Editorial
PA G E S P O N S O R : S R I V E N K ATA R A M A N A N T. , C H E N N A I
O
Real men and women ‘But’, Swamiji cautions his audience, ‘it can become so only if …you become real men and women, not people with vague ideas and superstitions in your brains…’ Indeed, achieving freedom in the two dimensions of our life—in the inner body-mindego complex and in the external social life—is possible only when we learn to take responsibility for our actions. Responsibility necessarily involves a sound sense of values, a
higher vision, and self-restraint. It calls for courage to face the truth and a steadfast determination to pursue the goal. When men and women become responsible in this sense, then they become real men and women. It is such people we need today in our country. As we write this editorial, our democratic general elections are entering into the final phase. All through the elections, marked by nasty intolerance, every party swore that those in the opposing camps were most unfit to lead the country. If this mutual assessment is true, as it could be for they know each other best, then we probably have none fit enough to be our democratic leaders! Yet, by the time this issue reaches the readers, some of these same parties will be conducting the affairs of the government at the Centre and in some States. In the face of wide-spread corruption, escapism, mass hysteria, narrow sectarianism, and a general lowering of standards seen in our society, should we surrender to despair and scepticism? Never. To do so would be an insult to Man, his higher nature, his divinity, and a disbelief in the universal moral law. Faith in God is faith in man. Swami Vivekananda desired India to strive for the evolution of a Vedantic civilization where politics, science, religion, literature, and everything else would lead man to higher and higher levels of self-expression. This he said was also India’s responsibility towards the world Civilisation. Tyaga and Seva How do we become real men and women and achieve true freedom within and foster real democracy in the world outside? Swamiji gave two tools of action to realise this: Tyaga and
9 The Vedanta Kesari
Democracy and Vedanta nce, Swami Vivekananda told his American audience: ‘There is a chance of Vedanta becoming the religion of your country because of democracy.’ He then explained it thus: ‘You have a government, but the government is impersonal. Yours is not an autocratic government, and yet it is more powerful than any monarchy in the world. Nobody seems to understand that the real power, the real life, the real strength is in the unseen, the impersonal, the nobody. As a mere person separated from others, you are nothing, but as an impersonal unit of the nation that rules itself, you are tremendous. You are all one in the government — you are a tremendous power. … Each man is the power.’ This is also the message of Vedanta. It does not preach a God sitting in Heaven who plays with our lives. Instead, Vedanta teaches a democratic God; ‘the infinite principle of God embodied in every one of us.’ Exploring and discovering this innate Divinity is what we call spiritual journey. This spiritual discovery in our inner world becomes easy when our outside world has social and political democracy. This is Swamiji’s point.
June 2019
Rama Rajya
