The forgotten Swami Dayanand

A pity that his agenda of social liberation doesn’t interest his followers
VALSON THAMPU
Indian Express, Monday, November 15, 2004

Maharshi Dayanand was a rare spiritual genius whose vision and mission represented an unprecedented stirring in the ocean of Indian spirituality. The Arya Samaj, in its authentic version, holds the potential to be an effective antidote to the spiritual decay that we see around us in the form of communalism, casteism and religious obscurantism. Sadly, the Arya Samaj, in the recent decades, seems to have compromised its mission. The cultural and intellectual vitality it awakened seems to have ebbed. It did yeoman service earlier by catalysing an intellectual and spiritual effervescence in the stagnant pool of religiosity. One wonders if it still does.

Maharshi Dayanand represented the resurgence of reason in religion. Those who see reason and faith as contraries know neither. Faith intuits and accesses truths that belong to the realm of revelation. But the harvest of revelation has to be articulated in the idiom of reason. What is not reasonable has no place in religion or it will regress quickly into blind faith and obscurantism. Dayanand is a role model for all those who take their religion seriously. Spirituality gives us courage, as it did Dayanand, to break out of the prison of blind faith and exercise the God given capacity for rational analysis — the secret of our inner freedom.

Second, every genuine spiritual leader in history has also been a religious reformer. There are two types of religious leaders: custodians of orthodoxy who perpetuate the status quo and those to whom religion is a call to know truth and honour God. This makes them concerned about the decay in the core of their religions. Dayanand was particularly appalled by the gulf between the Vaidic vision and popular Hinduism. So he raised the battle cry, “Back to the Vedas.” His greatest contribution was not that he reformed Hinduism. His was a clarion call to reform the idea of religion itself. Spirituality was an agenda of human liberation for him and that is why he found caste ridden Hinduism a spiritual anathema.

To him there was an innate connection between idol-worship and casteism. He realised that caste was the darkest blot on the Vaidic faith. The business of religion is to empower people to fulfill their arya (noble) destiny. It is a great pity that Dayanand’s followers have not remained faithful to his agenda of social liberation. Since Independence, evils like caste, communalism and women’s oppression have increased. Surprisingly, most Arya Samjis only stand by and watch this choreography of corruption. It makes one wonder if the Arya Samaj is now a movement or if it has become a monument.