Swami Dayanand Saraswati:A Prophet of Modern Hinduism: Difference between revisions

Swami Dayanand Saraswati:A Prophet of Modern Hinduism

More than thirty-five years ago I graduated from D.A.V. College in Amritsar. Credit truly goes to this fine institution that I still cherish my fond memories of the educational experience. Even though D.A.V. College is named after a man called “Dayanand”, most students knew next to nothing about him and nor were we taught anything about him. Then in the early 1970s a minor incident occurred that surprised many of us. The Punjab Government decided to realign some colleges to affiliate with the newly created Guru Nanak University located in Amritsar. A number of colleges including those in Amritsar were included in this transfer category and surprisingly this decision caused an uproar among them. Apparently these colleges were content with their affiliation with the Punjab University in Chandigarh, and resented strongly being reassigned to Guru Nanak University. As a young student I heard distressing rumors that these D.A.V. colleges didn’t think much of the name of Guru Nanak, which to me was baffling all the more because I held D.A.V. colleges in high esteem just as I held Guru Nanak’s name. I graduated and moved on but the question remained in my remote memory as to why such institutions of higher learning like the D.A.V colleges resented being linked to the name of Guru Nanak via a university affiliation.

After commissioning in the U.S. Army and weeks before leading to the 1984 tragedies affecting the Sikhs in India, I read a few reports highlighting the role that Arya Samaj played in the breakdown of Punjabi society both before and after Punjab’s partition in 1947. Swami Dayananda about whom I did not know much at that time founded Arya Samaj. I have always exercised caution while reading news authored by various Indian groups including the Sikhs. Finally the circumstances had descended for me to begin unveiling the mystery of Arya Samaj and its founder Swami Dayanand. Little was I prepared when in 1991 I read the Satyarth Prakash, Dayananda’s master literature, which left me stunned for days. Before I dwell further on the Swami, let me say a few words on modern Hinduism, an understanding of which is essential here. What is modern Hinduism?

With the introduction of British colonialism in the Bengal region of India a new ideology took birth that was to transform classical and/or popular Hinduism. In other words, modern Hinduism (also referred to as reformatory Hinduism) is a reinterpretation of Hindu scriptures or Hindu ideas based upon the following six competing aggressive factors: (1) European colonialism; (2) Christian missions; (3) Western education & technology; (4) Western means of propaganda & disinformation; (5) Theosophy; and (6) Freemasonry. Over the years various interpretations had appeared on the horizon starting with the Brahmo Samaj and its various tributaries. Men who brought forth these new interpretations are the ones whom I call “Prophets of modern Hinduism.” They range from RamMohan Roy in Bengal to Mahatma Gandhi of Gujarat. In fact among the cadres of these prophets, all hailed from Bengal with the exception of two from Gujarat namely Swami Dayananda and Mahatma Gandhi.

It should be noted that both Gandhi and Dayanand exerted far-reaching negative impact on Punjab. While popular imagination is entrenched in thinking that modern Hinduism is after all a reformatory movement and therefore a far better alternative to its predecessor, I contend that modern Hinduism is far more precarious ideologically with its unending mutations at any given opportunity and it can, and has, seriously undermined both the Hindus and their neighbors including the Sikhs. This characteristic of modern Hinduism is absolutely essential to unfolding the mystery surrounding Swami Dayananda and his legacy.

I have been researching Swami Dayananda off and on for the last sixteen years. Dayanand was a big man full of an unending supply of inner energies, determinations, zeal, resolve, and so forth. He cherished a sincere desire to seek answers to many mysteries that grapple a thinking person, and he would travel extraordinary distances often in unfriendly territories hoping to find answers. Imbued with that hungry spirit, amazingly Swami would seek debates with his opponents and open the books including the Hindu scriptures. All in all this man, while on road, carried a significant load of reading materials plus other items. Such was his unquenchable thirst to learn. There are more admirable qualities about him but I think you got the idea.

Dayanand’s story began in a small town of Tankara, Gujarat in 1824; born with a name of DayaRam Mulshankar, the Swami was nicknamed Mulji. Expectedly his Brahman parents were deeply religious within the Shaivite tradition and rightly so harbored great aspirations for Mulji. By the age of 22 years (1846) Mujli’s life was anything but stable; there was a storm brewing inside of him and he ran away from home. Shortly thereafter he was bestowed with the coveted title and he became Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Life away from home and barely existing on the dusty road and back alleys for the next 15 years in faraway inhospitable places as a sannayasi pursuing yoga and surviving by begging is no easy lifestyle. Then, why pursue such a life? The Swami’s answer would be moksha. I suspect Mulji was already experiencing psychological challenges, but I can’t cast a definitive critical eye on his early years (evidence is lacking). The Swami’s life as a yogi is a specimen for closer examination, however.

