Young India today is throbbing with life and activity. There is a
ferment all round among the people, especially among the youth — the students.
Even during the exciting phases of the freedom struggle against the British
Government, such wide-spread commotion and unrest as is now prevailing was not
witnessed. It is indeed a sign of our country returning to its normal health.
Unrest, like zest, is a sign of robust life and is a harbinger of
progress. It generates energy and activity. Social unrest, even though it may
sometimes bring in its wake violence and consequent human suffering, is still
preferable to social tranquility born out of the people’s inertia. Social
inertia indicates people’s loss of power to react to any challenging situation
confronting them and is, therefore, as dreadful as paralysis in a human body.
A glaring example of that sort of social quietude was witnessed during the
horrible man-made famine of Bengal in the year 1943. While multitudes of people
were being denied food and were starving, the grain shops and restaurants,
situated right in the midst of those hungry millions, were seen carrying on
their business as usual without the least fear of being attacked or looted.
This could happen, obviously, not because the people had reached a Paramahamsa
state or were too conscientious to take to avowedly criminal acts for a morsel
of food or just for their physical survival; there were neither food riots nor
did the people resort to looting for the simple reason that they had lost all
power to react, resist or assert. Some western correspondents who were in
Bengal, then, expressed great surprise over this phenomenon which they
considered inconceivable in their own countries.
In fact, if we look back to our history of the past several
centuries, our country had been under the spell of utter inertia (Tamas),
except for brief periods of manly vigour and activity here and there. It is
said that Bakhtiyar Khilji with a handful of horsemen rode all the way from
Delhi to Bengal, traversing the vast plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but
that none of the people on the way felt like challenging this band of armed
foreigners. It is further said that these Turks managed to straightway enter
the palace at Nadia, the then capital of Bengal, and massacred the inmates
while the king, Lakshamana Sen, fled by the back-door. Even granting that there
is a lot of exaggeration in this historical account as taught in schools, and
that perhaps only a fraction of it may be true, the fact remains that the
people had lost their vigour and the will to resist and were as inert as stocks
and stones.
Even during Swami Vivekananda’s times he had to face the same
appalling insensitiveness of the people. His biographers report about an
apparently queer piece of advice Swami Vivekananda felt like giving to a lazy
and indolent youth, who had approached him with a desire to know from him what
he should do to know God and how he was to get free. Swamiji who knew the
questioner to be quite a do-nothing fellow asked him: “Can you tell a lie?” The
boy replied, “No”. Swamiji then said to him, “Then you must learn to do so. It
is better to tell a lie than to be a brute, or a log of wood. You are inactive,
you have not certainly reached the highest state which is beyond all action,
calm and serene; you are too dull even to do something wicked”. Of course,
Swamiji said all this satirically and out of his exasperation over the
vegetating young boy. But this shows amply that even in Swamiji’s days the
apathy of the people was one of the major problems before the country.
Today, however, the people in general, and the younger generation
in particular are showing signs of an awakening from a long stupor of
centuries. They have begun to feel, and react to situations favourably or
unfavourably, according as they are palatable or unpalatable to them.
Authorities, whether in charge of universities or industries or those at the
helm of government administration, can no more take the people for granted; nay,
even the parents are not able to command submission from their youngsters.
The question “Can you tell a lie?” put by Swami Vivekananda to a
typically lazy and inactive student of those days, has no relevance today.
Because, the student of today has ceased to be the passive and submissive
creature that he was yesterday. Today, he is full of energy and his activity
covers such novel spheres as Swami Vivekananda could not have even imagined
then. Even an average student of today can truthfully say that he is capable of
not only telling a lie, but can also pelt stones at passenger-buses and trains,
and even remove fish-plates from the railway track just for the fun of it ; he
can as well set fire to buses, trains, buildings and even knife his teachers
just to satisfy his curiosity to know how newspapers would report the incidents
next day.
Similarly, the general mass of people and especially the younger
generation have now totally got rid of their old passivity and submission.
They have not only regained their normal capacity to feel and perceive but have
also developed an ultra-sensitiveness. Even the presence of an invigilator in
the examination hall makes their blood boil — nay, the very system of
examination irritates them. They are equally sensitive, and even allergic, to
the sight of bus-conductors asking bus-fares from their fraternity, railway
inspectors detecting ticketless students, gate-keepers in cinema halls checking
up tickets or even policemen obstructing stone-throwing.
In short, the country has, at long last, shed its torpidity and
the people now are up and doing. As long as the entire nation was numb with
inertia, nothing could be expected except a gradually increasing deterioration.
But, by the grace of God, the country has turned the corner, and the people
have become conscious of themselves and their capacity to do and undo, and to
build and destroy.
One may take an alarmist view of the present trends in the younger
generation. But, in fact, there is more reason to rejoice than to be frightened.
Because it is not through the peace of the graveyard but only through the
dynamism of action, whether good, bad or even wicked, that nations, sooner or
later, light upon the right vision and adopt the course ordained for them. Out
of the present exuberance of meaningless or destructive activity of the young,
there is bound to emerge soon the next phase, the dawn of wisdom and
discrimination (Vivek) which will make the country re-discover its
mission andgive a new creative direction to all its endeavours.
Ma.Eknath Ranade
