Every society consists of four types of people. One -- Satpurusas -- good people, who sacrifice their own self interest and work for the welfare of other people; Two -- Samanyas, the generality or the majority, who also work for the welfare of other people, but without sacrificing their own self-interest; Three -- Manava Raksasas, demons among men, who destroy other people’s welfare in order to gain their own selfish interest; Fourth -- Alas, I don’t not know what to call them, who destroy other people’s welfare even without gaining anything for themselves!
The difference between society and society, and between different periods in the history of the same society, arises from the different ratio of these four groups to each other. In today’s India, we still have the small minority of the first group at the top. We have too many of the third and fourth groups of Manava Raksasas and vandals. But we have too few of the second group of the Samanyaa and what is more important, this healthy second group, for want of spiritual strength and through looking up to the third and fourth groups as examples instead of to the first, is getting continually depleted in numbers and swelling the ranks of the Manava Raksasas and vandals of the third and the fourth groups.
Human equality at the spiritual level has been preached and practised in our country since ages. This is the meaning of life and is derived from the Vedantic teaching of the same divine Atman in all beings -- integral, inalienable and full and the samatvam and the sama-darsitvam, equality and sameness of vision, flowing from it.
A few saints and devotees had realised this truth and lived by it. Bhakter Jat Nai, there is no caste and class distinction among devotees of God is a famous saying of Shri Ramakrishna. This great truth had never been translated into the wide social and economic fields or transformed into a social fact of human awareness affecting millions. But that opportunity has come to us in the modern age, through the message of modern democracy -- political, economic and social. That sama-darsitvam at the spiritual level becomes today, buttressed and strengthened by a sama-darsitvam at the political and social level, by the modern concept and practice of citizenship of a democratic state. Democratic citizenship is a focus of not only human freedom and dignity but also of human equality. Swami Vivekananda considered the significance of the emerging modern period of our history to consist essentially in this practical implementation of the Vedantic vision of human freedom, dignity and equality. In our new India, therefore, political efforts and spiritual efforts coalesce and reinforce each other, in the struggle to evolve an egalitarian society; the spiritual effort stresses human unity in the one Atman in all and the political effort stresses human unity in the unity of a common citizenship in our democracy.
The excerpt is from Enlightened Citizenship and Our Democracy, a lecture at New Delhi in April 1980.