{"id":361,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=361"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:32","slug":"154-the-asiatic-role-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/01-bande-mataram-volume-01\/154-the-asiatic-role-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-154_The Asiatic Role.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n The Asiatic Role<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n               
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>T<\/font><\/b><\/span>HE<\/font><\/b> genius of the Hindu is not for
\npure action, but for thought and aspiration realised in action, the spirit
\npremeditating before the body obeys the inward command. The life of the Hindu is
\ninward and his outward life aims only at reproducing the motions of his spirit.
\nThis intimate relation of
\nhis thought and his actions is the secret of his perpetual vitality. His outward
\nlife, like that of other nations, is subject to growth and decay, to periods of
\ngreatness and periods of decline, but while other nations have a limit and a
\nterm, he has none. Whenever death claims his portion, the Hindu race takes
\nrefuge in the source of all immortality, plunges itself into the fountain of
\nspirit and comes out renewed for a fresh term of existence. The elixir of
\nnational life has been discovered by India alone. This immortality, this great
\nsecret of life, she has treasured up for thousands of years, until the world was
\nfit to receive it. The time has now come for her to impart it to the other
\nnations who are now on the verge of decadence and death. The peoples of Europe
\nhave carried material life to its farthest expression, the science of bodily
\nexistence has been perfected, but they are suffering from diseases which their
\nscience is powerless to cure. England with her practical intelligence, France
\nwith her clear logical brain, Germany with her speculative genius, Russia with
\nher emotional force, America with her commercial energy have done what they
\ncould for human development, but each has reached the limit of her peculiar
\ncapacity. Something is wanting which Europe cannot supply. It is at this
\njuncture that Asia has awakened, because the world needed her. Asia is the
\ncustodian of the world’s peace of mind, the physician of the maladies which
\nEurope generates. She is commissioned to rise from time to time from her ages of
\nself-communion, self-sufficiency, self-absorption and rule the world for a
\nseason so that the world may come and sit at her feet to learn the secrets she
\nalone has to give. When the restless spirit of Europe has added a new phase of
\ndiscovery to<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-842<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe
\nevolution of the science of material life, has regulated politics, rebased
\nsociety, remodelled law, rediscovered science, the spirit of Asia, calm,
\ncontemplative, self-possessed, takes possession of Europe’s discovery and
\ncorrects its exaggerations, its aberrations by the intuition, the spiritual
\nlight she alone can turn upon the world. When Greek and Roman had exhausted
\nthemselves, the Arab went out from his desert to take up their unfinished task,
\nrevivify the civilisation of the old world and impart the profounder impulses of
\nAsia to the pursuit of knowledge. Asia has always initiated, Europe completed.
\nThe strength of Europe is in details, the strength of Asia in synthesis. When
\nEurope has perfected the details of life or thought, she is unable to harmonise
\nthem into a perfect symphony and she falls into intellectual heresies, practical
\nextravagances which contradict the facts of life, the limits of human nature and
\nthe ultimate truths of existence. It is therefore the office of Asia to take up
\nthe work of human evolution when Europe comes to a standstill and loses itself
\nin a clash of vain speculations, barren experiments and helpless struggles to
\nescape from the consequences of her own mistakes. Such a time has now come in
\nthe world’s history.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>In former ages India was a sort of hermitage of thought and peace apart
\nfrom the world. Separated from the rest of humanity by her peculiar geographical
\nconformation, she worked out her own problems and thought out the secrets of
\nexistence as in a quiet Ashram from which the noise of the world was shut out.
