When I was asked to speak to you at
the annual meeting of your Sabha, it was my intention
to say a few words about the subject chosen for today,
the subject of the Hindu religion. I do not know now
whether I shall fulfill that intention; for as I sat
here, there came into my mind a word that I have to
speak to you, a word that I have to speak to the whole
of the Indian Nation. It was spoken first to myself in
jail and I have come out of jail to speak it to my
people.
It was more than a year ago that
I came here last. When I came I was not alone; one of
the mightiest prophets of Nationalism sat by my side.
It was he who then came out of the seclusion to which
God had sent him, so that in the silence and solitude
of his cell he might hear the word that He had to say.
It was he that you came in your hundreds to welcome.
Now he is far away, separated from us by thousands of
miles.
Others whom I was accustomed to
find working beside me are absent. The storm that swept
over the country has scattered them far and wide. It is
I this time who have spent one year in seclusion, and
now that I come out I find all changed. One who always
sat by my side and was associated in my work is a
prisoner in Burma; another is in the north rotting in
detention.
I looked round when I came out, I
looked round for those to whom I had been accustomed to
look for counsel and inspiration. I did not find them.
There was more than that. When I went to jail the whole
country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive
with the hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men
who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out
of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead
a silence.
A hush had fallen on the country
and men seemed bewildered; for instead of God's bright
heaven full of the vision of the future that had been
before us, there seemed to be overhead a leaden sky
from which human thunders and lightning rained. No man
seemed to know which way to move, and from all sides
came the question, "What shall we do next ? What is
there that we can do ?"
I too did not know which way to
move, I too did not know what was next to be done. But
one thing I knew, that as it was the Almighty Power of
God which had raised that cry, that hope, so it was the
same Power which had sent down that silence. He who was
in the shouting and the movement was also in the pause
and the hush. He has sent it upon us, so that the
nation might draw back for a moment and look into
itself and know His will. I have not been disheartened
by that silence because I had been made familiar with
silence in my prison and because I knew it was in the
pause and the hush that I had myself learned this
lesson through the long year of my
detention.
When Bepin Chandra Pal came out
of jail, he came with a message, and it was an inspired
message. I remember the speech he made here. It was a
speech not so much political as religious in its
bearing and intention. He spoke of his realisation in
jail, of God within us all, of the Lord within the
nation, and in his subsequent speeches also he spoke of
a greater than ordinary force in the movement and a
greater than ordinary purpose before it.
Now I also meet you again, I also
come out of jail, and again it is you of Uttarpara who
are the first to welcome me, not at a political meeting
but at a meeting of a society for the protection of our
religion. That message which Bepin Chandra Pal received
in Buxar jail, God gave to me in Alipore. That
knowledge He gave to me day after day during my twelve
months of imprisonment and it is that which He has
commanded me to speak to you now that I have come
out.
I knew I would come out. The year
of detention was meant only for a year of seclusion and
of training. How could anyone hold me in jail longer
than was necessary for God's purpose ? He had given me
a word to speak and a work to do, and until that word
was spoken I knew that no human power could hush me,
until that work was done no human power could stop
God's instrument, however weak that instrument might be
or however small. Now that I have come out, even in
these few minutes, a word has been suggested to me
which I had no wish to speak. The thing I had in my
mind He has thrown from it and what I speak is under an
impulse and a compulsion.
When I was arrested and hurried
to the Lal Bazar hajat I was shaken in faith for a
while, for I could not look into the heart of His
intention. Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried
out in my heart to Him, "What is this that has happened
to me ? I believed that I had a mission to work for the
people of my country and until that work was done, I
should have Thy protection. Why then am I here and on
such a charge ?"
A day passed and a second day and
a third, when a voice came to me from within, "Wait and
see." Then I grew calm and waited, I was taken from Lal
Bazar to Alipore and was placed for one month in a
solitary cell apart from men. There I waited day and
night for the voice of God within me, to know what He
had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this
seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson
came to me.
I remembered then that a month or
more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put
aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into
myself, so that I might enter into closer communion
with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My
work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I
thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or
even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It
seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, "The
bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken
for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my
intention that that should continue. I have had another
thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought
you here, to teach you what you could not learn for
yourself and to train you for my work."
Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered
into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I
was not only to understand intellectually but to
realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He
demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free
from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without
the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become
a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have
an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent,
success and failure, yet not to do His work
negligently.
I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of
the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of
us really know what that religion is. Other religions
are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession,
but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing
that has not so much to be believed as
lived.
This is the Dharma that for the
salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of
this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion
that India is rising. She does not rise as other
countries do, for self or when she is strong, to
trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal
light entrusted to her over the world. India has always
existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for
humanity and not for herself that she must be
great.
