Was Ranade a
great man? He
was of coarse great in his person. Vast in physique -he
could have been called " Your Immense
"
as the Irish servant who could
not pronounce. Your Eminence used respectively to call Cardinal Wiseman-his master. He was a man
of sanguine temperament.
of genial disposition and
versatile in his capacity. He
had keenly which is the
sum of all moral qualities and his
sincerity was
of the
sort which
was prescribed by Carlyle.
It was not a conscious " 'braggart
sincerity
".
It was the natural sincerity a constitutional trait and
not an assumed air. He was rot only big
in his physique and in his sincerity. he
was also big in intellect. Nobody can
question that 'Ranade
had intellect of a
high calibre.
He was not
merely a
lawyer and a judge of the High Court, he was a first class economist, a first class historian a first class educationist and
a first class divine. He was
not a politician. Perhaps it
is good that he was not. For if he had been,
he might not
have been a great man.
As Abraham Lincoln said , "
Politicians are a set
of men who
have interests aside from the
interests of the people and
who to say the most of them are taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men." Ranade though
not a politician was a
profound student of politics. Indeed it would be
difficult to find in
the history of India
any man who could
come up to Ranade
in the width of his learning, the breadth of his wisdom and
the length of his vision. There was no subject which he did not touch and in which he did not acquire
profundity. His reading was on the scale of the colossal and every inch he was
a scholar. He was great not merely by the standard of his Time, but he was
great— measured by any standard. As I have said no claim for being a great man
can rest on the foundation of sincerity and intellect either singly or in
combination. Ranade
could not be called great if he had these two qualities and no more. His title
to being a great man must rest upon the social purposes he served and on the
way he served them. On that there can be no doubt. Ranade is known more as a
social reformer than as a historian, economist or educationist. His whole life
is nothing but a relentless campaign for social reform. It is on his role as a social reformer that this
title to being a great man rests. Ranade had both the vision and the courage
which the reformer needs, and in the circumstances in which he was: born his vision was no small a
virtue than his courage. That he developed a vision of the Prophet—1 am using
the word in the Jewish sense—cannot but be regarded as a matter of surprise if
the time in which he was born
is taken into account. Ranade was
born in 1842 some 24 years after the battle of Kirkee
which brought the Maratha
Empire to an end.
The downfall of the Maratha
Empire evoked different feelings among different people. There were men like Natu who
served as accessories before the fact. There were some who played the part of
accessories after the fact, inasmuch as they were happy that the cursed rule of
the Brahmin Peshwa
was brought to an end. But there
can be no doubt that a large majority of the people
of Maharashtra
were stunned by the event. When the whole of India was enveloped by the
advancing foreign horde and its people being subjugated piece by piece, here in this little corner of
Maharashtra lived
a sturdy race who knew what liberty was, who had fought for it inch by inch and
established it over miles and miles. By the British conquest they had lost what
was to them a most precious possession. One can quite imagine
how the best intellect of Maharashtra had its mind utterly confounded and its
horizon fully and completely darkened. What could be the natural reaction to so
great a catastrophe? Can it be other than resignation, defeatism and surrender
to the inevitable ?
How did Ranade react? Very differently. He held out the hope that the fallen
shall rise. Indeed he developed a new faith on which this hope was founded. Let
me quote his own words. He said :
"
I profess implicit faith in two articles of my creed. This country of ours is
the true land of promise. This race of ours is the chosen
race."
He did not rest quiet by merely
enunciating this new Mosaic Gospel of hope and confidence. He applied his mind
to the question of the realization
of this hope. The first requisite was of course a dispassionate analysis of the
causes of this downfall. Ranade realized that the downfall was due to certain
weaknesses in the Hindu social system and unless these weaknesses were removed the hope could not be
realized. The new gospel was therefore
followed by a call to duty. That duty was no other than the duty to reform
Hindu society. Social reform became therefore the one dominant purpose of his
life. He developed a passion for social reform and there was nothing he did not
do to promote it. His methods included meetings, missions, lectures, sermons, articles,
interviews, letters—all carried on with an unrelenting zeal. He established
many societies. He founded many journals. But he was not content
with this. He wanted something more permanent, something more systematic for
promoting the cause of social reform. So he founded the Social Conference, an
All-India Organization which ran as an adjunct to the Indian National Congress.
Year after year the Conference met to discuss the social ills and to find the
ways of remedying them, and year after year Ranade
attended its annual sessions as though it was a pilgrimage and fostered the
cause of social reform.
In fostering
the cause of social reform Ranade
showed great courage. Many people of this generation will perhaps laugh at such
a claim. Courting prison has become an act of martyrdom in India. It is
regarded both as a patriotic act and also as an act of courage. Most people who
would otherwise be beneath notice and in whose case it could rightly be said
that they were scoundrels who had taken to politics as their last refuge, have
by going to prison become martyrs and have acquired a name and fame which, to
say the least, is quite astounding. There would be some substance in this view, if prison life
involved the rigours to which men like Tilak
and those of his generation had been subjected. Prison life today has lost all
its terrors. It has become a mere matter of detention. Political prisoners are
no longer treated as criminals. They are placed in a separate class. There are
no hardships to suffer, there is no reputation to lose and there is no
privation to undergo. It calls for no courage. But even when prison life had,
as in the time of Mr. Tilak, its rigours the political prisoners could make no
claim to greater courage than a social reformer. Most people do not realize
that society can practise tyranny and oppression
against an individual in a far greater degree than a Government can. The means
and scope that are open to society for oppression are more extensive than those
that are open to Government, also they are far more effective. What punishment
in the penal code is
comparable in its magnitude and its severity to excommunication ? Who has greater courage—the social
reformer who challenges society and invites upon himself excommunication or the
political prisoner who challenges Government and incurs sentence of a few
months or a few years imprisonment ?
There is also another difference which is often lost sight of in estimating the
courage shown by the social reformer and the political patriot. When the social reformer challenges
society there is nobody to hail him a martyr. There is nobody even to befriend
him. He is loathed and shunned. But when the political
patriot
challenges Government
he has whole society to support him. He
is praised,
admired and elevated
as the saviour. Who shows more courage"-The social reformer
who fights alone
or the political patriot who fights
under the cover of vast mass of supporters? It would be
idle to deny that
Ranade
showed courage in taking up the cause of social reform.
Indeed he showed
a high degree of courage. For let is be remembered that he lived
in times when social and religious customs however gross and unmoral
were regarded
as sacrosanct and when any doubt questioning their divine and moral basis was
regarded not merely as heterodoxy but as
intolerable blasphemy and
sacrilege.
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