Glimpses of Dayananda (Part-8)]

THE WARRIOR🌺*
[Glimpses of Dayananda (Part-8)]
✍🏻Author - Pandit Chamupati M.A.
*Presentation - 🌺 ‘Avatsāra’*

Dayananda is said to have founded a church militant. His followers regard the epithet as a compliment to, rather than as a denunciation of, their Society. Of all religions Hinduism is thought to be the most peaceful. Divided into so many sects, it has a wonderful power of accommodating them all. With non-Hindu religions it never bothers itself. The latter are ever busy proselytising Hindus and thinning day by day the ranks of the Vedicists. And piteously Hinduism regards such renegade members of the community as so many men and women fallen beyond reclamation. So constituted, Hinduism is considered a racial group rather than a religious dispensation. Regarding the Veda as Divine Revelation, apaurusheya jnan, superhuman wisdom, the Hindu has allowed his scriptures to be treated historically, exegetically, linguistically, as it has suited the whims of the individual interpreter to treat them. This supine indifference on the part of the Hindu has resulted in his own conviction that his, of all communities in the world, is the one that has no mission, no culture, no message for humanity. His religion he has to borrow -

Not so did Dayananda view his religion. The Aryan faith, to him, was a dispensation divine. It was the primitive, and therefore the only, revelation from Heaven. What the adversaries considered its rawness to Dayananda was the very evidence of the perfectness of his faith. For, knowledge divine can know no cancellation, no change, no evolution. What were regarded as later rehabilitations of the once-antiquated obsolete religion had made no new discovery in the realm either of morals or of spirituality. They had on the contrary led to a strife of sects, a war among communities which stuck, one to this accretion, another to that local temporary convention occasionally devised. His deep insight into the history of his community had made Dayananda conscious that in the past his Religion had been a missionary faith. Of divine dispensation this being the one indispensable characteristic that the religion revealed by God must find a following on its own. It ought to propagate itself. Addressed to the whole humanity, it should attempt to cover the confines of the whole human family.

Led by this feeling, Dayananda proceeded to change the religious attitude of the whole Aryan race. In total concurrence with none, he believed in his heart of hearts that the sects composing Hinduism had still a common foundation. They all derived their fundamentals from the Commandments of the Veda. Each sect professed to be so derived. He, therefore, caught hold of that common denominator, and sought to reduce to it every fraction of the Aryan community. It was a bold vision, but he was convinced that the vision was right. Through fighting alone, fighting with the Hindu rival sects, he could evolve Hindu harmony. And, when his own community was made one, it could be pitted against all stand shoulder to shoulder with other churches.

Not that he was prejudiced in favour of the Aryan faith because he was born in that faith. If that consideration had weighed with him, he might have taken up the cause of one of the sects of Hinduism, for he was born in one. It was far easier to join, and help in the spread of, one of the existing creeds, Aryan or non-Aryan. Had he been ambitious, he could have established an entirely new creed which his followers may have named after the ambitious apostle. His church was neither one of those existing, nor, too, quite a new dispensation. He was a follower of the Rishis of old, and yet for his time, the founder for a new church. He had to wage war, on the one side, against the whole Arya community which was at the time sunk deep un-Aryan superstition. On the other side, there were the so-called non-Aryan churches preying on the effete Hindu. The latter, complaisantly helpless in the face of the non Arya, had life enough to resist the attack of a fellow-Arya. He could condemn him, ostracise him, checkmate him, in short render his efforts at reform null and void. He could! For internal strife, for fighting against itself, Hinduism was yet strong enough. The non Hindu it could not check. The Hindu it would not allow to advance. Dayananda knew, self-defence and self-reform would proceed hand-in-hand. He, therefore, set his hand to both these missions simultaneously.

