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INDIA’S ANCIENT PAST GAVE PLACE TO PESSIMISM
‘ RASHTRA RAKSHA KE VAIDIK SADHAN ’ BY SWAMI VEDANANDA TEERTHA
PREFACE
I am asked to write a Preface to the booklet by Swami Vedananda Teertha. Owing to pressure of work I had declined to accede to the request of the author. But as he has been insisting on my writing a few words, I have agreed to do so. The author’s plea is that free India should adopt as its religion the gospel preached by the Vedas which is scattered all over the Vedas and which he has collected together in one place in this booklet. I do not know that the book will become the gospel of new India. But I can say that the book is not merely a wonderful collection of statements drawn from the Religious Books of the ancient Aryans but it brings out in a striking manner the vigour of thought and motion which prevailed among the ancient Aryans. What the book shows is that there is nothing in it of that pessimism among the ancient Aryans which dominates the modern Hindus. The work would have been of greater value if the author had considered why the positivism and optimism of India’s ancient past gave place to the pessimism of later days. I hope that the author will deal with this problem at some later stage. In the meantime it is no small contribution to our knowledge that the theory that world is Maya is a new invention. It is from this point of view that I commend this booklet.
B. R. Ambedkar [1]
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1 : Swami Vedananda Teertha (1892-1956)— Rashtra Raksha Ke Vaidik Sadhan— 1948