“ The world is in the chains of superstition,” said Swami Vivekananda in 1896. He had also said then, “Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries.” He was genuinely religious and studied religions of the world keenly. He knew how clean and inspiring all religions were at the outset, before they went under the leadership of people greedy for pelf and power. Observing their downfall due to corrupt practices in them, he was deeply hurt. Religions of the world originated out of an urgency in man. They were for earning peace and perfection. They grew in an atmosphere of sovereignty.
They developed on different faiths suited to different ethos. They were pragmatic and progressive, for they recognized diversity and individual needs as obvious and offered means for their practices. They were compatible with various tastes and temperaments. There was neither disrespect nor discrimination among them. They co-existed in search of Truth and God. Amidst them, there was a healthy connection. In order to describe it he said, “Every religion is an expression, a language to express the same truth, and we must speak to each in his own language.” Therefore, faiths were the primary means, and spiritual realizations the invariable end to them.
Superstition had no room in them. Pure and simple belief in God and Truth only mattered in them. But, with the intrusion of priestcraft, they began to socially decline and degenerate into “mockeries”. Priests forged “chains of superstition” craftily and rapaciously sapped the world to their own authority and profit. Priests reduced them to mere conglomerates of rites and rituals, cunningly keeping their essentials at bay in the dense shrouds of mystery. Faiths in the hands of priests imperatively became misplaced and had eventually remained no more as means for God-realization and emancipation from afflictions, but became ends in themselves, giving rise to sturdy sectarianism.
In their wake, religions, which were once liberal, inclusive, and shorn of prejudice had now become abysses of ignorance and fanaticism with the aggressive parochial preaching by the priests. The fellow feeling between religions and the idea that they are transmogrifications of the one irreducible Eternal Religion thus petered out of the world. Swamiji said, “One infinite religion existed all through eternity and will ever exist, and this religion is expressing itself in various countries in various ways.” God is the embodiment of that Eternal Religion. Realizing God, one becomes its living example. One such would say with a firm conviction: “Only he who constantly thinks of God can know His real nature. He alone knows that God reveals Himself in different forms and different ways, that He has attributes and, again, has none.”
Eternal Religion annihilates one’s sufferings forever and makes one blissful permanently. It is directly perceptible, independent of any priestly intervention. This fact was dismissed by the priests, so that they could establish themselves as religious agents of God falsely. Swamiji gave utterances against priestly manoeuvres and tried to rescue the world from its detrimental grip. He spoke to show how religions of the world were made “lifeless” by it. He said, “When principles are entirely lost sight of and emotions prevail, religions degenerate into fanaticism and sectarianism.”
However, even in the midst of unbridled priestly activities and indoctrinations banking on gratuitous non-essentials of religions, there have always been mystics and seekers of the highest order who believed as before that religion was one and infinite but faiths were many as various means to realize it. So, they chose suitable faiths to carry out their spiritual practices, in order to realize that religion as their goal of life. Hence, their faiths served as their paths to reach it. That is why, Swamiji’s conclusion was: “If there were not different religions, no religion would survive.”
Along with it, he had also logically shown: “In essentials, all religions are one.” Swamiji and his Master were of the same ilk. They realized the Eternal Religion and had its supreme knowledge. Both being armed with the invincible spiritual wisdom as well as expertise, fought a benign battle against religious bigotry and fundamentalism perpetuated by the priesthood. In his first speech at Chicago, Swamiji famously recited from ancient texts containing the realization of such souls of yore and buttressed his view of oneness of the purposes of all faiths.
His Master Sri Ramakrishna described faiths as paths, each capable of taking aspirants to the goal which is the one endowed by the Eternal Religion. He exhorted: “Never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false.” One of the verses Swamiji recited at Chicago was: “As the different streams, having their sources at different places, all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.” Our religion was called “Vaidika Dharma” before it came to be known as “Hindu Dharma” or Hinduism which was being ascribed because it happened to be the religion of the “Hindu people”. Persians gave us the name “Hindu”.
Swamiji said, “The religion of the Vedas is the religion of the Hindus, and the foundation of all Oriental religions.” The essentials or the eternal values embedded in the Vedas constitute the scriptures or Shastras of the Hindus. Smritis do not come under their category since they are of periodical relevance and changeable vis-à-vis the changing social conditions. To consider and pass them as scriptures is wrong and harmful. Accordingly, any Smriti (social norms) of antiquity could not be deemed right for application in modern India.
Swamiji used to say that there was a need for a new Smriti in the present age for the Hindus. He was badly disturbed to see how hideously the upper caste and the rich discriminated against the lower caste and poor in Hindu society sticking to the laws of obsolete Smritis. He raised his voice against the heinous repression of the Sudras by the priestly Brahmins and spoke of “Sudra Jagaran” or awakening of the masses comprising the downtrodden whom centuries of coercion and oppression made forgetful of their human identity. Giving a call, he said to them, “Let new India arise in your place.
