Social Reform
Sri Aurobindo
Essays Divine and Human
Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950
Social Reform
Reform is not an excellent thing in itself as many Europeanised intellects imagine; neither is it always safe and good to stand unmoved in the ancient paths as the orthodox obstinately believe. Reform is sometimes the first step to the abyss, but immobility is the most perfect way to stagnate and to putrefy. Neither is moderation always the wisest counsel: the mean is not always golden. It is often an euphemism for purblindness, for a tepid indifference or for a cowardly inefficiency. Men call themselves moderates, conservatives or extremists and manage their conduct and opinions in accordance with a formula. We like to think by systems and parties and forget that truth is the only standard. Systems are merely convenient cases for keeping arranged knowledge, parties a useful machinery for combined action; but we make of them an excuse for avoiding the trouble of thought.
One is astonished at the position of the orthodox. They labour to deify everything that exists. Hindu society has certain arrangements and habits which are merely customary. There is no proof that they existed in ancient times nor any reason why they should last into the future. It has other arrangements and habits for which textual authority can be quoted, but it is oftener the text of the modern Smritikaras than of Parasara and Manu. Our authority for them goes back to the last five hundred years. I do not understand the logic which argues that because a thing has lasted for five hundred years it must be perpetuated through the aeons. Neither antiquity nor modernity can be the test of truth or the test of usefulness. All the Rishis do not belong to the past; the Avatars still come; revelation still continues.
Some claim that we must at any rate adhere to Manu and the Puranas, whether because they are sacred or because they are national.
Well, but, if they are sacred, you must keep to the 
whole and not cherish isolated texts while disregarding the body of your authority.
You cannot pick and choose; you cannot say “This is sacred and I will keep to it, that is less sacred and I will leave it alone.”
When you so treat your sacred authority, you are proving that to you it has no sacredness.
You are juggling with truth; for you are pretending to consult Manu when you are really consulting your own opinions, preferences or interests.
To recreate Manu entire in modern society is to ask Ganges to flow back to the Himalayas.
Manu is no doubt national, but so is the animal sacrifice and the burnt offering.
Because a thing is national of the past, it need not follow that it must be national of the future.
It is stupid not to recognise altered conditions.
We have similar apologies for the unintelligent preservation of mere customs; but, various as are the lines of defence, I do not know any that is imperiously conclusive.
Custom is shishtachar, decorum, that which all well-bred and respectable people observe.
But so were the customs of the far past that have been discontinued and, if now revived, would be severely discountenanced and, in many cases, penalised; so too are the customs of the future that are now being resisted or discouraged, — even, I am prepared to believe, the future no less than the past prepares for us new modes of living which in the present would not escape the censure of the law.
It is the achar that makes the shishta, not the shishta who makes the achar.
The achar is made by the rebel, the innovator, the man who is regarded in his own time as eccentric, disreputable or immoral, as was Sri Krishna by Bhurisrava1 because he upset the old ways and the old standards.
Custom may be better defended as ancestral and therefore cherishable.
But if our ancestors had persistently held that view, our so cherished customs would never have come into being.
Or, more rationally, custom must be preserved because its long utility in the past argues a sovereign virtue for the preservation of society.
But to all things there is a date and a limit.
All long-continued customs have been sovereignly useful in their time, even totemism and polyandry.
We must not ignore the usefulness of the past, but we seek in preference a present and a future utility. 
Custom and Law may then be altered. For each age its shastra. But we cannot argue straight off that it must be altered, or even if alteration is necessary, that it must be altered in a given direction. One is repelled by the ignorant enthusiasm of social reformers. Their minds are usually a strange jumble of ill-digested European notions. Very few of them know anything about Europe, and even those who have visited it know it badly. But they will not allow things or ideas contrary to European notions to be anything but superstitious, barbarous, harmful and benighted, they will not suffer what is praised and practised in Europe to be anything but rational and enlightened. They are more appreciative than Occidentals themselves of the strength, knowledge and enjoyment of Europe; they are blinder than the blindest and most self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon to its weakness, ignorance and misery. They are charmed by the fair front Europe presents to herself and the world; they are unwilling to discern any disease in the entrails, any foulness in the rear. For the Europeans are as careful to conceal their social as their physical bodies and shrink with more horror from nakedness and indecorum than from the reality of evil. If they see the latter in themselves, they avert their eyes, crying, “It is nothing or it is little; we are healthy, we are perfect, we are immortal.” But the face and hands cannot always be covered, and we see blotches.
