
of fixed stars revolve round it each in its own sphere. It included biology and
geology and propounded the view that the growth of life on the earth had
been created all at once and had contained from the time of creation
onwards, all the heavenly bodies that it now contains and all kinds of animals
of plants. It claimed medicine to be its province and taught that disease was
either a divine visitation as punishment for sin or it was the work of demons
and that it could be cured by the intervention of saints, either in person or
through their holy relics; or by prayers or
pilgrimages; or (when due to demons) by exorcism and by treatment which
the demons (and the patient) found disgusting. It also claimed physiology and
psychology to be its domain and taught that the body and soul were two
distinct substances.
Bit by bit this vast Empire of Religion was destroyed. The Copernican
Revolution freed astronomy from the domination of Religion. The Darwinian
Revolution freed biology and geology from the trammels of Religion. The
authority of theology in medicine is not yet completely destroyed. Its
intervention in medical questions still continues. Opinion on such subjects as
birth control, abortion and sterilisation of the defective are still influenced by
theological dogmas. Psychology has not completely freed itself from its
entanglements. None the less Darwinism was such a severe blow that the
authority of theology was shattered all over to such an extent that it never
afterwards made any serious effort to remain its lost empire.
It is quite natural that this disruption of the Empire of Religion should be
treated as a great Revolution. It is the result of the warfare which science
waged against theology for 400 years, in which many pitched battles were
fought between the two and the excitement caused by them was so great that
nobody could fail to be impressed by the revolution that was blazing on.
There is no doubt that this religious revolution has been a great blessing. It
has established freedom of thought. It has enabled society " to assume
control of itself, making its own the world it once shared with superstition,
facing undaunted the things of its former fears, and so carving out for itself,
from the realm of mystery in which it lies, a sphere of unhampered action and
a field of independent thought". The process of secularisation is not only
welcomed by scientists for making civilisation—as distinguished from
culture—possible, even Religious men and women have come to feel that
much of what theology taught was unnecessary and a mere hindrance to the
religious life and that this chopping of its wild growth was a welcome process.
But for ascertaining the norm for judging the philosophy of Religion we must
turn to another and a different kind of Revolution which Religion has
undergone. That Revolution touches the nature and content of ruling
conceptions of the relations of God to man, of Society to man and of man to
man. How great was this revolution can be seen from the differences which
divide savage society from civilized society.
Strange as it may seem no systematic study of this Religious Revolution
has so far been made. None the less this Revolution is so great and so
immense that it has brought about a complete transformation in the nature of
Religion as it is taken to be by savage society and by civilised society
although very few seem to be aware of it.
To begin with the comparison between savage society and civilised society.
In the religion of the savage one is struck by the presence of two things.
First is the performance of rites and ceremonies, the practice of magic or tabu
and the worship of fetish or totem. The second thing that is noticeable is that
the rites, ceremonies, magic, tabu, totem and fetish are conspicuous by their
connection with certain occasions. These occasions are chiefly those, which
represent the crises of human life. The events such as birth, the birth of the
first born, attaining manhood, reaching puberty, marriage, sickness, death
and war are the usual occasions which are marked out for the performance of
rites and ceremonies, the use of magic and the worship of the totem.
Students of the origin and history of Religion have sought to explain the
origin and substance of religion by reference to either magic, tabu and totem
and the rites and ceremonies connected therewith, and have deemed the
occasions with which they are connected as of no account. Consequently we
have theories explaining religion as having arisen in magic or as having
arisen in fetishism. Nothing can be a greater error than this. It is true that
savage society practices magic, believes in tabu and worships the totem. But
it is wrong to suppose that these constitute the religion or form the source of
religion. To take such a view is to elevate what is incidental to the position of
the principal. The principal thing in the Religion of the savage are the
elemental facts of human existence such as life, death, birth, marriage etc.
Magic, tabu, totem are things which are incidental. Magic, tabu, totem, fetish
etc., are not the ends. They are only the means. The end is life and the
preservation of life. Magic, tabu etc., are resorted to by the savage society not
for their own sake but to conserve life and to exercise evil influences from
doing harm to life. Thus understood the religion of the savage society was
concerned with life and the preservation of life and it is these life processes
which constitute the substance and source of the religion of the savage
society. So great was the concern of the savage society for life and the
preservation of life that it made them the basis of its religion. So central were
the life processes in the religion of the savage society that everything, which
affected them, became part of its religion. The ceremonies of the savage
society were not only concerned with the events of birth, attaining of
manhood, puberty, marriage, sickness, death and war they were also
concerned with food. Among pastoral peoples the flocks and herds are
sacred. Among agricultural peoples seedtime and harvest are marked by
ceremonials performed with some reference to the growth and the
preservation of the crops. Likewise drought, pestilence, and other strange,
irregular phenomena of nature occasion the performance of ceremonials.
Why should such occasions as harvest and famine be accompanied by
religious ceremonies? Why is magic, tabu, totem be of such importance to the
savage. The only answer is that they all affect the preservation of life. The
process of life and its preservation form the main purpose. Life and
preservation of life is the core and centre of the Religion of the savage
society. As pointed out by Prof. Crawley the religion of the savage begins and
ends with the affirmation and conservation of life.
In life and preservation of life consists the religion of the savage. What is
however true of the religion of the savage is true of all religions wherever they
are found for the simple reason that constitutes the essence of religion. It is
true that in the present day society with its theological refinements this
essence of religion has become hidden from view and is even forgotten. But
that life and the preservation of life constitute the essence of religion even in
the present day society is beyond question. This is well illustrated by Prof.
Crowley. When speaking of the religious life of man in the present day
society, he says how—
"a man's religion does not enter into his professional or social hours, his
scientific or artistic moments; practically its chief claims are settled on one
day in the week from which ordinary worldly concerns are excluded. In fact,
his life is in two parts; but the moiety with which religion is concerned is the
elemental. Serious thinking on ultimate questions of life and death is, roughly
speaking, the essence of his Sabbath; add to this the habit of prayer, giving
the thanks at meals, and the subconscious feeling that birth and death,
continuation and marriage are rightly solemnised by religion, while business
and pleasure may possibly be consecrated, but only metaphorically or by an
overflow of religious feeling."
Comparing this description of the religious concerns of the man in the
present day society with that of the savage, who can deny that the religion is
essentially the same, both in theory and practice whether one speaks of the
religion of the savage society or of the civilised society.
It is therefore clear that savage and civilised societies agree in one respect.
In both the central interests of religion—namely in the life processes by which
individuals are preserved and the race maintained—are the same. In this
there is no real difference between the two. But they differ in two other
important respects.
In the first place in the religion of the savage society there is no trace of the
idea of God. In the second place in the religion of the savage society there is
no bond between morality and Religion. In the savage society there is religion
without God. In the savage society there is morality but it is independent of
Religion.
How and when the idea of God became fused in Religion it is not possible to
say. It may be that the idea of God had its origin in the worship of the Great
Man in Society, the Hero—giving rise to theism—with its faith in its living God.
It may be that the idea of God came into existence as a result of the purely
philosophical speculation upon the problem as to who created life—giving rise
to Deism—with its belief in God as Architect of the Universe. In any case the
idea of God is not integral to Religion. How it got fused into Religion it is
difficult to explain. With regard to the relation between Religion and Morality
this much may be safely said. Though the relation between God and Religion
is not quite integral, the relation between Religion and morality is. Both
religion and morality are connected with the same elemental facts of human
existence—namely life, death, birth and marriage. Religion consecrates these
life processes while morality furnishes rules for their preservation. Religion in
consecrating the elemental facts and processes of life came to consecrate
also the rules laid down by Society for their preservation. Looked at from this
point it is easily explained why the bond between Religion and Morality took
place. It was more intimate and more natural than the bond between Religion
and God. But when exactly this fusion between Religion and Morality took
place it is not easy to say.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that the religion of the Civilised Society
differs from that of the Savage Society into two important features. In civilised
society God comes in the scheme of Religion. In civilised society morality
becomes sanctified by Religion.
This is the first stage in the Religious Revolution I am speaking of. This
Religious Revolution must not be supposed to have been ended here with the
emergence of these two new features in the development of religion. The two
ideas having become part of the constitution of the Religion of the Civilised
Society have undergone further changes which have revolutionized their
meaning and their moral significance. The second stage of the Religious
Revolution marks a very radical change. The contrast is so big that civilized
society has become split into two, antique society and modern society, so that
instead of speaking of the religion of the civilised society it becomes
necessary to speak of the religion of antique society as against the religion of
modern society.
The religious revolution, which marks off antique society from modern
society, is far greater than the religious revolution, which divides savage
society from civilised society. Its dimensions will be obvious from the
differences it has brought about in the conceptions regarding the relations
between God, Society and Man. The first point of difference relates to the
composition of society. Every human being, without choice on his own part,
but simply in virtue of his birth and upbringing, becomes a member of what
we call a natural society. He belongs that is to a certain family and a certain
nation. This membership lays upon him definite obligations and duties which
he is called upon to fulfil as a matter of course and on pain of social penalties
and disabilities while at the same time it confers upon him certain social rights
and advantages. In this respect the ancient and modern worlds are alike. But
in the words of Prof. Smith:—
"There is this important difference, that the tribal or national societies of
the ancient world were not strictly natural in the modern sense of the word,
for the gods had their part and place in them equally with men. The circle
into which a man was born was not simply a group of kinsfolk and fellow
citizens, but embraced also certain divine beings, the gods of the family and
of the state, which to the ancient mind were as much a part of the particular
community with which they stood connected as the human members of the
social circle. The relation between the gods of antiquity and their
worshippers was expressed in the language of human relationship, and this
language was not taken in a figurative sense but with strict literally. If a god
was spoken of as father and his worshippers as his offspring, the meaning
was that the worshippers were literally of his stock, that he and they made
up one natural family with reciprocal family duties to one another. Or, again,
if the god was addressed as king, and worshippers called themselves his
servants, they meant that the supreme guidance of the state was actually in
his hands, and accordingly the organisation of the state included provision
for consulting his will and obtaining his direction in all weighty matters, also
provision for approaching him as king with due homage and tribute.
"Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he
was born into relation to his fellow men; and his religion, that is, the part of
conduct which was determined by his relation to the gods, was simply one
side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a
member of society. There was no separation between the spheres of religion
and of ordinary life. Every social act had a reference to the gods as well as to
men, for the social body was not made up of men only, but of gods and men."
Thus in ancient Society men and their Gods formed a social and political as
well as a religious whole. Religion was founded on kinship between the God
and his worshippers. Modern Society has eliminated God from its
composition. It consists of men only.
The second point of difference between antique and modern society relates
to the bond between God and Society. In the antique world the various
communities
"believed in the existence of many Gods, for they accepted as real the
Gods of their enemies as well as their own, but they did not worship the
strange Gods from whom they had no favour to expect, and on whom their
gifts and offerings would have been thrown away.... Each group had its own
God, or perhaps a God and Goddess, to whom the other Gods bore no
relation whatever, "
The God of the antique society was an exclusive God. God was owned by
and bound to one singly community. This is largely to be accounted for by

"the share taken by the Gods in the feuds and wars of their worshippers.
The enemies of the God and the enemies of his people are identical; even in
the Old Testament `the enemies of Jehovah' are originally nothing else than
the enemies of Israel. In battle each God fights for his own people, and to his
aid success is ascribed ; Chemosh gives victory to Moab, and Asshyr to
Assyria ; and often the divine image or symbol accompanies the host to
battle. When the ark was brought into the camp of Israel, the Philistines said,
"Gods are come into the camp ; who can deliver us from their own practice,
for when David defeated them at Baalperazirm, part of the booty consisted in
their idols which had been carried into the field. When the Carthaginians, in
their treaty with Phillip of Macedon, speak of "the Gods that take part in the
campaign," they doubtless refer to the inmates of the sacred tent which was
pitched in time of war beside the tent of the general, and before which
prisoners were sacrificed after a victory. Similarly an Arabic poet says,
"Yaguth went forth with us against Morad"; that is, the image of the God
Yaguth was carried into the fray".

This fact had produced a solidarity between God and the community.
"Hence, on the principle of solidarity between Gods and their worshippers,
the particularism characteristic of political society could not but reappear in
the sphere of religion. In the same measure as the God of a clan or town had
indisputable claim to the reverence and service of the community to which he
belonged, he was necessarily an enemy to their enemies and a stranger to
those to whom they were strangers".
God had become attached to a community, and the community had become
attached to their God. God had become the God of the Community and the
Community had become the chosen community of the God.
This view had two consequences. Antique Society never came to conceive
that God could be universal God, the God of all. Antique Society never could
conceive that there was any such thing as humanity in general.
The third point of difference between ancient and modern society, has
reference to the conception of the fatherhood of God. In the antique Society
God was the Father of his people but the basis of this conception of
Fatherhood was deemed to be physical.
"In heathen religions the Fatherhood of the Gods is physical fatherhood.
Among the Greeks, for example, the idea that the Gods fashioned men out of
clay, as potters fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception is
that the races of men have Gods for their ancestors, or are the children of the
earth, the common mother of Gods and men, so that men are really of the
stock or kin of the Gods. That the same conception was familiar to the older
Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes idolaters as saying to a
stock, Thou art my father ; and to a stone, Thou has brought me forth. In the
ancient poem, Num. xxi. 29, The Moabites are called the sons and daughters
of Chemosh, and at a much more recent date the prophet Malachi calls a
heathen woman "the daughter of a strange God". These phrases are
doubtless accommodations to the language, which the heathen neighbours of
Israel used about themselves. In Syria and Palestine each clan, or even
complex of clans forming a small independent people, traced back its origin to
a great first father ; and they indicate that, just as in Greece this father or
progenitor of the race was commonly identified with the God of the race. With
this it accords that in the judgment of most modern enquirers several names
of deities appear in the old genealogies of nations in the Book of Genesis.
Edom, for example, the progenitor of the Edomites, was identified by the
Hebrews with Esau the brother of Jacob, but to the heathen he was a God, as
appears from the theophorous proper name Obededom, " worshipper of
Edom", the extant fragments of Phoenician and Babylonian cosmogonies
date from a time when tribal religion and the connection of individual Gods
with particular kindreds was forgotten or had fallen into the background. But
in a generalized form the notion that men are the offspring of the Gods still
held its ground. In the Phoenician cosmogony of Philo Bablius it does so in a
confused shape, due to the authors euhemerism, that is, to his theory that
deities are nothing more than deified men who had been great benefactors to
their species. Again, in the Chaldaean legend preserved by Berosus, the
belief that men are of the blood of the Gods is expressed in a form too crude
not to be very ancient; for animals as well as men are said to have been
formed out of clay mingled with the blood of a decapitated deity. "
This conception of blood kinship of Gods and men had one important
consequence. To the antique world God was a human being and as such was
not capable of absolute virtue and absolute goodness. God shared the
physical nature of man and was afflicted with the passions infirmities and
vices to which man was subject. The God of the antique world had all the
wants and appetites of man and he often indulged in the vices in which many
revelled. Worshipers had to implore God not to lead them into temptations.
In modern Society the idea of divine fatherhood has become entirely
dissociated from the physical basis of natural fatherhood. In its place man is
conceived to be created in the image of God ; he is not deemed I to be
begotten by God. This change in the conception of the fatherhood of God
looked at from its moral aspect has made a tremendous difference in the
nature of God as a Governor of the Universe. God with his physical basis was
not capable of absolute good and absolute virtue. With God wanting in
righteousness the universe could not insist on righteousness as an immutable
principle. This dissociation of God from physical contact with man has made it
possible for God to be conceived of as capable of absolute good and absolute
virtue.
The fourth point of difference relates to the part religion plays when a
change of nationality takes place.
In the antique world there could be no change of nationality unless it was
accompanied by a change of Religion. In the antique world, "It was
impossible for an. individual to change his religion without changing his
nationality, and a whole community could hardly change its religion at all
without being absorbed into another stock or nation. Religions like political
ties were transmitted from father to son ; for a man could not choose a new
God at will ; the Gods of his fathers were the only deities on whom he could
count as friendly and ready to accept his homage, unless he forswore his
own kindred and was received into a new circle of civil as well as religious
life."
How change of religion was a condition precedent to a Social fusion is well
illustrated by the dialogue between Naomi and Ruth in the Old Testament.
"Thy Sister" says Naomi to Ruth, "is gone back unto her people and unto
her Gods"; and Ruth replies, "Thy people shall be my people and thy God my
God."
It is quite clear that in the ancient world a change of nationality involved a
change of cult. Social fusion meant religious fusion.
In modern society abandonment of religion or acceptance of another is not
necessary for social fusion. This is best illustrated by what is in modern
terminology and naturalisation, whereby the citizen of one state abandons his
citizenship of the state and becomes a citizen of new state. In this process of
naturalisation religion has no place. One can have a social fusion which is
another name for naturalisation without undergoing a religious fusion.
To distinguish modern society from antique society it is not enough to say
that Modern Society consists of men only. It must be added that it consists of
men who are worshippers of different Gods.
The fifth point of difference relates to the necessity of knowledge as to
the nature of God as part of religion.
"From the antique point of view, indeed the question what the Gods are
in themselves is not a religious but a speculative one ; what is requisite to
religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on I which the deity acts
and on which he expects his worshippers to frame their conduct—what in 2
Kings xvii. 26 is called the "manner" or rather the "customary law " (misphat)
of the God of the land. This is true even of the religion of Israel. When the
prophets speak of the knowledge of the laws and principles of His
government in Israel, and a summary expression for religion as a whole is
"the knowledge and fear of Jehovah," i.e. the knowledge of what Jehovah
prescribes, combined with a reverent obedience. An extreme skepticism
towards all religious speculation is recommended in the Book of Ecclesiastes
as the proper attitude of piety, for no amount of discussion can carry a man
beyond the plain rule, to "fear God and keep His Commandments". This
counsel the author puts into the mouth of Solomon, and so represents it, not
unjustly, as summing up the old view of religion, which in more modern days
had unfortunately begun to be undermined."
The sixth point of difference relates to the place of belief in Religion.
In ancient Society :—
"Ritual and practical usages were, strictly speaking, the sum total of ancient
religions. Religion in primitive times was not a system of belief with practical
applications ; it was a body of fixed traditional practices, to which every
member of society conformed as a matter of courage. Men would not be men
if they agreed to do certain things without having a reason for their action ; but
in ancient religion the reason was not first formulated as a doctrine and then
expressed in practice, but conversely, practice preceded doctrinal theory.
Men form general rule of conduct before they begin to express general
principles in words ; political institutions are older than political theories and in
like manner religious institutions are older than religious theories. This
analogy is not arbitrarily chosen, for in fact the parallelism in ancient society
between religious and political institutions is complete. In each sphere great
importance was attached to form and precedent, but the explanation why the
precedent was followed consisted merely of legend as to its first
establishment. That the precedent, once established, was authoritative did
not appear to require any proof. The rules of society were based on
precedent, and the continued existence of the society was sufficient reason
why a precedent once set should continue to be followed."
The seventh point of difference relates to the place of individual conviction
in Religion. In ancient Society :—
"Religion was a part of the organized social life into which a man was born,
and to which he conformed through life in the same unconscious way in which
men fall into any habitual practice of the society in which they live. Men took
the Gods and their worship for granted, just as they took the other usages of
the state for granted, and if they reason or speculated about them, they did so
on the presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed things, behind
which their reasoning must not go, and which no reasoning could be allowed
to overturn. To us moderns religion is above all a matter of individual
conviction and reasoned belief, but to the ancients it was a part of the citizen's
public life, reduced to fixed forms, which he was not bound to understand and
was not at liberty to criticize or to neglect. Religious non-conformity was an
offence against the state; for if sacred tradition was tampered with the bases
of society were undermined, and the favour of the Gods was forfeited. But so
long as the prescribed forms were duly observed, a man was recognized as
truly pious, and no one asked how his religion was rooted in his heart or
affected his reason. Like political duty, of which indeed it was a part, religion
was entirely comprehended in the observance of certain fixed rules of
outward conduct."
The eighth point of difference pertains to the relation of God to Society and
man, of Society to Man in the matter of God's Providence.
First as to the difference in the relation of God to Society. In this connection
three points may be noted. The faith of the antique world
"Sought nothing higher than a condition of physical bien etre. . . . The good
things desired of the Gods were the blessings of earthly life, not spiritual but
carnal things." What the antique societies asked and believed themselves to
receive from their God lay mainly in the following things :
"Abundant harvests, help against their enemies and counsel by oracles or
soothsayers in matters of natural difficulty." In the antique world
"Religion was not the affair of the individual but of the Community. . . . It was
the community, and not the individual, that was sure of the permanent and the
unfailing hand of the deity." Next as to the difference in the relation of God to
man.
"It was not the business of the Gods of heathenish to watch, by a series of
special providence, over the welfare of every individual. It is true that
individuals laid their private affairs before the Gods, and asked with prayers
and views for strictly personal blessings. But they did this just as they might
crave a personal boon from a king, or as a son craves a boon from a father,
without expecting to get all that was asked. What the Gods might do in this
way was done as a matter of personal favour, and was no part of their proper
function as heads of the community."
"The Gods watched over a man's civic life, they gave him his share in public
benefits, the annual largess of the harvest and the vintage, national peace or
victory over enemies, and so forth, but they were not sure helpers in every
private need, and above all they would not help him in matters that were
against the interests of the community as a whole. There was therefore a
whole region of possible needs and desires for which religion could and would
do nothing." Next the difference in the attitude of God and Society to man.
In the antique world Society was indifferent to individual welfare. God as no
doubt bound to Society. But
"The compact between the God and his worshippers was not held to pledge
the deity to make the private cares of each member of the Community his
own."
"The benefits expected of God were of a public character affecting the
whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks of herds and
success in war. So long as community flourished the fact that an individual
was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence."
On the contrary the antique world looked upon the misery of a man as proof.
"That the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the Gods. Such a man
was out of place among the happy and the prosperous crowd that assembled
on feast days before the alter." It is in accordance with this view that the leper
and the mourner were shut out from the exercise of religion as well as from
the privileges of social life and their food was not brought into the house of
God.
