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RADHASOAMI FAITHA HISTORICAL STUDY |
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RADHASOAMI FAITHA HISTORICAL STUDY |
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The gradual decline in power of the Mughals in the eighteenth century resulted in anarchy in India's political life. Confusion, disorder and disunity reigned supreme. The pleasure-loving later Mughals, the very antithesis of their great forebears, and their corrupt nobility who were engrossed in mutual rivalries weakened the central authority. Several provincial dynasties sprang up to reduce the Mughal Emperor to insignificance. The Maratha ascendancy in the north, series of foreign invasions and the terror they struck, and the defeat of Marathas at the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1761 made the condition worse.
The stage was set for the "flag to follow the trade" and the English who had come as traders gradually acquired one province after another and within a century became the paramount power over a dominion extending from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin and from the Indus to the Brahmaputra. That a great people should lie under foreign heels was a lamentable misfortune indeed.
The history of early English domination is a sordid story of exploitation and plunder, resulting in the country's economic ruin. Agriculture and smallscale industries were badly affected and indigenous trade came to a standstill. With the "decrease of the national stock"and "a rapid lowering of mechanical skill", the economic life rapidly deteriorated.
The breakdown of the political and economic structure had disastrous effect on the socio- religious life. Rabindranath Tagore described the then India as "slumbering in a death-like sleep". He observed : "In social usage, in politics, in the realm of religion and art we had entered the zone of uncreative habit, of decadent tradition and ceased to exercise our humanity." Social life dried up and expressed itself in the revival of customs, superstitions, prejudices, ignorance, fear, feuds, bitterness and parochialism.
Education, the prerequisite of healthy social life, was neglected. "The centres of learning and wisdom had either disintegrated or degenerated, and whatever of them remained did little more than the memorising of texts on traditional lines". The education imparted was narrow and did not include a study of sacred literature, ancient classics, medicine or science. Referring to the general deteriration of Hindu society, R.C. Majumdar says : "Long subjection to alien rule, lack of contact with the progressive forces of the world, and a stereotyped system of education leading to knowledge which was based upon blind faith impervious to reason - all these told upon the mental and moral outlook of men and society".
Social degeneration was even more apparent in the condition of women. Polygamy, child marriage, sati, sanctions against widow remarriage, female infanticide, illiteracy, purdah system were the prevalent practices and woman's status was generally inferior to men. N.S. Bose writes about the women of Bengal "In the name of Kulinism hundreds and thousands of girls' lives were totally blasted. Rich people in Bengal were mostly polygamous and left their wives confined in the house.......". There was no escape for women from the terrible sufferings and social fetters. They did not enjoy any right or previlege. Throughout the dark and dismal years of the eighteenth century, grievous social anarchy continued to gnaw at the very vitals of Indian culture and the noble and sublime ideals had long been forgotten. The low moral standard was reflected in the abundance of corruption, fraud, treachery, conceit and other major and minor vices and the entire social structure was fast degenerating.
The caste system led not only to stagnation and obscurantism but also to bleak traditionalism - undemocratic and authoritarian in the extreme. Hinduism's caste hierarchy based on social and legal inequities, was held to be divinely ordained. At the apex of the social pyramid stood the Brahmins who monopolised the right to act as preists and for exclusive access to all higher religious and secular learning. At the base swarmed the mass of shudras, the untouchables. To them the caste system, sanctified by Hindu religion and enforced by coercive power, had assigned the duty of serving all other castes. They were constrained to follow, under threat of severe penalty, such low vocations as scavenging, tanning and the like. Infringement of caste rules was a crime not only against caste but also against religion.
The upper classes had such frivolous pastimes as kite-flying, bird-fights, obscene jatras, cheap theatre, base musical performances and so on. They had no interest in higher pursuits and could hardly read and write. The masses were all the more ignorant and superstitious. But they were honest, religious in the traditional sense and frugal in their way of life.
Six hundred years of Islamic authority over the Indo-Gangetic plain had left Hinduism in a state of depression. It was the religion of a subject race. It had no central direction, organisation and hardly any leadership. Religion, then, was marked with sacrificial rites and ostentation. The study of Vedas and Upnishads had become almost extinct. Irrational orthodoxy and ritualism prevailed. Even most of the Brahmins were practically illiterate. Some of them had studied Nyaysastra and Smriti, but few could explain Vedic prayers. Morality and religious norms had reached their lowest ebb. As B.N. Dutta writes, the term Hinduism "was used to denote a jumble of various Brahmanic rites of a later origin, Mahayanist ceremonies and beliefs, Buddhist tantric rites, Buddhist sahajyanist customs, totemistic notions of purity and taboo in matters of touch and smell, non-Aryan customs and ceremonies, beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery - all were known as Hinduism".
