श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुणः परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात् ।स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः ॥
śreyānsvadharmo viguṇaḥ paradharmātsvanuṣṭhitātsvadharme nidhanaṁ śreyaḥ paradharmo bhayāvahaḥ
Better is one’s own law of works, swadharma, though in itself faulty, than an alien law well wrought out; death in one’s own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
His translation
KRISHNA Two are the ways of devotion in this world, already have I declared it to thee, O sinless hero; the devotion of the men of Sankhya is by singleness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness and not by mere renouncing…Read the whole passage · 1,072 wordsClose the passage
KRISHNA Two are the ways of devotion in this world, already have I declared it to thee, O sinless hero; the devotion of the men of Sankhya is by singleness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness and not by mere renouncing of the world shall he reach perfection. For verily no man even for a moment remains without doing, since each is made to do whether he will or not by the moods of his essential nature. He who coerceth the organs of action and sitteth remembering in his heart the things in which the senses work, is a man deceived in Spirit, him they call a hypocrite, but he whosoever governeth the senses with his mind, O Urjoona, and entereth on Yoga in works using the organs of action without attachment, is distinguished above all beings. Do thou the works that the law demands of thee, for action is mightier than inaction; yea without works the very maintenance of thy body cannot be. ‘Tis by doing works in other spirit than as a sacrifice that this world of creatures falleth into bondage to its works; but do thou practise works as a Sacrifice, O son of Coonty, with a mind free from the yoke of attachment. For with Sacrifice as their companion the Father, of old, created all these peoples and said unto them, “By Sacrifice shall ye beget offspring; lo the chosen joys of your desire, they shall be to you the milk of her udders. Cherish you the gods with sacrifice and the gods shall cherish you in turn; thus by cherishing each other shall ye attain to your highest welfare. Cherished with sacrifice the gods shall bestow on you the joys you most desire and he is no better than a thief who enjoyeth what they give and giveth not to them again.” The good who eat the remnants of the Sacrifice are delivered from all their transgressions, but those accursed eat and drink sin who cook their food but for their own selfish bellies. From food all creatures are born and from rain is the birth of food; but rain ariseth from the sacrifice and Sacrifice hath its root in works; works know to be born of the Eternal, for by the imperishable word of the Eternal they were brought into being. Therefore is the Eternal everywhere and in all things; yea He hath His home for ever in the heart of the Sacrifice. This is the Wheel that God hath set going and who goeth not with it, whose days are a wickedness, whose delight & ease are in the senses, O son of Pritha, liveth his life in vain. But for the man whose whole pleasure is in the Self and who satisfies his longing with the Self, yea who is content utterly with the Self, for him there is no needful action. For indeed he hath no end at all to gain by doing neither any by not doing, he hath no dependence for end or aim on any or even this whole world of creatures. Therefore without attachment do ever the work before thee, since by doing works without attachment man reacheth the Highest. ‘Twas by works alone that the men of old reached to utter perfection even Junac and the rest. Moreover even if thou lookest to the right government of the world, thou shouldest be doing. What they see their Greatest do, even that the rest of the folk will practise, and the standard that the Best setteth up, the world will surely follow. Behold, O Partha, there is nought at all in the three worlds that I must do, there is nothing I have not or that I yet need to win, and still I move in the path of works. For verily were I not to move sleeplessly in the path of works, lo men follow utterly the way wherein I tread, O son of Pritha, then would all these worlds sink and perish, were I not to do works and I should become the creator of bastard confusion and the slayer of all these creatures. That which the ignorant do with attachment to the work, O Bharata, the wise man should do without attachment, wishing only to keep the world in its traces. Let him not be the cause of division and confusion of mind in the ignorant who are attached to their works, but let him, knowing all, set them to all the works of this world by doing works in Yoga. Lo works are done but by the modes of Nature in her inevitable working, but the Spirit of man is deceived by the sense of separate existence and he sayeth in himself “I, even I am the doer.” But he who knoweth to the core how the workings of the modes are parcelled out, believeth that the modes work in and upon the modes, and suffereth not attachment to seize him. Most men are deceived by the modes of Nature, cling to the workings of these modes; these dull brains, these imperfect knowers, let not the perfect knower cause to swerve and stumble. Repose all thy works upon Me and with thy heart spiritually inclined be desireless, be selfless; then arise, fight, O Urjoona, let the fever of thy soul pass from thee. For men who with faith & without carping follow ever this my Word are released, they also, from bondage to their works, but they who carp at and follow not this my word, know of them that all their knowledge is a delusion; their intellect is nought; they are lost men, Urjoona. Lo even the wise man who knoweth can but act according to his own essential nature; for to their nature all creatures come at last and what shall coercing it avail? Only in the field of each & every sense love and hate are there & ever they lie in ambush; let not the Spirit of man fall into their clutches for they are his adversaries in his great journey. Better is it the rule of thy own life ill done than an alien rule well accomplished, yea death in the path of one’s own nature is better; it is a fearful and perilous thing to follow the law of another’s being.
