SCRUTINIZING OUR TRADITIONS

No one can claim himself to be truly modern unless he has thoroughly scrutinized his traditions and has adopted what was right in them and has discarded whatever was found to be unacceptable therein.

All the reforms that have ever taken place could be made possible because of the close scrutiny of traditions by someone or the other. However, the minds that thought of discontinuing some aspects of the man’s life were not completely detached from all that was traditional. Moreover, it has also been observed that even the great reformers who picked up the most harmful traditions at a time to fight against had been fully aware that social changes could not be brought about easily. Often, it was believed that it was enough to initiate some changes, because later, the society itself would have the capacity to rectify some errors of the past as the man, by nature, did not like to continue with things that harmed him. It was also, generally, believed that modern education would be able to help the man in getting rid of all what was inconsistent to individual freedom of the man and damaging to humanitarian principles of life.

What we observe today is not encouraging. There is no doubt that a small proportion of the world population has some degree of freedom for selecting something from a few of the options available to them, but, no one can dare to choose a path that is beyond the options available to him. Let us say a very few of the human race have achieved a conditional freedom. As regards humanitarian principles, the majority of the human population is still deprived of what is rightfully due to it; they still suffer simply because the history of the mankind had been unkind to them in the past. Has the man been able to free himself of the tradition of violence, discrimination, falsehood, greed, hatred and timidity? I and many others do not think so.

Unlike propagators of a complete revolution for rectifying errors of the past I do not think that reformers are effective only in some patchworks. In fact, reformers scrutinize the errors in more details, anticipate the repercussions of their actions and devote much energy in planning the change. After having done a good preparation, they courageously fight against the system making many sacrifices. For them, those parts of the society, which are instrumental in causing harm to the society due to unfair traditions, are not enemies, but are only a part of the system that needs a thorough overhaul. Reforms, however, are painfully slow and need time to become reasonably effective. Last few decades had been of very quick changes and have swept away many saplings that were planted or were being planted after the Second World War.

As against this, the revolutionaries begin with identifying those harmful elements that must be made powerless and ineffective in causing further harm. While paying full attention to the process of weakening the undesired forces, they fail to identify the bond between the discriminator and the discriminated, the oppressor and the oppressed, and the exploiter and the exploited; howsoever awkward and filthy it may be, but such bonds always exist. That is the reason why the societies after any revolution become torn societies and their reconstruction becomes very difficult. It must be remembered that many of the problems associated with the reconstruction and restructuring would be virtually impossible to solve when democracies of whatever type are in existence in the modern world in place of feudal systems of yesteryears.

Although we have not yet completed the discussion on whether to prefer reform or some kind of revolution to effect necessary changes in the society, it would be better to understand what we mean when we use the word tradition. If we think of what is not modern as being traditional we are not helped in any way in sharpening our understanding where we have gone wrong and what improvements we have made in our way of life. In my opinion, if we take the right ways of life as prescribed by ancient Indian scriptures or similar tried and tested ways that placed great emphasis on the right thoughts and conduct, to mean the traditional ways; we would have some kind of reference before us to view what can be done to rectify the errors of the past. This will also help us in knowing what changes are needed in the so prescribed right ways of life according to place, time and circumstances.

If we are not satisfied with our present we look at our past or dreams of our future to find an answer. At the same time, we, most willingly, allow the shadows of our past or virtual images of future to influence our present. The two processes referred here are reactive and passive. They are emotional in nature and cloud our intellectual process. We do not proactively endeavour to analyze our present state, which can only be done by picking up a theory, an ideal, as a reference and experimenting with our present to identify what is best for the plurality of the mankind. In my opinion, it is not always necessary to have the social context in mind; we can carry out our experiments at individual level closely watching our interactions with our immediate surroundings.

We are not detached from our tradition. In fact, we are the product of our traditions, individually and socially. The errors committed by the man in the past and the advancements made by the humanity, both are imbibed in our nature.

Instead of having any biased views about traditions and modernity we must scrutinize our traditions and our way of life to explore what is uniformly beneficial for all. The question of reforms or revolution comes only after our understanding about the root causes of defects in the society are identified. For developing a complete understanding of the defects of the society; the man, the live and active constituent of the society, must be understood totally. We cannot leave any of the three components of man’s nature, namely, physical, intellectual and spiritual. Only when, the defects and the man’s nature are thoroughly understood the change has to be brought about through the man only. 

The man alone can reform himself. Whether he does it through a silent spiritual revolution within himself or through his external thoughts and conduct or a combination of the two, will actually be known when some progress has been made in this direction. The job of the one who is committed to the welfare of the mankind is to serve the man, selflessly; keeping in mind that his job would only be completed only when he has sufficiently encouraged the man to change himself for his own benefit.

PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA

[Author of “Mahatma: A Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious”]

16th December, 2014