there was an attempt made to prove that the Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes. I should not be sorry if they had been all diowned there, theoiy and all. Some say now that they lived at the Noith Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for the truth of these iheones, there is not one word in our.sciiptuies, not one, to ptove that the Aiyan ever came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. 'Pheie it ends. And the theoiy that the Sudra caste were all non-Aiyans and they were a multitude, is equally illogical and equally iiiational. It could not have been possible in those days that a few Aryans settled and lived there with a bundled thousand slaves at their command. These slaves would have eaten them up, made ‘ chutney ’ of them in five minutes. The only cxiilana- lion is to be found in the IMahabharata, which says, that in the beginning of the Satya Vuga there was one caste, the Brdhmans, and then by difference of occupations they went on dividing themselves into diffeient castes, and that is the only true and rational explanation that has been given. And in the coming Satya Yuga all the olliei castes will have to go back to the same condition. The solution of the caste problem in India, thcicfoie, assumes this foim, not to degrade the higher castes, not to ciush out the Brahman.
The Biaiimanhood is the ideal of humanity in India, as wonderfully put forward by Sankaracharya at the beginning of his commentary on the Gita, wheie he speaks about the reason for Krishna’s coming as a preacher for the preservation of Biahman- hood, of Biahmanuess. That was the great end. This Brahman, the man of God, he who has known Brahman, die ideal man, the perfect man, must remain; he must not go. And with all the defects of the caste now, we know that we must all be ready to give to the Biahmans this credit, that from them have come more men with real Brahmanness in them than from all the other castes. That is true. 1 hat is the credit due to them from all the other castes. Wc must be bold enough, must be biavc enough to speak of their defects, but at the same lime we must give the credit that is due to them. Remember the old English proverb, ‘ Give every man his due.’ Therefore, my fiiends, it is no use fighting among the castes. What good will it do? It will divide us all the more, weaken us all the more, degrade us all the more. The days of exclusive privileges and exclusive claims are gone gone for ever fioni the soil of India, and it is one of the great blessings of the Biitish Rule of India. Even to the I^Iahommcdan Rule wc owe that great blessing, N LECTURES--FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA Jo<5 Jo<5 the destruction of exclusive privilege. That Rule was, after all, not all bad; nothing Is all bad, and nothing is all good. The Mahommedan conquest of India came as salvation to the down-trodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have become Mahommedans. It was not the sword that did it all. It would be the height of madness to think it was all the work of sword and fire. And one-fifth — onc-half— of your Madras people will become Christians if you do not take care, Wats there ever a sillier thing before in the world than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mahommedan name, it is all right. What inference would you draw except that these Malabaris are all lunatics, theii homes so many lunatic asylums, and that they are to be treated with derision by every race in India until they mend their manners and know better. Shame upon them that such wicked and diabolical customs are allowed; their own chddien arc allowed to die of starvation, but as soon as they lake up some other religion they are well fed. There ought to be no more fight between the castes.
The solution is not by bringing down the higher, but by raising the lower up to the level of the higher. And that is the line of work that is found in all our books, in spite of wliat you may hear from some people whose knowledge of their own scriptures and whose capacity to understand the mighty plans of the ancients are only zero. They do not understand, but those do that have brains, that have the intellect to grasp the whole scope of the work. They stand aside iind follow the wonderful procession of national life through the ages. They can tiace it step by step through all the books, ancient and modern. What is the plan? The ideal at one end is the Brahman and the ideal at the other end is the Chandirla, and the whole work is to raise the Chandala up to the Brahman. Slowly and slowly you find more and more privileges granted to them. There are books where you read such fierce words as these: “ If the Sudra hears the Vedas, fill his cars with molten lead, and if he remembers a line, cut his tongue out. If he says to the Brflhman, ‘ You Brihman,’ cut his tongue out.” This is diabolical old barbarism, no doubt, that goes without saying; but do not blame the law-givers, who simply record the customs of some section of the community. Such devils sometimes arose among the ancients. There have been devils everywhere more or less in all ages. Accordingly, you will find that later on, this tone is modified a little; as for instance — “ Do not distuib the Sudras but do not teach them higher things.” Then gradually we find in other Smritis, especially in those that have full power now, that if the Sudras imitate the manners and (,.:stoms of the Bifihmans they do well, they ought to be encouraged. Thus it is going on. I have no time to place before you all these workings, nor how they can be traced in detail; but coming to plain facts, we find that all the castes are to rise slowly and slowly; however, there arc thousands of castes and some are even getting admission into Brfihman- hood, foi what prevents any caste from declaring they are Brahmans? Thus caste, with all its rigour has been created in that manner. Let us suppose that there arc castes here with ten thousand people in each. If these put their heads together and say, wc will call ourselves Brahmans, nothing can stop them; I have seen it in my own life. Some castes become strong, and as soon as they all agree, who is to say nay? Because whatever it was, each caste was exclusive of the other. It did not meddle with others’ affairs; even the several divisions of one caste did not THE FUTURE OF INDIA toy meddle with the other divisions, and those powerful epoch-makers, Sankaracharya and others, were the great caste-makers. I cannot tell you all the wonderful things they fabricated, and some of you may resent what I have to say. But in my travels and experiences I have traced them out, and have arrived at most wonderful results. They would sometimes get hordes of Beluchccs and at once make them Kshatriyas, also get hold of hordes of fishermen and make them Bi'fihmans forthwith. They were all Rishis and sages and we have to bow down to their memory. So, be you all Rishis and sages; that is the secret. More or less we shall all be Rishis. What is meant by a Rishi?— the pure one. Be pure first, and you will have power. Simply saying “ I am a Rishi,” will not do, but when you are a Rishi you will find that others obey you instinctively. Something mysterious emanates from you, which makes them follow you, makes them hear you, makes them unconsciously, even against their will, carry out your plans. That is Rishihood.
