Book on Spiritual Nationalism

1. BOOK DISCUSSION
ON
‘THE SOUL OF INDIA’
BY BIPIN CHANDRA PAL
(Contextualizing to Present Times)
Mrinal Rai
University of Delhi
Presentation at
Centre for Study of Democracy & Culture (CSDC), New Delhi

2. INTERPRETING BHARAT
• Three class of English works on Bharat –
1. European Orientalists – pessimistic view
2. European Christian Missionaries – pure religious propaganda
3. Anglo-Indian Officials – applied generalisations of European history and culture.
• Misleading not Dishonest - explained through the story mentioned in Naradiya Upakhyan of
Mahabharata: “eating the God they worshipped.” It drives home the lesson that we need to hold
the right key to the interpretation of the outer acts.
• As the ‘Blind’ saw the Elephant – the story reflects that what the European writers on Bharat
record is in a sense true, so far as their own particular sense impressions go. Yet, it may be, all the
same, monstrously false, as a picture of real Bharat.
• As the Fishes knew the Sea – a Chinese story, that drives home the lesson that mere physical
contact with a thing does not necessarily lead to a full and correct knowledge of it.
• “Alas! The night is gone” – we always put our own meaning, in the light of our special
temperament or experience, upon men and things.

3. WHY CAN’T THE EUROPEANS TRULY UNDERSTAND BHARAT ?
• Europeans have had mere sense-contact with our life and habits.
• There exists a fundamental difference, both of mental temperament and spiritual character
between the Hindus and the Greeks.
• Two ways of viewing theWhole –
1) as a Concrete Reality – whole through its parts – arrive at Concrete Universal or Apara or Saguna
Brahman; emphasis on Form or Definition.
2) as an Absolute Idea or Principle – whole in the parts – arrive at Abstract Universal or Para or Nirguna
Brahman.
• In the pursuit of the whole through the parts, the Greek mind has become pre-eminently definitive,
analytical, objective and realistic. It is more prone to define and differentiate than to combine and
integrate, more able to analyse than to synthesize, more scientific than metaphysical, more objective than
subjective and more realistic than idealistic.
• The way of Hindus has been of metaphysics. We have trained the mind to constantly transcend every
form of definition and relativity, to reach and realise the Undefinable and the Absolute.

4. • The standard of values for a Hindu is internal not external, intellectual not physical, emotional and
not rational in the usual narrow sense of the terms. Thus - “By heredity and training he knows only how
to seize the universal to the apparent neglect of isolated particulars.”
• These two fundamentally different types of mental temperaments have created two quite different
standards of intellectual and moral values among the Hindus and the Greeks.
• “The European is the spoilt child of modern humanity.” – consumed by superiority complex
that incapacitates its ability to correctly understand other world cultures.
• It is on the account of these serious intellectual and moral disabilities that the Europeans have failed
to truly understand Bharat.

5. THE SUPER-MEN OF BHARAT 1/2
• “To correctly present India, one must therefore first be himself an Indian, not merely by birth
but in heart and spirit.”
• It is the holy men of Bharat, who have, from generation to generation, maintained the essential
continuity of our culture while progressively adjusting our socio-religious life and institutions to the
changing conditions, both physical and social, of their people.
• The illumined and absolutely selfless minds of our country, by identifying themselves with the universal,
have been able to harmonise order with progress and prevent the growth of the spirit of revolution and
anarchy in our community.
• One who has seen the Supreme, has had “all the knots of his heart cut through (i.e., all his self-
regarding desires absolutely killed), all his spiritual doubts completely dispelled, and all his
karma (i.e., the seeds of all possible self-regarding activities in the future, whether here or
hereafter) absolutely worn out.” – Upanishads.

6. THE SUPER-MEN OF BHARAT 2/2
• “A tree must not only be judged by its fruit but should also be interpreted by it.”
• If one really desires to correctly understand and truly appreciate the life and culture of Bharat, one
must try, first and foremost, to study, to love and thus to understand the holy men of Bharat.
• Characteristics of the holy men – Absolute self-detachment and unique idealism
• “It is on account of this detachment and idealism that a community controlled by a most rigid system of castes
rarely suffered from class-war or developed any violent spirit of mutual jealousy or recrimination among its
members until we commenced very recently to improve and reform it by the individualistic, capitalistic and
competitive class-distinctions of the imported socio-political ideals of modern European civilisation.”
• “….our idealism always helped us to transcend all forms of social inequalities, due to
convention or culture, and realise the Divine as much in the Brahmin as in the Pariah.”