Essays on the Gita
The rest of Arjuna’s questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character.3·35 When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no apparent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature, even if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives men as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His practical intelligence is baffled by Krishna’s assertion that it was he who in4·1–8 ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and renunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this “mingled” word. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed6·33–34 to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud?
The Gita says, indeed, “All existences follow their nature and what shall coercing it avail?” which seems, if we take it by3·33 itself, a hopelessly absolute assertion of the omnipotence of Nature over the soul; “even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature.” And on this it founds the injunction to follow faithfully in our action the law of our nature. “Better is one’s own law of works, svadharma, though in itself faulty3·35 than an alien law well wrought out; death in one’s own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law.” What is precisely meant by this svadharma we have to wait to see until we get to the more elaborate disquisition in the closing chapters about Purusha and Prakriti and the gunas; but certainly it does not mean that we are to follow any impulse, even though evil, which what we call our nature dictates to us. For between these two verses the Gita throws in this further injunction, “In the3·34 object of this or that sense liking and disliking are set in ambush; fall not into their power, for they are the besetters of the soul in its path.” And immediately after this, in answer to Arjuna’s objection who asks him, if there is no fault in following our3·36 Nature, what are we then to say of that in us which drives a man to sin, as if by force, even against his own struggling will, the Teacher replies that this is desire and its companion wrath, children of rajas, the second guna, the principle of passion, and this desire is the soul’s great enemy and has to be slain. Abstention from evil-doing it declares to be the first condition for liberation, and always it enjoins self-mastery, self-control, saṁyama, control of the mind, senses, all the lower being.
Well, but in man at least there is another action, a free soul, a free will, a sense of responsibility, a real doer other than Nature, other than the mechanism of Maya? So it seems, because in man there is a conscious intelligent will; buddhi is full of the light of the observing Purusha, who through it, it seems, observes, understands, approves or disapproves, gives or withholds the sanction, seems indeed at last to begin to be the lord of his nature. Man is not like the tiger or the fire or the storm; he cannot kill and say as a sufficient justification, “I am acting according to my nature”, and he cannot do it, because he has not the nature and not, therefore, the law of action, svadharma, of the tiger, storm or fire. He has a conscious intelligent will, a buddhi, and to that he must refer his actions. If he does not do so, if he acts blindly according to his impulses and passions, then the law of his being is not3·35 rightly worked out, svadharmaḥ su-anuṣṭhitaḥ, he has not acted18·47 according to the full measure of his humanity, but even as might the animal. It is true that the principle of rajas or the principle of tamas gets hold of his buddhi and induces it to justify any and every action he commits or any avoidance of action; but still the justification or at least the reference to the buddhi must be there either before or after the action is committed. And, besides, in man sattva is awake and acts not only as intelligence and intelligent will, but as a seeking for light, for right knowledge and right action according to that knowledge, as a sympathetic perception of the existence and claims of others, as an attempt to know the higher law of his own nature, which the sattwic principle in him creates, and to obey it, and as a conception of the greater peace and happiness which virtue, knowledge and sympathy bring in their train. He knows more or less imperfectly that he has to govern his rajasic and tamasic by his sattwic nature and that thither tends the perfection of his normal humanity.
