History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c48.s2.21

v3.c48.s2.21

Towards the close of the 15th century, when the first wave of Muslim immigration into India had worn itself out, leaving the country in political disruption social disorder and moral decadence, there arose in the extreme east and the extreme west of India two Hindu reformers who called upon the people to prefer the essence to the form of religion, a living faith to a dead mechanical ritual, and the spirit to the letter of their scriptures. Both of them insisted on the unity of the Godhead underlying the multitude of the idols of popular worship. Both taught that God can be realized only by means of a love as ardent and all-absorbing as the conjugal passion. Both urged on their hearers to work out their salvation personally by strenuous holy living and not to imagine that it can be won through any other man's exertions or the mechanical repetition of any words. Both invited earnest believers to their folds without distinction of caste or creed, and tried to form a brotherhood of the elect. Both attempts, after glorious success for three generations, ended in failure, and their only result has been to add two more names to the long list of the religious sects of the Hindus. The goal of Chaitanya* was lost when his Church passed under the control of Brahman Goswamis who developed a very subtle and esoteric theology in which the brain has suppressed the heart, and his Vaishnava followers now form two sharply divided sections,—an emotional but morally undisciplined rabble at the base, and a keenly intellectual but cold and fastidious priesthood at the top, without any link between them. The aims of Nanak were abandoned when his successors in the leadership of the Sikhs set up a temporal dominion for themselves and made military drill take the place of moral self-reform and spiritual growth.