7. The case of Europe
• Faithful discharge of the obligations imposed upon
the individual
• A revolt for the rights
• Rebels and reformers have shaped the society
The case of Bharat
• Society based on duty
• Social evolution by spirit-illumined saints and sages
A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF SOCIO-ETHICAL EVOLUTION
IN EUROPE AND BHARAT
Evolution of Religion –
Ethnic stage > Credal stage > True Universalism
In this context, both Christianity and Islam has passed through these two stages to reach true universalism.
Whereas, Hinduism has never been a credal religion and has been successful in directly realising the true universalism. Thanks to
the successive generations of our holy men who have exercised great influence over our socio-religious evolution.
“The word of Indian Evolution is Dharma; the word of European Evolution is Right.”

8. DHARMA – THE BASIS OF OUR CIVILISATION 1/2
• Dharma is not Religion.
- Dharma: is that which holds together the different elements of a thing and thus combines them into one
organic whole.
- It is cosmic and universal; and therefore essentially specific and personal
- Religion: is that which binds men together.
- It is exclusively human and social.
• Reflections of Libertarian thought in the idea of Dharma –
- The closest translation of Dharma in English can be ‘Law of Being’.
- This law of being is not imposed upon the objects but it grows from within through the general course of their
history and evolution.This is called the Regulative Idea of Evolution.
- Dharma therefore, organises and expresses itself differently in different objects.
- Dharma of one man cannot truly be the Dharma of another due to constitutional differences between one
individual and another.
- “The freedom and integrity of the parts inside the unity of the whole, is the very soul and essence of the federal
idea.”

9. DHARMA – THE BASIS OF OUR CIVILISATION 2/2
“The word of Indian Evolution
is Dharma; the word of
European Evolution is Right.”
Dharma is the law of
renunciation, Right is the law
of resistance.
Dharma develops collectivism,
Right develops individualism.
Dharma works for synthesis,
Right lives and grows in
antithesis.
Dharma is the soul of order,
Right the parent of revolution.
Therefore, the generalisations
of European experience,
gathered under the Law of
Right cannot help one to
interpret the character and
culture of India, trained in the
ideal of Dharma.
Due to the prevalence of the idea of Dharma, great diversities of both faiths and cultures have flourished
in Hinduism. Hindu society is not a homogenous unit but a highly developed organic whole which
accepts and harmonises the endless diversities of its component organisms.

10. The present generation in Bharat cannot truly interpret Bharat because :
- The hybrid/modern education has produced a kind of intellectual and spiritual atavism in us.
- It has divorced our mind and spirit from the deeper realities of the life and thought of our own country.
- Divided us into two opposite camps – reformers and reactionaries.
- Both have imbibed the European temperament and are emphatically objective and materialistic.
- The reformer by applying the untested canons of imported European enlightenment to the examination
of Indian life and institutions concludes that Bharat was great and noble, wise and strong, pious and pure
at one time. But now she is mean, ignorant, godless, weak and vicious.
- The reactionary, tries to revive the relaxing rigidities of the Indian caste-system in the spirit of the class
domination of Europe.
• Thus, by loving extremely the European ideals one becomes a reformer, while by hating extremely the
European ideals one becomes a reactionary.
• However, the real truth about Bharat lies in the traditional Middle Path of the sage and the philosopher.
TRUE INTERPRETATION OF BHARAT

11. • We never called ourselves either India or Hindoostan.
• The Babylonians and the Persians called our Sindhu river - Hindu, while the same became Indus for the
Greeks and the Romans.
• “Our distinctive geographical features, bewildering diversities of racial origin, as well as of languages and
literatures, and cults and customs, combine to strengthen the first impression produced by the physical
characteristics of the land upon the uninitiated stranger, that it is not a country but a continent.”
• The orthodox official view of India as uttered by Anglo-Indian rulers and British politicians – India is not
a country but a collection of countries.
• This view is a result of having a superficial experience of Bharat which reduces her identity to a mere
geographical location –
As long as you look upon our country as “India, or the Land of the Indus” – you will get no closer and truer view of
it than what the foreign officials and students have been able to do.
POPULAR VIEW ABOUT BHARAT

12. THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND NAMING A COUNTRY
• Geographical names belong to three classes –
- Physical origin and reference [Transvaal, India, etc.]
- Ethnic or tribal origin [Aryavarta, England, etc.]
- Personal and historic origin, and reference [Rome, Bharatavarsha]
• Wherever a country is commenced to be called after some great historic personage,
especially some great king or potentate, whether real or legendary, there necessarily
lies at the back of it a distinct historic or national consciousness.
• Rome from Romulus and Bharatavarsha from Bharat – belong to the third and historic group of
geographical names.
• The name Bharatavarsha has been derived from the king Bharata who is described as the lord and
master of the “world with all the seas”. He is described as a rajachakravarti, who is the nominal
head of a federation of kingdoms and principalities.
• As a rajachakravarti, his political position in the land was not that of the administrative head of any
large and centralised government, but only that of the recognised and respected centre and
symbol of a confederation of brother princes.