The social reformer repeats certain stock arguments like shibboleths.
For these antiquities he is a fanatic or a crusader.
Usually he does not act up to his ideas, but in all sincerity he loves them and fights for them.
He pursues his nostrums as panaceas; it would be infidelity to question or examine their efficacy.
His European doctors have told him that early marriage injures the physique of a nation, and that to him is the gospel.
It is not convenient to remember that physical deterioration is a modern phenomenon in India and that our grandparents were strong, vigorous and beautiful.
He hastens to abolish the already disappearing nautchgirl, but it does not seem to concern him that the prostitute multiplies.
Possibly some may think it a gain that the European form of the malady is replacing the Indian!
He tends 
towards shattering our cooperative system of society and does not see that Europe is striding Titanically towards Socialism.
Orthodox and reformer alike lose themselves in details; but it is principles that determine details. Almost every point that the social reformers raise could be settled one way or the other without effecting the permanent good of society. It is pitiful to see men labouring the point of marriage between subcastes and triumphing over an isolated instance. Whether the spirit as well as the body of caste should remain, is the modern question. Let Hindus remember that caste as it stands is merely jat, the trade guild sanctified but no longer working, it is not the eternal religion, it is not chaturvarnya. I do not care whether widows marry or remain single; but it is of infinite importance to consider how women shall be legally and socially related to man, as his inferior, equal or superior; for even the relation of superiority is no more impossible in the future than it was in the far-distant past. And the most important question of all is whether society shall be competitive or cooperative, individualistic or communistic. That we should talk so little about these things and be stormy over insignificant details, shows painfully the impoverishment of the average Indian intellect. If these greater things are decided, as they must be, the smaller will arrange themselves.
There are standards that are universal and there are standards that are particular.
At the present moment all societies are in need of reform, the Parsi, Mahomedan and Christian not a whit less than the Hindu which alone seems to feel the need of radical reformation.
In the changes of the future the Hindu society must take the lead towards the establishment of a new universal standard.
Yet being Hindus2 we must seek it through that which is particular to ourselves.
We have one standard that is at once universal and particular, the eternal religion, which is the basis, permanent and always inherent in India, of the shifting, mutable and multiform thing we call Hinduism.
Sticking fast where you are like a limpet is not the dharma, neither is leaping without looking the dharma.
The eternal religion is to realise God in our inner life and our outer existence, in society not less than in the individual.
Esha dharmah sanatanah.
God is not 
antiquity nor novelty: He is not the Manava Dharmashastra, nor Vidyaranya, nor Raghunandan; neither is He an European.
God who is essentially Sachchidananda, is in manifestation Satyam, Prema, Shakti3, — Truth, Strength and Love.
Whatever is consistent with the truth and principle of things, whatever increases love among men, whatever makes for the strength of the individual, the nation and the race, is divine, it is the law of Vaivaswata Manu, it is the sanatana dharma and the Hindu shastra.
Only, God is the triple harmony, He is not one-sided.
Our love must not make us weak, blind or unwise; our strength must not make us hard and furious; our principles4 must not make us fanatical or sentimental.
Let us think calmly, patiently, impartially; let us love wholly and intensely but wisely; let us act with strength, nobility and force.
If even then we make mistakes, yet God makes none.
We decide and act; He determines the fruit, and whatever He determines is good.
He is already determining it. Men have long been troubling themselves about social reform and blameless orthodoxy, and orthodoxy has crumbled without social reform being effected. But all the time God has been going about India getting His work done in spite of the talking. Unknown to men the social revolution prepares itself, and it is not in the direction they think, for it embraces the world, not India only. Whether we like it or not, He will sweep out the refuse of the Indian past and the European present. But the broom is not always sufficient; sometimes He uses the sword in preference. It seems probable that it will be used, for the world does not mend itself quickly, and therefore it will have violently to be mended.
