CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XI

'A SOLDIER OF LIGHT'¹

A STREAK OF the New Dawn gleamed on India's horizon when along with other things her sons started on their quest of the truth and greatness of their past, on which to rebuild the present for a greater future. Here also the start was given by Rammohun and continued by Devendranath, Rajnarayan and others with what results already stated. But this past in their case did not go farther than the immortal treasures of the Upanishads. Earlier, Devendranath had leanings towards the Veda as an infallible scripture, but later under the prevailing influence of Western rationalism he restricted himself only to those of its truths that conformed to reason. Happily this earlier unerring perception, missed later by Devendranath, was seized by a contemporary of his who by the light and strength of his truth-perception became one of the greatest leaders of the Indian renaissance, 'a unique renovator and new-creator'.

In order to assess the contribution of those movements which had more or less identical aims, and the life and work of their leaders, the present study had to go far ahead of its chronological sequence up to Tilak's passing in 1920 from where it has now to go back over nearly a century to an event of great importance—the birth of Swami Dayananda Saraswati whose work for modern India's resurgence has a distinction all its own and which must be studied not only for its singularity but also for its rapid growth into a powerful movement with a significant bearing on India's future. And it is for both these reasons that Dayananda requires a treatment as the last chapter of Part One (Study in Origins) so that his value and uniqueness may be the better understood and appreciated in the context of what has been already said about the other movements whose social, cultural and even religious ideals were about the same as Dayananda's but with this difference—and it was a fundamental one—that while his ideals were inspired by his studies of the Veda, the Brahmo Samaj leaders were moved mainly by the Western ideas of rationalism and progress that dominated the nineteenth-century India.

It is remarkable that though Dayananda had no contact with these ideas, he made it his life's mission to fight all sorts of untruth and unreason that were then sapping the national life and against which the Brahmo Samaj leaders carried on vigorous campaigns. This shows that the Western impact was not the only cause of the growth of rationalism in Indian mind

¹ Unless otherwise acknowledged, the quotations in this section are from Sri Aurobindo's Bankim- Tilak- Dayananda.

but that it was only one of the factors of the nineteenth century upsurge. It is also a notable phenomenon that Indians, however inherently intuitive, could develop a ratiocinative bias and with its help regulate their thoughts and actions as Dayananda so consummately did. But in giving an outer shape to his ideas he acted from an inner urge, from a higher than merely mental consciousness; yet in justification of his actions, he used the mind's way of reasoning. Dayananda had thus in him a rare combination of intuition and intellect, the former aiding the latter, and proving one of the most effective causes of his wonderful success as an upholder of the ancient ideal of the Vedic Dharma as the basis of a new life for his people.

The social, cultural, religious and educational movements that had begun in some form or other before Dayananda and were contemporaneous with his own could, scarcely be said to have originated from and grown on purely Indian lines; otherwise they should have invariably had a spiritual inspiration backed by an unshakable faith in the eternal truth of the Vedic lore. It was left to this heroic soul to rediscover the truth and try to found on it his country's life, every aspect of it, so that India might fulfil her national self in a new society, a new civilisation, live a larger life in the Spirit and fulfil as well her divine mission on earth. This was the great aim implicit in his endeavours, not always so objectively defined as those of the other movements which, because of their rationalistic basis, emphasised their specific aims and activities in much clearer terms and limited their scope within particular spheres, though their influence could be felt in others too. While for him the Vedic ideals were the highest ones to inculcate upon his people, he had one ideal in common with the other leaders of the renaissance and that was the recovery by India of her greatness as a free and progressive nation of the earth, as a spiritual light for mankind.

Who was this mighty soul ? What characterised his work and his personality ? Here are the words of Sri Aurobindo : 'Among the great company of remarkable figures that will appear to the eye of posterity at the head of the Indian Renascence, one stands out by himself with peculiar and solitary distinctness, one unique in his type as he is unique in his work. It is as if one were to walk for a long time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser altitude, but all with sweeping contours, green-clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold and striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in sheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its summit, a solitary pine jutting out into the blue, a great cascade of pure, vigorous and fertilising water gushing out from its strength as a very fountain of life and health to the valley. Such is the impression created on my mind by Dayananda.

