New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century Part 6

[Sidenote: Four new religious organisations.]

As change more definite and perceptible, we look first at the new Indian religious organisations. Within the British period, four organised religious movements attract our notice. They are: I. The new Indian Christian Church; II. The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j and the kindred Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes; III. The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j; and IV. The Theosophical Society, which in India now stands for the revival of Hinduism.

I. To hear the native Indian Church reckoned among the products of the British period may be surprising to some. There are indeed Christian communities in India older than the Christianity of many districts in Britain, and even excluding the Syrian and Roman Christians of India we must acknowledge that the Protestant Christian community dates farther back than the British period. Yet in a real sense the Protestant Indian Church, and the progressive character of the whole Indian Church, belong to the century just closed. The Moravians and one English Missionary Society excepted, all the great Missionary Societies now at work have come into being since 1793. In 1901 the native _Protestant_ community in India, outcome of these Societies' labours, numbered close upon a million souls.

[Sidenote: The Indian Church.]

[Sidenote: The Indian Church and the national consciousness.]

The Indian Christian Church is a living organisation, or congeries of organisations, over two and a half million souls all told, and growing rapidly. The exact figures in 1901 were 2,664,313, showing an increase during ten years of 30.8 per cent. The figures exclude Eurasians and Europeans; and in Anglo-Indian speech, we may remark, all Americans and Australians and South African whites and the like are Europeans. The att.i.tude of the Indian Christian Church to the new ideas introduced by the British connection and by the modern world can readily be understood. Cut off, cast off, by their fellow-countrymen, and brought into closer contact than any others with Europeans in their missionaries and teachers, their minds have been open to all the new ideas. We know in fact that Indian Christians are often charged, by persons who do not appreciate the situation, with being over-Europeanised. It may be so in certain ways, but, irrespective of Christianity or Hinduism, the adoption of European ways results from contact with Europeans, and in certain respects is almost a condition of intercourse with Europeans.

Let those, for example, who talk glibly about Indians sticking to their own dress, know that gentlemen in actual native dress are not allowed to walk on that side of the bandstand promenade in Calcutta where Europeans sit--a scandal crying for removal. With regard to the new national consciousness, it may be repeated that the Indian Christian community is almost as alive with the national feeling as the educated Hindu community. As the Indian Church becomes at once more indigenous and more thoroughly educated in Western learning, as it becomes less identified with European denominations, and less dependent upon stimulus from without, it will no doubt become still more national in every sense, be more recognised as one of India's inst.i.tutions, and become a powerful educator in India. Once within the environment of the national feeling, the seed of Christian thought and modern ideas will spring up and spontaneously flourish. The future progress of the Indian Church may be said to depend upon the growth of that national consciousness within it.

The sense of independence and the duty of self-support and union are, properly, being fostered in the native churches. But one of the dangers ahead undoubtedly is that, like one of the other religious movements of the past century, or like the Ethiopian Church in South Africa, the Indian Church may become infected with the political rather than the religious aspect of the idea.

[Sidenote: The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j.]

[Sidenote: Rammohan Roy.]

II. _The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j_.--Next to the Christian Church in order of birth of the issue of the new age, comes the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic a.s.sociation. It was founded in Calcutta in 1828 by the famous reformer, Raja Rammohan Roy, first of modern Indians. The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j is confessedly the outcome of contact with Christian ideas. By the best known of the Br[=a]hma community, the late Keshub Chunder Sen, it was described as "the legitimate offspring of the wedlock of Christianity with the faith of the Hindu Aryans." "No other reformation"

[in India], says the late Sir M. Monier Williams, "has resulted in the same way from the influence of European education and Christian ideas."

The founder himself, Raja Rammohan Roy, was indeed more a Christian than anything else, although he wore his brahman thread to the day of his death in order to retain the succession to his property for his son. In London and in Bristol, where he died in 1833, he a.s.sociated himself with Dr. Carpenter and the more orthodox section of the Unitarians, explicitly avowing his belief in the miracles of Christ generally, and particularly in the resurrection. In Calcutta, indeed, the origin of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j was acknowledged at its commencement. After attending the Scotch and other Churches in Calcutta, and then the Unitarian Church, Rammohan Roy and his native friends set up a Church of their own, and one name for it among educated natives was simply the Hindu Unitarian Church. It is a secondary matter that, to begin with, the reformer believed that he had found his monotheism in the Hindu Scriptures, now known to all students as the special Scriptures of pantheism.