Islam, obviously, had failed to touch even a fringe of Hindu society, despite its weapon of proselytization. It is indicated by the continued belief in a number of gods, image worship, ritualism, dominance of hereditary preists, the extant cults, aversion to spiritual practices (yoga) as well as the common man's faith in witchcraft and tantric practices. Religion as a source of moral purity and spiritual force, as preached by the medieval saints, had long ceased to exercise any influence over a large section of the people before the dawn of Indian renaissance in the nineteenth century. To make things worse, callousness to human suffering arising out of blind adherence to old practices such as hook-swinging seemed to have been the ordr of the day. J.N. Sarkar observes : "Religion in the eighteenth century had become the handmaid of vice and folly.
The Muslims, shorn virtually of all power, steadily found themselves in a hopeless state of frustration and despondency.The early Muslims had maintained intimate contact with Islam in its original home and had purged themselves of almost all non-Islamic influences. But with the passage of time their beliefs and social customs underwent change and the pristine purity of Islam was diluted under the influence of Hinduism.Muslim leaders, therefore, wanted their community to shake off manners and customs which were alien to Islam.
The Sufi mystics attracted most of those who drifted away form the original Islam. However, even Sufism later degenerated into rank superstition and blind worship of Pirs at the instance of unscrupulous Muslim preists. Shah Waliullah, a revivalist of the eighteenth century, was deeply distressed by the decline of Indian Islam, which was slowly departing from some of its original practices and unconsciously adopting those of the Hindus. It was particularly so with new converts who retained not only their Hindu background but also continued to adhere to some of their beliefs and superstitions. A majority of Muslims feared the impact of Western influence and English education. They nourished irrational prejudices against new forces and denied themselves opportunities of material progress and intellectual enlightment.
Western influence on India began with the landing at Calicut in 1498 of Vasco da Gama. The Portuguese were followed by the British, the French, the Dutch and the Danes. All of them subjected the country to their respective influences. Gradually, the English acquired supremacy over the country. Thereafter, farsighted as they were, they devoted their energy to strengthening their foothold in India. They reformed the administration, improved communications, introduced an effective system of law and justice, and opened schools, colleges, universities, and offered the gifts of science and technology to India. Indians were dazzeled byWestern civilization. Their confidence in their own culture began to waver. A few were so enchanted that they adopted western ways and wished to rebuild the structure of Indian life on the foundations of an alien culture. Many Indians along with some Englishmen were convinced that English education would dispel India of socio-religious malpractices.
The english language enthusiasts were supported by Raja Rammohun Roy and his associates. Orthodox Indians pleaded for classical languages, but Macaulay ended the controversy by his broadside against this attitude. In 1835, the great object of the British Government was "the promotion of European litrature and science among the natives of India and that all funds appropriate for the purposes of education would best be employed on English education alone." In 1844, they decided "to give preference to those who had been educated in western science and English language for the public employement." English education under the new regime tended to turn out men who were Indians in blood and colour but English in taste and intellectual outlook.
In this strange academic milieu, young minds began to swallow queer cultural shibboleths such as that India had no culture worth the name, that her entire past was a foolish quest after false ideals, that if she really wanted to live and progress, She would have to remould herself thoroughly on the lathe of European civilization. Cosequently as R.C. Majumdar writes: "It was almost inevitablethat the first effect of free thinking on the immature minds of the young men who drank deep into English education would be more destructive than constructive in social and religious matters...... but the evils that followed were much exaggerated." The orthodox people, specially in Bengal, raised much hue and cry against English education and considered it a dangerous instrument to wreck the general framework of Hindu society.
An imitation of the West ensued in almost every walk of life. Many boys educated in the Hindu College, Calcutta and Elphinstone College, Bombay revolted against indigenous customs and deliberately adopted English dress, cutoms, mannerism and food, thus offending Hindu sentiments.Yet it cannot be denied that English education brought here western thought especially the French concept of the supremacy of reason over faith and of individual conscience over outside authority as well as new ideas of social justice and political rights. The static life governed for centuries by a fixed set of religious beliefs was replaced by a critical attitude towards religion and a spirit of inquiry which resulted in creativity and vitality in every sphere of Indian life. New ways of thinking and criticism, cultivation of science and scientific approach to problems, and transplantation of western political and socio-religious ideas were further strengthened with the contributions of Western thinkers such as Dante and Petrarch, Voltaire and Rousseau, Goethe and Schiller, Locke, Bentham and Hume, Shakespeare and Milton and many others.
The spiritof enquiry then not only applied to socio-religious institutions and beliefs but it also penetrated deep into literature, painting, sculpture and art.The creation of Hindu historiography and recovery of India's glorious past constitute the most spectacular as also the first fundamental contribution of European scholarship to India. Freedom of the press, emancipation of women, a forward-looking attitude, acceptance of change when change was inevitable, were the far-reaching contributions of western impact.
