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The question naturally arises—What is the first step to be taken in our advance towards Hindu Sangathan ? In my tour throughout India I have seen edu… - Swami Shraddhanand
" "The question naturally arises—What is the first step to be taken in our advance towards Hindu Sangathan ? In my tour throughout India I have seen educated Hindus reluctant to mix with each other. It is only on rare occasions that they meet to discuss common social problems. The reason is that they have no common meeting place. Their sectarian temples have not sufficient space where even a hundred or two could sit together. In Delhi, besides the Jama and Fatehpuri mosques which can accomodate big audiences consisting of 25 to 30 thousands of Muhammadans, there are several old mosques which can serve as meeting places for thousands. But for Hindus, the only enclosed meeting place is Lakshmi Narayana’s Dharmsala which can hardly accomodate some 8 hundred, with this difference that while the Muhammadan meeting are free from all noise, the hubbub of voices from travellers in the Dharamshala hardly allows the speakers to be distinctly heard. The first step which I propose is to build one Hindu Rashtra Mandir at least in every city and important town, with a compound which could contain an audience of 25 thousands and a hall in which Katha from Bhagavad Gita, the Upnishads and the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharat could be daily recited. The Rashtra Mandir will be in charge of the local Hindu Sabha which will manage to have Akharas for wrestling and gatka etc. plays in the same compound. While the sectarian Hindu temples are dominated by their own individual deities, the Catholic Hindu Mandir should be devoted to the worship of the three mother-spirits (ekr`'kfDr) the Gau-mata, the Saraswati-mata and the Bhumi-mata. Let some living cows be there to represent plenty, let 'Savitri' (xk;=h eU=e~) be inscribed over the gate of the hall to remind every Hindu of his duty to expel all ignorance and let a life-like map of Mother— Bharat be constructed in a prominent place, giving all its characterestics in vivid colours so that every child of the Matri-Bhumi may daily bow before the Mother and renew his pledge to restore her to the ancient pinnacle of glory from which she has fallen !
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About Swami Shraddhanand
Swami Shraddhanand (22 February 1856 – 23 December 1926), also known as Mahatma Munshi Ram Vij, was an Indian education advocate and an Arya Samaj missionary who propagated the teachings of Dayananda Saraswati. This included the establishment of educational institutions, like the Gurukul Kangri University, and played a key role on the Sangathan (consolidation) and the Shuddhi (re-conversion), a Hindu reform movement in the 1920s.
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Swami Sraddhananda
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Additional quotes by Swami Shraddhanand
The expected has happened. Swami Shraddhanandji passed a day or two at the Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati, now about six months ago, and told me, in the course of his conversations that he often received letters threatening his life. Where is the refoimer who has not a price put upon his head ? Swamiji was a reformer, he was a man of action not of words. His was a living belief. He had suffered for it. He was bravery personified. He never quailed before danger. He was a warrior. And a warrior loves to die, not on a sick-bed, but on the battlefield. God had willed for him a martyr’s death and so, though he was still on the sick-bed, he died at the hands of an assassin. In the language of the Gita, therefore, ‘happy the warrior who achieves such a blessed death.’ Death is at any time blessed, but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause, i.e. truth. Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. He helps us against ourselves. He ever gives us new chances, new hopes. He is like sleep a sweet restorer. Yet it is customary to mourn when a friend dies. The custom has no operation when the death is that of a martyr. I cannot, therefore, mourn over his death. He and his are to be envied. For though Shraddhanandji is dead, he is yet living. He is living in a truer sense than when he moved about in our midst in his giant body. The family in which he was born, the nation to which he belonged are to be congratulated upon so glorious a death as this. He lived a hero. He has died a hero.
The Times of India of 30th November 1927 carried the news item: ‘‘It is reported that for earning merit for the soul of Abdul Rashid, the murderer of Swami Shraddhananda, in the next world, the students and professors of the famous theological collage of Deoband finished five complete recitations of the Koran and had planned to finish a daily lakh and a quarter recitations of Koranic verses. Their prayer was ‘God Almighty may give the marhoom (i.e., Rashid) a place in the a ala-e-illeeyeen (the summit of the seventh heaven).‘‘
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This was the practical application of Swami Shraddhananda’s book ‘Hindu Sangathan’, Saviour of the Dying Race (1924). If one book can make you understand modern Hindu activism in general, of which Hindu Nationalism and a fortiori the RSS is only one current, it is that one, far more than Bunch of Thoughts.
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