Now, as to the details, they, of course, have to be worked out through generations. But this is merely a suggestion in order to show you that these quarrels should cease. Especially do I regret that in modern times there should he so much discus- sion between the castes. This must stop. It is useless on both sides, especially on the side of the higher caste, the Brahman, because, the day for these piivilcges and exclusive claims is gone. The duty of every aristocracy is to dig its owa "lavc, and the sooner it does so, the better. The more it delays, the more it will fester and the worse death it will die. It is the duty of the Brahman, therefore, to \vork for the salvation of the rest of mankind, in India. If he does that and so long as he docs that, he is a Buthman, but he is ho Br.^hman, when he goes about making money. You on the other hand should give help only to the rightful Brahman, who deserves it; that leads to heaven, but sometimes a gift to another person who docs not deserve it, leads to the other place, says our scripture. You must be on your guard about that. He only is the Brahman who has no secular employment. Secu- lai employment is not for the Brahman but for the other castes. To the BnlUmans I appeal, that they must work hard to raise the Indian people by teaching them what tlu'y know, by giving out the culture that they have accumulated for centuries. It is cleaily the duty of the Bic^hmans of India to remember what real Brahmanhood is. As Manu says, all these piivileges and honours are given to the Brahman because, “with him is the treasury of viitue.” He must open that treasuiy and distribute its valuables to the woild. It is true that he was the earliest preacher to the Indian races, he was the fust to renounce everything in order to attain to the higher realisation of life, before olheis could reach to the idea. It was not his fault that he marched ahead of the other castes. Why did not the other caster so undei stand and do as they did? Why did they sit down and be lazy, and let the Barhmans win the race? But it is one thing to gain an advantage, and another thing to preserve it for evil use. Whenever power is used for evil it becomes diabolical; it must be used for good only. So this accumulated culture of ages of which the Brahman has l>ccn the trustee, he must now give to the people at large, and it was because he did not give it to the people, that the Mahommedan invasion was possible. It was because he did not open this treasury to the people from the beginning, that for a thousand years we have been trodden under the heels of every one who chose to come to India; it was thiough that we have become degraded, and the first task must be to break open the cells that hide the wonderful treasures which our common ancestois accumulated; bring them out, and give them to everybody, and the Brdhman must be the first to do it.
LECTURES— FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA There is an old superstition in Bengal that if the cobra that bites, sucks out his own poison from the patient, the man must survive. Well then, the Brdhman must suck out his own poison. To the non-Brdhman castes-I say, wait, be not in a hurry. Do not seize every opportunity of fighting the Brdhman, because as I have shown, you aie suffering from your own fault. Who told you to neglect spirituality and Sanskrit learning.? What have you been doing all this lime? Why have you been in- different? Why do you now fret and fume because somebody else had more brains, more energy, more pluck and go, than you? Instead of wasting your energies in vain discussions and quarrels in the newspapers, instead of fighting and quarrelling in your own homes, — which is sinful, — use all your energies in acquiring the culture which the BrAhman has, and the thing is done. Why do you not become Sanskrit scholars? Why do you not spend millions to bring Sanskrit education to all the castes of India? That is the question. The moment you do these things, you are equal to the BrAhman. That is the secret of power in India.
