Swami Vivekananda and Sudra Jagaran or the Awakening of the masses - His visions for a future world order - Part 3

Whenever the social situation declined under one order, exploitation and corruption became rampant resulting in enormous suffering and miseries for common man, a giant tidal wave came and swept everything away, leaving in its wake a completely changed social order. If we look only at India, we’ll see such a change occuring in the recorded history at around 500 B.C, when Brahmin priests held dominance over Indian socio political structure. It is not suprising that the towering personality of Buddha came from a Kshatriya background, as if to emphasize what was going to happen. Buddhism swept India and with it went away the Brahminical orthodoxy, although it did not vanish. It retained its stronghold in the South, but Kshatriyas became more powerful and Brahmins were relegated to secondary positions. Even we saw the rise of Sudras into kingship as was evident in the assumption of power by Chandragupta Mauriya and also that of the dynasty which he replaced – the Nandas. Buddhism did help in curbing the influence of Brahmins, esp. in the North. So the social order was changed. As Vivekananda summarized in his writings about priesthood, “That renunciation, self-control, and asceticism of the priest which during the period of his ascendancy were devoted to the pursuance of earnest researches of truth are on the eve of his decline employed anew and spent solely in the accumulation of objects of self-gratification and in the extension of privileged superiority over others.” 

Of all the powers to help, power of spirituality is the most potent. However, of all powers to cause evil, spirituality turned upside down, i.e. pseudo spirituality is also the greatest. It can and it did cause great harm through exclusion, deprivation, false entitlements, pride and selfishness.

In the global context we can say the decline of Brahminism was observed with the decline of Greece and the rise of Rome was the herald of the rise of Kshatriya power. Greece with all its learning and wisdom faded into oblivion, never to rise again and the military mights of Rome and later the different Empires in the Eastern Europe were the basically the Kshatriyas ruling the world. The period was marked by the ascent and sacrifice of a very great man, Jesus, whose followers helped in curbing the influence of both the suprerior military might of Rome and the priestly class of Jews, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the elitists, who ruled over the common men. Christianity spread to Europe and Europe was never the same again. Church, the new priestly order became very important and actively colluded with the States to control the lives of common masses, but they could never gain the absolute power of the states and had to depend on the states for sovereign influence in return for extending their help in subordinating the common people.

In Arabia another great man, a prophet, declared the end of all priestly dominion and Islam, was largely driven by its Kshatriya might and power. It therefore spread very soon from one country to another through the military conquests. In words of Swamiji, “The resuscitation of the priestly power under the Mussulman rule was, on the other hand, an utter impossibility. The Prophet Mohammed himself was dead against the priestly class in any shape and tried his best for the total destruction of this power by formulating rules and injunctions to that effect. Under the Mussulman rule, the king himself was the supreme priest; he was the chief guide in religious matters; and when he became the emperor, he cherished the hope of being the paramount leader in all matters over the whole Mussulman world.”