Let her arise ~ out of the peasants’ cottage, grasping the plough; out of the huts of the fisherman, the cobbler, and the sweeper. Let her spring from the grocer’s shop, from beside the oven of the fritter-seller. Let her emanate from the factory, from marts and from markets. Let her emerge from groves and forests, from hills and mountains. The common people have suffered oppression for thousands of years ~ suffered it without murmur, and as a result have got wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has given them unflinching vitality.” Indeed, it was painful to him that, in spite of the highly egalitarian spiritual teachings of Hinduism in essence, Sudras had to unnecessarily suffer untold miseries at the hands of Hindu priests and pundits.
He said, “No religion on earth preaches the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain as Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism.” Swamiji taught Vedanta, which is the essence of our religion. Vedanta has survived with its pristine purity through millennia for its exceptional essential impersonal spiritual aspect of harmony with other religions. He said, “In essentials, all religions are one.” We honoured and respected all religions unequivocally, until we gave ourselves into the hands of power-crazy priests who injected hatred for other religions in our hearts and minds.
Our civilization grew up on the virtues of unfettered resilience, relationship, and acceptance, taking resort to the basic principle of our religion which says Truth is one but its interpretations are many. Swamiji said to the world that we accept all religions as true. With due love and respect for world religions, he spoke about their founders, namely, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad, publicly in the West, upholding the real spirit of our religion. It was because of the proud priests that our society became caste ridden and rife with untouchability. Swamiji said the downfall of our nation commenced the moment the word “untouchable” was introduced in our society by them.
We never knew communalism so long as its poison was infused in our psyche in an organized manner by evil forces comprising narrow-minded priests and politicians in the modern times. They cunningly legitimized it as “Shatsra Vachan”, which it was not, as its mention is nowhere to be found in Vedanta. The vitals of our collective life were unobtrusively eaten up by its menace. Swamiji saw an imminent danger of our nation being in deep trouble ahead due to its wild scourge. He, therefore, set out the responsibility of the Ramakrishna Mission to forward the work of religious harmony initiated by his Master.
He had pointedly said in the resolutions of its first meeting: “The duty of the Mission is to conduct in the right spirit the activities inaugurated by Sri Ramakrishna for the establishment of fellowship among the followers of different religions, knowing them all to be so many forms only of one undying Eternal Religion.” Usurpation of politics in the realm of Hinduism has made our country extremely weak now. Politicians have been using it for their dirty gains, removing the essential format. In order to weaponise it, they have made it fake, falsely inserting all sorts of nonsensical division, discrimination, and segregation among our people. Their tyranny over the Dalits, Adivasis and other religious communities has crossed all limits.
They have washed our brains with floods of lies about historical and religious facts and made us believe them to hate and punish those with the worst miseries, such as the snatching of their rights. To oppose a similar situation, Swamiji declared distinctly: “We preach neither social equality nor inequality but every being has the equal rights, and insist upon freedom of thought and action in every way.” This sinister activity of politicians dwelling on a redundant Smriti, which complies with their ominous agenda, is a direct assault on Hinduism.
Politicians in connivance with questionable organizations assisted by ferocious hoodlums have made a “mockery” of Hinduism, putting the Hindus in “chains” of distortions and deceptions. It is not the fault of Hinduism but of politicians who deserve to be condemned and ostracised. Swamiji said: “Religion (Hinduism) is not in fault. On the other hand, your religion teaches you that every being is only your own self multiplied. But it was the want of practical application, the want of sympathy ~ the want of heart.” Indomitably reckoning with opposing forces 130 years ago, Swamiji placed true Hinduism at the pinnacle of glory before the world outside our country and attracted numerous people from far and wide to love and respect it. Unfortunately, its ill treatment with ulterior motives relentlessly for a century after his departure has pulled it down to dust, converting it into a communal and fundamental religion.
The world looks at it now scornfully for the way Dalits, Adivasis, and the people of other religious faiths are being humiliated and tortured by so-called Hindus in our country mercilessly in the name of religion. This is the consequence of the fact that politics has spoiled our simple and ignorant Hindus, by and large, making them behave like beasts with fellow beings if they belong to the communities they hate. Lest politics destroy our country, Swamiji reminded us: “Religion is of deeper importance than politics, since it goes to the root, and deals with the essential of conduct.”
Swamiji was a well-recognized world teacher. He taught for the good of all in the world, giving the lesson of the oneness of religion and humanity. He spoke about religion and society of the East as well as of the West. He said to his Western audience significantly: “We, in India, allowed liberty in spiritual matters, and we have a tremendous spiritual power in religious thought even today. You grant the same liberty in social matters, and so have a splendid social organisation. We have not given any freedom to the expansion of social matters, and ours is a cramped society.
You have never given any freedom in religious matters but, with fire and sword, have enforced your beliefs, and the result is that religion is a stunted, degenerated growth in the European mind. In India, we have to take off the shackles from society; in Europe, the chains must be taken from the feet of spiritual progress.” Irrespective of his or her individual religious faith, an underlying Eternal Religion eternally links every one with each other on earth and forms a global family. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda discovered this truth scientifically by dint of their rigorous spiritual experiments and proclaimed it to the world at large. We will have to realise it ourselves at any price for the sake of our peaceful co-existence.
The writer is associated with the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Narendrapur