Sanskrit and prestige go together in India. As soon as you have that, none dares say anything against you. That is the one secret; lake that up. The whole universe, to use the ancient Advaitist’s simile, is in a state of self-hypnotism. It is will that is the power. It is the man of strong will that throws, as it were, a halo round him and brings all other people to the same state of vibration as he has in his own mind. Such gigantic men do appear. And what is the idea? When a powerful individual appears, his personality infuses his thoughts into us, and many of us come to have the same thoughts and thus we become powerful. Why is it that organisations are so powerful? Do not say organisation is material. Why is it, to take a case in point, that forty millions of Englishmen rule three hundred millions of people here? What is the ps)chological explanation? The.se foity millions pul their wills together and that means infinite power, and you three hundred millions have a will each separate from the other. Therefore to make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organi- sation, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills. Already befoic my mind li.ses one of the marvellous verses of the Atharva Veda Samhita which says. “ Be thou all of one mind, be thou all of one thought, for in the days of yore, the gods being of one mind were enabled to receive oblations. That the gods can be worshipped by men is because they are of one mind.” Being of one mind is the secret of society. And the more you go on fighting and quairelling about all tiivialilies such as “Dravidian” and “Aryan,” and the question of BrAhmans and non-Brdhmans and all that, the further you are off from that accumulation of energy and power which is going to make the future India. For mark you, the future India depends entirely upon that. This is the secret, accumulation of will-power, co-ordina- tion, biinging them all, as it were, into one focus. Each Chinaman thinks in his own way, and a handful of Japane.se all think in the same way. and you know the result. That is how it goes throughout the history of the world. You find in every case, compact little nations always governing and ruling huge unwieldy nations, and this is natural, because it is easier for the little compact nations to bring their ideas into the same focus, and thus they become developed. And the bigger the nation, the more unwieldy it is. Born, as it were, a disorganised mob, they cannot combine. All these dissensions must stop.
There is yet another defect in us. Ladies, excuse me, but through centuries of slavery, w'c have become like a nation of women. You scaicely can gel three women together for five minutes in this country, or any other country but they THE FUTURE OF INDIA,09 quarrel. Women make big societies in European countries, and make tremendous declarations of women s power and so on; then they quaiiel, and some man comes and rules them all. All over the woild they still lequirc some man to rule them. We are like them. Women we are. If a woman comes to lead women they all begin immediately to ciilicise her, tear her to pieces, and make her sit down. If a man comes and gives them a little harsh treatment, scolds them now and then, It is all light, they have been used to that sort of mesmerism. The whole world is full of such mesmerists and hypnotists. In the same way, if one of our coimti>men stands up and tiies to become great, we all try to hold him down, hut if a foieigner comes and tries to kick us, it is all light. Wc have been used to it, have we not? And slaves must become great masters! So give up being a slave. For the next fitty years this alone shall be our keynote,— this, our great Mother India. Let all other vain Gods disappear for that time from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, eveiywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His eais, He coveis everything. All other Gods are sleeping What vain Gods shall w'e go after and yet cannot w'oiship the God that wc sec all round us, the Vird/, When we have worshipped this, we shall be able to worship all other Gods. Before we can crawl half a mile, wc want to cross the ocean, like Hanumdn ' It cannot be. * Everyone going to he a Yogi, cveiyonc going to meditate! It cannot be. I'he whole day mixing with the world, with Kaima-kaiula, and in the evening sitting down and blowing through your nose' Is it so easy? Should Rishis come lljing ihioiigli the air, because you have blown three times through the nose? Is it a joke? It is "all nonsense. What is needed is ChUtiuhnddbi, purification of the heart. And how does that come? The fust of all woiship, is the w-orship of the Virdt,—oi those all around us. Worship It. Woiship is the exact equivalent of the Sanskiit wwd, and no other English word will do. 'I'hesc are all our Gods,— men and animals, and the first Gods we have to worship are our own countrymen. That is what wc have to woiship, instead of being jealous of each other and fighting each other. It is the most tciiible Karma foi which we are siiffeiing, and yet it does not open our eyes!
Well, the subject is so great that I do not know where to stop, and I must bring my lecture to a close by jdacing before you in a few words the plans I w.ant to cairy out m Madras. Wc must have a hold on the spiiitual and secular education of the nation. Do you understand that? You must dream it, you must talk it, you must think it, and you must work it out. Till then there is no salvation for the race. The education that you are getting now has some good points, but it has a tremendous dis.advantage which is.so great that the good things aie all weighed down. In the first pl.^ce it is not a man-making education, it is merely and entirely a neg.ative education. A negative education or any training that is given to negation, is worse than death. The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a fool, the second thing, that his grandfather is a lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are hypociites, the fourth, th.at all the s.acred books are lies 1 By the time he is sixteen he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result is, that fifty years of such education has not produced one original man in the three Presidencies. Every man of oiiginality that has been produced has been educated elsewhere, and not in this country, or they have gone to the old universities once more to cleanse themselves of.supcistitions. Education is not the amount of mfoimation that is put into your biain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-budding, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas.
