{"id":1084,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:27","slug":"08-the-awakenings-soul-of-india-vol-02-karmayogin-volume-02","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/02-karmayogin-volume-02\/08-the-awakenings-soul-of-india-vol-02-karmayogin-volume-02","title":{"rendered":"-08_The Awakenings Soul of India.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\n
\nThe Awakening Soul of India<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n                          NO<\/b> NATIONAL
\n<\/b>awakening is really vital and enduring which confines itself to a
\nsingle field. It is when the soul awakens that a nation is really alive, and
\nthe life will then manifest itself in all the manifold forms of activity in
\nwhich man seeks to express the strength and the delight of the expansive spirit
\nwithin. It is for ānanda<\/i> that the
\nworld exists; for joy that the Self puts
\nHimself into the great and serious game of life; and the joy which He sees is
\nthe joy of various self-expression. For this reason it is that no two men are
\nalike, no two nations are alike. Each has its own separate nature over and
\nabove the common nature of humanity and it is not only the common human
\nimpulses and activities but the satisfaction and development of its own separate
\ncharacter and capacities that a nation demands. Denied that satisfaction and
\ndevelopment, it perishes. By two tests, therefore, the vitality of a national
\nmovement can be judged. If it is imitative, imported, artificial, then,
\nwhatever temporary success it may have, the nation is moving towards
\nself-sterilisation and death; even so the
\nnations of ancient Europe perished when they gave up their own individuality as
\nthe price of Roman civilisation, Roman peace, Roman prosperity. If, on the
\nother hand, the peculiar individuality of a race stamps itself on the movement
\nin its every part and seizes on every new development as a means of
\nself-expression, then the nation wakes, lives and grows and whatever the
\nrevolutions and changes of political, social or intellectual forms and
\ninstitutions, it is assured of its survival and aggrandisement.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n                         The nineteenth century in India was imitative, self-forgetful,
\nartificial. It aimed at a successful reproduction of Europe in India,
\nforgetting the deep saying of the Gita,
\n"Better the law of one’s own being though it be badly done than an alien dharma
\n<\/i>well-followed; death in one’s own dharma<\/i> is better, it is a dangerous
\nthing to follow the law of another’s nature." For death in one’s own dharma<\/i>
\nbrings new birth, success in an alien path<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 36<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nmeans only
\nsuccessful suicide. If we had succeeded in Europeanising
\nourselves, we would have lost for ever our spiritual capacity, our intellectual
\nforce, our national elasticity and power of self-renovation. That tragedy has
\nbeen enacted more than once in history, only the worst and most mournful
\nexample of all would have been added. Had the whole activity of the country
\nbeen of the derivative and alien kind, that result would have supervened. But
\nthe life-breath of the nation still moved in the religious movements of Bengal
\nand the Punjab, in the political aspirations of Maharashtra
\nand in the literary activity of Bengal. Even here it was an undercurrent, the
\npeculiar temperament and vitality of India struggling for self-preservation
\nunder a load of foreign ideas and foreign forms, and it was not till in the
\nstruggle between these two elements the balance turned in favour of the
\nnational dharma<\/i> that the salvation of
\nIndia was assured. The resistance of the conservative element in Hinduism, tamasic, inert, ignorant, uncreative
\nthough it was, saved the country by preventing an even more rapid and thorough
\ndisintegration than actually took place and by giving respite and time for the persistent
\nnational self to emerge and find itself. It was in religion first that the soul
\nof India awoke and triumphed. There were always indications, always great
\nforerunners, but it was when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed
\ndown at the feet of an illiterate Hindu ascetic, a self-illuminated ecstatic
\nand "mystic" without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or
\neducation upon him that the battle was won. The going forth of Vivekananda, marked out by the Master as the
\nheroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it, was
\nthe first visible sign to the world that India was awake not only to survive
\nbut to conquer. Afterwards when the awakening was complete, a section of the
\nnationalist movement turned in imagination to a reconstruction of the recent pre-British past in all its details. This could
\nnot be. Inertia, the refusal to expand and alter, is what our philosophy calls tamas<\/i>, and an excess of tamas<\/i> tends to disintegration and
\ndisappearance. Aggression is necessary for self-preservation and, when a force
\nceases to conquer, it ceases to live \u2014 that which remains stationary and stands
\nmerely on the defensive, that which retires into and keeps within its own kot<\/i> or<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 37<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n


\nbase,
\nas the now defunct Sandhya<\/i> used
\ngraphically to put it, is doomed to defeat, diminution and final elimination
\nfrom the living things of the world. Hinduism has always been pliable and
\naggressive; it has thrown itself on the
\nattacking force, carried its positions, plundered its treasures, made its own
\neverything of value it had and ended either in wholly annexing it or driving it
\nout by rendering its further continuation in the country purposeless and
\ntherefore impossible. Whenever it has stood on the defensive, it has
\ncontracted within narrower limits and shown temporary signs of decay.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Once the soul of the nation was awake in religion, it was only a
\nmatter of time and opportunity for it to throw itself on all spiritual and
\nintellectual activities in the national existence and take possession of them.
\nThe outburst of anti-European feeling which followed on the Partition gave the
\nrequired opportunity. Anger, vindictiveness
\nand antipathy are not in themselves laudable feelings, but God uses them for
\nHis purposes and brings good out of evil. They drove listlessness
\nand apathy away and replaced them by energy and a powerful emotion; and that energy and emotion were seized upon by
\nthe national self and turned to the uses of the future. The anger against
\nEuropeans, the vengeful turning upon their commerce and its productions, the
\nantipathy to everything associated with them engendered a powerful stream of
\ntendency turning away from the immediate anglicised past, and the spirit which
\nhad already declared itself in our religious life entered in by this broad
\ndoorway into politics, and substituted a positive powerful yearning towards the
\nnational past, a still more mighty and dynamic yearning towards a truly
\nnational future. The Indian spirit has not yet conquered the whole field of our
\npolitics in actuality, but it is there victoriously in sentiment; the rest is a
\nmatter of time, and everything which is now happening in politics, is helping
\nto prepare for its true and potent expression. The future is now assured.
\nReligion and politics, the two most effective and vital expressions of the
\nnation’s self having been nationalised, the rest will follow in due course. The
\nneeds of our religious and political life are now vital and real forces and it
\nis these needs which will reconstruct our society, recreate and remould our
\nindustrial and commercial life and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 38<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n


