Ram Mohan was a Vedāntin; but he was also a rationalist. He believed that all scriptures, including the Vedas, must be interpreted, not dogmatically but on the basis of rational criteria which gave due attention to historical context, semantic developments of style and content, and contemporary sociological and other influences. Thus where the Vedas were concerned, it suited Ram Mohan's purposes to appeal to their paramount authority as scripture, but not to other features traditionally bolstering this authority, e.g. the mystical efficacy of Sanskritic utterance, the method of the Vedas’ promulgation by Brahmā etc., and their nature as eternal and unauthored (as discussed by us in Chapter 3).
To achieve his reformist goals, Ram Mohan embarked on a campaign of disseminating, in Bengali and English, his rationalist interpretation of Upaniṣadic religion. It was by drawing on the authority of the śruti that he ceaselessly waged his reformist battles. An outstanding success in this regard was his leading contribution to the campaign to prohibit suttee, which was outlawed in 1829 when Lord William Bentinck was Governor-General of British India. In fact, it has been suggested that Ram Mohan's professed Vedantism (as also his espousal of a Unitarian interpretation of the Christian scriptures) was based on utilitarian motives rather than on personal commitment.8 The utilitarian views of Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill were important influences at the time. There may well have been a utilitarian slant to Ram Mohan's faith: but one can appreciate the utilitarian value of one's faith while at the same time being convinced of its genuineness.
In 1828, in order to further his aims, he had established the Brahmo Sabha (‘The Assembly of Brahman’). Here, ‘Brahman'meant the Supreme Being of the Upaniṣads. Among its various activities, the Sabha held religious services to which all who were interested were welcome, irrespective of caste and gender. These services generally began with formal Vedic chanting by Brahmins in the presence of Brahmins (it is said that the chanters, orthodox south Indians, refused to perform otherwise9), but then continued with Bengalis expounding Upaniṣadic texts to the congregation at large. Note that these texts were as much a part of the Vedic canon as the Vedic chants. Thus did Ram Mohan both authenticate and propagate his message. This was very bold for the time; the taboo to confine teaching and chanting of the Vedas to the castes of the ‘twice-born'was so psychologically enduring that even in the first decades of the twentieth century, I am reliably informed, there was a Brahmin professor in the University of Calcutta who after quite willingly teaching Vedic texts to all and sundry in his class, then felt compelled later in the day to take a purificatory bath in a local distributary of the river Ganges! Renamed the Brahmo Samaj some years later, Ram Mohan's society played a crucial role in shaping modern Hinduism by becoming one of the most potent instruments of Westernizing and lasting socio-religious reform in nineteenth-century India.
It is important to note that for all his avowed susceptibility to Muslim and Christian teaching, Ram Mohan regarded himself as a Hindu seeking to reform Hinduism from within. Hence the declared Vedāntic basis of his reformist efforts.10 It was Ram Mohan who started the process of restoring the Vedas to public consciousness in modern India, both as an object of study and as a source of religious inspiration. Ram Mohan regenerated the Vedāntic tradition which, mainly in its Advaitic form, at least among educated Hindus today, is a popular option for religious commitment. Veiled by Sanskrit, hedged round by taboos of access, jealously guarded by the priests, for centuries the śruti had lain smouldering in the religious life of the people. Ram Mohan started the process of dismantling the taboos, of opening up and exposing the śruti to the transnational winds of change.11 In time, many people, both inside and outside the Brahmo Samaj, were to contribute to this process, so that once again theVedas became the active basis of numerous ideologies for socio-religious change. In this way they played an important part in the creation of modern India, thus affecting either directly or indirectly the lives of the population at large.
Let us mention three other well-known figures who contributed enduringly to the resurgence of the Vedic religion in modern times as a strategy for some form of ‘nation-building’. (i) The first may be regarded as heir to the conceptual influences of the Brahmo Samaj;(ii) the second was a visionary outside this tradition, while (iii) the third gave the Veda a modern appeal until well into the twentieth century.
