Swami Rama Tirtha

Born in the family of Goswami Tulsidas, in the Gujaranwala district of ( western ) Punjab, Sri Tirth Rama got himself initiated in asceticism ( Sannyasa ) at the age of 28 years, leaving his job as a lecturer in a college, and became well known as Swami Rama Tirth. He undertook performing the enormous task of preaching Vedanta through wayfaring in India and abroad. Like Swami Vivekananda he went abroad and had many Western disciples from there. He had mastery over Urdu and Persian languages from the very beginning, studied Sanskrit, and of the Mathematics he had been a college lecturer. He performed strong penance in a jungle near Hrishikesh. Along with the Advaita Vedanta he preached fearlessness and patriotism. Living a life of faith in spirituality and devotion to God, Swami Rama Tirth after lightening the lamp of Vedanta in the country and abroad entered in Jala Samadhi in Ganga at the age of 33 years.

Swami Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) was one of the greatest spiritual figures of modern India. He also visited the United States from 1902-1904 and was one of the first great Swamis to bring the Vedantic teaching to the West, following in the footsteps of Vivekananda. Though his teachings are on par with Vivekananda-indeed often more poetic and inspiring-since he formed no organization they are not as well known. Rama did not even care to collect his own writings. He was such a God intoxicated person that the entire manifest universe did not count for anything more than straw for him. His greatness has been recognized by many great people including Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Shivananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, and Anandamayi Ma. He is lauded in yogic circles as a Jnani or man of spiritual knowledge.

Mahatma Gandhi himself said, "Swami Rama's teachings have got to be propagated. He was one of the greatest souls, not only of India but of the whole world". 
Rama was a very learned man, a great poet and scholar. He knew many languages including Hindi, Urdu, English, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, French and German. He was not only a great Vedantin, he was also a Sufi, studies the Persian Sufi works and the Koran, which works he often quoted in his talks and writings. He spoke in Arabic to Islamic groups in Egypt during his world travels. As he was a child of the Punjab and knew the Hindu and Islamic religions intimately, his statements about Islam are worthy of note.

In 1905 he had several conversations with the Muslims in Lucknow, which has always been one of the more liberal centers of Islamic thought, largely owing to the influence of Shia Muslims, who until recently tended to be less militant and more tolerant than the main Sunni Islamic groups. These talks are recorded in the sixth volume of Rama's works, In Woods of God Realization. Though they are nearly a century old, they remain quite relevant today as Hindu-Muslim conflicts still prevail throughout India. The following is only a partial excerpt from these conversations which were meant to explain the validity of the Hindu religion to Indian Muslims.

Rama replied, "It would have been better if you had not put this question to Rama, because, whatever he says will be according to his own notions. Rama likes neither to flatter anybody, nor injure the feelings of anyone. Truth cannot be crushed. There is some Truth in every religion. Rama is, therefore, not only a Hindu, but also a Muslim, a Christian and a Buddhist. In answer to your question Rama will speak politely and with love, but he may also have to indulge in some plain speaking, without the least intention to injure your feeling. Rama loves you all like his own self. As such, there should be nothing to hide form his own self".

"The truth is that the followers of Islam have very wrongly interpreted the words Kufr and Kafir (the first meaning heresy and the second meaning heretic or infidel) and they have also made a very wrong use of these words
As you know, the heart of a man is the seat of God. It is a great virtue to be kind to others". "But, unfortunately, on account of superficial knowledge or ignorance,the so-called leaders of Islam injected hatred, alienation, prejudice and violence into the hearts of ignorant Muslims, instead of preaching love for God or brotherhood of man".

"The history written by the Muslims alive. They did not spare even the women and the children. History says that they buried in a brick wall even the young sons of Guru Govind Singh of only eight and ten years of age, when they resolutely refused to accept Islam. They rode rough shod over all those who ever dared challenge the autocratic and dictatorial bigotry of the Muslims. With only a few noble exceptions, a very great majority of Muslims treated the non-Muslims as Kafirs (heretics). This is against the very tenets of Islam which literally means the 'Religion of peace'."

"Yet in the very name of God and His peaceful religion, Islam, His own creation has been annihilated and mercilessly cut down, under the sword of bigotry and fanaticism of ignorant Muslims. Lakhs of non-Muslims were taken prisoners and made to say goodbye to their hearths and homes, to be sold in Muslim countries as slaves to serve their masters for their whole life. Lakhs of helpless were made into widows. They were raped and used to satisfy the lust of the guardians of Islam. By the misuse of the words Kufr and Kafir, millions of innocent children were rendered orphans and forced to lead a life of immorality by the soldiers of Islam.

