{"id":92,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=92"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:51","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:51","slug":"14-our-hope-in-the-future-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/14-our-hope-in-the-future-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-14_Our Hope in the future.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\n
\nSEVEN<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nOur Hope in the Future<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nB<\/font>UT<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

profound as have been its effects, this
\nrevolution is yet in its infancy. Visible on every side, in the
\nwaning influence of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, in the triumph
\nof the Bengali language, in the return to Hinduism, in the pride
\nof birth, the angry national feeling and the sensitiveness to insult,
\nwhich are growing more and more common among our young
\nmen, it has nevertheless only begun its work and has many more
\nfields to conquer. Calcutta is yet a stronghold of the Philistines; officialdom is honey-combed with the antinational tradition: in
\npolitics and social reform the workings of the new movement are
\nyet obscure. The Anglicised Babu sits in the high place and rules
\nthe earth for a season. It is he who perorates on the Congress,
\nwho frolics in the abysmal fatuity of interpellation on the Legislative Council, who mismanages civic affairs in the smile of the
\nCity Corporation. He is the man of the present, but he is not the
\nman of the future. On his generation, a generation servilely English and swayed by Keshab Chandra Sen and Kristo Das Pal,
\nBankim had little effect. Even now you will hear Anglicised
\nBengalis tell you with a sort of triumph that the only people who
\nread Bengali books are the Bengali ladies. The sneer is a little
\nout-of-date, but a few years ago it would not have been so utterly
\nbeside the mark. All honour then <\/b> to the women of Bengal,
\nwhose cultured appreciation kept Bengali literature alive! And
\nall honour to the noble few who, with only the women of Bengal
\nand a small class of cultured men to appreciate their efforts,
\nadhered to the language our forefathers spoke, and did not sell
\nthemselves to the tongue of the foreigner! Their reward is the
\nheart-felt gratitude of a nation and an immortal renown. Yes,
\nthe women of Bengal have always been lovers of literature and
\nmay they always remain so; but it is no longer true that they are
\nits only readers. Already we see the embryo of a new generation<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nsoon to be with us, whose imagination Bankim has caught and
\nwho care not for Keshab Chandra Sen and Kristo Das Pal, a
\ngeneration national to a fault, loving Bengal and her new glories,
\nand if not Hindus themselves, yet zealous for the honour of the
\nancient religion and hating all that makes war on it. With that
\ngeneration the future lies and not with the Indian Unnational
\nCongress or the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. Already its vanguard
\nis upon us. It has in it men of culture, men of talent, men of genius. Let it
\nonly be true to itself and we shall do yet more marvellous things in the future than we have done in the past. A
\nBengali may be pardoned who, looking back to a splendid beginning and on to a hopeful sequel, indulges in proud and grandiose
\nhopes.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nLiterature and learning are the provinces in which the
\nBengali is fitted to have kingship, and of the two literature rather
\nthan learning; but signs are not wanting that in other spheres
\nalso he may win laurels only less splendid. In painting and
\nsculpture, in the plastic arts, the Hindu imagination has
\nhad no gift. The favourite style is evidence of a debauched eye
\nand a perverted taste. Yet even in this alien sphere a Bengali
\nhas been winning noble renown and that too in Italy, the native
\nland of painting, the land of Raphael, <\/b> Da Vinci and Angelo,
\nand among Italians, with whom artistic taste is an instinct. In
\nreligion too, the Bengali has the future in his hands. He was the
\nfirst to revolt against the shortcomings of Hinduism, and he is the
\nfirst who has attempted to give some shape to that New Hinduism, which is, one feels, his religious destiny. He has sojourned
\nfor some time in the religious thought of the foreigner, but he is
\nnow coming back to the creed of his fathers with strange and
\nprecious gifts in his hands. In politics, he has always led and still
\nleads. The Congress in Bengal is dying of consumption; annually
\nits proportions shrink into greater insignificance; its leaders,
\nthe Bonnerjis and Bannerjis and Lalmohan Ghoses have climbed
\ninto the rarefied atmosphere of the Legislative Council and lost
\nall hold on the imagination of the young men. The desire for a
\nnobler and more inspiring patriotism is growing more intense;<\/font> 
\n<\/font>and already in the Hindu revival and in the rise of an Indigenous
\nTrade Party we see the handwriting on the wall. This is an omen<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nof good hope for the future; for what Bengal thinks tomorrow,
\nIndia will be thinking tomorrow week. Even towards commerce and science, spheres in which he has been painfully helpless,
\nthe Bengali is casting wistful glances; but whether he will here as elsewhere ascend the ladder, can only be settled by experiment.