\nfound
\na new and victorious art, literature, science and philosophy which will be not
\nEuropean but Indian.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

The impulse is already working in Bengali art and literature. The
\nneed of self-expression for the national spirit in politics suddenly brought
\nback Bengali literature to its essential and eternal self and it was in our
\nrecent national songs that this self-realisation came. The lyric and the
\nlyrical spirit, the spirit of simple, direct and poignant expression, of deep,
\npassionate, straightforward emotion, of a frank and exalted enthusiasm, the
\ndominant note of love and bhakti<\/i>, of a mingled sweetness and strength,
\nthe potent intellect dominated by the self-illuminated heart, a mystical
\nexaltation of feeling and spiritual insight expressing itself with a plain
\nconcreteness and practicality \u2014 this is the soul of Bengal. All our literature,
\nin order to be wholly alive, must start from this base and, whatever variations
\nit may indulge in, never lose touch with it. In Bengal, again, the national
\nspirit is seeking to satisfy itself in art and, for the first time since the
\ndecline of the Moguls, a new school of national art is developing itself, the
\nschool of which Abanindranath Tagore is the founder and master. It is still troubled by the
\nforeign though Asiatic influence from which its master started, and has
\nsomething of an exotic appearance, but the development and self-emancipation of
\nthe national self from this temporary domination can already be watched and
\nfollowed. There again, it is the spirit of Bengal that expresses itself. The
\nattempt to express in form and limit something of that which is formless and
\nillimitable is the attempt of Indian art. The Greeks, aiming at a smaller and
\nmore easily attainable end, achieved a more perfect success. Their instinct for
\nphysical form was greater than ours, our instinct for psychic shape and colour
\nwas superior. Our future art must solve the problem of expressing the soul in
\nthe object, the great Indian aim, while achieving anew the triumphant
\ncombination of perfect interpretative form and colour. No Indian has so strong
\nan instinct for form as the Bengali. In addition to the innate Vedantism of all Indian races, he has an
\nall-powerful impulse towards delicacy, grace and strength, and it is these
\nqualities to which the new school of art has instinctively turned in its first
\ninception. Unable to find a perfect model in the scanty relics of old Indian
\nart, it<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 39<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n


\nwas
\nonly natural that it should turn to Japan for help, for delicacy and grace are
\nthere triumphant. But Japan has not the secret of expressing the deepest soul
\nin the object, it has not the aim. And the Bengali spirit means more than the
\nunion of delicacy, grace and strength; it
\nhas the lyrical mystic impulse; it has the
\npassion for clarity and concreteness and as
\nin our literature, so in our art we see these tendencies emerging \u2014 an emotion
\nof beauty, a nameless sweetness and spirituality pervading the clear line and
\nform. Here, too, it is the free spirit of the nation beginning to emancipate
\nitself from the foreign limitations and shackles.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

No department of our life can escape this great regenerating and
\nreconstructing force. There is not the slightest doubt that our society will
\nhave to undergo a reconstruction which may amount to revolution, but it will
\nnot be for Europeanisation as the average
\nreformer blindly hopes, but for a greater and more perfect realisation of the
\nnational spirit in society. Not individual selfishness and mutually consuming
\nstruggle but love and the binding of individuals into a single inseparable life
\nis the national impulse.
\nIt sought to fulfil itself in the past by the bond of blood in the joint
\nfamily, by the bond of a partial communism in the village system, by the bond
\nof birth and a corporate sense of honour in the caste. It may seek a more
\nperfect and spiritual bond in the future. In commerce also so long as we follow
\nthe European spirit and European model, the individual competitive selfishness,
\nthe bond of mere interest in the joint-stock company or that worst and most
\ndangerous development of co-operative Capitalism, the giant octopus-like Trust
\nand Syndicate, we shall never succeed in rebuilding a healthy industrial life.
\nIt is not these bonds which can weld Indians together. India moves to a deeper
\nand greater life than the world has yet imagined possible and it is when she
\nhas found the secret of expressing herself in those various activities that her
\nindustrial and social life will become strong and expansive.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Nationalism has been hitherto largely a revolt against the tendency
\nto shape ourselves into the mould of Europe; but it must also be on its guard
\nagainst any tendency to cling to every detail that has been Indian. That has
\nnot been the spirit of Hinduism in the past, there is no reason why it should
\nbe so in<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 40<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

the future. In all
\nlife there are three elements, the fixed and permanent spirit, the developing
\nyet constant soul and the brittle changeable body. The spirit we cannot change,
\nwe can only obscure or lose; the soul must
\nnot be rashly meddled with, must neither be tortured into a shape alien to it,
\nnor obstructed in its free expansion; and
\nthe body must be used as a means, not over-cherished as a thing valuable for
\nits own sake. We will sacrifice no ancient form to an unreasoning love of
\nchange, we will keep none which the national spirit desires to replace by one
\nthat is a still better and truer expression of the undying soul of the nation.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 41<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n


\n
\nHOME<\/span><\/a><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Awakening Soul of India                             NO NATIONAL awakening is really vital and enduring which confines itself to a single field. It is when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-02-karmayogin-volume-02","wpcat-23-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}