THE ARYA SAMAJ
It was evening service, at the hour when sunset is still bright, but
if you stare into the sky, you suddenly see the stars. A few score
of boys and young men were gathered round a small square pit, in
which a fire of dry sticks was burning with a yellow flame. They were
dressed in long cotton cloths of yellow or white, and, sitting in
rows, they chanted the ancient Vedic hymns in praise of God, with the
peculiar intervals and nasal quaverings of the East. In their midst,
by the edge of the pit, sat their Guru, or teacher, and from time
to time he ladled clarified butter into the fire, while youths from
each of the other sides of the square threw in handfuls of rice and
fragrant woods or herbs. Meantime the chanting never ceased, but with
a concentrated vehemence all raised to the air the eternal Sanscrit
words, revealed to the Aryan race before recorded history, so that
they might never be devoid of the holiest wisdom, but bear it with
them across mountains of ice and over sunburnt plains to the furthest
world. At the end, all stood up for the final evening hymn, and then
dispersed, leaving the fire burning as a symbol of man’s soul, and of
the divine power, and of the transfiguration of the spirit by flame
and purity.
That form of worship is celebrated every morning and evening by all
Vedic believers, whether assembled or alone. But I saw it first at
one of the students’ homes in Lahore, where a branch of the Arya
Samaj, or Aryan Society, has a school and an “Anglo-Vedic College,”
numbering about 1800 members together. Lala Lajpat Rai sat next
me, for it was to this branch that he had devoted all his labours
for social and religious reform, till injustice drove him to turn
aside into politics from the true objects of the Samaj. I speak of
a branch because, like most vital movements, the Samaj is divided
into parties, one holding its services inside the crowded old city
itself, the other just outside the ancient walls. As usually happens,
the two parties in the religion have split on unessential points,
for which they are prepared to die, though not to kill. But both
claim to follow the doctrines of their founder, Dayananda Saraswati,
who quitted this stage of existence at Ajmere in 1883, after a
wandering life of holy poverty given up entirely to the denunciation
of idols, caste restrictions, animal sacrifices, licentious rites,
the multiplicity of deities, and other accretions with which frail
humanity has surrounded the stern purity of the Vedic revelation.
Leaving his home as an outcast rather than submit to the carnal
marriage tie, Dayananda spent sixteen years of youth and early
manhood in walking from one holy place of Northern India to
another. Sometimes he passed into Kashmir, thrice he crossed the
snow mountains into Thibet, and, hungry for wisdom, he sought
everywhere for the teacher at whose feet he might enjoy it. At
last he found wisdom near at hand, in those very scriptures on
which he had meditated day and night, and full of reforming zeal he
turned to Benares and other seats of religious learning where he
might confute the Pundits, whose obscure minds darkened the hard
radiance of God’s Sanscrit word. In city after city public debates
were held before immense audiences, Dayananda in solitary knowledge
opposing the priestly hostility of all the teachers combined, while
as a rule, the local representative of the British Empire was
invited to take the chair and see fair play, or award the prize in
subtleties of theological controversy. The latter was a task for
which our public-school education does not specially adapt us, but
as a rule the British representative was spared the difficulty of
metaphysical decision by the Pundits themselves, who violently broke
up the meeting under consciousness of defeat. Perhaps unhappily
for his cause, Dayananda did not confine himself to the purgation
of Hindu superstitions and social abuses, but was equally vehement
in his attacks upon the unworthy additions and compromises that
have gathered round Christianity and Islam; and to his success in
interrupting the process of conversion among Hindus we may trace the
marked hostility with which Christian and Mohammedan missionaries
have always regarded the Samaj.[62]
The first branch of the society was established in Bombay by
Dayananda himself in 1875, but its real strength now lies in the
Punjab and United Provinces, in both of which together it numbers
about 250,000 members. The two parties into which the Samaj in Lahore
is to some extent divided, as I said, both unite in rejecting idols,
and in condemning the seclusion or “purdah” of women, the dangerous
prerogatives of the priesthood, and all restrictions of caste,
except such rights and obligations as are the due of character or
intellect. Both unite in maintaining the unity of God, the eternal
trinity of God, Soul, and Matter, and the universal wisdom revealed
for all races in the Vedas. The differences that divide them are,
perhaps, rather of temperament than of doctrine. The party that
worships in the city claims to be more democratic in its appeal,
to be stricter in life and discipline, but at the same time freer
from “purdah”; and, indeed, its women are allowed to attend divine
service in a gallery unveiled, while the women of the other party
have a service to themselves, with a woman preacher, whose sermons I
was, unhappily, unable to attend. The city party has been called the
Culture Section, in which name, I think, there lies a covert sneer.