As for conflict between individual and individual and between society and
the individual God had no concern. In the antique world :
"It was not expected that (God) should always be busy righting human
affairs. In ordinary matters it was men's business to help themselves and their
own kins folk, though the sense that the God was always near, and could be
called upon at need, was a moral force continually working in some degree
for the maintenance of social righteousness and order. The strength of this
moral force was indeed very uncertain, for it was always possible for the evil-
doer to flatter himself that his offence would be overlooked." In the antique
world man did not ask God to be righteous to him.
"Whether in civil or in profane matters, the habit of the old world was to think
much of the community and little of the individual life, and no one felt this to
be unjust even though it bore hardly on himself. The God was the God of the
national or of the tribe, and he knew and cared for the individual only as a
member of the community."
That was the attitude that man in the antique world took of his own private
misfortune. Man came to rejoice before his God and "in rejoicing before his
God man rejoiced with and for the welfare of his kindred, his neighbours and
his country, and, in renewing by solemn act of worship the bond that united
him to God, he also renewed the bonds of family, social and national
obligation." Man in the antique world did not call upon his maker to be
righteous to him.
Such is this other Revolution in Religion. There have thus been two
Religious Revolutions. One was an external Revolution. The other was an
internal Revolution. The External Revolution was concerned with the field
within which the authority of Religion was to prevail. The Internal Revolution
had to do with the changes in Religion as a scheme of divine Governance for
human society. The External Revolution was not really a Religious Revolution
at all. It was a revolt of science against the extra territorial jurisdiction
assumed by Religion over a field which did not belong. The Internal
Revolution was a real Revolution or may be compared to any other political
Revolution, such as the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. It
involved a constitutional change. By this Revolution the Scheme of divine
governance came to be altered, amended and reconstituted.
How profound have been the changes which this internal Revolution, has
made in the antique scheme of divine governance can be easily seen. By this
Revolution God has ceased to be a member of a community. Thereby he has
become impartial. God has ceased to be the Father of Man in the physical
sense of the word. He has become the creator of the Universe. The breaking
of this blood bond has made it possible to hold that God is good. By this
Revolution man has ceased to be a blind worshipper of God doing nothing but
obeying his commands. Thereby man has become a responsible person
required to justify his belief in God's commandments by his conviction. By this
Revolution God has ceased to be merely the protector of Society and social
interests in gross have ceased to be the center of the divine Order. Society
and man have changed places as centers of this divine order. It is man who
has become the center of it.
All this analysis of the Revolution in the Ruling concepts of Religion as a
scheme of divine governance had one purpose namely to discover the norm
for evaluating the philosophy of a Religion. The impatient reader may not ask
where are these norms and what are they? The reader may not have found
the norms specified by their names in the foregoing discussion. But he could
not have failed to notice that the whole of this Religious Revolution was
raging around the norms for judging what is right and what is wrong. If he has
not, let me make explicit what has been implicit in the whole of this
discussion. We began with the distinction between antique society and
modern society as has been pointed out they differed in the type of divine
governance they accepted as their Religious ideals. At one end of the
Revolution was the antique society with its Religious ideal in which the end
was Society. At the other end of the Revolution is the modern Society with its
Religious ideal in which the end is the individual. To put the same fact in
terms of the norm it can be said that the norm or the criterion, for judging right
and wrong in the Antique Society was utility while the norm or the criterion for
judging right and wrong in the modern Society is Justice. The Religious
Revolution was not thus a revolution in the religious organization of Society
resulting in the shifting of the center—from society to the individual—it was a
revolution in the norms.
Some may demur to the norms I have suggested. It may be that it is a new
way of reaching them. But to my mind there is no doubt that they are the real
norms by which to judge the philosophy of religion. In the first place the norm
must enable people to judge what is right and wrong in the conduct of men. In
the second place the norm must be appropriate to current notion of what
constitutes the moral good. From both these points of view they appear to be
the true norms. They enable us to judge what is right and wrong. They are
appropriate to the society which adopted them. Utility as a criterion was
appropriate to the antique world in which society being the end, the moral
good was held to be something which had social utility. Justice as a criterion
became appropriate to the Modern World in which individual being the end,
the moral good was held to be something which does justice to the individual.
There may be controversy as to which of the two norms is morally superior.
But I do not think there can be any serious controversy that these are not the
norms. If it is said that these norms are not transcendental enough ; my reply
is that if a norm whereby one is to judge the philosophy of religion must be
Godly, it must also be earthly. At any rate these are the norms I propose to
adopt in examining the philosophy of Hinduism.

II
This is a long detour. But it was a necessary preliminary to any inquiry into
the main question. However, when one begins the inquiry one meets with an
initial difficulty. The Hindu is not prepared to face the inquiry. He either argues
that religion is of no importance or he takes shelter behind the view—fostered
by the study of comparative Religion—that all religions are good. There is no
doubt that both these views are mistaken and untenable.
Religion as a social force cannot be ignored. Religion has been aptly
described by Hebert Spencer as "the weft which everywhere crosses the
warp of history". This is true of every Society. But Religion has not only
crossed everywhere the warp of Indian History it forms the warp and woof of
the Hindu mind. The life of the Hindu is regulated by Religion at every
moment of his life. It orders him how during life he should conduct himself and
how on death his body shall be disposed of. It tells him how and when he
shall indulge in his sexual impulses. It tells him what ceremonies are to be
performed when a child is born—how he should name, how he should cut the
hair on its head, how he should perform its first feeding. It tells him what
occupation he can take to, what woman he should marry. It tells him with
whom he should dine and what food he should eat, what vegetables are
lawful and what are forbidden. It tells how he should spend his day, how
many times he should eat, how many times he should pray. There is no act of
the Hindu which is not covered or ordained by Religion. It seems strange that
the educated Hindus should come to look upon it as though it was a matter of
indifference.
Besides, Religion is a social force. As I have pointed out Religion stands for
a scheme of divine governance. The scheme becomes an ideal for society to
follow. The ideal may be non-existent in the sense that it is something which
is constructed. But although non-existent, it is real. For an ideal it has full
operative force which is inherent in every ideal. Those who deny the
importance of religion not only forget this, they also fail to realize how great is
the potency and sanction that lies behind a religious ideal as compound with
that of a purely secular ideal. This is probably due to the lag which one sees
between the real and the ideal which is always present whether the ideal is
religious or secular. But the relative potency of the two ideals is to be
measured by another test—namely their power to override the practical
instincts of man. The ideal is concerned with something that is remote. The
practical instincts of man are concerned with the immediate present. Now
placed as against the force of the practical instincts of man the two ideals
show their difference in an unmistaken manner. The practical instincts of man
do yield to the prescriptions of a religious ideal however much the two are
opposed to each other. The practical instincts of man do not on the other
hand yield to the secular ideal if the two are in conflict. This means that a
religious ideal has a hold on mankind, irrespective of an earthly gain. This can
never be said of a purely secular ideal. Its power depends upon its power to
confer material benefit. This shows how great is the difference in the potency
and sanction of the two ideals over the human mind. A religious ideal never
fails to work so long as there is faith in that ideal. To ignore religion is to
ignore a live wire.
Again to hold that all religions are true and good is to cherish a belief which
is positively and demonstrably wrong. This belief, one is sorry to say, is the
result of what is known as the study of comparative religion. Comparative
religion has done one great service to humanity. It has broken down the claim
and arrogance of revealed religions as being the only true and good religions
of study. While it is true that comparative religion has abrogated the
capricious distinction between true and false religions based on purely
arbitrary and a priori considerations, it has brought in its wake some false
notions about religion. The most harmful one is the one I have mentioned
namely that all religions are equally good and that there is no necessity of
discriminating between them. Nothing can be a greater error than this.
Religion is an institution or an influence and like all social influences and
institutions, it may help or it may harm a society which is in its grip. As pointed
out by Prof. Tiele religion is
"one of the mightiest motors in the history of mankind, which formed as well
as tore asunder nations, united as well as divided empires, which sanctioned
the most atrocious and barbarous deeds, the most libinous customs, inspired
the most admirable acts of heroism, self renunciation, and devotion, which
occasioned the most sanguinary wars, rebellions and persecutions, as well as
brought about the freedom, happiness and peace of nations—at one time a
partisan of tyranny, at another breaking its chains, now calling into existence
and fostering a new and brilliant civilization, then the deadly foe to progress,
science and art."
A force which shows such a strange contrast in its result can be accepted
as good without examining the form it takes and the ideal it serves.
Everything depends upon what social ideal a given religion as a divine
scheme of governance hold out. This is a question which is not avowed by
the science of comparative religion. Indeed it begins where comparative
religion ends. The Hindu is merely trying to avoid it by saying that although
religions are many they are equally good. For they are not.
However much the Hindu may seek to burke the inquiry into the philosophy
of Hinduism there is no escape. He must face it.
Ill
Now to begin with the subject. I propose to apply both the tests, the test of
justice and the test of utility to judge the philosophy of Hinduism. First I will
apply the test of justice. Before doing so I want to explain what I mean by the
principle of justice.
No one has expounded it better than Professor Bergbon. As interpreted by
him the principle of justice is a compendious one and includes most of the
other principles which have become the foundation of a moral order. Justice
has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of "compensation". Equity
signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are
concerned with equality in value. If all men are equal, all men are of the same
essence and the common essence entitled them to the same fundamental
rights and to equal liberty.
In short justice is simply another name for liberty equality and fraternity. It is
in this sense I shall be using justice as a criterion to judge Hinduism.
Which of these tenets does Hinduism recognize? Let us take the question
one by one.
1. Does Hinduism recognize Equality?
The question instantaneously brings to one's mind the caste system. One
striking feature of the caste system is that the different castes do not stand as
an horizontal series all on the same plane. It is a system in which the different
castes are placed in a vertical series one above the other. Manu may not be
responsible for the creation of caste. Manu preached the sanctity of the Varna
and as I have shown Varna is the parent of caste. In that sense Manu can be
charged with being the progenitor if not the author of the Caste System.
Whatever be the case as to the guilt of Manu regarding the Caste System
there can be no question that Manu is responsible for upholding the principle
of gradation and rank.
In the scheme of Manu the Brahmin is placed at the first in rank. Below him
is the Kshatriya. Below Kshatriya is the Vaishya. Below Vaishya is the Shudra
and Below Shudra is the Ati-Shudra (the Untouchables). This system of rank
and gradation is, simply another way of enunciating the principle of inequality
so that it may be truly said that Hinduism does not recognize equality. This
inequality in status is not merely the inequality that one sees in the warrant of
precedence prescribed for a ceremonial gathering at a King's Court. It is a
permanent social relationship among the classes to be observed— to be
enforced—at all times in all places and for all purposes. It will take too long to
show how in every phase of life Manu has introduced and made inequality the
vital force of life. But I will illustrate it by taking a few examples such as
slavery, marriage and Rule of Law.
Manu recognizes Slavery. But he confined it to the Shudras. Only Shudras
could be made slaves of the three higher classes. But the higher classes
could not be the slaves of the Shudra.
But evidently practice differed from the law of Manu and not only Shudras
happened to become slaves but members of the other three classes also
become slaves. When this was discovered to be the case a new rule was
enacted by a Successor of Manu namely Narada. This new rule of Narada
runs as follows :—
V 39. In the inverse order of the four castes slavery is not ordained except
where a man violates the duties peculiar to his caste. Slavery (in that respect)
is analogous to the condition of a wife."
Recognition of slavery was bad enough. But if the rule of slavery had been
left free to take its own course it would have had at least one beneficial effect.
It would have been a levelling force. The foundation of caste would have been
destroyed. For under it a Brahmin might have become the slave of the
Untouchable and the Untouchable would have become the master of the
Brahmin. But it was seen that unfettered slavery was an equalitarian principle
and an attempt was made to nullify it. Manu and his successors therefore
while recognising slavery ordain that it shall not be recognised in its inverse
order to the Varna System. That means that a Brahmin may become the
slave of another Brahmin. But he shall not be the slave of a person of another
Varna i.e. of the Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, or Ati-Shudra. On the other hand
a Brahmin may hold as his slave any one belonging to the four Varnas. A
Kshatriya can have a Kshatriya, Vaisha, Shudra and Ati-Shudra as his slaves
but not one who is a Brahmin. A Vaishya can have a Vaishya, Shudra and
Ati-Shudra as his slaves but not one who is a Brahmin or a Kshatriya. A
Shudra can hold a Shudra and Ati-shudra can hold an Ati-Shudra as his slave
but not one who is a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra.
Consider Manu on marriage. Here are his rules governing intermarriage
among the different classes. Manu says :—-
III. 12. "For the first marriage of the twice born classes, a woman of the
same class is recommended but for such as are impelled by inclination to
marry again, women in the direct order of the classes are to be preferred."
III. 13. "A Shudra woman only must be the wife of Shudra : she and a
Vaisya, of a Vaisya; they two and a Kshatriya, of a Kshatriya ; those two and
a Brahmani of a Brahman."
Manu is of course opposed to intermarriage. His injunction is for each class
to marry within his class. But he does recognize marriage outside the defined
class. Here again he is particularly careful not to allow intermarriage to do
harm to his principle of inequality among classes. Like Slavery he permits
intermarriage but not in the inverse order. A Brahmin when marrying outside
his class may marry any woman from any of the classes below him. A
Kshatriya is free to marry a woman from the two classes next below him
namely the Vaishya and Shudra but must not marry a woman from the
Brahmin class which is above him. A Vaishya is free to marry a woman from
the Shudra Class which is next below him. But he cannot marry a woman
from the Brahmin and the Kshatriya Class which are above him.
Why this discrimination? The only answer is that Manu was most anxious to
preserve the rule of inequality which was his guiding principle.
Take Rule of Law. Rule of Law is generally understood to mean equality
before law. Let any one interested to know what Manu has to say on the point
ponder over the following Rules extracted from his code which for easy
understanding I have arranged under distinct headings.
As to witnesses.—According to Manu they are to be sworn as follows :—
VIII. 87. "In the forenoon let the judge, being purified, severally call on the
twice-born, being purified also, to declare the truth, in the presence of some
image, a symbol of the divinity and of Brahmins, while the witnesses turn their
faces either to the north or to the east."
VIII. 88. "To a Brahman he must begin with saying, `Declare ; to a
Kshatriya, with saying, ' Declare the truth '; to a Vaisya, with comparing
perjury to the crime of stealing kine, grain or gold ; to a Sudra, with comparing
it in some or all of the following sentences, to every crime that men can
commit.".
VIII. 113. "Let the judge cause a priest to swear by his veracity ; a soldier,
by his horse, or elephant, and his weapons ; a merchant, by his kine, grain,
and gold ; a mechanic or servile man, by imprecating on his own head, if he
speak falsely, all possible crimes ;"
Manu also deals with cases of witnesses giving false evidence. According to
Manu giving false evidence is a crime, says Manu :—
VIII. 122. "Learned men have specified these punishments, which were
ordained by sage legislators for perjured witnesses, with a view to prevent a
failure of justice and to restrain iniquity."
VIII. 123. "Let a just prince banish men of the three lower classes, if they
give false evidence, having first levied the fine ; but a Brahman let him only
banish." But Manu made one exception :—
VIII. 1 12. "To women, however, at a time of dalliance, or on a proposal of
marriage, in the case of grass or fruit eaten by a cow, of wood taken for a
sacrifice, or of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahman, it is deadly
sin to take a light oath." As parties to proceedings—Their position can be
illustrated by quoting the ordinances of Manu relating to a few of the important
criminal offences dealt with by Manu. Take the offence of Defamation. Manu
says :—
VIII. 267. "A soldier, defaming a priest, shall be fined a hundred panas, a
merchant, thus offending, an hundred and fifty, or two hundred; but, for such
an offence, a mechanic or servile man shall be shipped."
III. 268. "A priest shall be fined fifty, if he slander a soldier; twenty five, if a
merchant ; and twelve, if he slander a man of the servile class." Take the
offence of Insult—Manu says:—
VIII. 270. "A once born man, who insults the twice-born with gross
invectives, ought to have his tongue slit ; for he sprang from the lowest part of
Brahma."
VIII. 271. "If he mention their names and classes with contumely, as if he
say, "Oh Devadatta, though refuse of Brahmin", an iron style, ten fingers long,
shall be thrust red into his mouth."
VIII. 272. "Should he, through pride, give instruction to priests concerning
their duty, let the king order some hot oil to be dropped into his mouth and his
ear." Take the offence of Abuse—Manu says :—
VIII. 276. "For mutual abuse by a priest and a soldier, this fine must be
imposed by a learned king; the lowest amercement on the priest, and the
middle-most on the soldier."
VIII. 277. "Such exactly, as before mentioned, must be the punishment a
merchant and a mechanic, in respect of their several classes, except the
slitting of the tongue ; this is a fixed rule of punishment. " Take the offence of
Assault—Manu propounds :—
VIII. 279. "With whatever member a low-born man shall assault or hurt a
superior, even that member of his must be slit, or cut more or less in
proportion to the injury ; this is an ordinance of Manu."
VIII. 280. "He who raises his hand or a staff against another, shall have his
hand cut ; and he, who kicks another in wrath, shall have an incision made in
his foot." Take the offence of Arrogance—According to Manu:—
VIII. 28). "A man of the lowest class, who shall insolently place himself on
the same seat with one of the highest, shall either be banished with a mark on
his hinder parts, or the king, shall cause a gash to be made on his buttock."
VIII. 282. "Should he spit on him through price, the king shall order both his
lips to be gashed; should he urine on him, his penis: should he break wing
against him, his anus."
VIII. 283. "If he seize the Brahman by the locks, or by the feet, or by the
beard, or by the throat, or by the scrotum, let the king without hesitation cause
incisions to be made in his hands." Take the offence of Adultery. Says
Manu:—
VIII. 359. "A man of the servile class, who commits actual adultery with the
wife of a priest, ought to suffer death; the wives, indeed, of all the four classes
must ever be most especially guarded."
VIII. 366. "A low man, who makes love to a damsel of high birth, ought to be
punished corporal; but he who addresses a maid of equal rank, shall give the
nuptial present and marry her, if her father please."
VIII. 374. "A mechanic or servile man, having an adulterous connection with
a woman of a twice-born class, whether guarded at home or unguarded, shall
thus be punished ; if she was unguarded, he shall lose the part offending, and
his whole substance ; if guarded, and a priestess, every thing, even his life."
VIII. 375. "For adultery with a guarded priestess, a merchant shall forfeit all
his wealth after imprisonment for a year; a soldier shall be fined a thousand
panas, and he be shaved with the urine of an ass."
VIII. 376. "But, if a merchant or soldier commit adultery with a woman of the
sacerdotal class, whom her husband guards not at home, the king shall only
fine the merchant five hundred, and the soldier a thousand;”
VIII. 377. "Both of them, however, if they commit that offence with a
priestess not only guarded but eminent for good qualities, shall be punished
like men of the servile class, or be burned in a fire of dry grass or reeds."
VIII. 382. "If a merchant converse criminally with a guarded woman of the
military, or a soldier with one of the mercantile class, they both deserve the
same punishment as in the case of a priestess unguarded."
VIII. 383. "But a Brahman, who shall commit adultery with a guarded woman
of those two classes, must be fined a thousand panas ; and for the life
offence with a guarded woman of the servile class, the fine of a soldier or a
merchant shall be also one thousand."
VIII. 384. "For adultery with a woman of the military class, if guarded, the
fine of a merchant is five hundred ; but a soldier, for the converse of that
offence, must be shaved with urine, or pay the fine just mentioned."
VIII. 385. "A priest shall pay five hundred panas if he connect himself
criminally with an unguarded woman of the military, commercial, or servile
class, and a thousand, for such a connection with a woman of a vile mixed
breed."
Turning to the system of punishment for offences Manu's Scheme throws an
interesting light on the subject. Consider the following ordinances :—
VIII. 379. "Ignominious tonsure is ordained, instead of capital punishment,
for an adulterer of the priestly class, where the punishment of other classes
may extend to Loss of life."
VIII. 380. "Never shall the king slay a Brahman, though convicted of all
possible crimes ; let him banish the offender from his realm, but with all his
property secure, and his body unhurt."
XI. 127. "For killing intentionally a virtuous man of the military class, the
penance must be a fourth part of that ordained for killing a priest ; for killing a
Vaisya, only an eighth, for killing a Sudra, who had been constant in
discharging his duties, a sixteenth part."
XI. 128. "But, if a Brahmen kill a Kshatriya without malice, he must, after a
full performance of his religious rites, give the priests one bull together with a
thousand cows."
XI. 129. "Or he may perform for three years the penance for slaying a
Brahmen, mortifying his organs of sensation and action, letting his hair grow
long, and living remote from the town, with the root of a tree for his mansion."
XI. 130. "If he kill without malice a Vaisya, who had a good moral character,
he may perform the same penance for one year, or give the priests a hundred
cows and a bull."
XI. 131. "For six months must he perform this whole penance, if without
intention he kill a Sudra ; or he may give ten white cows and a bull to the
priests."
VIII. 381. "No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahman ; and
the king, therefore, must not even form in his mind an idea of killing a priest."
VIII. 126. "Let the king having considered and ascertained the frequency of
a similar offence, the place and time, the ability of the criminal to pay or suffer
and the crime itself, cause punishment to fall on those alone, who deserves
it."
VIII. 124. "Manu, son of the Self-existent, has named ten places of
punishment, which are appropriated to the three lower classes, but a
Brahman must depart from the realm unhurt in any one of them."
VIII. 125. "The part of generation, the belly, the tongue, the two hands, and,
fifthly, the two feet, the eye, the nose, both ears, the property, and, in a capital
case, the whole body." How strange is the contrast between Hindu and Non-
Hindu criminal jurisprudence? How inequality is writ large in Hinduism as
seen in its criminal jurisprudence? In a penal code charged with the spirit of
justice we find two things—a section dealing defining the crime and a
prescribing a rational form of punishment for breach of it and a rule that all
offenders are liable to the same penalty. In Manu what do we find? First an
irrational system of punishment. The punishment for a crime is inflicted on the
organ concerned in the crime such as belly, tongue, nose, eyes, ears, organs
of generation etc., as if the offending organ was a sentient being having a will
for its own and had not been merely a servitor of human being. Second
feature of Manu's penal code is the inhuman character of the punishment
which has no proportion to the gravity of the offence. But the most striking
feature of Manu's Penal Code which stands out in all its nakedness is the
inequality of punishment for the same offence. Inequality designed not merely
to punish the offender but to protect also the dignity and to maintain the
baseness of the parties coming to a Court of Law to seek justice in other
words to maintain the social inequality on which his whole scheme is founded.
