{"id":924,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=924"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:15","slug":"02-is-india-civilised-vol-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14\/02-is-india-civilised-vol-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","title":{"rendered":"-02_Is India Civilised .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nI<\/font><\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\nThe Issue:<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nIs India Civilised? <\/span>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA BOOK under this rather startling title was
\npublished some years ago by Sir John Woodroffe, the
\nwell-known scholar and writer on Tantric philosophy, in answer to an
\nextravagant jeu d’esprit <\/i>by Mr. William Archer. That wellknown dramatic
\ncritic leaving his safe natural sphere for fields in which his chief claim to
\nspeak was a sublime and confident ignorance, assailed the whole life and
\nculture of India and even lumped together all her greatest achievements,
\nphilosophy, religion, poetry, painting, sculpture, Upanishads, Mahabharata,
\nRamayana, in one wholesale condemnation as a repulsive mass of unspeakable
\nbarbarism. It was argued by many at the time that to reply to a critic of this
\nkind was to break a butterfly, or it might be in this instance a bumble-bee,
\nupon the wheel. But Sir John Woodroffe insisted that even an attack of this
\nignorant kind ought not to be neglected; he took it as a particularly useful
\ntype in the general kind, first, because it raised the question from the rationalistic
\nand not from the Christian and missionary standpoint and, again, because it
\nbetrayed the grosser under\u00adlying motives of all such attacks. But his book was
\nimportant, not so much as an answer to a particular critic, but because it
\nraised with great point and power the whole question of the survival of Indian
\ncivilisation and the inevitability of a ,war of cultures. <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nquestion whether there has been or is a civilisation in India is not any longer
\ndebatable; for everyone whose opinion counts recognises the presence of a
\ndistinct and a great civilisation unique in its character. Sir John Woodroffe’s
\npurpose was to disclose the conflict of European and Asiatic culture and, in
\ngreater prominence, the distinct meaning and value of Indian civilisation, the
\nperil it now runs and the calamity its destruction would be to the world. The
\nauthor held its preservation to be of an immense importance to mankind and he
\nbelieved it to be in great danger. In the stupendous rush of change which is
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-1 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

coming on the human
\nworld as a result of the present tornado of upheaval, ancient India’s culture,
\nattacked by European modern\u00adism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by
\nthe indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of
\nthe nation that holds it in its keeping. The book was an urgent invitation to
\nus to appreciate better this sacred trust and the near peril which besets it
\nand to stand firm and faithful in the hour of the ordeal. It will be useful to
\nstate briefly its gist as an introduction to this all-important issue. <\/font><\/p>\n

A
\ntrue happiness in this world is the right terrestrial aim of man, and true
\nhappiness lies in the finding and maintenance of a natural harmony of spirit,
\nmind and body. A culture is to be valued to the extent to which it has
\ndiscovered the right key of this harmony and organised its expressive motives
\nand move\u00adments. And a civilisation must be judged by the manner in which all
\nits principles, ideas, forms, ways of living work to bring that harmony out,
\nmanage its rhythmic play and secure its continuance or the development of its
\nmotives. A civilisation in pursuit of this aim may be predominantly material
\nlike modern European culture, predominantly mental and intellectual like the
\nold Graeco\u00adRoman or predominantly spiritual like the still persistent culture
\nof India. India’s central conception is that of the Eternal, the Spirit here
\nincased in matter, involved and immanent in it and evolving on the material
\nplane by rebirth of the individual up the scale of being till in mental man it
\nenters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma. <\/i>This
\nachievement, this victory over unconscious matter develops its lines, enlarges
\nits scope, elevates its levels until the increasing manifestation of the
\nsattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind enables the individual
\nmental being in man to identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness
\nbeyond Mind. India’s social system is built upon this conception; her
\nphilosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual
\nconsciousness and its fruits; her art and literature have the same upward look;
\nher whole Dharma or law of being is founded upon it. Progress she admits, but
\nthis spiritual progress, not the externally self. unfolding process of an
\nalways more and more prosperous and efficient material civilisation. It is her
\nfounding of life upon this <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-2 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

exalted
\nconception and her urge towards the spiritual and the<\/font> eternal that constitute the distinct value of her
\ncivilisation. And it is her fidelity, with whatever human shortcomings, to this
\nhighest ideal that has made her people a nation apart in the human world. <\/font><\/p>\n

But
\nthere are other cultures led by a different conception and even an opposite
\nmotive. And by the law of struggle which is the first law of existence in the
\nmaterial universe, varying cultures are bound to come into conflict. A
\ndeep-seated urge in Nature compels them to attempt to extend themselves and to
\ndestroy, assimilate and replace all disparates or opposites. Conflict is not
\nindeed the last and ideal stage; for that comes when various cultures develop.
\nfreely, without hatred, mis\u00adunderstanding or aggression and even with an
\nunderlying sense of unity, their separate special motives. But so long as the
\nprin\u00adciple of struggle prevails, one must face the lesser law; it is fatal to
\ndisarm in the midmost of the battle. The culture which gives up its living
\nseparateness, the civilisation which neglects an active self-defence will be
\nswallowed up and the nation which lived by it will lose its soul and perish.
\nEach nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives
\nby the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living
\nenergy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very prin\u00adciple
\nof her existence. For by its virtue alone she has been one of the immortal
\nnations; this alone has been the secret of her ama\u00adzing persistence and
\nperpetual force of survival and revival. <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nprinciple of struggle has assumed the large historical aspect of an agelong
\nclash and pressure of conflict between Asia and Europe. This clash, this mutual
\npressure has had its material side, but has borne also its cultural and
\nspiritual aspect. Both materially and spiritually Europe has thrown herself
\nrepeatedly upon Asia, Asia too upon Europe, to conquer, assimilate and dominate.
\nThere has been a constant alternation, a flowing backward and forward of these
\ntwo seas of power. All Asia has always had the spiritual tendency in more or
\nless intensity, with more or less clearness; but in this essential matter India
\nis the quintessence of the Asiatic way of being. Europe too in mediae\u00adval times
\nhad a culture in which by the dominance of the Chris- <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-3<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