But it briskly retaliated by calling the suburban party the Vulture
Section, in which the sneer is not covert at all, but palpably due to
a backsliding from vegetarianism.
Not that the extra-mural party itself dreams of backsliding. It
only aims at progress and increasing freedom in social life; for,
like other great movements of religious reform, it maintains that
the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink. The differences, in
fact, have never been serious, though a few years ago there was the
same tender hostility as used to prevail between Newton Hall and
Lamb’s Conduit Street, when Positivists turned their criticism from
Christians to each other. But of late persecution, which makes all
its victims friends, has brought them together again, and few of the
outside world are now aware of any division. It was the deportation
of Lajpat Rai that gave the final touch to reconcilement. That a man
of austere and generous life, one who had given up great worldly
success for the service of the poor and unlearned, should be spirited
away without warning and without trial for venturing to criticize
official injustice—that was the touch to kindle the indignant fire
which welds men into one.
Lajpat Rai was one of those men into whose soul the wrongs of their
people enter. By nature averse from politics, he devoted himself to
those deeper questions which lie beyond the touch of governments
good or bad, and it was not till he was forty that the decisive
change came. It is true that he joined the Congress movement in 1888,
within two or three years of its beginning; but no one has more
severely criticized the Congress and its methods—its unwieldy size,
its holiday aspect, its failure to touch the poverty and ignorance
of India, and its mistaken confidence in the power of speeches and
resolutions for the redress of political wrongs.[63]
It was significant of his strength of character and indifference to
popularity, that after the breach in the Surat Congress, he gave
his immense influence to the Moderate party, and declared he would
fight under the old banner, as I have described. But it was still
more characteristic that, when the Congress had vanished, he remained
in Surat for the Social and Swadeshi Conferences, and organized a
famine-relief fund there, just as if nothing had happened.
Deeper things than can be reached by Government or speeches have
occupied his life. Born at Jaguran, in the district of Ludhiana,
where his father taught Persian and Urdu, he became a student at the
Government College in Lahore, and a Pleader in the Courts there
just at the time when the Arya Samaj was engaged in its earliest
struggle for religious and social reform.
[Illustration: LALA LAJPAT RAI.
_Photo by P. Girdhar Roy & Sons, Lahore._
[_Face p. 296._
]
Under the influence of Hans Raj, now the Principal of the Anglo-Vedic
College, a direct and silent man of similar austerity and devotion of
life, he joined the Samaj and threw himself into its conflict against
idol-worship, child-marriage, girl-widowhood, caste subdivisions, and
the other abuses of orthodox Hinduism. Poverty, ignorance, and famine
appeared to him the chief outward and visible evils of his country,
and for many years, in the intervals of heavy professional work,
he lived the life of what one would call a philanthropist, if the
word had not gathered round it the inhuman associations of charity.
He directed orphanages, superintended education, helped to found
Swadeshi banks and mills long before Swadeshi became a political
weapon; he administered famine funds—with a side-glance at the
unhappy “famine Christians,” the Samajists say he rescued thousands
of souls from famine and conversion—and one of his great achievements
was the relief of the destitute in the Kangra valley after the
terrible earthquake of 1905.
But I think that year marked a change. So far, beyond attending the
Congress and publishing two vernacular pamphlets on Mazzini and
Garibaldi—dangerous themes, I admit, for a member of any subject
race—his action had not been political. In that year he went to
England, like Mr. Gokhale, to represent the cause of Indian reform,
and he also visited America. It so happened that he found England
on the verge of the greatest Liberal revival. She appeared to have
awakened from the ten years’ incubus of reaction and Imperialistic
misgovernment. Hopes of reform went hand in hand with hatred of
oppression. He noticed the movements of the unemployed, the devotion
of passive resisters, the sympathies with oppressed nationalities,
the rapid recovery from the fever of the Boer war. He noticed that
even on such a question as bringing the trams across the bridges
the Lords were threatened with a revolution in the ordering of the
State.[64] The same spirit of freedom appeared to be at work in other
parts of the world—in Ireland, Japan, Egypt, Persia, and especially
in Russia. It was natural that the ideal of winning for his own
people a true share in the government of their country should be
strengthened.