So far I have taken for illustrations such matters as serve to show * how
Manu has ordained social inequality. I now propose to take other matters
dealt with by Manu in order to illustrate that Manu has also ordained Religious
inequality. These are matters which are connected with what are called
sacraments and Ashrams.
The Hindus like the Christians believe in sacraments. The only difference is
that the Hindus have so many of them that even the Roman Catholic
Christians would be surprised at the extravagant number observed by the
Hindus. Originally their number was forty and covered the most trivial as well
as the most important occasions in I a person's life. First they were reduced to
twenty. Later on it was reduced to sixteen and at that figure the sacraments of
the Hindus have remained stabilized.
Before I explain how at the core of these rules of sacraments there lies the
spirit of inequality the reader must know what the rules are. It is impossible to
examine all. It will be enough if I deal with a few of them. I will take only three
categories of them, those relating with Initiation, Gayatri and Daily Sacrifices.
First as to Initiation. This initiation is effected by the investitute of a person
with the sacred thread. The following are the most important rules of Manu
regarding the sacrament of investiture.
II. 36. "In the eighth year from the conception of a Brahman, in the eleventh
from that of a Kshatriya, and in the twelfth from that of a Vaisya, let the father
invest the child with the mark of his class."
II. 37. "Should a Brahman, or his father for him, be desirous of his
advancement in sacred knowledge ; a Kshatriya, of extending his power; or a
Vaisya of engaging in mercantile business; the investitute may be made in the
fifth, sixth, or eighth years respectively."
II. 38. "The ceremony of investitute hallowed by the Gayatri must not be
delayed, in the case of a priest, beyond the sixteenth year ; nor in that of a
soldier, beyond the twenty second ; nor in that of a merchant, beyond the
twenty fourth."
II. 39. "After that, all youths of these three classes, who have not been
invested at the proper time, become vratyas, or outcasts, degraded from the
Gayatri, and condemned by the virtuous."
II. 147. "Let a man consider that as a mere human birth, which his parents
gave him for their mutual gratification, and which he receives after lying in the
womb."
II. 148. "But that birth which his principal acharya, who knows the whole
Veda, procures for him by his divine mother the Gayatri, is a true birth ; that
birth is exempt from age and from death."
II. 169. "The first birth is from a natural mother; the second, from the ligation
of the zone ; the third from the due performance of the sacrifice ; such are the
births of him who is usually called twice-born, according to a text of the Veda."
II. 170. "Among them his divine birth is that, which is distinguished by the
ligation of the zone, and sacrificial cord ; and in that birth the Gayatri is his
mother, and the Acharya, his father." Then let me come to Gayatri. It is a
Mantra or an invocation of special spiritual efficacy. Manu explains what it is.
II. 76. "Brahma milked out, as it were, from the three Vedas, the letter A, the
letter U, and the letter M which form by their coalition the triliteral
monosyllable, together with three mysterious words, bhur, bhuvah, swer, or
earth, sky, heaven."
II. 77. "From the three Vedas, also the Lord of creatures, incomprehensibly
exalted, successively milked out the three measures of that ineffable text, be
ginning with the word tad, and entitled Savitri or Gayatri."
II. 78. "A priest who shall know the Veda, and shall pronounce to himself,
both morning and evening, that syllable and that holy text preceded by the
three words, shall attain the sanctity which the Veda confers."
II. 79. "And a twice born man, who shall a thousand times repeat those
three (or om, the vyahritis, and the gayatri,) apart from the multitude, shall be
released in a month even from a great offence, as a snake from his slough."
II. 80. "The priest, the soldier, and the merchant, who shall neglect this
mysterious text, and fail to perform in due season his peculiar acts of piety,
shall meet with contempt among the virtuous."
11.81 "The great immutable words, preceded by the triliteral syllable, and
followed by the Gayatri which consists of three measures, must be
considered as the mouth, or principal part of the Veda."
II. 82. "Whoever shall repeat, day by day, for three years, without
negligence, that sacred text, shall hereafter approach the divine essence,
move as freely as air, and assume an ethereal form."
II. 83. "The triliteral monosyllable is an emblem of the Supreme, the
suppressions of breath with a mind fixed on God are
the highest devotion ; but nothing is more exalted than the gayatri ; a
declaration of truth is more excellent than silence."
II. 84. "All rights ordained in the Veda, oblations to fire, and solemn
sacrifices pass away; but that which passes not away, is declared to be the
sylable om, thence called acshare ; since it is a symbol of God, the Lord of
created beings."
II. 85. "The act of repeating his Holy Name is ten times better than the
appointed sacrifice: an hundred times better when it is heard by no man ; and
a thousand times better when it is purely mental."
II. 86. "The four domestic sacraments which are accompanied with the
appointed sacrifice, are not equal, though all be united, to a sixteenth part of
the sacrifice performed by a repetition of the gayatri." Now to the Daily
Sacrifices.
III. 69. "For the sake of expiating offences committed ignorantly in those
places mentioned in order, the five great sacrifices were appointed by
eminent sages to be performed each day by such as keep house."
III. 70. "Teaching (and studying) the scripture is the sacrifice to the Veda;
offering cakes and water, the sacrifice to the Manes, an oblation to fire, the
sacrifice to the Deities; giving rice or other food to living creatures, the
sacraments of spirits; receiving guests with honour, the sacrifice to men."
III. 71. "Whoever omits not those five great sacrifices, if he has ability to
perform them, is untainted by the sons of the five slaughtering places, even
though he constantly resides at home."
Turning to the Ashramas. The Ashram theory is a peculiar feature of the
philosophy of Hinduism. It is not known to have found a place in the teachings
of any other religion. According to the Ashram theory life is to be divided into
four stages called Brahmachari, Grahastha, Vanaprastha and Sannyas. In the
Brahamachari stage a person is unmarried and devotes his time to the study
and education. After this stage is over he enters the stage of a Grahastha i.e.
he marries, rears a family and attends to his worldly welfare. Thereafter he
enters the third stage and is then known as a Vanaprastha. As a Vanaprastha
he dwells in the forest as a hermit but without severing his ties with his family
or without abandoning his rights to his worldly goods. Then comes the fourth
and the last stage--that of Sannyas—which means complete renunciation of
the world in search of God. The two stages of Braharnchari and Grahastha
are natural enough. The two last stages are only recommendatory. There is
no compulsion about them. All that Manu lays down is as follows:
VI. 1. A twice born who has thus lived according to the law in the order of
householders, may, taking a firm resolution and keeping his organs in
subjection, dwell in the forest, duly (observing the rules given below.)
VI. 2. When a householder sees his (skin) wrinkled, and (his hair) white, and
the sons of his son, then he may resort to the forest.
VI. 3. Abandoning all food raised by cultivation, all his belongings, he may
depart into the forest, either committing his wife to his sons, or accompanied
by her.
VI. 33. But having passed the third pan of (a man's natural term of) life in
the forest, he may live as an ascetic during the fourth part of his existence,
after abandoning all attachment to worldly objects.
The inequality embodied in these rules is real although it may not be quite
obvious. Observe that all these sacraments and Ashramas are confined to the
twice-born. The Shudras are excluded from their benefit. Manu of course has
no objection to their undergoing the forms of the ceremonies. But he objects
to their use of the Sacred Mantras in the performance of the ceremonies. On
this Manu says: — X. 127. "Even Shudras, who were anxious to perform (heir
entire duty, and knowing what they should perform, imitate the practice of
good men in the household sacraments, but without any holy text, except
those containing praise and salutation, are so far from sinning, that they
acquire just applause." See the following text of Manu for women: — -
II. 66. "The same ceremonies, except that of the sacrificial thread, must be
duly performed for women at the same age and in the same order, that the
body may be made perfect; but without any text from the Veda."
Why does Manu prohibit the Shudras from the benefit of the Sacraments?
His interdict against the Shudras becoming a Sannyasi is a puzzle. Sannyas
means and involves renunciation, abandonment of worldly object. In legal
language Sannyas is interpreted as being equivalent to civil death. So that
when a man becomes a Sannyasi he is treated as being dead from that
moment and his heir succeeds immediately. This would be the only
consequence, which would follow if a Shudra become a Sannyasi. Such a
consequence could hurt nobody except the Shudra himself. Why then this
interdict? The issue is important and I will quote Manu to explain the
significance and importance of the Sacraments and Sannyas. Let us all
ponder over the following relevant texts of Manu :
II. 26. With holy rites, prescribed by the Veda, must the ceremony on
conception and other sacraments be performed for twice-born men, which
sanctify the body and purify (from sin) in this (life) and after death.
II. 28. By the study of the Veda, by vows, by burnt oblations, by (the
recitation of) sacred texts, by the (acquisition of the) three sacred Vedas, by
offering (to the gods Rishis and Manes), by (the procreation of) sons, by the
Great Sacrifices, and by (Srauta) rites this (human) body is made fit for (union
with) Bramha. This is the aim and object of the Samscaras. Manu also
explains the aim and object of Sannyas.
VI. 81. He (the Sannyasi) who has in this manner gradually given up all
attachments and is freed from all the pairs (of opposites), reposes in Brahman
alone.
VI. 85. A twice born man who becomes an ascetic, after the successive
performance of the above-mentioned acts, shakes off sin here below and
reaches the highest Brahman. From these texts it is clear that according to
Manu himself the object of the sacraments is to sanctify the body and purify it
from sin in this life and hereafter and to make it fit for union with God.
According to Manu the object of Sannyas to reach and repose in God. Yet
Manu says that the sacraments and Sannyas are the privileges of the higher
classes. They are not open to the Shudra. Why? Does not a Shudra need
sanctification of his body, purification of his soul? •Does not a Shudra need to
have an aspiration to reach God? Manu probably would have answered these
questions in the affirmative. Why did he then make such rules. The answer is
that he was a staunch believer in social inequality and he knew the danger of
admitting religious Equality. If I am equal before God why am I not equal on
earth? Manu was probably terrified by this question. Rather than admit and
allow religious equality to affect social inequality he preferred to deny religious
equality.
Thus in Hinduism you will find both social inequality and religious inequality
imbedded in its philosophy.
To prevent man from purifying himself from sin!! To prevent man from
getting near to God!! To any rational person such rules must appear to be
abnominal and an indication of a perverse mind. It is a glaring instance of how
Hinduism is a denial not only of equality but how it is denial of the sacred
character of human personality.
This is not all. For Manu does not stop with the non-recognition of human
personality. He advocates a deliberate debasement of human personality. I
will take only two instances to illustrate this feature of the philosophy of
Hinduism.
All those who study the Caste System are naturally led to inquire into the
origin of it. Manu being the progenitor of Caste had to give an explanation of
the origin of the various castes. What is the origin which Manu gives? His
explanation is simple. He says that leaving aside the four original castes the
rest are simply baseborn!! He says they are the progeny of fornication and
adultery between men and women of the four original castes. The immorality
and looseness of character among men and women of the four original castes
must have been limitless to account for the rise of innumerable castes
consisting of innumerable souls!! Manu makes the wild allegation without
stopping to consider what aspersions he is casting upon men and women of
the four original castes. For if the chandals—the old name for the
Untouchables—are the progeny of a Brahman female and a Shudra male
then it is obvious that to account for such a large number of Chandals it must
be assumed that every Brahman woman was slut and a whore and every
Shudra lived an adulterous life with complete abandon. Manu in his mad just
for debasing the different castes by ascribing to them an ignoble origin seems
deliberately to pervert historical facts. I will give only two illustrations. Take
Manu's origin of Magadha and Vaidehik and compare it with the origin of the
same castes as given by Panini the great Grammarian. Manu says that
Magadha is a caste which is born from sexual intercourse between Vaishya
male and Kshatriya female. Manu says that Vaidehik is a caste which is born
from sexual intercourse between a Vaishya male and a Brahmin female. Now
turn to Panini. Panini says that Magadha means a person who is resident of
the country known as Magadha. As to Vaidehik Panini says that Vaidehik
means a person who is resident of the country known as Videha. What a
contrast!! How cruel it is. Panini lived not later than 300 B.C. Manu lived about
200A.D. How is it that people who bore no stigma in the time of Panini
became so stained in the hands of Manu? The answer is that Manu was bent
on debasing them. Why Manu was bent on deliberately debasing people is a
task which is still awaiting exploration In the meantime we have the strange
contrast that while Religion everywhere else is engaged in the task of raising
and ennobling mankind Hinduism is busy in debasing and degrading it.
The other instance I want to use for illustrating the spirit of debasement
which is inherent in Hinduism pertains to rules regarding the naming of a
Hindu child.
The names among Hindus fall into four classes. They are either connected
with (i) family deity (ii) the month in which the child is born (iti) with the
planets under which a child is born or (iv) are purely temporal i.e. connected
with business. According to Manu the temporal name of a Hindu should
consist of two parts and Manu gives directions as to what the first and the
second part should denote. The second part of a Brahmin's name shall be a
word implying happiness ; of a Kshatriya's a word implying protection; of a
Vaishya's a term expressive of prosperity and of a Shudra's an expression
denoting service. Accordingly the Brahmins have Sharma (happiness) or
Deva (God), the Kshatriyas have Raja (authority) or Verma (armour), the
Vaishyas have Gupta (gifts) or Datta (Giver) and the Shudras have Das
(service) for the second part of their names. As to the first part of their names
Manu says that in the case of a Brahmin it should denote something
auspicious, in the case of a Kshatriya something connected with power, in the
case of a Vaishya something connected with wealth. But in the case of a
Shudra Manu says the first part of his name should denote something
contemptible!! Those who think that such a philosophy is incredible would like
to know the exact reference. For their satisfaction I am reproducing the
following texts from Manu. Regarding the naming ceremony Manu says :—
II. 30. Let (the father perform or) cause to be performed the namadheya (the
rite of naming the child), on the tenth or twelfth (day after birth), or on a lucky
lunar day, in a lucky muhurta under an auspicious constellation.
II. 31. Let (the first part of) a Brahman's name (denote) something
auspicious, a Kshatriya's name be connected with power, and a Vaishya's
with wealth, but a Shudra's (express something) contemptible.
II. 32. (The second part of) a Brahman's (name) shall be (a word) implying
happiness, of a Kshatriya's (a word) implying protection, of a Vaishya's (a
term) expressive of thriving, and of a Shudra's (an expression) denoting
service.
Manu will not tolerate the Shudra to have the comfort of a high sounding
name. He must be contemptible both in fact and in name.
Enough has been said to show how Hinduism is a denial of equality both
social as well as religious and how it is also a degradation of human
personality. Does Hinduism recognise liberty?
Liberty to be real must be accompanied by certain social conditions.
In the first place there should be social equality. "Privilege tilts the balance
of social action in favour of its possessors. The more equal are the social
rights of citizens, the more able they are to utilise their freedom… If liberty is
to move to its appointed end it is important that there should be equality."
In the second place there must be economic security. "A man may be free
to enter any vocation he may choose. . . . Yet if he is deprived of security in
employment he becomes a prey of mental and physical servitude
incompatible with the very essence of liberty.... The perpetual fear of the
morrow, its haunting sense of impending disaster, its fitful search for
happiness and beauty which perpetually eludes, shows that without economic
security, liberty is not worth having. Men may well be free and yet remain
unable to realise the purposes of freedom".
In the third place there must be knowledge made available to all. In the
complex world man lives at his peril and he must find his way in it without
losing his freedom.
"There can, under these conditions, be no freedom that is worthwhile unless
the mind is trained to use its freedom. (Given this fact) the right of man to
education becomes fundamental to his freedom. Deprive a man of knowledge
and you will make him inevitably the slave of those more fortunate than
himself.... deprivation of knowledge is a denial of the power to use liberty for
great ends. An ignorant man may be free. . . . (But) he cannot employ his
freedom so as to give him assurance of happiness."
Which of these conditions does Hinduism satisfy? How Hinduism is a denial
of equality has already been made clear. It upholds privilege and inequality.
Thus in Hinduism the very first collection for liberty is conspicuous by its
absence.
Regarding economic security three things shine out in Hinduism. In the first
place Hinduism denies freedom of a vocation. In the Scheme of Manu each
man has his avocation preordained for him before he is born. Hinduism allows
no choice. The occupation being preordained it has no relation to capacity nor
to inclination.
In the second place Hinduism compels people to serve ends chosen by
others. Manu tells the Shudra that he is born to serve the higher classes. He
exhorts him to make that his ideal. Observe the following rules lay down by
Manu.
X. 121. If a Shudra (unable to subsist by serving Brahmanas) seeks a
livelihood, he may serve Kshatriyas, or he may also seek to maintain himself
by attending on a wealthy Vaishya.
X. 122. But let a Shudra serve Brahmans....
Manu does not leave the matter of acting upto the ideal to the Shudra. He
goes a step further and provides that the Shudra does not escape or avoid his
destined task. For one of the duties enjoined by Manu upon the King is to see
that all castes including the Shudra to discharge their appointed tasks.
VIII. 410. "The king should order each man of the mercantile class to
practice trade, or money lending, or agriculture and attendance on cattle ; and
each man of the servile class to act in the service of the twice born."
VIII. 418. "With vigilant care should the king exert himself in compelling
merchants and mechanics to perform their respective duties ; for, when such
men swerve from their duty, they throw this world into confusion."
Failure to maintain was made an offence in the King punishable at Law.
VIII. 335. "Neither a father, nor a preceptor, nor a friend, nor a mother, nor a
wife, nor a son, nor a domestic priest must be left unpunished by the King, if
they adhere not with firmness to their duty."
VIII. 336. "Where another man of lower birth would be fined one pana, the
king shall be fined a thousand, and he shall give the fine to the priests, or cast
it into the river, this is a sacred rule." These rules have a two-fold significance,
spiritual as well as economic. In the spiritual sense they constitute the gospel
of slavery. This may not be quite apparent to those who know slavery only by
its legal outward form and not by reference to its inner meaning. With
reference to its inner meaning a slave as defined by Plato means a person
who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. In this
sense a slave is not an end in him. He is only a means for filling the ends
desired by others. Thus understood the Shudra is a slave. In their economic
significance the Rules put an interdict on the economic independence of the
Shudra. A Shudra, says Manu, must serve. There may not be much in that to
complain of. The wrong however consists in that the rules require him to
serve others. He is not to serve himself, which means that he must not strive
after economic independence. He must forever remain economically
dependent on others. For as Manu says:—
1. 91. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Shudra to serve
meekly even these other three castes. In the third place Hinduism leaves no
scope for the Shudra to accumulate wealth. Manu's rules regarding the wages
to be paid to the Shudra when employed by the three higher classes are very
instructive on this point. Dealing with the question of wages to the Shudras,
Manu says :—
X. 124. "They must allot to him (Shudra) out of their own family property a
suitable maintenance, after considering his ability, his industry, and the
number of those whom he is bound to support."
X. 125. "The remnants of their food must be given to him, as well as their
old clothes, the refuse of their grain, and their old household furniture.
This is Manu's law of wages. It is not a minimum wage law. It is a maximum
wage law. It was also an iron law fixed so low that there was no fear of the
Shudra accumulating wealth and obtaining economic security. But Manu did
not want to take chances and he went to the length of prohibiting the Shudra
from accumulating property. He says imperatively:—
X. 129. No collection of wealth must be made by a Shudra even though he
be able to do it; for a Shudra who has acquired wealth gives pain to
Brahmans.
Thus in Hinduism, there is no choice of avocation. There is no economic
independence and there is no economic security. Economically, speaking of a
Shudra is a precarious thing.
In the matter of the spread of knowledge two conditions are prerequisites.
There must be formal education. There must be literacy. Without these two,
knowledge cannot spread. Without formal education it is not possible to
transmit all the resources and achievements of a complex society. Without
formal education the accumulated thought and experience relating to a
subject cannot be made accessible to the young and which they will never get
if they were left to pick up their training in informal association with others.
Without formal education he will not get new perceptions. His horizon will not
be widened and he will remain an ignorant slave of his routine work. But
formal education involves the establishment of special agencies such as
schools, books, planned materials such as studies etc. How can any one take
advantage of these special agencies of formal education unless he is literate
and able to read and write? The spread of the arts of reading and writing i.e.
literacy and formal education go hand in hand. Without the existence of two
there can be no spread of knowledge.

How does Hinduism stand in this matter?

The conception of formal education in Hinduism is of a very limited
character. Formal education was confined only to the study of the Vedas.
That was only natural. For the Hindus believed that there was no knowledge
outside the Vedas. That being so formal education was confined to the study
of the Vedas. Another consequence was that the Hindu recognised that its
only duty was to study in the schools established for the study of the Vedas.
These schools benefited only the Brahmins. The State did not hold itself
responsible for opening establishments for the study of arts and sciences,
which concerned the life of the merchant and the artisan. Neglected by the
state they had to shift for themselves.
Each class managed to transmit to its members the ways of doing things it
was traditionally engaged in doing. The duties of the Vaishya class required
that a young Vaishya should know the rudiments of commercial geography,
arithmetic, some languages as well as the practical details of trade. This he
learned from his father in the course of the business. The Artisan's class or
the Craftsman who sprang out of the `Shudra class also taught the arts and
crafts to their children in the same way. Education was domestic. Education
was practical. It only increased the skill to do a particular thing. It did not lead
to new perceptions. It did not widen horizon, with the result that the practical
education taught him only an isolated and uniform way of acting so that in a
changing environment the skill turned out to be gross ineptitude. Illiteracy
became an inherent part of Hinduism by a process which is indirect but
integral to Hinduism. To understand this process it is necessary to draw
attention to rules framed by Manu in regard to the right to teach and study the
Vedas. They are dealt with in the following Rules.
