SWADHARMA.

First Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru recalled "India's Tryst with Destiny" at the stroke of the midnight hour more than 70 years, while unfurling the national flag on the rampants of Red Fort, on the eve of Independence Day celebrations. He visualised that we would be equal to the challenge of freedom, redeem our debt to the motherland and fulfill promises made to ourselves. Then the children, the post-independence generation have already crossed sixty and wherever they see, they find betrayal. Who betrayed whom? Who betrayed the nation? These are some of the disturbing facts which need to be answered. Analysts have attributed to the failure of democracy, decline of institutions and to democracy as incompatible with development. Senior statesman and political experts have even tried to suggest that the nation as a whole is incubating a lust of tyranny. They are even suggesting that we need to wage a second freedom struggle for emancipating ourselves from corruption, communalism and criminality.

In this backdrop, that all our young men and women of today have a responsibility to re-build and re-model our nation. They have to re-think the implications of statements like: "A first class constitution and third rate democracy prevailing at present; failure of governance. The betrayal of the people by the professionals and the professions and so on". Heaven on earth and globalisation, if only we are prepared to tackle the market. In all this, no one has time and patience, to wonder whether we have betrayed our 'Swadharma'.

Is it not anomalous to talk about swadharma when the entire earth has shrunk to a global village? Even in brave new world of Information Technology, a need to talk of swadharma which is intrinsic to every individual not something which is either received or imposed from outside. It has something to do with the intrinsic identity to an individual, to do with self-hood and self-definition. It is vitally related to the concept of individuation, as something to do with coming to terms with one's self. All are not capable of self-definition nor is everyone capable of discovering one's own identity. How can we discover Swadharma unless we are tested? In traditional societies, rituals of initiation expose the young to powerful demons in the absence of social mediations, while in a university setting, the danger of direct exposure is modified by a protective system. University life is an institutionalised rite of passage. It is a kind of 'Virtual Reality' a student encounters while pursuing higher education. He undergoes all mock tests and he succeeds in making the grade. But the real test remains in future and struggle in order to succeed.
In the real test of life, does he succeed? Is he betrayed? Does he ultimately discover his Swadharma? Does he suffer a plenary introduction to himself? Society has become a value-free institution. We are not in a position to distinguish between facts and values, ends and means, and information and wisdom. It is disturbing to see value-pluralism taken to the logical extreme. Gradual transformation by which sin becomes immorality, immorality becomes deviance and deviance becomes choice, and choice becomes legitimate. A profound re-mapping of our moral landscape. When and where does Swadharma manifest itself most clearly? In day to day living or in times of crisis? Does everyone discover his Swadharma as a matter of course?
It is a quest involving in tense struggle, a plunge into the abyss of self, is reecognised only when we read the legendary lives of great men - a Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a Sri Ramakrishna, a Swami Vivekananda, a Swami Dayananda, a Sri Aurobindo, or relevantly, a Vivekananda, or a Mahatma Gandhi, or a Tagore. The Dichotomy between knowledge and action, so much a part of ordinary lives of great saints of India. "Trikarana Suddhi" is a continual test. It involves, a seamless unity between knowledge and action, precept and practice, knowing and doing. When God first created man, He endowed him with goodness. As a result, men were born with wisdom and it did not take them long to realise that the world was an ephemeral thing. Immediately they took the name of God and set out to meditate on him and by His grace were liberated from the bonds of life. In the end along with the spirit of goodness, he mingled in profuse quantities; the spirit of materialism and that of vanity. Then the game of life went on with a swing.
-Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy-
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