A combat or two in Shastric learning, into which Dayananda entered with his Pauranic adversaries, we have already had the occasion to describe. At Kashi there took place a right historic battle. While preaching elsewhere, he had been confronted with a vyavastha of the Kashi alumni. Everywhere, the latter were cited as authorities on Religion. Their learning was reputed to be great, and their opinion had the same weight with commonalty that citation from Shastras had with Dayananda. Dayananda determined to tame Puranicism in its strongest den. He was alone when he reached Banaras. According to his wont he gave an open challenge to all the Pandits there, and began, by a series of lectures, his usual denunciation of idolatry. Now Kashi is known to be a city of Idols. Every little stone in the town is regarded as an incarnation of Shankar. On any side you turn, you are confronted with a temple in which a number of images are lodged. And net Dayananda's criticism was unsparing. His commonsense logic went into the hearts of his hearers. His lectures were largely attended, and the revolution they brought about was so great and far-reaching that the alumni, who had for centuries enjoyed an undisturbed repose, were for a moment shaken in their asanas and gaddis. Those who had viewed the atrocities of the Mughal and the Pathan with non chalance rubbed their eyes with wonder now that their reputation for Shastric erudition-for the first time in history-was at stake.

The Raja of Kashi arranged a slastrartha, a religious polemic, at which he himself was to preside. The rishi, sitting alone, with only a loin-cloth on-while before him ranged arrayed all the notable scholars and men of repute in religious learning of the literary Athens of India, clad in the gorgeous colours of their divers sects-was a spectacle to arouse the wonder of the gods. What transpired at the meeting may, to the lay reader, prove nothing easier than an Egyptian heiroglyph. Man versed in the Aryan shastras can alone follow these learned disquisitions. At a point in the course of that debate, a paper purporting to be from a scripture was handed to the rishi, who began forthwith who to examine its contents. The pandits, who had all the time been on the lookout, found now their opportunity, and clapping their hands, declared that they had silenced the rishi. The Raja joined the insidious game and the assembly disbersed amidst shouts and disorder. For the ruffians the time was opportune to assert their rogueries simmering. They threw about filth and brickbats. Some inscrutable destiny kept the rishi safe. That his adversaries indulged in this unenviable frolic was proof incontrovertible of the rishi's morally victory. His logic was answered with brickbats. In the field of shastras the collective learning of Kashi had failed to be his match.

This as regards the opposition that Dayananda had to meet with at the hands of psuedo-Aryans. His mission, however, was not simply to reform Hinduism. In the Aryan fold there had arisen reformers and saints without number. Each had, according to his stamina, given the dying community one more short lease of existence. He had made a reform here and a reform there, and had by dint of that reform pushed the wheel of the community a few steps farther. A section of the community had accepted his creed in its totality, while to the rest the spirit he had breathed had served as a leaven. The inequality of the progress that the two sections had put forth had led to a further division of the society. One more sect had been added to the already large number of Hinduisms.

Dayananda addressed his appeal to humanity at large. Krinvanto vishvam aryam: Make the whole world Arya for such was the commandment of the Veda. Aryan tradition, recorded in their own history and literature was a testimony that corroborated that time-old statement as regards the Arya mission. Dayananda, therefore, made it a plank in his platform to criticise and, where necessary, to denounce that were regarded as non-Aryan faiths. Shastrarthas like the one held at Kashi had been taking place in India from time to time. In their intensity and volume they may have been inferior to what won by Dayananda. Viewed, had been from their pobmical aspect, they belonged to the same category. The controversy arranged at Chandpur, however, had been in the history of India-extending over no smaller a period than that which had intervened since the days of the Mahabharat-unique. A Sadhu of the Aryan community had taken the field against Christian fathers and Mohammaden Mullas. The controversy had from the first been designed to last for at least three days. The Mulla and the Padre were, however, so completely discomfited the very first day that on the second no vestige of their encampments was to be found on the scene. For the first time after long a warrior of the Aryan faith had routed the combined operations of Christianity and Islam. A beginning in Aryan aggression had been made; and it had been auspicious. To an abiding credit of those so-called Semitic faiths it must be admitted that their followers introduced lesser acrimony into the debate than did the Puranists. No untoward event ever occurred in the course of Dayananda's polemics with the representatives of Islam and Christianity.

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