The imperial states of the modern world built up their social, economic and political structure with the object of securing their own power and keeping-the conquered peoples subject and weak. We often charge the white masters of coloured races with having haughtily refused to mingle with their subjects, with passing discriminatory laws, with denying-citizenship and opportunities of enlightenment and progress to the weaker race, with suppressing their national aspirations and so organizing the entire state’ as to prevent them from ever realising their full manhood. The ancient Brahman masters of Hindu India, who had established themselves as a separate nation with all the exclusiveness, arrogance, selfishness and cruelty which we associate with the white imperialists, did exactly what we accuse the latter of having done. No imperial power ever imposed on a weaker people a more ruthless and soul-destroying domination than the Brahmans did on the rest-of the Hindus, and no race of superior men even arrogated to themselves such haughty supremacy and false greatness as they.
When the ancient priests set themselves up as, an exclusive caste of Brahmans in order to establish their self-assumed superiority, they had to inflict degradation on all other Hindus and press them down to various layers of subordination. They had to keep the people divided, disunited, weak and degraded, to deny them learning, refinement and opportunities of advancement, and permanently and unalterably to tie them down to a low status in society. The Hindu social organisation based on hereditary castes was evolved by the Brahmans with the above object and enforced on the people with the help of foreign conquerors. Consistently with their pretensions to be a superior race,• the Brahmans could not follow the ordinary avocations for a means of livelihood. All the avenues of acquiring wealth by honest work were closed to them by their own caste-pride, at least nominally. The trades and crafts were considered as unbecoming to the Brahmans. They were therefore obliged to build up a system of exploitation for procuring wealth fr-om those who fought and worked for it. The entire popular religious organisation of the Hindus, including the temples, the pilgrimages, the festivals, penances, rituals, secret cults, ceremonies, Mantras and ‘Contras, and other items of the huge network of priesteraft, was primarily meant for the profit of The Brahmans and the entanglement of the rest. Hardly any of them were intended to ennoble the life of the devotees or to help them in their struggles. Many of them were positively degrading, and destroyed the peoples’ spiritual perceptions. The large majority of the ever-growing community of hereditary Brahmans could sustain their lives only by the propagation of a social order and religion which kept the other Hindus in the condition of hewers of wood and drawers of water, morally and intellectually castrated..
But there were great souls among the Brahmans also. They protested and revolted against these deceptions. There were great philosophers who
condemned the false system of castes and priestcraft., Inspired teachers appeared again and again and exposed the futility of the priest-imposed religion.
The Brahman priests had to counteract all these redeeming influences if they and their system were to survive. They had to justify their castes and idolatry and rituals against these attacks and were obliged to keep on producing an endless series of spurious Shastras and authoritiesSutras, Puranas, commentaries, Mahatmyams, philosophies, esoteric meanings and so forth. They had to tamper with the ancient works of the sages, distort and misinterpret the original texts, interpolate new matter, concoct new works in the name of ancient authors and practise similar deceptions, because their very exist¬ence depended on keeping the Hindu masses hypnotised. Caste, priestcraft and’ false Shastras followed one after another in an inevitable succession.
An exploiting nation can thrive only on the disunion, weakness, ignorance, mutual rivalries and superstitions of the exploited. Just as the system of hereditary castes condemned the vast majority of the Hindus to perpetual exploitation, so did it condemn the hereditary Brahmans, probably against their own better nature and impulses, to lead the life of heartless exploiters, compelled by sheer necessity to cultivate a culture of untruths, deceptions, selfishness, injustice, immorality, hatred and oppression. In the ordinary course of things, after hereditary priesthood had become their lot in life, they could not have done anything else. Thus in course of time both the masters and the slaves lost their souls. They learned to find wisdom in their .follies, sanctity in. their superstitions, truth in their ‘deceptions and glory in .their ignominy. Even the best among , them are now unable A° .rise -above the ”slave mentality.
For the preservation of the master-slave culture of Brahmanism: It existed not for the advancement of the Hindu peoples, but for their suppression and exploitation for the profit of the Brahmans and their partisans. Under the rule of the Hindu Rajas, the Hindu masses never prospered. They invariably Most their manliness, were irretrievably divided among themselves, and gradually driven out of the Hindu fold to the embrace of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj and other religious communities. This was the fate of the Hindus in the past, and the same process continues today, except where non-Hindu influences have directly or indirectly made the life of the Hindus tolerable within the Hindu society. We shall illustrate the general result of Hindu rule by the history of a typical Hindu state.
