All prophets have had the same experience while evolving. Initially, in their own lifetime and in their own country, hardly anyone give them any genuine recognition. They say that Muhammad was at one time rejected, jeered and stoned. Christ was brutally beaten and mercilessly crucified. Socrates was made to drink a cup of hemlock poison.
In 1846, when he left his home, no one knew of Moolshankar, the future Dayananda Saraswati, but with the passage of time he grew and evolved. As he kept evolving, he was rejected, scoffed at and violently opposed. Repeated attempts were made to assault him, poison him, and liquidate him. He, however, stood firm like a rock amidst all tempests of life, and he finally succeeded in becoming the new lion of Asia. And, while roaring with his message of reform, Dayananda, as Romain Rolland acknowledged, transfused into the languid body of India his own formidable energy, his certainty, and his lion-like blood. He restored to India her long-lost soul, her lost self-confidence. He traced India’s national identity to the Vedas, humanity’s proudest heritage and its most ancient thought and wisdom. He diagnosed that India’s slavery was due in large measure to a decline in character, and so he endeavored to lay the moral foundations for a new India. He was the first to raise the slogan of independence [Swaraj] for India. Even though established historians may scoff at our findings, our research discovers that the Rishi, through his background role, did provide active moral support and spiritual encouragement to the fighters involved in the 1857 Sepoy’s revolt, which some people call the first war for India’s independence. Swaraj, Harijan uplift, emancipation of women, Hindi as India’s Lingua Franca, cow protection, Swadeshi, prohibition, opposition to salt tax, releasing forces of modernization – there is not a single plank of Gandhi’s program that Dayananda did not anticipate and work for. And so, India’s second President, Dr. Radhakrishnan, rightfully said, "Many provisions about the social welfare in the Constitution of India owe their inspiration to the teachings of Swami Dayananda. Indeed, Dayananda occupies a unique place in the history of modern India."
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