The Gita has laid some stress on this point and even assigned to it a great preliminary importance. At the very start it has spoken of the nature, rule and function of the Kshatriya as Arjuna’s own law of action, svadharma; it has proceeded to lay it down with a striking emphasis that one’s own nature, rule, function…Read the whole passage · 658 wordsClose the passage
The Gita has laid some stress on this point and even assigned to it a great preliminary importance. At the very start it has spoken of the nature, rule and function of the Kshatriya as Arjuna’s own law of action, svadharma; it has proceeded to lay it down with a striking emphasis that one’s own nature, rule, function should be observed and followed,—even if defective,3·35 it is better than the well-performed rule of another’s nature. Death in one’s own law of nature is better for a man than victory in an alien movement. To follow the law of another’s nature is dangerous to the soul, contradictory, as we may say, to the natural way of his evolution, a thing mechanically imposed and therefore imported, artificial and sterilising to one’s growth towards the true stature of the spirit. What comes out of the being is the right and healthful thing, the authentic movement, not what is imposed on it from outside or laid on it by life’s compulsions or the mind’s error. This swadharma is of four general kinds formulated outwardly in the action of the four orders of the old Indian social culture, cāturvarṇya. That system4·13 corresponds, says the Gita, to a divine law, it “was created by me according to the divisions of the gunas and works,”—created from the beginning by the Master of existence. In other words, there are four distinct orders of the active nature, or four fundamental types of the soul in nature, svabhāva, and the work and proper function of each human being corresponds to his type of nature. This is now finally explained in preciser detail. The works of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, says the Gita, are divided according to the qualities (guṇas) born of their own inner nature, spiritual temperament, essential character (svabhāva). Calm, self-control, askesis, purity, long-suffering, candour, knowledge, acceptance of spiritual truth are the work of the Brahmin, born of his swabhava. Heroism, high spirit, resolution, ability, not fleeing in the battle, giving, lordship (īśvara-bhāva, the temperament of the ruler and leader) are the natural work of the Kshatriya. Agriculture, cattle-keeping, trade inclusive of the labour of the craftsman and the artisan are the natural work of the Vaishya. All work of the character of service falls within the natural function of the Shudra. A man, it goes on to say, who devotes himself to his own natural work in life acquires spiritual perfection, not indeed by the mere act itself, but if he does it with right knowledge and the right motive, if he can make it a worship of the Spirit of this creation and dedicate it sincerely to the Master of the universe from whom is all impulse to action. All labour, all action and function, whatever it be, can be consecrated by this dedication of works, can convert the life into a self-offering to the Godhead within and without us and is itself converted into a means of spiritual perfection. But a work not naturally one’s18·47 own, even though it may be well performed, even though it may look better from the outside when judged by an external and mechanical standard or may lead to more success in life, is still inferior as a means of subjective growth precisely because it has an external motive and a mechanical impulsion. One’s own natural work is18·48 better, even if it looks from some other point of view defective. One does not incur sin or stain when one acts in the true spirit of the work and in agreement with the law of one’s own nature. All action in the three gunas is imperfect, all human work is subject to fault, defect or limitation; but that should not make us abandon our own proper work and natural function. Action should be rightly regulated action, niyataṁ karma, but intrinsically18·9 one’s own, evolved from within, in harmony with the truth of one’s being, regulated by the Swabhava, svabhāva-niyataṁ karma.
- II. 31. svadharmam api cāvekṣya.
“The real truth of all this action of Prakriti is, however, less outwardly mental and more inwardly subjective. It is this that man is an embodied soul involved in material and mental nature, and he follows in it a progressive law of his development determined by an inner law of his being; his cast of spirit makes out his cast of mind and life, his swabhava. Each man has a swadharma, a law of his inner being which he must observe, find out and follow. The action determined by his inner nature, that is his real Dharma. To follow it is the true law of his development; to deviate from it is to bring in confusion, retardation and error. That social, ethical, religious or other law and ideal is best for him always which helps him to observe and follow out his Swadharma.
Other writings
The return to ourselves is the cardinal feature of the national movement. It is national not only in the sense of political self-assertion against the domination of foreigners, but in the sense of a return upon our old national individuality. It is significant that all those who are out of touch with this feature of the movement, are losing their position at its head, while those who keep in its forefront are being more and more suffused with the spirit of “Indianity” and overcome with the spell of India, the magic of her thought and civilisation, the overpowering touch of her religion. The highest qualities of head and heart cannot keep the lead for men who have not the saving grace of openness to this passion for India as she was, is and will be. On the other hand men perhaps of inferior calibre are likely to do better work for the country, who have the power to respond. The secret of this peculiar feature of the movement is to be found in its essential nature and in the purpose which God intends it to serve. If India follows in the footsteps of Europe, accepts her political ideals, social system, economic principles, she will be overcome with the same maladies. Such a consummation is neither for the good of India nor for the good of Europe. If India becomes an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to her natural greatness or fulfil the possibilities within her. Paradharmo bhayavahah, to accept the dharma of another is perilous; it deprives the man or the nation of its secret of life and vitality and substitutes an unnatural and stunted growth for the free, large and organic development of Nature. Whenever a nation has given up the purpose of its existence, it has been at the cost of its growth. India must remain India if she is to fulfil her destiny. Nor will Europe profit by grafting her civilisation on India, for if India, who is the distinct physician of Europe’s maladies, herself falls into the clutch of the disease, the disease will remain uncured and incurable and European civilisation will perish as it perished when Rome declined, first by dry rot within itself and last by irruption from without. The success of the national movement, both as a political and as a spiritual movement, is necessary for India and still more necessary for Europe. The whole world is interested in seeing that India becomes free so that India may become herself.
