Introduction

A century after his birth, at the Ardha Kumbha Meld held in Allahabad (Prayag) in 2007, the presence of Svami Karpatri (1907-1982) loomed very large. Most of the five millions of sadhus gathered on this occasion used to refer to him with the title of paramahamsa (the Great Swan), which is, for the Hindus, the highest goal reachable by a living being. In this Kumbha Mela the name of Svami Karpatri, which is practically ignored in the West, echoed and his face shone at several camps of sadhus, including those of the four sankaracaryas, which are traditionally recognized as the highest authority of Hinduism. During the whole month of this Kumbha Mela celebrating the centenary of Svami Karpatri, samnyasins that had known him, sankaracaryas that had been his companions or disciples spoke about him in their discourses, invoked his name in their pujas, and discussed his teachings with new generations of brahmins and samnydsins and with the public of all castes who came to listen their expositions on dharma. Everywhere in the sadhus' processions to the sacred bath, at the beginning and the end of discourses, during pujas and in all kind of ceremonies, the slogans composed by Svami Karpatri rose to the sky: dharma ki jaya ho! (victory to dharma), adharma ka nasa ho! (destruction of injustice), praniyom mem sadbhavana ho! (goodwill for all creatures), visva ka kalyana ho! (welfare for the world), gomata ki jaya ho! (praise to our mother the cow), gohatya band ho! (stop cow slaughter).

Three years before this Kumbha Mela, as I will explain hereafter, I had discovered a big mistake concerning Svami Karpatri in the. publications of the sole Westerner who had claimed to be his spokes man. But I had been unable to find any book or academic article about the life and the action of Svami Karpatri. Surprisingly, this monk who had been a spiritual leader of first importance for million of Hindus in the twentieth century remains widely unknown even in many circles in India. The few references to him portray him as . 'reactionary' samnyasin who opposed the Hindu Code Bill and other 'progressive' policies of the Nehru Government. Having discovered that Svami Karpatri was not the creator of an ultra-nationalist party linked with fundamentalists, as it was printed here and there, but on the contrary a sage of high knowledge revered by traditional monks as the four sankaracaryas and their entourage, I decided to collect information about him. I found this information—the facts and their explanations—from Svami Karpatri's direct disciples and follower whom I was fortunate enough to meet, at Prayag or Banaras. I presented here this information not to justify or condemn anything but to try to understand.

I have no any other aim in the following pages than to try—for the first time in English—to give some lights about a contemporary samnyasin of deep knowledge, author of more than forty books, a sage who became a political leader, and whose slogans, twenty-five years after his death, were spreading in the whole Ardha Kumbha Mela in 2007.

According to the disciples of Svami Karpatri, these slogans—which were those of the Dharma Sangh, a cultural and religious organisation he created for the defence of dharma in 1939, and afterwards of the Ram Rajya Parishad, a political party founded in 1950 with a similar goal—were initially opposed to the anti traditionalist politics of the British Government, then of the leader of the Indenendence movement who had been educated in English universities and wanted to establish a secular state in the exact pattern of Western countries.

Following these disciples, sadhus for the most, these slogans did not pretend to set the Hindus in opposition to the other sections of the population, nor India to any other country, but rather confronted the challenges of the 21 st century multicultural societies, as well as the political and ecological dangers of a government mostly ruled by economical aims—which are, traditionally, those of the sole third varna Slogans as dharma ki jaya ho! (victory to dharma), praniyom mem sadbhavana ho! (goodwill for all creatures), visva ka kalyana ho! (welfare for the world), express another political scope than modern nationalist ones as "one country, one people, one language", which consider the earth as mere property to be exploited, reducing humanity to its material needs and trying to abolish the organic differences that form the base of the traditional kingdoms.' From a traditional point of view, a 'secular' government desecrates the earth, imperilling its equilibrium, and profanes also human society—no longer organized as it was the case, at least ideally, as communities in balance with other communities and with Nature, but in nations opposed to other nations.

