T. L. Vaswani: Apostle of India’s Culture

T. L. Apostle of India’s Culture

In his economic interpretation of history, the prophet of Communism, Marx, regards the proletarian, the working class, as the true and only builder of national life, and ignores the spiritual genius, the exceptional man. India, through the ages of her history, has stood up for a different ideal: India has always offered the reverent homage of her heart to her seers and sages and has acclaimed them as the true heroes of her history. India has frankly stood up for God and God-men. This, it seems to me, is the reason of India’s continued existence, while other nations–great and mighty in their own days–have, one after another, crumbled to their fall. Rome and Greece and Babylonia ran after the things of the world, temporary, transient, passing: today, they are but dim memories of an ancient past. But India, building her life on the firm bed-rock of spiritual idealism, still lives on, still declares the ancient truth that history is more than prices and wages, more than the shouts and shows of politicians and statesmen, more than the was and victories of kings and emperors. History is made by supermen–seers and sages, thinkers and artists, Yogis and Saints–who declare the Divine Principle of life and mould men into instruments of the Eternal.

Age after age have such great ones appeared and kept up the process of India’s renewal and rejuvenation. India today, has fallen on dark days. Long-continued slavery, sectarian strife, communal warfare, deep misunderstandings, daily friction and contradiction seem to sap the life of this great and gifted country. But not yet have the real guardians of her destiny deserted her. For even in our own day we have had men like Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, Pandit Malaviyaji and Subhas Chandra Bose, Sri Aurobindo and T. L. Vaswani,–great ones, mighty ones such as the most gifted among the nations of the earth may be proud of.

Born sixty-seven years ago, Vaswaniji has spent the best years of his life in awakening the youth of India whom he has loved to call “the greatest guarantee of the future”. “An eternal shakti lies locked up within you, young men!” his words ring clear and sharp. “Call it up and use it for the service of India, and India’s chains will break. And She who led civilisation, will march on again to Her great mission. She will be a teacher of the national and a healer of humanity.” He urges upon young men to build up their manhood. “Freedom”, he says, “will not come as a gift received at alien doors. Freedom can only be the creation of India’s blood and determination to work out her salvation out of her own eternal strength.” Carrying this message, he moves on from place to place with the Flame of Freedom in his soul, the Dream of Independence in his eyes.

He was Principal of the Dyal Sing College, Lahore: he was still in his thirties when the call came to him to give up everything at the altar of service. “Why do you give up such a lucrative job?” they said to him. “You are still young; you have a bright future before you; you can make money, heaps of money.” “Life is not given to make money,” he replied. And they asked him, “What is the purpose of life?” He replied, “To dedicate it to Love Divine: to serve and be poured out as a sacrifice!”

Over 37 years ago, Vaswaniji–then senior Professor in the D. J. Sind College, Karachi,–went to Berlin as one of India’s representatives to the World Congress of Religions. His speech before that august assembly and his subsequent lectures in different parts of Europe on India’s message to the nations aroused deep interest in Indian thought and religion, and linked up many with him in India’s mission of help and healing to humanity,–so much so, that his name came to be coupled with those of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore as one of the three leaders of India.

India, he profoundly believes, has a message to give to the modern nations. Addressing a meeting of the “Association of Indian Culture” at Calcutta two years ago, he said:

“To a Europe in ruins, to a West in the flames of war, India’s message is of renewal and freedom from greed and violence, so that the technical civilisation of today may become one of brotherliness, sympathy and service. The restless energies of Europe lead to fever and frustration; these energies need to be used in the service of Man by being linked up to the spirit!”

He teaches by precept and example that life is larger than livelihood. He urges that character, not money, should rule the world: and character must grow out of courage. He is careful to point out that courage must be distinguished from the will-to-power, which makes men and nations aggressive and selfish. He asks young men to study the truths of modern life, but he pleads with them not to forget their own culture. He warns them that schools and colleges in India are a home neither of English culture nor of Indian wisdom: they are at best so many ‘caves’ in which students receive ‘blurred images’. “Come out of the caves,” he says to them, and “turn to the light of the sun, the light of Indian culture, and you will know what I share India can have in the international exchange of thought and life.”

He goes from place to place, giving knowledge to all, not seeking the honours of the earth but rejoicing in wisdom as his wealth, and in the service of the poor and lowly as the treasure of his quest. Of such as him the Chinese pilgrim to India centuries ago declared: “For them there is no honour except in knowing truth and no disgrace in being destitute.”

This great one, whom the Irish poet, Dr. Cousins, greeted many years ago as India’s modern mystic, is a seer. What does he see? In his heart he sees the grandeur of an India going upon a mission of help and healing to the nations. He sees India being accepted by the nations of the East and the nations of the West as their teacher and preceptor. In his heart he sees the birth of a new India “strong in the strength of her ancient wisdom and in touch with modern science and culture”. These and other things he sees in his heart more clearly than a man beholds a distant star through a telescope. But he is not blind to the realities of the situation around him. A great and mighty future awaits this ancient land, it is true; but what is the situation in India today? In a recent letter to a friend, he summed up the situation thus:

“I confess my heart becomes sad, sometimes, as it surveys the situation. The tragedy of today is that chaotic elements are rising; the structure of a society and morality reared by poets and prophets, whose vision embraced the Hindu and the Muslims, the believer and the agnostic, is being engulfed in a rising sea of accumulated rage and inflamed sectarianism. The peasant and the village-folk are falling, alas! into the hands of the priest; the industrialists, enslaving the workers, accumulate and exchange, while the sense of beauty and worship decays in the cities where money becomes Lord and there is no soul.”

