‘Varnashramachar’ Strengthened National Integrity, ensuring Real Welfare
| H.H. (Dr) Shibnarayan Sen is a great scholar of Dharmashastras. He is also the General Secretary of ‘Shastra Dharma Prachar Sabha’ in Bengal and the Editor of Fortnightly Periodical ‘Truth’. His ‘Kshatratej’ is evident when he talks about atheists. He attained the spiritual level of 71% and became a Saint on 1st June 2019. |
| In Part 1 of this Article, we read what various authorities have said Varna – about Varnashram Dharma, that love and hatred are innate in man, that Varna Vyavastha and colour discrimination are poles asunder, that the aim of the British was to wedge a Caste divide, a brief on Casteism in history, the Hindu Educational System and Caste, and that Caste is not a doctrine of hate. In Part 2 of this Article, we read how Caste is the Parent of Solidarity, and the prowess of Caste system. Now, read Part 3. |
10. The Jeeva reaps what he had sown in his past lives
In the introduction to an article ‘The Four Varnas’, Sri Narendranath Chakravarti writes as follows : The Vedas and other Hindu Scriptures hold that the Jeeva reaps what he had sown in his past lives. His birth is conditioned by his Karmaphala. He takes birth in a family where he can experience the full effect of his past Karma. God Himself has ordained the four Varnas. It is not created by human beings or by the Brahmins as urged now by the Indologists (so-called). It is the Law of Creation. As divisions and inter-divisions run through the Creation as a universal law, it also runs through the human race.
It is an eternal law which knows no extinction or exception. Hindus had always believed that the Varnas are created by God Himself and the Vedas and other Hindu Scriptures also proclaim it.
The harm caused by the Europeans
Before the Europeans interested themselves into the History and Culture of India, the Indians themselves almost without any exception believed the Varnas to be a Divine Creation.
But after the Europeans rejected the Scriptural views, their pupils, the Anglicised minority of Hindus, were taught to regard the Varnas as an institution introduced by human agency.
A regular succession of Hindu scholars – including extraordinary intellectual geniuses, like Maharshi Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa or Bhagawan Shankaracharya – supported the Vedic view that the Varnas were created by God. No individual group of individuals, neither the Brahmins nor King Pushyamitra or any other Monarch introduced it among the Hindus. Nor it is an occupational grouping.
By the word ‘Creation’, the Jews, the Mohamedans, the Christians, etc. mean the acts of God whereby this world, which was absolutely non-existent before, came for the first time into existence. The Vedas do not assign such a meaning to the Sanskrit word ‘Sristhi’ (Creation). The Vedic view is that Sristhi means augmentation, increment. A Hindu does not believe that God on a particular day or days or at any particular period of time created this world or human beings for the first time out of nothing. Hindu Scriptures assert that under no circumstances, a thing can come out of nothing. The Cosmos is only an outer-manifestation of the Absolute, as God has neither a beginning nor an end, so the Creation, the material world which is but an expression of the Eternal Spirit in Time and Space cannot also have a beginning or an end.
With the help of His own Maya the world evolved out of God. It may be compared to a circle which revolves according to the Divine Law. After long intervals the Cosmos, the material world disintegrates into chaos, the phenomenal world dissolves into noumenal.
As a banyan tree collects all its trunks, branches twig long root and shrinks and draws them inside a seed of smallest size and remains latent there and sprouts up into a big tree when it gets an opportunity, so the Universe, men, beasts, birds, worms, trees, every created thing reverts to God and lies dormant there till the time of next evolution of the Universe in which the Jeevas, so long lying inactive as if in a long and deep slumber or a trance, wake up into action; this process continues eternally. The dissolution of the Universe does not wipe out or annihilate the past actions of the Jeevas. They simply remain inactive during the period of dissolution.
A Jeeva cannot simultaneously experience the effect of all his actions. He has to do it gradually, one after another, according to the Divine dispensation. In the preceding Cosmos, a Jeeva did not suffer the full consequences of the acts of his previous births and a part of them remained in store; he will have to experience the effects of that part in the succeeding Cosmos.
A Jeeva who has fully enjoyed the effect of a particular Karma will have to suffer the consequences of another of his past Karmas as ordained by God.
