Let me share with you my response to the same question asked yesterday.
It (the recent shooting of tourists by Islamist terrorists) is a wake up or rather a shake up call for the Hindus as well as for the world that is hobnobbing with conscious evil thriving in the name of certain religions and ideologies. Sri Aurobindo cautioned us long back.
‘No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the Powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet.’ ‘The highest way appointed for him is to carry out the will B.G.11.33 of God without egoism, as the human occasion and instrument of that which he sees to be decreed, with the constant supporting B.G.8.7 memory of the Godhead in himself and man, mām anusmaran, and in whatever ways are appointed for him by the Lord of his B.G.11.33 Nature. Nimittamātraṁ bhava savyasācin. He will not cherish personal enmity, anger, hatred, egoistic desire and passion, will not hasten towards strife or lust after violence and destruction B.G.3.20 like the fierce Asura, but he will do his work, lokasaṅgrahāya. Beyond the action he will look towards that to which it leads, that for which he is warring. For God the Time-Spirit does not destroy for the sake of destruction, but to make the ways clear in the cyclic process for a greater rule and a progressing manifestation, B.G.11.33 rājyaṁ samṛddham. He will accept in its deeper sense, which the superficial mind does not see, the greatness of the struggle, the glory of the victory,—if need be, the glory of the victory which comes masked as defeat,—and lead man too in the enjoyment of his opulent kingdom. Not appalled by the face of the Destroyer, he will see within it the eternal Spirit imperishable in all these perishing bodies and behind it the face of the Charioteer, the Leader of man, the Friend of all creatures, suhṛdaṁ sarvabhūtānām. This formidable World-Form once seen B.G.5.29 and acknowledged, it is to that reassuring truth that the rest of the chapter is directed; it discloses in the end a more intimate face and body of the Eternal.’
He shows us the way but are we listening? The average Hindu is still too busy with his selfish life, amassing wealth for posterity, a seeker after comforts and pleasures rather than dreamers and realisers of the very highest truths. True we pay lip service to the great scriptures and revel in the glory of the past but our life is full of small, ignoble things. We have preached enough of the different schools of philosophy. It is now time to practise them and fulfil the Aryan ideal, to become the hero-warriors who fear nothing rather than the comfort seeking Bourgeoisie. Sri Aurobindo gave a clarion call more than a hundred years back but barring a few here and there, we are still stuck with Mayavada and individual Moksha as the last word in spiritual thought. We erect temples to Rama and Krishna but we do not try to emulate even a fraction of what they stood for, lived for and sacrificed their life for. In the name of Rama we have some loud cries and emotional gesticulations. In the name of Krishna we have some emotional fervour with dancing and singing. We did not listen to them. Let us hope we listen to Sri Aurobindo, even a few would be enough.
‘Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity—this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, “The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India is essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity, not excluding England, that she should wholly establish her claim.” We say to the nation, “It is God’s will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India’s eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, ‘This is our dharma.’ We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours.” We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India’s work, the world’s work, God’s work, “You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your fore-fathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual pre-eminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.”
This is not to exonerate the government of the day and the poor security planning necessary in such places. Vigilance is the price for freedom applies to both inner and outer life. But then governments in democracy, especially parliamentary democracy become puppets of their ambition and vote bank considerations. Let us hope that here too, there are hearts that are listening. In 1947, in 1962, in 1971, they did not heed the words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Let us hope it won’t be so this time. But meanwhile each of us has our little responsibility. Instead of reacting like weak emotional children or rash adolescents who revolt and blame the world, let us grow calm and fearless and strong, full of courage and wisdom, full of love and strength so that it has a cascading effect. Let us build ourselves first going beyond the first moulds of our forefathers and rebuild our life around the higher ideals. And it will be so. The Hindu (in the truest sense) cannot die, the Sanatan Dharma is too strong and deep to be even scratched by a bunch of cowardly gunmen. Perhaps it is also high time that some kind of training in Martial Arts is given to all children in the School and the Gita taught as a national scripture. What we need is to inscribe these words in our very heart and soul that……
.’the foundations of Hinduism are truth and manhood, esha dharmah sanatanah. Hinduism is no sect or dogmatic creed, no bundle of formulas, no set of social rules, but a mighty, eternal and universal truth. It has learned the secret of preparing man’s soul for the divine consummation of identity with the infinite existence of God; rules of life and formulas of belief are only sacred and useful when they help that great preparation. And the first rule of life is that man must live the highest life of which he is capable, overcoming selfishness, overcoming fear, overcoming the temptation to palter with truth in order to earn earthly favours. The first formula of belief is satyannasti paro dharmah, there is no higher law of conduct than truth.’]
Affectionately,
Alok Da