1. 88. To the Brahmanas he (the creator) assigned teaching and studying
the Veda.
1. 89. The Kshatriya he (the creator) commanded to study the Veda.
1. 90. The Vaishya he (the creator) commanded. . . . . . to study the Veda.
II. 116. He who shall acquire knowledge of the Veda without the assent of
his preceptor, incurs the guilt of stealing the scripture, and shall sink to the
region of torment."
IV. 99. He (the twice born) must never read (the Veda). . . . . . in the
presence of the Shudras.
IX. 18. Women have no business with the text of the Veda. XI. 199. A twice
born man who has...... (improperly) divulged the Veda (i.e. to Shudras and
women) (commits sin), atones for his offence, if he subsists a year on barley.
In these texts there are embodied three distinct propositions. The Brahmin,
Kshatriya and Vaishya can study the Vedas. Of these the Brahmins alone
have the right to teach the Vedas. But in the case of the Shudra he has not
only not to study the Vedas but he should not be allowed to hear it read.
The successors of Manu made the disability of the Shudra in the matter of
the study of the Veda into an offence involving dire penalties. For instance
Gautama says:
XII. 4. If the Shudra intentionally listens for committing to memory the Veda,
then his ears should be filled with (molten) lead and lac ; if he utters the Veda,
then his tongue should be cut off; if he has mastered the Veda his body
should be cut to pieces. To the same effect is Katyayana.
The ancient world may be said to have been guilty for failing to take the
responsibility for the education of the masses. But never has any society
been guilty of closing to the generality of its people the study of the books of
its religion. Never has society been guilty of prohibiting the mass of its people
from acquiring knowledge. Never has society made any attempt to declare
that any attempt made by the common man to acquire knowledge shall be
punishable as a crime. Manu is the only devine law giver who has denied the
common man the right to knowledge.
But I cannot wait to dilate upon this. I am more immediately concerned in
showing how the prohibition against the study of the Vedas to the mass of the
people came to give rise to illiteracy and ignorance in secular life. The answer
is easy. It must be realized that reading and writing have an integral
connection with the teaching and study of the Vedas. Reading and writing
were arts necessary for those who were free and privileged to study the
Vedas. They were not necessary to those who were not free to do so. In this
way reading and writing became incidental to the study of the Vedas. The
result was that the theory of Manu regarding the rights and prohibitions in the
matter of the teaching and the study of Vedas came to be extended to the
arts of reading and writing. Those who had the right to study the Vedas were
accorded the right to read and write. Those who had no right to study the
Vedas were deprived of the right to read and write. So that it can be rightly
said according to the law of Manu reading and writing has become the right of
the high class few and illiteracy has become the destiny of the low class
many.
Only a step in the process of this analysis will show how Manu by
prohibiting literacy was responsible for the general ignorance in which the
masses came to be enveloped.
Thus Hinduism far from encouraging spread of knowledge is a gospel of
darkness.
Taking these facts into consideration Hinduism is opposed to the conditions
in which liberty can thrive. It is therefore denial of liberty.

IV

Does Hinduism recognise Fraternity?

There are two forces prevalent in Society. Individualism and Fraternity.
Individualism is ever present. Every individual is ever asking "I and my
neighbours, are we all brothers, are we even fiftieth cousins, am I their
keeper, why should I do right to them" and under the pressure of his own
particular interests acting as though he was an end to himself, thereby
developing a non-social and even an anti-social self. Fraternity is a force of
opposite character. Fraternity is another name for fellow feeling. It consists in
a sentiment which leads an individual to identify himself with the good of
others whereby "the good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and
necessarily to be attended to like any of the physical conditions of our
existence". It is because of this sentiment of fraternity that the individual does
not "bring himself to think of the rest of his fellow-creatures as struggling rivals
with him for the means of happiness, whom he must desire to see defeated in
their object in order that he may succeed in his own." Individualism would
produce anarchy. It is only fraternity, which prevents it and helps to sustain
the moral order among men. Of this there can be no doubt.
How does this sentiment of Fraternity of fellow feeling arise? J. S. Mill says
that this sentiment is a natural sentiment.
"The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to
man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary
abstraction he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a
body; and this association is riveted more and more, as mankind are further
removed from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore,
which is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an
inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he
is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. Now, society between
human beings, except in the relation of master and slave, is manifestly
impossible on any other footing than that the interests of all are to be
consulted. Society between equals can only exist on the understanding that
the interests of all are to be regarded equally. And since in all states of
civilisation, every person, except an absolute monarch, has equals, every one
is obliged to live on these terms with some body; and in every age some
advance is made towards a state in which it will be impossible to live
permanently on other terms with any body. In this way people grow up unable
to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of other people's
interests."
Does this sentiment of fellow feeling find a place among the Hindus? The
following facts throw a flood of light on this question.
The first fact that strikes one is the number of castes. No body has made an
exact computation of their number. But it is estimated that total is not less
than 2000. It might be 3000. This is not the only distressing aspect of this fact.
There are others. Castes are divided into sub-castes. Their number is legion.
The total population of the Brahmin Caste is about a crore and a half. But
there are 1886 sub-castes of the Brahmin Caste. In the Punjab alone the
Saraswat Brahmins of the Province of Punjab are divided into 469 sub-
castes. The Kayasthas of Punjab are divided into 590 sub-castes. One could
go on giving figures to show this infinite process of splitting social life into
small fragments.
The third aspect of this splitting process is the infinitely small fragments into
which the Castes are split. Some of the Baniya sub-castes can count no more
than 100 families. They are so inter related they find extremely difficult to
marry within their castes without transgressing the rules of consanguinity.
It is noteworthy what small excuses suffice to bring about this splitting.
Equally noteworthy is the hierarchical character of the Caste System.
Castes form an hierarchy in which one caste is at the top and is the highest,
another at the bottom and it is the lowest and in between there are castes
every one of which is at once above some castes and below some castes.
The caste system is a system of gradation in which every caste except the
highest and the lowest has a priority and precedence over some other castes.
How is this precedence or this superiority determined ? This order of
superiority and inferiority or this insubordination is determined by Rules (1)
which are connected with religious rites and (2) which are connected with
commensuality.
Religion as a basis of Rules of precedence manifests itself in three ways.
Firstly through religious ceremonies, secondly through incantations that
accompany the religious ceremonies and thirdly through the position of the
priest.
Beginning with the ceremonies as a source of rules of precedence it should
be noted that the Hindu Scriptures prescribe sixteen religious ceremonies.
Although those are Hindu ceremonies every Hindu Caste cannot by right
claim to perform all the sixteen ceremonies. Few can claim the right to
perform all. Some are allowed to perform certain ceremonies, some are not
allowed to perform certain of the ceremonies. For instance take the ceremony
of Upanayan, wearing of the sacred thread. Some castes can't. Precedence
follows this distinction in the matter of right to perform the ceremonies. A
caste which can claim to perform all the ceremonies is higher in status than
the caste which has a right to perform a few.
Turning to the Mantras, it is another source for rules of precedence.
According to the Hindu Religion the same ceremony can be performed in two
different ways. (1) Vedokta and (2) Puranokta. In the Vedokta form the
ceremonies are performed with Mantras (incantations) from the Vedas. In the
Puranokta form the ceremony is performed with Mantras (incantations) from
the Puranas. Hindu Religious Scriptures fall into two distinct categories (1)
The Vedas which are four, and (2) the Puranas which are eighteen. Although
they are all respected as scriptures they do not all have the same sanctity.
The Vedas have the highest sanctity and the Puranas have the lowest
sanctity. The way the Mantras give rise to social precedence will be obvious if
it is borne in mind that not every caste is entitled to have the ceremony
performed in the Vedokta form. Three castes may well claim the right to the
performance of one of the sixteen ceremonies. But it will be that one of it is
entitled to perform it in the Vedokta form, another in the Puranokta form.
Precedence goes with the kind of Mantra that a caste is entitled to use in the
performance of a religious ceremony. A caste which is entitled to use Vedic
Mantras is superior to a caste which is entitled to use only Puranokta
Mantras.
Taking the priest as a second source of precedence connected with
Religion, Hinduism requires the instrumentality of a priest for the derivation of
the full benefit from the performance of a religious ceremony. The priest
appointed by the scripture is the Brahmin. A Brahmin therefore is
indispensable. But the scriptures do not require -that a Brahmin shall accept
the invitation of any and every Hindu irrespective of his caste to officiate at a
religious ceremony. The invitation of which caste he will accept and of which
he will refuse is a matter left to the wishes of the Brahmin. By long and well-
established custom it is now settled at which caste he will officiate and at
which caste he will not. This fact has become the basis of precedence as
between castes. The caste at which a Brahmin will officiate is held as superior
to a caste at whose religious functions a Brahmin will not officiate.
The second source for rules of precedence is commonality. It will be noticed
that rules of marriage have not given rise to rules of precedence as rules of
commonality have. The reason lies in the distinction between the rules
prohibiting intermarriage and inter-dining. That difference is obvious. The
prohibition on intermarriage is such that it cannot only be respected but it can
be carried out quite strictly. But the prohibition of inter-dining creates
difficulties. It cannot be carried out quite strictly in all places and under all
circumstances. Man migrates and must migrate from place to place. In every
place he happens to go he may not find his caste-men. He may find himself
landed in the midst of strangers. Marriage is not a matter of urgency but food
is. He can wait for getting himself married till he returns to the Society of his
caste-men. But he cannot wait for his food. He must find it from somewhere
and from someone. Question arises from which caste he can take food, if he
has to. The rule is that he will take food from a caste above him but will not
take food from a caste, which is below him. There is no way of finding how it
came to be decided that a Hindu can take food from one caste and not from
another. By long series of precedent every Hindu knows from what caste he
can take food and from what caste he cannot. This is determined chiefly by
the rule followed by the Brahmin. A caste is higher or lower according as the
Brahmin takes from it food or not. In this connection the Brahmin has a very
elaborate set of rules in the matter of food and water. (1) He will take only
water from some and not from others. (2) A brahmin will not take food cooked
in water by any caste. (3) He will take only food cooked in oil from some
castes. Again he has a set of rules in the matter of the vessels, in which he
will accept food and water. He will take food or water in an earthen vessel
from some castes, only in metallic vessel from some and only in glass vessel
from others. This goes to determine the level of the castes. If he takes food
cooked in oil from a caste its status is higher than the caste from which he will
not. If he takes water from a caste its status is higher than the caste from
which he will not. If he takes water in a metallic vessel that caste is higher
than the caste from which he will take water in an earthen vessel. Both these
castes are higher than the caste from which he will take water in a glass
vessel. Glass is a substance which is called (Nirlep) (which conserves no
stain) therefore a Brahmin can take water in it even from the lowest. But other
metals do conserve stains. Contaminating character of the stain depends
upon the status of the person who has used it. That status depends upon the
Brahmins will to accept water in that vessel. These are some of the factors
which determine the place and status of a caste in this Hindu hierarchical
system of castes.
This hierarchical organisation of the caste system is responsible for
producing a social psychology, which is noteworthy. In the first place it
produces a spirit of rivalry among the different castes for dignity. Secondly it
produces an ascending scale of hatred and descending scale of contempt.
This social psychology of mutual hatred and contempt is well illustrated by
the innumerable proverbs that are flying about in India. As examples I record
a few of them.
This spirit of hatred and contempt has not only found its place in proverbs
but it has found its place in Hindu literature also. I refer to a Scripture known
as the Sahyadrikhand. It is one of the Puranas which form a part of the Hindu
Sacred literature. But its subject matter is totally foreign to the subject matter
of other Puranas. It deals with the *origin of the different castes. In doing so it
assigns noble origin to other castes while it assigns to the Brahmin caste the
filthiest origin. It was a revenge on Manu. It was worst lampoon on the
Brahmins as a caste. The Peshwas very naturally ordered its destruction.
Some survived the general destruction.
I will just record one more fact before I put the question. Present day Hindus
are probably the strongest opponents of Marxism. They are horrified at its
doctrine of class struggle. But they forget that India has been not merely the
land of class struggle but she has been the land of class wars.
The bitterest class war took place between the Brahmins and the
Kshatriyas. The classical literature of the Hindus abounds in reference to
class wars between these two Varnas.
The first recorded conflict was between the Brahmins and King Vena. Vena
was the son of King Anga, of the race of Atri and was born of Sunitha, the
daughter of Mrityu (Death). This son of the daughter of Kala (death), owing to
the taint derived from his maternal grandfather, threw his duties behind his
back, and lived in covetousness under the influence of desire. This king
established an irreligious system of conduct; transgressing the ordinances of
the Veda, he was devoted to lawlessness. In his reign men lived without study
of the sacred books and the gods had no soma-libations to drink at sacrifices.
`I' he declared, 'am the object, and the performer of sacrifice, and the
sacrifice itself; it is to me that sacrifice should be presented, and oblation
offered'. This transgressor of the rules of duty, who arrogated to himself what
was not his due, was then addressed by all the great rishis, headed by
Marichi. 'We are about to consecrate ourselves for a ceremony which shall
last for many years, practice not unrighteousness, O Vena : this is not the
eternal rule of duty. Thou art in every deed a Prajapati of Atri's race, and thou
has engaged to protect thy subjects.' The foolish Vena, ignorant of what was
right, laughingly answered those great rishis who had so addressed him ; '
Who but myself is the ordained of duty or whom ought I to obey? Who on
earth equals me in sacred knowledge, in prowess, in austere fervour, in truth?
Yes who are deluded and senseless know not that I am the source of all
beings and duties. Hesitate not to believe that I, if I willed, could burn up the
earth, or deluge it with water, or close up heaven and earth. ' When owing to
his delusion and arrogance Vena could not be governed then the mighty
rishis becoming incensed, seized the vigorous and struggling king, and
rubbed his left thigh. From this thigh, so rubbed, was produced a black man,
very short in stature, who, I being alarmed, stood with joined hands. Seeing
that he was agitated, Atri said to him ' Sit down' (Nishada). He became the
founder of the race of the Nishadas, and also progenitor of the Dhivaras
(fishermen), who sprang from the corruption of Vena. So two were produced
from him the other inhabitants of the Vindhya range, the Tukharas and
Tumburas, who are prone to lawlessness. Then the mighty sages, excited
and incensed, again rubbed the right hand of Vena, as men do the Arani
wood, and from it arose Pritha, respondent in body, glowing like the
manifested Agni." "The son of Vena (Pritha) then, with joined hands,
addressed the great Rishis: 'A very slender understanding for perceiving the
principles of duty has been given to me by nature; tell me truly how I must
employ it. Doubt not that I shall perform whatever thy shall declare to me as
my duty, and its object '. Then those gods and great I rishis said to him: '
Whatever duty is enjoined perform it without hesitation, disregarding what
though mayest like or dislike, looking on all creatures with an equal eye,
putting far from thy lust, anger, cupidity and pride. Restrain by the strength of
thin arm all those men who swerve from righteousness, having a constant
regard to duty. And in thought, act, and word take upon thyself, and
continually renew, the engagement to protect the terrestrial Brahman (Veda
or Brahmins?). . .. .. And promise that thou wilt exempts the Brahmans from
punishment, and preserve society from the confusion of Castes '. The son of
Vena then replied to the gods, headed by the rishis : ' The great Brahmans,
the chief of men, shall be reverenced by me '. `So be it,' rejoined those
declare of the Veda. Sukra, the depository of divine knowledge, became his
Purohita ; the Balakhilyas and Sarasvatyas his ministers; and the venerable
Garga, the great rishi, his astrologer.
The second recorded conflict took place between the Brahmins and the
Kshatriya king Pururavas. A brief reference to it occurs in the Adiparva of the
Mahabharat.
Pururavas was born of lla. Ruling over thirteen islands of the ocean, and
surrounded by beings who were all superhuman, himself a man of great
renown, Pururavas, intoxicated by his prowess engaged in a conflict with the
Brahmans, and robbed them of their jewels, although they loudly
remonstrated. Sanatkumara came from Brahma's heaven, and addressed to
him an admonition, which however, he did not regard. Being then straightway
cursed by the incensed rishis, he perished, this covetous monarch, who,
through pride of power, had lost his understanding. This glorious being (virat),
accompanied Urvasi, brought down for the performance of sacred rites the
fires which existed in the heaven of the Gandharvas, properly distributed into
three.
A third collision is reported to have occurred between the Brahmins and
King Nahusha. The story is given in great details in the Udyogaparva of the
Mahabharat. It is there recorded:
"After his slaughter of the demon Vrittra, Indra became alarmed at the idea
of having taken the life of a Brahmin (for Vrittra was regarded as such), and
hid himself in waters. In consequence of the disappearance of the king of
gods, all affairs, celestial as well as terrestrial, fell into confusion. The rishis
and Gods then applied to Nahusha to be their king. After at first excusing
himself on the plea of want of power, Nahusha at length, in compliance with
their solicitations, accepted the high function. Up to the period of his elevation
he had led a virtuous life, but he now became addicted to amusement and
sensual pleasure; and even aspired to the possession of Indrani, Indra's wife,
whom he had happened to see. The queen resorted to the Angiras Vrihaspati,
the preceptor of the Gods, who engaged to protect her. Nahusha was greatly
incensed on hearing of this interference; but the Gods endeavoured to pacify
him, and pointed out the immorality of appropriating another person's wife.
Nahusha, however, would listen to no remonstrance, and insisted that in his
adulterous designs he was not worse than Indra himself; "The renowned
Ahalya, a rish's wife, was formerly corrupted by Indra in her husband's
lifetime; why was he not prevented by you? And many barbarous acts, and
unrighteous deeds, and frauds were perpetrated of by old Indra; Why was he
not prevented by you?" The Gods, urged by Nahusha, then went to bring
Indrani; but Vrihaspati would not give her up. At his recommendation,
however, she solicited Nahusha for some delay, till she should ascertain what
had become of her husband. This request was granted. The Gods next
applied to Vishnu on behalf of Indra ; and Vishnu promised that if Indra would
sacrifice to him, he should be purged from his guilt, and recover his dominion,
while Nahusha would be destroyed. Indra sacrificed accordingly; and the
result is thus told ; "Having divided the guilt of Brahmanicide among trees,
rivers, mountains, the earth, women and the elements, Vasava (Indra), lord of
the Gods, became freed from suffering and sin, and self governed. "Nahusha
was by this means, shaken from his place. But he must have speedily
regained his position, as we are told that Indra was again ruined, and became
invisible. Indrani now went in search of her husband; and by the help of
Upasriti (the Goddess of night and revealer of secrets) discovered him
existing in a very subtle form in the stem of a lotus growing in a lake situated
in a continent within an ocean north of the Himalaya. She made known to him
the wicked intention of Nahusha, and entreated him to exert his power,
rescue her from danger, and resume his dominion. Indra declined any
immediate interposition on the plea of Nahusha's superior strength; but
suggested to his wife a device by which the usurper might be hurled from his
position. She was recommended to say to Nahusha that "if he would visit her
on a celestial vehicle borne by rishis, she would with pleasure submit herself
to him". The question of the Gods accordingly went to Nahusha, by whom she
was graciously received, and made this proposal:" I desire for thee, king of
the Gods, a vehicle hitherto unknown, such as neither Vishnu, nor Rudra, nor
the asuras, nor the rakshases employ. Let the eminent rishis, all united, bear
thee, lord, in a car; this idea pleases me". Nahusha receives favourably this
appeal to his vanity, and in the course of his reply thus gives utterance to his
self congratulation: "He is a personage of no mean prowess who makes the
Munis his bearers. I am a fervid devotee of great might, lord of the past, the
future and the present. If I were angry the world would no longer stand; on me
everything depends.... Wherefore, 0 Goddess I shall, without doubt, carry out
what you propose. The seven rishis, and all the Brahman rishis, shall carry
me. Behold beautiful Goddess, my majesty and my prosperity. "The narrative
goes on: "Accordingly this wicked being, irreligious, violent, intoxicated by the
force of conceit, and arbitrary in his conduct, attached to his car the rishis,
who submitted to his commands, and compelled them to bear him". Indrani
then again resorts to Vrihaspati, who assures her that vengeance will soon
overtake Nahusha for his presumption; and promises that he will himself
perform a sacrifice with a view to the destruction of the oppressor, and the
discovery of Indra's lurking place. Agni is then sent to discover and bring
Indra to Vrihaspati ; and the latter, on Indra's arrival, informs him of all that
had occurred during his absence. While Indra with Kuvera, Yama, Soma, and
Varuna, was devising means for the destruction of Nahusha, the sage
Agastya came up, congratulated Indra on the fall of his rival, and proceeded
to relate how it had occurred: "Wearied with carrying the sinner Nahusha, the
eminent divine rishis, and the spotless brahman-rishis asked that divine
personage Nahusha (to solve) a difficulty: 'Dost thou, Vasava, most excellent
of conquerors, regard as authoritative or not those Brahmana texts which are
recited at the immolation of king?' 'No', replied Nahusha, whose
understanding was enveloped in darkness. The rishis rejoined: 'Engaged in
unrighteousness, thou attainest not unto righteousness: these texts, which
were formerly uttered by great rishis, are regarded by us as authoritative. 'The
(proceeds Agastya) disputing with the munis, impelled by unrighteousness,
touched me on the head with his foot. In consequence of this the king's glory
was smitten and his prosperity departed. When he had instantly become
agitated and oppressed with fear, I said to him, ' Since thou, O fool,
condiments that sacred text, always held in honor, which has been composed
by former sages, and employed by Brahman-rishis, and hast touched my
head with thy foot, and employest the Brahma—like and irresistable rishis as
bearers to carry thee,—therefore, short of thy lustre and all thy merit
exhausted, sink down, sinner, degraded from heaven to earth. For then
thousand years thou shalt crawl in the form of a huge serpent. When that
period is completed, thou shalt again ascend to heaven. `So fell that wicked
wretch from the sovereignty of the Gods."