It was Kathiawar that gave birth to this puissant renovator and new-creator. And something of the very soul and temperament of that peculiar land entered into his spirit, something of Girnar and the rocks and hills,

something of the voice and puissance of the sea that flings itse4f upon those coasts, something of that humanity which seems to be made of the virgin and unspoilt stuff of Nature, fair and robust in body, instinct with a fresh and primal vigour, crude but in a developed nature capable of becoming a great force of genial creation....

'As I regard the figure of this formidable artisan in God's workshop, images crowd on me which are all of battle and work and conquest and triumphant labour. Here, I say to myself, was a very soldier of Light, a warrior in God's world, a sculptor of men and institutions, a bold and rugged victor of the difficulties which matter presents to spirit. And the whole sums itself up to me in a powerful impression of spiritual practicality. The combination of these two words, usually so divorced from each other in our conceptions, seems to me the very definition of Dayananda.

'Even if we leave out of account the actual nature of the work he did, the mere fact that he did it in this spirit and to this effect would give him a unique place among our great founders. He brings back an old Aryan element into our national character. This element gives us the second of the differentiae I observe and it is the secret of the first.... Dayananda seized on all that entered into him, held it in himself, masterfully shaped it there into the form that he saw to be right and threw it out again into the forms that he saw to be right. That which strikes us in him as militant and aggressive, was a part of his strength of self-definition.

'He was not only plastic to the great hand of Nature, but asserted his own right and power to use Life and Nature as plastic material. We can imagine his soul crying still to us with our insufficient spring of manhood and action, "Be not content, O Indian, only to be infinitely and grow vaguely, but see what God intends thee to be, determine in the light of His inspiration to what thou shalt grow. Seeing, hew that out of thyself, hew that out of life. Be a thinker, but also a doer; be a soul, but also a man; be a servant of God, but be also a master of Nature !" And this was what he himself was; a man with God in his soul, vision in his eyes and power in his hands to hew out of life an image according to his vision. Hew is the right word. Granite himself, he smote out a shape of things with great blows as in granite.'

This was Dayananda in the eyes of the Master-Seer of the age. The birth of this one of the greatest makers of New India, in the westernmost region of the country has also a meaning for the work he came to do. While Tilak hailing from the southern part of Western India awakened the whole country to its need for freedom, Dayananda rose to reestablish the Aryan Ideal and make it the basis of national reconstruction. Fighting for this ideal, he furthered it with such uncompromising zeal that we can compare him only with the great Sankaracharya who hallowed the land a millennium ago. His victorious campaigns all over the country from western to eastern end were the beginning of an upheaval of great impor-

tance for the history of modem Indian renaissance. Like his life, his work also has yet to be properly appraised. The bare facts known about him do not certainly represent the whole truth of his life.

Dayananda was born in 1824 in a village in the Moroi State in Kathiawad. His father, an orthodox brahmana and a devout worshipper of Siva, gave Mulsankar—that was his family name—a good Sanskrit education which commenced when he was five. He was invested with the sacred thread in his eighth year from when, as was the custom, he began to perform the rites of brahmacarya which included the worship of the family deity Siva. When he was fourteen his father on a special evening of Siva worship took him to the temple of Siva when after a whole day's fast he was to keep a night-long vigil. He did that with the hope that he would thereby be able to see God Siva who was said to appear to his devotees on that evening. While others fell asleep, young Mulsankar kept awake to see the god, but alas! what did he see ? He saw a mouse running over the Siva-image and eating the food offered to the god. The Divine touches the soul in diverse ways. The event set the boy thinking. A doubt arose in him, and then a question whose answer none could give. 'How could this emblem of Siva in the temple be identical with Mahadeva, the Great God of the Scriptures ?' he asked his father. 'I feel it impossible to reconcile the idea of an omnipotent living God with this idol.'