LECTURES— FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have moie education than any man who has got by heart a whole library, anrr %TTr ^ l “ The ass cariying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of the sandalwood.” If education is identi- cal with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and en- cyclopaidias are the Rishis. The ideal therefore is, that we must have the whole education of our country, spiiilual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on national lines, thiough national methods, as far as practicable. Of course this is a very big scheme, a veiy big plan. I do not know whether it will ever work out. Rut we must begin the work. But how? Take Madras, for instance. We must have a temple, for with Hindus, religion must come first. Then, you may say, all sects will quairel about it. But we will make it a non-sectarian temple, having only “ Om,” as the symbol, the greatest symbol of any sect. If there is any sect hcie, which believes that “ Om” ought not to be the symbol, it has no light to call itself Hindu. All will have the light to interpret Hinduism, each one according to his own sect ideas, but we must have a common temple. You ^ can have your own images and symbols in other places, but do not quarrel here with those who differ from you. lleie should be taught the common grounds of our different sects, and at the same lime the diffeient sects should have perfect liberty to come and teach their doctrines, with only one lestiiction, that is, not to quairel with other sects. Say what you have to say, the world wants it, but the world has no time to hear what you think about other people; you can keep that to youi.selves. Secondly, in connection with this temple there should be an institution to tram teachers who must go about preaching religion and giving secular education to our people; they must cairy both. As we have been already carrying religion from door to dooi, let us along with it carry secular education also. That can be easily done. Then the work will extend through these bands of teachers and preachers, and gradually we shall have similar temples in other centres, until we have covered the whole of India. That is my plan. It may appear gigantic, but it is much needed. You may ask, where is the money. Money is not needed. Money is nothing. For the last twelve years of my life, I did not know where the next meal would come-fiom; but money and everything else I want must come, because they are my slaves, and not I theirs; money and everything else must come. Must, — that is the word. Whcie aic the men? That is the question. Young men of IMadias, my hope is in you. Will you respond to the call of your nation? Each one of you has a gloiious futuie if you dare believe me. Have a tremendous faith in your- selves, like the faith I had when I was a child, and which I am working out now. Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself, that eternal power is lodged in every soul, and you will revive the whole of India. Aye, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas will before long be a component of the many forces that are woiking to make up every nation in the world. We must enter into the life of every race in India and abroad; we shall have to work to bring this about. Now for that, I w'ant young men. “ It is the young, the stiong, and healthy, of sharp intellect, that will reach the Loid,” say the Vedas. This is the time to decide your future — ■ while you possess the energy of youth, not when you aie worn out and jaded, but in the fieshness and vigoiu of youth. Work; this is the time, for the freshest, the untouched and imsmellcd flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and such He receives. Rouse yourselves, therefore, for life is shoit. There are greater THE FUTURE OF INDIA 1 1 x works to be clone than aspiring to become lawyers, and picking quarrels, and such things. A far greater work is this sacrifice of yourselves for the benefit of your race, for the welfare of humanity. What is in this life? You are Hindus, and there is the instinctive belief in you that life is eternal. Sometimes I have young men come and talk to me about Atheism; I do not believe a Hindu can become an atheist. He m^y reatrEuropcau books, and persuade himself he is a maleiialist, but it is only for a time. It is not in your blood. You cannot believe what is not in your constitution; it would be a hopeless task for you. Do not attempt that sort of thing. I once attempted it when I was a boy; but it could not be. Life is shoil, but the Soul is immortal and eternal, and one thing being certain, death, jet us thciefore take up a great ideal, and give up our whole life to it. T.ei this be our determination, and may He, the Lord, who “ comes again and again for the salvation of Ills own people,” to quote fiom our sciiptures,— may the gieat Kiishna bless us, and lead U3 all tQ the fulfilment of our aims 1 ON CHARITY.
During his stay in Madras the ^wami presided at the annual meeting of the Chennapun Annaclana.Samajam, an institution of a chaiilable nature, and in the course of a brief address leferred to a icmark by a piovious spicakcr deprecating special alms-giving to the Biahman over and above the other castes. Swainiji pointed out, that this had its good as well as its bad side. All the cultmc practically, which the nation possessed was among the Bifihmans, and they also had been the thinkers of the nation. Take away the means of living which enabled them to be thinkers, and the nation as a whole would sulTer. Speaking of the indiscriminate charily of India as compared with the legal charily of other nations, he said, the outcome of Iheii system of relief was, that the vagabond in India was contented to icccive icadily what he was given readily, and lived a peaceful and contented life: while the vagabond in the West, unwilling to go to the poor-house, — for man loved lilieily more than food — turned a robber, the enemy of society, and nccessiUled the oiganisalion of a system of magistracy, police, jails, and other establishments. Poverty there must be, so long as the disease known as civilisation existed: and hence the need for relief. So that they had to choose between the indiscriminate charity of India, which, in the case of Sannyasins at any rate, even if they were not sincere men, at least forced them to learn some little of their scriptures before they were able to obtain food; and the discriminate charity of Western nations which necessitated a costly S)stcm of poor-law relief, and in the end succeeded only in changing mendicants into criminals.