Raja Rammohan Roy, the brave man who made a voyage to Britain in defiance of caste, the champion of the widow who had often been virtually obliged to lay herself on her dead husband's pyre, the strenuous advocate of English education for Indians, the supporter of the claim of Indians to a larger employment in the public service, has not yet received from New India the recognition and honour which he deserves. To every girl, at least in Bengal, the province of widow-burning, he ought to be a hero as the first great Indian knight who rode out to deliver the widows from the torturing fire of Suttee.

[Sidenote: Service of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j to India.]

As its theistic name implies, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j professedly represents a movement towards theism, _i.e._ a rise from the polytheism and idolatry of the ma.s.ses and a rejection of the pantheism of Hindu philosophy. Of course, noteworthy though it be, the foundation of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j in 1828 was not the introduction of monotheism to India. In the Indian Christian Church and in Mahomedanism, the doctrine of one, personal, G.o.d had been set forth to India, and in one of the ancient Hindu philosophical systems, the Yoga Philosophy, the same doctrine is implied. But in India, Christianity and Mahomedanism were a.s.sociated with hostile camps; the Yoga Philosophy was known only to a few Sanscrit scholars. In Br[=a]hmaism, the doctrine of one personal G.o.d became again natural naturalised in India. That has been its special service to India, to naturalise monotheism and many social and religious movements. For in India, things new and foreign lie under a peculiar suspicion. In the social sphere, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j repudiates caste and gives to women a position in society. As Indian _theists_ also, when their first church was opened in 1830, they gave the Indian sanction to congregational worship and prayer, "before unknown to Hindus." For, the brahman interposing between G.o.d and the ignorant mult.i.tude, the Hindu mult.i.tude do not a.s.semble themselves for united prayer, as Christians and Mahomedans do; and at the other end of the Hindu scale, the professed pantheist as such cannot pray. In proof of the latter statement, we recall the words of Swami Vivekananda, representative of Hinduism in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, in a lecture "The Real and the Apparent Man," published in 1896. "It is the greatest of all lies," he writes somewhat baldly, although one is often grateful for a bald, definite statement, "that we are mere men; we are the G.o.d of the Universe.... The worst lie that you ever told yourself is that you were born a sinner.... The wicked see this universe as a h.e.l.l, and the partially good see it as heaven, and the perfect beings realise it as G.o.d Himself.... By mistake we think that we are impure, that we are limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence."

Prayer is therefore irrational for a pantheist, for no man is separate from G.o.d.

[Sidenote: Its limited membership.]

The influence of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j has been far greater than its numerical success. Reckoned by its small company of 4050 members,[52]

some of them certainly men of the highest culture and of sincere devoutness, the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j is a limited and local movement, limited largely to the province of Bengal, and even to a few of the larger towns in the province. But if the taint of the intellectual origin of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j be still visible in the eclecticism that it professes, in its rejection of the supernatural, and in its poor numerical progress, it has nevertheless done great things for India.

[Sidenote: The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j and the national feeling.]

As yet the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j has remained unaffected by the political aspect of the new national feeling. Early in its history there was, indeed, a section of the Sam[=a]j resolved to limit the selection of scriptures to the scriptures of the Hindus, but the late Keshub Chunder Sen successfully a.s.serted the freedom of the Sam[=a]j, and probably saved it from the narrow patriotic groove and from the political character of the third of the new religious organisations, the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j.

[Sidenote: Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes or Prayer a.s.sociations of S.W.

India.]

_The Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes_ or Prayer a.s.sociations of South-Western India.--The history of India is pre-eminently the history of Northern India, that is of the great plains of the Ganges and the Punjab. One may test it by the simple academical test of reckoning what percentage of marks in an examination on Indian history is a.s.signed to the events of the great northern plains. It is the same in the more recent religious history of India. The southern provinces of Bombay and Madras have contributed very little in respect of new religious life, organised or unorganised, compared with the northern provinces of Bengal, the United Provinces, and the Punjab. The Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes or Prayer a.s.sociations of Bombay and South-western India are monotheistic like the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, and have their halls for their own worship. But socially they have not severed themselves from their Hindu brethren, and do not figure in the Census as separate. Even compared with the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, they are few in number. The first Pr[=a]rthan[=a]

Sam[=a]j was founded in Bombay in 1867. In Madras there is a small representation of the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j.