In no time the doubt gave place to a quest. Mulsankar now heard the Call and he must go in search of Truth, 'the Great Solution'. Within a few years of this a sister of his died, and later, an uncle; and these bereavements proved to him 'the instability of life' and intensified his seeking. When he was twenty he felt that he must now satisfy the hunger of his soul. He asked his father to send him to Kashi (now Varanasi), the famous seat of spiritual culture. His mother stood in the way thinking that her son would never come back. His parents then made hurried preparations for their son's marriage which was to them the only way of diverting him from his otherworldly bent. But the son had already heard the Call and set his face against all the attractions of the world which were nothing to him. He resolved, to quote his own words, 'to place an eternal barrier between myself and marriage'. He therefore secretly left his father's house in quest of 'his soul's Homeland'. His father pursued him, caught him in a religious fair and brought him back. But one who hears the Call of God and is meant for a definite work for Him cannot be forced back into the ordinary life of a householder. So the same night at three o'clock when the Sepoy in charge of him was asleep, Mulsankar made good his escape and started on his itinerary in the course of which he came to the banks of the Narbada where he met learned sannyasins with whom he studied Vedanta philosophy. One of them, Swami Paramananda Saraswati of Sringeri Math of Sankaracharya in the South, initiated him into sannyasa (renunciation), delivered to him a daṇḍa (symbol of initiation)

and gave him the name Dayananda Saraswati, a name destined to endure in the history of modern India.

Dayananda was still on the move in quest of the Great Solution. Once when a rich chief of a monastery offered him his office, he spurned it, saying, T have renounced everything to have Knowledge....I belong to Truth and to nothing else'. For this he travelled and travelled on, undergoing all kinds of privations, strains and struggles of such life till in i860 he arrived at Mathura and met the famous blind Sannyasin teacher, Swami Virajananda, a heroic soul, a master of the treasures of Sanskrit literature, who had no equal or rival in that part of India in his time. He hated image-worship and the traditional system of teaching. Dayananda found in him his spiritual master from whom he imbibed his ideas and the best of the Sanskrit lore. Two years and a half after when the day of leave-taking came, the fee demanded by Virajananda was a solemn pledge on the part of his pupil to devote his life to the dissemination of truth and to restore the true teaching of the Vedas. His words were : 'The Vedas have long ceased to be taught in Bharatavarsha; go and teach them, teach the true sastras and dispel by their light the darkness which the false creeds have given birth to.'

This command of his guru opened before Dayananda the work his life was meant for and to which he referred later : 'To take up the task of a New Reformation is the mission of my life'. Dayananda now started on his campaign delivering to his people his message of the Aryan Ideal which evolved in him out of the teachings of his master and out of his own study and yogic contemplation of the Vedic lore, the central idea of which, he knew, was the worship of the One Supreme Being, and not the many gods of Puranic Hinduism which Dayananda denounced as non-Vedic. He visited the important cities of northern, central and western India—Agra, Gwalior, Jaipur, Kashi, Ajmer, Bombay, Poona, Calcutta, Patna, Jodhpur—where he addressed big gatherings and held discussions with learned scholars. Almost everywhere he won the day by his exceptional oratorical gift and determined will force that broke down all opposition, although the orthodoxy of the extreme school was not always ready to accept his views and often subjected him to cruel persecutions—the fate of all reformers and renovators. But the dignified calmness with which he bore these, not unoften, violent hostilities, was not only exemplary but worthy of one who knew the truth and was, therefore, sure of victory.

In Calcutta Dayananda met the well-known Brahmo Samaj leaders Maharshi Devendranath Tagore and Brahmananda Keshubchandra Sen who suggested that he address his public meetings in Hindi instead of in Sanskrit as he was wont to, if he wished to reach the masses. The suggestion was accepted by Dayananda, which meant a change of tremendous significance, because to it was largely due the wide popularity of his teachings. It is said that some of the Brahmo Samaj leaders tried to win

Dayananda's cooperation for their movement; but he could not give up his faith in the infallibility of the Vedas and the doctrine of transmigration of souls, the two cardinal principles which distinguish the Arya Samaj from the Brahmo Samaj.

On his way from Calcutta Dayananda visited several places in Bihar and the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) where at the request of an admirer he started writing his famous book Satyartha Prakas, 'The Light of Truth', with which began his serious writing work. Satyartha Prakas is an exposition of his beliefs giving clear and pointed directions to those who would follow them for their self-development. It also contains his views on the major religions of the world. What strikes the reader is Dayananda's rational approach to the various problems of life and to conventional religious ideas.

