[Glimpses of Dayananda (Part-12)]

*🌺THE PATRIOT-POLITICIAN🌺*
[Glimpses of Dayananda (Part-12)]
✍🏻Author - Pandit Chamupati M.A.
*Presentation - 🌺 ‘Avatsāra’*

Dayananda was no doubt a cosmopolitan sage, but all the same he was both a patriot and a politician. He has been recognised as the precursor of a New Age, of new moral values-new not to him but to the rest of the world as that world was living and thinking at the time when he appeared on the scene. His ambition was to see a reformed world, not simply a reformed country. We have already related how he welcomed into his arms disciples from far-off West. All this shows that his sympathies were human, not narrowly national. For the success of his very cosmopolitanism, however, it was necessary that he should fix a centre whence he should start the centrifugal activities of his Universal Mission. Lest your love of man should, in your vain ambition to enclose at once a whole Universe in your necessarily narrow arms, evaporate in a fancy, a dream, on account of the very absence of a practical scheme before you—for in the world as it exists today, there is very little possibility of formulating one-of bringing by the force of any idea, the whole human family under one roof, it is necessary you should begin showing your immediate affections to your immediate neighbour. Patriotism, unless it prejudices the interests of another country, is a necessary factor of cosmopolitanism. Dayananda's own country was, in his day, in the hard grip of a foreign exploiter. It was economically, politically being treated as a helot of the rest of humanity. It appears to us to be a divine Providence that to arrange for them, as it were, an appropriate schooling, Nature gives birth to the redeemers of Humanity in places where Humanity is at the time, in direst woe. In subject communities the spirit of cosmopolitanism finds a favourable soil. From their own experience of foreign tyranny, such communities naturally develop world-wide sympathies for their fellow-men. The danger of this spirit is that, over-worked and over-strained it translates itself into indifferences towards one's own country. Slothful souls find in the easy flights to this filmsy spirit, a convenient refuge from the hard tiresome struggle that goes on at their doors. Slogans of world-wide sympathy are the easiest to cram and parrot-like repeat when the time comes to respond to patriotism's call. To religious reformers, the temptation to avoid this earthly struggle appeals most naturally Their field is spiritual. For the things of the earth there is no place in their heavenly cares and sympathies.

Not of such fibre was Dayananda's mental fabric made. Politics appeared to him to be the controlling factor of human life. Unless that factor is purged of its impurities, no religious uplift will help suffering mankind. More than half the ills of Humanity have their root in perverse politics and if religion should forego addressing itself to this most important and most comprehensive field of human action, it confines itself to an incredibly narrow region, a region virtually of imbecility and impotency. All religions, that have made their mark on the history of mankind began from moral and social reform and ended with political upheavals. Morality exerts its greatest momentum in politics; and politics in its turn, has its ripest fruit in the furtherance of public and private morality of citizens.

Some of Dayananda's most pathetic prayers are the prayers that seek to remedy the ills of his country. The very word Swarajya, which today is India's watchword, was first used in its present political bearings by Dayananda. The death of the sage occurred before the Indian National Congress came into being. But he had not only formed a dream of Democracy, a dream which is flitting before the country today, but had also given that dream, his dream of plebescite a practical shape in the Constitution of his Arya Samaj. It is in this society that both majorities and minorities have at their command an affective instrument of giving expression to their views. Any school of opinion that can rally round it ten voters may have one member in the executive body of the Samaj. The Congress has yet to take its cue from Dayananda's scheme of a political Constitution.

Dayananda was the greatest respector of the people's conscience. Only, he would train that conscience in the proper way. He would have every country, great and small, free to rule itself. In case a nationality breaks an international convention, or for that matter conducts itself in a manner prejudicial to the interests of mankind, or in its internal management tyranny helds sway, in case, in short, something happen which necessitates interference from outside, Dayananda would permit such interference, even by the force of arms. He would, however, insist that his interference should be a transitory step designed simply to reform the conquered community. The very day of the conquest should witness a change of the governing body, which should in no case, be composed, except of the children of the soil. Trusts in the long run prove life-long leases.

