Swami Vivekananda found that beneath all the apparent variations of manners and customs of culture and power all the Indians reflected the same mighty human heart under the impulsion of the same joys and sorrows, of the same weakness and strength. He was of course grateful to the lands of the West for the many warm hearts that received him with all the love, but his life’s allegiance was for his motherland alone. He once said that. “If I had a thousand lives, every moment of the whole series would be consecrated to your service, my countrymen and my friends. For this land I owe whatever I possess, physical, mental and spiritual; and if I have been successful in anything, the glory is yours, not mine.”
He believed that it was in this land, the great problems of life and death, the thirst for life, and the vain mad struggles to preserve it only resulting in the accumulation of woes, were first grappled with and solved. India alone discovered that even life itself is a will, the shadow only of something which alone is real. He found that India is a land of renunciation. Upanishads declared “Na Prajaya Dhanein Tyagenaike Amritatvamanasu (Not by Progeny, not by wealth, but by renunciation alone immortality is reached)” India in every generation of its civilization has taken up the challenge and tried their utmost to solve the world riddle on the plane of desires. In the words of Vivekananda, “This is the theme of Indian life work, the burden of her eternal songs, the backbone of her existence, the foundation of her being, the raison d’etre of her very existence-the spiritualisation of the human race. In this life course she has never deviated, whether the Tartar ruled or the Turks, whether the Mogal ruled or the English”.
Vivekanand found that there was an inquisitiveness in the Aryan race which later developed into bold analysis. Its boldness made these men search every brick of their sacrificial altars, scan, cement and pulverise every word of their scriptures, arrange, rearrange, doubt, deny or explain the ceremonies. It evolved the science of geometry from the arrangements of bricks to build various altars, and startled the world with astronomical knowledge that arose from the attempts to accurately time their worship and obligations. It made their contribution to science and mathematics the largest of any race, ancient or modern and to their knowledge of chemistry, of metallic compounds in medicine, their scale of musical notes and invention of almost all bow instruments to which the west was obliged to depend while building up their so-called modern world. But the greatest feature of Hindu race was its poetic insight. Its religion, its philosophy, its history, its ethics, its politics were all inlaid in a flowerbed of poetic imagery the miracle of language which was called Sanskrit or “perfected”, lending itself to expressing and manipulating them better than any other tongue the aid of melodions numbers was invoked even to express the hand facts of mathematics. Arts and sciences, even the relatives of domestic life, are covered with a mass of poetic conceptions.
Vivekananda also eulogised the Aryan identity in his own brilliant way. In his words, “On wards surrounded by the snows of Himalayas on the north and the heat of south-vast plains, interminable forest, through which mighty rivers roll their tides. We catch a glimpse of different races- Dravidians, Tartars, and Aboriginals pouring in their quota of blood, of speech, of manners and religions. And at last a great nation emerges to our view- still keeping the type of the Aryan-stronger, broader and more organised by assimilation. We find the central assimilative core giving its type and character to the whole mass, clinging on with great pride to its name of Aryan, and though willing to give other races the benefits of its civilisation, it was by no means willing to admit them within the Aryan pale.”
Modern India admits spiritual equality of all souls but strictly keeps the social differences. The Indian history reflects the struggle all along the line of sixth century Before Christ to restructure the overwhelming ancient order of things under Buddhism which swept off almost every bit of the old rituals of the Vedas, The aim of Buddhism was reform of Vedic religion by standing against ceremonials requiring offerings of animals, against hereditary caste and exclusive priesthood, and against beliefs in permanent souls. But the older forces were never pacified; indeed they underwent a good deal of modification driving the centuries of Buddhistic supremacy. But in spite of these historical undercurrents Vivekananda claims that the centres of national life in Ancient India were always the intellectual and spiritual and not political and has been always subordinated to spiritual and intellectual. Vivekananda admitted that the reactionary movement to Buddhism led in close succession by Kurmarila in the north, and Shankar and Ramanuja in the south was the last embodiment of the vast accumulation of sects and doctrines and rituals called Hinduism. Hinduism in northern India was affected but awakened by the thundering rush of Muslim cavaly across the plains of Afghanistan. In the south, however, the spiritual upheaval of Shankar and Ramaniya was followed by the usual Indian sequence of united races and powerful empires. It was the home of refuge of the Indian religion and civilisation, when northern Indian religion and civilisation lay bound at the feet of Central Asiatic conquerors. The Muslims tried for centuries to subjugate the south, but can scarcely be said to have got even a strong foothold; and when the strong the united empire of Mughals was very near completing its conquest, the hills and plateaus of the south poured in their bands of fighting peasant horsemen, determined to die for the religion which Ramdas preached and Tukaramsang. The friars of the orders founded by Ramanand, Kabir, Dadu, Chavitanya or Nanak were all agreed in preaching the equality of man, however differing from each other in philosophy. Their energy was for the most part spent in checking the rapid conquest of Islam among the masses, and they had very little left to give birth to new thoughts and aspirations. Though evidently successful in their purpose of keeping the masses within the fold of Hinduism, and tempering the fanaticism of the Muslims, they according to Vevekanand kept only struggling to obtain permission to live. He praised Guru Govind Singh as being a creative genius and for founding a great political organization as a result of his spiritual work. Vivekanand criticised the facts founded during British rule as the voices of the dead or the dying. The feeble tones of a terrorised people, pleading for permission to live, and who adjusted their spiritual and social surroundings according to the tastes of the conquerors. No wonder that these facts mushroomed just to live. Therefore Vivekananad became one of those great pioneers who ushered the era of revivalism and restoration forces of the ancient glory of our motherland.
The views expressed in the article are the writers' own.