We say to the nation, “It is God’s will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India’s eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, ‘This is our dharma.’ We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours.”
How can it be my dharma to kill my own brothers and relations? How can it be to slaughter my nation and house? Srikrishna answers according to the spirit of Hindu ideas. He says that it is your dharma, because you are a Kshatriya. This is a dharma of a particular kind. The duty of the Kshatriya is not the same as that of the Brahmin, and that of the Shudra is not equal to that of the Kshatriya. If a Shudra adopts the dharma of a Brahmin, he brings about the confusion of all laws and leads to the destruction and not to the betterment of mankind. It is nature which teaches you your own dharma. This is your dharma. If you shrink from upholding the cause of virtue, truth and justice, out of a feeling which is inconsistent, you are guilty, you bring in confusion, you encourage yourself to give up your duty.
The nineteenth century in India was imitative, self-forgetful, artificial. It aimed at a successful reproduction of Europe in India, forgetting the deep saying of the Gita—“Better the law of one’s own being though it be badly done than an alien dharma well-followed; death in one’s dharma is better, it is a dangerous…Read the whole passage · 575 wordsClose the passage
The nineteenth century in India was imitative, self-forgetful, artificial. It aimed at a successful reproduction of Europe in India, forgetting the deep saying of the Gita—“Better the law of one’s own being though it be badly done than an alien dharma well-followed; death in one’s dharma is better, it is a dangerous thing to follow the law of another’s nature.” For death in one’s own dharma brings new birth, success in an alien path means only successful suicide. If we had succeeded in Europeanising ourselves we would have lost for ever our spiritual capacity, our intellectual force, our national elasticity and power of self-renovation. That tragedy has been enacted more than once in history, only the worst and most mournful example of all would have been added. Had the whole activity of the country been of the derivative and alien kind, that result would have supervened. But the life-breath of the nation still moved in the religious movements of Bengal and the Punjab, in the political aspirations of Maharashtra and in the literary activity of Bengal. Even here it was an undercurrent, the peculiar temperament and vitality of India struggling for self-preservation under a load of foreign ideas and foreign forms, and it was not till in the struggle between these two elements the balance turned in the favour of the national dharma that the salvation of India was assured. The resistance of the conservative element in Hinduism, tamasic, inert, ignorant, uncreative though it was, saved the country by preventing an even more rapid and thorough disintegration than actually took place and by giving respite and time for the persistent national self to emerge and find itself. It was in religion first that the soul of India awoke and triumphed. There were always indications, always great forerunners, but it was when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed down at the feet of an illiterate Hindu ascetic, a self-illuminated ecstatic and “mystic” without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon him that the battle was won. The going forth of Vivekananda, marked out by the Master as the heroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it, was the first visible sign to the world that India was awake not only to survive but to conquer. Afterwards when the awakening was complete a section of the nationalist movement turned in imagination to a reconstruction of the recent pre-British past in all its details. This could not be. Inertia, the refusal to expand and alter, is what our philosophy calls tamas, and an excess of tamas tends to disintegration and disappearance. Aggression is necessary for self-preservation and when a force ceases to conquer, it ceases to live—that which remains stationary and stands merely on the defensive, that which retires into and keeps within its own kot or base, as the now defunct Sandhya used graphically to put it, is doomed to defeat, diminution and final elimination from the living things of this world. Hinduism has always been pliable and aggressive; it has thrown itself on the attacking force, carried its positions, plundered its treasures, made its own everything of value it had and ended either in wholly annexing it or driving it out by rendering its further continuation in the country purposeless and therefore impossible. Whenever it has stood on the defensive, it has contracted within narrower limits and shown temporary signs of decay.
We have to transcend Nature, to become super-Nature, but it follows from what I have said that it is by taking advantage of something still imprisoned in Nature itself, by following some line which Nature is trying to open to us that we ought to proceed. By yielding to our ordinary nature we fall away both from Nature itself and from God; by transcending Nature we at once satisfy her strongest impulse, fulfil all her possibilities and rise towards God. The human first touches the divine and then becomes the divine. But there are those who seek to kill Nature in order to become the Self. Shall we follow them? No, however great & lofty be their path, however awful & dazzling their aspiration, because it is not God’s intention in humanity & therefore not our proper dharma. Let any say, if he will, that we have made the lower choice. We answer in the language of the Gita, Sreyan swadharmo viguno, Better is the law of our own being though inferior, too perilous the superior law of another’s being. To obey God’s will in us, is certainly more blissful, perhaps even more divine than to rise to the austere heights of the Adwaitin & the ineffable self-extinction in an indefinable Existence. For us the embrace of Krishna is enough and the glory of the all-puissant bosom of Kali. We have to transcend & possess Nature, not to kill her.