CHAPTER XI

NEW RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS

THE [=A]RYAS AND THE THEOSOPHISTS.

"Let us receive not only the revelations of the past, but also welcome joyfully the revelations of the present day."

--BISHOP COLENSO.

[Sidenote: The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j.]

III. _The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j_ or _Vedic Theistic a.s.sociation_--In contrast to the Sam[=a]jes which are leavening the country but themselves are numerically unprogressive, are two other organisations--first, the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j of the United Provinces and the Punjab, and secondly, the Theosophists, who are now most active in Upper India, with Benares the metropolis of Hinduism, as their headquarters. These two have taken hold of educated India as no other movements yet have done. They appeal directly to patriotic pride and the new national feeling, or, more truly, are primarily shaped thereby.

Founded in 1875, the [=A]ryas are the most rapidly increasing of the new Indian sects. In 1901 they numbered 92,419, an increase in the decade of 131 per cent. What ideas have such an attraction for the educated middle cla.s.s, for to that cla.s.s the [=A]ryas almost exclusively belong? In certain parts of the United Provinces and the Punjab, it seems as much a matter of course that one who has received a modern education should be an [=A]rya, as that in certain other provinces he should be a supporter of the Congress.

[Sidenote: Foundation ideas of the [=A]ryas--two.]

The prime motive ideas are two. One is the result of modern education and of Christian influence, namely, a consciousness that in certain grosser aspects, such as polytheism, idolatry, animal sacrifices, caste, and the seclusion of women, the present-day Hinduism cannot be defended.

Those things the [=A]ryas repudiate,--all honour to them for their protest in behalf of reason, although in respect of caste and the seclusion of women, their theory is said to be considerably ahead of their practice. In the same modern spirit every [=A]rya member pledges himself to endeavour to diffuse knowledge; and a college and a number of schools are carried on by [=A]ryas in the Punjab. Repudiating all those current customs, of course the [=A]ryas have parted company with the orthodox Hindus. [=A]rya preachers denounce the corruptions of Hinduism, and in turn, what may be called a Great Council of orthodox Hindus has p.r.o.nounced condemnation on the [=A]ryas. At an a.s.sembly of about four hundred Hindu pandits, held in 1881 in the Senate House of the University in Calcutta, the views of the founder of the [=A]ryas, Dyanand Saraswati, were condemned as heterodox.[53]

The second motive idea is the new national consciousness, the new patriotic feeling of Indians. The patriotic feeling is manifest in the name; the [=A]ryas identify themselves with the [=A]ryans, the Indo-European invaders of India, from whom the higher castes of Hindus claim to be descended. Virtually, we may say, the [=A]ryas claim by their name to be the pure original Hindus.

[Sidenote: Infallibility of the Vedas the leading tenet at first.]

To the first influence we may a.s.sign one of the chief doctrines of the [=A]ryas, namely, their monotheism. Others of their doctrines belong to the theology and philosophy of Hinduism, _e.g._ the ancient doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the doctrine of the three eternal ent.i.ties, G.o.d, the Soul, and Matter, the doctrinal significance of which we shall have occasion to consider hereafter. These three uncreated existences const.i.tute one of the doctrines of the Joga system of Hindu philosophy. To the second, or patriotic, influence, we may a.s.sign especially the fundamental tenet of the founder of the [=A]ryas, namely, the infallibility of the original Scriptures, the four Vedas, given, as he alleged, to Indian sages at the creation of the world. "Back to the Vedas!" we may say, is the cry of the [=A]ryas. In effect, the cry is tantamount to the plea that the errors of Hinduism are only later accretions; and be it acknowledged that no sanction can be drawn from the Vedas for the prohibition of widow marriages, for the general prevalence of child marriages, for the tyranny of caste, for idolatry and several other objectionable customs.[54] Among the [=A]ryas, therefore, we have the championship of things Indian in its crudest form. Ludicrous are the attempts to rationalise all the statements of the Vedas, and to find in them all modern science and modern ideas, pouring new wine into old wine-skins, in perfect innocence of "the higher criticism." Thus while animal sacrifices are proscribed by the [=A]ryas, they are everywhere a.s.sumed in the Vedas, and two of the hymns in the Rigveda are for use at the sacrifice of a horse (a[s']wamedha).[55] According to an [=A]rya commentator, however, a[s']wamedha is to be translated not "sacrifice of a horse," but destruction of ignorance,--sacrifice of an a.s.s, as one may jestingly say.[56] Offerings for deceased parents, prescribed in detail in the Vedas, are similarly rationalised into kind treatment of parents in old age. The ancient and modern condemnation of eating beef was rationalised by the [=A]ryas as follows: To kill a cow is as bad as to kill many men.