But this is a general principle; how shall we determine the principles that are particular to the nature of the community and the nature of the Age?
There is such a thing as yugadharma, the right institutions and modes of action for the age in which we live.
For action depends indeed on the force of knowledge or will that is to be used, but it depends, too, on the time, the place and the vessel.
Institutions that are right in one age are not right in another.
Replacing social system by social system, religion by religion, civilisation by civilisation God is perpetually leading man onwards to loftier and more embracing manifestations of our human perfectibility.
When in His cosmic circling movement He establishes some stable worldwide harmony, that is man's Satya Yuga.
When harmony falters, is maintained with difficulty, not in the nature of men, but by an accepted force or political instrument, that is his Treta.
When the faltering becomes stumbling and the harmony has to be maintained at every step by a careful and laborious regulation, that is his Dwapara.
When there is disintegration, and all descends in collapse and ruin, nothing can stay farther the cataclysm that is his Kali.
This is the natural law of progress of all human ideas and institutions.
It applies always in the mass, continually though less perfectly in the detail.
One may almost say that each human religion, society, civilisation has its four Ages.
For this movement is not only the most natural, but the most salutary.
It is not a justification of pessimism nor a gospel of dumb fate and sorrowful annihilation.
It is not, as we too often think in our attachment to the form, a melancholy law of decline and the vanity of all human achievements.
If each Satya has its Kali, equally does each Kali prepare its Satya.
That destruction was necessary for this creation, and the new harmony, when it is perfected, will be better than the old.
But there is the weakness, there is the half success turning to failure, there is the discouragement, there is the loss of energy and faith which clouds our periods of disintegration, the apparent war, violence, ragging, tumult and trample to and fro which attends our periods of gradual creation and half-perfection.
Therefore men cry out dismally and lament that all is perishing.
But if they trusted in God's Love and Wisdom, not preferring to it their conservative and narrow notions, they would rather cry out that all is being reborn.
So much depends on Time and God's immediate purpose that it is more important to seek out His purpose than to attach ourselves to our own nostrums.
The Kala Purusha, Zeitgeist and Death Spirit, has risen to his dreadful work — lokakshayakritpravriddhas — increasing to destroy a world, — and who shall stay the terror and mightiness and irresistibility of Him?
But He is not only destroying the world that was, He is creating the world 
that shall be; it is therefore more profitable for us to discover and help what He is building than to lament and hug in our arms what He is destroying.
But it is not easy to discover His drift, and we often admire too much temporary erections which are merely tents for the warriors in this Kurukshetra and take them for the permanent buildings of the future.
The Pandits are therefore right when they make a difference between the practice of the Satya and the practice of the Kali. But in their application of this knowledge, they do not seem to me to be always wise or learned. They forget or do not know that Kali is the age for a destruction and rebirth, not for a desperate clinging to the old that can no longer be saved. They entrench themselves in the system of Kalivarjya, but forget that it is not the weaknesses but the strengths of the old harmony that are being subjected to varjanam, abandonment. That which is saved is merely a temporary platform which we have erected on the banks of the sea of change awaiting a more stable habitation; and it too must one day break down under the crash of the waves, must disappear into the engulfing waters. Has the time arrived for that destruction? We think that it has. Listen to the crash of those waters, — more formidable than the noise of assault, mark that slow, sullen, remorseless sapping, — watch pile after pile of our patched incoherent ramshackle structure corroding, creaking, shaking with the blows, breaking, sinking silently or with a splash, suddenly or little by little into the yeast of those billows. Has the time arrived for a new construction? We say it has. Mark the activity, eagerness and hurrying to and fro of mankind, the rapid prospecting, seeking, digging, founding — see the Avatars and great vibhutis coming, arising thickly, treading each close behind the other. Are not these the signs and do they not tell us that the great Avatar of all arrives to establish the first Satya Yuga of the Kali?