Travancore is one of the most progressive Hindu states in all India and is second to none in the matter of the spread of education and the development of political life. If we make use of the history of Travancore for the purpose of the present chapter no one can, justly say that we have picked an exceptionally bad instance of an insignificant and backward state. His Highness Sree Bala Rama Varmah, the present ruler of Travancore, has immortalised his name by the famous Temple Entry Proclamation, which by one stroke of the pen annihilated a universal and deep-rooted superstition of the Hindus and offered to the down-trodden Hindu communities the largest measure of liberty, hope and self-respect which any Hindu reformer has succeeded in giving for more than a thousand years. His Highness has to be particularly congratulated on the absolute frankness of his personal attitude which was characterized throughout by an ardent desire to make the reform as complete as possible without the reservations and qualifications with which orthodox governments generally diminish the benefits of their own self-laudatory innovations. The Maharaja has evinced greater personal interest than the people themselves in the liberation of the Hindu masses and in carrying out the spirit of the new order even in the domestic life of the royal family, and if more has not been achieved in the direction of Hindu con solidation, the blame certainly cannot be attributed to him. On the other hand, though the proclamation evoked universal rejoicings in the state, not to speak of the encomiums which poured in from all parts of the world, it cannot be said that His Highness has received from his own Hindu subjects that degree of intelligent and organised co-operation in the working of the arrangement or the extending of its principles to all aspects of Hindu life which an ardent soul like him had reason to expect. Instead, the bonfire lighted to celebrate the opening of the temples to all Hindus without reservations, was practically converted into a signal of revolt and noting, in which many of his Hindu subjects took a leading part, exhibiting all the ugliness of disunion and communal jealousies and the incapacity to entertain sustained loyalty to any leader however great, which are the inherent weaknesses of all Hindu communities poisoned by the caste-spirit. Within a few months of the epoch-making proclamation, which should have prompted all sensible Hindus to unite in homage and strengthen the hands of the ruler for further measures of reform and reconstruction, we find the whole state plunged into a condition of lawlessness and mob-violence in which the Hindus, along with .the non-Hindus, took part with a recklessness amounting almost to fanaticism. The conflagration was started in the name of noble ideals of responsible government, and many well-meaning workers were involved in it, but one who felt the pulse of the movement could easily detect below the cloak of respectable protestations the unquenchable spirit of communal. jealousies which exaggerated and fanned into flame the smouldering embers of economic discontent, and roused the feelings of the masses against a government. Which undoubtedly deserved the patience and co-operation of its subjects more than any previous government of the state or any other contemporary government in Tndia. It must’ have been felt as an ungrateful stab by the young Maharaja who will surely take time to recover from its disheartening effects. The ill-advised agitation, besides Bringing out the constitutional incapacity of the Hindu communities to unite even under the most favorable circumstances, has served to delay the hand of progress by antagonizing the forces of reform and creating an atmosphere of distrust between the ruler and the ruled which was unknown in modern Travancore.
The people too were unwilling victims of their hereditary environment. No amount of tinkering tan, for long, unite the Hindus in devotion to a common cause or person so long as caste differences persist. The most liberal reforms will not make a Kshatriya Raja loved by all his Hindu subjects in that spirit of community of religion and social affinity with which a Christian or a Muhammadan people look upon their sovereigns. The majority of his Hindu subjects must forever remain alienated from him in their minds as irrevocably outside the caste. An unbridgeable gulf separates the Hindu ruler from his subjects. The greatest saint, reformer, teacher and nation-builder Travancore has produced since the days of the first Sree Sankaracharya was undoubtedly the late Sree Narayana Guruswamy. In any other country he would have been universally acclaimed as a saviour and prophet. But in a Hindu state caste envelops in dark clouds even such great’ souls and prevents their light from penetrating into the ‘open world. When a Rishi like him could not overcome the caste prejudices of a Hindu state, who else can ever hope to do so? The most beloved of Maharajas must remain an alien in caste to the huge majority of his Hindu subjects, however much the civilities of modern life may cover up the feeling of separateness. No Dewan could have acted more courageously for the welfare of the state in the critical situation which confronted it, and none could have more successfully saved the Hindus from their internal dissensions than Sir C. P. Ramaswarny Iyer, the present Dewan. But he had his caste, he could never rise above it; the people could never for a moment get the notion out of their heads that he belonged to a caste. He was victimised like Sree Narayana Guruswaniy and the Maharaja, not by the people but by caste. History will record the fact that the greate.st Hindu Dewan of modern Travancore received the greatest opposition from the Hindu people. Mahatma Gandhi has not been openly disowned by the Hindus because he has refrained from directly attacking the castes; but when it comes to real concerted action in social life in addition to putting up a fight with foreign rulers, he too will have either to denounce the evil and fight it, or else fail in the ultimate attainment of true freedom and unity for India and the Hindus.
The history of Hindu states like Travancore and Cochin furnishes ample evidence that Hindu state is ultimately detrimental to the interest of the Hindu people and Hindu religion. It may appear a paradox that Hindus OM Hinduism are safer under non-Hindu rule than under Hindu rule. The most orthodox Hindu states are exactly the places where the Hindus have declined steadily and the non-Hindus gained in strength the numbers. In British India, the Hindus cherish some degree of emancipation from Hindu, rule since the state is non-Hindu and public
