Idols & Idealism: Swami Dayanand Saraswati, The Militant Monk Of India’s Freedom Struggle – Analysis
Swami Dayanand declared (in the first Charter of the Arya Samaj) ‘the well-being of the whole humanity will be the objective of the Samaja’. Two years later, in 1877, he expressed among the principles of the Arya Samaj that of doing good to the whole world, while improving the physical, spiritual, and social conditions of humanity. April 2025 will mark 150 years of the founding of the Arya Samaj
Kathiawad, the peninsular region distinguishing India’s western coast at its farthest north end, continues to remain in the news for Dwarka and Somnath, its ancient temple-towns and temples. In 19th century CE, Kathiawad is where several champions of Indian nationalism were born: namely, Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883), Pandit Shyamaji Krishnaverma (1857-1930) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948). Each one of them spent their lives working for ‘freedom’ from colonial rule and oppressive policies towards education, law and human rights. The impact they made has. without doubt, shaped and molded not only contemporary India but the modern world till date.
A 150 years ago, on 10 April 1875, Swami Dayanand established in Bombay the ‘Society of the Men with Higher Principles’ or the Arya Samaj that was to spread out its influence across India. As a preacher-teacher-public speaker, Swami Dayanand was passionate as his ideological predecessors in Bengal – Raja Rammohun Roy and Keshub Chunder Sen, driven by a universal kindness of the kind which is rarely experienced in our globalized world.
Swami Dayanand declared (in the first Charter of the Arya Samaj) ‘the well-being of the whole humanity will be the objective of the Samaja’. Two years later, in 1877, he expressed among the principles of the Arya Samaj that of doing good to the whole world, while improving the physical, spiritual, and social conditions of humanity. And in the Satyartha Prakash (The Light of the Truth) he wrote: “I believe in a religion based on all-embracing universal principles, that have always been accepted as truths by mankind and will continue to be obeyed down the ages to come. I call this the Eternal Primitive Religion: because it is above the hostility of all human beliefs. This alone I hold to be acceptable and worth believing by all people and down all times.” Satyartha Prakash was written in Sanskrit.
When Dr Prithwindra Mukherjee – a poet, historian, musicologist, translator – was writing his magnum opus The Intellectual Roots of India’s Freedom Struggle (1893-1918), he highlighted that most people believe India’s struggle for independence to have begun with Mahatma Gandhi. “Little credit goes to the proof that this call for a mass movement did not arise out of a void. For the past century and more, historians have overlooked the phase of twenty-five years of intense creative endeavour preceding and preparing for the Mahatma’s advent. The reason for this systematic omission has been the fundamentally radical nature of the revolutionary programme put to practice by Indian leaders of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” it stated.
Dr Prithwindra’s study carefully detailed the origins – philosophical, historical and religious and intellectual, so to say – of Indian nationalism. From Raja Rammohun Roy (1772-1833), Mahatma Rajnarain Basu (1826-1899), Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838-1894), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) to Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), and Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). Swami Dayanand was one among these intellectual giants, who stood on each other’s shoulders and acquired a ‘very sophisticated understanding of the contemporary political reality’. They became emblems of their epoch, its aspirations.
Eternal truth:
The chapter on Swami Dayanand is titled ‘The Quest of the National Soul’ and it takes the reader through the life, times and teachings of the militant monk: “At a very young age, disillusioned by abuses of idolatry, by social practices based on ignorance of the true spiritual life and on colonial exploitation, Dayanand put at the people’s service all his encyclopedic learning of the Hindu scriptures to revive Vedic teachings in order to solve contemporary problems, religious, social, political, and cultural. Having sworn not to borrow anything from Western thought, Dayanand never learned any European language. This permitted him to define the true nationalist existence inspired by the principles of a strictly Indian tradition and to go beyond the ritualistic and mytho-centric interpretations of the Vedas. Dayanand chalked out the general principles sufficient to regenerate the Indian nation. He considered the Vedas as ‘something more: the very speech of the eternal Truth on which can be founded—in a sure and justified manner—the human knowledge of God and man’s relationship with the divine being as well as with the like.”
The challenge for Swami Dayanand was to show the compatibility of spiritual life and the science of national government. It may seem strange for modern global netizens but the Swami
in his ‘Introduction to the commentaries of the Rigveda’ (Rigvedadi-bhashya-bhumika), interpreted a section of the Vedic verses in the light of burning political issues of the time.
