Seekers of Popularity versus Seekers of the Truth

I have read with a kind of interest bordering on the tragic a most remarkable article bearing the title Lokapriyata O Satyanusandhan which may be rendered as ‘Seekers of Popularity versus seekers of the Truth,’ the title that has been adopted as the heading of this communication. The article appeared in two successive issues of the weekly Bengali journal the Gaudiya, the principal organ of the Gaudiya Mission, in its issues of the 19th and 26th May respectively. That article has not received the attention that is its due for the reason that in Bengal there is at present a dearth of both the genuine religious sentiment as well as the modern democratic spirit. Had the article been written in any European language it would most likely have forced itself on the attention of thoughtful publicists, if not for its religion, at any rate for its un-compromising attitude of antagonism to the modern democratic ideal in the form it is winning the practical acceptance of the present generation in most civilized countries of the world.

The issue raised by the above-named article may be put thus. ‘Is the Truth attainable by the universal suffrage of the people of this world? If it is not attainable by such method why has it been adopted, why also is it so strongly recommended, by such a very large number of the most cultured persons of this generation, for the purpose?’ A public meeting has to be called to pronounce its verdict on every question that affects the ordinary life of the people. Endorsed by such an assembly an ‘interest’ becomes a public interest; opposed by ‘a public meeting’ the genuineness of an issue becomes at once a matter of grave suspicion ‘to the public.’ In proportion to the degree of ‘public support’ that is received by a proposition the ‘suspicion’ of the public regarding its ‘genuineness’ is ‘cleared up’ and they can accordingly extend to it this ‘active sympathy’. It is the duty of ‘the leaders’ to push this process of classification of all important issues. The tribunal of public opinion alone is entitled to pass the verdict that can be accepted as ‘genuine’ and ‘impartial’.

Any issue that cannot stand this crucial and ‘open’ test must wait outside the hallowed circle of active public sympathy and should be deservedly looked upon with the gravest suspicion.

But who are to bring all important issues to the one anvil? Is it the duty of the leaders or of those persons who are convinced of their justice and truth? If it be the latter can they get up a public propaganda on the requisite scale without the help of the former? Why also should the public take them seriously at all? There are so many more urgent calls on the attention of the modern public. Every proposal to the public should, therefore, come in a business-like form or, in other words, through the leaders. These leaders will practically settle what is to be put before the public for its serious consideration. After a proposition has been thus ‘regularly’ put to the public it is bound to win the active sympathy of the masses by reason of the ‘innate power’ that truth always possesses of impressing itself on the minds of the generality of the people no appreciable number of whom can have any interest in being perversely hostile to the truth for the reason that it happens to be the truth. This is the well-earned reward of those staunch adherents of the truth who undergo all this unselfish exertion for securing the acceptance by the public of the truth for the general well-being. This at any rate offers the most perfect of all practicable methods of settling popular issues, and, even if it falls short of the ideal, there is no alternative but to accept it tentatively for what it is worth till the discovery of some other method that is better or at least equally satisfactory.

The assumption underlying this popular philosophy of modern democracy has been subjected to a searching analysis from the point of view of the truth in the article referred to above. That analysis discloses the following state of affairs.

The public is made up of individuals. There can be no public opinion which is un-acceptable to a numerical majority of individuals forming a group, a community or mankind. The acceptance of a proposition by the individual is, therefore, the basis of the general acceptance unless, indeed, the general public wave its right of considering the pros and cons through reliance on its leaders or for want of the faculty of reason. There can be no qualitative difference between public and private opinion in the sense that the former is true while the latter is liable to error because the one happens to be based upon the other. If such opinion originates from an individual or individuals who are themselves free all liability to error and is subsequently endorsed by the public it still derives its truth not from the fact of such endorsement but from the purity of its original source. Thus we come back to the individual or individuals responsible for a proposition in order to avoid being prejudiced in judging of its truth or falsity by the wholly extraneous factor in the shape of the nightmare of its endorsement by public opinion.

We cannot, therefore, completely, or even for a moment, shake off the individual. By this masked vicious circle of argument we are conducted to the heaven of the voice of God viz. the voice of the people from the purgatory of the opinion of the individual, for whose opinion the democrat especially in this generation has such an undisguised contempt, through the magical process of a number of public meetings organised by the selfless exertions of a few (?) seekers (?) after the truth (?) which by the way cannot be known to or admitted by any individual on account of his personal prejudices and selfish interests. A community of tigers can by such process be raised to the level of the gentle lamb and the democratically organised society of individual apes be made to develop the highest zeal of the purest philanthropy and both of them forget respectively the un-tameable ferocity and the native turn for mischief of their unfortunate individual brethren in their ‘private’ capacities. The individuals also need not despair in as much as ‘the pure stream that pours incessantly from this unpolluted source provided with such divine prescience within the ‘body-politic’ itself by the democratic society is bound naturally to exercise a constant and effective cleansing on the character of its individual members.’ Or in other words, the individual apes will turn into tigers and all distinction obliterated in the ideal state that will be automatically brought about by the working of the democratic machinery. It has the same logical cogency as is possessed by the argument that filth is changed into honey by the mere mechanical accumulation and manipulation of filth.