"What is all this for? Is this your Islam which you call the Religion of peace? Is terrorism the only way to make people accept Islam? This is what your own history says. This is what the world has seen of Islam. This is what the Indians have experienced. And this is what the Muslims are even today practicing in India on the smallest pretext, during the communal riots, said to be engendered at the behest of our alien rulers. But no. This is not the teaching of Islam, the Religion of peace. It is due to the wrong interpretation of the words Kufra and Kafir."
Rama has no ill will against any one of you, because he knows that the Muslim masses are misinformed and that, taking advantage of their ignorance of the Arabic language in which the holy Koran has been written, they are still being misled by their fanatic and selfish leaders."

"Rama's heart aches when he sees all this in the name of Islam and against the Farman of the Prophet who was a true and sincere devotee of God. He could not have allowed his followers unjustly and ruthlessly to butcher the innocent creation of his own God in his very name and in that of Islam, the religion which is said to establish peace on earth. But alas, after his death, not only non-Muslims but his own son-in-law, Hazrat Ali, and his (Prophet's) grandsons were mercilessly and unjustly, under the abominable intoxication of their false pride and prestige,"

"Rama has great respect and regard for Islam. But he is extremely pained to see its fall to such a depth of degeneration that its followers, the Muslims, especially in India, have not only misused the words, Kufr and Kafir in the name of their peaceful religion, but have also indulged in all sorts of sins, murders, butchery, bloodshed, rape, hatred, jealousy, spite, prejudice, etc. against the non-Muslims, their own fellow beings and the creation of their own God or Allah."

"It is not the non-Muslims but the so-called Muslims themselves, who have defamed and vilified their own simple, veracious and unfeigned religion which is said to be preaching peace on earth. They have themselves presented an ugly image of their God-fearing and simple religion before the world."

"According to the Indian Muslims in general, Kafir is one who is not a Muslim. But this interpretation is absolutely wrong. It is for this reason that wherever they went, they, in their zeal to spread their religion, perpetrated tyranny, bloodshed and oppression. All this is against the fundamental principles of Islam, peace and total resignation to the all-pervading God."

"The person, who asserts his ego or selfishness, as against Truth is a Kafir. And what is this Truth? Truth is that which remains the same yesterday, today forever. But Truth or Reality is only one. It is only God who is immortal, eternal, and imperishable.”
"According to the Muslims, a non-Muslim is a Kafir, however God-intoxicated or truly religious-minded he may be. As such, it is said that a so-called Muslim has every right to do away with a non-Muslim, if the latter does not believe in the Prophet Mohammed, or in the Koran, as if he, the non-Muslim, has not been created by the same God. It is also said that a Muslim will be forgiven by God for his sins just because he is a formal Muslim. This is a popular belief among the Muslim masses. All this misbelief or blind faith is against the fundamental principles of Islam. From the point of view of Rama, cruelty due to narrowmindedness, does not become those who profess that Islam is the religion of peace."

"It is now for you to say, how reasonable, just and fair it is to preach to the ignorant Muslim masses, segregation in the name of Islam, which is obviously for political reasons with vested interests. The entire universe is one due to direct connection with God, the universal creator. If your own God has made people take birth into non-Muslim families, who are you to shed their blood, annihilate them or hate them after taking them to be Kafirs? How do you justify yourself in finding fault with God's doing? How dare you interfere with his planning."

"Oh dear friends, according to your own Koran, all are equal in the eyes of God who is the Rabbul-Almin, the Lord of all the worlds. We all emanate from Him. We all are His sons. Will God be ever pleased with you to see His sons being massacred by you in His very name? No father can be happy to see this cruelty of yours. Who are you, then, to create differences and disunity in the so-called Kafirs and the Muslims, when God is common to all? Please reflect and say honestly, if you yourself are a real Muslim? Are you not a Kafir yourself, when you deny God, by acting practically all the time with selfish motives? This is certainly not the teaching of Islam, the religion of peace."

"Rama regrets very much to have to say all this. But since Rama has great respect and regard for Islam, due to its simplicity and direct faith in God and, since he takes the Muslims as his own self, he does not feel any hesitation in speaking frankly and fearlessly to his own self. Rama says with love and good intentions only what he thinks to be right from his own experience and observation, because it is sin to hide anything from his own dear ones. If he is wrong he may be corrected, Rama will not have the least objection to this."

Swami Ram Tirtha does not criticize Islam, not its prophet nor its book. In this he follows in the wake of other Hindu religious teachers and thinkers. What is exceptional about him is that he knows so much about Islamic history and speaks about it with such frankness, exercising no negationism about it. And that is the most significant part of this essay. His knowledge of Islamic history does not however make him change his views of Islam as a religion. He thinks that all that the best of Muslim heroes did and Muslim teachers taught was "against the fundamental principles of Islam." And in this way, he is able to retain his "respect and regard for Islam." In this respect too he follows in the wake of other Hindu savants and students of Islam who think they know Islam better than the best of Muslim theologians, and cannot resist the temptation of speaking "not only as a Hindu, but also as a Muslim and as a Christian."

