Devotion, Worship, Loyalty: Versus Irreverence, Profanity, Flippancy.
About this ebook
Shelley on the devotion of the moth for the star.
The Paths of action, renunciation, and their endless variants.
Irreverence, profanity, and flippancy are incipient fear plus the desire to belittle, in order to remove the element that causes the fear, and thereby to gain for oneself the consciousness of increase, in contrast with the belittlement of the other.
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About the author
Dr. Bhagwan Dās was born at Varanasi on 12th January 1869. After a brilliant career as a student, he joined government service as a deputy collector. But he was too great a man to remain a relatively minor government official for long. Learning, more especially of religions and philosophy, was of absorbing interest to him. For a time he came under the influence of Dr. Annie Besant in collaboration with whom he founded the Central Hindu College. This institution developed in time into the Benares Hindu University. Later, he founded the Kashi Vidya Pith, a national university and was its head for a number of years.
He was not only a philosopher, but a prominent public figure as well. He was an esteemed member of the Central Legislative Assembly of undivided India. He presided at a number of social and political conferences. He was associated with the Hindustani Culture Society and was president of the National Committee on Communal Riots. As a fighter for national freedom, he courted imprisonment.
An erudite scholar in Sanskrit, he coined a large number of Hindi words. He wrote no less than 30 books, a number of them in Sanskrit and Hindi. A majority of his works concern philosophy and ancient Indian lore. He studied other religions, as also diverse subjects like psychology and socialism. He wrote books on these subjects as well. He was thus a many-sided personality with achievements to his credit in several fields. His pre-eminently distinguished position in the country was recognised when the highest national award of Bharat Ratna was conferred upon him. He passed away on 18th September 1958, rich in years and in honours.
Dr. Bhagwan Dās will be chiefly remembered as a thinker. He tried to bring the West nearer to the east and made the old intelligible in terms of the modern. He wrote:
. . . the thoughts, the ideals, the ways of human communities require exogamous alliances . . . for a new lease of richer life. Any honest exchange of commodities spiritual, as well as material, is profitable to both the parties concerned.
He was a great believer, in synthesis. To quote him again,
In essentials, in principles, in great things, unity; in non-essentials . . . liberty; in all things, charity; this should be our guiding star.
This great son of India is no more, but the ideas which he expounded live on. The Indian P & T Department is happy to issue a special postage stamp in memory of the great philosopher on the occasion of his birth centenary.
That was a Tribute from the Indian Post.
