II. LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Christianity in India—The “Brahma-Somaj”—Mohammedanism—Ramakrishna—Vivekananda

It was natural and characteristic that under these conditions India should seek consolation in religion. For a time she gave a cordial welcome to Christianity; she found in it many ethical ideals that she had honored for thousands of years; and “before the character and behavior of Europeans,” says the blunt Abbé Dubois, “became well known to these people, it seemed possible that Christianity might take root among them.”¹⁰ Throughout the nineteenth century harassed missionaries tried to make the voice of Christ audible above the roar of the conquering cannon; they erected and equipped schools and hospitals, dispensed medicine and charity as well as theology, and brought to the Untouchables the first recognition of their humanity. But the contrast between Christian precept and the practice of Christians left the Hindus sceptical and satirical. They pointed out that the raising of Lazarus from the dead was unworthy of remark; their own religion had many more interesting and astonishing miracles than this; and any true Yogi could perform miracles today, while those of Christianity were apparently finished.¹¹ The Brahmans held their ground proudly, and offered against the orthodoxies of the West a system of thought quite as subtle, profound, and incredible. “The progress of Christianity in India,” says Sir Charles Eliot, “has been insignificant.”¹²

Nevertheless, the fascinating figure of Christ has had far more influence in India than may be measured by the fact that Christianity has converted six per cent of the population in three hundred years. The first signs of that influence appear in the Bhagavad-Gita;¹³ the latest are evident in Gandhi and Tagore. The clearest instance is in the reform organization known as the Brahma-Somaj,* founded in 1828 by Ram Mohun Roy. No one could have approached the study of religion more conscientiously. Roy learned Sanskrit to read the Vedas, Pali to read the Tripitaka of Buddhism, Persian and Arabic to study Mohammedanism and the Koran, Hebrew to master the Old Testament and Greek to understand the New.¹⁴ Then he took up English, and wrote it with such ease and grace that Jeremy Bentham wished that James Mill might profit from the example. In 1820 Roy published his Precepts of Jesus: a Guide to Peace and Happiness, and announced: “I have found the doctrines of Christ more conducive to moral principles, and better adapted for the use of rational beings, than any other which have come to my knowledge.”¹⁵ He proposed to his scandalized countrymen a new religion, which should abandon polytheism, polygamy, caste, child marriage, suttee and idolatry, and should worship one god —Brahman. Like Akbar he dreamed that all India might be united in so simple a faith; and like Akbar he underestimated the popularity of superstition. The Brahma-Somaj, after a hundred years of useful struggle, is now an extinct force in Indian life.†

The Moslems are the most powerful and interesting of the religious minorities of India; but the study of their religion belongs to a later volume. It is not astonishing that Mohammedanism, despite the zealous aid of Aurangzeb, failed to win India to Islam; the miracle is that Mohammedanism in India did not succumb to Hinduism. The survival of this simple and masculine monotheism amid a jungle of polytheism attests the virility of the Moslem mind; we need only recall the absorption of Buddhism by Brahmanism to realize the vigor of this resistance, and the measure of this achievement. Allah now has some 70,000,000 worshipers in India.

The Hindu has found little comfort in any alien faith; and the figures that have most inspired his religious consciousness in the nineteenth century were those that rooted their doctrine and practice in the ancient creeds of the people. Ramakrishna, a poor Brahman of Bengal, became for a time a Christian, and felt the lure of Christ;* he became at another time a Moslem, and joined in the austere ritual of Mohammedan prayer; but soon his pious heart brought him back to Hinduism, even to the terrible Kali whose priest he became, and whom he transformed into a Mother-Goddess overflowing with tenderness and affection. He rejected the ways of the intellect, and preached Bhakti-yoga—the discipline and union of love. “The knowledge of God,” he said, “may be likened to a man, while love of God is like a woman. Knowledge has entry only to the outer rooms of God, and no one can enter into the inner mysteries of God save a lover.”¹⁸ Unlike Ram Mohun Roy, Ramakrishna took no trouble to educate himself; he learned no Sanskrit and no English; he wrote nothing, and shunned intellectual discourse. When a pompous logician asked him, “What are knowledge, knower, and the object known?” he answered, “Good man, I do not know all these niceties of scholastic learning. I know only my Mother Divine, and that I am her son.”¹⁹ All religions are good, he taught his followers; each is a way to God, or a stage on the way, adapted to the mind and heart of the seeker. To be converted from one religion to another is foolishness; one need only continue on his own way, and reach to the essence of his own faith. “All rivers flow to the ocean. Flow, and let others flow, too!”²⁰ He tolerated sympathetically the polytheism of the people, and accepted humbly the monism of the philosophers; but in his own living faith God was a spirit incarnated in all men, and the only true worship of God was the loving service of mankind.

Many fine souls, rich and poor, Brahman and Pariah, chose him as Guru, and formed an order and mission in his name. The most vivid of these followers was a proud young Kshatriya, Narendranath Dutt, who, full of Spencer and Darwin, first presented himself to Ramakrishna as an atheist unhappy in his atheism, but scornful of the myths and superstitions with which he identified religion. Conquered by Ramakrishna’s patient kindliness, “Naren” became the young Master’s most ardent disciple; he redefined God as “the totality of all souls,”²¹ and called upon his fellow men to practise religion not through vain asceticism and meditation, but through absolute devotion to men.

Leave to the next life the reading of the Vedanta, and the practice of meditation. Let this body which is here be put at the service of others! . . . The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek. He alone serves God who serves all other beings!²²

Changing his name to Vivekananda, he left India to seek funds abroad for the Ramakrishna Mission. In 1893 he found himself lost and penniless in Chicago. A day later he appeared in the Parliament of Religions at the World’s Fair, addressed the meeting as a representative of Hinduism, and captured everyone by his magnificent presence, his gospel of the unity of all religions, and his simple ethics of human service as the best worship of God; atheism became a noble religion under the inspiration of his eloquence, and orthodox clergymen found themselves honoring a “heathen” who said that there was no other God than the souls of living things. Returning to India, he preached to his countrymen a more virile creed than any Hindu had offered them since Vedic days:

It is a man-making religion that we want. . . . Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong. . . . For the next fifty years . . . let all other, vain gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covers everything. . . . The first of all worship is the worship of those all around us. . . . These are all our gods—men and animals; and the first gods we have to worship are our own countrymen.²³

It was but a step from this to Gandhi.