Next there is a reference to the conflict between King Nimi and the
Brahmins. The Vishnu Puran relates the story as follows :—
"Nimi had requested the Brahman-rishi Vasishtha to officiate at a sacrifice,
which was to last a thousand years, Vasishtha in reply pleaded a pre-
engagement to Indra for five hundred years, but promised to return at the end
of that period. The king made no remark, and Vasishtha went away,
supposing that he had assented to this arrangement. On his return, however,
the priest discovered that Nimi had retained Gautama (who was equal with
Vasishtha a Brahman-rishi) and others to perform the sacrifices ; and being
incensed at the neglect to give him notice of what was intended, he cursed
the king, who was then asleep, to lose his corporeal form. When Nimi awoke
and learnt that he had been cursed without any previous warning, he retorted,
by uttering a similar curse on Vasishtha, and then died. In consequence of
this curse the vigour of Vasistha, however, received from them another body
when their seed had fallen from them at the sight of Urvasi. Nimi's body was
embalmed.
At the close of the sacrifice which he had begun, the Gods were willing, on
the intercession of the priests, to restore him to life, but he declined the offer,
and was placed by the deities, according to his desire, in the eyes of all living
creatures. It is in consequence of this fact that they are always opening the
shutting. (nimishas means "the twinkling of the eye")." Manu mentions
another conflict between the Brahmins and King Sumukha. But of this no
details are available.
These are instances of conflict between the Brahmins and the Kshatriya
Kings. From this it must not be supposed that the Brahmins and the
Kshatriyas as two classes did not clash. That there were clashes between
these two classes as distinguished from conflicts with kings is abundantly
proved by material the historic value of which cannot be doubted. Reference
may be made to three events.
First is the contest between two individuals Vishvamitra the Kshatriya and
Vasishtha the Brahmin. The issue between the two was whether a Kshatriya
can claim Brahmahood. The story is told in Ramayana and is as follows :-
"There was formerly, we are told, a king called Kusa, son of Prajapati, who
had a son called Kushanabha, who was father of Gadhi, the father of
Visvamitra. The latter ruled the earth for many thousand years. On one
occasion, when he was making a circuit of the earth, he came to Vasishtha's
hermitage, the pleasant abode of many saints, sages, and holy devotees,
where, after at first declining he allowed himself to be hospitably entertained
with his followers. Visvamitra, however, coveting the wondrous cow, which
had supplied all the dainties of the feast, first of alt asked that she should be
given to him in exchange for a hundred thousand common cows, adding that
"she was a gem, that gems were the property of the king, and that, therefore,
the cow was his by right". On this price being refused the king advances
immensely in his offers, but all without effect.
He then proceeds very ungratefully and tyrannically, it must be allowed—to
have the cow removed by force, but she breaks away from his attendants,
and rushes back to her master, complaining that he was deserting her. He
replied that he was not deserting her, but that the king was much more
powerful than he. She answers, "Men do not ascribe strength to a Kshatriya;
the Brahmins are stronger. The Strength of Brahmins is divine, and superior
to that of Kshatriya. Thy strength is immeasurable. Visvamitra, though of
great vigour, is not more powerful than thou. Thy energy is invincible.
Commission me, who have been acquired by the Brahmanical power, and I
will destroy the pride, and force, and attempt of this wicked prince".
She accordingly by her bellowing creates hundreds of Pahlavas, who
destroy the entire host of Visvamitra, but are slain by him in their turn. Sakas
and Yavans, of great power and valour, and well armed, were then produced
who consumed the king's soldiers, but were routed by him. The cow then calls
into existence by her bellowing, and from different parts of her body, other
warriors of various tribes, who again destroyed Visvamitra's entire army, foot
soldiers, elephants, horses, chariots, and all. "A hundred of the monarch's
sons, armed with various weapons, then rushed in great fury on Vashistha,
but were all reduced to ashes in a moment by the blast of that sage's mouth.
Vishvamitra, being thus utterly vanquished and humbled, appointed one of his
sons to be regent, and travelled to the Himalaya, where he betook himself to
austerities, and thereby obtained a vision of Mahadeva, who at his desire
revealed to him the science of arms in all its branches, and gave him celestial
weapons with which, elated and full of pride, he consumed the hermitage of
Vashishtha, and put its inhabitants to flight.
Vashishtha then threatens Vishvamitra and uplifts his Brahminical mace.
Vishvamitra too, raises his fiery weapon and calls out to his adversary to
stand. Vashishtha bids him to show his strength, and boasts that he will soon
humble his pride. He asks : "What comparison is there between a Kshatriya's
might, and the great might of a Brahman? Behold, thou contemptible
Kshatriya, my divine Brahmanical power".
The dreadful fiery weapon uplifted by the son of Gadhi was then quenched
by the rod of the Brahman, as fire is by water. Many and various other
celestial missiles, as the nooses of Brahma, Kala (time), and Varuna, the
discus of Vishnu, and the trident Siva, were hurled by Vishvamitra at his
antagonist, but the son of Brahma swallowed them up in his all-devouring
mace. Finally, to the intense consternation of all the Gods, the warrior shot off
the terrific weapon of Brahma (Brahmastra) ; but this was equally ineffectual
against the Brahmanical sage. Vashishtha had now assumed a direful
appearance: 'Jets of fire mingled with smoke darted from the pores of his
body; the Brahminical mace blazed in his hand like a smokeless mundane
conflagration, or a second sceptre of Yama".
Being appeased, however, by the munis, who proclaimed his superiority to
his rival, the sage stayed his vengeance ; and Vishvamitra exclaimed with a
groan : 'Shame on a Kshatriya's strength ; the strength of a Brahman's might
alone is strength ; by the single Brahmanical mace all my weapons have been
destroyed. ' No alternative now remains, to the humiliated monarch, but either
to acquiesce in this helpless inferiority, or to work out his own elevation to the
Brahmanical order. He embraces the latter alternative: "Having pondered
well this defeat, I shall betake myself, with composed senses and mind, to
strenous austere fervour, which shall exalt me to the rank of a Brahman".
Intensely vexed and mortified, groaning and full of hatred against his enemy,
he travelled with his queen to the south, and carried his resolution into effect;
and we are first of all told that three sons Havishyanda, Madhusyanda, and
Dridhanetra were born to him.
At the end of a thousand years Brahma appeared, and announced that he
had conquered the heaven of royal sages (Rajarshis) ; and, in consequence
of his austere fervour, he was recognised as having attained that rank.
Vishvamitra, however, was ashamed, grieved, and incensed at the offer of so
very inadequate a reward, and exclaimed: " I have practised intense austerity,
and the Gods and Rishis regard me only as a Rajarshi and not as a Brahman.
"There is conflict recorded between the same persons or different persons of
the same name though on a somewhat different issue.
King Trisanku, one of Ikshvaku's descendants, had conceived the design of
celebrating a sacrifice by virtue of which he should ascent bodily to heaven.
As Vashistha, on being summoned, declared that the thing was impossible
(asakyam), Trisanku travelled to the south, where the sage's hundred sons
were engaged in austerities, and applied to them to do what their father had
declined. Though he addressed them with the greatest reverence and
humility, and added that "the Ikshvaku regarded their family—priests as their
highest resource in difficulties, and that, after their father, he himself looked to
them as his tutelary deities "he received from the haughty priests the following
rebuke for his presumption : "Asakyam" "Fool, thou hast been refused by thy
truth speaking preceptor. How is it that, disregarding his authority, thou hast
resorted to another school (sakha). The family priest is the highest oracle of
all the Ikshvakus', and the command of that veracious personages cannot be
transgressed. Vashishtha, the divine Rishi, has declared that 'the thing cannot
be'; and how can we undertake thy sacrifice? Thou art foolish king; return to
thy capital. The divine (Vashishtha) is competent to act as priest of the three
worlds; how can we shew him disrespect?" Trisanku then gave them to
understand that as his preceptor and "his preceptor's sons had declined
compliance with his requests, he should think of some other expedient". In
consequence of his venturing to express this presumptuous intention, they
condemned him by their imprecation to become a Chandala.
As this curse soon took effect, and the unhappy king's form was changed
into that of a degraded outcast, he resorted to Vishvamitra (who, as we have
seen, was also dwelling at this period in the south), enlarging on his own
virtues and piety, and bewailing his fate. Vishvamitra commiserated his
condition, and promised to sacrifice on his behalf, and exalt him to heaven in
the same Chandala form to which he had been condemned by his preceptor's
curse. "Heaven is now as good as in thy possession, since thou hast resorted
to the son of Kusika". He then directed that preparations should be made for
the sacrifice, and that all the Rishis, including the family of Vashishtha should
be invited to the ceremony. The disciples of Vishvamitra, who had conveyed
his message, reported the result on their return in these words : "Having
heard your message, all the Brahmans are assembling in all the countries,
and have arrived, excepting Mahodaya (Vashishtha)? Hear what dreadful
words those hundred Vashishthas, their voices quivering with rage, have
uttered : " How can the Gods and Rishis consume the oblation at the sacrifice
of that man, especially if he be a Chandala, for whom a Kshatriya is officiating
priest? How can illustrious Brahmans ascend to heaven after eating the food
of a Chandala, and being entertained by Vishvamitra? "These ruthless words
all Vashishthas, together with Mahodaya, uttered, their eyes inflamed with
anger.
Vishvamitra, who was greatly incensed on receiving this, message by a
curse doomed the sons of Vashishtha to be reduced to ashes, and reborn as
degraded outcasts (mritapah) for seven hundred births, and Mahodaya to
become a Nishada. Knowing that this curse had taken effect, Vishvamitra
then after eulogizing Trisanku, proposed to the assembled Rishis that the
sacrifice should be celebrated. To this they assented, being actuated by fear
of the terrible sage's wrath. Vishvamitra himself officiated at the sacrifices as
vajakas ; and the other Rishis as priests (Ritvijah) (with other functions)
performed all the ceremonies. Vishvamitra next invited the gods to partake of
the oblations ; "When, however, the deities did not come to receive their
portions, Vishvamitra became full of wrath, and raising aloft the sacrificial
ladle, thus addressed Trisanku : 'Behold, O monarch, the power of austere
fervour acquired by my own efforts. I myself, by my own energy, will conduct
thy to heaven.
Ascend to that celestial region which is so arduous to attain in an earthly
body. I have surely earned SOME reward of my austerity '. "Trisanku
ascended instantly to heaven in the sight of Munis. Indra, however, ordered
him to be gone, as a person who, having incurred the curse of his spiritual
preceptors, was unfit for the abode of the celestials :—and to fall down
headlong to earth. He accordingly began to descend, invoking loudly, as he
fell, the help of his spiritual patron. Vishvamitra, greatly incensed, called out to
him to stop: "Then by the power of his divine knowledge and austere fervour
created, like another Prajapati, other Seven Rishis (a constellation so called)
in the southern part of the sky. Having proceeded to this quarter of the
heavens, the renowned sage, in the midst of the Rishis, formed another
garland of stars, being overcome with fury. Exclaiming, 'I will create another
Indra, or the world shall have no Indra at all', he began, in his rage, to call
Gods also into being".
The Rishis, Gods, (Suras), and Asuras now became seriously alarmed and
said to Vishvamitra, in a concilliatory tone, that Trisanku, "as he had been
cursed by his preceptors, should not be admitted bodily into heaven, until he
had undergone some lustration". The sage replied that he had given a
promise to Trisanku, and appealed to the Gods to permit his portage to
remain bodily in heaven, and the newly created stars to retain their places in
perpetuity. The Gods agreed that "these numerous stars should remain, but
beyond the Sun's path, and that Trisanku, like an immortal, with his head
downwards should shine among them, and be followed by them", adding "that
his object would be thus attained, and his renown secured, and he would be
like a dweller in heaven". Thus was this great dispute adjusted by a
compromise, which Vishvamitra accepted.
When all the Gods and rishis had departed at the conclusion of the sacrifice,
Vishvamitra said to his attendant devotees ; "This has been a great
interruption (to our austerities) which has occurred in the southern region : we
must proceed in another direction to continue our penances". He accordingly
went to a forest in the west, and began his austerities anew. Here the
narrative is again interrupted by the introduction of another story, that of king
Ambarisha, king of Ayodhya, who was, according to the Ramayana, the
twenty eighth in descent from Ikshvaku, and the twenty second from Trisanku.
Vishvamitra is nevertheless represented as flourishing
contemporaneously with both of these princes. The story relates that
Ambarisha was engaged in performing a sacrifice, when Indra carried away
the victim. The priest said that this ill-omened event had occurred owing to
the king's bad administration ; and would call for a great expiation, unless a
human victim could be produced. After a long search the royal rishi
(Ambarisha) came upon the Brahmin-rishi Richika, a descendant of Bhrigu,
and asked him to sell one of his sons for a victim, at the price of a hundred
thousand cows. Richika answered that he would not sell his eldest son ; and
his wife added that she would not sell the youngest : "Eldest sons," she
observed, "being generally the favourites of their fathers, and youngest sons
of their mothers". The second son, Sunassepa then said that in that case he
regarded himself as the one who was to be sold, and desired the king to
remove him. The hundred thousand cows, with ten millions of gold pieces and
heaps of jewels, were paid down, and Sunassepa was carried away. As they
were passing through Puskara, Sunassepa beheld his maternal uncle
Vishvamitra who was engaged in austerities there with other rishis, threw
himself into his arms, and implored his assistance, urging his orphan,
friendless, and helpless state, as claims on the sage's benevolence.
Vishvarnitra soothed him: and pressed his own sons to offer themselves as
victims in the room of Sunassepa. This proposition met with no favour from
Madhushanda and the other sons of the royal hermit, who answered with
haughtiness and derison : "How is it that thou sacrificest thine own sons, and
seekest to rescue those of others? We look upon this as wrong, and like the
eating of one's own flesh".
The sage was exceedingly wrath at this disregard of his injunction, and
doomed his sons to be born in the most degraded classes, like Vashishtha's
sons, and to eat dog's flesh, for a thousand years. He then said to Sunassepa
: "When thou art bound with hallowed cords, decked with a red garland, and
anointed with unguents, and fastened to the sacrificial post of Vishnu, then
address thyself to Agni, and sing these two divine verses (gathas), at the
sacrifice of Ambarisha ; then shall thou attain the fulfilment of thy desire".
Being furnished with the two gathas, Sunassepa proposed at once to King
Ambarisha that they should set out for their destination. Then bound at the
stake to be immolated, dressed in a red garment, "he celebrated the two
Gods, Indra and his younger brother (Vishnu), with the excellent verses. The
thousand-eyed (Indra) was pleased with the sacred hymn, and bestowed long
life on Sunassepa". King Ambarisha also received great benefits from this
sacrifice. Vishvamitra meanwhile proceeded with his austerities, which he
prolonged for a thousand years. "At the end of this time the Gods came to
allot his reward; and Brahma announced that he had attained the rank of a
rishi, thus apparently advancing an additional step. Dissatisfied, as it would
seem, with this, the sage commenced his task of penance anew. After a
length of time he beheld the nymph (Apsara) Menka, who had come to bathe
in the lake of Pushkara.
She flashed on his view, unequalled in her radiant beauty, like lightning in a
cloud. He was smitten by her charms, invited her to be his companion in his
hermitage, and for ten years remained a slave to her witchery, to the great
prejudice of his austerities. At length he became ashamed of this ignoble
subjection, and full of indignation at what he believed to be a device of the
Gods to disturb his devotion ; and, dismissing the nymph with gentle accents,
he departed for the northern mountains, where he practised severe austerities
for a thousand years on the banks of the Kausiki river. The Gods became
alarmed at the progress he was making, and decided that he should be
dignified with the appellation of great rishi (Maharshi) ; and Brahma, giving
effect to the general opinion of the deities, announced that he had conferred
that rank upon him. Joining his hands and bowing his head, Vishvamitra
replied that he should consider himself to have indeed completely subdued
his senses, if the incomparable title of Brahmin-rishi were conferred upon him.
Brahma informed him in answer, that he had not yet acquired the power of
perfectly controlling his senses ; but should make further efforts with that
view.
The sage then began to put himself through a yet more rigorous course of
austerities, standing with his arms erect, without support, feeding on air, in
summer exposed to five fires (i.e. one on each of four sides, and the sun
overhead), in the rainy season remaining unsheltered from the wet, and in
winter lying on a watery couch night and day. This he continued for a
thousand years. At last Indra and the other deities became greatly distressed
at the idea of the merit he was storing up, and the power which he was
thereby acquiring; and the chief of the celestials desired the nymph Rambha
to go and bewitch him by her blandishments. She expressed great reluctance
to expose herself to the wrath of the formidable muni, but obeyed the
repeated injunction of Indra, who promised that he and Kandarpa (the God of
love) should stand by her, and assumed her most attractive aspect with the
view of overcoming the sage's impassability. He, however, suspected this
design, and becoming greatly incensed, he doomed the nymph by a curse to
be turned into stone and to continue in that state for a thousand years.
The curse took effect, and Kandarpa and Indra sunk away. In this way,
though he resisted the allurements of sensual love, he lost the whole fruit of
his austerities by yielding to anger; and had to begin his work over again. He
resolved to check his irresistibility, to remain silent, not even to breathe for
hundreds of years ; to dry up his body ; and to fast and stop his breath till he
had obtained the coveted character of a Brahmin. He then left the Himalaya
and travelled to the east, where he underwent a dreadful exercise, unequalled
in the whole history of austerities, maintaining silence, according to a vow, for
a thousand years. At the end of this time he had attained to perfection, and
although thwarted by many obstacles, he remained unmoved by anger. On
the expiration of this course of austerity, he prepared some food to eat; which
Indra, coming in the form of a Brahmin, begged that he would give him.
Vishvamitra did so, and though he had done left for himself, and was obliged
to remain fasting, he said nothing to the Brahmin, on account of his vow of
silence. "As he continued to suspend his breath, smoke issued from his head,
to the great consternation and distress of the three worlds."
The Gods, rishis, etc., then addressed Brahma. "The great muni
Vishvamitra has been allured and provoked in various ways, but still
advances in his sanctity. If his wish is not conceded, he will destroy the three
worlds by the force of his austerity. All the regions of the universe are
confounded, no light anywhere shines; all the oceans are tossed, and the
mountains crumble, the earth quakes, and the wind blows confusedly. We
cannot, 0 Brahma, guarantee that mankind shall not become atheistic.....
Before the great and glorious sage of fiery form resolves to destroy
(everything) let him be propitiated. "The Gods, headed by Brahma, then
addressed Vishvamitra : 'Hail, Brahman rishi, we are gratified by the austerity
; O Kausika, thou hast, through their intensity, attained to Brahmahood. O
Brahman, associated with the Maruts, confers on thee long life. May every
blessing attend thee ; depart where ever thou wilt.' The sage, delighted,
made his obeisance to the Gods, and said: ' If I have obtained Brahmahood,
and long life, then let the mystic monosyllable (ornkara) and the sacrificial
formula (vashatkara) and the Vedas recognise me in that capacity. And let
Vashishtha, the son of Brahmin, the most eminent of those who are skilled in
the Kshatra-Veda, and the Brahma-Veda (the knowledge of the Kshatriya and
the Brahmnical disciplines), address me similarly '..... Accordingly Vashishtha,
being propitiated by the Gods, became reconciled to Vishvamitra, and
recognised his claim to all the prerogatives of a Brahman rishi. ....
Vishvamitra, too having attained the Brahmanical rank, paid all honour to
Vashishtha".
The second event has a reference to the slaughter of the Brahmins by the
Kshatriyas. It is related in the Adiparva of the Mahabharat from which the
following account is taken :—
"There was a King named Kritrvirya, by whose liberality the Bhrigus, learned
in the Vedas, who officiated as his priests, had been greatly enriched with
corn and money. After he had gone to heaven, his descendants were in want
of money, and came to beg for a supply from the Bhrigus, of whose wealth
they were aware. Some of the latter hid their money under ground, others
bestowed it on Brahmins, being afraid of the Kshatriyas, while others again
gave these last what they wanted. It happened, however, that a Kshatriya,
while digging the ground, discovered some money buried in the house of
Bhrigu. The Kshatriyas then assembled and saw this treasure, and, being
incensed, slew in consequence all the Bhrigus, who they regarded with
contempt, down to the children in the womb. The widows, however, fled to the
Himalaya mountains. One of them concealed her unborn child in her thigh.
The Kshatriya, hearing of its existence from a Brahmani informant, sought to
kill it ; but it issued forth from its mother's thigh with lustre, and blinded the
persecutors. After wandering about bewildered among the mountains for a
time, they humbly supplicated the mother of the child for the restoration of
their sight ; but she referred them to her wonderful infant Aurva into whom the
whole Veda, with its six Vedangas, had entered as the person who (in
retaliation of the slaughter of his relatives) had robbed them of their eyesight,
and who alone could restore it. They accordingly had recourse to him, and
their eyesight was restored. Aurva, however, meditated the destruction of all
living creatures, in revenge for the slaughter of the Bhrigus. and entered on a
course of austerities which alarmed both Gods, Asuras, and men ; but his
progenitors (Pitris) themselves appeared, and sought to turn him from his
purpose by saying that they had no desire to be revenged on the Kshatriyas:
"It was not from weakness that the devout Bhrigus overlooked the massacre
perpetrated by the murderous Kshatriyas.
When we became distressed by old age, we ourselves desired to be
slaughtered by them. The money which was buried by someone in a Bhrigu's
house was placed there for the purpose of exciting hatred, by those who
wished to provoke the Kshatriyas. For what had we, who were desiring
heaven, to do with money? "They added that they hit upon this device
because they did not wish to be guilty of suicide, and concluded by calling
upon Aurva to restrain his wrath ; and abstain from the sin he was meditating,
"Destroy not the Kshatriyas. Oh, son, nor the seven worlds. Suppress thy
kindled anger which nullifies the power of austere fervour."
Aurva, however, replies that he cannot allow his threat to remain un-
executed. His anger, unless wreaked upon some other object, will, he says,
consume himself. And he argues on grounds of justice, expediency, and duty,
against the clemency which his progenitors recommend. He is, however,
persuaded by the Pitris to throw the fire of his anger into the sea, where they
say it will find exercise in assailing the watery element, and in this way his
threat will be fulfilled."