For suppose a cow to have a lifetime of fourteen or fifteen years. Her calves, let us say, would be six cow calves and six bull calves. The milk of the cow and her six cow calves during her natural lifetime would give food for a day to an army of 154,440 men, according to the calculation of the founder of the [=A]ryas, while the labour of the other six calves as oxen would give a full meal to an army of 256,000 men. Therefore to kill a cow, etc., Q.E.D. Modern democracy, the Copernican system of astronomy, a knowledge of the American continent, of steamships, and of the telegraph are all discovered by Dyanand in the Vedas, as no doubt wireless telegraphy and radium would have been, had death not cut short, in 1883, the discoveries of the founder of the [=A]ryas.[57]

[Sidenote: The modern leaven still affecting the [=A]ryas.]

These specimens of [=A]rya exposition of the Vedas I have given with no intention of scoffing, although we may be permitted a laugh. I desire to show the conflict of modern ideas and the new patriotic feeling, and how the latter has affected the religious and theological position of the [=A]ryas. It is the prominence of the patriotic feeling in many branches of the Sam[=a]j that has led some observers to describe it as less of a religious than a political organisation, anti-British and anti-Mahomedan and anti-Christian. But the opponents of the Sam[=a]j are always a.s.sociated by [=A]ryas with rival religions; _keranis, kuranis,_ and _puranis_ is their echoing list of their opponents,--namely, Christians _(kerani_ being a corruption of _Christiani_), and believers in the Koran, and believers in the Purans, _i.e._ the later Hindu books. And that there is much more than political feeling is apparent in their latest developments. The leaven of modern ideas has now led to the rise of a party among the [=A]ryas which is prepared to stand by reason out and out, and repudiate the founder's bondage to the Vedas and his _a priori_ expositions. Popularly, the new party is known as the "flesh-eaters." At present the Sam[=a]j is about equally divided, but the more rationalistic section comprises most of the new-educated members. Should the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j retain, as their chief doctrinal positions, the perfection of pure original Hinduism and opposition to every other ism, no great foresight or historical knowledge is required to predict for the [=A]ryas, despite their vigour, a speedy lapse from their reforming zeal into the position simply of a new Hindu caste, reverting gradually to type. Their fate is still in the balance.

[Sidenote: The Bombay [=A]rya Sam[=a]j.]

The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j in Bombay does not repudiate caste. One of their principles is that no member is expected to violate any of his own special caste rules. Why, one cannot help asking, this invertebrate character of the new Indian religious a.s.sociations in Western India? It is patent that what the Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes of Western India are to the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j of Bengal, the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j in Bombay is to that in the Punjab and the United Provinces--only feeble echoes.

Bombay Indians lead their countrymen in commercial enterprise, and in political questions they take as keen an interest as any of the Indian races. With hesitation and with apologies to Pa.r.s.ee friends, we ask whether it is the numerous Pa.r.s.ees in Bombay who have made their fellow-westerns only worldly-wise. For to great commercial enterprise, the Pa.r.s.ees add a stubborn conservatism in religion.

[Sidenote: The Theosophical Society and the national feeling.]

IV. _The Theosophists_ are the only other new religious organisation whom we can notice.--Them too the new patriotic feeling has very largely shaped. Founded in America in 1875, the very year in which the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j was established in Bombay, the Theosophical Society professed to be "the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity," representing and excluding no religious creed and interfering with no man's caste. On the other hand, somewhat inconsistently, it professed to be a society to promote the study of [=A]ryan and other Eastern literature, religion, and sciences, and to vindicate their importance; and it appealed for support, amongst others, "to all who loved India and would see a revival of her ancient glories, intellectual and spiritual." At the same time the society professed "to investigate the hidden mysteries of nature and the psychical powers latent in man." The society naturally gravitated towards India, and by 1884 had 87 branches in India and Ceylon, against 12 in all the rest of the world. Its career might easily have been predicted. Inevitably, when transplanted to India, about the year 1878, such a society came under the spell of the new national consciousness already referred to. For a time Theosophy shared with the political Congress the first place in the interest of New India, and crowds of educated Indians still a.s.semble whenever Mrs. Besant, now the leading Theosophist, is to speak. One of the rules of the society, however, saved it from the descent into politics that has overtaken the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j and tainted it as a religious movement. Rule XVI (1884) forbids members, as such, to interfere in politics, and declares expulsion to be the penalty for violation of the rule.