(i) Swami Vivekananda, whose original name was Narendranath Datta, was born in Calcutta in 1863.12 He was exposed to English education in his formative years and as a young man moved about in the circles of the Brahmo Samaj, especially in the movement's most Westernizing, reformist faction. He soon came under the spell of the Bengali mystic, Ramakrishna, whom he followed until the latter's death in 1886. After this, Vivekananda became a leading figure among Ramakrishna's devotees, elaborating his Master's teaching and helping give it organizational form. He was a sensation at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. This launched him as a religious teacher of repute in the West, especially in the United States, which he visited more than once. It also helped to give him great prestige in the subcontinent, and to establish the Ramakrishna Mission in India, run by an Order of monks. The aim of the Mission was to perpetuate Ramakrishna's teaching as interpreted largely by Vivekananda. With its headquarters on the western bank of the Hooghly river at Belur in the northern outskirts of Calcutta/Kolkata, the Mission currently has branches not only in the rest of the subcontinent but throughout the world. By the time Vivekananda died in 1902, he and his teaching had become well-known among the educated in India for whom his international standing acted as a counterbalance to the humiliation of colonial rule. Vivekananda and his message played an inspiring role in the early stages of the Indian national movement.
In his numerous writings and speeches, Vivekananda based his teaching on an Advaitic interpretation of the Upaniṣads. At the deepest level of being – the level of Spirit or Ātman – all humanity is one, outer differences of race, religion, sex and condition of life being of no lasting value. Vivekananda based his egalitarian ethic, that we should love one another as we love ourselves, on this idea. He quoted and commented upon Upaniṣadic texts frequently in elaboration of his views. The German Indologist, Paul Hacker (1913–1979), has argued that Vivekananda derived his egalitarian ethic, which he (Vivekananda) claimed was based on teachings of the Bhagavad Gītā and the great saying of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, tat tvam asi, viz.‘That you are’ (e.g. 6.8.7), from a reading of these texts by the German scholar Paul Deussen (1845–1919), who himself got it from an interpretation of the Hindu scriptures made by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860;see Hacker in Halbfass 1995:Chapter 13). Hacker's claim has been overturned by T. Green, who has shown that Vivekananda embraced this position before his meeting with Deussen.13 In any event, it was through Vivekananda, from a teaching that he claimed derived from Hindu scripture, that this ethic made an impact on the Hindu intelligentsia.
This is how Vivekananda put it in a lecture given in 1896 in a private house in Wimbledon during a brief visit to England:
Is there an inner world? And what is it? It is Ātman. It is the Self ... That is to say, what we call the Absolute, the Universal Soul, the Self, is the force by which from the beginning all things have been and are and will be manifested.
While the Vedānta philosophers solved that question, they at the same time discovered the basis of ethics. Though all religions have taught ethical precepts, such as,’Do not kill, do not injure;love your neighbour as yourself’, etc., yet none of these has given the reason. Why should I not injure my neighbour? To this question there was no satisfactory or conclusive answer forthcoming, until it was evolved by the metaphysical speculations of the Hindus who could not rest satisfied with mere dogmas. So the Hindus say that this Atman is absolute and all-pervading, therefore infinite. There cannot be two infinites, for they would limit each other and would become finite. Also each individual soul is a part and parcel of that Universal Soul, which is infinite. Therefore i
n injuring his neighbour, the individual actually injures himself. This is the basic metaphysical truth underlying all ethical codes.
(Complete Works, vol.1, pp.384–5)
This was the basis for Vivekananda's clarion call that Hinduism had entered, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Age of the Śūdra, when people should no longer be discriminated against on the grounds of age-old distinctions of caste and birth. Once again the śruti, in the form of the Upaniṣads, not to mention another sacred text, viz. the Bhagavad Gītā, had a leavening influence on the minds of many who played an important role in fashioning the new nation.
