RECONCILIATION AND HARMONY.
(The article is based on a speech delivered by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India, at a civic reception hosted in his honour at Trivandrum on 29th September, 1963).
Mr. Mayor and friends: I am very grateful to you for your generous words of greetings on this my fourth or fifth visit to the city of Trivandrum, the capital now of the whole of Kerala.
You refer in your address to the work of the great Sankaracharya, which is of permanent value. There are many people who think that the work for which he laid the foundations is still unfinished, unaccomplished. He was the prophet of reconciliation and universal harmony. He is said to be an advaitavadi, a non-dualist philosopher. Non-duality does not mean that the world does not exist. It only means that the world is permeated by one supreme fact - Isavasyam idam sarvam. He never looked upon the world as a mere illusion, phantasmagoria or fantasy. It is not a dream world, it is not a mere illusion, but it is not as real as the fundamental, ultimate reality of Brahman. This whole universe has a purpose. It goes on from one stage to another : it has ascended from mere non-existence to the present state when human intelligence is trying to advance into a spiritual being. Man's destiny consists in transcending his present condition and attaining what may be regarded as illumination. Moksha is not running away from the world. It is living in the process of spirit. Moksha is the attainment by the human individual of a higher status than the one in which he happens to be today. It is not an escape from the world, it is attaining a position where it will be possible for you to transform the world according to your own light. Sankaracharya found people worshipping many gods - he was regarded as sanmata sthapanacharya - Siva, Sakti, Vishnu, etc. He looked upon all of them as the legitimate, valid forms of the Supreme, and he asked us not to quarrel about these names and other things. If he had been alive today, he would have extended this spirit of harmony to the other religions which also prevail in this country and in the world. He was essentially a democrat, a democrat preaching reconciliation, harmony.
If you take democracy in the proper sense of the term, it is toleration of differences, it is accepting the variety of the world as something to be encouraged and not as something to be destroyed or obliterated. If you have differences, they have to be settled by peaceful methods. Resort to direct action or violence is inconsistent with the spirit of democracy. Democracy requires us to respect each individual as sacred, as an embodiment of the Supreme, and never to regard ourselves as the only repositories of the ultimate truth. It is that view of democracy which we are adopting today in our own country. It requires of us that all people belonging to this country have the chance to develop their spiritual possibilities.
That cannot be done if we do not provide them with food, clothing and shelter. The colossal problem facing this country is this abysmal poverty. If you have enormous wealth on one side and extreme poverty on the other, it must be regarded as a challenge to anyone who believes in democracy. If we are believers in democracy, it must be our attempt to narrow these differences, to bridge this gulf, and to see to it that the wealth of the country is enjoyed by all the people. The peasants, the farmers and the factory workers are all contributing to the production of the nation's wealth. If they are contributing to it, they have a right to enjoy the fruits of their toil. We have for centuries suppressed many of our people, suppressed our men and women, suppressed large masses of people by regarding them as beyond the pale of civilisation; for the inequities which we inflicted, we are held responsible and we are suffering. If we should get rid of them, we must try to exercise our faith in democracy by extending the privileges to all and trying to lift all the people to the same level of equality, equality not merely before law, equality not merely in the Constitution, but equality in everyday life. It is that which we should do but have not done, and we have suffered for it. If we do not learn from the past, we have to live the past over again. If we became victims of aggression from outside, or upheavals from within, all this is due to the fact that we have not been loyal to the fundamental principle to which we pay lip allegiance and not real allegiance. The same spirit requires us to look upon other nations as units co-operating in the building up of a world community. It does not matter whether you worship God as Vishnu, Shiva or Shakti : so also, among nations of the world we should not adopt the view that some nations are black and others pure white. There are no pure white nations in the world. There are no jet-black nations in the world. Some of them have developed certain qualities; others may not have developed those qualities. We must try to co-operate with them all. If we accept the principle of peaceful co-operation and if we are working for achieving world harmony, it is because of this very spirit of democracy. Just as among the religions of this country we do not wish to say that this religion is better, that religion is worse - individuals may believe what they please - so also as a State, as a Government, we have no such predilections, we have no such prejudices or obscurantist assumptions. From a world point of view, it is essential that all nations emerge from their stage of subjection, that they are lifted from their economic bondage, that our people hold to the idea of a world responsibility. That is what democracy requires us to do.
We talk about democracy but when it comes to any particular thing, we prefer a man belonging to our caste or community or religion. So long as we have this kind of temptation, it means that our democracy is a phoney kind of democracy. We must be in a position to respect a man as a man and to extend opportunities for development to those who deserve them and not those people who happen to belong to our community or race. This fact of favouritism, nepotism, has been responsible for much discontent and ill will in our own country. If anyone asks us why we suffer, we need not point to the stars above, or say that God has punished us. We have to put it down to our inequities, our dis-loyalties and our derivations from the ideals which we profess. We have the best ideals inscribed and embodied in our Constitution, but how many of us are carrying them out properly?
True democrats must not tolerate any kind of corruption, nepotism and communal prejudices and conflicts which are to be found so much all over our country and which have brought down this country again and again to a state of degradation. We know the causes, we know the cure, and all that we have to do is to take the advice of our past seers, whatever religion they may belong to. They ask us to work for unity, for one family on earth. Democracy must be taken seriously.
In a Corporation like this, what is the aim of the members? : to make the city a healthy and beautiful one. Why do party differences come in here? Everyone is interested in making the city a good one, of which we can all be proud. Similarly when you are trying to advance your State, why should political differences impede this co-operative effort to enhance the prosperity of Kerala? We must try in the cool hours of reflection to find out what is wrong with us. We must have the single aim of building up a great India and, through that, a great world. India is part of the world, and whatever we may do, it will be good for us to keep this world view.
Your Mayor referred to several of my activities - educational, diplomatic, etc. To the best of my ability, I tried to respect other people and to help them to the best of my ability. I have found in distant places warmth and affection - in East Africa, even in South Africa in 1939 when I visited that place; in America and Great Britain there is much of goodwill for us - but we must deserve that goodwill. We can do so only if we raise ourselves in our own esteem, if we are able to take into account the miseries of our country and do our utmost to redress them. There is only one thing that will be remembered of us fifty years or later when not many of us will be remembered. All other things are tinsel and not worth pursuing. Try, therefore, to believe in democracy, to believe in the potential divinity of every man, try to understand that if you insult a man, you insult God, you are an atheist, you are not a believer. If you are a believer, you will always treat others with the utmost dignity and respect.
Sankaracharya, to whom reference was made by the Mayor, was a prophet of reconciliation in his own time, and if this spirit is preserved, he will also be a prophet of reconciliation and harmony to the whole world.
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