Being judgmental will spell doom but compassion will build a happy race, says Swami Vivekananda
In each nation, an individual is the external expression of an ideal to be embodied. The collection of such individuals is the nation, which also represents a great ideal in itself. Therefore, it is rightly assumed that to understand a nation, you must first understand its ideal, for each nation refuses to be judged by any other standard other than its own.
All growth, progress, well-being or degradation is but relative. It refers to a certain standard and each man has to be referred to that standard of his perfection. You see this more markedly in nations: what one nation thinks good might not be so regarded by another nation.
For instance, cousins getting married could be permissible in one country but in India it would be seen as a horrible incest. likewise, widow remarriage, though legitimate, it would be the greatest degradation for a woman to marry twice among the higher castes in India. So you see, we work through such different ideas that to judge one person by the other’s standard would be neither just nor practicable.
Therefore, when speaking of different nations, we start with a general idea that there is one code of ethics and the same kind of ideals for all races; practically however, when we come to judge others, we think what is good for us must be good for everybody; what we do is the right thing, what we do not do, of course in others would be outrageous. I do not mean to say this as criticism, but just to bring the truth home.
When I hear Western women denounce the confining of the feet of Chinese ladies, they never seem to think of the corsets which are doing far more injury to the race. This is just one example; for you must know that cramping the feet does not do one-millionth part of the injury to the human form that the corset has done and is doing — when every organ is displaced and the spine is curved like a serpent. When measurements are taken, you can note the curvatures. I do not mean to criticise but just to point out to you the situation, as you stand aghast at women of other races, thinking that you are supreme, the very reason that they do not adopt your manners and customs shows that they also stand aghast at you.
Therefore, there is some misunderstanding on both sides. There is a common platform, a common ground of understanding, a common humanity, which must be the basis of our work. We ought to find out that complete and perfect human nature which is working only in parts, here and there. It has not been given to one man to have everything in perfection. You have a part to play. I, in my humble way, another; here is one who plays a little part and there, another. Perfection is the combination of all these parts.
Just as with individuals, so with races. Each race has a part to play; each race has one side of human nature to develop. And we have to take all these together; and possibly in the distant future, some race will arise in which all these marvellous individual race perfections, attained by the different races, will come together and form a new race, the like of which the world has not yet dreamed. Beyond saying that, I have no criticism to offer about anybody. I have travelled not a little in my life; I have kept my eyes open; and the more I go about the more my mouth is closed.
Excerpts taken from Swami Vivekananda’s discourses