The message of Bahagavan Das on the present significance of the Vedic Social Order

theme of Plato’s Republic and which is usually translated ‘justice’. In the Republic, Plato goes to great lengths to impress it upon his readers that the word is not to be taken in any mere outer sense, but that it means the true and orderly functioning of all the different parts of society and similarly of the three main functions of the individual Man—his thinking, feeling, and willing—and that therefore the Man in whom there is justice, in this sense, must be the happiest, whatever appearances there may be to the contrary.

Unfortunately, however, the mere notion Social Order or the idea of organism as referring to society sets up immediate resistance among the people of the so-called ‘free world’, because the notion Order is taken as infringing individual freedom. This reaction is intensified by the more unfortunate fact that Hitler and Mussolini stole the word to describe their rigid dictatorial regimes. It is, however, questionable whether the ‘freedom’ of the ‘free world’ is not a complementary, and equally inexcusable, misuse of terms. To a Western European or an American the notion Order as referring to society conveys the notion of the individual life being made to subserve the purposes of the State, but such an idea bears no relation to the true meaning of the idea of organism.

The essence of an organism is that its members are related to one another in such a way as to fulfil the goal or final cause of the whole; the goal or meaning of the whole organism is the principle of the organisation of its members and is the goal of each of them. Therefore the conflict between the freedom of the individual person and social order for Mankind as a whole is ultimately unreal. The greatest freedom and happiness for an individual man is to be truly himself without externally imposed restriction, and to be truly himself means to perform his life function. But the life of an individual man only has meaning within the life of Mankind as a whole, and therefore Dharma is not to be understood as an artificial imposition of order or duty or law, but as the clear realisation by the individual man who he is and the embodiment of this in his social life. Thus social order and individual freedom not only do not ultimately conflict, but are unattainable apart from one another.

Now it is true that in ancient India Man had not yet achi

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