The third event has reference to the slaughter of the Kshatriyas by the
Brahmins. This story is told in several places in the Mahabharat. The
magnificent and mighty Kartavirya, possessing a thousand arms, was lord of
this whole world, living in Mahishmati. This Haihaya of unquestioned valour
ruled over the whole sea-girt earth, with its oceans and continents. He
obtained boons from the Muni Dattatreya, a thousand arms whenever he
should go into battle, power to make the conquest of the whole earth, a
disposition to rule it with justice and the promise of instruction from the
virtuous in the event of his going astray. "Then ascending his chariot glorious
as the resplendent Sun, he exclaimed in the intoxication of his prowess, ' Who
is like me in fortitude, courage, fame, heroism, energy, and vigour?'
At the end of this speech a bodiless voice in the sky addressed him: 'Thou
knowest not, 0 fool, that a Brahman is better than Kshatriya. It is with the help
of the Brahman that the Kshatriya rules his subjects. ' Arjuna answers : ' If I
am pleased, I can create, or, if displeased, annihilate living beings; and no
Brahman is superior to me in act, thought or word. The first proposition is that
the Brahmins are superior: the second that the Kshatriyas are superior; both
of these thou hast stated with their grounds, but there is a difference between
them (in point of force). The Brahmins are dependent on the Kshatriyas and
not the Kshatriyas on the Brahmins, who wait upon them, and only make the
Vedas a pretence. Justice, the protection of the people, has its seat in the
Kshatriyas. From them the Brahmins derive their livelihood; how then can the
latter be superior? I always keep in subjection myself those Brahmins, the
chief of all beings, who subsist on air and sand who have a high opinion of
themselves. For truth was spoken by that female the Gayatri in the sky. I shall
subdue all those unruly Brahmins clad in hides. No one in the three worlds,
god or man can hurl me from my royal authority; therefore I am superior to
any Brahman. Now shall I turn the world in which Brahmins have the upper
hand into a place where Kshatriyas shall have the upper hand; for no one
dares to encounter my force in battle. ' Hearing this speech of Arjun, the
female roving in the night became alarmed.
Then Vayu hovering in the air, said to Arjuna: 'Abandon this sinful
disposition, and do obeisance to the Brahmins. If thou shall do them wrong,
thy kingdom shall be convulsed. They will subdue thee; those powerful men
will humble thee, and expel thee from thy country. ' The King asks him, 'Who
art thou?" Vayu replies, 'I am Vayu, the messenger of the Gods. and tell thee
what is for thy benefit. ' Arjuna rejoins, ' Oh, thou displayest today a great
warmth of devotion to the Brahmins. But say that a Brahman is like (any
other) earth-horn creature. "
This king came into conflict with Parsuram the son of a Brahman sage
Jamadagni. The history of this conflict is as follows:—
There lived a king of Kanyakubja, called Gadhi, who had a daughter named
Satyavati. The marriage of this princess to the rishi Richika, and the birth of
Jamadagni, are then told in nearly the same way as above narrated.
Jamadagni and Satyavati had five sons, the youngest of whom was the
redoubtable Parasuram. By his father's command he kills his mother (who, by
the indulgence of impure desire, had fallen from her previous sanctity), after
the four elder sons had refused this matricidal offence, and had in
consequence been deprived of reason bv their father's curse. At Parasuram's
desire, however, his mother is restored by his father to life, and his brothers to
reason; and he himself is absolved from all the guilt of murder ; and obtains
the boon of invincibility and long life from his father.
His history now begins to be connected with that of king Arjuna (or
Kartavirya). The latter had come to Jamadagni's hermitage, and had been
respectfully received by his wife; but he had requited this honour by carrying
away by force the calf of the sage's sacrificial cow, and breaking down his
lofty trees. On being informed of this violence, Parasurama was filled with
indignation, attacked Arjuna, cut off his thousand arms, and slew him.
Arjuna's sons, in return slew the peaceful sage Jamadagni, in the absence of
Parasuram.
Rama, after performing, on his return, his father's funeral obsequies, vowed
to destroy the whole Kshatriya race ; and execucted his threat by killing first
Arjun's sons and their followers. Twenty one times did he sweep away all the
Kshatriyas from the earth, and formed five lakes of blood in Samantpanchaka
; in which he satiated the manes of the Bhrigus, and beheld face to face (his
grandfather), Richika, who addressed himself to Rama. The latter gratified
Indra by offering to him a grand sacrifice, and gave the earth to the officiating
priests. He bestowed also a golden altar, ten fathoms long and nine high, on
the mighty Kasyapa.
This, by his permission, the Brahmins divided among themselves, deriving
thence the name of Khandavavanas. Having given away the earth to
Kasyapa, Parasuram himself dwells on the mountain Mahendra. Thus did
enmity arise between him and Kshatriyas, and thus was the earth conquered
by Parasuram of boundless might." The Kshatriyas who were slain by
Parasuram are described in the Dronaparvan of the Mahabharata as of
various provinces, viz., Kasmiras, Daradas, Kuntis, Kshudrakas, Malavas,
Angas, Vangas, Kalingas, Videhas, Tamraliptakas, Marttikavatas, Sivis and
other Rajanyas.
The means by which the Kshattriya race was restored is also told as part of
this story of annihilation of the Kshatriyas by the Brahmins. It is said :—
"Having one and twenty times swept away all the Kshatriyas from the earth,
the son of Jamdagni engaged in austerities on Mahendra the most excellent
of mountains. After he had cleared the world of Kshatriyas, their widows came
to the Brahmins, praying for offspring. The religious Brahmins, free from any
impulse of lust cohabited at the proper seasons with these women, who in
consequence became pregnant, and brought forth valiant Kshatriya boys and
girls, to continue the Kshatriya stock. Thus was the Kshatriya race virtuously
begotten by Brahmins on Kshatriya women, and became multiplied and long
lived. Thence there arose four castes inferior to the Brahmins." No country
has such a dismal record of class war as Hindustan. It was the proud boast
of the Brahmin Parsuram that he exterminated the Kshatriyas twenty one
times from the face of Hindustan and recreated them by Brahmans cohabiting
with the widows of the Kshatriyas.
It must not be supposed that this Class War in India is a matter of ancient
History. It has been present all along. Its existence was very much noticeable
in Maharashtra during the Maratha Rule. It destroyed the Maratha Empire. It
must not be supposed that these class Wars were like ordinary wars which
are a momentary phenomena which come and go and which leave no
permanent chasms to divide the peoples of the different nations. In India the
class war is a permanent phenomenon, which is silently but surely working its
way. It is a grain in the life and it has become genius of the Hindus.
These facts it will not be denied are symptomatic in the sense they indicate
health and character. Do they suggest that there is fraternity among Hindus?
In the face of these facts I am sure it would be impossible to give an
affirmative answer.
What is the explanation of this absence of fraternity among the Hindus? It is
Hinduism and its philosophy that is responsible for it. The sentiment of
fraternity as Mill said is natural but it is a plant, which grows only where the
soil is propitious and the conditions for its growth exist. The fundamental
condition for the growth of the sentiment of fraternity is not preaching that we
are children of God or the realisation that one's life is dependent upon others.
It is too rational to give rise to a sentiment. The condition for the growth of this
sentiment of fraternity lies in sharing in the vital processes of life. It is sharing
in the joys and sorrows of birth, death, marriage and food. Those who
participate in these come to feel as brothers. Prof. Smith very rightly
emphasises the importance of sharing food as a prime factor in the creation
of community feeling when he says;
"The sacrificial meal was an appropriate expression of the antique ideal of
religious life, not merely because it was a social act and in which the God and
his worshippers were conceived as partaking together, but because, as has
already been said, the very act of eating and drinking with a man was a
symbol and 4 a confirmation of fellowship and mutual social obligations.
The one thing directly expressed in the sacrificial meal is that the God and his
worshippers are common sols but every other point in their mutual relations is
included in what this involves. Those who sit at meal together are united for
all social effects; those who do not eat together are aliens to one another,
without fellowship in religion and without reciprocal social duties".
There is no sharing among Hindus of joys and sorrows involved in the vital
facts of life. Everything is separate and exclusive. The Hindu is separate and
exclusive all through his life. A foreigner coming to India will not find men
crying Hindu Pani (water for Hindus) and Musalman Pani (water for
Musalmans). He will find Brahmin Coffee
Houses, Brahmin Eating-Houses, where no non-Brahmin Hindus can go. He
will find Brahmin Maternity Homes, Maratha Maternity Homes and Bhatia
Maternity homes although Brahmins, Marathas and Bhatias are all Hindus. If
there is a birth at the house of a Brahmin, no non-Brahmin will be invited nor
will he feel the desire to join. If there is marriage in the family of a Brahmin, no
non-Brahmin will be invited nor will he feel the desire to join if a Brahmin dies,
no non-Brahmin will be invited to join the funeral nor will he think it necessary
to join in the procession. If there is a festivity in the house of a Brahmin, no
non-Brahmin will be called and no non-Brahmin will feel any wrong about it.
Joys and sorrows of one caste are not the joys and sorrows of another. One
caste has no concern with other castes. Even charity has become caste
bound. Among Hindus there is no public charity in the sense of its benefit
being open to all. You have Brahmin Charity for Brahmins. Within that you
have Chitpavan Brahmin Charity for Chitpavan Brahmins only. Deshastha
Brahmin Charity for Deshastha Brahmins only, Karhada Brahmin Charity for
Karahda Brahmins only. You have Sarasvat Brahmin Charity. Within that you
have Kudaldeshkar Brahmin Charity. One could go on with such instances ad
nauseum to show the exclusive character of Hindu Charity—rather Charity
among Hindus—for there is no such thing as Hindu Charity. Thus one Hindu
will share nothing with another Hindu while they are alive. But they will be
separate and exclusive even when they are dead. Some Hindus bury their
dead. Some Hindus burn their dead. But those bury will not share the same
cemetery. Each will appropriate a part of the cemetery to bury its dead. Those
Who burn will not burn at the same burning place. If they do, each will have a
separate funeral pan.
Is there any wonder that the sentiment of fraternity is foreign to the Hindus?
With a complete refusal to share the joys and sorrows of life how can the
sentiment of fraternity take roots?
But the question of all questions is why do the Hindus refuse to share the
joys and sorrows of life? It needs no saying that he refuses to share because
his religion tells him not to share them. This conclusion need cause no
surprise. For what does Hinduism teach? It teaches not to inter-dine, not to
intermarry, not to associate. These don'ts constitute the essence of its
teaching. All the shameful facts I have referred to, to illustrate the separate
and exclusive character of the Hindus is the direct outcome of this philosophy
of Hindusim. The philosophy of Hinduism is a direct denial of fraternity.
This brief analysis of the Philosophy of Hinduism from the point of view of
justice reveals in a glaring manner how Hinduism is inimical to equality,
antagonistic to liberty and opposed to fraternity.
Fraternity and liberty are really derivative notions. The basic and
fundamental conceptions are equality and respect for human personality.
Fraternity and liberty take their roots in these two fundamental conceptions.
Digging further down it may be said that equality is the original notion and
respect for human personality is a reflection of it. So that where equality is
denied, everything else may be taken to be denied. In other words it was
enough for me to have shown that there was no equality in Hinduism. But as
Hinduism has not been examined so far in the manner I have done, I did not
think it sufficient to leave it to implication that Hinduism was a denial of
Fraternity and Liberty as well.
There is one final observation with which I wish to conclude this discussion
with the profound observation of Lord Acton. The great Lord says that
inequality has grown as a result of historical circumstances. It has never been
adopted as a creed. It is obvious that in making this observation Lord Acton
must have omitted to take note of Hinduism. For in Hinduism inequality is a
religious doctrine adopted and conscientiously preached as a sacred dogma.
It is an official creed and nobody is ashamed to profess it openly. Inequality
for the Hindus is a divinely prescribed way of life as a religious doctrine and
as a prescribed way of life, it has become incarnate in Hindu Society and is
shaped and moulded by it in its thoughts and in its doings. Indeed inequality
is the Soul of Hinduism.
Let me now turn to the examination of the philosophy of Hinduism from the
point of view of Utility.
This examination of Hinduism from this aspect need not be long and
detailed. For as Mill pointed out there is no necessary antagonism between
justice and utility. In other words what is unjust to the individual cannot be
useful to society. Apart from this we have before us the consequences of
caste staring us in the face.
The ideal of caste was not mere ideal. The ideal was put into practice; was
therefore something real. So that, in the matter of the Chaturvarna the Hindus
have very faithfully followed the German Philosopher Nietszche who said
"Realise the-ideal and idealise the real".
The value of the ideal must be tested by its results. If experience therefore
must be the criterion then the ideal of Chaturvarna stands thrice condemned.
Purely as a form of social organisation it stands condemned. As a producer's
organisation it stands discredited. As an ideal scheme of distribution it has
miserably failed. If it is an ideal form of organisation how is it that the
Hinduism has been unable to form a common front. If it is an ideal form of
production, how is it that its technique never advanced beyond that of the
primitive man. If it is an ideal form of distribution, how is it that it has produced
appalling inequality of wealth, immense wealth side by side extreme poverty.
But I do not wish to dismiss the subject so summarily, for I know many
Hindus who claim great social utility to the institution of caste and praise
Manu for having been so wise and so thoughtful not only in devising it but in
giving it a divine sanction.
This view of the caste is due to taking the separate aspects of caste
separately. One must take them in conjunction. The resultant social utility or
distillate of caste can be ascertained only by putting together the separate
aspects of caste and judge them in their combination. Following this line of
attacking the problem, the following conclusions follow: —
(1) Caste divides Labourers (2) Caste disassociates work from interest (3)
Caste disconnects intelligence from manual labour (4) Caste devitalises by
denying to him the right to cultivate vital interest and (5) Caste prevents
mobilisation. Caste System is not merely division of labour. IT IS ALSO A
DIVISION OF LABOURERS. Civilised society undoubtedly needs division of
labour. But in no civilised society is division of labour accompanied by this
unnatural division of labourers into watertight compartments. Caste System is
not merely a division of labourers, which is quite different from division of
labour it is an hierarchy in which the divisions of labourers are graded one
above the other. In no other country is the division of labour accompanied by
this gradation of labourers. There is also a third point of criticism against this
view of the Caste System. This division of labour is not spontaneous, it is not
based on natural aptitudes. Social and individual efficiency requires us to
develop the capacity of an individual to the point of competency to chose and
to make his own career. This principle is violated in the Caste System in so
far as it involves an attempt to appoint tasks to individuals in advance,
selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the
social status of the parents. Looked at from another point of view this
stratification of occupations which is the result of the Caste System is
positively pernicious. Industry is never static. It undergoes rapid and abrupt
changes. With such changes an individual must be free to change his
occupations. Without such freedom to adjust himself to changing
circumstances it would be impossible for him to gain his livelihood. Now the
Caste System will not allow Hindus to take occupations where they are
wanted if they do not belong to them by heredity. If a Hindu is seen to starve
rather than take to new occupations not assigned to his Caste, the reason is
to be found in the Caste System. By not permitting readjustment of
occupations, caste becomes a direct cause of much of the unemployment we
see in the country.
As a form of division of labour the Caste System suffers from another
serious defect. The division of labour brought about by the Caste System is
not a division based on choice. Individual sentiment, individual preference has
no place in it. It is based on the dogma of predestination. Considerations of
social efficiency would compel us to recognise that the greatest evil in the
industrial system is not so much poverty and the suffering that it involves, as
the fact that so many persons have callings which make no appeal to those
who are engaged in them. Such callings constantly provoke one to aversion,
ill will and the desire to evade. There are many occupations in India which on
account of the fact that they are regarded as degraded by the Hindus provoke
those who are engaged in it to aversion. There is a constant desire to evade
and escape from such occupations which arises solely because of the
blighting effect which they produce upon those who follow them owing to the
slight and stigma cast upon them by the Hindu religion.
The second mischief it dose is to dissociate intelligence from work and
create contempt for labour. The theory of the Caste is that a Brahmin who is
permitted to cultivate his intellect is not permitted to labour, indeed is taught to
look down upon labour. While the Shudra who is required to labour is not
permitted to cultivate his intelligence. The disastrous consequences of this
have been well portrayed by Mr. R.C.Dutt. ..... barren. Wealth without
education and wealth is brutal. Each is necessary to every one. They are
necessary for the growth of a man.
That the Brahmin should cultivate knowledge, Kshatriya should bear arms,
the Vaishya should trade and that the Shudra should serve is presented as a
theory of mutual interdependence found in the family. It is asked why should
the Shudra need trouble to acquire wealth when the three Varnas are there to
support him; Why need the Shudra bother to take to education when the
Brahmin to whom he can go when the occasion for reading or writing arises;
Why need the Shudra worry to arm himself because there is the Kshatriya to
protect him? The theory of Chaturvarnya understood in this sense may be
said to look upon the Shudra as the ward and the three Varnas as his
guardians. Thus interpreted it is a simple and alluring theory. Assuming this to
be the correct view of the underlying conception of Chaturvarnya it seems to
me that the system is neither fool-proof nor knave-proof. What is to happen if
the Brahmins, Vaishyas and Kshatriyas fail to pursue knowledge, to engage
in economic enterprises and to be efficient soldiers which are their respective
functions? Contrary-wise, suppose that they discharge their functions but flout
their duty to the Shudra or to one another? What is to happen to the Shudra if
the three classes refuse to support him on fair terms or combine to keep him
down? Who is to safeguard the interests of the Shudra or for the matter of
that of the Vaishya and Kshatriya when the person who is trying to take
advantage of his ignorance is the Brahmin? Who is to defend the liberty of the
Shudra or that of the Brahmin and the Vaishya, when the person who is
robbing him of it is the Kshatriya? Inter-dependence of one class on another
class is inevitable. Even dependence of one class upon another may
sometimes become allowable. But why make one person depend upon
another in the matter of his vital needs? Education every one must have.
Means of defence every one must have. These are the paramount
requirements of every man for his self-preservation. How can the fact that his
neighbour is educated and armed, help a man who is uneducated and
disarmed. The whole theory is absurd. These are the questions which the
defenders of Chaturvarnya do not seem to be troubled about. But they are
very pertinent questions. Assuming their conception of Chaturvarnya that the
relationship between the different classes is that of ward and guardian is the
real conception underlying Chaturvarnya, it must be admitted that it makes no
provision to safeguard the interests of the ward from the misdeeds of the
guardian. Whether the relationship of guardian and ward was the real
underlying conception on which Chaturvarnya was based there is no doubt
that in practice the relation was that of master and servant. The three classes,
Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas although not very happy in their mutual
relationship managed to work by compromise. The Brahmin flattered the
Kshatriya and both let the Vaishya live in order to be able to live upon him.
But the three agreed to beat down the Shudra. He was not allowed to acquire
wealth lest he should be independent of the three Varnas. He was prohibited
from acquiring knowledge lest he should keep a steady vigil regarding his
interests. He was prohibited from bearing arms lest he should have the
means to rebel against their authority. That this is how the Shudras were
treated by the Trayavarnikas is evidenced by the Laws of Manu. There is no
code of laws more infamous regarding social rights than the Laws of Manu.
Any instance from anywhere of social injustice must pale before it. Why have
the mass of people tolerated the social evils to which they have been
subjected? There have been social revolutions in other countries of the world.
Why have there not been social revolutions in India is a question which has
incessantly troubled me. There is only one answer which I can give and it is
that the lower classes of Hindus have been completely disabled for direct
action on account of this wretched system of Chaturvarnya. They could not
bear arms and without arms they could not rebel. They were all ploughmen or
rather condemned to be ploughmen and they were allowed to convert their
ploughshares into swords. They had no bayonets and therefore everyone
who chose ploughs did sit upon them. On account of the Chaturvarnya they
could receive no education. They could not think out or know the way to their
salvation. They were condemned to be lowly and not knowing the way of
escape and not having the means of escape, they became reconciled to
eternal servitude which they accepted as their inescapable fate. It is true that
even in Europe the strong has not shrunk from the exploitation, nay the
spoliation of the weak but in Europe, the strong have never contrived to make
the weak helpless against exploitation so shamelessly as was the case in
India among the Hindus. Social war has been raging between the strong and
the weak far more violently in Europe than it has ever been in India. Yet the
weak in Europe has had in him freedom of military service his physical
weapon, in suffrage his political weapon and in education his moral weapon.
Three weapons for emancipation were never withheld by the strong from the
weak in Europe. All these weapons were however denied to the masses in
India by Chaturvarnya. There cannot be a more degrading system of social
organisation than Chaturvarnya. It is the system, which deadens, paralyses
and cripples the people from helpful activity. This is no exaggeration. History
bears ample evidence. There is only one period in Indian history, which is a
period of freedom, greatness and glory. That is the period of the Mourya
Empire. At all other times the country suffered from defeat and darkness. But
the Mourya period was a period when Chaturvarnya was completely
annihilated, when the Shudras, who constituted the mass of the people came
into their own and became the rulers of the country. The period of defeat and
darkness is the period when Chaturvarnya flourished to the damnation of the
greater part of the people of the country.
Caste prevents mobilisation. Occasions arise when society must mobilise all
its resources to one end in order to save itself from a catastrophe. To take a
catastrophe like war, Society must mobilise all its resources for militarization.
Every one must do war. Every one must be a soldier. Is this possible under
the theory of caste? Obviously not. Indeed the destiny of a defeat which has
been the lot of India throughout history is due to caste. Caste prevented
general mobilisation. Or the extent of mobilisation was of a very limited
character. Only the Kshatriyas were expected to fight. The rest the Brahmins
and the Vaishyas were not armed and the Shudras who formed the large
majority of the country were disarmed. The result was that once the small
class of Kshatriyas were defeated by a foreign foe. the whole country fell at
his feet. It could offer no resistance. It was not capable of resistance. Indian
wars have been mostly wars of single battles or single campaigns. This was
due to the fact that once the Kshatriyas fell everything fell. Why? Simply
because there was no general mobilisation and the theory deeply imbedded
in the psychology of the people.
If these conclusions are sound, how can a philosophy which dissects
society in fragments, which dissociates work from interest, which disconnects
intelligence from labour, which expropriates the rights of man to interests vital
to life and which prevented society from mobilising resources for common
action in the hour of danger, be said to satisfy the test of Social Utility.