The most important event about this time was the foundation by him of the Arya Samaj in Bombay, in April, 1875, with its twenty eight principles which were revised into ten when the Samaj was reorganised in Lahore in 1877. The principles are : 1. God is the primary cause of all true knowledge and of everything known by its means : 2. God is All-truth, All-knowledge, All-beatitude, Incorporeal, Almighty, Just, Merciful, Unbegotten, Infinite, Unchangeable, without a beginning, Incomparable, the support and the Lord of All, All-pervading, Omniscient, Imperishable, Immortal, Exempt from fear, Eternal, Holy and the cause of the Universe. To Him alone worship is due : 3. The Vedas are the Books of true knowledge, and it is the paramount duty of every Arya to read or hear them read, to teach and read them to others : 4. An Arya should always be ready to accept truth and renounce untruth : 5. All actions must conform to virtue, i.e., should be performed after a thorough consideration of right and wrong : 6. The primary object of the Samaj is to benefit the whole world, viz., by improving the physical, spiritual, and social condition of mankind : 7. All ought to be treated with love, justice and with due regard to their merits : 8. Ignorance must be dispelled and knowledge diffused : 9. No one should be contented with his own good alone, but everyone should regard his or her prosperity as included in that of others : 10. In matters which affect the general social well-being of our race, no one should allow his or her individuality to interfere with the general good, but in strictly personal affairs, everyone may act with freedom.

An institution for the all-round well-being of man could not indeed have loftier and nobler aims. Except for their Vedic basis—and no basis could be sounder and stronger—these aims were more or less those of most of the progressive movements started by the Brahmo Samaj leaders.

Dayananda condemned the hereditary system of caste as a positive evil which, he felt, must be eradicated if the nation was to progress. The true basis of caste, he said, is worth and not birth. He declared the right of all to study the Vedas. 'The word of God is for all irrespective of

caste, creed or colour.' This was Dayananda's greatest service to the cause of religious and intellectual as well as social freedom in India.

The great reformer began now to establish Arya Samaj es and schools of Vedic studies at places he would visit. The one at Lahore was soon followed by others in important cities of the Panjab and the United Provinces where he met Col. Olcott and Madame Blavatsky, who together founded the Theosophical Society in New York, U.S.A., the same year as Dayananda founded the Arya Samaj in India. They made a public announcement that they had come to India accepting Dayananda as their guru and guide. Later, when they found that the objectives of the Theosophical Society and the Arya Samaj were fundamentally the same they along with the majority who controlled the Society in America, decided to change its name to 'Theosophical Society, branch of the Arya Samaj of Aryavarta'. They all accepted Swami Dayananda as their guide and guru and the formal head of the new organisation. Before long, Blavatsky found that Dayananda's exposition of the Vedic conception of God was not identical with the Theosophist conception; there were, besides, other differences on principles too. All these developed to such a degree that the new organisation no more functioned.

After having had 'splendid response' in most parts of northern India where a network of Arya Samajes had been set up by this time, Dayananda now turned his attention to Rajputana where the Maharana of Udaipur, a noble and high-minded Hindu chief, accepted Dayananda as his teacher and gave him substantial help in furtherance of his work. There were other nobles and chiefs of Rajputana from whom he received wholehearted support. His influence in that region widened and deepened and his work proved as great a success there as elsewhere. And it was here that he had to leave his body under tragic circumstances. While living as a guest of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, he took very strong exception to the Maharaja's living with a concubine who was a Muslim. It is said that she contrived to have a subtle poison mixed in his food which caused his death on 30 October 1883. Dayananda had known of it beforehand, and was, therefore, repeating the Gayatri. His last words were : 'What a fine turn, my Lord ! Thy will be done !' It was a Deepavali evening on which he left his body. And it was but proper that he should choose to do so when his country was celebrating the festival of Lights—a fitting symbol to keep burning the Light of which he was a God-appointed messenger.

Thus passed away one of the greatest sons of India to whom she owes much of her present greatness and much of that which would be hers in the future, and this not only because 'the blood of the martyr is the cement of the Church' but also because like all mighty creators he made possible more than what he actually did.