If Dayanand’s younger years at home were healthy (suspicion is otherwise), I believe yoga seriously undermined Swami’s critical faculties, and possibly afflicted him with a bipolar-like personality disorder. Swami devoted significant time and effort to master yoga, a task fraught with dangers. Reading his biographies one can’t escape turmoil the Swami was in. Here is an example: While on the banks of Ganges, upon seeing a corpse floating, Swami jumped and dragged the body out to examine it’s inside using his pocket knife. He cut open the body to inspect the heart, head, neck, etc., trying to verify the yoga anatomical details. Not finding them the frustrations grew. One can imagine Swami’s mental framework! It should come as no surprise to know that he could not find the chakras and the nadis via gross anatomy, which leads me to believe that Swami hadn’t been reading the yoga scriptures carefully. Nonetheless this wild experience should have convinced him to reevaluate the field of Hindu spirituality. But I can’t find that moment; all I find is more turmoil in him.

Further down in time, Swami found himself poisoned and he at once resorted to applying Neoli-karm, apparently one of the yogic dhoutis. Swami descended into the Ganges water, swallowed large quantities of this polluted water and passed it out via his anus in an attempt to flush his entire gastrointestinal system. By this way we are told, Swami saved his life. If this incident is true it points to the fact that Swami was deep into the yoga practices and no surprise to those of us who study Yoga that such yogic complex techniques point to his psychological instabilities. If this were not enough Dayanand acquired the habit of ingesting bhang.

As stated earlier these roughly fifteen years of pursuing yoga devastated the Swami especially his mental health if not the physical health. Swami needed a quick rescue and in 1860, Swami Virjanand Saraswati (1779-1868) of Mathura is credited for saving Dayanand. For the next three years, Mulji received instructions and then was commissioned to restore glory to Aryavarta and reestablish pristine Vedic knowledge at the expense of all other false religions. To put it mildly, as Arthur Koestler would sum it, Swami was tasked to become a Yogi and the Commissar – a perfect blend of both politics and religion. The image of Swami Dayananda that we have inherited as a reformer had its roots at this stage of his life. At this time, I will stop the biography and concentrate on Swami’s important teachings. VEDAS & the Vedic Literature

Dayanand considered Vedas to be eternal, meaning they existed before the universe came into being and authored by God himself. Using his brand of hermeneutics, Swami radically altered the teachings of Vedas thereby bringing them in conformity with the Semitic religions of Islam and Christianity. This of course didn’t go well at many places, especially where scholars and prominent people knew Sanskrit. In Punjab, however, the situation was different due to the susceptibility of educated Hindu Punjabi Khatri and his receptiveness to the new Vedic interpretation. Neither knowing Sanskrit and nor being versed in the Hindu scriptures these Punjabi Hindus swallowed the whole of Swami’s Vedas. Sensing his incredible successes in Punjab, Swami contacted the Punjab government to lay validity to his Vedic commentary. Hardly a surprise, the Punjab government along with its cadre of Vedic scholars rejected the Swami. Even Max Muller commented,

“By the most incredible interpretations Swami Dayanand succeeded in persuading himself and others that everything worth knowing, even the most recent inventions of modern science, were alluded to in the Vedas.” 