\nHe is almost too imaginative, restless and swayed by his feelings for paths in which a cold eye or an untroubled brain is the one
\nthing needful. Nevertheless let Bengal only be true to her own soul, and there is no province in which she may not climb to
\ngreatness. That this is so, is largely due to the awakening and stimulating influence of Bankim on the national mind. Young
\nBengal gets its ideas, feelings and culture not from schools and colleges, but from Bankim’s novels and Rabindranath Tagore’s
\npoems; so true is it that language is the life of a nation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nMany are carrying on the great work in prose and poetry \u2014 Hemchandra, Nobin, Kamini Sen, Rabindranath and
\nRabindranath’s sister, that flower of feminine culture in Bengal, Swarna Kumari Devi, and many more whose names it would
\ntake long to repeat; but another Bankim, another Madhusudan comes not again. Some are pointing to this as a sign of intellectual barrenness; but it is not so. Shakespeare and Milton came
\nwithin the limits of a century! Since then there have been Keats,
\nWordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, but not a second Shakespeare
\nor Milton. Dante and Boccaccio came successively: since then
\nthere have been Berni, Boiardo, Alfieri, Tasso, but not a second
\nDante or Boccaccio. Such men come rarely in the lapse of
\ncenturies. Greece alone has presented the world an unbroken
\nsuccession of supreme geniuses. There is nothing to prevent us Hindus, a nation
\ncreated for thought and literature, from repeating that wonderful example. Greece is a high name, but what
\nman has once done, man may again strive to do. All we need
\nis not to tie ourselves down to a false ideal, not to load our brains
\nwith the pedantry of a false education, but to keep like those first
\nbuilders a free intellect and a free soul. If we are careful to do
\nthat, there is no reason why the creative impulse in Bengal should
\nfor a moment die out. But whatever else may perish or endure,
\nBankim’s fame cannot die. Already it has overleaped the barrier
\nbetween East and West; translations of his works are already<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nappearing in English and German, and wherever they are read,
\nthey excite admiration, wonder and delight. O sage politicians,
\nand subtle economists, whose heads run on Simultaneous Examinations and whose vision is bounded by Legislative Councils,
\nwhat a lesson is here for you! Not in this way shall we exalt ourselves in the scale of nations, not in this way,
\nO sages of the
\nbench and sophists of the bar, but by things of which your legal
\nwisdom takes little cognizance, by noble thoughts, by high deeds,
\nby immortal writings. Bankim and Madhusudan have given
\nthe world three noble things. They have given it Bengali literature, a literature whose princelier creations can bear comparison
\nwith the proudest classics of modern Europe. They have given
\nit the Bengali language. The dialect of Bengal is no longer a
\ndialect, but has become the speech of Gods, a language
\nunfading and indestructible, which cannot die except with
\nthe death of the Bengali nation and not even then. And
\nthey have given it the Bengali nation; a people spirited, bold,
\ningenious and imaginative, high among the most intellectual races
\nof the world, and if it can but get perseverance and physical
\nelasticity, one day to be high among the strongest. This is surely
\na proud record. Of them it may be said in the largest sense that
\nthey, being dead, yet live. And when Posterity comes to crown
\nwith her praises the Makers of India, she will place her most
\nsplendid laurel not on the sweating temples of a place-hunting
\npolitician nor on the narrow forehead of a noisy social reformer
\nbut on the serene brow of that gracious Bengali who never clamoured for place or for power, but did his work in silence for
\nlove of his work, even as nature does, and just because he had
\nno aim but to give out the best that was in him, was able to create
\na language, a literature and a nation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

SEVEN Our Hope in the Future   BUT profound as have been its effects, this revolution is yet in its infancy. Visible on every side,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","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=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}