Unhappily, Lajpat Rai also observed in England that the people
were too much occupied with the overwhelming problems confronting
themselves to pay close attention to a subject so distant and
abstruse as Indian reform. He observed that in English politics
the cause of justice had no chance unless it were made a party
question, and the Liberal Party refused to make Indian reform a party
question, because, while it did not move the people at large, it
touched too many important interests. As to the upper classes, he
found, as Ruskin had found long before, that “every mutiny, every
danger, every crime occurring under our Indian legislation arose
directly out of our native desire to live on the loot of India.” Only
from the Irish and Labour Parties did his mission receive any real
encouragement, and, owing to the executive weakness of those two
parties, he concluded—one may still hope too hastily—that any appeal
to the justice and benevolence of Great Britain as represented by her
Parliament was vain:—
“You can at times,” he wrote, “successfully appeal to the
humanity and benevolence of individuals, but to hope for justice
and benevolence from a nation is hoping against hope. The rule
of a foreign democracy is, in this respect the most dangerous.
The democracy is swayed by so many diverse interests that it
is impossible to expect anything like unanimity or even a
preponderance of opinion in dealing justly with a subject race,
because justice to a subject race often clashes with the interest
of some class of the ruling democracy. Whenever an attempt is made
to do justice to the subject race, that class rises up, raises a
storm, and prevents the Government from doing the right thing. Look
at the history of the cotton duties in India, and every one will
see the truth of this. How many times has the Government of India
been overruled in the matter, simply because the Home Government
cannot afford to risk the opposition of Lancashire and incur its
displeasure!”[65]
He returned to India convinced that the political as well as the
social salvation of the country rested only with the Indian peoples
themselves. As to means, he looked to anything that would promote
political knowledge, courage, and self-reliance. At one time he seems
to have contemplated a kind of Teaching Order, something like Mr.
Gokhale’s “Servants of India.”
“Where are the political thinkers of the country,” he cried, “whose
sole thought by day and night, sleeping or waking, would be how
to initiate and carry on the struggle for freedom? Where are the
political Sanyasis (wandering friars) whose sole work in life would
be the preaching of the gospel of freedom? Were are the Vaishyas
of the movement who will make money only for the struggle: who
will live poorly and modestly and save every farthing for the
sacred cause?... Where are the people who will raise agitation for
political rights and liberty to the dignity of a Church and will
live and die for the same?”[66]
He believed that the only way to win the consideration of England
for reforms was to prove the determination and self-reliance of the
Indians themselves.
“The British are not a spiritual people,” he said. “They are either
a fighting race or a commercial nation. It would be throwing pearls
before swine to appeal to them in the name of the higher morality
or justice or on ethical grounds. They are a self-reliant, haughty
people, who can appreciate self-respect and self-reliance even in
their opponents.”[67]
In a yielding disposition, a false prudence, a distrust of enthusiasm
and energy, he found the real dangers of the Indian temperament.
“Our whole life from top to bottom smacks of fear,” he wrote,
“deadly fear of losing in the estimation of those whom we in our
heart of hearts believe to be only usurpers; fear of losing the
sunshine of the smile of those whom we believe to be day and night
engaged in the exploitation of our country and the spoliation of
our people, fear of offending the false gods that have by fraud or
force taken possessions of our bodies and souls, fear of being shut
up in a dungeon or prison house, as if the freedom that we enjoy
were not by its own nature one to be abhorred.”[68]
He was soon in his own person to prove the sincerity of his creed.
The condition of the Punjab during 1907 was particularly deplorable.