13. THE CHARACTER OF BHARATIYA UNITY
• The unity of Bharat was neither just racial nor religious, nor political nor administrative. It was a
peculiar type of unity, which may be best described as cultural.
• Bharat is representative of a great civilisation and culture, imbibed with historic and national
consciousness.
• Our country thus, was not governed merely as a political or administrative entity. Neither was it
governed merely as a religious or sacerdotal entity. The Hindu rajachakravarti was therefore not an
emperor, as he is known in Europe, but only a king “established at the centre of a circle of kings.”
• This is reflective of the highly decentralised and liberal form of the Hindu society and governance.
• Hindu thought on conversion of faiths – a Hindu understands that our faiths are the result of our
inner temperament and outer education and experiences. This change of temperament can be brought
about only through a long course of psychophysical, intellectual and ethical disciplines. It requires
replacement of the old prepossessions by new ones created through a new and different order of
experience. Once this is done, the legitimate opinions and faiths proper and natural to the disciple’s
inner intellectual and spiritual state, grow of themselves. This can never be achieved by the way of
imposition from the outside through the force of supernatural authority or formal logic.

14. THE IDEAL OF SPIRITUAL DEMOCRACY
• The special disciplines of the varna-ashrama dharma led to the development of an ideal of spiritual
democracy, unknown to the rest of the world.
• The society was divided into the four caste divisions, while the individual life was divided into four ashramas
or stages. Each ashrama had its own peculiarity -
1) Brahmachari: every individual was absolutely equal to every other individual irrespective of the caste ones’
parents might belong to.
2) Grihast/householder: all the inequalities of life enters at this stage, due to the variety of social functions
which different individuals had to discharge.
3) Vanaprasth: individual was encouraged to cultivate the spirit of detachment once more.
4) Sannyasin: when the only aim in life is to lose all conceits of the isolated individuality, and identify oneself
entirely with the Universal.
• The almost absolute autonomy enjoyed by the different castes in regard to all matters concerning their
caste-life, and the sense of mutual interdependence cultivated in all the castes, both lower and higher, as
limbs and organs of a great organic whole, left little room for the growth of envious conceits.
• The spirit of complete self – detachment, developed through the ashramas within the individual
members of the society, worked as a remedy against the inevitable pride of office which generates in the so-
called higher castes. The genius of the varna-ashrama dharma never tolerated the spirit of domination in the
so-called higher-castes.

15. ‘RATIONALITY’ IN BHARATIYA THOUGHT
• If the Ultimate Reality be intelligent and self-conscious, then it must have all the necessary elements of
consciousness. Reason or consciousness can work only through duality and this reason is inconceivable
without something to know or think of.
• This something must not be absolutely different from us, nor must it be absolutely identical with us.
For we can never know that which we are not; all knowledge is therefore, really self-knowledge. Nor
can we know anything which is not differentiated from us.
• The object of our knowledge must be the same as ourselves, yet at the same time different from us.
Thus, in every act of knowledge or thought, we first create a separation between ourselves and our
object.
• The Ultimate Reality being infinite, the object through which that Reality can realise its infinite reason,
must also be infinite. In all the three elements of the rational or spiritual life, (reason, love, will/volition)
the same process of the separation of the self from itself and its return to itself, with a view to realise
itself, is perpetually present.
• Once this fact is grasped, one can easily understand the mystery of the Purusha and Prakriti.

16. SHAKTI – THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALITY
• That through which the Divine realises Himself in His Own being is called Prakriti by Hindus. The Purusha
realises His Reason, His Love and His Will through the Prakriti. The Prakriti is thus, the Regulative Idea of
the universe and all things are made by Her.
• The concept of Purusha and Prakriti is actually the rational interpretation of cosmic evolution which is
symbolised by Mahavishnu or Narayana.
• The Sankhya doctrine of Prakriti, theVedantic doctrine of Maya, theVaishnavic conception of Radha and the
Shaivite conception of Shakti – all represent the attempt of human mind and spirit to reach and realise the
Mystery of Divine Being.
• Maya is the explanation of our rational experience; Radha of our emotional experience and Shakti of our
volitional experience.
• Reason reveals the truth of things, the emotions enjoy them and the will works to develop and perfect
them. Shakti is thus, the dynamic element in our ethical consciousness. It has many forms and one of these
many forms of Shakti is what we call the Spirit of Nationality.
• Nationality is conceived as a Being, as a self-conscious intelligence. It is thus, natural to conceive a
Personality behind national evolutions.The Hindu addresses this Personality as Mother in his Motherland.