Col. Olcott said : 'All our differences had been burnt with the body.. ..

A master-spirit has passed away from India... . One of her noblest sons, a patriot in the true sense of the word.' 'Dayananda', said Romain Rolland, 'transfused into the languid body of India his own formidable energy, his certainty, his lion's blood. His words rang with heroic power. He was the most vigorous force of the immediate and the present action in India at the moment of the rebirth and reawakening of the national consciousness. He was one of the most ardent prophets of reconstruction and of national organisation... this thunderous champion of the Vedas.'

What is it in the Vedas that gave Dayananda the strength and inspiration to do his work for the uplift of India and the world ? Sri Aurobindo gives the answer : 'In Dayananda's life we see always the puissant jet of his spiritual practicality. A spontaneous power and decisiveness is stamped everywhere on his work. And to begin with, what a master-glance of practical intuition was this to go back trenchantly to the very root of Indian life and culture, to derive from the flower of its first birth the seed for a radical new birth ! And what an act of grandiose intellectual courage to lay hold upon this scripture defaced by ignorant comment and oblivion of its spirit, degraded by misunderstanding to the level of an ancient document of barbarism, and to perceive in it its real work as a scripture which conceals in itself the deep and energetic spirit of the forefathers who made this country and nation,—a scripture of divine knowledge, divine worship, divine action... .He seized just on the Veda as India's Rock of Ages and had the daring conception to build on what his penetrating glance perceived in it a whole education of youth, a whole manhood and a whole nationhood.

'There has always existed in India the double but incompatible tradition that the Veda is a book of ritual and mythology and that it is a book of divine knowledge. Western scholars extending Sayana's (fourteenth century) commentary on the former view class the Veda as a ritual liturgy to Nature-Gods. The genius of the race looking through the eyes of Dayananda pierced behind the error of many centuries and received again the intuition of a timeless revelation and a divine truth given to humanity....

'An interpretation of the Veda must stand or fall by its central conception of the Vedic religion and the amount of support given to it by the intrinsic evidence of the Veda itself. Here Dayananda's view is quite clear, its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One Deity under many names, names which are used and even designed to express His qualities and powers. This is not an arbitrary conception of Dayananda. It is the explicit statement of the Veda itself: 'One existent, sages speak of in many ways, as Indra, as Yama,as Matariswan, as Agni....' This fixes the whole character of the Veda in the sense Dayananda gave to it; the merely ritual, mythological, polytheistic interpretation of Sayana collapses, the merely meteorological and naturalistic interpretation col-

lapses. We have instead a real Scripture, one of the world's, sacred books and the divine word of a lofty and noble religion. „

'All the rest of Dayananda's theory arises logically out of this fundamental conception. If the names of the godheads express qualities of the one Godhead and it is these which the Rishis adored and towards which they directed their aspiration, then there must inevitably be in the Veda a large part of psychology of the Divine Nature, psychology of the relations of man with God and a constant indication of the law governing man's Godward conduct. Dayananda asserts the presence of such an ethical element, he finds in the Veda the law of life given by God to the human being. And if the Vedic godheads express the powers of a Supreme Deity who is Creator, Ruler and Father of the universe, then there must inevitably be in the Veda a large part of cosmology, the law of creation and of cosmos. Dayananda asserts the presence of such a cosmic element, he finds in the Veda the secrets of creation and law of Nature by which the Omniscient governs the world.... The Vedic godheads are constantly hymned as Masters of Wisdom, Power, Purity, purifiers, hea'ers of grief and evil, destroyers of sin and falsehood, warriors for the truth; constantly the Rishis pray to them for healing and purification, to be made seers of knowledge, possessors of the truth, to be upheld in the divine law, to be assisted and armed with strength, manhood and energy. Dayananda has brought this idea of the divine right and truth in the Veda.

In the matter of Vedic interpretation I am convinced that whatever may be the final complete interpretation, Dayananda will be honoured as the first discoverer of the right clues. Amidst the chaos and obscurity of old ignorance and age-long misunderstanding his was the eye of direct vision that pierced to the truth and fastened on that which was essential. He has found the keys of the doors that time has closed, and rent asunder the seals of the imprisoned fountains.'