In the internal management of a country Dayananda would give the highest place to enlightened self-sacrifice. He would set no monetary value on educational qualifications. Voluntary poverty appears to him to be the badge of piety and learning. Those with the least wants, and therefore the most selfless, should have the greatest hand in the administration of the realm. The executive belongs to others, but the inspiration and determination is necessarily theirs. At the head of the government should be the king. His office is not necessarily to be hereditary. The people choose him, and the choice lasts for his life, unless something disqualifying him for the office takes place in the interim. His person is as much subject to the judicial codes of the realm as that of his meanest subject.

To assist him, there are to be three assemblies, devised for the administration of affairs relating to Legislature, Dharma Education, Vidya and Executive functions-Rajya, respectively. Education, no less than Legislature, he would have free from the control of the Executive to obviate the possibility of this most powerful humanising agency in the civil life of the community being subordinated to selfish political ends. Justice he would leave in the hands of Brahmans, those highly erudite but having no pecuniary interest in developing the resources of one class of subjects at the cost of another.

As to the means he would allow for the redress of the people's grievances, he has given his sanction to every variety of protest against and remedy of-political tyranny, beginning from verbal appeals and ending in armed revolts of non-co-operation, propounded by Gandhi, not only the creed, but every single item of the practical programme also, is suggested by Dayananda in his books. He was both a co-operator and a non-co-operator, what particular weapon should be employed at a particular time is to be determined by the occasion. In the nation's armoury, however, there should not be scarcity of munitions of war of any quality and of any brand. To co-ordinate the administration carried on in various ways in various countries he would have an International Congress, presided over by a Chakravarti Raja. Sanyasis to whom the whole Earth is their home, should have a determining voice in the deliberations of that whole World Assembly.

Such, in brief, was Dayananda's outline of a scheme for the governance of the political affairs of the whole world and of the countries which compose it. He would leave every country to develop its own culture. Only, that culture should not become a kultur with menace to the rest of Humanity. Dayananda was in the favour of encouraging Swadeshi. The ordinary wants of the inhabitants of every country should, he says, be supplied within that country. For food and clothing, especially, no land should depend on another land. It was at Wazirabad that the Sage asked for a knife. And when a knife of foreign manufacture was brought to him, he was wroth expressing on incensed surprise at the inability of a town, where cutlery was the chief native industry, to supply him a knife of native make. He displayed a bias in favour of native dress and native manners. His chief attack on the Brahmos was that they were discarding native modes of life. Every country has developed a set of forms, in which is cloaked that country's individuality. Unless something repugnant to higher Humanity has crept into those forms, it is in the interest of the ancient culture of that country to stick to those forms and to keep them intact. Dayananda, that lover of Humanity at large, was strange as it may seem, an advocate of Swadeshi a Swadeshist to the core.

He would not relinquish the language of his country. When B. Keshab Chandra Sen regretted his ignorance of English, which circumstance, he said, incapacitated him from going to preach his faith in England, he was ready with the retort that more deplorable still was the learned Keshab's imperfect mastery of his native tongue which stood as a bar between him and his people. At the door of an ancient fortress, guarded by British officers, he was asked, as a preliminary to admittance, to take off his turban and go in with his shoes on. No, said he, this would reverse Indian custom, which he was not prepared to do, even for a purpose higher than that of having the temporary pleasure of sight-seeing. With such patriotic prejudices, Dayananda was yet a cosmopolitan sage of the first brand. His was a mixture, a chemical union more properly, of the love of man and the love of his country. To him the two loves appeared to be but two forms of a higher love the love of his Lord.

✍🏻Author - Pandit Chamupati M.A.
*Presentation - 🌺 ‘Avatsāra’*

॥ ओ३म् ॥