We say to the nation, “It is God’s will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India’s eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, ‘This is our dharma.’ We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours.”
It is in this infinitely motionless, yet infinitely moving Brahman that Matariswan or Prana, the great Breath of things, the mighty principle of Life, disposes forms and solidities rescuing them out of the undifferentiated state from which the world arose. To understand these two verses it is necessary to grasp…Read the whole passage · 761 wordsClose the passage
It is in this infinitely motionless, yet infinitely moving Brahman that Matariswan or Prana, the great Breath of things, the mighty principle of Life, disposes forms and solidities rescuing them out of the undifferentiated state from which the world arose. To understand these two verses it is necessary to grasp clearly the ideas of creation & evolution which the Upanishads seek to formulate. What in Europe is called creation, the Aryan sages preferred to call srishti, projection of a part from the whole, the selection, liberation and development of something that is latent and potentially exists. Creation means the bringing into existence of something which does not already exist; srishti the manifestation of something which is hidden and unmanifest. The action of Prakriti proceeds upon the principle of selection leading naturally to development; she selects the limited out of the unlimited, the particular out of the general, the small portion out of the larger stock. This limited, particular & fractional having by the very nature of limitation a swabhav, an ownbeing or as it is called in English a nature, which differentiates it from others of its kind, develops under the law of its nature; that is its swadharma, its own law & religion of being, and every separate & particular existence, whether inanimate thing or animal or man or community or nation must follow & develop itself under the law of its nature and act according to its own dharma. It cannot follow a nature or accept a dharma alien to itself except on peril of deterioration, decay and death. This nature is determined by the balance in its composition of the three gunas or essential qualities of Prakriti, passivity, activity and equipoise, which reveal themselves under different shapes in the animate as well as the inanimate, in the mind as well as in the body. In matter they appear as passive reception, reaction and retention, in human soul as the brutal animal, the active, creative man and the calm, clear-souled god. It must always be remembered that Prakriti is no other than Avidya, the great Illusion. She is that impalpable indeterminable source of subtle and gross matter, Matter in the abstract, the idea of difference and duality, the impression of Time, Space and Causality. The limited is limited not in reality, but by walls of Avidya which shut it in and give it an impression of existence separate from that of the illimitable, just as a room is shut off from the rest of the house by walls and has its separate existence and its separate nature small or large, close or airy, coloured white or coloured blue. Break down the walls and the separate existence and separate nature disappear; the very idea of a room is lost and there is nothing left but the house. The sense of limitation and the consequent impulse towards development & self-enlargement immediately create desire which takes the form of hunger and so of a reaching after other existences for the satisfaction of hunger; and from desire & the contact with other existences there arise the two opposite forces of attraction and repulsion which on the moral plane are called liking and dislike, love and hatred. Thus [the] necessity of absorbing mental and aesthetic food for the material of one’s works; this too is hunger. The instinct of self-enlargement shows itself in the physical craving for the absorption of other existences to strengthen oneself, in the emotional yearning to other beings, in the intellectual eagerness to absorb the minds of others and the aesthetic desire to possess or enjoy the beauty of things & persons, in the spiritual passion of love & beneficence, and all other activity which means the drawing of the self of others into one’s own self and pouring out of oneself on others. Desire is thus the first principle of things. Under the force of attraction and repulsion hunger begins to differentiate itself & develop the various senses in order the better to master its food and to feel & know the other existences which repel or attract it. So out of the primal consciousness of Will dealing with matter is developed form and organism, vitality, receptive mind, discriminating mind, Egoism. Out of this one method of Prakriti, selection, liberation and development, the whole evolution of the phenomenal world arises. Creation therefore is not a making of something where nothing existed, but a selection and new formation out of existing material; not a sudden increase, but a continual rearrangement and substitution; not an arbitrary manufacture, but an orderly development.
