by Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar
The varńáshrama social system [four-caste system] did not originate in India. This weed crept into India from the north-west and, sucking all the vital juice out of the verdurous expanse of people's minds, it threatened not only to destroy their minds, but to annihilate them totally. The effects linger on. We still feel the ill effects in our innermost being, in every vein and capillary. This varnáshrama system is an ineradicable black spot on us. Ráŕh, situated at the furthest end of northern India, was also touched by this all-obliterating wave. Just as in northern India, the social discipline in Ráŕh was about to be devastated by this caste system. [Throughout northern India,] all attempts to stop the onrush of the scourge of this wave, this wave of discrimination, superiority complex and inferiority complex, with weak embankments of sand, proved futile. No one could stop it, but in Ráŕh some efforts were made. There an attempt, at least, was made to give some support to society so as to save the social edifice from the jaws of disaster. It was Smárta(1) Raghunandan who made this attempt through his two-caste system. This system, like the four-caste system, was defective, but the defects were not as serious as in the four-caste system. And the main thing was that, defects or not, an experiment at least was certainly made. Bankimchandra and Haraprasad Shastri appeared at a time when the people of Ráŕh and Bengal had, in confusion, forgotten their real selves; when they failed to find a link in their lives between the past and the present; and when self-recrimination was the order of the day. They came with a lamp of enlightenment in that dark age. In their literary work they both sallied forth not only with strokes of the pen and marks of ink, but also in a vital literary achievement that resonated with the loud clang of swords. Bankim and Haraprasad were Ráŕhii by lineage.
