Lokasamskar

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||

It is very interesting to see how important is National Character. Here is a small story from our History:

The Raja Karna of Gujarat had a Prime Minister who was a great scholar of Vedas and also well-versed in various arts and sciences. Once the King, in a moment of weakness, abducted the wife of one of his sardars. At this the Prime Minister was beside himself with rage and took a vow to punish the King for that sin. He felt that all his powers of piety and religious learning were challenged. What was the course he adopted to fulfil his vow? He knew that the Muslim armies were poised on the northern border of Gujarat. Prior to that, they had made several abortive attempts to over-run and subjugate Gujarat. The Prime Minister directly went to the Muslim Sultan at Delhi and sought his help to punish his King for the sin he had committed. The enemy was only too glad to snatch that golden opportunity. Equipped with the valuable information revealed by the Prime Minister, who knew all the secrets of the defences of his kingdom, the enemy marched on Gujarat. And the powerful Hindu outpost of Karnavati, which had so far effectively checked the Muslim expansion into the South, fell. Thereafter, not only Gujarat, but, the whole of South lay prostrate at the feet of Muslim marauders. What did Prime Minister gain after all? Doubtless, the King was killed, but along with him thousands of the Prime Minister's own kith and kin were put to sword. Countless women were molested before his eyes, temples razed to the ground and his own residence where he used to recite Vedas and worship God turned into a slaughter-house of cows; in addition, a vast portion of our motherland was reduced to slavery for centuries to come!

We can see, that, on the one hand, the King was loose in his personal character, but, strong in the national aspect, and, on the other hand, the Prime Minister was personally full of piety, of God-fearing nature and all that, but devoid of national character which enables a man to judge the ultimate well-being of the nation as a whole and urges him to sacrifice his all including his personal notions of righteousness at the altar of his nation's well-being. Thus both the King and Prime Minister became responsible for bringing about such a great disaster to a cause which both of them cherished.

A worker has to take care of both the personal as well national character as that alone will enable him to take up the work in the society and Bharatmata to be the Jagadguru.