It may well be that both tendencies, the mental and the vital and physical stress of Europe and the spiritual and psychic impulse of India, are needed for the completeness of the human movement. But if the spiritual ideal points the final way to a triumphant harmony of manifested life, then it is all-important for India not to lose hold of the truth, not to give up the highest she knows and barter it away for a perhaps more readily practicable but still lower ideal alien to her true and constant nature. It is important too for humanity that a great collective effort to realise this highest ideal—however imperfect it may have been, into whatever confusion and degeneration it may temporarily have fallen,—should not cease, but continue. Always it can recover its force and enlarge its expression; for the spirit is not bound to temporal forms but ever-new, immortal and infinite. A new creation of the old Indian svadharma, not a transmutation to some law of the Western nature, is our best way to serve and increase the sum of human progress.
Not that all these errors have not each of them a truth behind their false constructions; for all errors of the human reason are false representations, a wrong building, effective misconstructions of the truth or of a side or a part of the truth. Utility is a fundamental principle of existence and all fundamental principles of existence are in the end one; therefore it is true that the highest good is also the highest utility. It is true also that, not any balance of the greatest good of the greatest number, but simply the good of others and most widely the good of all is one ideal aim of our outgoing ethical practice; it is that which the ethical man would like to effect, if he could only find the way and be always sure what is the real good of all. But this does not help to regulate our ethical practice, nor does it supply us with its inner principle whether of being or of action, but only produces one of the many considerations by which we can feel our way along the road which is so difficult to travel. Good, not utility, must be the principle and standard of good; otherwise we fall into the hands of that dangerous pretender expediency, whose whole method is alien to the ethical. Moreover, the standard of utility, the judgment of utility, its spirit, its form, its application must vary with the individual nature, the habit of mind, the outlook on the world. Here there can be no reliable general law to which all can subscribe, no set of large governing principles such as it is sought to supply to our conduct by a true ethics. Nor can ethics at all or ever be a matter of calculation. There is only one safe rule for the ethical man, to stick to his principle of good, his instinct for good, his vision of good, his intuition of good and to govern by that his conduct. He may err, but he will be on his right road in spite of all stumblings, because he will be faithful to the law of his nature. The saying of the Gita is always true; better is the law of one’s own nature though ill-performed, dangerous is an alien law however speciously superior it may seem to our reason. But the law of nature of the ethical being is the pursuit of good; it can never be the pursuit of utility.
Writings in Bengali