The principle of ‘Unity in Diversity’ and ‘Diversity in Unity’ is in the warp and woof of the entire ‘Creation’. Diversity exists not only in all creatures and all forms of life, including animals, plants, seeds worms, snakes, etc., but also in gems, jewels, metals, poison and every form of material creation in the form of ‘Brahmins’, ‘Kshatriya’, ‘Vaishya’, etc., as has been classified delineated in voluminous research undertaken by Raja Bhoj, Nakula of Mahabharata, etc. The Science of modern genetics also indicates to the importance of heredity and the ‘gene X environment’ interaction.
There is no scope of hatred in this and He (Sri Bhagawan) pervades everything. सर्वं प्राण एजति – says the Katha Upanishad.
11. Caste and Unity
Hostile critics have insisted that Caste produces disunion; one Caste is constantly jealous of another and their jealousy, strife and disunion are primarily responsible for the conquest of India by the foreigners. But this is false.
Disunity in India has never been between one Caste and another, but between individual rulers of the same Caste. Thus, Muhammad Ghori succeeded in conquering Prithvi Raj because of the jealousy and treachery of Jai Chand, cousin of Prithvi Raj. Similarly, the quarrel between Pratap Singh and Man Singh of Jaipur, paved the way for the conquest of Rajputana.
The intrigues of Pasupati, the Brahmin Minister of Lakshman Sen, against his master who describes himself a Brahmin, and not between a Brahmin and an untouchable, was responsible for the absurdly easy conquest of Bengal.
12. Benefits of Caste System
When Buddhism receded from India, Western Punjab and Eastern Bengal continued as strongholds of Buddhism. The protecting influence of Caste being absent, the people in the areas fell easy prey to Islamic conversion and were converted en masse, while in the rest of India, conversions were few and far between.
As East Bengal was largely converted to Buddhism, so in the first impact of Islam, the Buddhists therein all became Moslem, very rarely the Hindus. As a result, while in East Bengal, the Moslems formed 80% of the population, in West Bengal in the Burdwan Division, for example, they formed only 17%, the same as in the UP, although UP was a stronghold of the Muslim rulers and was kept under their subjugation for 6 centuries.
Similarly in Java, when it had been Hindu, it had produced powerful empires, like the Sailendra Empire, but declined when converted to Buddhism. The Buddhist Java was quickly overrun and converted to Islam but in the little island of Bali, where the Caste System flourished and flourishes to this day, Islam never secured a foot-hold and this place is still Hindu. No Islamic power succeeded in penetrating the fortress of Caste in that tiny island; the Dutch, when they overran Indonesia, found Bali a Hindu Kingdom.
Keen observers (Birdwood, Woodroffe) have testified that Hindu society has held together because of the Caste System. Because of this unity, it has weathered storms which have broken down ancient customs elsewhere. It is the earliest social system in existence from the millenium before Christ.
How the Caste-ridden Japan became a world power
The Caste-ridden Japan with its untouchable Etah, who form 1/10th of the entire population, became a first-class world power whose prowess shook the whole of Europe and Russia, while Casteless Burma was under the British till the other day and now although free, became an easy prey to Communism, whose depredations have become a national menace there.
13. Caste and Success
War is surely not the only criterion of success. There are other criteria such as devotion to truth, courage, humanity, etc. Judged on this basis again, Hinduism with its Caste System comes out triumphant. The vitality of Hinduism is shown by the galaxy of Sadhus and great men, who flourished in India after the Moslem conquest. No Nation in the world has probably produced a single similar individual and yet under alien rule, India produced Ramanuja, Madhvacharya, Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya, Tukaram, etc. The Nyaya School of Mithila, the new school of Nyaya at Nabadwip, Madhab Kar, Chakrapani and other makers of modern Ayurveda, etc., all flourished when India was subject to Moslems.
Similarly, after the Saka invasion, India produced Sages like Kumaril Bhatta, the Great Shankar, the Sage Bhatrihari (whose inimitable Bhattikabya is a miraculous structure of Grammar, Poetry and Ramayana); Nagarjuna, the Chemist, etc. and others too numerous to mention.
(To be continued)
| Disunity in India has never been between one Caste and another, but between individual rulers of the same Caste ! |