\nHer thoughts flashed out over Asia and created civilisations,
\nher
\nsons were the bearers of light to the peoples; philosophies<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>based themselves on stray fragments of
\nher infinite wisdom; sciences arose from the waste of her intellectual
\nproduction. When the barrier was broken and nations began to surge through the
\nHimalayan gates, the peace of India departed. She passed through centuries of
\nstruggle, of ferment in which the civilisations born of her random thoughts
\nreturned to her developed and insistent, seeking to impose themselves on the
\nmighty mother of them all. To her they were the reminiscences of her old
\nintellectual experiments laid aside and forgotten. She took them up, re-thought
\nthem in a new light and once more made them part of herself. So she dealt with
\nthe Greek, so with the Scythian, so<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-843<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nwith
\nIslam, so now she will deal with the great brood of her returning children,
\nwith Christianity, with Buddhism, with European science and materialism, with
\nthe fresh speculations born of the world’s renewed contact with the source of
\nthought in this ancient cradle of religion, science and philosophy. The vast
\namount of new matter which she has to absorb, is unprecedented in her history,
\nbut to her it is child’s play. Her all-embracing intellect, her penetrating
\nintuition, her invincible originality are equal to greater tasks. The period of
\npassivity when she listened to the voices of the outside world is over. No
\nlonger will she be content merely to receive and reproduce, even to receive and
\nimprove. The genius of Japan lies in imitation and improvement, that of India in
\norigination. The contributions of outside peoples she can only accept as rough
\nmaterial for her immense creative faculty. It was the mission of England to
\nbring this rough material to India, but in the arrogance of her material success
\nshe presumed to take upon herself the role of a teacher and treated the Indian
\npeople partly as an infant to be instructed, partly as a serf to be schooled to
\nlabour for its lords. The farce is played out. England’s mission in India is
\nover and it is time for her to recognise the limit of the lease given to her.
\nWhen it was God’s will that she should possess India, the world was amazed at
\nthe miraculous ease of the conquest and gave all the credit to the unparalleled
\ngenius and virtues of the Engligh people, a fiction which England was not slow
\nto encourage and on which she has traded for over a century. The real truth is
\nsuggested in the famous saying that England conquered India in a fit of absence
\nof mind, which is only another way of saying that she did not conquer it at all.
\nIt was placed in her hands without her realising what was being done or how it
\nwas being done. The necessary conditions were created for her, her path made
\neasy, the instruments given into her hands. The men who worked for her were of
\ncomparatively small intellectual stature and with few exceptions did not make
\nand could not have made any mark in European history where no special Providence
\nwas at work to supplement the deficiencies of the instruments. The subjugation
\nof India is explicable neither in the ability of the men whose names figure as
\nthe protagonists nor in the superior genius of the<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-844<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nconquering
\nnation nor in the weakness of the conquered people. It is one of the standing
\nmiracles of history. In other words, it was one of those cases in which a
\nparticular mission was assigned to a people not otherwise superior to the rest
\nof the world and a special faustitas <\/i>or decreed good fortune set to watch
\nover the fulfilment of the mission. Her mission once over, the angel of the Lord
\nwho stood by England in her task and removed opponents and difficulties with the
\nwaving of his hand, will no longer shield her. She will stay so long as the
\ndestinies of India need her and not a day longer, for it is not by her own
\nstrength that she came or is still here, and it is not by her own strength that
\nshe can remain. The resurgence of India is begun, it will accomplish itself with
\nher help, if she will, without it if she does not, against it if she opposes.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nLove Me or Die<\/font><\/a><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe
\nEditor of the Urdu Swarajya <\/i>has been warned to refrain from seditious
\nwritings. The Magistrate in conveying the warning unctuously remarked that
\n"the Government never dissuades righteous criticism, it is only a
\ndisaffectionate feeling that it wants to check." The heart of the
\nbureaucracy is evidently in the right place; it is so anxious to be loved that
\nit is ready to chop off the head of anyone who refuses to love it. The
\nbureaucracy has sometimes been compared by editors with exuberant pens to the
\nEmperor Nero, a comparison which it has resented by putting the writer in
\nprison; but it is written in history that Nero suffered precisely from this
\namiable weakness. He wanted to be loved and anyone who had a "disaffectionate
\nfeeling" for him or criticised "unrighteously" his character or
\nhis flute-playing or his poetry or his acting, was in instant danger of being
\ntaught affection by the sword. Nero also did not want to dissuade
\n"righteous" criticism, but then the judge of the righteousness of the
\ncriticism was Nero himself. The love-sick despot is a more difficult kind of
\nanimal to tackle than the more ferocious species. "Obey me or perish"
\nis the attitude of the latter, and it is one which can be appreciated if not
\nadmired. But "love me or<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-845<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ndie",
\nis a principle of Government to which human nature cannot so easily accustom
\nitself. It is too ethereal for the grossness of our base terrestrial
\ncomposition.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i> <\/font> April 9, 1908<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>846<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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