It appears that Svami Karpatri wanted to reassert principles which had been the spinal cord of Indian civilization, as the social traditional order, a traditional government respecting dharma, a government taking into account all the different communities and the different aims of life—and not only the economical ones. It can be argued that several centuries of Muslim and British government had put traditional Hinduism in a defensive position, giving a break on his creativity.

However in the opinion of Svami Karpatri, much of its high principles and values were still alive; due to that, Indian civilization remained through millennia, and its principles should guide again the new state that was about to be born. In his perspective, the reformist following western ideologies wanted to "throw the baby with the dirty water".

This is why Svami Karpatri was opposed to the partition of India, as according to him Hindus and Muslims should live together in the mutual respect of their differences, and against the destruction of the varnasrama, the ancient Indian social organisation called by the westerners 'caste system', that protected the minorities, the tribes, the ascetics, the family life, the children and the aged persons. From a traditional point of view, the joint-family provides a favourable frame for children and people in the grhastha (householder) stage; the dignity of aged persons is also provided by the conception of vanaprastha, where old people can dedicate themselves to religious life; and the last stages, following the traditional way of renouncement (samnyasa), could been fully dedicated to spiritual aims—even if the forest of old have been replaced by other environments. On discussing these matters with disciples of Svami Karpatri, it was pointed out that it is impossible to find anywhere a human society without defaults, but it should be recognized that this traditional organization contrasts sharply, by example, with the place of Western modern society gives to his own old people. Modern society accords to them, of course, material and medical assistance, but segregates them from the rest of the people, stripping them of all knowledge value and role in the society. It was underlined also that modem 'egalitarian' Indian society claims to have progressed from the traditional and 'oppressive' one, by granting equal rights to all. Sometimes, though, fifty years after Independence, its looks that instead it has given everybody equal lack of rights. For example tribes in India had always led an independent life, and mainstream society let them live their own life in their territories, even if giving them a low status. The modem state, while theoretically granting them all rights, had deprived them of their territories and independence in the name of progress.

Svami Karpatri, in the context of the formation of a secular state in India fought against the interference of the secular government in matters of religion and struggled strongly to defend the holy cow. This is specially expressed by the slogans praniyom mem sadbhavana ho! (goodwill for all creatures), visva ka kalyana ho! (welfare for the world), gomata ki jaya ho! (praise to our mother the cow), gohatya band ho! (stop cow slaughter). For the Hindus, animal and plants are not deprived of consciousness, and the holy cow represents all the animal stage—in fact, the generosity of Nature—with which the human society has to organize a relationship of reciprocity and not despotic exploitation. The mythical cow Kamadhenu, who provides all the desires, contains symbolically all the gods in her body; the holy cow had been intimately close-knit to Hindu society. Traditional Hindus cannot consider positively the deny of animals' rights to be free, not only in western 'developed' cities, but also in the modern countryside, which appears as a green desert. From a Hindu point of view, the 'rational' western organization of collective jails for cows and other domesticated animals, treated as mere things, killed in a young age for economic reasons, deprived even of the light of the sun, seems a kind of hell. Svami Karpatri fought all his life to ban cow slaughter from India.

In the 20th century, so fertile with war, revolution and conflict, the spiritual way of Svami Karpatri lay not in keeping himself aloof from world matters, as most sadhus usually do, but rather to take an active part in them. For millions of Hindus, Svami Karpatri was a clear example for our modern times of the sthitaprajna of the Gita, the sage "established in wisdom" who "performs actions while remaining steadfast in yoga" (Bhagavad Gita,II.48). He worked only for the benefit of the world, having already obtained the highest spiritual state: "Forsaking attachment to the fruits of action, ever satisfied, depending on nothing; though engaged in action, truly, he does nothing." (Bhagavad Gita, IV.20).

Indeed, Svami Karpatri paid a heavy price, by going fourteen times to jail to defend traditional Indian society, to claim and reaffirm something very ill-treated by the apparently irresistible triumph materialism: sanatana dharma, the timeless and eternal law hed given India its foundation throughout the millennia.