I shall describe briefly the cause of this yearning for freedom. For all people, subjection is a messenger and servitor of death. Only freedom can protect life and make any progress possible. Swadharma (self-law) or work and endeavour fixed by one’s own nature is the only path of progress. The foreigner in occupation of the country, even if he is very kind, and our well-wisher, will not think twice about putting the load of an alien dharma on our heads. Regardless of whether his intention is noble or wicked, this can never do us anything but harm. We have neither the strength nor the inclination to advance on the path suitable to the nature of an alien people; if we follow it, we may be able to imitate them well enough, ingeniously covering up our own degradation with the symbols and robes of progress of the foreigner, but during an ordeal our weakness and sterility, resulting from the pursuit of a foreign dharma, will become evident. We too shall die out because of that sterility.
“Better is one’s own law of works, swadharma though in itself faulty, than an alien law well wrought out; death in one’s own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law.” 1
সনাতন ধর্ম্মের মধ্যে অনেক গৌণ ধর্ম্ম নিহিত; সনাতনকে অবলম্বন করিয়া পরিবর্তনশীল মহান্, ক্ষুদ্র নানাবিধ ধর্ম্ম স্ব স্ব কার্য্যে প্রবৃত্ত হয়। সর্ব্বপ্রকার ধর্ম্মকর্ম্ম স্বভাবসৃষ্ট। সনাতন ধর্ম্ম জগতের সনাতন স্বভাব আশ্রিত, এই নানাবিধ ধর্ম্ম নানাবিধ আধারগত স্বভাবের ফল। ব্যক্তিগত ধর্ম্ম, জাতিধর্ম্ম, বর্ণাশ্রিত ধর্ম্ম, যুগধর্ম্ম ইত্যাদি নানা ধর্ম্ম আছে। অনিত্য বলিয়া সেইগুলি উপেক্ষণীয় বা বর্জ্জনীয় নয়, বরং এই অনিত্য পরিবর্তনশীল ধর্ম্ম দ্বারাই সনাতন ধর্ম্ম বিকশিত ও অনুষ্ঠিত হয়। ব্যক্তিগত ধর্ম্ম, জাতিধর্ম্ম, বর্ণাশ্রিত ধর্ম্ম, যুগধর্ম্ম পরিত্যাগ করিলে সনাতন ধর্ম্মের পুষ্টি না হইয়া অধর্ম্মই বর্দ্ধিত হয় এবং গীতায় যাহাকে সঙ্কর বলে, অর্থাৎ সনাতন প্রণালী ভঙ্গ ও ক্রমোন্নতির বিপরীত গতি বসুন্ধরাকে পাপে ও অত্যাচরে দগ্ধ করে। যখন সেই পাপের ও অত্যাচারের অতিরিক্ত মাত্রায় মানুষের উন্নতির বিরোধিনী ধর্ম্মদলনী আসুরিক শক্তিসকল স্ফীত ও বলযুক্ত হইয়া স্বার্থ, ক্রুরতা ও অহঙ্কারে দশদিক আচ্ছন্ন করে, অনীশ্বর জগতে ঈশ্বর সাজিতে আরম্ভ করে, তখন ভারার্ত্ত পৃথিবীর দুঃখলাঘব করিবার মানসে ভগবানের অবতার কিম্বা বিভূতি মানবদেহে প্রকাশ হইয়া আবার ধর্ম্মপথ নিষ্কণ্টক করেন।
এই আকাঙ্ক্ষার কারণ সংক্ষেপে বলিব। জাতির পক্ষে পরাধীনতা মৃত্যুর দূত ও আজ্ঞাবাহক, স্বাধীনতায়ই জীবনরক্ষা, স্বাধীনতায়ই উন্নতির সম্ভাবনা। স্বধর্ম্ম অর্থাৎ স্বভাবনিয়ত জাতীয় কর্ম্ম ও চেষ্টা জাতীয় উন্নতির একমাত্র পন্থা। বিদেশী যদি দেশ অধিকার করিয়া অতি দয়ালু ও হিতৈষীও হন, তাহা হইলেও আমাদের মস্তকে পরধর্ম্মের ভার চাপাইতে ছাড়িবেন না। তাঁহার উদ্দেশ্য ভাল হউক মন্দ হউক, তাহাতে আমাদের অহিত ভিন্ন হিত হইবে না। পরের স্বভাবনিয়ত পথে অগ্রসর হইবার শক্তি ও প্রেরণা আমাদের নাই, সেই পথে গেলে আমরা অতি সুন্দররূপে পরের অনুকরণ করিতে পারি, পরের উন্নতির লক্ষণ ও বেশভূষায় অতি দক্ষতার সহিত স্বীয় অবনতি আচ্ছাদন করিতে পারি, কিন্তু পরীক্ষাকালে আমাদের পরধর্ম্মসেবাসম্ভূত দুর্ব্বলতা ও অসারতা বিকাশ পাইবে। আমরাও সেই অসারতার ফলে বিনাশপ্রাপ্ত হইব। রোমের আধিপত্যভুক্ত, রোমের সভ্যতাপ্রাপ্ত প্রাচীন য়ুরোপীয় জাতিসকল অনেকদিন সুখস্বচ্ছন্দে কাটাইলেন বটে, কিন্তু তাঁহাদের শেষ অবস্থা অতি ভয়ানক হইল, মনুষ্যত্ব বিনাশে তাঁহাদের যে ঘোর দুর্দ্দশা হইল, প্রত্যেক পরাধীনতাপরায়ণ জাতির সেই মনুষ্যত্ব-বিনাশ ও ঘোর দুর্দ্দশা অবশ্যম্ভাবী। পরাধীনতার প্রধান ভিত্তি জাতির স্বধর্ম্মনাশ ও পরধর্ম্মসেবা। যদি পরাধীন অবস্থায় স্বধর্ম্ম রক্ষা করিতে বা পুনরুজ্জীবিত করিতে পারি, পরাধীনতার বন্ধন আপনি খসিয়া পড়িবে, ইহা অলঙ্ঘনীয় প্রাকৃতিক নিয়ম। অতএব কোন জাতি যদি
