Ram Swarup Quotes

Hindus learn to look at themselves through borrowed eyes. The two approaches, that of self-discovery and creative response and that of self-alienation and imitation, were both inherited from the immediate history of the freedom struggle, though they derive their strength from the deeper sources in the psyche....For one, the problem is of helping the society to find its roots, for the other to remake it in the image of a chosen pattern. The one serves; the other manipulates....[The first approach] once formed a powerful current, and the freedom struggle was waged under its auspices. But increasingly its hold became weak, and in our own times it seems to have lost altogether....Some see in this change a triumph of Nehru over Gandhi....Nehru represented, in his own way, the response of a defeated nation trying to restore its self-respect and self-confidence through self-repudiation and identification with the ways of the victors. The approach was not altogether unjustified at one time. It had its compulsions and it also had a survival value for us. But its increasing influence can mean no good to us. We, however, believe that deeper Indian nationalism, which is also in harmony with deeper internationalism, may be weak just now, but it has the seed-power and it is bound to come up again under propitious circumstances

We also said that what is true of Europe is also true of Africa and South America. The countries of these continents have recently gained political freedom, but it has done little to help them to regain their spiritual identity. If they wish to rise in a deeper sense, they must recover their soul, their Gods, their roots in their own psyche. If they need any change, and there is no doubt they do, it must come from within themselves as a part of their own experience. They have to make the .best use of their own psychic and spiritual gifts. They cannot nse through imported deities, saviours and prophets.

These similarities were not accidental caused by a “Hindu environment”, as some post-Macauliffe Akali scholars try to explain. They arose because the Sikh Gurus were Hindus; they were brought up and nourished on Hindu scriptures; they were shaped by the Santtradition of their day which derived from the Upanishads and the Yogas and Sikh Gurus were Vaishnavas who remembered their God by the name of Hari or Rama or Govinda.Nanak alone used the word “Hari’ 630 times; in the Adi Granth, it occurs 8,300 times. Similarly, the word ‘Rama’ appears 2,500 times. Whether one understands these names in their more popular and Pauranik sense or in their more Upanishadic and Yogic meaning, in either case there is no escape from the traditional identity.

Pythagoras taught the doctrine of the witness, drashTâ of the Hindus. He said that life is like a gathering at the Olympic Games, where some come to buy and sell, others to play, but the best of them come to look on. This is just like the Upanishads' two birds on a tree, one eating its fruits and the other just looks on. It has reference to the witness self of the Upanishads, the kûTastha of the Gita. In higher Greek religion the doctrine of the life of a spectator holds a high place.

Perhaps a creed is best known by what it does when it holds political sway.

A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes.... The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism... During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune.

As regards Ramakrishna’s “practice of Islam and Christianity” of which the Mission makes so much, it finds no mention in the Gospel, the earliest and most authentic account of Ramakrishna’s thoughts and experiences in his own words. In this work we find that though Ramakrishna reminisces often about his experiences and God-filled states, there is hardly a word about his so-called practice of Islam and Christianity.... It also seems that the practice of Islam and Christianity made a less than deep impression on Ramakrishna, for subsequently he does not mention on his own initiative either Muhammad or the Koran, neither Jesus nor the Bible. Not even once! Nor did he draw from” his practice such excessive and indiscriminate conclusions as Mission monks now do.

He only quotes from Rabia, Bayazid, Abu Sa'id and Rumi who do not properly represent even the sufi silsilas, the mainstream Islamic Sufism.

It is indeed a strange sect of Islam which claims for itself a founder other than Muhammad and a scripture other than the Quran, and which does not mention the name of the Prophet even once in its scripture quite considerable in length.

Dharampal is now perhaps the best authority on a most significant period of India's history....

But foreign should not be defined in geographical terms. Then it would have no meaning except territorial or tribal patriotism. To me that alone is foreign which is foreign to truth, foreign to Atman.

Mother Teresa is a true daughter of the Church in having her mind and heart closed to the religions of the countries of her labour, even adoption. Sometime back, some European Vedantists learning that she was at the Vatican went there to pay their respects. She rebuked them for "betraying Christ". Let me clarify the point a little further by bringing in Sister Nivedita. She is a lady Hindus are proud of. She helped India by helping it to rediscover itself. No higher service could be rendered to a nation in the grip of self-forgetfulness. She stood for national justice for India and she helped us by giving us national pride. This explains why Sister Nivedita is Hindu India's hero. This also explains why Western nations shower praise and money on Mother Teresa while Sister Nivedita remained unsung in the West and there were no contributions from that quarter even for her purely humanitarian work, like education and child care and relief work which she did with no less dedication, sympathy and loving care.

It is not that there are different Purushas to experience but the same Purusha is experienced differently at different levels. There is the experience of Divinity at the level of purified manas, but the same is also experienced at the level of buddhi. ... In the first, the experience is more particularised; in the second it puts on a more universal aspect. ... Manas particularizes; buddhi generalises. In the movement from manas to buddhi, spirituality rises from a spiritual experience to a spiritual truth. .... One need not grade the two experiences but one should try to understand the difference between them. At the level of purified mans, there is faith, joy, sonship, prophethood, inspired utterances, luminous visions, chosen destinies, unique roles.... (p. 101 ff)

In Western thought, the body holds the soul; in Indian thought, the soul holds the body.

The Hindu pantheon has changed to some extent but the old Gods are still active and are still understood though under modified names. Hindu India has a sense of continuity with its past which other nations, that changed their religions at some later stage, lack. It is also known that the Hindu religion preserves many old layers and forms. Therefore, its study may link us not only with its own past forms but also with the religious consciousness, intuitions and forms that prevailed in the past in Europe, in Greece, in Rome, in many Scandinavian and Baltic countries, amongst Germanic and Slavic peoples and also in several countries of the Middle East. In short, the study may reveal a fundamental form of spiritual consciousness which is wider than its Hindu expression.