His path as a reformer was not smooth. It
was blocked from many sides. The sentiments of the people whom he wanted to
reform were deeply rooted in the ancient past. They held
the belief that their ancestors were the wisest and the noblest of men, and the social
system which they had devised
was of the most ideal character. What appeared to Ranade to be the shames and wrongs of the Hindu society were to
them the most sacred injunctions of their religion. This was the
attitude of the common man. The intelligentsia. was divided
into two schools—-a school which was
orthodox in its belief but unpolitical in its outlook, and a school which was modem in its beliefs but primarily political in its aims and
objects. The former was led by Mr. Chiplunkar and the latter by Mr. Tilak. Both combined against Ranade and created as many difficulties for him as they could. They
not only did the greatest harm to the cause of social reform, but as experience shows they have done the greatest harm to the cause of political reform in India. The
unpolitical or the orthodox school
believed in the Hegelian view—-it
is a puzzle to me—namely
to realize the ideal and idealize the real. In this it. was egregiously wrong. The Hindu religious and social
system is such that you cannot go forward to give its ideal form a reality
because the ideal is bad;
nor can you attempt to elevate the real to the status of the ideal because the real. i.e., the existing state of affairs, is worse than
worse could be. This is no
exaggeration. Take the Hindu religious system or take the Hindu social system, and examine it from the point of social
utility and social justice. It is said that
religion is good when it is fresh from the mint.
But Hindu religion has been a bad coin to start
with. The Hindu ideal of society as prescribed by
Hindu religion has acted as a most demoralizing and
degrading influence on
Hindu society. It is Nietzschean in its form and essence. Long before Nietzsche was born Manu had
proclaimed the gospel which Nietzsche sought to preach. It is a religion which is not intended
to establish liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a gospel which proclaims the worship of the superman— the Brahamin by the rest of the Hindu society. It propounds that the superman
and his class alone are
born to live and to rule. Others are born to serve them, and to
nothing more. They have no life of their own to live,
and no right to develop their own personality. This has been
the gospel of the Hindu Religion. Hindu philosophy, whether it is Vedanta, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaishashika, has moved in its own circle without in anyway affecting the Hindu
religion It has never had the courage to challenge this gospel That Hindu philosophy that everything is Brahma remained only
a matter of intellect. It never became a social philosophy. The Hindu philosophers had. both their philosophy
and their Manu held
apart in two hands, the right not knowing what the left had. The Hindu is never troubled by
their inconsistency, As to their social system, can
things be worst ? The
Caste system is in itself a degenerate form of the Chaturvarnya
which is the ideal of the Hindu. How can anybody who is
not a congenital idiot accept Chaturvarnya as
the ideal form of society ?
Individually and socially it is a folly and a crime. One class and one class alone to
be entitled to education and learning! One class and one
class alone to be entitled to arms! One class and one class alone to trade! One
class and one class alone to serve! For the Individual the consequences are obvious. Where can you find a learned man who has no means of livelihood who will not degrade his education. ? Where can you find a
soldier with no education and culture who will use his arms to
conserve and not to destroy ? Where can you find a
merchant with nothing but the acquisitive instinct to follow who will not descend to the level of the brute ? Where can you find the servant who is not to acquire education, who is not to own arms and who is not to
possess other means of livelihood to be a man as
his maker intended him to be ? If baneful to the individual
it makes society vulnerable.
It is not enough for a social structure to be good
for a fair weather. It must be able to weather the storm. Can the Hindu
caste system stand the gale and the wind of
an aggression ? It is obvious that it cannot. Either for defence or for offence a
society must be able to mobilize its forces. With functions and duties exclusively distributed and immutably assigned, what way is there for mobilization ?
Ninety per cent of the Hindus— Brahmins, Vaishyas and Shudras—could
not bear arms under the Hindu social system. How can a country be defended if its army
cannot be increased in the hour of its peril. It
is not Buddha who; as is oflen alleged, weakened Hindu society by his gospel of non-violence.
It is the Brahmin theory of Chaturvarnya that ha.s been responsible not only for
the defeat but for the decay of Hindu society.
