IV
Was Ranade
a great man ? He was of course great in his person. Vast in physique—he could
have been called “Your Immense” as the Irish servant who could not pronounce
Your Eminence used respectfully to call Cardinal Wiseman—his master. He was a
man of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition and versatile in his
capacity. He had sincerity which is the sum of all moral qualities and his
sincerity was of the sort which was prescribed by Carlyle. It was not a conscious
“braggart sincerity”. It was the natural sincerity, a constitutional trait and
not an assumed air. He was not only big in his physique and in his sincerity,
he was also big in intellect. Nobody can question that Ranade had intellect of
a high calibre. He was not merely a lawyer and a judge of the High Court, he
was a first class economist, a first class historian, a first class
educationist and a first class divine. He was not a politician. Perhaps it is
good that he was not. For if he had been, he might not have been a great man.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside
from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them are taken as
a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.’’ Ranade though not a
politician was a profound student of politics. Indeed it would be difficult to
find in the history of India any man who could come up to Ranade in the width
of his learning, the breadth of his wisdom and the length of his vision. There was
no subject which he did not touch and in which he did not acquire profundity.
His reading was on the scale of the colossal and every inch he was a scholar.
He was great not merely by the standard of his Time, but he was great— measured
by any standard. As I have said no claim for being a great man can rest on the
foundation of sincerity and intellect either singly or in combination. Ranade
could not be called great if he had these two qualities and no more. His title
to being a great man must rest upon the social purposes he served and on the
way he served them. On that there can be no doubt. Ranade is known more as a
social reformer than as a historian, economist or educationist. His whole life
is nothing but a relentless campaign for social reform. It is on his role as a
social reformer that this title to being a great man rests. Ranade had both the
vision and the courage which the reformer needs, and in the circumstances in
which he was born his vision was no small a virtue than his courage. That he
developed a vision of the Prophet—I am using the word in the Jewish
sense—cannot but be regarded as a matter of surprise if the time in which he
was born is taken into account. Ranade was born in 1842 some 24 years after the
battle of Kirkee which brought the Maratha Empire to an end. The downfall of
the Maratha Empire evoked different feelings among different people. There were
men like Natu who served as accessories before the fact. There were some who
played the part of accessories after the fact, inasmuch as they were happy that
the cursed rule of the Brahmin Peshwa was brought to an end. But there can be
no doubt that a large majority of the people of Maharashtra were stunned by the
event. When the whole of India was enveloped by the advancing foreign horde and
its people being subjugated piece by piece, here in this little corner of
Maharashtra lived a sturdy race who knew what liberty was, who had fought for
it inch by inch and established it over miles and miles. By the British
conquest they had lost what was to them a most precious possession. One can
quite imagine how the best intellect of Maharashtra had its mind utterly
confounded and its horizon fully and completely darkened. What could be the
natural reaction to so great a catastrophe? Can it be other than resignation,
defeatism and surrender to the inevitable? How did Ranade react? Very
differently. He held out the hope that the fallen shall rise. Indeed he
developed a new faith on which this hope was founded. Let me quote his own
words. He said :
“I profess
implicit faith in two articles of my creed. This country of ours is the true
land of promise. This race of ours is the chosen race.”
He did not
rest quiet by merely enunciating this new Mosaic Gospel of hope and confidence.
He applied his mind to the question of the realization of this hope. The first
requisite was of course a dispassionate analysis of the causes of this
downfall. Ranade realized that the downfall was due to certain weaknesses in
the Hindu social system and unless these weaknesses were removed the hope could
not be realized. The new gospel was therefore followed by a call to duty. That
duty was no other than the duty to reform Hindu society. Social reform became
therefore the one dominant purpose of his life. He developed a passion for
social reform and there was nothing he did not do to promote it. His methods
included meetings, missions, lectures, sermons, articles, interviews,
letters—all carried, on with an unrelenting zeal. He established many
societies. He founded many journals. But he was not content with this. He
wanted something more permanent, something more systematic for promoting the
cause of social reform. So he founded the Social Conference, an All-India
Organization which ran as an adjunct to the Indian National Congress. Year
after year the Conference met to discuss the social ills and to find the ways
of remedying them, and year after year Ranade attended its annual sessions as
though it was a pilgrimage and fostered the cause of social reform.
In
fostering the cause of social reform Ranade showed great courage. Many people
of this generation will perhaps laugh at such a claim. Courting prison has
become an act of martyrdom in India. It is regarded both as a patriotic act and
also as an act of courage. Most people who would otherwise be beneath notice
and in whose case it could rightly be said that they were scoundrels who had
taken to politics as their last refuge, have by going to prison become martyrs
and have acquired a name and fame which, to say the least, is quite astounding.
There would be some substance in this view, if prison life involved the rigours
to which men like Tilak and those of his generation had been subjected. Prison
life today has lost all its terrors. It has become a mere matter of detention.
Political prisoners are no longer treated as criminals. They are placed in a
separate class. There are no hardships to suffer, there is no reputation to
lose and there is no privation to undergo. It calls for no courage. But even
when prison life had, as in the time of Mr. Tilak, its rigours the political
prisoners could make no claim to greater courage than a social reformer. Most
people do not realize that society can practise tyranny and oppression against
an individual in a far greater degree than a Government can. The means and
scope that are open to society for oppression are more extensive than those
that are open to Government, also they are far more effective. What punishment
in the penal code is comparable in its magnitude and its severity to excommunication
? Who has greater courage—the social reformer who challenges society and
invites upon himself excommunication or the political prisoner who challenges
Government and incurs sentence of a few months or a few years imprisonment ?
There is also another difference which is often lost sight of inestimating the
courage shown by the social reformer and the political patriot. When the social
reformer challenges society there is nobody to hail him a martyr. There is
nobody even to befriend him. He is loathed and shunned. But when the political
patriot challenges Government he has whole society to support him. He is
praised, admired and elevated as the saviour. Who shows more courage—The social
reformer who fights alone or the political patriot who fights under the cover
of vast mass of supporters ? It would be idle to deny that Ranade showed
courage in taking up the cause of social reform. Indeed he showed a high degree
of courage. For let it be remembered that he lived in times when social and religious
customs however gross and unmoral were regarded as sacrosanct and when any
doubt questioning their divine and moral basis was regarded not merely as
heterodoxy but as intolerable blasphemy and sacrilege.
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