Wednesday 16 October 2013
Sunday 13 October 2013
Valedictory Address at the Seminar by Shri Virendra Parekh
Shri Virendra Parekh delivered this Valedictory Address at a seminar on “Relevance of Swami Vivekananda’s Thoughts on National Rebuilding” in Mumbai on Sept. 29, 2013.
Kva suryaprabhavo vansh: kva chālpavishayāmati:
Titirushurdustaram mohad udeupenāsmi sāgaram.
Where the dynasty that
emerged out of the Sun and where my limited intelligence? I am trying to
cross an ocean with a ramshackle raft.
I must say I have a
similar feeling of diffidence as I rise to speak at this gathering. Here
is Swami Vivekananda, a great sage, a maharishi in the line of
Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri and Bharadwaja, Dirghatamas and
Yajnavalkya, a sannyasi in the line of Adi Shankaracharya and
Ramanujacharya, an illustrious son of Bharat Mata whose memory shines
brightly more than a hundred years after he left his mortal frame. And
here is a pen-pusher like me who has spent most of his life writing on
economic and political happenings of the day. And I am not gifted with
Kalidasa’s genius either!
Yet I gladly and
gratefully accepted the invitation to be here today. I remembered
Pushpadanta, who says in Shivsamahimnastotram:
Mamatvetām vāňīm gunakathanapuňyen bhavatah:
Punāmītyrathesmin puramathana buddhirvyavasitā.
No speech can
adequately capture the essence of Shiva. But I have deployed my
intellect in this endeavour knowing that by reciting your qualities, I
am purifying my speech.
Swami Vivekananda
belongs to that order of great souls. He was a towering personality.
The more we know him, the purer and stronger we become. What we say
about him is a reflection on us, and not on him. It reveals what we are,
rather than what he was.
The focus here is on
the social and economic thinking of Swamiji. That is very appropriate.
These are the areas—society and economy—where the task of national
regeneration must begin. These are also the areas where results of our
effort would be and should be visible.
There is a small
difficulty, though. Swami Vivenkananda was not a professional economist
like Amartya Sen or Jagdish Bhagwati, nor was he a social reformer in
the mould of Maharshi Karve or Jyotiba Phule. Essentially, Swamiji was a
Yogi, a seeker of spiritual truths, which he realized in his life and
exhorted his fellow countrymen to do likewise. Verily has it been said
that he was Swami first and Vivekananda later. Whatever he said about
society and economy has to be understood in the larger context of his
overall personality and message.
What was the message?
Every nation, every race, Swamiji said again and again, has at its core a
living principle, an idea or ideal which forms its bedrock or backbone.
It is the foundation on which that nation is built; it is the centre
around which its life revolves.
The essence of India,
said Swamiji, lies in Dharma, Dharma not as a divisive sect, but as a
quest for spiritual truth. India lives by and lives for Dharma,
Adhyatma, Tattvagyana. Remove it, and India will be reduced to a
geographical expression. India’s Dharmik tradition, said Swamiji, is the
invaluable heritage, not only of India but of the whole world.
The spiritual wisdom
preserved in the Vedas and Upanishads is a pearl of inestimable value.
From the dawn of civilisation, mankind is faced by some fundamental
questions. What is the real self of man? Is this body all that there is
to us? Or we are more than the body? What is the secret of death? When a
man dies, is it the end of everything? If something remains after
death, what is it? And what happens to it? At more practical level, what
is more real—goodness or wickedness? What is stronger: Muscle or
spirit? What is more desirable—wealth or truth? It is struggling with
answers. But India has discovered the answer long back: na karmaňā na prajayā dhanena, tyāgenaike amrutattvamānsashu:
Not by feverish activity, or progeny or wealth, but by renunciation
alone does one experience the Immortal. This is the heritage that India
has to share with the world. It is India’s mission and also India’s
destiny to share this wisdom with the rest of the world. It is India’s
tryst with destiny to become the Jagadguru.
But which India?
Swamiji looked around and he saw a country enslaved and exploited by a
foreign power; a society mired in poverty, illiteracy, ignorance,
superstitions and divided along every conceivable line. It was a society
where untouchability was a normal social practice, where a man marrying
outside his sub-caste made sensational news, where Hindu water and
Muslim water were sold separately on railway stations, where rules on
who can dine with whom, who cannot dine with whom, who can accept water
from whom and who cannot accept water from whom were matters of supreme
importance. It was a country where lakhs of people lived on the edge of
starvation, where footwear was a luxury for mass of the people. Dadabhai
Navroji famously showed that the average income of a poor Indian was
less than what British government spent on prisoners in jail. In other
words, India’s poor millions lived a life worse than that of prisoners
in jail!