It is therefore on the authority of the Master-Seer of the age who has himself seen and revealed to man 'the Vasts of the Infinite Celestial Light' symbolised in the Vedic hymns, that Dayananda stands in modern Indian history as a pioneer of Vedic Renaissance, 'a soldier of Light' who fought all his life to vindicate what he knew to be the true truth of his country's religion. He held that the religion of the Veda was the absolutely true religion and that it was for all mankind whose liberation from the evils it suffers from lies in its acceptance of the mystic doctrines of this oldest Scripture of the world. This is the Vedic Renaissance Dayananda envisaged not only for India but also for the whole world. Perhaps, because of his preoccupation with the problems of the immediate present he could not be so clear in his words about this 'immense future'. But what he did or rather wan ed to do did point to the glorious Tomorrow.

Dayananda strove to realise his vision by bringing about a radical reform in Hindu thought, Hindu religion and Hindu life. What he aimed at was

nothing short of a complete revolution in the mental and spiritual outlook of the Hindus. He knew that if the world was to be saved Hinduism must be saved. Therefore did he 'want the Hindu mind,' says Lajpat Rai, 'to turn from passiveness to activity; to exchange the standard of weakness for the standard of strength.... The Arya Samaj is thus one of the most potent nationalising forces.... It aims at the formation of a new national character on the fundamental basis of Vedic thought and Vedic life'— words that echo Sister Nivedita's : 'Hinduism must now be looked upon as the creator of Hindu character.... And character is spirituality.' To spread this new gospel, she continues, 'Hinduism has become aggressive. No other religion in the world is so capable of this dynamic transformation.... Our work is not now to protect ourselves but convert others.' One may hear in these words the ring of Vivekananda's voice. Anyway they sum up the bold stand of Dayananda.

Dayananda, observes Lajpat Rai, 'dreamed of a regenerated India, as spiritual, as wise, as noble, as learned, as chivalrous, and as great in every way as in its most glorious past, if not more so, and he wanted his countrymen to proceed to the realisation of that ideal, with confidence and fervour.' He was certainly interested in the political well-being of his people, though he did not make it the main plank of his public activity. Patriotism was rooted in his love for the Aryan ideal. He was a champion of democracy. He gave a democratic constitution to the Arya Samaj. He said that 'indigenous self-rule is by far the best and that people should always see that their country is administered not by a single individual but by Councils.' He was the first among modern Indians to declare that 'good government is no substitute for self-government'. He was of the opinion that the extreme and egoistic independence of the sovereign states was the cause of international conflicts. He was therefore for a unitary control of the whole earth, something like a World Federation. He was a pioneer in Swadeshi. He discovered the magnificent past of India and wanted to rebuild her present on its truth and greatness.

The life of this mighty warrior of God has yet to be studied in its deeper implication for the present and future of India and the world. The work he initiated in the outer world is not the proper index of the place his life occupies in the historic evolution of his country. It was no doubt a beginning, but a beginning that opened the door to limitless possibilities, because Dayananda had a vision of the Truth, the Truth that liberates the consciousness into its infinitude.

'Truth seems a simple thing and is yet most difficult. Truth was the master-word of the Vedic teaching, truth in the soul, truth in vision, truth in the intention, truth in the act. Practical truth, ārjava, an inner candour and a strong sincerity, clearness and open honour in the word and deed, was the temperament of the old Aryan morals. It is the secret of a pure unspoilt energy, the sign that a man has not travelled far from Nature. It

is the Bardexter of the son of Heaven, Divasputra. This was the stamp that Dayananda left behind him and it should be the mark and effigy of himself by which the parentage of his work can be recognised. May his spirit act in India pure, unspoilt, unmodified and help to give us back that of which our life stands especially in need, pure energy, high clearness, the penetrating eye, the masterful hand, the noble and dominant sincerity.'

How the Dayananda-force has acted in India can be seen in the work of men and institutions inspired by his life and teachings.