For in the Kali too, say the secret and ancient traditions of the Yogins, there is a perpetual minor repetition of Satya-Treta-Dwapara-Kali subcycles, the subSatya a temporary and imperfect harmony which in the subTreta and subDwapara breaks down 
and disappears in the subKali.
The process then begins over again [............................................] for each new temporary harmony is fairer and more perfect than its preceding harmony, each new temporary collapse more resounding and terrible than its anterior dissolution.
Already ended are the first five thousand years of the Kali which were necessary to prepare for final destruction the relics of the ancient Satya.
Weakness and violence, error and ignorance and oblivion rushing with an increasing speed and rhythm over the whole earth have done for us that work.
The morning of the first Kali-Satya is ready to break, the first few streaks dimly visible.
So runs the not incredible tradition.
Yes. A new harmony, but not the scrannel pipes of European materialism, not an Occidental foundation upon half truths and whole falsehoods. When there is destruction it is the form that perishes, not the spirit — for the world and its ways are forms of one Truth which appears in this material world in ever new bodies and constantly varied apparel — the inward Eternal taking the joy of outward Mutability. The truth of the old Satya that is dead was not different from the Truth of the new Satya that is to be born, for it is Truth that restores itself always and persists. In India, the chosen land, it is preserved; in the soul of India it sleeps, expectant of that soul's awakening, the soul of India leonine, luminous, locked in the closed petals of the ancient lotus of strength and wisdom, not in her weak, sordid, transient and miserable externals. India alone can build the future of mankind; in India alone can the effective Avatar appear to the nations. And until He appears, it is for India to gather herself up out of her dust and degradation, — symbol of the shattered Satyayuga — commune with her soul by Yoga and to know her past and her future. I have not here speculated on what we should build, what we should break, nor shall I now define my detailed opinions — but whatever it be, we must do it in the light and in the spirit of that triple principle of the divine nature; we must act in the reflection of God's Love, Strength and Wisdom.
*
We are Hindus seeking to re-Hinduise society, not to Europeanise it.
But what is Hinduism?
Or what is its social principle?
One thing at least is certain about Hinduism religious or social, that its whole outlook is Godward, its whole search and business is the discovery of God and our fulfilment in God.
But God is everywhere and universal.
Where did Hinduism seek Him?
Ancient or preBuddhistic Hinduism sought him both in the world and outside it; it took its stand on the strength and beauty and joy of the Veda, unlike modern or postBuddhistic Hinduism which is oppressed with Buddha's sense of universal sorrow and Shankara's sense of universal illusion, — Shankara who was the better able to destroy Buddhism because he was himself half a Buddhist.
Ancient Hinduism aimed socially at our fulfilment in God in life, modern Hinduism at the escape from life to God.
The more modern ideal is fruitful of a noble and ascetic spirituality, but has a chilling and hostile effect on social soundness and development, social life under its shadow stagnates for want of belief and delight, sraddha and ananda.
If we are to make our society perfect and the nation is to live again, then we must revert to the earlier and fuller truth.
We must not make life a waiting for renunciation, but renunciation a preparation for life; instead of running from God in the town to God in the forest, we must rather plunge into the mountain solitude in our own souls for knowledge and joy and spiritual energy to sustain any part that may be given to us by the master of the Lila.
If we get that strength, any society we build up must be full of the instinct of immortal life and move inevitably towards perfection.
As to the precise way in which society will be reconstructed, we have hardly yet knowledge enough to solve the problem.
We ought to know before we act, but we are rather eager to act violently in the light of any dim ray of knowledge that may surprise our unreflecting intellects, and although God often uses our haste for great and beneficial purposes, yet that way of doing things is not the best either for a man or a nation.
One thing seems to me clear that the future will deny that principle of individual selfishness and collective self-interest on which European society has hitherto been based and our renovated systems will be based on the renunciation of individual selfishness and the organisation of brotherhood, — principles common to Christianity, Mahomedanism and Hinduism.
Circa 1912
1 1992 ed.: Bhurishrava
2 1992 ed.: Hindu
3 1992 ed.: Satyam, Shakti, Prema
4 1992 ed.: principle