This is the society,
this is the country that Swamiji sought to shake out of its slumber and
sloppiness. That is why we always notice a sense of urgency and
impatience in all his utterances.
How did he go about it?
First and foremost, he awakened the people of India to their great
tradition. Like the sage of Upnishand, he said, Ātmānam Viddhi.
Know thyself. Swamiji’s genius lay in the fact that he converted this
spiritual injunction into a rousing call for national regeneration. You
are heir to the oldest and greatest civilisation in the world. You are
repositories of the highest truths of spirit discovered by human mind.
Know what you are, be proud of it and prepare yourself for the great
task that awaits you, he told people.
Balam upāssa,
he said. Become strong. The only sin I know of is weakness, he would
say. I want young men with muscles of iron and nerves of steel, he said.
He enjoined young men to play football so that they could understand
Gitā better.
Be active. Swamiji realized that tāmasika
qualities of sloth, indifference and inactivity had enveloped the
people after centuries of foreign rule. The spirit of inquiry, the will
to challenge, the desire for adventure had gone. He urged people to
shake off their inactivity and consciously pursue rājasika qualities of ambition and effort. He exhorted people to cherish great dreams and put in gigantic effort to realize them.
Sink all your
differences and unite. Life is growth, life is expansion. In love, in
art, a man grows. In selfishness, in hatred, he is diminished. Our
society has become dead and rigid because we forgotten to love our
brethren. Break all the artificial barriers and come together.
He repeatedly urged
people to sink petty differences of caste and unite for a higher ideal.
He lamented that Hindu Dharma which was capable of enlightening the
whole world had become confined to kitchen, entangled in meaningless
rules on eating and puerile priest craft.
There was one evil
against which he used harsh language again and again. That evil was
untouchability. “No sillier thing has existed in the world than what I
saw in Malabar,” he writes. “The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass
through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his
name to a hodge-podge English name, it is alright; or to a Mohammedan
name, it is alright. What inference would you draw except that these
Malabaris are all lunatics, their homes so many lunatic asylums, and
they should be ridiculed until they mend their manners. Shame upon them
that such wicked and diabolical customs are allowed.”
Swamiji warned Hindu
leaders that if we continued to ill-treat and exploit the lower castes,
they may be forced or tempted to convert to Islam or Christianity. And,
he said without mincing words, “every convert out of Hinduism is not
only a brother less, but an enemy more.”
We now turn to
Swamiji’s views on economy. The first thing we notice in Swamiji’s
economic thinking is that he never ever glorified poverty. He roamed
around the country, saw the people living in abject squalor and realized
that the days when poverty could be voluntary and dignified were over. A
hungry man has no stomach for Vedanta, he would say. Before we urge a
man to turn to the life of spirit, his basic requirements have to be
satisfied.
This was in line with
the teachings of Veda and Upanishads. Indian tradition enjoins man to
live like a master of wealth, and not its slave. Rgveda has Sree Sookta,
a hymn dedicated to the goddess of wealth. Chandrām hiranmayīm lakshmīm jātvedo m āvaha, says the Rishi. O Agni! Bring me wealth which is shining like gold and brings coolness like the moon. The Upanishad says, kushalānna pramaditavyam (Well-being should not be neglected). Bhūtyai na pramaditavyam (Material prosperity should not be neglected). Dhyānam ratnashilātaleshu vibudhstrīsannidhau sanyam,
says Kalidasa of sage Marich. He meditates sitting atop a mountain made
of precious stone, he observes restraint in the presence of apsaras.
Secondly, Swamiji
wanted India to modernize its economy. He inspired Jamshedji Tata to
bring modern industry to India as also to set up an institute for basic
research in science. India must learn from the West the science of
wealth creation. He wanted it to be an exchange between equals. India
has something valuable to offer in the field of Dharma, Adhyatma and
philosophy. And it should humbly learn from the West the road to
material well-being. Swamiji clarified that India should modernize
without losing its cultural ethos. He gave example of Japan, which had
modernized its economy while retaining its cultural moorings—it remained
an Asian country rooted in Buddhism and Shintoism.
Thirdly, Swamiji wanted
India and Indians to rise through their own efforts. He extolled
charity as a personal virtue, but never advocated trusteeship like
Gandhiji or outright confiscation like Communists. This is only to be
expected. Communism was still a struggling movement in his days. The
Russian Revolution was 15 years away in the future at the time of his
departure.
At first sight, these
ideas look elementary. However, contrast it with the ideology underlying
the policies that we pursued after independence and their relevance
becomes immediately obvious. Under the garb of equality and social
justice, we stifled enterprise, discouraged private effort and created a
vested interest in poverty, shortages and scarcities. We changed course
only when the country was driven to the verge of bankruptcy.