(ii) Among those who propagated Vedic religion in nineteenth-century India, our next noteworthy figure is Swami Dayananda Sarasvati (1824–1883). Dayananda was born in the region of Kathiawar (part of the modern state of Gujarat, in western India), of Brahmin stock in a home in which the traditional image-worship of Śiva was followed. He started the study of Sanskrit and Vedic texts from an early age. He once related how, while still a boy, he was taken by his father to attend an all-night vigil in a temple of Śiva. Late into the night, struggling to stay awake while others, including his father, had nodded off one by one, he noticed some mice nibbling at the offerings made to Śiva's image. This led him to question image-worship and all that it stood for. If Śiva cannot protect his offerings from some mice, he thought, how can he give solace and protection to his devotees? Deaths in the family and an attempt to marry him off induced him to leave home while still a young man to seek life's meaning. He travelled around as a traditional renouncer, studying and debating the sacred texts in Sanskrit, and became increasingly attracted to an Advaitic interpretation of the Upaniṣads. He also practised traditional Yoga techniques with a will. Image-worship he rejected.
From 1860, for about two and a half years, he sat at the feet of a holy man, a well-known Sanskritist named Virjanand Sarasvati. Through this association his knowledge of classical Sanskrit grammar in particular deepened; his studies led him to distinguish the Hindu sacred texts into two categories: (i) arṣa, that is, those texts that were revealed by the agency of the Rishis or ancient sages and hence were infallibly authoritative;and (ii) anarṣa, those which had no such derivation, and were therefore not infallible. The historical point of division between the two categories was the supposed cataclysmic war around which the story of the Mahābhārata is spun. This war is supposed to have plunged a more or less religiously homogeneous people and polity into fragmented chaos. Post-Mahābhārata-war India lost its original high religious and social ideals and the process of Hindu degeneration began, giving rise to caste practices, priest-craft, discrimination against women, polytheism, idolatrous image-worship and so on. It was during this time of upheaval that such religious texts as the Purāṇas, Tantras etc. were produced;these shared the venality and falsehood of the religious mentality which spawned them and which in turn they helped to foster. The śruti, on the other hand, antedated this war and remained intact as a source of revealed truth. In time, Dayananda's attention was turned from the Upaniṣads to the Saṃhitā portion of the Veda as the repository of the purest, most original Aryan truth. This led him away from a leaning towards Advaita or monism. The principle that ancient India was the golden age of the Hindu tradition was very much in force.
For a few months in 1872–3, Dayananda paid a visit to Calcutta at the invitation of leading figures in the Adi Brahmo Samaj (the original rump of the Brahmo Samaj). The way the Brahmo movement successfully and influentially communicated its policies convinced him that he would have to change his own image. He relinquished the renouncer's garb, put on conventional clothes and started perfecting his Hindi with a view to propagating his teaching in this northern lingua franca.
Dayananda's teaching, as relevant for our purposes, contained the following points: the Vedas, not least the Saṃhitās – especially the hymns of the g Veda – are the source and model of all truth. The Vedas, which are innocent of icon-worship, declare the existence of but one, formless, Supreme Being, who is their source and who fashioned the world. This formless God is omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, imperishable, benevolent, blissful, etc., but God is also co-existent with prakṛti or primeval energy from which the world is produced, and with individual embodied spiritual selves or jīvas who are subject to the law of karma and rebirth. Thus there are three co-existent eternal categories of being: the deity, prakirti, and the jīvas. Further, the state of mokṣa or liberation is not permanent but temporary, souls enjoying their heavenly reward through good karma accrued, and then falling back into the cycle of rebirth. This view of the temporary nature of the highest state is probably unique in Hindu theology.
The Vedas, continued Dayananda, also provide the blueprint not only for all religious truth, but also for all scientific discoveries. The ancient Aryans knew all about such marvellous things as steamships and the telegraph. This scientific knowledge was lost after the Mahābhārata war, only to be rediscovered in modern times. In his day Dayananda may not have had an opportunity to become familiar with the historical–critical interpretation of sacred texts that was being pioneered in Europe (though Ram Mohan Roy's searching analyses of Hindu and Christian scriptures half a century earlier had incorporated such techniques). Dayananda's followers and sympathizers today, however, have less excuse for their unknowing. Even some of the apparently educated among these today maintain that the ancient Aryans were familiar with at least the basics of what most people think are modern scientific inventions (including the aeroplane). For example, in his work Hindu Scriptures, B. Bissoondoyal quotes with approval a publication, the Organiser (6th October, 1952), to the effect that ‘Vedic references to aeroplanes described eight kinds of machines in aeroplanes, all of which were electrically controlled’ (1979:16, note 20). Apparently it was on the basis of such ancient wisdom that an inhabitant of Bombay (with some collaborators) constructed an aeroplane in 1895 that ‘rose to a height of 1500 feet and automatically landed safely’. Later, the machine was sold ‘to an English commercial concern’. The rest, as they say, is history. Further current examples of this form of Vedic fundamentalism can be given, but let us leave it at that. Swami Dayananda's great doctrinal work, written in lively style in chaste Sanskritic Hindi, is entitled the Satyārth Prakāś (‘A Declaration of Truth's Meaning’).14 It was first published in 1875, and was revised finally by 1883, the year Dayananda died.