But nothing was more meaningful and significant than the wave of Christanity that tended to sweep away the very existence of religious beliefs and practices of the country. The impact of Christanity was, indeed, a mighty challenge to the conscience and spirit of Indian culture.
The history of Christanity in India has been traced to the arrival in the first century AD of the Syrian Christians on the Malabar coast who settled there as a peaceful community. But the first Christian missionaries were the Roman Catholics of Portugal and Spain who came during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and made Goa their headquarters. Fanatics as they were, they practised intolerance and persecution. English missionaries followed after Clive's success in Bengal. The official attitude of the East India company was that of non-interference with indigenous religion and society. But missionaries did receive help from the officers. In 1792 the first organised mission headed by William Carey was established in Calcutta; but it soon shifted to Serampore and did significant and commendable work Wellesley allowed all freedom to Serampore mission and appointed Carey as Professor of Oriental languages at the Fort William College. Missionaries poured into India and found a favourable atmosphere for their evangelistic work. The Christian scriptures were translated into almost all the regional languages of India, were widely distributed and network of missions had been established by the time of William Bentinck. They opened numerous schools for both boys and girls as well as boarding schools and orphanages. They even attempted medical work and did not neglect the lepers.
The main object of these missionaries was conversion, especially through their educational and medical institutions. They used no physical force, but adopted the most subtle weapons - propogandaand financial assistance. The increasing spread of the Gospel and criticism of Indian way of life sometimes provoked local opposition and often the zealots had to seek governmental protection. Offended as the Indians were, they came forward to meet the challenge thrown out by Christianity. Adorned with the light of rational thinking and the glamour of the spirit of inquiry, they turned towards their own glorious past and sought a definite reply to the Christian dogma. Farquhar overestimates the impact of Christanity on India when he holds that the seeds of the socio-religious movements of the nineteenth century were sown by Christian teachings and the Protestant missions' activities brought about an awakening in India. Infact education and not Christanity was a potent force to stimulate modern reform movements which made Indians cast off their conservatism and excrescenes inconsistent with the spirit of Hinduism.
A careful observer would not miss the fact that an inner urge and a call of conscience prompted these reform movements and led to enormous creativity in all walks of Indian life. The spiritual foundations of the Hindu society proved too strong for the hypnotic spell of foreign civilization. Soon, renascent India began to search and evolve the vital elements of its cultural existence leading to political independence. Renaissance in India was a remodelling of India's cultural modes under the impact of a new spirit which, though not opposed to the old, was descreet in its adherence to the past and was equally responsive to the new stimuli. It meant the reorientation of the old to suit the new. This reawakening of the spirit manifested itself in socio-religious reform movements of the nineteenth century.India welcomed, accepted and assimilated the ideas, principles and purposes from Europoe which were necessary for her transformation into a modern society; but "modern India continued to be essentially Indian, cirtain of her own individuality, drawing a spiritual inspiration and sustenance from her own past." K. M. Panikkar rightly remarks that what had happened in India was a revolution. But this revolution did not cut India off its moorings.
Born in a devout Brahman family in 1772 and brought up in a strictly religious atmosphere, Rammohun Roy rebelled against all the Brahmanical traditions and conservatism and came to be acknowledged as the herald of the age of reason in India. He wasa scholar of Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Bengali. He studied English language and literature which braoght home to him the whole range of western liberal thought. Later he learnt Hebrew, Greek and Latin in order to understand Christanity through the original texts. He developed a broad vision and adopted a critical attitude towards socio-religious and political problems.
He also studied the Upanishads and other religious scriptures. Though he was impressed with the moral precepts of Jesus and with the monotheistic principle of Islam, He remained a staunch Hindu who realised the necessity of re-interpreting Hinduism. Rejecting the narrow Christian claims, he accepted the wide humanism of European thought and its ethical approach to the problems of life. To liberate Indian society from the fetters of dogmatism, authoritarianism and medievalism he struck a balance between the best elements in indigenous and western cultures and founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828. The Samaj was not a Christian dilution of Hinduism but a synthesis of European enlightenment with the philosophy of Vedanta. It was indeed based on genuine Hindu traditions. Its outlook on life was neither Hindu nor Christian but European, drawing its inspiration from the European intellectual quest. Its social message of westernisation was meant to purge Hinduism of its vicious customs and superstitions, to raise the status of women, to bridge the yawning gulf between popular and higher Hinduism, to fight relentlessly against caste, social taboos, polygamy, idol-worship and other well-entrenched abuses. He took up cudgels against atheism as much as against Christianity, and thus enabled Hinduism to withstand the onslaught of Christian missionaries. According to R.C. Majumdar, "Brahmo Samaj effectively helped the progress of Hindu society by stemming the tide of conversions, by holding a living example of a society based on progressive and liberal views and supplying eminent persons who advanced novel liberal ideas in other spheres such as politics."
