Give Accident a Chance

Accidents often rattle us. Some accidents though are of strange types, they change the course of our lives. Chancing upon a book and being affected by it is one such accident. The likelihood of being affected by a book has increased manifold ever since books began being published simply because there were more books available that may be read. However a mere availability has not ensured that they are read and increasingly we are finding less and less inclination among people to read books. This lack of inclination may also be responsible for the absence of great leaders in our society on whom young and old alike may look up to and draw inspiration from.

If there were one such man whom books influenced deeply and altered his course of life was Mahatma Gandhi. He not only read a lot but also took his readings seriously. The books that he read shaped his thought and later his philosophy which affected the course of our country. The books that influenced him deeply were On Heroes & Hero Worship by Thomas Carlyle, Unto this Last- Four Essays on First Principles of Political Economy by John Ruskin, Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold, India-What can it teach us by Friederich Max Muller, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau and The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy among several others. Gandhiji acknowledges their contribution in his autobiography and says that the verses of Bible “'But I say unto you, that ye resist no evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man takes away thy coat let him have thy cloak too” delighted him no end and his young mind attempted to unify the ideas of The Gita, The Bible and Light of Asia.

Interestingly another person whose life took a different course after reading a book is Anna Hazare. He is also a person in whose life several accidents took place and he ruminated and later acted upon them and turned the course of life not only his own but also that of countless thousands. For those of us who may not be aware, he was a driver in Indian army. He joined Indian Army at the exhortation of the government when China attacked our country in 1962 and when a bullet passed by his head during 1965 war and when all his fellow soldiers died in the shelling done by Pakistan in Khem Karan sector in Kashmir, he began contemplating the purpose of life.

Interestingly once as he was on the New Delhi railway station, he chanced upon a book by Swami Vivekananda. He liked the photograph of Swamiji on the cover of the book and immediately bought it. As he read the book, he found answers to his questions and resolved that the mission of his life is to serve humanity. He took voluntary retirement from the army and headed back to his native village Ralegaon Siddhi. Through his work in the field of water conservation which enhanced the yield of food grains and made the village self sufficient in food, education for children by constructing schools through cooperative work among villagers and through eradication of alcoholism he transformed Ralegaon Siddhi to a model village.

Today as we are surrounded by news and views about him and his work in the field of corruption, we must not forget that he is a creation of a number of accidents in his life and also because after every accident he saw life in a new light and followed that light.

Old Buddha and the New Buddha

What is important to us and what is not is difficult to decide. We are often confused and when faced with such a situation we often rely on the judgment of others. The others may be parents or friends or culture or society and we end up living a life not of our own but that which is dictated by others. If there were one person in history who refused to live a life dictated by others, it was Prince Siddharth, later known as Gautam Buddha. He realized very early after seeing a sick man, an old man a dead body and an ascetic that life is full of suffering and a way must be found to live. He found enlightenment under a fig tree later called Bodhi tree and he was thence called Buddha, a being who can discriminate between what is important and what is not. 

The path showed by him became very popular not only in India but also beyond Indian shores. It was called Buddhism and was in Swami Vivekananda’s words, a rebel child of Hinduism. Hinduism then was under strict dominion of Vedic Brahminism and society was clearly divided in to castes that served the interests of a few by keeping the people from lower castes away from the basic privileges of life. Buddhism refused to acknowledge these divisions and considered all in a society as equals. This aspect of Buddhism found its echo most powerfully again, more than 2500 years later when Dr Bhimrao Ramji  Ambedkar converted more than 5 lacs of his supporters to Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur. 

Dr Ambedkar was a student of Anthropology and studied plight of people who were forced to live outside their village as they were untouchables. He wrote a remarkably scholarly book on this issue titled “Who were sudras? How they became untouchables”. He studied Buddhism all his life, founded Buddhist Society of India and wrote the masterpiece “The Buddha and His Dhamma”. He prescribed 22 vows for his followers that were taken from the three refuges and five precepts of Buddhism. The first one was “I shall have no faith in Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara nor shall I worship them” and also included “I firmly believe the Dhamma of the Buddha is the only true religion. Many Ambedkarite organizations today are working towards popularizing these 22 vows, the one at the vanguard is “22 Pledges Practice & Propagation Movement” and claims to have more than 50 lacs volunteers. 

Dr Ambedkar was the first law minister of India and was also the Chairman of Constitution Drafting Committee. His extensive study of Buddhist literature was of immense utility while drafting the constitution. He borrowed the Sangha practices like voting by ballot, rules of debate and precedence and use of agenda to conduct business for the Indian constitution. He also introduced the system of reservation in jobs and schools and colleges for under-privileged classes and was hailed as affirmative action towards eradicating socio-economic inequalities in the country. Towards this end he also had a famous fight against Gandhiji when British Government accepted his demand for a separate electorate for untouchables while Gandhiji was vehemently against it and went on to a fast unto death as a protest. There was a nation-wide concern for Gandhiji’s health and fearing his death several Hindu leaders organized joint public meetings with Dr Ambedkar and under massive coercion he dropped the demand for separate electorate for untouchables and accepted reserved seats for them. This pact is famously called Poona Pact.