For thirteen years scarcity had prevailed almost without intermission
in the south of the province, and the increasing poverty was only
relieved by the hideous mortality of the plague. Just before Lajpat
Rai’s deportation, the official record of deaths from plague in the
Punjab alone rose to nearly 65,000 in one week, and the real number
was almost certainly higher. On the top of hunger and plague, which
we piously call the visitations of God, came the visitations of the
Government in a largely increased revenue assessment, increased
irrigation rates, the Colonization Bill threatening to break a
solemn promise made by Government to the Chenab settlers fifteen
years before, and the refusal of the Lieutenant-Governor to take
any steps against the leading Anglo-Indian paper of Lahore for a
series of abusive articles against Indians, whilst Indian papers
were prosecuted and condemned for articles containing certainly no
greater incitement to racial animosity.[69] The feeling in the Punjab
became intensely embittered. Local riots occurred at Lahore and Rawal
Pindi. Anglo-Indian journalists remembered that it was the fiftieth
anniversary of the Mutiny. Strange precautions were taken. English
people took refuge in the forts. In the haggard element of fear
anything may assume a terrifying shape, and without trial or charge
or warning, the most prominent member of the Arya Samaj was seized,
and sent to Mandalay.[70]
It was all a little ironic, this treatment of a sad, retiring,
clear-minded man, seeking neither advantage nor fame—one who had
freely given up his possessions, and worked for many years unknown
at the humblest duties. When I was at Peshawar, I ventured to ask
one in authority why a man of such high reputation as Lajpat Rai
should have been selected for attack, and in defence of the Punjab
Government, he said: “You see, it was just because he was so good
that they fired him. If he had been a rotter, they could have left
him alone.” I think it was as fine a compliment as any political
offender could hope for.
But it was not entirely for his personal excellence that the Punjab
Government struck at Lajpat Rai, nor for the wide influence of his
decisive eloquence. It was because they hoped to strike the Arya
Samaj at the same time. The authorities in Northern India, always
timid and suspicious owing to the neighbourhood of the Frontier
and the more warlike character of the peoples, had long regarded
the Samaj with special enmity. I have known a soldier, with papers
of the highest character, turned out of a Sikh regiment admittedly
for belonging to the Samaj. Much of this suspicion arises from
false information, such as is always supplied to officials who
remain isolated from the surrounding people. The editor of the
_Hindustan_, for instance, who had recently been sentenced to two
years’ imprisonment, was described as a graduate of the Anglo-Vedic
College, though he had hardly been there a month, and owed the rest
of his training to a Christian Mission School. In the same way
young Ajit Singh, who was deported on suspicion of tampering with
the native troops, was described as a prominent Samajist, though he
had never belonged to the Samaj at all. Some members of the Society
have turned to politics, because for the moment the attraction is
irresistible for many generous minds, and at such a time, as Disraeli
said in “Sybil,” “to be young and to be indifferent are no longer
synonymous.” But the Samaj as such has no concern with politics.
[Illustration: AN ARYA SAMAJ TEACHER.
[_Face p. 304._
]
It is a religious body—a Universal Church—bent only on religious
purification and the training of youth in accordance with Vedic
rules. One can understand the opposition of orthodox Hindus,
Mohammedans, and Christian missionaries, for in its religious
propaganda the Samaj is distinctly militant and gathers in many
converts. But the Indian Government is mistaken in regarding it
as a centre of sedition. The leaders of both sections—such men
as Hans Raj, Principal of the Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore, and
Lala Munshi Rama, Governor of the Gurukula, near Hardwar—have
steadily set their faces against political work of any sort, and
they discourage political discussion among the students as strictly
as the Risley Circular. It is useless, they say, to look for the
political regeneration of India while the character and intellect of
the people are unregenerate. I do not agree with them, believing, as
I do, that political freedom is essential for any regeneration
of the national spirit. But to accuse the Samaj of political aims,
to grasp at any forgery or lie which seeks to implicate the Society
in sedition, are only signs of ignorance fixed in its isolation
among a subject race. In the summer of 1907, Lala Munshi Rama wrote
a detailed defence of the Samaj on this point in the _Civil and
Military Gazette_ of Lahore—a defence so just and reasonable that
even the _Gazette_, conspicuous among Anglo-Indian papers for the
virulence of its anti-Indian feeling, described the “dignity of this
deeply pondered vindication” as commanding respect. In one passage he
said:—
“It is an awful responsibility which these people undertake who
try to set the Government against the Arya Samaj, a Society which
is trying its best to uproot some of the evils of intemperance, of
impurity, of child-marriage, of polygamy, of gambling, and a host
of other vices—why, it is the Arya Samajists whom you find in the
foremost rank of workers in the field.”
