Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Long before Ghandi’s efforts to free India from the colonial influence of the British Empire, other individuals such as Swami Dayananda Saraswati had long espoused the “India for Indians” message. In later life he was highly respected enough to be referred to as the one of the makers of modern India.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Born in 1824 in Tankara, in the state of Gujurat, Dayananda’s family were wealthy and religious Brahmins and his early life followed the somewhat standard pattern of that period; a future as a Hindu priest awaited him and therefore he studied religious texts such as the Vedas and learned Sanskrit.
Swami Virajananda
From an early age Dayananda became aware of some of the difficult questions asked of religion and argued with his parents about the unquestionable power of the Hindu Gods. When he was still only a teenager, he escaped an arranged marriage by running away and this was to become his life for the twenty years. He spent these two decades in a search for God, living the life of a nomadic monk until, in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, he met Swami Virajananda who was to become his guru.
Understanding Dayananda’s problems, Virajananda urged him to start from the beginning again; to discard the diverse texts he has acquired and return to the Vedas, one of Hinduism’s foundation books. Staying with Virajananda for around two and a half years, Dayananda finally left his tutelage and began repaying his guru by spreading the Vedas’ message in society.
Spreading the Vedic Message
What Dayananda saw around him was a Hindu faith which had become in some ways corrupt and he tackled those he saw as responsible head on. He travelled India, challenging priests wherever he encountered them, arguing that they had moved too far away from the founding principles of Hinduism. He was not universally popular and threats to his life were frequent. He accused the priests of twisting the messages of the original texts to enrich themselves and in this manner they were persuading their followers to lean towards superstition and idolatry rather than the Vedic scripts.
Dayananda was not just a critic of the Hindi faith, he was interested in all religions and was equally critical of each of them. In 1875 Dayananda founded the Arya Samaj; a reform movement based on the founding principles of the Vedas. This was not his first attempt to establish this type of organisation – for the previous six years he had been visiting various areas to promote something similar but political problems and hostility to his ideas from the priesthood had always stood in the way.
Mumbai was his first successful attempt and in 1977 this was followed by the establishment of a similar set up in Lahore. The Arya Samaj appealed to the entire population, not just the ruling clases and it was this influence which enabled Dayananda to voice his opinions on social reform, education for women and fair treatment for untouchables. It also gave him the platform to campaign for self-governance.
Swami Dayananda was finally poisoned by the girlfriend of the Maharajar of Jodpur who he had criticised. He died in 1883 and Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the most prominent figures in Indian independence said this of him:
“Swami Dayananda Saraswati is certainly one of the most powerful personalities who has shaped modern India and is responsible for it’s moral regeneration and religious revival.”