It is tempting to assess how far we have moved closer to or away from the ideal that Swamiji held for India.
A great deal of
progress has been made both on the economic and social fronts. India was
one of the poorest countries in the world then. Today, it has the
fourth largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power. If we
follow proper policies, we may become the second largest one in the next
few decades. Social indicators like life expectancy, literacy, child
mortality are much better now. In spite of glaring inequalities, it is
possible to say that all sections of the society have participated in
the economic progress though in uneven degrees.
No doubt we could have
done much more if we had proper leadership. Other nations, far less
gifted than India in terms of natural resources and human talent, have
accomplished much more than we have. And much more remains to be done in
the field of health, education and poverty eradication. The economy is
facing daunting challenges, largely but not wholly of our own making.
However, there is a collective confidence that we can and we shall
overcome all the challenges if we mend our ways.
The society has, in
many ways, changed beyond recognition. Urbanisation, modern education,
internet and mobile telephony have broken down old social divisions.
Marriages across castes, language groups and communities are common.
Widow remarriages have long been accepted. Women are coming to the fore
in every walk of life and earning their rightful place in the economy
and polity. There are strong pockets of orthodoxy, but they no longer
control the establishment. They know, as well as others, that their time
is running out fast.
However, while we have
tremendous progress in material sense, we have suffered heavy losses and
reverses in terms of territory, demography, politics, ideology and
morality.
Large parts of
Bharatvarsh have now been ceded officially and permanently to
self-declared enemies of Hinduism and Hindu society. The land of
Saptasindhu, where Vasishtha and Vishwamitra chanted Vedic hymns and
performed sacrifices, where King Sudas defeated his adversaries in a
battle recorded in the Rgveda, is now largely the enemy territory. We
cherish the memory of Swami Vivekanada, Ravindranath Tagore, and Netaji
Subhash Chandra Bose, but three-fourth of Bengal is now foreign
territory.
Back in those days,
Hindus constituted about 80 per cent of the undivided pre-partition
India or what is now fashionably called the Indian subcontinent. Today,
they constitute about 66 per cent of that area. In other words, the
ratio of Hindus to non-Hindus has come down from 4 to 1 to 2 to 1.
Political losses have
been worse. A constitution, made by enlightened and patriotic Hindus,
discriminates against Hindus. Islam and Christianity can be taught in
government aided schools and colleges, but not Hinduism. The government
can and does interfere with the administration and management of
temples; it often diverts temple funds to non-Dharmik purposes. But it
does not dare touch mosques or churches.
In the name of
secularism, we have created a polity in which all the rights, privileges
and prerogatives belong to non-Hindus, and all the duties, obligations
and responsibilities are saddled on the Hindus. A missionary converting
Hindus to Christianity is only exercising his fundamental right given in
the constitution, but any attempt to bring them back to their ancestral
tradition is frowned upon as an assault on minority rights, a divisive
endeavour. In the early years of independence, Muslims were apologetic
for breaking up the country. Today, they hold, or they think they hold,
key to political power in India. No leader, however honest, competent,
popular and patriotic, is regarded as fit to rule India unless he is
accepted or at least tolerated by Muslims. Although Hindus constitute 80
per cent of the population, the 12 per cent minority has acquired a
veto over who can and who cannot rule the country.
Even more significant
are the ideological losses. Hundred years ago, Swami Vivekanand could
declare India as the homeland of Hinduism and Hindu society. He, like
countless other leaders, could identify Hinduism as the essence of
Indian nationalism. Hundred years ago, Maharshi Aravind could say in a
public meeting that India rises with the rise of Sanatan Dharma, and
India declines with the decline of Sanatan Dharma. Hundred years ago,
Dr. Radhakrishnan wrote his classic Indian Philosophy without including Islam and Christianity, for the valid reason that they are not Indian and they have no philosophy.
Nobody accused Swami
Vivekanand of being a communalist, a Hindu Supremacist, a polarizing
figure preaching a divisive and disruptive ideology. But now that view
of India as the cradle of Vedic culture, of Hinduism as the essence of
Indian nationalism, in short, the Idea of India as Hindu Rashtra is
unmentionable. From a nation, we are reduced to a community. Under
Nehruvian secularism, Hindus are just one of the five-six communities
inhabiting this land. They have no special right or title either to the
land or its ethos. In fact, an educated Hindu is expected to behave as
if he is making amends for being a Hindu.