Therefore this was the next thing
He pointed out to me. He made me realise the central
truth of the Hindu religion. He turned the hearts of my
jailors to me and they spoke to the Englishman in
charge of the jail, "He is suffering in his
confinement; let him at least walk outside his cell for
half an hour in the morning and in the evening." So it
was arranged, and it was while I was walking that His
strength again entered into me. I looked the jail that
secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high
walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who
surrounded me.
I walked under the branches of
the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I
knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw
standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked
at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty
for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana
who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay
on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch
and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of
my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the
deeper vision He gave me.
I looked at the prisoners in
the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers,
and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was
Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and
misused bodies. Amongst these thieves and dacoits
there were many who put me to shame by their
sympathy, their kindness, the humanity triumphant
over such adverse circumstances.
One I saw among them especially,
who seemed to me a saint, a peasant of my nation who
did not know how to read and write, an alleged dacoit
sentenced to ten years' rigorous imprisonment, one of
those whom we look down upon in our Pharisaical pride
of class as Chhotalok. Once more He spoke to me and
said, "Behold the people among whom I have sent you to
do a little of my work. This is the nature of the
nation I am raising up and the reason why I raise
them."
When the case opened in the lower
court and we were brought before the Magistrate I was
followed by the same insight. He said to me, "When you
were cast into jail, did not your heart fail and did
you not cry out to me, where is Thy protection ? Look
now at the Magistrate, look now at the Prosecuting
Counsel."
I looked and it was not the
Magistrate whom I saw, it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana
who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the
Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the
prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat
there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and
smiled. "Now do you fear ?" He said, "I am in all men
and I overrule their actions and their words. My
protection is still with you and you shall not fear.
This case which is brought against you, leave it in my
hand. It is not for you. It was not for the trial that
I brought you here but for something else. The case
itself is only a means for my work and nothing
more."
Afterwards when the trial opened
in the Sessions Court, I began to write many
instructions for my Counsel as to what was false in the
evidence against me and on what points the witnesses
might be cross-examined. Then something happened which
I had not expected.
The arrangements which had been
made for my defence were suddenly changed and another
Counsel stood there to defend me. He came unexpectedly,
a friend of mine, but I did not know he was coming. You
have all heard the name of the man who put away from
him all other thoughts and abandoned all his practice,
who sat up half the night day after day for months and
broke his health to save me, Srijut Chittaranjan
Das.
When I saw him, I was satisfied,
but I still thought it necessary to write instructions.
Then all that was put away from me and I had the
message from within, "This is the man who will save you
from the snares put around your feet. Put aside those
papers. It is not you who will instruct him. I will
instruct him."
From that time I did not of
myself speak a word to my Counsel about the case or
give a single instruction, and if ever I was asked a
question, I always found that my answer did not help
the case. I had left it to him and he took it entirely
into his hands, with what result you know. I knew all
along what He meant for me, for I heard it again and
again, always I listened to the voice within; "I am
guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to your own work for
which I have brought you to jail and when you come out,
remember never to fear, never to hesitate. Remember
that it is I who am doing this, not you nor any
other.
Therefore whatever clouds may
come, whatever dangers and sufferings, whatever
difficulties, whatever impossibilities, there is
nothing impossible, nothing difficult. I am in the
nation and its uprising and I am Vasudeva, I am
Narayana, and what I will, shall be, not what others
will. What I choose to bring about, no human power can
stay."
Meanwhile He had
brought me out of solitude and placed me among those
who had been accused along with me. You have spoken
much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my
country. I have heard that kind of speech ever since I
came out of jail, but I hear it with embarrassment,
with something of pain.
For I know my
weakness, I am a prey to my own faults and
backslidings. I was not blind to them before and when
they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them
utterly. I knew them that I the man was a man of
weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong
only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I
found myself among these young men and in many of them
I discovered a mighty courage, a power of
self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply
nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to
me in force and character, - very many were that, - but
in the promise of that intellectual ability on which I
prided myself.
He said to me, "This
is the young generation, the new and mighty nation that
is arising at my command. They are greater than
yourself. What have you to fear ? If you stood aside or
slept, the work would still be done. If you were cast
aside tomorrow, here are the young men who will take up
your work and do it more mightily than you have ever
done. You have only got some strength from me to speak
a word to this nation which will help to raise it."
This was the next thing He told me.
Then a thing happened suddenly
and in a moment I was hurried away to the seclusion of
a solitary cell. What happened to me during that period
I am not impelled to say, but only that day after day,
He showed me His wonders and made me realise the utter
truth of the Hindu religion. I had many doubts before.
I was brought up in England amongst foreign ideas and
an atmosphere entirely foreign.
About many things in Hinduism I
had once been inclined to believe that they were
imaginations, that there was much of dream in it, much
that was delusion and Maya. But now day after day I
realised in the mind, I realised in the heart, I
realised in the body the truths of the Hindu religion.