From its very beginning the Arya Samaj movement made its appeal to the people and proved a most progressive educational force and its activities were a powerful and effective factor in the expansion of the movement. Soon after Dayananda left his body his followers proposed to perpetuate his memory in a suitable manner. As Dayananda laid great stress on the need of proper education for young Indians, it was decided to establish an Anglo-Vedic College which would promote the study of Hindi literature, classical Sanskrit and the Vedas, English literature and sciences both theoretical and applied, and of such technical subjects as were consistent with the proper fulfilment of its objects. The start had already been made in the form of the Dayananda Anglo-Vedic High School, opened at Lahore in June 1886. In about ten years it grew into a college with degree and post-graduate classes. With this as the centre there were opened in various parts of the Panjab, and later, in other parts of northern India a large number of D.A.V. Colleges, primary, secondary and model schools and other technical and industrial institutions. Afterwards the movement took on a new feature by providing separate educational facilities for girls.

Almost from the beginning there was difference of opinion about the character and management of the D.A.V. College. The majority group wanted the College to impart modern education on modern lines; the minority, anti-modernist in its outlook, wished it to follow the ancient Indian ideal in education. A time came when the minority group found this difference too sharp to allow them to continue with the other group. They therefore separated in order to give form to their idea of education. The result was the Gurukula of Kangri near Hardwar, the most fascinating educational experiment in the whole world' as declared in 1913 by the famous British Professor Sydney Webb, who visited the institution, and who also said that the Arya Samaj 'may possibly prove to be the most important religious movement in the whole of India'.

It should be mentioned that the Gurukul did not reject English and Western culture which were given a secondary place in its primarily Sanskritic curriculum. A prominent part in its foundation was played by Munshi Ram, who in 1916 became a sannyasin under the name Swami Shraddhananda and gave his life for the cause so dear to him. Of the leaders of the majority group, mention may be made of Hans Raj who

dedicated his whole life first to the educational, and then to the missionary work of the Arya Samaj, and of Lajpat Rai whose work first for the Arya Samaj, and then for India's freedom must along with those mentioned before find a prominent place in the history of modern Indian renaissance.

The propagation of the Aryan ideal against the Western impact and the eradication of the evils undermining the society were among the most important missionary and social activities of the Arya Samaj, already initiated by its founder. Dayananda's emphasis on Vedic monotheism compelled Christian missionaries to change in their attitude towards Hindu religious ideals, whose 'sublime teachings' they began from now to admire pointing out their similarities with their own religion. In social reform, too, considerable spade work was done by the Arya Samaj.

The three principal aims of the Arya Samaj Suddhi movement were : first, to prevent conversion of Hindus to other religions; second, to reconvert those who had forsaken Hinduism; third, to convert members of other denominations. There is no doubt that the social and educational work of the Arya Samaj did prove an effective check on the conversion of young Hindus to other religions. A notable work of the Suddhi movement was the reconversion of about 2500 Hindus who had been forcibly converted to Islam by the Moplas of Malabar; another was the conversion of thousands of Malkane Rajputs through the untiring efforts of Hans Raj and Swami Shraddhananda. The latter's work enraged a section of the Muslims and a fanatic assassinated him.

The militant and aggressive manner in which the Suddhi movement of the Arya Samaj did its work might have about it a crudeness for which it is criticised; but the work had behind it the Master's vision—the vision of the universal religion of the Spirit envisaged in the Vedic vision of the Truth as the future religion of mankind which will prevail when the present imperfect world is transformed into a perfect, new world of Truth and Light, a glimpse of which vision gave Dayananda the strength to rise and conquer. This is the secret of the Dayananda-force that inspired and guided the activities of the Arya Samaj. Vivekananda meant this future world-religion when he prophesised that the time was coming for India to conquer by her thought the mind of the whole human race. This is the meaning of what his disciple, Sister Nivedita, called the aggressive power of Hindu religion whose Vedic basis inspired the efforts of Dayananda and whose Vedantic basis the efforts of Vivekananda. The latter once said : 'The aim of my whole life is to make Hinduism aggressive.'

