SOME THOUGHTS ON 'VAISHNAVA JANATO
Recently a friend from Chennai sent me two Tamil translations of Vaishnava Janato by Narasimha Mehta – a favorite bhajan of Mahatma Gandhi. I found the one by Namakkal Kavignar[1] easier to pronounce and get by heart easily within a few hours of reading it. Please see the attachment.
The translation strictly follows the format of the original in Gujarati – a couplet followed by four stanzas, each stanza consisting of eight lines. As I read the lines and digested their import, my mind reeled with its idealism and humanity. Here is Narasimha Mehta expounding on what it makes one a true devotee; the fourth stanza is mind-boggling.
A Vaishnava doesn’t succumb to worldly attachments
He is detached from worldly pleasures
He is enticed by the name of God Sri Ram
All holy sites of pilgrimage are embodied in him.
Such a devotee personifies God whose grace we constantly seek. In other words, if we set our eyes upon such a person, we can feel comforted we had visited all the holy sites; salvation is ours.
What a profound thought! This is the stanza that moved me the deepest.
But I am also disheartened; can anyone – ANY ONE – ever fulfill the poet’s all criteria? The bar is raised so high that it seems virtually impossible for any human to reach that ideal; don’t these lines reveal a sense of human inadequacy?
I remember once listening to a lecture by the late Santana Gopalachariar who mentioned the hallmark of Vaishnava Philosophy expounded by the Alwars is its SOWLABHYA VISESHAM – the idea that God is easily accessible to anyone who seeks Him. This is an egalitarian view which appealed to Mahatma Gandhi as well.
Redemption is another facet of Hinduism; some of the saints we worship today were certainly not the unalloyed human beings in the first place.
It also makes the earth a much duller place if everyone – devotee or otherwise – strives to be uniformly grand and the same. Is not life interesting because there is variety in everything that is God’s creation?
Somerset Maugham wrote the concept of an average man is nonexistent. Maugham, inspired by Hinduism and Ramana Maharishi, says everyone is special and unique; that mere awareness negates the idea that we are all the same. Each individual is born with an unique talent and a special reason. That individual needs to seek out that purpose and his contribution to humanity.
According to Maugham, there could be no average man in a heterogeneous group.
We hear of the infinite variety of Man – the inexhaustible source of wonder as Maugham describes – in all great literature. Hamlet, said to be the most representative of humanity, echoes this sentiment:
We hear of the infinite variety of Man – the inexhaustible source of wonder as Maugham describes – in all great literature. Hamlet, said to be the most representative of humanity, echoes this sentiment:
What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!
In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.
[1] Namakkal Ramalingam Pillai (1888-1972) was the Poet Laureate of the Madras Government in 1949. His novel MALAIKKALLAN, described as ‘a blend of Robin Hood and Mark of Zorro’ has the unique distinction of having been adapted for a movie in six Indian languages – Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam, and Sinhalese.
THE POEM IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Call those people Vaishnavas
Who feel the pain of others.
Help those who are in misery,
But never let self-conceit enter their mind.
They respect the entire world,
Do not disparage anyone,
Keep their words, actions and thoughts pure,
The mother of such a soul is blessed.
They see all equally, renounce craving,
Respect other women as their own mother,
Their tongue never utters false words,
Their hands never touch the wealth of others.
They do not succumb to worldly attachments,
They are firmly detached from the mundane,
They are enticed by the name of God (Rama),
All places of pilgrimage are embodied in them.
They have forsaken greed and deceit,
They stay afar from lust and anger,
Narsi says: I’d be grateful to meet such a soul,
Whose virtue liberates their entire lineage.