Six or seven years ago—in 1901 or early 1902—the writer of that
protest cleared a large open space in a pleasant jungle where in a
single day I have still seen many deer and monkeys, many wild boars
and jackals, the bone-strewn home of a tigress with cubs, the spoor
of a huge elephant, wild peacocks perching in the trees, and nearly
all the other delights of Eden, except Eve. A few miles away the
holy Ganges issues from the foot of the Himalayas into the great
Indian plain, and there stands the holy town of Hardwar, goal of
great pilgrimages and pitch of many religious beggars, who keep with
them deformed cows and other holy monsters to move the hearts of
worshippers to pity. On the open space in the jungle a quadrangle of
tin-roofed buildings has been raised to be a Vedic school and future
college. Over its gateway floats a red banner, inscribed with the
sacred symbol of “Om,” and its Brahmacharya, or holy discipline,
follows the lines laid down by primeval revelation.
Those lines are Spartan, or, at least, Platonic. The boys are
admitted at eight, and their parents take a solemn pledge not to
remove them or allow their marriage till they are twenty-five, the
lowest age fixed for a man’s marriage by the Vedic Scriptures.
During these sixteen years the Brahmacharies, or disciples, do not
go home, nor are they allowed to write letters or receive them; but
their parents may visit them once a month, and do, in fact, visit
them about twice a year. The great occasion for these visits is the
school anniversary, which happens to be St. Patrick’s Day, when over
sixty thousand Samajists come, including many thousands of women,
and encamp on the edge of the jungle in grass and wicker huts,
which were being prepared for them during my stay in the school.
Unlike the parents who come to see their sons on speech-days at our
public-schools, the pilgrim visitors bring their own supplies, and
they generally stay three days, that being all of family life the
boys ever know. And that is all they know of woman’s society, too,
for it is, as I said, an Eveless Paradise.
[Illustration: A STREET IN HARDWAR.
HARDWAR STRAND.
[_Face p. 306._
]
Such isolation in the midst of our common and intermingled world
is, perhaps, dangerous. It comes too near the inhuman monotony
of workhouse schools. It is likely to exaggerate the desires and
curiosity of growing men, or to produce the hesitation of bashful and
secluded lives when confronted with the need for action. The entire
removal of home influence might appear harsh if we did not remember
the scores of men whom we have known ruined by their parents’
vulgarity or their mothers’ indulgence. But even if we grant that
most parents are quite unfit to bring up children, sixteen years
seems too long for any boy to remain in the same place, with the
same teachers and the same companions. Even the holiday excursions
to historic cities of India, which are arranged by the Governor,
and usually conducted by him, do not sufficiently break up the
one-sidedness of such a life; and think of the boy who is genuinely
unfitted for school and is compelled to remain unhappy for a quarter
of man’s existence!
Mr. Rama Deva, the young and highly educated head-master of the
school, and the other masters as well, met my scruples by urging
that in India the home influence is almost invariably dangerous
or softening. They said their only hope of preserving the boys
from child-marriage, maternal ignorance, and the evil of cities
lay in this monastic seclusion. In place of parents they have a
few Superintendents—about one to every twenty-five of the 220 boys
then in the school—who live with each class day and night, except
during school hours. The greatest difficulty of the school is to
find Superintendents worthy and willing, and I should have thought
it impossible. The three oldest boys in the top form have rooms to
themselves and no Superintendent. All sleep on plank beds, but are
allowed a warm covering in winter. All dress in yellow “dhotis”
(long cotton cloths) for schooltime, and in white “dhotis” for play.
They are allowed wooden sandals, held on by a peg between the toes,
but nearly all go barefoot, and with feet and legs bare they ride
bareback and play cricket, football, and an Indian form of prisoners’
base. The school belongs to the Culture Section of the Arya Samaj,
and is so violently vegetarian that I was not allowed to approach the
buildings in boots of murdered leather.
