A Relentless Search for Truth

Laxmanshastri practiced what he preached. For him and in his household, Untouchables were treated no differently than brahmins. Although the domestic staff essentially came from the Untouchable community, he and his wife, Satyavati, were sure to encourage their children to study and get formal college education. Throughout his life, he used his scholarship to focus on the heterodoxy of thought within Hinduism, and the wide spectrum of religious beliefs and practices within the Hindu fold. For him, that was the truth and with that, he set personal examples of not adhering to any dogma blindly, of not discriminating against any individual on the basis of his or her hereditary caste. As an ardent humanist, he presented evidence, providing innovative arguments in simple terms, and with courage, encouraged respectful dialog in a bid to transcend convention instead of bowing to it. Like Tagore, he was in every respect one of India’s renaissance men. His writings and thoughts had an enduring quality. He became one of the leading voices in the evolution of a free, secular, modern, and progressive India.

Coming of Age

Laxmanshastri was born in 1901 and spent the first years living a very traditional life in the small town of Wāi, where society was ordered by caste-based hierarchy handed down from generation to generation over two millennia. His transformation into a Sanskritist and Vedic scholar began when he entered Prādnapāthshālā, a gurukul noted for traditional learning and weaving current political events in the curriculum. In this milieu, inspired by his guru and Lokmanya Tilak, Laxmanshastri developed an abiding commitment to social and religious reforms. Encouraged to learn English by Vinoba Bhave, with whom he developed a friendship, he became keenly aware of the groundswell for swarāj, or freedom from the British. From an early stage he had developed a sense that simply embracing Untouchables was not action enough. It was equally important to speak out and actively work against untouchability. Drawing on Buddha’s public discourses, he began campaigning for removing untouchability.

Know Thyself

Having won acclaim with his receiving India’s highest literary honour, the Sahitya Academy Award, he set his sights on encouraging Dalit writers and thinkers to express themselves in their own words, helping them find their own authentic voices, without regard to the vast literature that was essentially canonical and brahminical in origin. He hoped that this would help heal the wounds that the Untouchables felt deeply as a result of the deprivations that they had experienced for generations. At the same time, he also pointed to the varied and opposing interpretations of stories and parables from the great Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. His distillation of the vast span of Vedic and Vedantic literature offered depth and meaning extending from the ancient Sanskrit to the contemporary nascent Dalit literature. Marathi Dalit literature blossomed during this time and saw extraordinary growth. He expanded his analysis and thinking into other creative realms including the aesthetics of art, poetry, and drama.

Marxism and Beyond

M.N. Roy and Laxmanshastri found intellectual affinity towards each other when they met and collaborated on building the Radical Democratic Party founded by Roy. This party wished to create a government that represented all Indian people—not just the privileged upper class. When the British stepped up their war efforts to thwart the Japanese who were knocking at the Burma front, the Congress Party opposed supporting the efforts, hoping to force the British to strike a bargain and leave India. Members of the Radical Democratic Party favored supporting the British war efforts, only because they felt that a totalitarian form of government that dominated Axis powers, would supplant the Raj and would prove to be more dangerous. Laxmanshastri also continued to write and speak out against unjust social practices and for inclusion of all her people. He wrote a seminal book on Hindu religion which endeared him to Ambedkar. As the World War II ended with the Allies victorious, it exposed the shortcomings of communism, which led Roy and Laxmanshastri to abandon Marxism as a model for India’s democracy. This led to the dissolution of the party after which Laxmanshastri immersed himself in compiling the Dharmakosha, an exhaustive encyclopedia of Hindu scriptures. Later he served on the committee chaired by Ambedkar that drafted India’s constitution.

Turbulent Times

As the East India Company’s trade expanded, so did their control, influence, and interference in Indian politics, society, and local laws. The Meerut Mutiny of 1857 was the turning point for Indians to earnestly begin clamouring for freedom. To achieve that, however, bringing Indians together was a paramount task. So, the social reformers systematically began asking Indians to set aside caste-based discrimination practices and unite together against the Raj. Laxmanshastri espoused a reasoned and rational dialog as the principal way to bring people with opposing views together. He drew on the historiography of the dharma-shastras, pointing to the wide-ranging and rich polemical debates in the literature that allowed diametrically opposite views and interpretation. He believed in the central Upanishadic idea that all humans are Brahman. It was from that principle that he kept the injustices against Untouchables squarely in his vision, never losing sight of the idea of making India more equitable for all her citizens. While his command of the shastras was never questioned, changing deeply held biases proved to be more challenging, but he did succeed in getting the more orthodox upper caste members of Indian society to consider his arguments and pay more attention to the plight of the Untouchables.

Reason and Tolerance

Laxmanshastri had an immensely practical view of philosophy. First schooled in classical Vedic and aVedic darshanas and later in Western philosophical systems, he synthesized the ancient Indian systems with the sceptical traditions of Charvaka. He argued that the purpose of philosophy was to motivate the individual and society to aspire to higher goals. As he analysed and integrated the various systems of philosophy, he was called to provide his insights at many venues. Whenever and wherever he spoke, he invariably emphasized Buddha’s guiding principle of questioning and examining everything critically and carefully. He extended his analysis and writing to speculations on the reasons behind the decline of Hindu society.

A New Beginning

After independence, Laxmanshastri re-joined the Indian Congress Party, earnestly canvassing for a democratic and egalitarian society. During this time, he was asked to lead the dedication of the Somnath Temple in Gujarat, because trustees decided to open the temple to Hindus regardless of their caste, leading traditional priests to protest. New Indians states were being formed with boundaries being drawn along linguistic lines. The newly formed state of Maharashtra, headed by Y.B Chavan as the chief minister, appointed Laxmanshastri to head the Sahitya Samskriti Mandal, which eventually decided to compile the Vishwakosha, a Marathi language encyclopaedia, under the chief editorship of Laxmanshastri. For his scholarship in Vedic literature, Laxmanshastri was honoured as the National Sanskrit Scholar by F.A. Ahmed, President of India in 1974. Despite many hurdles, the Vishwakosha and Dharmakosha projects continued forward and the pilot volume of the Kumarakosha, a companion volume of the Vishwakosha, was released by A.P.J Kalam in 2003, India’s then president.

Gandhi Beckons

Gandhi asked Laxmanshastri to stay back at his Bardoli ashram to help him in his drive to bring the Untouchables into the mainstream. Laxmanshastri agreed, thinking that this was his opportunity to amplify his reform efforts at the national level. He plunged into the satyāgraha movement and was soon jailed by the British for sedition. In jail, he read Marx’s writing and like many intellectuals of the time both in India and Europe, he became interested in Marxism and its potential to create a just society. He also continued to argue against caste segregation and discrimination. It was in the notorious Yerawada prison that he helped Gandhi formulate arguments against those advanced by the orthodox upper caste Indians who dominated the leadership in the Indian National Congress, to including Untouchables in the political mainstream. When traditional priests objected to the pratiloma marriage arrangement of Devdas, Gandhi’s son, to Laxmi, Rajagopalachari’s daughter, he used a lawyerly interpretation of caste and performed their wedding.