লণ্ডনে জাতীয় মহাসভার অধিবেশনের পক্ষে গীতাকে আশ্রয় করিয়া একটী অদ্ভুত ও রহস্যময় যুক্তি প্রদর্শিত হইতেছে। অধিবেশনের পরিপোষকগণ সেইরূপ অধিবেশনে প্রকৃত ফলের সম্ভাবনা দেখাইতে না পারিয়া দেশবাসীকে গীতোক্ত নিষ্কামধর্ম্ম এবং সিদ্ধি ও অসিদ্ধি সম্বন্ধে সমতা অবলম্বন করিতে বলিতেছেন। লণ্ডন অধিবেশন আমাদের কর্ত্তব্য কর্ম্ম, অতএব তাহার ফলাফল বিবেচনা না করিয়া কর্ত্তব্য কর্ম্ম সমাধান করা উচিত। রাজনীতিতে ধর্ম্মের দোহাই ও গীতার দোহাই দেখিয়া আমরা প্রীত হইলাম, এবং ‘কর্ম্মযোগী’ ও ‘ধর্ম্মের’ চেষ্টার ফল হইতেছে বুঝিয়া আশান্বিত হইলাম। তবে গীতার এইরূপ ব্যাখ্যায় গোড়ায় গলদ হইবার সম্ভাবনা দেখিয়া শঙ্কিতও হইলাম। কর্ত্তব্য পালনের উপায়-নির্ব্বাচনে অপরিণামদর্শিতা ও উদ্দেশ্যসিদ্ধির চেষ্টায় উদাসীনতা শিক্ষা দেওয়া গীতার সমতাবাদ ও নিষ্কাম-কর্ম্মবাদের উদ্দেশ্য নহে। আমাদের কর্ত্তব্য কি, তাহা অগ্রে নির্ণয় করা আবশ্যক; তৎপরে ধীরভাবে অসিদ্ধিতে অবিচলিত হইয়া কর্ত্তব্যসম্পাদন করা ধর্ম্মানুমোদিত পন্থা। লণ্ডন অধিবেশন আমাদের কর্ত্তব্য কর্ম্ম কিনা, তাহা লইয়াই বাদবিবাদ; সেই প্রশ্নের মীমাংসায় পরিণামচিন্তা বর্জ্জন করিতে পারি না। কর্ত্তব্য-নির্ণয়ে দুই স্বতন্ত্র বিষয়ের মীমাংসা আবশ্যক, প্রথম উদ্দেশ্য, দ্বিতীয় উপায়। মুখ্য উদ্দেশ্য ধর্ম্মানুমোদিত হইলে — ধর্ম্মের আবশ্যক অঙ্গ হইলে — পরিণাম চিন্তা চলে না; তাহা আমাদের স্বধর্ম্ম হয়, সেই ধর্ম্মপালনে নিধনও শ্রেয়স্কর তবে তাহা পরিত্যাগ করিয়া পরধর্ম্মপালন পাপ। যেমন, স্বাধীনতা-অর্জ্জনের চেষ্টা, স্বাধিকার-লাভের চেষ্টা, দেশহিত-সম্পাদনের চেষ্টা জাতির প্রধান ধর্ম্ম, দেশের প্রত্যেক কর্ম্মী-সন্তানের স্বধর্ম্ম, সেই স্বধর্ম্মপালনে প্রাণত্যাগও শ্রেয়স্কর, তথাপি স্বধর্ম্মত্যাগপূর্ব্বক শূদ্রোচিত পরাধীনতা এবং দাসস্বভাব-সুলভ স্বার্থপরতা আশ্রয় করা মহাপাপ। কিন্তু উপায় কেবলই ধর্ম্মানুমোদিত হইলে চলে না, উদ্দেশ্যসিদ্ধির উপযোগীও হওয়া প্রয়োজন। স্বধর্ম্মের অঙ্গস্বরূপ কর্ত্তব্য কর্ম্ম সমাধানের জন্য ধর্ম্মানুমোদিত ও উপযুক্ত উপায় প্রয়োগপূর্ব্বক উৎসাহের সহিত কর্ত্তব্য-সিদ্ধির চেষ্টা করিয়াও যদি সিদ্ধি লাভ না ঘটে, তাহা হইলে অসিদ্ধিতে অবিচলিত হইয়া প্রাণত্যাগ পর্য্যন্ত পুনঃ পুনঃ সর্ব্ববিধ উপযুক্ত ও ধর্ম্মানুমোদিত উপায়ে কর্ত্তব্য-
Letters
(Gita, III.35)
Evening talks
Sri Aurobindo: Present politics in India is not essentially different from, it is rather an imperfect imitation of, European politics. The modern Indian politicians readily adopt catchwords and intellectual ideas from Europe and without reference to their own life and genius they try to introduce them into the country. Sometimes it is Democracy, sometimes Bolshevism, sometimes Fascism. Europe does not seem to have made any real progress with the help of these ideas. Is it worth while for the Indians to give up their own _svadharma_ in pursuit of these alien foreign ideals? Then our politicians have adopted the whole machinery of European politics – e.g. the press, the platform, the Congress organization; specially they have adopted the British methods. Propaganda and public agitation has its use in England, where the voters determine the policy of the Government, but in India it is meaningless. The only thing Indian in the present political movement is the demand for freedom. Instead of frittering away energy in useless imitations of foreign methods the people of the country should be organized for freedom.