But if a truthful account of Indian history is made, we need not accuse those who give such accounts as being prejudiced against Muslims because such history does not show Islam in a Positive light. If we do we will have to throw the likes of Swami Rama Tirtha into such a category.

Rama also stated to the Indians: "Please study your own history with care and attention, you will please mark that, so long as we were strictly following the basic tenets of our Sanatana Dharma, which is based on mutual love, unity and selfless discharge of our moral duty, with faith in God, no outside power could dare look at us with evil designs." Hindus today need to look at their history in that light of dharma. Only then will emerge the true way to develop the country for the future.




Sri Aurobindo (Aravinda)

Sri Aurobindo had been an excellent political leader of India, a revolutionary, a Yogi and a grand teacher of Bharatiya culture. Just after primary education in Bengal, his birth place, he had been sent to England from where he returned to become a lecturer of English at Baroda and soon entered into fight for the Independence of India and joined the revolutionaries of Bengal. He was jailed for the Alipur bomb case. He joined journalism as the publisher and editor of the daily paper Vande Mataram to preach his cult of acute nationalism and later also brought Arya and Karmayogi, the two journals. His life then took a turn towards intense spirituality and the practice of Yoga at Pondycherry where . in 1920 A.D. ( i.e., Kaliyuga's year 5021 ) he set up the Ashram. While being there he did lot of writing to explain the concepts such as Integral Yoga, Supra-rational Mind and Life Divine etc. Apart from his magnum opus, a deeply philosophic and spiritual work, ' Life Divine ', he wrote ' Essays on Gita ', ' Secret of Vedas ', ' The Upanishads ' and ' Savitri ' ( a poetic description of the secret of death and life ) and the like. By visualising Bharata Mata as spiritual representation of God's power he provided a spiritual and cultural basis to Indian Nationalism. He also laid down what great contribution has India to make towards a common world-culture in future. His prediction is that India that had been divided in 1947 shall once again be united.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Paul's School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years. In 1890 he passed also the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified for the Service. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England for India, arriving there in February, 1893.

Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariate work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self-culture, of literary activity -- for much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time -- and of preparation for his future work. In England he had received, according to his father's express instructions, an entirely occidental education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. Footnote 1 At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimmilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. In 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed in the Congress. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the "Subjects Committee". Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging programme, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between the Moderates and the Nationalists (called by their opponents Extremists) which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics.

The new-born Nationalist party put forward Swaraj (independence) as its goal as against the far-off Moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform; it proposed as its means of execution a programme which resembled in spirit, though not in its details, the policy of Sinn Fein developed some years later and carried to a successful issue in Ireland. The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organisation of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Government. Boycott of British and foreign goods and the fostering of Swadeshi industries to replace them, boycott of British law courts, and the foundation of a system of Arbitration courts in their stead, boycott of Government universities and colleges and the creation of a network of National colleges and schools, the formation of societies of young men which would do the work of police and detence and, wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance were among the immediate items of the programme. Sri Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organised national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram of which he was at the time acting editor. The Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in 1908 when Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him, circulated almost immediately all over India. During its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India which has ever since preserved fundamentally, even amidst its later developments, the stamp then imparted to it. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at the time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a programme.

Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and acquitted. Up till now an organiser and writer, he was obliged by this event and by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested in the Alipore Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could.be established against him and in this case too he was acquitted. After a detention of one year as undertrial prisoner in the Alipore Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action.

For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. For a time he thought that the necessary training must first be given through a less advanced Home Rule movement or an agitation of passive resistance of the kind created by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. But he saw that the hour of these movements had not come and that he himself was not their destined leader. Moreover, since his twelve months' detention in the Alipore Jail, which had been spent entirely in practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusiie concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time.

In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French lndia. A third prosecution was launched against him at this moment for a signed article in the Karmayogin; in his absence it was pressed against the printer of the paper who was convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in the High Court of Calcutta. For the third time a prosecution against him had failed. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he had taken up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies.

Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 onward he remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana.

In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Isha Upanishad, appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture (The Foundations of Indian Culture), the true meaning of the Vedas (The Secret of the Veda), the progress of human society (The Human Cycle), the nature and evolution of poetry (The Future Poetry), the possibility of the unification of the human race (The Ideal of Human Unity). At this time also he began to publish his poems, both those written in England and at Baroda and those, fewer in number, added during his period of political activity and in the first years of his residence at Pondicherry. The Arya ceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance. Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre.

Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo's rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Supermind or eternal Truth-Consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo left his body on December 5, 1950. The Mother carried on his work until November 17, 1973. Their work continues.