DR. AMBEDKAR AND THE HINDU CODE BILL 379
attained vriddhi, you call it, wisdom, growth, development—that is vridhi……. . Here our friends say:
“Na sa sabha yatra na santi vriddhah—
Vriddha na te ye na vadanti dharmam “
I think that even in that sense of “ vriddhi ” or wisdom, there are a number of my friends here who will live up to that standard. But my friends have stopped short of quoting the whole shloka. They start by saying :
“ Na sa sabha yatra na santi vridhah
Vriddha na te ye na vadanti dharmam.”
But what is Dharam ? The sloka goes on to say later on what is Dharma. These fellows conveniently omit that portion of the sloka. The sloka goes on to say:
“ Dharmah sa na yatra na satyamasti “
That is not Dharma where there is no satya. Therefore, my quarrel with those who take their stand on dharma is that they have not understood what is Hindu Dharma.
I will again crave your indulgence to tell the House what our great savant and philosopher, Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan has to say on the subject, especially Hindu Dharma. He tells us:
“There has been no such thing as a uniform stationary, unalterable Hinduism whether in point of belief or practice. Hinduism is a movement; not a position ; a process, not a result; a growing tradition, not a fixed revelation. Its past history encourages us to believe that it will be found equal to any emergency that the future may throw up. whether on the field of thought or of history…………………..”
We are happy that today the prediction is coming true. It was Swami Vivekananda who said fifty years ago that Vedanta will become the religion of humanity—the vedanta which has been given to the world by our seers, rishis and munis Radhakrishnan goes on to say:
“We are beginning to look upon our ancient faith with fresh eyes. We feel that our society is in a condition of unstable equilibrium. There is much wood that is dead and diseased that has to be cleared away.
I hope, Sir, that most of our friends here are in their own way leaders of Hindu thought and practice, I am sure of that —
“Leaders of Hindu thought and practice are convinced that the times require, not a surrender of the basic principles of Hinduism, but a restatement of them with special reference to the needs of a more complex and morbil social order.
“Such an attempt”, he says, “will only be the repetition of a
process which has occurred a number of times in the history of Hinduism.
The work of readjustment is in process. Growth is slow when roots