Some of you will take offence at what I have said
about the demoralizing effect of the Hindu socio-religious
ideal on Hindu society. But what is the truth. ? Can the
charge be denied ? Is
there any society in the world which has unapproachables,,
unshadowables and unseeables
? is there any
society which has got a population of Criminal Tribes ? Is there a society in which there exists today primitive people,
who live in jungles who do not know even to clothe themselves? How many do they count
in numbers ? Is it a matter of hundreds, is it a matter of thousands ? I wish they numbered a
paltry few. The tragedy is that they have to be counted in millions, millions
of Untouchables, millions of Criminal Tribes, millions of Primitive Tribes !!
One wonders whether the Hindu civilization, is civilization
or infamy? This is about the ideal. Turn now to the state of things as it
existed when Ranade came on the scene. It is
impossible to realize now the state of degradation they had reached when the
British came on the scene and with which the
reformers like Ranade were faced. Let me begin with the condition of the intellectual class. The rearing and guiding of a
civilization must depend upon its intellectual
class—upon the lead given by the Brahmins. Under the old Hindu Law the Brahmin
enjoyed the benefit of the clergy and not be hanged even if he was guilty of murder, and the East India Company allowed him the
privilege till 1817. That is no doubt because he was the salt of the Earth. Was there any salt left in him ? His profession had lost
all its nobility. He had become a pest. The Brahmin systematically preyed on
society and profiteered in religion. The Puranas
and Shastras which lie manufactured in tons are treasure trove of sharp practices which the Brahmins employed
to befool, beguile and swindle the common mass of poor, illiterate and
superstitious Hindus. It is impossible in this
address to give references to them. I can only refer to the coercive measures
which the Brahmins had sanctified as proper to be employed against the Hindus
to the encashment of their rights and privileges. Let those who want to know read
the preamble to Regulation XXI of 1795. According to it whenever a Brahmin
wanted to get anything which could not be willingly got from his victim, he
resorted to various coercive practices—lacerating his own body with knives and
razors or threatening to swallows some poison were the usual tricks he
practised to carry out his selfish purposes. There
were other ways employed by the Brahmin to coerce the Hindus which were as extraordinary as they were shameless. A common practice
was the erection in front of the house of his victim of the koorh—a circular enclosure in which a pile of
wood was placed— within the enclosure an old woman was placed ready to be burnt
in the koorh if his object was not granted. The second devise of such a
kind was the placing of his women and children in
the sight of his victim and threaten to behead them. The third was the Dhuma—starving on the doorstep of the victim. This is nothing. Brahmins had started making
claims for a right to deflower the women of non-Brahmins.
The practice prevailed in the family of the Zamorin
of Calicut and among the Vallabhachari
sect of Vaishnavas. What depths of degradation the
Brahmins had fallen to!If, as the Bible says, the
salt has lost its flavour wherewith shall it be
salted ? No wonder the Hindu Society had its moral
bonds loosened to a dangerous point. The East India Company had in 1819 to pass
a Regulation (VII of 1819) to put a stop to this moral degeneracy. The preamble
to the Regulation says that women were employed wholesale to entice and take
away the wives or female children for purposes of prostitution, and it was
common practice among husbands and fathers to
desert their families and children. Public conscience there was none, and in
the absence of conscience it was futile to expect
moral indignation against the social wrongs.
Indeed the Brahmins were engaged in defending
every wrong for the simple reason that they lived on them. They defended Untouchability which condemned millions to the lot of
the helot. They defended caste, they defended female child marriage and they
defended enforced widowhood—the two great props of the Caste system. They
defended the burning of widows, and they defended
the social system of graded inequality with its rule of hypergamy which led the
Rajputs to kill in their thousands the daughters that were born to them. What shames !
What wrongs! Can such a society show its face before civilized nations ? Can such a society hope to survive ? Such were the questions which Ranade asked. He concluded that on only one condition
it could be saved—namely, rigorous social reform.
RANADE, GANDHI AND JINNAH-VI
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