As a matter of fact it is the character of the average individual that determines the public opinion of a democratically organised community. The average man of this world, and for the matter of that the average member of every species of animals, seeks both as private individuals and as members of a community, only the direct or indirect gratification of his own sensuous appetites. The public opinion of a democratic society based on the opinions of the aggregate of its individual member, in proportion as such organisation is perfected, is bound to embody this general principle with greater fullness and clearness. When the ideal of democracy has been realised only such proposals as carry in them any prospect of the gratification of the senses of its members will receive the ‘active’ support of such community. This true psychology of the masses is exploited deliberately by all successful public men for their own private sensuous gratification. This is the truth regarding the philosophy of the lifeless numerical or democratic principle. It is the virus carried from the source pollution to other parts of the body by the fly that gloats over the process.

The force of the above observations is not lessened by the enumeration of the names of all the distinguished persons that are ordinarily paraded in the forefront of such proposals to furnish such foreign aristocratic support to an insubstantial structure. But these distinguished men would lose their distinction the very moment they proved untrue to their salt. They have gained their distinction by success in pandering to the sensuous gratification of their bretheren. How else can such people be grateful to them? Let us take a very ambiguous looking case viz. that of a person who has attained distinction by scientific research but refused all titles and riches for himself. His discovery is appreciated by the people because it either directly provides them with a new means of sensuous gratification or does so indirectly by the prevention or amelioration of worldly misery either physical or mental. He himself seeks the satisfactions of being the benefactor of mankind by helping them in thus gratifying their senses, the satisfaction in his case taking the mental form based on the sensuous. All real analysis brings us by the pitiless force of impartial logic to the economic value which governs the whole physical and mental world. The tangibility and strength of the modern European civilization consist in its clear realization and un-flinching pursuit of this ideal. Modern philanthropy is the impulse, prompted by the reaction of sentimental and the pre-science of calculating selfishness for the dissemination of the direct and indirect means for the sensuous gratification of the largest number of men and women who may not possess a sufficiency of it. Such philanthropy alone, such science alone, can expect the active support of a community composed of individuals who want nothing else except of the means of gratification of their senses.

Religion is used similarly by those who really want to catch the popular applause. What such persons have to prove is that all the benefits promised by religion are nothing but a stronger and an eternal foundation on which the most permanent structure of sensuous gratification, to which the other sciences cater so imperfectly, can be most successfully reared. If you want social or political or any sort worldly betterment all you have to do is to betake yourself to religion and the thing will be automatically secured. It will give you all those things that you desire. “Believe implicitly in this. Look at me. Have I not been successful in making the two ends meet? Follow, therefore, my example.” Have those preachers of the religion ever looked “a certain measure” of popular support in any age or century? Should such support be considered therefore, as the conclusive proof of their professions?

Now look at another picture. It is a matter of historical knowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was demanded by public opinion to which the weak-kneed Pilate succumbed against his own convictions. Muhammad was ferociously persecuted by the public of his day. Sri Chaitanya avoided the determined persecution of the elite of the most cultured city of that age by renunciation of home and society and by a voluntary exile. And this is true of all other preachers of the true religion. All of them instead of having any public support in this day were objects of special public detestation. The subsequent reaction of public opinion in their favour was equally deceptive and brought about by persons who exploited their sufferings for winning public fame for themselves by presenting in the name of the martyrs an attenuated form of the true religion which could be recognised as helpful to the worldly ambitions of the generality of the people.

The mass is never likely to be converted to the true faith. Such conversion is a strictly individual affair. Real converts to the true faith have always been extraordinarily few and none of them found it possible to mix with the people of this world on terms of real intimacy because their tastes and aspirations were an uncompromising denial of all economic values which form the one basis on which is founded the discordant hypocritical unity of the civilized communities of every age which are more savage in reality than the unlettered barbarians who posses no covering for their naked bodies and whose frank animalism has no artistic or philosophical apetopics or watchdogs of the ‘liberty’ of the un-restrained pursuit of sensuous gratification in the form of the fourth estate of the realm of Pluto, viz. the modern newspaper.

One cannot serve both God and mammon. It is only those who seek the real Truth for Its own sake that can have any ‘active’ sympathy for those who ‘serve Krishna by giving up all sensuous desire for the objects of this world in obedience to the command of the holy Scriptures and by so doing are relieved from every other form of obligation either to the gods, the rishis or the pitris that is to say the so-called ordinary ‘obligations’ of the society that only lives unto itself. All these worldly obligations they have to forego because they stand directly in the way of serving the real Truth which is no other than God Himself. And God, the Absolute Truth, rewards them by bestowing on them not any of those things that men of this world covet because all those have no charm for them, but – Himself, by submitting to be won by their really unselfish devotion to Himself for the sake of Himself.

Pro Bono Publico.