The Philosophy of Hinduism therefore neither satisfies the test of social

utility nor does it satisfy the test of individual justice.
The result of my analysis is so odd that it will surprise many. Astonished
some may even say that if the conclusions are so odd then there must be
something wrong in my analysis of the philosophy of Hinduism. I must meet
this objection. To those who refuse to accept my analysis I say that they find
my analysis odd because they do not have a correct notion what is central in
the philosophy of Hinduism. If they do they will feel no surprise at my
conclusions.
This matter is so important that I must stop to explain it. It may be recalled
that the foregoing analysis of the religious revolution showed that religious
ideals as forms of divine governance for human Society fall into two classes,
one in which Society is the centre and the other in which the Individual is the
centre. The same analysis showed that for the former the appropriate test of
what is good and what is right i.e. the test of the moral order is utility while for
the latter the test is justice. Now the reason why the philosophy of Hinduism
does not answer the test either of utility or of justice is because the religious
ideal of Hinduism for divine governance of human society is an ideal, which
falls into a separate class by itself. It is an ideal in which the individual is not
the centre. The centre of the ideal is neither individual nor society. It is a class
- the class of Supermen called Brahmins. Those who will bear the dominant
and devastating fact in mind will understand why the philosophy of Hinduism
is not founded on individual justice or social utility. The philosophy of
Hinduism is founded on a totally different principle. To the question what is
right and what is good the answer, which the philosophy of Hinduism gives, is
remarkable. It holds that to be right and good the act must serve the interest
of this class of supermen, namely, the Brahmins. Oscar Wilde said that to be
intelligible is to be found out. Manu is neither afraid nor ashamed of being
found out. Indeed Manu does not leave it to be found out. He expresses his
view in resonant and majestic notes as who are the Supermen and anything
which serves the interest of the Supermen is alone entitled to be called right
and good. Let me quote Manu.
X. 3. "On account of his pre-eminence, on account of the superiority of his
origin, on account of his observance of (particular) restrictive rules, and on
account of his particular sanctification the Brahman is the Lord of (all)
Varnas."
He proceeds to amplify his reasons and does so in the following
characteristic manner :—
1. 93. "As the Brahmana sprang from (Prajapati's i.e. Gods) mouth, as he
was first-born, and as he possesses the Veda, he is by right the lord of this
whole creation"
1. 94. For the self existent (Svayambhu i.e.God), having performed
austerities, produced him first from his own mouth, in order that offerings
might be conveyed to the Gods and Manes and that this universe might be
preserved."
1. 95. "What created being can surpass him, through whose mouth the gods
continually consume the sacrificial viands and the manes the offerings to the
dead?"
1. 96. "Of created beings the most excellent are said to be those which are
animated ; of the animated, those who subsist by intelligence ; of the
intelligent, mankind ; and of the men, the Brahmanas".
Besides the reason given by Manu the Brahmin is first in rank because he
was produced by God from his mouth, in order that the offerings might be
conveyed to the Gods and manes. Manu gives another reason for the
supremacy of the Brahmins. He says :—
1. 98. "The very birth of a Brahmana is an eternal incarnation of the sacred
Law (Veda) ; for he is born to (fulfil) the sacred law, and becomes one with
Brahman (God)."
1. 99. "A Brahamana, coming into existence, is born as the highest on earth,
the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the Law."
Manu concludes by saying that:—
1. 101. "The Brahman eats but his own food, wears but his own apparel,
bestows but his own in alms ; other mortals subsist through the benevolence
of the Brahamana." Because according to Manu:—
II. 100. "Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana ; on
account of the excellence of his origin the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to it
all." Manu directs:—
VII. 36. "Let the King, after rising early in the morning, worship Brahmans
who are well versed in the three-fold sacred science and learned (in polity),
and follow their advice".
VII. 38. "Let him daily worship aged Brahmans who know the Veda and are
pure. . . . ."
VII. 37. "Let the king, having risen at early dawn, respectfully attend to
Brahman, learned in the three Vedas and in the science of ethics, and by their
decision let him abide."
VII. 38. "Constantly must he show respect to Brahmans, who have grown
old, both in years and in piety, who know the scriptures, who in body and
mind are pure ; for he, who honours the aged, will perpetually be honoured
even by cruel demons."
IX. 313. "Let him not, although in the greatest distress for money, provoke
Brahmans to anger by taking their property ; for they, once enraged, could
immediately by sacrifices and imprecations destroy him with his troops,
elephants, horses and cars."

Finally Manu says :—

XI. 35. "The Brahman is (hereby) declared (to be) the creator (of the world),
the punisher, the teacher, (and hence) a benefactor (of all created beings) ; to
him let no man say anything unpropitious ; nor use any harsh words".
• To conclude and complete the theory of supermen and of what is right and
good let me reproduce the following two texts from Manu :—
X. 122. But let a Shudra serve Brahmans, either for the sake of heaven or
with a view to both this life and the next, for he who is called the servant of a
Brahman thereby gains all his ends.
X. 123. The service of the Brahmana alone is declared to be an excellent
occupation for a Shudra; for whatever else besides this he may perform will
bear no fruit. And Manu adds :—
X. 129. No collection of wealth must be made by a Shudra, even though he
be able to do it ; for a Shudra who has acquired wealth gives pain to
Brahman.
The above texts from Manu disclose the core and the heart of the
philosophy of Hinduism. Hinduism is the gospel of the superman and it
teaches that what is right for the superman is the only thing which is called
morally right and morally good.
Is there any parallel to this philosophy? I hate to suggest it. But it is so
obvious. The parallel to this philosophy of Hinduism is to be found in
Nietzsche. The Hindus will be angry at this suggestion. It is quite natural. For
the philosophy of Nietzsche stands in great odium. It never took roots, In his
own words he was "sometimes deified as the philosopher of the aristocracy
and squirearchy, sometimes hooted at, sometimes pitied and sometimes
boycotted as an inhuman being". Nietzsche's philosophy had become
identified with will to power, violence, denial of spiritual values, superman and
the sacrifice, servility and debasement of the common man. His philosophy
with these high spots had created a certain loathsomeness and horror in the
minds of the people of his own generation. He was utterly neglected if not
shunned and Nietzsche himself took comfort by placing himself among the
"posthumous men". He foresaw for himself a remote public, centuries after his
own time to appreciate him. Here too Nietzsche was destined to be
disappointed. Instead of there being any appreciation of his philosophy, the
lapse of time has only augmented the horror and loathing which people of his
generation felt for Nietzsche. This is principally due to the revelation that the
philosophy of Nietzsche is capable of producing Nazism. His friends have
vehemently protested against such a construction. But it is not difficult to see
that his philosophy can be as easily applied to evolve a super state as to
superman. This is what the Nazis have done. At any rate the Nazis trace their
ancestry from Nietzsche and regard him as their spiritual parent. Hitler has
himself photographed beside a bust of Nietzsche ; he takes the manuscripts
of the master under his own special guardianship ; extracts are chosen from
Nietzsche's writings and loudly proclaimed at the ceremonies of Nazism, as
the New German Faith. Nor is the claim by the Nazis of spiritual ancestry with
Nietzsche denied by his near relations. Nietzsche's own cousin Richard
Ochler approvingly says that Nietzsche's thought is Hitler in action and that
Nietzsche was the foremost pioneer of the Nazi accession to power.
Nietzsche's own sister, few months before her death, thanks the Feurhar for
the honour he graciously bestows on her brother declaring that she sees in
him that incarnation of the "Superman” foretold by Zarathustra.
To identify Nietzsche, whose name and whose philosophy excites so much
horror and so much loathing; with Manu is sure to cause astonishment and
resentment in the mind of the Hindus. But of the fact itself there can be no
doubt. Nietszche himself has openly declared that in his philosophy he is only
following the scheme of Manu. In his Anti Christ this is what Nietzsche says
:—
"After all, the question is, to what end are falsehoods perpetrated? The fact
that, in Christianity, `holy' ends are entirely absent, constitutes my objection to
the means it employs. Its ends are only bad ends; the poisoning, the
calumniation and the denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degradation
and self pollution of man by virtue of the concept of sin, - consequently its
means are bad as well. My feelings are quite the reverse, When I read the
law book of Manu, an incomparably intellectual and superior work, it would be
a sin against the spirit even to mention in the same breath with the Bible. You
will guess immediately why; it has a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not
merely an evil-smelling Jewish distillation of Rabbinism and superstition - it
gives something to chew even to the most fastidious psychologist. And, not to
forget the most important point of all, it is fundamentally different from every
kind of Bible: by means of it the noble classes, the philosophers and the
warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values, it is filled
with a feeling of perfection, with saying yea to life, and triumphant sense of
well-being in regard to itself and to life, - the Sun shines upon the whole book.
All those things which Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity;
procreation, woman, marriage, are here treated with earnestness, with
reverence, with love and confidence. How can one possibly place in the
hands of children and women, a book that contains those vile words : "to
avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have
her own husband. . . . . it is better to marry than to burn". And is it decent to
be a Christian so long as the very origin of man is Christianised, - that is to
say, befouled, by the idea of the immaculate conception?... I know of no book
in which so many delicate and kindly things are said to woman, as in the Law
Book of Manu ; these old grey-beards and saints have a manner of being
gallant to woman which, perhaps, cannot be surpassed. "The mouth of a
woman", says Manu on one occasion, "the breast of a maiden, the prayer of a
child, and the smoke of the sacrifice, are always pure". Elsewhere he says:
"there is nothing purer than the light of the Sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air
water, fire and the breath of a Maiden". And finally-perhaps this is also a holy
lie:— "all the openings of the body above the navel are pure, all those below
the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is the whole body pure."
This leaves no doubt that Zarathustra is a new name for Manu and that
Thus Spake Zarathustra is a new edition of Manu Smriti.
If there is any difference between Manu and Nietzsche it lies in this.
Nietzsche was genuinely interested in creating a new race of men which will
be a race of supermen as compared with the existing race of men. Manu on
the other hand was interested in maintaining the privileges of a class who had
come to arrogate to itself the claim of being supermen. Nietzsche's supermen
were supermen by reason of their worth. Manu's supermen were supermen
by reason of their birth. Nietzsche was a genuine disinterested philosopher.
Manu on the contrary was an hireling engaged to propound a philosophy
which served the interests of a class born in a group and whose title to being
supermen was not to be lost even if they lost their virtue. Compare the
following texts from Manu.
X. 81. "Yet a Brahman, unable to subsist by his duties just mentioned, may
live by the duty of a soldier; for that is the next rank."
X. 82. "If it be asked, how he must live, should he be unable to get a
subsistence by either of those employment ; the answer is, he may subsist as
a mercantile man, applying himself into tillage and attendance on cattle."
Manu adds :
IX. 317. "A Brahmana, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity, just as
the fire, whether carried forth (for the performance of a burnt oblation) or not
carried forth, is a great divinity".
IX.323. "Thus, though the Brahmans employ themselves in all (sorts) of
mean occupation, they must be honoured in every way; (for each of) them is
a very great deity".
Thus Manu's is a degraded and degenerate philosophy of superman as
compared with that of Nietzsche and therefore far more odious and
loathsome than the philosophy of Nietzsche.
This explains why the philosophy of Hinduism does not satisfy the test of
justice or of utility. Hinduism is not interested in the common man. Hinduism
is not interested in Society as a whole. The centre of its interest lies in a class
and its philosophy is concerned in sustaining and supporting the rights of that
class. That is why in the Philosophy of Hinduism the interests of the common
man as well as of society are denied, suppressed and sacrificed to the
interest of this class of Supermen.
What is the value of such a religion to man ? Mr. Balfour in speaking on the
merits of positivism as Religion asked the positivists certain questions which
are worth recalling. He very pertinently asked ;
"What has (Positivism) to say to the more obscure multitude who are
absorbed, and well nigh overwhelmed, in the constant struggle with daily
needs and narrow cares; who have but little leisure or inclination to consider
the precise role they are called on to play in the great drama of `humanity'
and who might in any case be puzzled to discover its interest or its
importance ? Can it assure them that there is no human being so insignificant
as not to be of infinite worth in the eyes of Him who created the Heavens, or
so feeble but that his action may have consequence of infinite moment long
after this material system shall have crumbled into nothingness? Does it offer
consolation to those who are bereaved, strength to the weak, forgiveness to
the sinful, rest to those who are weary and heavy laden? "
The same questions may be asked of Manu. The answer to each one of
them must be in the affirmative. In short the philosophy of Hinduism is such
that it cannot be called the Religion of humanity. That is why to use the
language of Balfour, Hinduism, if it penetrates, does not vitrify the inmost life
of ordinary humanity. Indeed if it does anything it paralyses it. There is in
Hinduism no nourishment for ordinary human souls, no comfort for ordinary
human sorrow, no help for ordinary human weakness. It leaves men in
darkness face to face with the unthinking energies of nature, which gives
them birth to which after a few fruitless struggles they succumb. Not less cruel
than the crudest irreligious, does it leave men divorced from all communions
with God.
Such is the philosophy of Hinduism. It is Superman's heaven and the
common man's damnation.
I am conscious that my position regarding the philosophy of Hinduism will
be assailed from different sides. So contrary it is to the current views about it
that it is bound to be assailed. The attack may come from various sides.
It will be said that I am wrong in taking the Manu Smriti as the book of Hindu
religion and that the true gospel of Hinduism is contained in the Vedas and
the Bhagwat Gita.
I am sure no orthodox Hindu will be bold enough to repudiate the authority
of Manu Smriti as a book of Hindu Religion. Such a charge can be made only
by some reformed sects of Hinduism such as the Arya Samajists. But there
can be no doubt that this charge is not well founded. To refute this charge it is
perhaps desirable to explain how the Smritis obtained a place and position of
authority among the Hindus.
The Smritis originally were a collection of rules relating to social traditions,
customs and conventions approved of and recommended by those who were
learned in the Vedas. For a long time these rules existed only in the memory
of those learned in the Vedas, so they began to be called Smritis i.e. things
which are remembered in contrast to Vedas or Shruti that is things which
were heard. In the beginning the Smritis even when they were codified were
treated as rules of inferior value as compared with the rules contained in the
Vedas.
The difference in their authority and binding force was the result of the
natural difference between the trustworthiness of what is heard as compared
to what is only remembered. There was also another reason of this
differentiation in the two sorts of Dharma Shastra literature. This was based
upon the status of their authors. The authors of the Vedas were Rishis. The
authors of the Smritis were only learned men. The Rishis were superior in
status and sanctity than those who were merely learned. Consequently the
Vedas were treated as more authoritative than the Smritis.
The consequence arising from this was well expressed in the Hindu
theological formula according to which if there was a conflict in the rules of
two Vedas on the same subject it meant option for a rule of Vedas cannot be
deemed to be inoperative. On the other hand, in a conflict between a rule of
Shriti and a rule of Smriti the rule of Shruti prevailed becuse for the reasons
stated above Smriti was inferior in authority to the Shruti. But as pointed out
by Prof. Altekar, the Smritis in course of time came to be invested with the
same authority as belonged to the Vedas. Various means were adopted to
accomplish this purpose. In the first place the authors of the Smritis were
elevated to the status of Rishis. The early Dharma Shastra writers like
Gautama, and Baudhayana were never given the status of a Rishi. But Manu
and Yajnavalkya are reckoned as Rishis. By this means the status of the
Smritis was equated to that of the Shrutis. The second means adopted was to
regard the Smriti as the record from memory of a Shruti which was lost. Thus
Smriti instead of being regarded as something quite different from Shruti
came to be regarded as akin to and indistinguishable from Shruti. The result
of these steps was a complete change in the rules regarding the authority of
the two. Originally if there was a conflict between a Smriti and a Shruti, the
Shruti prevailed. The new rule was that in case of conflict there was an option
which meant that the Smriti rule was as operative as the Rule of Shruti. This
new rule has been expressly laid down by Kumarila in his commentary on the
Purvamimansa Sutra whereby the Smritis were made as authoritative as
Shrutis.
While originally Hindu Society was bound to the Vedas and could not follow
any rule which was contrary to the Vedas, the new rule altered the situation
and left it to the option of society either to follow the Shruti or the Smriti. But
even this option was later on taken away. This was done by making the study
of the Smritis as compulsory as that of the Shruti.
This was done gradually. In the first place it was suggested that the Shrutis
and Smritis are the two eyes of the Brahamana, if he is devoid of one he
becomes a one-eyed person. Then came the theory that Brahmanyam is
possible only as the result of a joint study of both the Vedas and the Smritis.
Finally came the rule according to which the study of the Smruti only was
recognised and a contempt of the Smriti was made a sin and a person guilty
of it was declared to be condemned to be born as a beast for 21 generations.
This is how the Smritis have been recognised as a source of Hindu Religion
and there is no doubt that, to quote Prof. Altekar, the Smritis ;
"have played a great part in determining the features of many a social and
socio-religious institutions and customs and in moulding the development of
modern Hinduism."
It cannot therefore be maintained that I was wrong in taking Manu Smriti as
containing the philosophy of Hinduism.
This work of elevating the Smritis to the status of the Vedas was undertaken
by the Brahmins for a most selfish reason. The Smritis contain in all its wild
and luxurious growth the doctrine of Caste, the doctrine of the superiority of
the Brahmins, their rights and privileges, the doctrine of the subordination of
the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas and the doctrine of the degradation of the
Shudras. Such being the philosophy of the Smritis, the Brahmins were directly
interested in investing the Smritis with the authority which was claimed for the
Vedas and in which they ultimately succeeded to their advantage but to the
ruination of the whole country. But conceding—which orthodox and pious
Hindu would do that the Smritis do not contain the philosophy of Hinduism but
that the same is to be found in the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta the
question is what difference would this make in the result.
It seems to me that it matters very little whether one takes the Smritis, or the
Vedas or the Bhagwat Geeta.
Do the Vedas teach something, which is fundamentally different from what
the Smritis do? Does the Bhagwat Geeta run contrary to the injunctions of the
Smritis. A few illustrations will make the matter clear.
It is indisputable that the Vedas lay down the theory of Chaturvarna in what
is known as the Purushasukta. This Purushasukta recognises two basic
principles. It recognises the division of society into four sections as an ideal. It
also recognises that the ideal relationship between the four sections is
inequality.
What the Bhagwat Geeta teaches is also beyond controversy. Its teaching
may be summarised in the following four pronouncements made by Krishna in
the Bhagwat Geeta.
(1) "I myself have created the arrangement known as Chaturvarna (i.e. the
fourfold division of society into four castes Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas
and Shudras) assigning them different occupations in accordance with the
native capacities. It is I who am the maker of this Chaturvarna"— Gita. IV. 13
(2) "Even if it may be easier to follow the occupation of another Varna yet to
follow the occupation of one's own Varna is more meritorious, although one
may not be able to do it quite efficiently. There is bliss in following the
occupation of one's own Varna, even if death were to result in performing it ;
but to follow the occupation of another Varna is risky".—Geeta. HI. 35.
(3) "The educated should not unsettle the faith of the uneducated who have
become attached to their occupation. He himself should perform the
occupation of his Varna and make others perform theirs accordingly. An
educated man may not become attached to his occupation. But the
uneducated and dull-minded people who have become attached to their
occupation should not be spoiled by the educated by putting them on a wrong
path by abandoning their own occupation"— Geeta III. 26, 29.
(4) "Oh, Arjun ! Whenever this religion of duties and occupations (i.e. this
religion of Chaturvarna) declines, then I myself will come to birth to punish
those who are responsible for its downfall and to restore it—Geeta IV, 7-8.
Such is the position of Geeta. What difference is there between it and the
Manu Smriti? Geeta is Manu in a nutshell. Those who run away from Manu
Smriti and want to take refuge in Geeta either do not know Gita or are
prepared to omit from their consideration that soul of Geeta which makes it
akin to Manu Smriti.
Compare the teachings of the Veda, of the Bhagwat Geeta with what is
contained in the Manu Smriti which I have taken as the text for elucidating the
philosophy of Hinduism. What difference does one find? The only difference
one can find is that the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta deal with General
Theory while the Smritis are concerned in working out the particulars and
details of that theory. But so far as the essence is concerned all of them—the
Smritis, the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta—are woven on the same pattern,
the same thread runs through them and are really parts of the same fabric.
The reason for this is obvious. The Brahmins who were the authors of the
whole body of Hindu Religious Literature—except the Upanishad Literature—
took good care to inject the doctrines formulated by them in the Smritis, into
the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta. Nothing is to be gained in picking and
choosing between them. The Philosophy of Hinduism will be the same
whether one takes the Manu Smriti as its Gospel or whether one takes the
Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta as the gospel of Hinduism.
Secondly it will be contended that Manu Smriti is a Book of Laws and not a
code of ethics and that what I have presented as a philosophy of Hinduism is
only legal philosophy and is not the moral philosophy of Hinduism.
My answer to this contention is simple. I hold that in Hinduism there is no
distinction between legal philosophy and moral philosophy. That is because in
Hinduism there is no distinction between the Legal and the Moral, the Legal
being also the Moral.
Not much evidence is necessary to support my contention. Take the
meaning of the word Dharma in the Rig Veda. The word Dharma occurs in
the Rig Veda 58 times. It is used in six different senses. It is used to denote
(1) Ancient custom, (2) Laws, (3) Any arrangement which maintains law and
order in society, (4) The course of nature, (5) The quality of a substance and
(6) Duty of good and evil. It will thus be seen that from the very beginning the
word Dharma in Hinduism has a two fold connotation. It means both law and
moral. That is one reason why in the philosophy of Hinduism there can be
no distinction between legal philosophy and moral philosophy.
This is not to say that the Hindus have no code of morality. To be sure they
have. But it is very pertinent to ask the nature and character of conduct, which
the Hindu Code of Ethics declares to be moral.