[Sidenote: [=A]rya period of the Theosophical Society.]

Consistently enough, when the society was transplanted to India, it entered into partnership with the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j; for two years, indeed, Madame Blavatsky, the first leader of the Theosophists, had been corresponding from America with the founder of the [=A]ryas. The [=A]rya tenet of the infallibility of the original Hindu Scriptures needed no reconciliation with the Theosophist declaration of the ancient spiritual glories of India. But the [=A]ryas are also religious reformers, while, as enlightened Hindus now complain, the Theosophists are more Hindu than the Hindus. After three years, in 1881, difference arose on the question of the personality of G.o.d. The [=A]ryas, we have seen, are monotheist; the Theosophical Society, we shall see, is identified with brahmanical pantheism.[58]

[Sidenote: Buddhist period of the Theosophical Society.]

[Sidenote: Pro-Hindu period of the Theosophical Society.]

The Buddhist period of the Theosophical Society, which came next, is best known to general readers, but is only an episode in its history. In the early "eighties," we find the society pro-Buddhist, and apparently identifying _Buddhism_ with "the ancient glories of India, spiritual and intellectual," that the society was professedly desirous to revive. We a.s.sociate the period with the publication of _Esoteric Buddhism_, by Mr.

A.P. Sinnett, one of the society's leaders, and with Madame Blavatsky's claim to be in spiritual communication with Mahatmas [great spirits] in Thibet, the Buddhist land, now robbed of its mystery by the British expedition of 1904. Madame Blavatsky claimed to be receiving letters carried straight from Thibet by some air-borne Ariel. The discovery in 1884 of Madame Blavatsky's trickery ended the exhibition of "psychical powers," and also apparently the Buddhist period of the society. That the society itself survived the exposure is proof that it had a deeper root than any mere cult of Buddhism or Spiritualism could give. Its appeal, as we have said, was to the new patriotic feeling in the sphere of religion. To Madame Blavatsky succeeded Mrs. Besant as leading spirit, and to the cult of Buddhism again succeeded the glorification of ancient Hinduism and now also apologies of Hinduism as it is; and to Madras as chief centre of Theosophy succeeded Benares, metropolis of Hinduism. Mrs. Besant proclaimed herself the reincarnation of some ancient Hindu pandit, and called upon Hindus to devote themselves to the study of the Sacred Sanscrit. Supported by many well-to-do Hindus, in 1900 she founded a college at Benares in which Hinduism might be lived and inculcated as Christianity is inculcated in the Indian Missionary Colleges. In the beginning of 1904 a great figure of the G.o.ddess Saraswati, the Hindu G.o.ddess of Learning, was being erected in the grounds of the College. The subordination of the Indian Theosophical Society, at least in the person of Mrs. Besant, to the pro-Hindu national movement may be p.r.o.nounced complete. In the sphere of religion, this new Indian consciousness which has enveloped the Theosophists is a force opposed to change and reform. The Theosophical Society, which at the outset professed to be the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood, is now fostering caste and Hindu exclusiveness, the ant.i.theses of the idea of humanity. Yet, as we shall see, even in the text-books of Hindu Religion prepared for use in the Hindu College, Benares, Christian thought is not difficult to discover. And its meed of praise must not be withheld from the attempts of Theosophists and the Hindu College, Benares, to rationalise current Hindu customs and to reduce the chaos of Hindu beliefs to some system that will satisfy New India. Fain would the Theosophists propound, as we have already noted in the chapter, "New Social Ideas," that caste should be determined by character and occupation, not by birth. That being impossible, they would fain see the myriad of castes reduced to the original four named in Manu. To quote again the summing up regarding the caste system in the chief Hindu text-book referred to--"Unless the abuses which are interwoven with caste can be eliminated, its doom is certain." That is much from the leaders of the Hindu reaction. In Hinduism they may often see only what they wish to see, but they are not wholly blinded.