INDIA KNOW THYSELF

● An attempt to appraise the work of versatile genius like Dayanand ! ●

● People decry Dayanand, but follow Dayanand's ideas. ●

● Rishi Dayanand was a symbol of Indian India. ●
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- Suraj Bhan

INDIA KNOW THYSELF

How difficult it is to appraise the work of versatile genius like Dayanand ! A saint and a scholar, a socio-religious reformer and an educationist - what branch of human activity was not comprised in his comprehensive programme ! But beneath all this work there is the undercurrent of an idea, which was the mainspring of all his activities - the desire to see India restored to herself. "Know Thyself - India" was his clarion call. He found India ashamed of herself suffering from an inferiority complex. He revealed to her, her pristine glory, he gave her a vision of a glorious future - only if India would be herself. He found India weltering in the marshes of ignorance, bound by shackles of superstition, let in upon her people the light of his unique knowledge, exhorted them not to hug their chains, advised them to be themselves. Thousands were awakened out of their slumber, millions refused to awake, but were shaken, all the same. They refused to know themselves, the Saviour knew they would have to know themselves if they cared to survive. Let them not be converted by Dayanand, they should be converted by some proto-type of his after his death, if Hinduism had to exist.

Hinduism has paid the Arya Samaj the highest tribute, that of imitation by stealing its programme. People decry Dayanand, but follow Dayanand's ideas. That is his triumph. The most hostile camps take up the work that he stood for, and still continue to thunder against him. That is his victory. What the Rishi preached has become a part of our life - no wonder if some fail to appreciate the greatness of his achievement. Chroniclers have not done him justice yet. But the sun is bound to emerge resplendent out of the vapours of suspicion, false prestige and intolerance.

Dayanand found India - the so-called educated India being swapt by the West. "Know yourselves," the Saviour thundered. "Surrender not your souls," he called out to the apes, "your salvation lies not in imitation, but in being yourselves." People mocked at him, they called him a fool and a crank. And when today Gandhi, the idol of India - that glorious embodiment of what Hinduism stands for - preaches the same message, when Tagore - India's saintly poet - exhorts us not be mere images, and when Sir Radhakrishnan, the prince among Indian philosophers, deplores that "our hatred for British rule is combined with a strange love for British Institutions," we feel the seer that Dayanand was. There lies his glory. He saw the Indian problem as very few saw it. "Back to yourselves" was his cry. People said, going back could not be reconciled with moving forward. Dayanand saw no inconsistency in the two, and history has justified his belief.

The Rishi was a symbol of Indian India. He was an Indian to the core. The spirit that breathed in him was essentially indigenious and both in his ideas and his methods he was entirely Aryan. "Though in his breadth of vision and originality of outlook he was so much ahead of his people, he was yet so thoroughly Indian that there was nothing in him which in the remotest degree could be traced to foreign influence. "In spite of the great height from which he addressed his people he addressed them as his own. He knew and understood what they were and what they were not. His diagnosis was unique, and so was his remedy - the history of the last eighty years is a living testimony to the truth of this fact.

[Source: Dayanand - His Life and Work, p. 82-84, presented by: Bhavesh Merja]
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