Wednesday 25 March 2015

Varnas : stepping-stone to civilisation

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||
 
Mananeeya Eknathji has great confidence on the ancestors and the work they did. He firmly believed that Organization was integral to our social life. Further he said : The welfare of the society being the goal of social institutions, the Varnashrama system in one form or the other, with the name or without it, will continue to exist so long as nature has been skilful in providing a variation in the individual equipment by furnishing different aptitudes to different persons and so long as the society needs those aptitudes for its maintenance. The soundness of the Varnashrama system is found in its hereditary character, though it can be reckoned now as a drawback. But every social institution has its good points as well as bad points. And we look at this particular institution just to prove how organization was an integral part of our corporate social life. Its merits and demerits can be examined separately.

Swami Vivekananda too was proud of the ancestors and the work done by them. His total faith on the wisdom of our ancestors, Rishis made him proud of our nation. He says :  There is a law laid on each one of you in this land by your ancestors, whether you are Aryans or non-Aryans, Rishis or Brahmins, or the very lowest outcasts. The command is the same to you all, that you must make progress without stopping, and that from the highest man to the lowest Pariah, everyone in this country has to try and become the ideal Brahmin. This Vedantic idea is applicable not only here but over the whole world.

Such is our ideal of caste as meant for raising all humanity slowly and gently towards the realisation of that great ideal of the spiritual man who is non-resisting, calm, steady, worshipful, pure, and meditative. In that ideal there is God.

The old Aryan institution of the four castes and stages of life. The former comprise the Brâhmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, and the latter, Brahmacharya (student life), Gârhasthya (house-holder's life), Vânaprastha (hermit life), and Sannyâsa (life of renunciation) processes never found a place. And I ask you, fools of my own country, would there have been this institution of Varnashrama if the Aryans had exterminated the aborigines in order to settle on their lands?

The object of the peoples of Europe is to exterminate all in order to live themselves. The aim of the Aryans is to raise all up to their own level, nay, even to a higher level than themselves. The means of European civilisation is the sword; of the Aryans, the division into different Varnas. This system of division into different Varnas is the stepping-stone to civilisation, making one rise higher and higher in proportion to one's learning and culture. In Europe, it is everywhere victory to the strong and death to the weak. In the land of Bhârata, every social rule is for the protection of the weak.

--
KATHA : Vivekananda Kendra
विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari)

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