Ethics Of Swami Vivekananda And Raja Ram Mohan Roy

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) was a great thinker during the Indian Renaissance. According to Vivekananda, ethics is a reflection of a society's cultural health at a given time. Man creates progressive cultural and moral ethos during the evolution of human societies. However, there comes a point when cultural development slows due to a lack of new ideas. As a result, ethics is reduced to a shadow of its former glory. 

 

•    The solution lies in giving existing culture a spiritual dimension and, of course, developing a new moral and ethical code for future generations. 

•    When Vivekananda saw the poor state of the masses, he was moved by pity. 

 

•    The spiritual uplift of the masses, according to Swami Vivekananda, requires the country's social, economic, and political reconstruction. Offering religion to a starving people when they ask for food is insulting. Teaching religious principles to a hungry man is an insult to his dignity. 

 

•    He harshly criticises the people's flaws and weaknesses, as well as the evil practise of untouchability, caste superiority, priest craft, and religious tyranny. He prefers to think of the people as confirmed atheists rather than superstitious fools, because the atheists could be useful. 

 

•    However, it keeps superstitions at bay; the brain is bread, the mind is frozen, and life is engulfed in decadence. As a result, if humanity becomes atheist by relying on reason rather than blindly believing in two hundred million Gods on the authority of anyone, it will be valid.

 

•    According to him, freedom is a prerequisite for human development, but freedom does not imply the absence of barriers to social advancement or economic exploitation. In response to a question about the meaning of freedom, he says: “Our natural right to be allowed to use your own body, intelligence and wealth according to our will, without doing any harm to others, and all the members of a society ought to have the same opportunity for obtaining wealth, education or knowledge.”

 

•    He has advocated for progressive ideas while vehemently opposing escapist doctrines such as mysticism. Occultism and mysticism, he claims, have destroyed the people. The need of the hour is for man to create religion. Everything that weakens must be discarded as poison.

 

•    He is an advocate for logic. He claims that no genuine inspiration ever contradicts reason, and that when one does, it is due to inspiration. Although there are elements of materialism in Vivekananda's outlook, it is essentially idealistic. 

 

•    The goal of man is to identify with Brahman through self-purification and community service. Man is the centre of religion as he has conceived it. He who has set out in search of Go eventually realises that man is the centre of the universe. He encourages people to look for God in man.

 

•    The work of ethics has been, and will continue to be, not the destruction of variation and the establishment of sameness in the external world—-which is impossible because it would mean death and annihilation—-but the recognition of the unity in spite of all these variations, the recognition of the God within, in spite of everything that frightens us, the recognition of infinite strength as the property of everyone in spite of all apparent weakness, and the recognition of the eternal.

 

•    He sees the common people as India's only hope, as the upper classes are physically and morally exhausted. He advocates for a radical transformation of the social order because all members of a society should have equal access to wealth, education, and knowledge, and declares that the rules governing society that obstruct the unfolding of freedom are harmful and should be eliminated as soon as possible. Spiritual and secular education are required to uplift the masses.

 

•    Swami Vivekananda summarises the entire concept of education as the manifestation of divinity in man. He sees caste consciousness as a roadblock to India's development. Casteism constricts and divides the noble bond of humanity. For him, worth, not birth, is the true measure of a man. 

 

•    Swami Vivekananda's ultimate goal is the good of all. He promotes the notion that man must strive for this goal to the point of self-sacrifice. The methods used to achieve this ultimate goal must also be worthy of that goal.

 

•    Swami Vivekananda's programme of social regeneration in India includes two major components: emancipation of women and uplift of the masses. He could see how Indian society was deteriorating as a result of the continued neglect of women and the masses. He claims that a country or a nation that does not respect women has never been great and will never be great in the future. 

 

•    The state, with the help of society, can foster and promote people's common interests, resulting in justice, honesty, and peace, among other things. The state cannot have any other interests than those of the individuals who make up society. Individuals are what make up the state. It is futile to expect the state to prosper without virtuous individuals. 

•    He claims: “The basis of all systems social or political rests upon the goodness of man. No nation is great or good because parliament enacts this or that, but because its men are great and good.”

 

•    He visualises a dynamic concept of nationalism in relation to internationalism that encourages people to be entwined with the lives of other individuals and nations in order to benefit their own well-being, progress, and prosperity. His love for humanity is unconstrained by geography. His interests are not limited to India, but also extend to the rest of the world. He pleads for peace and good relations with multinational corporations.

 

•    Thus, from the Vedas to the present century, certain values that are humanistic in content and spirit have been cherished and propagated in Indian tradition. Of course, unlike the western tradition, Indian humanism has not developed into a systematic philosophy with a sound metaphysics and epistemology.

 

When the British imposed censorship on the Calcutta press in 1823, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder and editor of two of India's first weekly newspapers, organised a protest, arguing for the natural rights of freedom of speech and religion. This protest marked a shift in Roy's life, moving him away from religious polemic and toward social and political activism. 

 

•    Roy relentlessly criticised traditional Hinduism's idolatry and superstition in his newspapers, treatises, and books. He railed against the caste system and the Suttee custom. 

 

•    Roy's exact influence on the British East India Governing Council's prohibition of suttee in 1829 is unknown, but it is widely assumed that he pushed the government to act decisively on the issue.

 

•    Roy established the Anglo-Hindu School in 1822 and the Vedanta College four years later to teach his Hindu monotheistic doctrines. Roy protested in 1823 when the Bengal government proposed a more traditional Sanskrit college, claiming that classical Indian literature would not prepare Bengal's youth for the demands of modern life. Instead, he proposed a modern, Western-style curriculum. Roy also led a demonstration in India against the outdated British legal and revenue administration.

 

•    Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj (Society of Brahma) in August 1828, a Hindu reformist sect with Unitarian and other liberal Christian beliefs. The Brahma Samaj is more than just a religious reform organisation. Religious reform is linked to social and political progress. 

 

•    The Brahma Samaj movement has undoubtedly played a significant role in popularising the ideals of individual liberty, national unity, and the liberation of social institutions and social relations, as well as in quickening the forces of national regeneration.

 

•    Roy's contribution to the Indian ethos is based in part on the breadth of his social vision and his thought's striking modernity. He was a tireless social reformer, but he also reignited interest in the Vedanta school's ethical principles as a counterbalance to the Western assault on Indian culture. 

 

•    He contributed to the popularisation of Bengali through his textbooks and treatises, and he was the first Indian to apply the fundamental social and political ideas of the French and American revolutions to the Indian context.

 

•    As a result, Rammohan Ray was a social reformer who used Christian elements to reform Hinduism. He freely borrowed ideas from the French and American revolutions in politics.