A tribute of Swami Agnivesh on his 81st birth anniversary
By Kaushal Kishore
During the pandemic when the world seems to be busy with the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, a friend called me to share about the demise of social reformer, Swami Agnivesh. Today is his birthday and he died just ten days before he was to turn 81!
Agnivesh was among the top admirers of Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati and Lalaji (AKA Lala Lajpat Rai). He had compared the duo with Marx and Lenin in the context of Indian freedom struggle!
It’s impossible to forget such a revolutionary consciousness. Agnivesh was born among the Brahmins on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. He once told me about his birthplace that was a part of Odisha at that time, now in Andhra Pradesh. He had taught law and economics at a prestigious college and had practiced law at the Calcutta High Court in late sixties and early seventies. Swami Indravesh and Maharishi had profound impact that turned him into Swami Agnivesh at the prime of youth. The rationalist leader walked on the Grand Trunk Road of the Arya Samaj in North India, wrote Socialism in the Vedas, and delivered the interpretations of Maharishi’s Satyarth Prakash before fully accepting politics as the best medium of public service.
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At the age of 34 Agnivesh was the youngest Education Minister of Haryana. Maharishi and Lalaji had focused on the Cow Protection and the ban on Liquor that he pursued vigorously throughout the life. Ganga Jamuna Tehzeeb and the Inter-Religious Dialogues were his other interests. His long struggle against the bonded labour and child labour gained widespread recognition. It’s not possible to deny his existence because of his stand on mining workers, orphaned people, victims of displacement along with the tribals and dalits.
Maharishi opposed the idol worship. This was one of the ten commandments of the new Hindu sect, Arya Samaj that he had started against Islam, Christianity and the British colonialism, eighteen years after the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. That was initial step of modern Indian nationalism based on Hindi, Hindu and purification. After fifty long years, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh came into existence preferring Swami Vivekananda’s views on idol worship to dream the Ram Mandir and Ram Rajya. Most of the Arya Samajis left Maharishi Dayanand to realise the Ayodhya dream in the decades of eighties and nineties. But Agnivesh stood steadfastly with Maharishi against the idol worship. On this issue, he even faced the brutality of violence. The sad act of violence started at Pakur in Jharkhand and repeated during the funeral procession of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. His condition was not good since then onwards. Despite this, his activism did not decrease.
At a time when multinational corporations like Alibaba and Amazon introduced the world with a new kind of colonialism, his works attract attention on the plight of tribes in the forests. Now there is no one like him among the people working on the situation of tribals in the Naxalite areas. He had explained it as a counter-revolution after the independence. Wherever there was a mass movement against exploitation and oppression, he was also present.
We need to consider about this demise on the anniversary of terror attacks in this context. The man having revolutionary ideas departed in this era of violence. It is necessary to remember him for many other reasons as well. He tried to bring non-violence of Gandhi and Buddha into his life. But the rural communities continued to be viewed within the purview of socialist and capitalist interpretations. In fact, the community that the village refers to in the Indian subcontinent does not fit into the definitions of commune and civilization, but in the cultures and dialects of the tribes. The story of Indian civilization is incomplete without Gautam Buddha, Adi Shankaracharya, Maharishi Dayanand and Gandhi. The origin of this civilization, which advocates for Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and Atithi Devo Bhava, is rooted into these cultures. His departure has ended our discussions on the fall of modern civilization and the evolution of cultures.
*The writer is a social activist and author of The Holy Ganga (Rupa, 2008), Managing Editor of Panchayat Sandesh, and his column Across The Lines appears in the vernacular publications.
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