After a false start or two, in 1875 Dayananda succeeded in establishing a society in Bombay to institutionalize his views. It was called the Arya Samaj. But it was in the Punjab in 1877, in a milieu of well-to-do merchant castes and professionals, that the Arya Samaj got off the ground. Those who became Aryas were seeking a genuine ‘Hindu’ identity in that they wished to reject the Westernized life-style of the Brahmos who were influential in the area, while at the same time coming to terms with the technological advances of the day. They believed they found this in the Arya Samaj, for Samaj ideology traded, on the one hand, on the traditional authority of the Vedas, and on the other, on the Vedas’ supposed progressiveness. Though some Sanskritic rituals, derived from the Vedas it was claimed, were practised in Arya gatherings, these did not have the rationale of the ancient Vedic yajña. They were essentially symbolic performances, putting their adherents in mind of their claimed Vedic past. All this is a far cry from the Vedic religion of ancient India, but the high profile that the Samaj gave to the Vedas and their authority cannot be denied.
The Arya Samaj became an influential movement mainly in north-western India. From the outset, it reflected the militant missionary thrust of its founder's writings. Before long, it was to express this zeal politically. Aryas played a significant role in the nationalist movement. Though, as C. Jaffrelot points out,‘In 1891 the leadership of the [Arya] movement in the Punjab called on its members to declare themselves as “Aryas” and not as Hindus at the time of the census’, since ‘Hindu’ was understood here as signifying a state of decline from past glory, the ‘ideolo
gical characteristics [of the Samaj] were such that it became one of the first crucibles of Hindu nationalism’ (Jaffrelot 1999:17), of right-wing Hindu nationalism, that is.
‘Hindu’ becomes an ambiguous term in association with the Arya Samaj. I have heard politically moderate Aryas, sympathetic to the Samaj's original ‘anti-idolatry’ teachings, express reluctance at being called ‘Hindus’; however, they were equally reluctant to be regarded as belonging to some denomination outside the Hindu fold. I have also heard politically active Aryas proud to be regarded as being in the vanguard of a militant ‘Hindu’ nationalism. Thus, while on occasion Aryas may for various historical or personal reasons hesitate to describe themselves explicitly as ‘Hindus’, implicitly they see themselves as belonging to the Hindu fold, and equally important, are perceived as staunch Hindus throughout India, especially in the political context of today. The Vedic credentials of their faith propagated by their founder, and the latter's militant opposition to cultural and religious domination of India by outsiders (viz. mainly Westerners and Muslims), continue to exercise a controlling role in determining their identity.
The Arya Samaj is still an important religio-political force today, institutionally retaining on the whole its militant image. As a religious movement its activities have been confined mainly to the northern half of India, in both urban and rural settings. Politically, however, as we have intimated, its influence is more pervasive, and its ideology has percolated over time extensively into militant right-wing Hinduism.
It must not be thought that while Ram Mohan and others were adapting Vedic religion to new purposes by their rationalist or utilitarian approaches, the traditional orthodox pandits or scholars remained silent spectators. A number raised a cry of protest at this flouting of tradition. The innovators continued their campaigns, though often at personal cost to their lifestyles or reputations. But in its own way, orthodoxy fought back, showing that the traditional approach to the Vedas was also alive and well. This is quite typical of the Ancient Banyan. While new branches push out in one place, old roots survive doggedly elsewhere.
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