The boys get up at four in the morning, and attend Divine service
round the symbolic fire. Having taken the vows of obedience, poverty,
and chastity for sixteen years at their entrance, when two of those
vows can mean very little to them, they are further taught to speak
the truth, to practise concentrated contemplation for a period of
every day, and to subdue passion by the “yoga” of deep breathing
and holding the breath. They bathe in cold water before sunrise,
they climb the steep jungle mountains near, and all learn swimming
in the Ganges. Almost the only form of punishment is exclusion from
the games. The school hours run to about seven, divided into two
parts, and the chief subject taught is Sanscrit. There are the other
ordinary subjects—arithmetic and mathematics, history, science, and
English—and, unlike the Government schools, all teaching is given
in the vernacular Hindi, so that the boys understand the subjects
better, and can cover more ground, whereas in ordinary schools the
learning is continually hampered by the foreign tongue. But the
chief means of education is Sanscrit, just as in my old school it
was Greek. At least seven years are spent in getting that amazing
Sanscrit grammar off by heart, and in learning to read the Vedas.
Whether the Sanscrit literature is worth all that, I cannot say; we
spent much the same time over Greek, and it was well worth it to
about one in twenty. But in all the upper forms, though none of the
boys had yet approached the full age, they could already read and
write Sanscrit as fluently as a mother tongue, and that is more than
any of us ever did with Greek.
But the subject taught never matters much. The thing that does
matter is the manner of teaching, and nearly all the schools and
colleges I visited in India had the one common fault, that they tried
to force knowledge into the mind by giving information. They treated
the mind as a passive vessel to be filled through the channel of the
ears. The method was by lecture, not by dialectic, and I at least
have never learnt anything by being lectured. If the officials wish
to reform our system of education in India, here, at the very basis
of teaching, is where they might begin. They will find they are far
too late if they hope to stifle the national aspiration for liberty
by excluding the study of our own history and the works of Western
thinkers. Those are plants that we ourselves have generously set
in India, and they are too deep-rooted to be pulled up now. But to
transform the ordinary teaching into real education would be a change
indeed.
The Gurukula (the word means The Master’s Home) that I have been
describing takes no Government grant, and submits to no Government
inspection; nor is it affiliated to a Government University, like
the Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore. In the boarding houses of the
Anglo-Vedic School and College a pupil’s total expenses come to 20
or 25 rupees a month. In the Gurukula the parents pay 10 rupees a
month (£8 a year) for the complete education, including clothes,
food, games, and all. But the cost for each boy is really
about £15 a year, and the deficit is made up by the subscriptions
of the Samajists. Fifteen pounds a year is a great deal for a
poverty-stricken country like India, but I wish our public schools
did not cost ten times as much. In the great Government school and
college for Mohammedans at Aligarh the Principal told me the parents
paid from 20 to 40 rupees a month according to the boy’s room (£16 to
£32 a year). But that is a home of luxury, and I believe the money
required to keep a son there often amounts to £45 or even £50 a year,
as much as a third of the payment at one of our own public schools.
[Illustration: IN THE GURUKULA.
[_Face p. 310._
]
FOOTNOTES:
[62] “Life and Teachings of Dayananda Saraswati,” by Bawa Chaju Singh
(Lahore, 1903).
[63] Speech at Lahore before the meeting of the Calcutta Congress,
1906.
[64] “Our Struggle for Freedom: How to Carry it on”; see “Lala Lajpat
Rai, the Man in his Word” (Madras, Ganesh and Co., 1907), p. 134-145.
[65] _Ibid._, p. 197, “Indian Patriotism towards the Empire,” being
an answer to a circular order from the Director of Public Instruction
in the Punjab (May, 1906) requiring all schools to celebrate Empire
Day in a certain manner.
[66] _Ibid._, p. 141, “Our Struggle for Freedom.”
[67] _Ibid._, p. 184, “The Swadeshi Movement.”
[68] _Ibid._, p. 209, “The National Outlook.”
[69] See Introduction, p. 17 ff.
[70] For a full account of these events, see “The Story of My
Deportation,” by Lajpat Rai (The Punjabi Press, Lahore, 1908).