The fact is that the future religion of mankind will be not a credal but a spiritual religion, and the central teaching of both the Veda and the Vedanta is spirituality of the highest kind, as revealed by Sri Aurobindo. The Aryan Ideal is thus a universal ideal, and conquer it must, not only

India but the whole world for their ultimate redemption. Kṛnvantu viśvam āryam, 'Aryanise the whole world'—was the solemn command of the Aryan fathers, ringing through the ages, meaning not anything racial or ethnic but the supreme culture of self-perfection to which every human being is entitled.

This inner truth of the Aryan Ideal is the secret source of strength and inspiration that have found their dynamic expression in the activities of the Arya Samaj. All honour to the Master who incarnated this strength and infused it into the movement which he inaugurated for the regeneration of India. Whatever might be its form in the future, it is the first movement of the national being towards the larger ideal visioned by the Vedic Seers—'a perfect and divine humanity on earth'.

Among the galaxy of the nineteenth-century luminaries in India's firmament shines Dayananda, a star apart, as one of the very few to have discovered the true line of their country's self-development and to have reaffirmed it to their people so that they might find back their self and be great again. That is why Dayananda insisted so much on the development of character and the will to greatness. And the growth of this will was fundamentally the same as the recovery by Indians of their national self aimed at by some of the Brahmo Samaj pioneers. And was it not the first stage in the growth of the will to freedom that Tilak and the Nationalists created in the mind and heart of India which brought her independence ? And did not all of them see the gleamings of the Dawn that was coming ? In fact the Dawn had been already there, as it must always be, before its gleamings were visible in the twilight. Swami Dayananda saw it and became its mighty herald.

As seen before, there has been from Vedic to modern times a continuous attempt to build a synthesis of life, mind and spirit. But this continuity suffered a set-back when from shocks of foreign aggressions the mind of the race slumped and the true spirit of India sank under the weight of soulless forms, rites, rituals and superstitions. But the evolutionary urge refuses to be baulked. Upon the deadened mind came the impact of Europe. The spurt of energy it produced swept off the deadweight upon the mind and released it into the freedom of reason. The first excesses —a natural reaction—of the new freedom were soon subdued by the superior values of Indian culture discovered by the play of intuition over reason. This intuition was no superimposition but an inherent element in the Indian mind. In the visions, thoughts and actions of the great figures from Rammohun downwards can be perceived subtle touches of intuition consciously or unconsciously tinging their reason. Dayananda's seizing upon the Veda as the lever of India's higher life, as the potent source of her self-recovery is a demonstrable proof of his intuition crowning his reason. Yet Dayananda, be it remembered, had no sort of Western education. The outstanding fact, however, of the emergence

of intuition,, illumining reason is an assurance of the renewal of India's endeavour towards synthesis and harmony, broken off for a time.

It has been more or less seen how the mind of India was coming to its own and thereby recovering its inherent faculty of intuition flashes of which not only heightened the value of, but sometimes inspired, its creations in the field of art and literature, religion and patriotism. Markedly manifest was the play of intuition on science. The great physicist Jagadishchandra Basu demonstrated to the world of science the Vedantic truth of the unity of life and the sensitivity of consciousness 'both in the living and the nonliving'. The delicate and sensitive instruments he used were also his own invention and construction, recognised as unique, and inspired by intuition—doubtless, one of those achievements of India's creative soul that presaged greater possibilities. The inspiration of their intuitive vision is discernible in the exquisite creations of the Bengal painters.

The progressive movements of the nineteenth century were thus unmistakable gleamings of the Dawn that was preparing to break upon India's consciousness. Of this Dawn Dayananda, 'a soldier of Light', was a high-priest. The Dawn began to widen when Bankim voiced it in his famous mantra, when Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda awakened to it their countrymen, when Rabindranath sang its glory, when Sri Aurobindo opened to man the Light of the 'Everlasting Day' and the Mother brought the heavenly Light down on earth. And these master-builders of New India, and of the New World appeared on earth and began their God-given work in the momentous nineteenth century; and their work continued to bear fruit in the even more momentous twentieth century when Dawn burst into its splendours through an upsurge of India's soul in her national life and culture, followed by a vaster flood of Light from heaven inundating the consciousness of the Master-Seer of the race when began the Day ushered in by Aditi, the Mother of the gods.