Buddhism had made the first and yet the greatest attempt to propagate a universal religion. ‘Go, ye Bhikkus, to all the ten directions of the world and preach the law of Righteousness ! ’ Truly, it was a law of Righteousness. It had no ulterior end in view, no lust for land or lucre quickening its steps; but grand though its achievements were it could not eradicate the seeds of animal passions nor of political ambitions nor of individual aggrandisement in the minds of all men to such an extent as to make it safe for India to change her sword for a rosary. Even then, to set an example, did India declare her will to ’take more pleasure in the conquest of peace and righteousness than in the conquest of arms. ‘Nobly she tried : Ah ! so nobly as to make herself ridiculous in the eyes of lust and lucre. Had she not issued Royal edicts to the effect that the very water be strained before it was poured out for horses and elephants to drink, so as to enable the tiny lives in the waters to escape immediate death ? And had she not opened corn- throwing centres in the midst of the seas that fish be fed in the oceans of the world ? Nor had the very fish ceased to feed on each other ! Nobly did she try to kill killing by getting killed - and at last found out that palm leaves at times are too fragile for steel ! As long as the whole world was red in tooth and claw and the national and racial distinction so strong as to make men brutal, so long if India had to live at all a life whether spiritual or political according to the right of her soul, she must not lose the strength born of national and racial cohesion. So the leaders of thought and action grew sick of repeating the mumbos and jumbos of universal brotherhood and bitterly complained :
- 1.Those that were killed by you, O God, and the Asuras killed by Vishnu are once again born on this earth in the form of the Mlencchas.
- 2.They kill the Brahmans, destroy the religious rites like the sacrifices, abduct the daughters of the sages ; what sins do they not commit !
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- If the earth is conquered by the Mlecchas this land of the gods will perish, because of the abolishing of sacrifices and other religious rites.
(Gunadhya) and when the barbarian hordes of the Shakas and the Huns - who had ravaged their fair land that had in utter confidence clad herself in a Bhikku’s dress’ changed her sword for rosary and had taken to the vows of Ahimsa and nonviolence - were expelled beyond the Indus and further, and a strong national state was firmly established, then it was but natural that the leaders of our race should have realised what an immense amount of strength could be derived if but the new national State was backed up by a Church as intensely national. Moreover everything that is common in us with our enemies, weakens our power of opposing them. The foe that has nothing in common with us is the foe likely to be most bitterly resisted by us just as a friend that has almost everything in him that we admire and prize in ourselves is likely to be the firend we love most. The necessity of creating a bitter sense of wrong invoking a power of undying resistance especially in India that had under the opiates of Universalism and non-violence lost the faculty even of resisting sin and crime and aggression, could best be accomplished by cutting off even the semblance of a common worship - a common Church which required her to clasp the hand of those as her co-religionists whose had been the very hand that had strangled her as a nation. What was the use of a universal faith that instead of soothening the ferociousness and brutal egoism of other nations only excited their lust by leaving India defenceless and unsuspecting ? No; the only safe-guards in future were valour and strength that could only be born of a national self-consciousness. She had poured her life’s blood for sophistry that tried to prov otherwise !