But to identify Raja Rammohun Roy exclusively with the Brahmo movement is to ignore his valuable contribution to national life. With Max Mueller, we may call him the "Father of comparative theology", but we must admit that his religion was wedded to the service of humanity. The Raja was a rationalist reformer who did pioneering work in the socio-religious sphere. He bequeathed a rich legacy of rationalistic spirit and freedom of individual conscience.
Rammohun's religion was simple and practical. He declared a universal faith and shifted the emphasis from metaphysics to utilitarian ethics. He preached a lofty monotheistic creed based on the central concept of the "formless" God; yet it was a theistic concept and the God of Rammohun was immanent in all things and the world was created, governed, preserved and destroyed by Him. The world was not illusory but real according to his theistic interpretations. He interpreted the soul and its nature on the rational grounds of social welfare rather than on any metaphysical grounds. Salvation, according to Rammohun, meant the attainment of happiness or knowledge of the Divine. But he held that idol worship and ritualism were quite unnecessary. The concrete form of worship of God, he believed, was service to man. Thus he championed a cause which could bring maximum happiness of the maximum number of people. His philosophy thus can be termed as religious utilitarianism emphasising social amelioration and a better and happier life. Religion was to him a media to reform society.
Rammohun Roy wanted to reconstruct Indian society. He deemed sati as atrocious murder. He quoted such law-givers as Yajnyavalkya and Manu and pleaded with the government to legally abolish this inhuman practice. He also awakened public conscience and strengthened the then government. He wrote and propogated against polygamy and caste system and thus prompted Indian society to march ahead on the path to social progress and change. He also pleaded for modern and secular education. In his famous letter to Lord Amherst in 1823, he expressed his keen desire for the introduction of English education and English language as the medium of education for higher studies. His political views were also rationalistic and he believed in the creed of liberalism and justice, freedom of thought, expression and press. Raja Rammohun Roy, as the harbinger of the new age, belongs to the lineage of great seers and reformers who delivered the message of the "Eternal Man". He embodied the new spirit of reason, instinct of free enquiry, thirst of scientific knowledge, human sympathy and ethical values along with a reverential but not uncritical regard for India's spiritual heritage.
The nineteenth century was a creative age of great potentialities. It produced an unusually large number of distinguished men in different parts of the globe. It was an era of new awakening in almost all walks of Indian life. Historians have generally associated this cultural awakening with the impact of the West. But a careful study shows that behind the overall consciousness and general stir to reform medievalism, there existed a deep rooted spiritual urge for higher values within the very soul of the country.
It cannot be denied that during the six hundred years of Islamic suppression, Hinduism as the religion of a vanquished people suffered significant setbacks. It was during British rule that Hinduism could stand on a plane of equality with Islam. With the state policy of non-interference in socio-religious matters, an air of freedom was experienced by religious leaders who proceded with confidence to deliver eternal message of love and to provide the suffering humanity with solace and relief. They awakened slumbering massesby their new spiritual message and inspired them to attain the highest truth through simple devotional path. Such leaders as Soami Shiv Dayal Singhji, Swami Dayanand Saraswati and Ramakrishna Paramhansa were far above any western influence in their thinking. Neither Christianity nor English education had moulded their thought and philosophy. They were indeed, spiritual light and sacred truth incarnate. Through their own intuitive realisation and inner revelation, they came forward to be the founders of such important movements as the Radhasoami faith, the Arya Samaj and the Ramakrishna Mission. Remote from the centres of modern civilization and immune to westernization, they appear before Indian society with their simple and illuminating exposition of the spiritual ideals. Like the sages and seers of the past, they took a very firm stand on the bedrock of "mystic realization" and "spake like one in authority". They demonstrated the efficacy of a practical method of attaining the ultimate reality and inaugurated an enthusiastic quest after the eternal and transcendent Truth. Indeed, there was an urge from within to identify one's ownself with the highest and the noblest of the Spirit, that heralded a spiritual renaissance in the country. The Radhasoami Faith, founded in 1861 was the first such movement. The Arya Samaj and the Ramakrishna Mission joined this unique phase of spiritual renaissance much later.
In an age of scepticism, the founders of the Radhasoami Satsang presented a bright and living faith to give spiritual solace to the thousands of men and women by a rational and practical approach to intellectual doubts and querries on religion and spreading the divine light of love and faith far and wide in an unprecedented manner.
For more details :
E-mail to : Rajiv L. Srivastav at rajiv_lochan@iname.com