One man named Shiv Narayan Agnihotri (later, Satyananda Agnihotri) emerges as an intellectual giant of Punjab. Based upon his intense dealings with the Swami, Agnihotri accused him of (1) embezzlement, (2) hypocrisy, (3) the teachings of immorality (4) arrogance, and (5) misrepresentations of the Vedas. Unfortunately, the Punjabi Hindu, brainwashed in Arya Samaj, was in no mood to listen to Agnihotri. Incidentally, this is the same Agnihotri who almost forty years later warned Punjabis and other Indians to beware of Mahatma Gandhi. Agnihotri was the first Indian to recognize that race hatred is the modus operandi by which Gandhi worked his politics. The tragedy is that in both cases he failed to convince his fellow Punjabis of these two Gujaratis in their midst. Bhai Ditt Singh (1853-1901) had a singular honor of joining the ranks of Swami during his Punjab journey. Ditt Singh experienced another rare fortunate incident when he renounced the Swami upon learning uncomfortable version of his sermons. During this up close sessions, Singh literally witnessed how intricate and methodical the Vedic interpretations were made: Swami Dayanand reflected a considerable amount of flexibility in changing his interpretation of Vedas according to the need of the hour. For instance, in one of his discourses at Lahore, he said that the sun revolved around the earth. Back home, his admirers told him that people will think poor of Vedas as the latest scientific knowledgeable reveals that earth revolves around the sun. The following day, Swami Dayanand revised his interpretation of Vedas accordingly. The Caste System and Racism Although on the surface Dayanand looked reformed, however, on closer inspection he appears casteist and downright racist. In other words, the caste system stays intact, perhaps more solidified, if Swami’s prescription of Hindu totalitarianism were to be implemented. On page 266 [Bharadwaja’s translation] of Satyarth Prakash, we read him by citing the Atharva Veda: “The Dwijas (the twice-born)—Brahmanas, Ksyatriyas, Vaishyas—are called Aryas, while the Shudras are called Anaryas, or Non-Aryas.” Swami continues his racial rhetoric: In the face of these Vedic authorities how can sensible people believe in the imaginary tales of the foreigners. In the Devasura wars, Prince Arjuna and King Dashratha and others of Aryavarta used to go to the assistance of the Aryas in order to crush the Asuras…. But the war which Ram Chandra waged in the south against Ravana—the king of Ceylon—is called … war between the Aryas and Rakshasas. Besides, Manu also corroborates our position. He says, “The countries other than Aryavarta are called Dasyu and Maleschha countries.” The people living in the north-east, north, north-west and west of Aryavarta were called Dasyus, Asuras and Malechhas, while those living in the south, south-east and south-west were called Rakshasas. You can still see that the description of Rakshasas given therein tallies with the ugly appearance of the Negroes of today…. Hindu reformers like Dayananda would play with words and the concepts giving out different images of caste reforms without ever acknowledging that deceptive rhetoric is meant to throw off others by creating confusion. Careful reading of Swami’s political ideas throws some light insofar as his idea of a Hindu totalitarian state. One can only imagine the creation of state’s bureaucracy handling the caste matters! Dr. Rudolf Hoernle (Principal, Banaras Sanskrit College) made the following remarks: The [caste] the reformer [Dayananda] considers only as a political institution made by the rulers for the common good of society and not a natural or religious distinction…. The castes are simply different professions or guilds (adhikaras), established by the state to guard against confusion and mutual interference, and for the better establishment of the different works. Each class was made into a guild and furnished with its rights and privileges and made hereditary. But, as the whole classification is a creation of the state, any Sudra, who is deserving of the promotion, can be made by the state a Vaisya or Kshattriya or Brahmana, if he qualifies for the work of the respective class. Likewise any Brahmana, who deserves the degradation can be made by the state a Sudra. In fact, any Brahmana who is disqualified for the work, becomes at once a Sudra de jure, and a Sudra, who qualifies for it, becomes at once a Brahmana de jure; though neither can become so de facto also either by his own will or the will of others, as long as the state does not make him so.

On the surface Swami has made a reform here because seemingly the idea of hereditary castes is no longer Vedic and, the non-hereditary caste system is to be run and maintained by the State. In other words, what sounded as reform turned out to be no reform: If the caste system cannot be protected by claiming the religious doctrines for whatever reasons then come up with the political design to accomplish the same. The end result is still the same. There is no evidence in place where Swami as an authority ever crossed the caste lines to intermingle or eat with the lower castes. At one time he refused to dine with Sayed Ahmed Khan, and on another occasion he refused to eat a Brahmo’s food because it had been prepared by a low-caste female. Once in Banaras, Swami left a room where a Muslim was present to have a drink of water. .” Immoralities Swami remained single throughout his life. Whether he experienced any sexual encounters of any variety is hard to tell since the literature is silent on this fact. For sake of understanding, let’s say you are married and you find out your wife is pregnant. Given your beliefs, consider that you must refrain from any sexual activity until your wife delivers a baby. In the meantime how do you handle your sexual urges? Swami has an answer: Go ahead with sexual intercourse with someone else provided you do it according to the Vedic instructions -- read page 140 of Satyarth Prakash. In no way this recommendation is different from Islam’s sanctioning of “temporary marriage” called Mutah. Swami spelled out a wild doctrine of niyoga. I ask the reader to browse through pages 130 to 140 of Satyarth Prakash to grasp what niyoga is. Many fair-minded Hindus and others were incensed at the Swami for uttering such immoral nonsense. Manusmriti sanctions sex outside the norm in a narrowly prescribed manner. But the Swami, being never a careful reader, overextended Manu’s sanctions and created a scandal against him. His brainwashed followers brought suit against those ridiculing the niyoga. I am thankful to John Campbell Oman for bringing to my attention the following: “Courts pronounced the tenets of the Arya Samaj in regard to Niyoga to be undoubtedly immoral.” Sex

CONTD.