17. I. Maa Shakti as Devi Jagaddhatree
• From the bosom of her Lord Mahavishnu, Shakti manifests herself in the earliest
jungle-clearing stage, when man is engaged in a life-&-death struggle with both
his physical and animal environment. Shakti manifests herself as a tremendous
animal force, fighting and subjugating the malicious brute forces around her.
• She is symbolised in the form of Goddess Jagaddhatree, riding a lion. The lion
here represents the superior combination of animal strength and intelligence.
• The lion has its fore paw upon a vanquished elephant. It is a reminder of the
mammoth age of terrestrial history and evolution, characterised by the almost
complete domination of the animal over man. Man was then only a weaker
animal.
• The setting of Jagaddhatree is in wild mountain scenery, where Nature reigns in
all her terrific luxuriance, amidst yet more terrific animal life and activities.
• The evolution of man, at this stage, worked out through the conflict of the brute
in man with the brute in his fearful animal surroundings.
EVOLUTION OF BHARATIYA NATIONALITY
जननी जन्मभूममश्च स्वर्गादपि र्रीयसी|

18. II. Maa Shakti as Kalee
• The next stage is marked by fierce tribal conflicts. By this time, man has partially
conquered a portion of the earth from the animals, and has made it fit for his
habitation. Now the struggle is of man against man.
• This is symbolised by Goddess Kalee, who rides on no animal. She adorns dipping
heads of men whom she has herself killed – clearest symbolisation of pure human
conflict.
• Her setting is in the heart of the bloody desolations of war. She is dark with anger, and
unconscious of the terrible carnage she is engaged in. It is a state of universal war.
• However, the Hindu being innately spiritual is still conscious of the fact that the aim
and objective of evolution, whatever maybe its passing and apparent phases, is not to
kill but to save, not to destroy but to develop the principle of love and goodness in the
world.
• Therefore, we find Kalee standing on Shiva or the Good. But Shiva lies prostate at her
feet. This is because according to a popular Hindu story when Kalee completely forgot
herself and would not stop with her killing and conquest of her enemies, it was then
that Shiva, who alone could stand the passion of the dread Devi, threw himself down at
her feet, and thus brought her back to herself. Kalee, therefore, stands naked and
fearful, drunk with the lust of war and blood, on the prostate form of Shiva, her Lord
and Lover.

19. III. Maa Shakti as Devi Durga
• The next stage is the conflict between competing colours and rival cultures, which takes place in the far
more developed and organised society. The social life is completely organised and social functions,
clearly defined. The rational autonomy of the different departments of life – military, economic,
aesthetic, spiritual, has been fairly established.
• This stage is revealed in the form of Durga, the ten handed Goddess. Durga represents the perfected
type of nationhood. She is the Soul of National Life and Unity. Her ten hands, joins all the ten points of
the compass, symbolising the territorial unity of the nation’s body.
• Like Jagaddhatree, she too rides a lion, which shows that the spirit of the nation is related vitally and
organically to the animal kingdom. The lion here is a willing slave of the Mother, rendering joyous
service unto Her. Thus, the brute force is not eliminated, but has been brought absolutely under
control.
Nationalist Interpretation of Durga :
• Durga does not stand by herself. She is supported on one side by Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and
earthly possessions – symbolising the economic and industrial life & activities of the nation. On the
other side, by Saraswati, the goddess of learning and the art – symbolising the intellectual & aesthetic
life and activities.
• The economic activities of nations bring them into perpetual conflicts with their neighbouring nations.
Therefore, Lakshmi is always to be duly protected by Kartikeya or the god of war. Kartikeya represents
the military life of the nation.
• “Where knowledge comes but wisdom lingers, there the inevitable result is loss of intellectual vigour
and spiritual vision.Therefore, Ganapati who represents this spirit of wisdom, stands next to Saraswati.
• Thus, Durga has always symbolised the fully realised national life and consciousness in the religious
imagination and symbolism of the Hindus.

20. PROGRESSIVE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE
Material or Physical
Plane :Anna
Biological plane :
Prana
Psychological plane :
Manas
Philosophic
speculation :
Bijanam/Unity of
Consciousness
Anandam is Brahman.
“What is Brahman or the Absolute?”
“Shvetaketu,That (The Absolute or Brahman) art Thou”
Bhrigu, once asked his father sageVaruna,“Teach me, O revered
one, the knowledge of Brahman.”Varuna said – “Seek to know
Brahman through meditation.” He added – “That from which all
that exist have come into being; that by which after coming into
being all that are, continue to be; that towards which all objects
move and into which all objects enter; - knowThat as Brahman.”

21. QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION

22. THANK YOU