The biggest and most
damaging losses, however, have been in terms of ethics, morality and
spirituality. For all the glib talk of culture and spirituality, we are
one of the most corrupt societies in the world. We have lost sight of
all higher and finer aspects of life. Artha and Kama are the only
Purusharthas we know. Dharma has been relegated to the backseat and
Moksha? What is it anyway? Economics is our religion, gold is our God
and market is our Mother Goddess.
Indian society has
become Vaishya in character. Everybody is a trader. What is in it for
me? What can I get out of it? These are the only questions that bother
us. We have teachers, academics, researchers, journalists. But they are
not driven by a quest for truth or knowledge. They are driven by the
pull of reward, recognition and career prospects. In other words, they
are doing the work of Brahmin with the mentality of a Vaishya. We have
political leaders, administrators, police, spying agencies etc. They are
supposed to run the country and also protect it from internal and
external troubles. But they are guided not by national interest but
self-interest. In other words, they are doing the work of Kshatriya with
the mentality of a Vaishya. The same applies to the salaried middle
class, self-employed in the service industries and professionals like
medicine, law or various skilled jobs. Instead of serving society by
pursuing excellence in their professions, they are goaded by greed. In
other words, they are doing the work of Shudras with the mentality of a
Vaishya.
In the language of
Manusmruti, the Indian society has become Varnasankara. Varnas have
forgotten their Dharmas. And we are facing the consequences outlined by
Arjuan in Gita.
Imagine a man who has
very weak eyes, weak hands, weak feet but a large and voracious stomach.
That is the picture of Indian society today. Our eyes are blinded, our
hands are drained of strength, our feet can barely stand. But we have an
insatiable appetite. We keep on devouring more and more. No wonder the
enemies are having a free run in the county.
All the losses I
outlined above have followed from this moral degradation of our society.
We cannot blame it on foreigners. That failure is entirely ours.
If Swami Vivekanand
were around, what would he tell us? I have no pretence of stepping into
his shoes. I can only make some crude guesses.
Swamiji would awaken us with the same message that he gave us in his life time. Like the sages of Upanishads, he would say: Ātmanam Vidhdhi. Ātma vā are gyātavyo, shrotavyo, mantavyo, nididhyāsitavyo. Know thyself, he would tell us, both as individuals and a society.
He would tell each of
us: you are not the small insignificant entity that the market economy
has made of you. You are a child of immortality. Become aware of your
real self, pure, everlasting, and full of bliss and peace. You are a cub
of lion, behaving like a lamb. Know yourself and be free from all
sorrows, fear and worries.
He would cure us of our
greed by reminding us of the fickleness and evanescence of wealth.
Nothing is more pitiable than a man running after money for its own
sake. We regard gold, bank balance and properties as our solid
achievements, real things in life. Swamiji would point out that they are
first to leave us in the moment of death. Even the wealthiest man in
the world cannot carry a farthing with him to the grave.
Money, he would say can
buy the means, but not the end. Money can buy medicine, but not health;
book, not knowledge, music system, not the sense of music; servants,
not friends.
Balam upāssa,
he would say. The challenges before you may be daunting, but do not look
upon it as a weak man. The might of the universe lies within you.
Awaken it and conquer the world.
As a people, he would
remind us of our spiritual tradition and historical mission. How
ironical is it that even as the West is discovering the value of India’s
ancient wisdom, we are bent on denying and forgetting it? Swamiji would
point out that the so-called life style diseases—diabetes, blood
pressure, cholesterol—the so-called tensions of the modern life, is the
necessary condition of a society that pursues wealth and power to the
exclusion of everything else.
Our life should have
beauty in its limbs, music in its voice, dance in its steps, it should
have its metaphors in stars and flowers. But under the burden of a
prolific greed, it becomes an overladen market cart, jolting and
screeching along the road that leads from things to nothing, and
collapses by the wayside, reaching nowhere. For this is unreason, as Lao
Tse would say, and unreason soon ceases.
Swamiji would enjoin us to restore Dharma to its rightful place in our life. Dharmo rakshati rakshita—if you protect Dharma, Dharma protects you—he would remind us.
In short he would say: Ātmanam viddhi. Discover yourself and that knowledge will liberate you from the bondage of fear and doubt. Sā vidyā yā vimuktaye (Knowledge is that which liberates). Like the sage of the Upanishad he would say, uttisthata, jagrata, prāpya varānnibodhata.
Awake, arise, approach the best minds and get enlightenment. To the
young people he would say, Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is
reached.
In spite of the great
material progress, today we are drifting, not advancing, waiting for the
future to turn up. We are afflicted by self-doubt and
self-forgetfulness. We need the lion roar of Swami Vivekananda to wake
us up from this moha and moorchha. India is waiting for Swami Vivekananda.
» Virendra Parekh is Executive Editor, Corporate India, and lives in Mumbai.
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