PHILOSOPHY OF HINDUISM 81
(3) “The educated should not unsettle the faith of the uneducated who have become attached to their occupation. He himself should perform the occupation of his Varna and make others perform their’s accordingly. An educated man may not become attached to his occupation. But the uneducated and dull-minded people who have become attached to their occupation should not be spoiled by the educated by putting them on a wrong path by abandoning their own occupation”—Geeta III. 26, 29.
(4) “Oh, Arjun! Whenever this religion of duties and occupations (i.e. this religion of Chaturvarna) declines, then I myself will come to birth to punish those who are responsible for its downfall and to restore it—Geeta IV, 7-8.
Such is the position of Geeta. What difference is there between it and the Manu Smriti ? Geeta is Manu in a nutshell. Those who run away from Manu Smriti and want to take refuge in Geeta either do not know Gita or are prepared to omit from their consideration that soul of Geeta which makes it akin to Manu Smriti.
Compare the teachings of the Veda, of the Bhagwat Geeta with what is contained in the Manu Smriti which I have taken as the text for elucidating the philosophy of Hinduism. What difference does one find ? The only difference one can find is that the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta deal with General Theory while the Smritis are concerned in working out the particulars and details of that theory. But so far as the essence is concerned all of them—the Smritis, the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta—are woven on the same pattern, the same thread runs through them and are really parts of the same fabric.
The reason for this is obvious. The Brahmins who were the authors of the whole body of Hindu Religious Literature—except the Upanishad Literature—took good care to inject the doctrines formulated by them in the Smritis, into the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta. Nothing is to be gained in picking and chosing between them. The Philosophy of Hinduism will be the same whether one takes the Manu Smriti as its Gospel or whether one takes the Vedas and the Bhagwat Geeta as the gospel of Hinduism.
Secondly it will be contended that Manu Smriti is a Book of Laws and not a code of ethics and that what I have presented as a philosophy of Hinduism is only legal philosophy and is not the moral philosophy of Hinduism.
My answer to this contention is simple. I hold that in Hinduism there is no distinction between legal philosophy and moral philosophy. That is because in Hinduism there is no distinction between the Legal and the Moral, the Legal being also the Moral.