Pioneer of Shuddhi reformation in Modern India: Swami Dayanand Saraswati

 

 

Pioneer of Shuddhi reformation in Modern India: Swami Dayanand Saraswati

Swami Dayanand, the founder of the Arya Samaj pioneered the Shuddhi reformation movement in Modern India. For centuries we had completely forgotten the concept of Shuddhi. With the decline of Buddhism, the country came under Muslim rule. Muslim rulers used force, persuasion, and all other means to convert non-Muslims to the Islamic folds. The main reason for the conversion to Islam was forcible conversion, war, natural calamities, massive destruction of the seats of learning, rapid decline in the Gurukula system of education, the lure of high posts, or feudatory gains, polygamy, patronage by the Muslim rulers and never to forget the proselytizing mentality of Islamic preachers, etc.

Along with them the European powers such as the French and the British also ran in for the race to acquire a political base in India in order to secure their trade. This period of political instability was one of the most crucial phases in the social history of India. Confronted with rampant immorality, tyranny, and corruption, the Indian society degenerated to such an extent that religious bigotry, superstition, irrational and inhuman beliefs and practices such as sati, infanticide, superstitions, animal sacrifice, and the caste system became cardinal principles of the Indian value system. Such politically divided, socially degenerated, and economically exploited Hindu Society steeped into ignorance. In such a dreaded situation it was a major uphill task to reform the downtrodden condition of Hindu society to its previous glory and status of being the world.

Swami Dayanand decided to liberate Hindu society from this ignorance. He advocated molding and recreating a new dynamic and liberated society by demolishing the walls of separatism, allowing social mobility vertically, and dissolving social rigidity. Under such circumstances, it was natural for Dayanand to reform and consolidate Hindu society by establishing Shuddhi, a process of ritual purification to destroy the walls of hierarchical separatism and imparting man active and cosmic qualities to develop his capabilities.

Swami Dayanand was well aware that for centuries a large number of races of peoples of foreign origin had been continually coming to India before the Muslims, and were absorbed into Hinduism. Basing the assertion on a popular Vedic injunction Krinvanto Vishvamaryam i.e. ‘make the whole world Aryan', Swami Ji argued that the ancient Aryans had a tremendous zeal for Aryanizing people as they did with the Greeks, the Sakas, the Kushans, the Huns, and various others. Ancient texts like Dewala Smriti and Agni Purana refer to the existence of the institution of conversion under the name Vratyastoma, but it was with the advent of Islam the reverse process started and the conversion of the Hindus began. Gradually as the caste system became rigid, there appeared an unwillingness to take the lost brothers back into Hinduism. The rigidity was so hard that we can understand with the help of two examples.

‘The younger Sheshadari in Bombay was pronounced to have lost the status of a Hindu because he had lived for a day or two with his minor elder brother whom the missionaries had succeeded in converting to Christianity.’

    ‘Even leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahadev Gobind Ranade might have been lost to Hinduism in the latter half of the nineteenth century if they had not undergone purificatory ceremonies. Their sin had been that they had allowed the Christian organizer of a prize-giving function in the Mission School to offer them cups of tea; they had not touched the cup much less partaken the tea in it.’

The Arya Patrika refers to many cases with a view to establish that a large number of Hindus were driven into the fold of Christianity and Islam. Because at some occasions they inadvertently or by the force of circumstances became victims of petty pollution and were excommunicated. In view of this, it was argued that almost all religions of the world keep their doors open to 'newcomers' to their faith. Islam and Christianity were proselytizing religions in India and Hinduism were fast losing some of its members to both.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, Swami Dayanand stressed the revival of the ancient Vratyastoma under the guise of Shuddhi, a term so easily intelligible to a man in the street. It has gone a great way towards the regeneration, and re-admission into the Vedic Dharma, of thousands and thousands of such Hindus, whose ancestors under the stress of circumstances in centuries gone by, had to take shelter under the banners of Islam and Christianity. It is believed that the question of Shuddhi for the first time arose during Swami Dayanand's visit to Punjab in 1877. In Jullundur, six months after his arrival in Punjab, he reconverted a Hindu who had become a Christian. His name was Kharak Singh, and he was born a Sikh then became a Hindu and was consequently baptized by Rev. Robert Clark of Amritsar. He became an Arya after meeting the Swami. One Ramsharan, a Brahman of Ludhiana, who was teaching in a Mission School and was about to be converted to Christianity, abandoned his idea after meeting Swami Dayanand. Later on, in Dehradun, in 1879, he reconverted a born Muslim, Muhammad Umar, giving him the name of Alakhdhari. Besides these individual cases, there are a few instances that establish that any person could be admitted to the fold of Hinduism if he promised to lead a life according to the dictates of the Vedas. Moreover, he, through his speeches, impressed many probable converts to Christianity to remain within the Hindu fold and in the process stemmed the tide of Christianity. At Amritsar, about 40 Hindu students under the influence of Christian propaganda had almost become unbaptized Christians, who on listening to Swami Dayanand's preaching did not convert to Christianity. There are instances showing that a few European Christians also adopted Hinduism under the influence of Swami Dayanand. For instance, John Montgomery Hamilton, a Police Inspector changed his name to Sukh Lal. Martin Luther, a teacher working in Christian Orphanage was also converted to Hinduism. A Christian lady with her two children was converted at Ajmer on August 26, 1883. The evidence of conversion during the lifetime of Swami Dayanand is few in number. It can be viewed as a humble beginning, a preparatory stage that lessened the sense of impotence, and signified a new world in which Hindus could fight to maintain themselves and their religion.

J.T.F. Jorden acknowledges the credit to Swami Dayanand, for proclaiming the principle that reconversion was the right procedure, a principle the Arya Samaj would later fully put into practice. From a principle, it developed into ever enlarging its scope and proliferating its dimensions. The Shuddhi, a process of purifying an individual and making him again acceptable to his caste fellows, was first realized to retain Hindus who had been converted to either Christianity or Islam. In due course of time, it was extended to those whose ancestors had been converted, and finally, to those who had never been Hindus at all and whose ancestors had not been Hindus thus giving Hinduism an institution of conversion that it had not traditionally possessed. Once it had become possible to purify a foreigner or a Hindu whose family had been converted centuries before, the Arya Samajist thought it prudent to purify the members of the outcastes and raise their status to the level of the caste Hindus. Surely, if one can purify an Englishman or an American, then one can purify a low caste. This concept of caste reform through Shuddhi came later and perhaps the full implications of it were never realized.

The Shuddhi was adopted seriously by his successors like Swami Shraddhanand, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhai Parmanand, Veer Savarkar, etc. through platforms of Arya Samaj, Hindu Mahasabha leading to the movement of Hindu Sangthan. Swami Shraddhanand leads to Shuddhi of Malkans Neo Muslims living near Agra in thousands of numbers. His Shuddhi movement was opposed by Muslims and ultimately he had to sacrifice his life for his courage and mission. Veer Savarkar along with Bhai Parmanand started Shuddhi of Hindu prisoners in Andaman jail who were converted by Muslim officials of the jail. After his term in Jail, he continued his mission with full zeal.

It was welcomed by other eminent personalities like Swami Vivekananda. In his letter to Kahan Chand Verma (an Aryan Missionary from Lahore working in Kolkata) he congratulated him for Shuddhi of a Bengali Brahmin bringing him back to the folds of Hinduism from Christianity.

The Shuddhi movement will ever remain as an eternal monument of Swami Dayananda's foresight and his invaluable services to Hindus as a great social reformer.

Vivek Arya