Wrote Dr Prithwindra, “Uniting, thus, the innate intuition of Aryan spirituality with an acceptable rational methodology by dialectic mentality, Dayanand established the fundamental unity of the Indian people where the plurality of languages, of sects, of behaviours and of customs only assumed a superficial but enriching role. According to Dayanand, whatever the excellence of a foreign government, it could never replace the qualities of a self-management. To acquire the political independence of India as a nation chosen to reveal a new spiritual light to humanity, Dayanand undertook a programme of fierce struggle. This struggle would require: The exclusion of all ideological debt to foreign sources and the institution of an obligatory educational system for all children and teenagers (boys and girls), based on the residential academies of Vedic type (gurukula). ‘Be they princes and princesses or children of beggars, they will be submitted to the same food, sartorial regime, to the same absolute law of continence.’ The teaching would be physical, aesthetic (music, dance, theatrical art and authentic diction of the Vedic hymns), ethical, intellectual and spiritual.”
The arduous programme of intellectual studies that Swami Dayanand recommended, has been reconstituted by B.B. Majumdar, a scholar who dedicated his life deepening the understanding Indian political thought. Spread over twenty-two years, the academic programme included: a) Phonetics; the grammar of Panini, the Mahabhasya of Patanjali (3 years); (b) The Vedic lexicon as established by Yaska in the Nirukta (8 months); (c) Prosody by Pingala (4 months); (d) The Laws of Manu, the Epics (the Ramayana, entirely and important portions of the Mahabharata); (e) The six orthodox Schools (darshana) of Indian philosophy and the ten main Upanishads (2 years); (f) All the four Vedas and the supplementary Brahmanas (6 years); (g) The science of life (Ayurveda) including medical and surgical treatises (4 years); (h) Music, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, geography, geology and astronomy (3 years); (i) Economics and policies, containing civil and military protections (2 years). Vedic scholars believe that as strength and the physical activity grow, the intellect of students becomes subtle enough to seize the most abstruse and profound subjects, hence they should have access to the highest knowledge. As citizens and parents of future citizens, they would be able to discharge their responsibilities.
National character:
On the subject of degradation of national character caused by the centuries of slavery, there is considerable unity of thought between these iconic intellectuals of the 19th century CE from Raja Rammohun Roy to Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. With Swami Dayanand Saraswati, his insistence was on:
(1) The personal integrity and health of the teachers. Each of them by his or her example should awaken among their subjects ‘qualities required such as truthfulness in words, in acts and in thought, decorum, the self-control, sweetness of conduct’. Among the gurukula institutions which strived to develop education in India, Sabarmati (the educational community founded by Gandhi), at Santiniketan and the Vishvabharati (school and university founded by Tagore), at Pondicherry (the International Centre of Education founded by the Mother based on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings) exemplify these standards.
(2) The acceptance of Hindi as the national language and of the Vedas as the source of the people’s religious life. (3) A conversion of the strata of population, unjustly oppressed by the ignorance and the intolerance of Hindu orthodoxy. (4) The end of all foreign government in India: Swami Dayanand would raise his voice to endeavour to fight, humiliate, and destroy unbelievers, even if they were sovereign over the world, even if they were powerful. (5) Electing a president of the sovereign republic by universal suffrage, since the people are sovereign. Fiercely opposed to the autocratic reign, conscious of the fallibility and corruptibility of an individual propelled to the supreme command, Dayanand insisted on the vast learning and on the human qualities of the future president.
According to Vedic injunctions, the State should be composed of three colleges of elected citizens, all of them known for their integrity: (a) the legislative college; (b) the religious college; (c) the college of fine arts and sciences. As per the Arya Samaj website, there are approximately 2500 schools, colleges and universities in operation under the Arya Samaj; 400 Gurukuls running on residential education system; several orphanages are being managed for upbringing of more than 20000 orphans; almost 1500 hospitals and dispensaries are serving the people. Besides there are training centres, homes for the aged and sick, training centres for women and residential centres for the youth studying in colleges and universities. The vision of Swami Dayanand Saraswati has become a reality. Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked, on 200th birth anniversary of Swami Dayanand Saraswati on 11 February 2024, “Swami Dayanand was a saint who envisioned a bright future for Bharat. The belief that Swami ji had in Bharat, we must transform that same belief into our self-confidence during our ‘Amrit Kaal’. Swami Dayanand was a harbinger and a guide of modernity. Inspired by him, all of us need to lead Bharat towards modernity in this ‘Amrit Kaal’, to make our country a ‘Viksit Bharat’ (Developed India).”