This country developed the perfect manual for mankind, as Sri Aurobindo, whose birth anniversary coincides with India’s Independence Day, had opined. India’s dharma transcends narrow-minded nationalism, writes AJITH KUMAR
Among the many ancient knowledge systems that guided humanity down the millennia, the manual for man that India developed proved outstanding and singularly perfect. Out of the many, India developed the most coherent system — a harmony of values resulting in a perfectly balanced worldview. All inclusive was its outlook, versatility its hallmark and concordance its culture. “India is an epitome of the world” — this comment by one of world’s most noted philosopher and historian explains well India’s all comprehending culture that took to the inner most recess of its heart all the noble aspects of the world’s cultures, living as well as dead.
British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee believed India is a living civilisation whose vitality would enlighten the future humanity, contribute to human unity and strike a balance between the extremities of all kinds. True, many centuries have elapsed, invaders carrying fire and sword pounded India one after the other. Torn to fragments geographically and psychically, India of the present even bleeds in terrorist violence whose profile has occupied volumes of literature. It is as if India’s glory has become almost irretrievably stooping with bandicoots of all types eating into the vitals of her national life. Denunciation of the motherland, derogatory writings and statements that blackmail its culture and declining it for mere kickbacks and pay-offs are common place. Indeed the problems confronting our nation are legion. Yet, in the turbulent ocean with its currents flowing against and furious tides lashing out, India sails safe, looking at its distant destination, reminding one of the lonely traveller, left untouched by the surroundings, venting its way to a fixed goal.
What made India stand the vicissitudes of time and tension that had completely done away many coeval culturesIJ Definitely it was India’s all comprehending nature, its readiness to imbibe the noble aspects and bring about coherence to give the final touch to the culture of humanity. Greece was an aesthetic culture with its tendency to glorify and enjoy everything beautiful notwithstanding whatever defect what it deemed beautiful had. Discipline, shape, size and what not, the Greeks would ignore. Only beauty they were particular about.
Hence the aesthetic nature of the Greek culture, opined Indian seer Sri Aurobindo. Ancient Rome, Aurobindo says, ran in contrast. Beauty they discarded, and zeroed in more on the ethical aspects of life than anything. Enjoyment of beauty gave way to ethics and disciplines of life. A strong and muzzled body was preferred to the beautiful. They never thought of any beauty attainable through the discipline like the Greeks who didn’t have any idea about the discipline leading to a higher beauty. Beauty and discipline thus had run parallel, never to make their rendezvous in a creative unity. But India harmonised both discipline and beauty, making the former a means to realise the latter. It, down the millennia, was disciplining life to realise the ultimate beauty which if to quote a poet “is a joy for ever”. India’s eternal discipline leads it to the ultimate beauty or saundarya which is another synonym for god. It is both ethics and aesthetics perfectly mixed with superb finish.
India’s religion — dharma —was thus motivated by the principle of making human life perfect. Man making was its mission and turning the life divine was its end. In fact, in all the faculties of thought India developed man was of prime importance. On the incubator of its thought was always a religion or dharma of humanity. The entire nature was the ground for man’s sadhana or preparation for the higher life. India’s religion of man helped it attain the supra-rational beauty or the god within itself. The religion of humanity India developed down the millennia has it that man must be worshiped as god is. It aims at discovering and acknowledging the inherent divine potency and intrinsic superiority of man. Summing up India’s religion of man Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Man must be sacred to man regardless of all distinction of race, creed, colour, nationality, status, political or social advancement. The body of man is to be respected, made immune from violence of outrage, fortified by science against disease or preventable death. The life of man is to be held sacred also, given scope, protected from violations, from suppression, from mechanisation, from belittling influences. The mind of man is to be released from all bonds, allowed freedom and range and opportunity, given all its means of self-training and self-development and organised in the play, of its powers for the service of humanity. And all this too is not to be held as an abstract or pious sentiment but be given full and practical recognition in the presence of men and nations and mankind”.
This, speaking largely, is the idea and spirit of the intellectual religion of humanity. This is the reflection of a nation’s aspiration to elevate man into godhood and the whole earth to the kingdom of heaven or to quote Sri Aurobindo once again, “to raise the world to god in deathless light, to bring god to the world on earth we come, to change the earthly life into life divine”. This is the religion of India that stands above all fetters, limitations and confinements of creed, group or narrow minded nationalism.
(The writer is Associate Professor of History, Sanatana Dharma College, Alappuzha)