Practical Vedanta and the state. - Must read article from The Pioneer.

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foundations?" These words of Swami Vivekanand ring in my ears, whenever I

reflect upon today's sorry state of governance - a state in which Members of

Parliament do not hesitate to accept bribes for tabling questions in the House

and chairpersons of constitutional authorities (like Public Service

Commissions) are arrested on charges of forgery, cheating, etc. Most of our

problems have sprung up from our inability to provide to our governance the

"heart and the soul". Soon after Independence, the top leadership should

have engaged itself with the problems emanating from the poverty of the soul of

India and the pollution that had seeped into it during the period of its decline

and degeneration. It should have realised that even the

goals of material advancement, which were being sought through scientific

knowledge, technical skill and economic planning, could not be attained without

simultaneously making an earnest attempt to free the 'soul' of the nation.

Besides, the leadership should have understood that the constitutional morality

was as much needed as the sound provisions of the Constitution; that the

architects and engineers of soul had to be engaged along with the architects

and engineers of modern institutions; and that new temples of 'economic

development' required, besides the skill and scientific technique, clean hands

and pure hearts. Unfortunately, no such realisation, in any meaningful way,

dawned upon the leadership of post-1947 India. Initially, pious declarations

were made, but they were not followed by any positive action. Worse, the little

candle ignited by the stalwarts of the

late 19th century and early 20th century reform movements was not used to search

the right path for the future. If the current trend and attitude persist,

India would, in the best of scenario, be nothing more than a Third World

country, living with an illusion of progress and agenda set by others, and, in

the worst, a nation constantly at war with itself and exposed to the risk of

disintegration. And a situation could arise when, to borrow the words of

Vivekanand, "spirituality will be extinct, all moral perfection will be

extinct, all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct, all ideality

will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as

the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force and

competition its ceremonies and the human soul its sacrifice". For the past

58 years, the national leadership has been superficial in its approach to

attain its declared constitutional objectives. It has not paused for a moment

to think whether it was possible to establish an honest administration without

an honest mind and a beautiful edifice without a beautiful instinct. Few

realise that Vivekanand was one of the principal architects to cut a new

cultural stream that watered the parched soil of India and produced a rich

harvest of men and women who brought its freedom. "Here is the same India whose

soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived. Here

first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a

supervising God, an immanent God in nature and in man... We are the children of

such a country," he declared.

These inspiring words created a wave of self-respect and self-confidence that

brought men of sterling eminence like Mahatma Gandhi and BG Tilak to the scene.

It is Vivekanand's practical Vedanta that has shown us the way out. The

cornerstone of the ideal is: "Jiva is Shiva", that is, if one serves the sick,

the poor or any other person in distress, one offers prayers to God in the

highest form. "May I be born again and again, and suffer thousand miseries, so

that I may worship the only God I know that exists, the only God I believe in,

the sum total of all souls, and, above all, my God the wicked, my God the

miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species," he added. Why

could the above views of Vivekanand not be accommodated in our Constitution in

the form of an ethical system and made one of the constitutional goals, for the

attainment of which the state, society and individual should specifically

strive. Practical Vedanta, if its propagation has a backing of the state,

would help in orienting the mind of the individual towards service, compassion,

non-acquisitiveness and realisation that he is a part of the Greater Self and he

should not do anything that has the effect of injuring a part of his own self.

It has been rightly observed: "If there is no purity, fairness and justice in

your heart, these qualities will not be in your home; and if they are not in

your home, they will not be in your society; and if they are not in your

society, they will not be in your state." All said and done, it is basically an

individual who constitutes the building block of a nation. Practical Vedanta

accords with the scientific spirit of our times. It promotes rationality,

generates self-confidence and frowns upon fatalism. It is not in any way

antithetical to the ideal of secularism as incorporated in the Constitution.

Though associated with a particular religion, practical Vedanta is nothing but

spiritual secularism as well as spiritual pluralism. In his speech delivered to

the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, Swami Vivekanand made it clear that

Vedantists consider all religions to be true. The adoption of practical

Vedanta as a state policy can provide solution to most of our problems relating

to governance. It would ensure that the people do not remain without

inspiration, mooring or moral compass. The current Indian state leaves the

people generally cold and the latter do not

feel any compunction of conscience in resorting to corruption and other

malpractices. (Today is the 143rd birth anniversary of Swami Vivekanand)

"Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of

life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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