Chapter 7

Chapter VII

It was now summer. One afternoon Swamiji, Sturdy, Goodwin, Swami Saradananda, Fox and Mohendra were sitting together. In the newspapers there came as special news the description of the coronation of Czar Nicholas II. Goodwin was reading aloud. In commemoration of the coronation many classes of subjects had a year’s rents (taxes) nullified, and enameled cups bearing the coronation year stamped on them, were to be given away to innumerable persons, for which great preparations had been made. Poor people had flocked to Moscow in hope of an enameled cup. But the crowd was so vast, the police could make no arrangement for controlling them and fired on them and many died. Finally the Superintendent of Police shot himself. Everyone was dumbfounded by this news. Shortly Sturdy said, “Excusing back taxes – it is an empty gesture. Whatever is done, the magnates will fill their stomachs, the commoners will go to the wall; rather, extra taxes will be levied. It is a barbaric, intolerable race, knowing nothing of government. They rule by oppression alone. He said much more, about the good government of England and poor government of others. Goodwin said, “This is very wicked behavior. If it happened in England we would challenge it.”
Swamiji had till now remained silent in his chair and as if sunk in deep thought. His face was serious, his eyes wide and filled with sadness. Suddenly he said, “What misery! What suffering! For the sake of one cup all those people left their villages and came to the city and so many shot! How poor the country is. They are starving. They have given their lives for a two-bit enameled glass. Will the Czar’s coronation be remembered as a festival of joy or a catastrophe of carnage? And this happened right in front of the Czar! How sad.” And he began to walk the floor.`

Goodwin’s patriotism

    Edward VII was then Prince of Wales. A horse of his named “Persimmon” won the Derby race. England is a racing country, the fact that a horse of the Prince should win the race made a big stir. Everyone was overjoyed. Goodwin became excited and talked a lot about horse-racing, which did not please the others. He said the name Persimmon time after time. Swamiji was walking back and forth and began to make faces, saying “Persimmon” in mockery of Goodwin. The latter, who understood Swamiji’s every mood, got down on his knees and with folded hands pleaded, “Swamiji, whatever ridicule or teasing has to be done, please do it to poor Goodwin. Poor Goodwin is your disciple, your servant; but please do not say anything against the Royal Family; that is considered very censurable in this country. Have pity on me.” Hearing his words all were bemused. This Goodwin was supposed to be a dyed-in-the-wool radical, and here was such unswerving devotion to the Royal Family!
    At one point Swamiji and Sturdy were discussing the clergy of America. Swamiji said, “The clergy of America only go about with plans for raising money. Faith, devotion – these things are not in them. Just as the industrialists of America go around making money, so is the preoccupation of their clergy. Where Jesus showed his grand renunciation and wandered about with a single garment taking the name of God, these priests only raise money. I gave a good preaching to the preachers. They got miffed at me, but the rest of the people were pleased, because on one has dared to reproach them before.”
    Sturdy said: “The Christian religion has become utterly corrupted; it has become just a military and commercial religion. Its business now is war and commerce. Such religion will no longer stand in the world. The whole thing must be thrown out and a new religion established. The Vedanta is the only religion that will work.”
    A gentleman came to meet Swamiji who, while talking with him, said from time to time,” Do you not think such-and-such?” as if his matured opinion must be Swamiji’s also. No one need do any thinking for himself, but should expound this man’s idea and nothing else. Swamiji heard him in silence and with a grave face. At last, after a few words the Swami dismissed him, and told Sturdy, “This is a bad way of conversing. He uses a patronizing tone. So I did not engage him much in talk.” Sturdy said that many have this fault.
    One day a man came and told Swamiji all his most intimate affairs. Many did this with him. It seemed to console them. They reckoned him as one of their family and never thought, “Oh, this is a foreigner; I should not mix with him.”
    Goodwin was interested in politics and always was talking about “one man, one vote.” One day there was a knock at the door. Mohendra followed Goodwin to the door, saw there a peasant in boots. Mohendra noticed that Goodwin spoke with him at the door. Later he asked Goodwin why he had not asked the man to come in, and was told, “He belongs to the laboring class.” Then Mohendra thought of how Goodwin said everyone was equal in England. Swami Saradananda commented that politics is in the very bones of the British. Goodwin kept his mouth shut around Swamiji. So when the latter was out, he made use of that opportunity to talk politics with the others. He favored abolition of the House of Lords (but not of the Monarchy).