How can such an India find its place in the counsels of the nations? How can such an India make her message heard in the modern world? India must become herself before she can be honoured by the nations of the earth. And, to be herself, India must be free. This freedom is to be not merely political: it is also freedom from the bondage of customs, institutions, creeds which for centuries have choked the current of our life. If India is to be born anew in vigour and in strength, India must be truly free. Passionate is his love for Indian freedom. He expresses it in his social, political and religious views and, above all, in his actions. Love of freedom is, perhaps, the strongest passion of his soul,–freedom not of action merely, but of thought.

Today politics is the passion and pursuit of the nation. According to Vaswaniji politics is merely one of the four aspects of freedom,–the other three being civil, social and religious. In his Apostles of Freedom, he urges that a nation to be free must take note of all the four aspects. Politics is only one channel of a nation’s life. Home, workshop, school, profession,–all are to him symbols of the National Spirit. When, in our enthusiasm for the political, we neglect the other spheres and they cease to be organs of the spirit of Freedom, then, indeed, politics get easily corrupted and the country wanders from distraction to distraction.

His message is so simple. He preaches no abstruse philosophy, advocates no unintelligible theology. His teaching, in brief, is that in the love of God and the Service of man is the secret of true life.

The modern man, be knows, fights shy of God and religion. To Vaswaniji, God is the supreme reality of life. The modern world, he says, has divorced God and has forgotten the golden rule of Love, and so is unhappy, restless. “Our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in Thee,”–declared the Jewish seer. “Call Him by any name you will,” say Vaswaniji Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, Joy. His is the power that thrills the worlds from end to end. In his outlook upon life, he is profoundly religious. But religion to him is not a creed, not a dogma, not submission to any external authority, priest, dictator, temple or scripture. Religion is a Way of Life, a Way of Understanding. He believes that behind economics lie ethics and right ethics spring from spiritual life. He feels that man needs a religion, spiritual chart to lead him through darkness into light. The dream is in his eyes,–of a New Religion,–a Religion cleansed of creeds and dogmas, a New Religion essentially practical, a Religion building on this earth, and not merely promising in Heaven, a Kingdom of Happiness.

To build this Kingdom of Happiness on earth, men must work, toil, labour in the “vineyard of the Lord”, helping on each other along the difficult pathways of life. So the second point emphasised in his teaching is service of man. He says:

“If there is one religion which India and the nations need today, it is worship of the poor. Young men! There is the great work for you. It will sanctify your lives. In the cottages of the poor, there dwells the great God. In their tears and groans, in their prayers and aspirations is His call to you, young men!”

His own feeling of unity with the poor is intense. With child-like, wonder-filled eyes he moves among them, serving them with singular devotion. In his dress and food he is always simple, and, as the greatest only are, he is in his simplicity sublime. He eats very little: and his clothes are of hand-spun, hand-woven khaddar. For years together he has not known what it is to have one’s stomach full. This prince amongst men has subjected himself to the discipline of eating very little, because he knows that millions of his countrymen do not get even that little. It is enough, he says, if our clothes protect us from cold and our food gives us sufficient strength to be able to serve the distressed and the needy. In St. Mira’s New Building which has cost over two and a half lakhs, they wished to build for him the best quarters that modern architecture could devise; but he would have nothing of it. “A simple mud hut will do for me”, he said. He is fond of scratching his with a small wooden stick. A rich admirer,–a partner in a well-known firm of Calcutta jewelers,–got a pretty ‘scratcher’ made of silver for him. “I cannot accept such a useless gift,” he said, “give me things which I can give away to the poor and needy.” He always feels happy when he gives to the needy. He gives them his money, his time, his energy. A beggar, whose body was bare, asked for his shirt; he parted with the shirt on the spot. The beggar demanded his cap; he gave away the cap also. And on his face played a beautiful smile, which is visible only on the faces of those who have realised the joy of a life of renunciation.

He shuns meeting many people; he is happy in the company of a few simple souls. He speaks to them of the simple life, of how to walk the little way, avoiding the world’s gilded vanities, and of how to greet God’s simplicities that wander in the world asking for a home in the hearts of the poor in spirit. Is it any wonder that those who come in contact with him get linked up with him in a spirit of tender devotion? They obey him implicitly and spontaneously: they call him their Dada. We read in one of Hans Andersen’s Tales about a man who had the mysterious power of opening people’s hearts and seeing what was inside them. Such a man is T. L. Vaswani; and many of those who meet him say that he can read the hearts of men like the pages of an open book.

He is a born orator. He addresses large crowds of men and women. They hear him; they marvel at his words. He awakens new aspirations in the hearts of those that listen to him. When he speaks he fills the hall with the rich music of his words and the richer music of his heart.

He works on, day after day,–wanting nothing for himself, seeking only opportunities to serve the poor and lowly, the distressed and oppressed. His body is frail but he feels he has the strength of ten, because in his heart is love and every fiber of his being thrills with faith in the living Lord. “In His love”, he says, “the Lord has broken, is breaking my life into innumerable fragments and scattering them in different directions. May every fragment serve Him, singing His Name,–the Name of the Beloved!”

He heals many sorrowing hearts; and in wisdom and love he helps many of those who struggle through the dark forest of this life. His face radiates the love which fills his heart, and on his countenance is the calm born of deep faith in God. “Happy is my heart”, reads an entry in his Jail Dairy, “which rejoices in doing simple daily tasks and leaves the rest to God, the Builder of destiny.”

With this conviction, in this faith, he has gone to many climes in East and West, carrying everywhere the message of Ancient Wisdom, voicing everywhere the greatness and glory of Aryavarta, comforting men and women of hope, cheering them on life’s pilgrim way, encouraging them in the good path, restraining them from the path of evil, imploring all to believe in the brotherhood of religions, the unity of all races, the fellowship of all nations.