To have an idea of the nature of conduct which the Hindu thinks moral, it is
better to begin by recognising that there are three levels of conduct, which
must be, distinguished. (1) Conduct arising from instincts and fundamental
need (2) Conduct regulated by standards of I society and (3) Conduct
regulated by individual conscience. Conduct on the first level, we do not call
moral conduct. It is of course not immoral; it is merely unmoral. It is governed
by forces not as moral in purpose but as valuable in result. The forces are
biological or sociological or psychological. These have purpose, such as to
satisfy hunger, or to forge a weapon against an enemy. But the end is one set
up by our physical or instinctive nature. So long as this is merely accepted as
an inevitable end and not compared with others, valued, and chosen, it is not
properly moral. Conduct on the second level is no doubt social. Wherever
groups of men are living there are certain ways of acting which are common
to the group—"folkways". There are approved ways of acting, common to a
group, and handed down from generation to generation. Such approved ways
of acting are called the mores or the morals of the group. They imply the
judgement of the group that they are to be followed. The welfare of the group
is regarded as in some sense imbedded in them. It becomes the duty of the
individual to follow them and if any one acts contrary to them he is made to
feel the group's disapproval. We cannot strictly speaking call the conduct
moral. Because the end is accepted as a standard of `good' prescribed by
society. If it had spoken of a moral conduct it is only because it conforms to
the mores or morals of the Society. It may be called customary morality.
Conduct on the third level is conduct, which alone is truly and completely
moral. That is because in it the Individual recognises the right or chooses the
good, and freely devotes himself heartily to its fulfilment. He does not merely
accept what is inevitable or follow what is approved by society. He values and
chooses the end and becomes personally responsible. His is reflective
morality.
On what level does Hindu morality stand? Obviously it is not on the third
level. This means that a Hindu is social but not moral in the strict sense of the
term. A Hindu takes no responsibility for the ends he serves. He is a willing
tool in the hands of his society, content to follow. He is not a free agent afraid
to differ. His notions of sin give remarkable proof of his unmoral character.
Institutes of Vishnu gives a list of sins which are divided into nine classes:—
1. Deadly sins—atipataka. These are certain forms of incest, to be atoned
for only by burning.
2. Great sins—mahapataka. These are killing a Brahman, drinking
spirituous liquor, stealing the gold of a Brahman, connection with a Guru's
wife ; also social intercourse with those guilty of such sins.
3. Minor sins of a similar character— anupataka. These include the killing of
certain other classes of persons, giving false evidence and killing a friend,
stealing lands or deposits of a Brahman, certain forms of incest and adultery.
4. Minor sins— upapataka. Sins of false statement, neglect of certain
religious duties, adultery, unlawful occupation, offences connected with
marrying before an elder brother &c., not paying one's debts to the Gods, and
manes, atheism &c.
5. Sins effecting loss of caste jatibramsakara. Causing bodily pain to a
Brahman, smelling things, which should not be smelt, dishonest dealing, and
certain unnatural crimes.
6. Sins which degrade to a mixed caste samkarikarana. Killing domestic or
wild animals.
7. Sins which render one unworthy to receive alms— apatrikarana.
Receiving presents and alms from despicable persons, trade, money lending,
lying, and serving a Shudra.
8. Sins cause defilement— malavaha. Killing birds, amphibious animals,
and aquatic animals, worms and insects; eating nutmegs or other plants
similar in their effects to intoxicating liquors. 9. Miscellaneous sins—
prakirnaka. Those not already mentioned. This list of sins is not exhaustive
but it, is long enough and illustrative enough to give us the idea which
underlies the Hindu notion of Sin. In the first place it connotes the fall of man
from a prescribed form of conduct. In the second place it means to be defiled,
to become unclean. This is the root meaning of the term Patak. It means
Patana (falling away) and it means Asowcha (being rendered unclean). In
either case sin according to Hindu notion is a decease of the soul. In the first
sense it is merely breach of a rule of external conduct. In the other sense it is
a defilement of the body to be cleaned and purified by both or by pilgrimage
or by sacrificial offering. But it is never the spiritual defilement, which is
associated with the harbouring of evil thoughts and purposes.
This shows the morality of the Hindu is purely social. This means that the
level of his morality is purely traditional and customary. There are two evils of
customary morality. In the first place there is no surety that it will always be
charged with sincerity and purity of motive. For it is only when morality
penetrates to the deepest springs of purpose and feeling in the individual that
pretence will cease to find a place in human behaviour. In the second place
customary morality is an anchor and a drag. It holds up the average man and
holds back the man who forges ahead. Customary morality is only another
name for moral stagnation. This is true of all cases where morality is only
customary morality. But the customary morality of the Hindus has an evil
feature, which is peculiar to it. Customary morality is a matter of meritorious
conduct. Ordinarily this meritorious conduct is something, which is good from
the general or public point of view. But among the Hinduism the meritorious
conduct is not concerned with the worship of God or the general good of
community. Meritorious conduct in Hinduism is concerned with the giving of
presents, of good and of honour to the Brahmins. Hindu Ethics is worship of
the superman.
What difference would it have made if I had taken Hindu Ethics as the basis
for deducing the philosophy of Hinduism? Most students of Hinduism forget
that just as in Hinduism there is no difference between law and Religion so
there is no difference between law and ethics. Both are concerned with the
same thing namely regulating the conduct of the low class Hindus to subserve
the ends of high Caste Hindus.
Thirdly it will be objected that I presented an altogether false picture of
Hinduism in as much as I have omitted to take into account the Upanishads
which are the true source of Hindu philosophy.
I admit that I have not taken the Upanishads into account. But I have a
reason and I believe very good reason for doing so. I am concerned with the
philosophy of Hinduism as a part of the philosophy of Religion. I am not
concerned with Hindu philosophy. If I were, it would have been necessary to
examine the Upanishads. But I am quite willing to deal with it so as to leave
no doubt that what I have shown to be the philosophy of Hinduism is the
philosophy of Upanishads.
The philosophy of the Upanishads can be stated in very few words. It has
been well summarised by Huxley when he says that the Upanishad
philosophy agreed:—
"In supposing the existence of a permanent reality, or `substance', beneath
the shifting series of phenomena, whether of matter or of mind. The
substance of the cosmos was `Brahma', that of the individual man `Atman';
and the latter was separated from the former only, if I may so speak, by its
phenomenal envelope, by the casing of sensations, thoughts and desires,
pleasures and pains, which make up the illusive phantasmagoria of life. This
the ignorant, take for reality; their `Atman' therefore remains eternally
imprisoned in delusions, bound by the fetters of desire and scourged by the
whip of misery.
Of what use is this philosophy of the Upanishadas? The philosophy of the
Upanishadas meant withdrawal from the struggle for existence by resort to
asceticism and a destruction of desire by self-mortification. As a way of life it
was condemned by Huxley in scathing terms :—
"No more thorough mortification of the flesh has ever been attempted than
that achieved by the Indian ascetic anchorite; no later monarchism has so
nearly succeeded in reducing the human mind to that condition of impassive
quasi-somnambulism, which, but for its acknowledged holiness, might run the
risk of being confounded with idiocy."
But the condemnation of the philosophy of the Upanishads is nothing as
compared to the denunciation of the same by Lala Hardyal :—
"The Upanishads claim to expound `that, by knowing which everything is
known '. This quest for ' the absolute ' is the basis of all the spurious
metaphysics of India. The treatises are full of absurd conceits, quaint fancies,
and chaotic speculations. And we have not learned that they are worthless.
We keep moving in the old rut; we edit and re-edit the old books instead of
translating the classics of European social thought. What could Europe be if
Frederic Harrison, Brieux, Bebel, Anatole France, Herve, Haekel, Giddings,
and Marshall should employ their time in composing treatises on Duns,
Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and discussing the merits of the laws of the
Pentateuch and the poetry of Beowulf? Indian pundits and graduates seem to
suffer from a kind of mania for what is effete and antiquated. Thus an
institution, established by progressive men, aims at leading our youths
through Sanskrit grammar to the Vadasvia the Six Darshanas! What a false
move in the quest for wisdom ! It is as if a caravan should travel across the
desert to the shores of the Dead Sea in search of fresh water! Young men of
India, look not for wisdom in the musty parchments of your metaphysical
treatises. There is nothing but an endless round of verbal jugglary there.
Read Rousseau and Voltaire, Plato and Aristotle, Haeckel and Spencer, Marx
and Tolstoi, Ruskin and Comte, and other European thinkers, if you wish to
understand life and its problems." But denunciations apart, did the Upanishad
philosophy have any influence on Hinduism as a social and political system?
There is no doubt that it turned out to be most ineffective and inconsequential
piece of speculation with no effect on the moral and social order of the
Hindus.
It may not be out of place to inquire into the reasons for this unfortunate
result. One reason is obvious. The philosophy of Upanishad remained
incomplete and therefore did not yield the fruit, which it ought to have done.
This will be quite clear if one asks what is the keynote of the Upanishads. In
the words of Prof. Max Muller the keynote of the Upanishads is `Know thy
Self". The `Know thy Self of the Upanishads, means, know thy true Self, that
which underlies thin ego and find it and know it in the highest, the eternal self,
the One without a Second, which underlies the whole world."
That Atman and Brahman were one was the truth, the great truth which the
Upanishads said they had discovered and they asked man to know this truth.
Now the reasons why the philosophy of Upanishads, became ineffective are
many. I will discuss them elsewhere. At this place I will mention only one. The
philosophers of Upanishads did not realise that to know truth was not enough.
One must learn to love truth. The difference between philosophy and religion
may be put in two ways. Philosophy is concerned with knowing truth. Religion
is concerned with the love of truth. Philosophy is static. Religion is dynamic.
These differences are merely two aspects of one and the same thing.
Philosophy is static because it is concerned only with knowing truth. Religion
is dynamic because it is concerned with love of truth. As has been well said
by Max Plowman :—
". . . .Unless religion is dynamic and begets in us the emotion of love for
something, then it is better to be without any thing that we can call religion; for
religion is perception of truth and if our perception of truth is not accompanied
by our love for it then it were better not seen at all; The Devil himself is one
who has seen the truth only to hate it. Tennyson said "We must love the
highest when we see it". It does not follow. Seen in pure objectivity the
highest repels by its difference and distance; what we fear it, and what we
fear we come to hate. . . . ."
This is the fate of all transcendental philosophies. They have no influence
on the way of life. As Blake said "Religion is politics and politics is
Brotherhood. Philosophy must become Religion that is it must become a
Working Ethic. It must not remain mere metaphysics. As Mr. Plowman says—
"If religion were a Metaphysic and nothing else, one thing is certain, it would
never be the concern of the simple and humble men.
"To keep it wholly in the realm of Metaphysic is to make non-sense of it. For
belief in religion as in something not directly and vitally effective of politics is
ultimately belief that is strictly speaking idiotic; because in the effective sense
such a belief makes no difference, and in the world of time and space what
'makes no difference' does not exist."
It is for these very reasons that the philosophy of the Upanishads proved so
ineffective.
It is therefore incontrovertible that notwithstanding the Hindu Code of Ethics,
notwithstanding the philosophy of the Upanishads not a little not a jot did
abate from the philosophy of Hinduism as propounded by Manu. They were
ineffective and powerless to erase the infamy preached by Manu in the name
of religion. Notwithstanding their existence one can still say "Hinduism! Thy
name is inequality!"

VI
Inequality is the soul of Hinduism. The morality of Hinduism is only social. It
is unmoral and inhuman to say the least. What is unmoral and inhuman easily
becomes immoral, inhuman and infamous. This is what Hinduism has
become. Those who doubt this or deny this proposition should examine the
social composition of the Hindu Society and ponder over the condition of
some of the elements in it. Take the following cases.
First as to the Primitive Tribes. In what state of civilisation are they ?
The history of human civilisation includes the entire period of human
progress from Savagery to Barbarism and from Barbarism to Civilisation. The
transition from one to other has been marked by some discovery or intention
in some department of knowledge of Art resulting in advancing the onward
march of man.
The development of articulate speech was the first thing which, from the
point of view of human progress, divided man from the brute. It marks the first
stage of savagery. The Middle period of the state of savagery began with the
knowledge of the manufacture and use of fire. This wonderful discovery
enabled man to extend his habit almost indefinitely. He could leave his forest
home, go to different and colder climates, and increase his food supply by
including flesh and fish. The next discovery was the Bow and Arrow. This was
the greatest achievement of primitive man and marks the highest state of
savage man. It was indeed a wonderful implement. The possessor of this
device could bring down the fleetest animal and could defend himself against
the most predatory.
The transition from Savagery to Barbarism was marked by the discovery of
pottery. Hitherto man had no utensils that could withstand the action of fire.
Without utensils man could not store nor could he cook. Undoubtedly pottery
was a great civilising influence.
The Middle State of Barbarism began when man learned to domesticate
wild animals. Man learned that captive animals could be of service to him.
Man now became a herdsman, no longer dependent for food upon the
precarious chase of wild animals. Milk procurable at all seasons made a
highly important addition to his dietary. With the aid of horse and camel he
traversed wide areas hitherto impassable. The captive animals became aids
to commerce, which resulted in the dissemination of commodities as well as
of ideas.
The next discovery was of the Art of smelting iron. This marks the highest
stage of advancement of barbaric man. With this discovery man became a
"tool-making animal" who with his tool could fashion wood and stone and
build houses and bridges. This marks the close of the advancement made by
barbaric man. The dividing line which marks off Barbaric people from Civilised
people, in the fullest sense of the word Civilisation, is the art of making ideas
tangible by means of graphic signs— which is called the art of writing. With
this man conquered time as he had with the earlier inventions conquered
space. He could now record his deeds and his thoughts. Henceforth, his
knowledge, his poetical dreams, his moral aspirations might be recorded in
such form as to be read not merely by his contemporaries but by successive
generations of remote posterity. For man his history became safe and secure.
This was the steepest assent and the climbing of it marks the beginnings of
civilisation. Stopping here for the moment let us ask in what state of
civilisation are the Primitive Tribes.
The name Primitive Tribes is expressive of the present state of people who
are called by that name. They live in small-scattered huts in forests. They live
on wild fruits, nuts and roots. Fishing and hunting are also resorted to for the
purpose of securing food. Agriculture plays a very small part in their social
economy. Food supplies being extremely precarious, they lead a life of semi-
starvation from which there is no escape. As to clothes they economise them
to a vanishing point. They move almost in a state of complete nakedness.
There is a tribe, which is known as “Bonda Porajas” which, means "Naked
Porajas". Of these people it is said that the women wear a very narrow strip
which serves as a petticoat almost identical with what is worn by the Momjak
Nagas in Assam, the ends hardly meeting at the top on the left thigh. These
petticoats are woven at home out of the fibre of a forest tree. Girls wear a fillet
of beads and of palmyra leaf and an enormous quantity of beads and neck
ornaments extremely like those worn by many Komjak women. Otherwise the
women wear nothing. The women shave their heads entirely. . . . . Of these
Chenchus, a tribe residing near Farhabad in the Nizam's Dominions it is said
that "their houses are conical, rather slight in structure made of bamboo
sloping to the central point and covered with a thin layer of thatch..... They
have very little, indeed, in the way of material effects, the scanty clothes they
wear, consisting of a langoti and a cloth in the case of men, and a short
bodice and a petticoat in the case of women, being practically all, besides a
few cooking pots and a basket or two which perhaps sometimes contains
grain. They keep cattle and goats and in this particular village do a little
cultivation, elsewhere subsisting on honey and forest produce which they
sell". Regarding the Morias, another Primitive tribe, it is stated the men
generally wear a single cloth round the waist with a slap coming down in the
front. They also have a necklace of beads and when they dance put on cock's
plumes and peacock's feathers in their turbans. Many girls are profusely
tattooed, especially on their faces, and some of them on their legs as well.
The type of tattooing is said to be according to the taste of the individual and
it is done with thorns and needles. In their hair many of them stick the
feathers of jungle cocks and their heads are also adorned with combs of
wood and tin and brass.
These Primitive Tribes have no hesitation about eating anything, even
worms and insects, and, in fact, there is very little meat that they will not eat,
whether the animal has died a natural death or has been killed four days or
more before by a tiger.
The next groups of the people he will come across are the Criminal Tribes.
The Criminal Tribes live not in Forests as the Primitive Tribes do but in the
plains in close proximity to, and often in the midst of civilised life. Hollis in his
"Criminal Tribes of the United Provinces" gives an account of their activities.
They live entirely by crime. A few may be ostensibly engaged in agriculture,
but this is only to cover up their real activities. Their nefarious practices find
largest scope in dacoity or robbery by violence, but being a community
organised for crime, nothing comes amiss to them. On deciding to commit a
dacoity in any particular locality spies are sent out to select a suitable victim,
study the general habits of the villagers, and the distance from any effective
aid, and enumerate the number of men and firearms. The raid usually takes
place at midnight. Acting on the information given by the spies, men are
posted at various points in the village and by firing off their guns attract
attention from the main gang which attacks the particular house or houses
previously appointed. The gang usually consists of 30 to 40 men.
It is essential to emphasis the great part played by crime in the general life
of these peoples. A boy is initiated into crime as soon as he is able to walk
and talk. No doubt the motive is practical, to a great extent, in so far as it is
always better to risk a child in petty theft, who, if he is caught, would probably
be cuffed, while an adult would immediately be arrested. An important part is
also played by women, who, although they do not participate in the actual
raids, have many heavy responsibilities. Besides being clever in disposing off
stolen property the women of the Criminal Tribes are experts in shop lifting.
At one time the Criminal Tribes included such well-organised Confederacies
of Professional Criminals as the Pindharies and the Thugs.
The Pindharies were a predatory body of armed gangsters. Their
organisation was an open military organisation of freebooters who could
muster 20000 fine horse and even more. They were under the command of
brigand chiefs. Chitu one of the most powerful commanders had under his
single command 10000 horse, including 5000 good cavalry, besides infantry
and guns. The Pindharies had no military projects for employing their loose
bands of irregular soldiery, which developed into bodies of professional
plunderers. The Pindharies aimed at no conquests. Their object was to
secure booty and cash for themselves. General loot and rapine was their
occupation. They recognised no rulers. They were subjects of none. They
rendered loyalty to none. They respected none, and plundered all, high and
low, rich and poor, without fear or compunction.
The Thugs were a well organised body of professional assassins, who, in
gangs of from 10 to 100 wandered in various guises throughout India, worked
themselves into the confidence of wayfarers of the wealthier class, and, when
a favourable opportunity occurred, strangled them by throwing a handkerchief
or noose round their necks, and then plundered and buried them. All this was
done according to certain ancient and rigidly prescribed forms and after the
performance of special religious rites, in which was the consecration of the
package, and the sacrifice of sugar. They were staunch worshippers of Kali,
the Hindu Goddess of destruction. Assassination for gain was with them a
religious duty, and was considered a holy and honourable profession. They
had, in fact, no idea of doing wrong, and their moral feelings did not come into
play. The will of the Goddess, by whose command and in whose honour they
followed there calling, was revealed to them through a very complicated
system of omens.
In obedience to these they often travelled even the distance of hundred
miles in company with, or in the wake of, their intended victims before a safe
opportunity had presented itself for executing their design; and when the deed
was done, rites were performed in honour of that tutelary deity, and a goodly
portion of the spoil was set apart for her. The Thugs had also a jargon of their
own, as well as certain signs by which its members recognised each other in
the remotest part of India. Even those who from age or infirmities could no
longer take an active part in the operations used to aid the cause as
watchmen, spies or dressers of food. It was owing to their thorough
organisation, the secrecy and security with which they went to work, but
chiefly to the religious garb in which they shrouded their murders, that they
could continue for centuries to practise their craft. The extraordinary fact was
that Thugee was regarded as a regular profession by Indian Rulers of the
day, both Hindu and Mahomedans. The Thugs paid taxes to the state and the
state left them unmolested.
It was not until the British became rulers of the country that an attempt was
made to suppress the Thugs. By 1835, 382 Thugs were hanged and 986
were transported or imprisoned for life. Even as late as 1879 the number of
registered Thugs was 344 and the Thugee and the Dacoity department of the
Government of India continued to exist until 1904 when its place was taken by
the Central Criminal Intelligence Department. While it is not possible for the
criminal tribes to live by organized bodies of criminals, crime continues to be
their main occupation.
Besides these two classes there is a third class which comprises a body of
people who are known as Untouchables.
Below the Untouchables there are others who are known as
unapproachable. Untouchables are those who cause pollution only if they
touch. The Unapproachable are those who cause pollution if they come within
a certain distance. It is said of the Nayadis—a people, who fall into the
category of the Unapproachable, "that they are the lowest caste among the
Hindus—the dog-eaters.
They are the most persistent in their clamour for charity, and will follow at a
respectful distance, for miles together any person walking, driving or boating.
If any thing is given to them, it must be laid down, and after the person
offering it has proceeded a sufficient distance, the recipient comes timidly
forward, and removes it. "Of the same people Mr. Thurston says, "The subject
(i.e. the Nayadis) whom I examined and measured at Shoranus, though living
only about three miles off, had, by reason of the pollution which they
traditionally carry with them to avoid walking over the long bridge which spans
the river, and follow a circuitous route of many miles". Below the
Unapproachable are the Unseeables. In the Tinnevelley District of the Madras
Presidency there is a class of unseeables called Purada Vannans. Of them it
is said, "that they are not allowed to come out during day time because their
sight is enough to cause pollution. These unfortunate people are `compelled'
to follow the nocturnal habits, leaving their dens after dark and scuttling home
at the false dawn like the badger, the hyena, the avordvark."
Consider the total population of these classes. The Primitive Tribes form a
total of 25 million souls. The Criminal Tribes number 41/2 millions and the
Untouchables number 50 millions. This makes a grand total of 791/2 millions.
Now ask how these people could have remained in the state of moral,
material, social and spiritual degradation surrounded as they have been by
Hinduism. Hindus say that their civilisation is older than any civilisation, that
Hinduism as a religion is superior to any other religion. If this is so how is that
Hinduism failed to elevate these people, bring them enlightenment and hope;
how is it that it failed even to reclaim them ; how is it that it stood with folded
hands when millions and millions were taking to life to shame and crime?
What is the answer to this? The only answer is that Hinduism is overwhelmed
with the fear of pollution. It has not got the power to purify. It has not the
impulse to serve and that is because by its very nature it is inhuman and
unmoral. It is a misnomer to call it religion. Its philosophy is opposed to very
thing for which religion stands.