Swamiji’s conversations

    On the morning following a dispute between Swami Vivekananda and an Englishman at the evening discourse (to be reported on in Part II) Swamiji was very late getting up. His mind being upset, he had taken Goodwin for a long walk along the street. His eyes were swollen from the night’s chill. In his dressing gown and slippers he usually came to eat breakfast at nine or nine-thirty. After food he would sit in his easy- chair and talk long with Goodwin about religion and the American lectures, but today suddenly his subject and tone were different. He spoke of India’s wars. For on the night’s walk he had spoken of this continuously. So he was still talking history.
    He said that when the English first came to Madras, the French were the ascendant race. They had exceptional prowess in war and government. The native Muslims and French banded together and surrounded Arkat Castle. The British had only a few native soldiers. Battle gradually increased; slowly the British were hard put and many died. Their supplies gave out etc. But their native sepoys were so generous and noble that they said, “We are natives: we can live on very little.” And, cooking rice, they gave it to the British and themselves lived on the rice water. Some days went by. A Marathi commander, making with his army and encampment at a distance, was much impressed at the sight of the heroism and said he could not but go to the aid of people who could so skillfully survive, and he advanced with his party. Maharashtra was powerful then. When the Muslims and the French heard he was aiding the beleaguered, they withdrew and the Englishmen’s lives were saved.
    “Your race disregards this event, this nobility and heroism of the Hindus and oppresses them. Even though saved from the mouth of death you now make various types of oppression over them. Your race has no appreciation, you are self-seeking ungrateful people. That is why the peoples of the world do not have faith in you.”
    When Goodwin would boast of the courage of British soldiers, Swamiji would tell him other nice stories of this kind.
    “You see,” he said, “this is through ‘hypnotizing,’ this control which a few Britishers have over the Indians, sitting on their chests and sucking their blood. But the day that hypnotism is dispelled and the Indians understand their own inner strength, they will squeeze you like a lemon” – showing such a gesture with his fist.

His estimate of the English

    “Do you know why your country still survives? The French were a great race, who worked like heroes. But they had one weakness: the officers, the ministers, could be bribed by foreigners against their own people. They betrayed them in battle. So the French race fell. I see a thousand faults in your people; you may be cruel and self-seeking, but you have one great quality: very strong love for the race. There is no betrayal. This alone is what has preserved you. If you ever lose that you will fall apart in a few days, and will revert to being barbaric.”
    The question came up of the Mogul Empire. Why did such a great empire fall? Swamiji used to say it was conquered by its own wickedness.
When Sir Thomas Rowe went as British envoy to the court of Jehangir he wrote that when the Mogul emperor moves from one place to another, a whole city goes with him. Whatever classes of people live in the city, the same must go and stay at the Badshah’s encampment. Several thousand persons go with the camp and it lacks nothing. Even bathing facilities are a big affair. The magnificence and majesty of the Mogul Emperor was unrivalled and was the reality imagined by poets. Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb outdid Jehangir. The number of soldiers became so great that it began to be unmanageable. The soldiers began to loot the villages. This is the way oppression of the populace developed. From all this luxury and because of the army, the cost of government became insupportable and under pressure collapsed.
    The British were becoming greedy rulers and were trying to cover a vast empire of ever-expanding perimeter. But they are not a sufficiently vigilant and supervising people. Often there is news of uprising. A few selfish British ministers are bringing such a big empire under their control, incurring the expense of more and more armed forces. “It will crumble to pieces out of sheer weight.”