Darwin’s Day Today: Let Us Celebrate It By Reading This Book By Lala Har Dayal 

Today, on 12 February, the world celebrates Darwin's Day. It is the 210th birthday of Charles Darwin, who is, perhaps, the pioneering system biologist of the world. He discovered the process of natural selection, the mechanism through which evolution happens in the biocosm.

Darwinian evolution in many ways provided the quintessential test for an individual’s and a culture’s adherence to truth. The soft-spoken, almost self-effacing, ever hesitating Charles Darwin had unleashed an unprecedented storm on human psyche. To this day, Darwin proves to be the testing scale on which we can measure our commitment to truth.

In India, almost all spiritual and cultural traditions have a strong sankhya component, which makes evolution its basis. Hence, evolution has never met the opposition that the creation-based religious traditions of the West faced. This actually created a great divide in the West.

This is a great civilisational advantage that India has. Unfortunately, certain voices opposing evolution are arising. There are people, even responsible people in seats of power, who desire a ‘vedic alternative’ to evolution and speak of replacing Darwinian evolution with such a ‘vedic alternative’. This is the worst form of injustice and insult that can be meted out to vedic traditions, in particular, and Hindu civilisation in general.

So this Darwin day, let us dwell on the thinking of Lala Har Dayal (1884-1939). Har Dayal started his life as an Arya samaji. The simplicity and fire of the samaji remained with him all his life. He was involved in a series of revolutionary activities in London, Paris and the United States. He was barred from entering India.

In 1934, five years before his death at a not-so-old age, he wrote Hints for Self Culture which was published by Hy S L Polak and Co. London (UK). It is essential that every Indian educationist, who desires a robust science and cultural education in India, should read this classic. Here, Har Dayal speaks of how studying zoology, cosmology and evolution, in particular, frees our mind from the tyranny of superstition and takes us forward into a vision of the universe and our own place in it, which is far magnificent than any presented by scriptural fantasies.

Why should one study zoology? Har Dayal answers:

It is quite interesting to see that a Hindu nationalist, an atheist, a person who condemned monotheism of Christianity and Islam, praise the Jews and even suggested that the ‘terrible consequences’ of ‘intolerant monotheism’ were more the result of certain ideas getting passed on to the Christian church. More importantly, Har Dayal finds the Jewish contribution to diverse fields including varied schools of thoughts as one that enriched human civilisation.

Har Dayal criticises capitalism and considers it unsustainable. But he also criticises the dogmatic Marxist view of history which gives extreme importance to economic relations. However, he also spoke of the need to study theoretical and practical Marxism. At the same time, he could see that the Marxist state was acquiring the characteristic of a theocratic state so much so that while it allowed blasphemy of religious leaders, it prohibited the blasphemy of Marx and Lenin. To him, Marxism devalued and did not properly recognise the human personality and individuality. He criticised the Marxist approach exhibiting a sense of humour:

So in the end, why should we re-read his book now? Because this is a book for no-nonsense nation-builders written by a person who considered himself both a universal humanist and a Hindu nationalist. This book is filled with insights that are relevant even today. One may or may not agree with all his assessment of history and society but the broad framework and its core values are very important and they need to be integrated into our education system.