They became living experiences to me, and things were
opened to me which no material science could explain.
When I first approached Him, it was not entirely in the
spirit of the Jnani. I came to Him long ago in Baroda
some years before the Swadeshi began and I was drawn
into the public field.
When I approached God at that
time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic
was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me
and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at
all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me
to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the
truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be a
mighty truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in
this religion based on the Vedanta.
So when I turned to the Yoga and
resolved to practise it and find out if my idea was
right, I did it in this spirit and with this prayer to
Him, "If Thou art, then Thou knowest my heart. Thou
knowest that I do not ask for Mukti, I do not ask for
anything which others ask for. I ask only for strength
to uplift this nation, I ask only to be allowed to live
and work for this people whom I love and to whom I pray
that I may devote my life."
I strove long for the realisation
of Yoga and at last to some extent I had it, but in
what I most desired I was not satisfied. Then in the
seclusion of the jail, of the solitary cell I asked for
it again. I said, "Give me Thy Adesh. I do not know
what work to do or how to do it. Give me a message." In
the communion of Yoga two messages came.
The first message said, "I have
given you a work and it is to help to uplift this
nation. Before long the time will come when you will
have to go out of jail; for it is not my will that this
time either you should be convicted or that you should
pass the time, as others have to do, in suffering for
their country. I have called you to work, and that is
the Adesh for which you have asked. I give you the
Adesh to go forth and do my work."
The second message came and it
said, "Something has been shown to you in this year of
seclusion, something about which you had your doubts
and it is the truth of the Hindu religion. It is this
religion that I am raising up before the world, it is
this that I have perfected and developed through the
Rishis, saints and Avatars, and now it is going forth
to do my work among the nations. I am raising up this
nation to send forth my word. This is the Sanatan
Dharma, this is the eternal religion which you did not
really know before, but which I have now revealed to
you.
The agnostic and the sceptic in
you have been answered, for I have given you proofs
within and without you, physical and subjective, which
have satisfied you. When you go forth, speak to your
nation always this word, that it is for the Sanatan
Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for
themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom
for the service of the world. When therefore it is said
that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma that
shall be great.
When it is said that India shall
expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma
that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It
is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists.
To magnify the religion means to magnify the country. I
have shown you that I am everywhere and in all men and
in all things, that I am in this movement and I am not
only working in those who are striving for the country
but I am working also in those who oppose them and
stand in their path. I am working in everybody and
whatever men may think or do, they can do nothing but
help in my purpose.
They also are doing my work, they
are not my enemies but my instruments. In all your
actions you are moving forward without knowing which
way you move. You mean to do one thing and you do
another. You aim at a result and your efforts subserve
one that is different or contrary. It is Shakti that
has gone forth and entered into the people. Since long
ago I have been preparing this uprising and now the
time has come and it is I who will lead it to its
fulfilment."
This then is what I have to say
to you. The name of your society is "Society for the
Protection of Religion". Well, the protection of the
religion, the protection and upraising before the world
of the Hindu religion, that is the work before us. But
what is the Hindu religion ? What is this religion
which we call Sanatan, eternal ? It is the Hindu
religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it,
because in this Peninsula it grew up in the seclusion
of the sea and the Himalayas, because in this sacred
and ancient land it was given as a charge to the Aryan
race to preserve through the ages.
But it is not circumscribed by
the confines of a single country, it does not belong
peculiarly and for ever to a bounded part of the world.
That which we call the Hindu religion is really the
eternal religion, because it is the universal religion
which embraces all others. If a religion is not
universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a
sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only
for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the
one religion that can triumph over materialism by
including and anticipating the discoveries of science
and the speculations of philosophy.
It is the one religion which
impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and
embraces in its compass all the possible means by which
man can approach God. It is the one religion which
insists every moment on the truth which all religions
acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and
that in Him we move and have our being. It is the one
religion which enables us not only to understand and
believe this truth but to realise it with every part of
our being. It is the one religion which shows the world
what the world is, that it is the Lila of Vasudeva. It
is the one religion which shows us how we can best play
our part in that Lila, its subtlest laws and its
noblest rules. It is the one religion which does not
separate life in any smallest detail from religion,
which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed
from us the reality of death.
This is the word that has been
put into my mouth to speak to you today. What I
intended to speak has been put away from me, and beyond
what is given to me I have nothing to say. It is only
the word that is put into me that I can speak to you.
That word is now finished. I spoke once before with
this force in me and I said then that this movement is
not a political movement and that nationalism is not
politics but a religion, a creed, a faith. I say it
again today, but I put it in another way. I say no
longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a
faith; I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us
is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the
Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows.
When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation
declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of
perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish.
The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism. This is the
message that I have to speak to you.