tian idea – but
\nChristianity was of Asiatic origin – the spiritual motive took the lead; then there was an
\nessential similarity as well as a certain difference. Still the differentiation
\nof cultural temperament has on the whole been constant. Since some cen\u00adturies
\nEurope has become material, predatory, aggressive, and has lost the harmony of
\nthe inner and outer man which is the true meaning of civilisation and the
\nefficient condition of a true pro\u00adgress. Material comfort, material progress,
\nmaterial efficiency have become the gods of her worship. The modem European
\ncivilisation which has invaded Asia and which all violent attacks on Indian
\nideals represent, is the effective form of this material\u00adistic culture. India,
\ntrue to her spiritual motive, has never shared in the physical attacks of Asia
\nupon Europe; her method has always been an infiltration of the world with her
\nideas, such as we today see again in progress. But she has now been physically
\noccupied by Europe and this physical conquest must necessarily be associated
\nwith an attempt at cultural conquest; that invasion too has also made some
\nprogress. On the other hand, English rule has enabled India still to retain her
\nidentity and social type; it <\/i>has awakened her to herself and has
\nmeanwhile, until she became conscious of her strength, guarded her against the
\nflood which would otherwise have submerged and broken her civilisation.1<\/sup><\/span>  It is for her now to recover herself, defend her
\ncultural exis\u00adtence against the alien penetration, preserve her distinct
\nspirit, essential principle and characteristic forms for her own salva\u00adtion and
\nthe total welfare of the human race. <\/font><\/p>\n

But
\nmany questions may arise, – and principally whether such a spirit of defence
\nand attack is the right spirit, whether union, harmony, interchange are not our
\nproper temperament for the coming human advance. Is not a unified world-culture
\nthe large way of the future? Can either an exaggeratedly spiri\u00adtual or an
\nexcessively temporal civilisation be the sound condi\u00adtion of human progress or
\nhuman perfection? A happy or just <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1 <\/sup>This contention cannot be accepted in an
\nunqualified sense. English rule has by its general principle of social and
\nreligious non-interference prevented any direct and violent touch, any
\ndeliberate and purposeful social pressure; but it has undermined and deprived of
\nliving strength all the pre-existing centres and instruments of Indian social
\nlife and by a sort of unperceived rodent process left it only a rotting shell
\nwithout expansive power or any better defensive force than the force of inertia.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Page-4<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

reconciliation would
\nseem to ,be a better key to a harmony of Spirit, Mind and Body. And there is
\nthe question too whether the forms of Indian culture must be preserved intact
\nas well as the spirit. To these queries the reply of the author is to be found
\nin his law of graduality of the spiritual advance of humanity, its need of
\nadvancing through three successive stages. <\/font><\/p>\n

The first stage is the period of conflict and competition which has
\nbeen ever dominant in the past and still overshadows the present of mankind.
\nFor even when the crudest forms of material conflict are mitigated, the
\nconflict itself still survives and the cultural struggle comes into greater
\nprominence. The second step brings the stage of concert. The third and last is
\nmarked by the spirit of sacrifice in which, because all is known as the one
\nSelf, each gives himself for the good of others. The second stage has hardly at
\nall commenced for most; the third belongs to the indeterminate future.
\nIndividuals have reached the highest stage; the perfected Sannyasin, the
\nliberated man, the soul that has become one with the Spirit, knows all being as
\nhimself and for him all self-defence and attack are needless. For strife does
\nnot belong to the law of his seeing; sacrifice and self-giving are the whole
\nprinciple of his action. But no people has reached that level, and to follow a
\nlaw or principle involuntarily or ignorantly or contrary to the truth of one’s
\nconsciousness is a falsehood and a self-destruction. To allow oneself to be
\nkilled, like the lamb attacked by the wolf, brings no growth, farthers no
\ndevelopment, assures no spiritual merit. Concert or unity may come in good
\ntime, but it must be an underlying unity with a free differentia\u00adtion, not a
\nswallowing up of one by another or an incongruous and inharmonious mixture. Nor
\ncan it come before the world is ready for these greater things. To lay down
\none’s arms in a state of war is to invite destruction and it can serve no
\ncompen\u00adsating spiritual purpose. <\/font><\/p>\n

Spiritual
\nand temporal have indeed to be perfectly harmo\u00adnised, for the spirit works
\nthrough mind and body. But the purely intellectual or heavily material culture
\nof the kind that Europe now favours bears in its heart the seed of death; for
\nthe living aim of culture is the realisation on earth of the kingdom of heaven.
\nIndia, though its urge is towards the Eternal, since <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-5<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

that is always the
\nhighest, the entirely real, still contains in her own culture and her own
\nphilosophy a supreme reconciliation of the eternal and the temporal and she
\nneed not seek it from out\u00adside. On the same principle the form of the
\ninterdependence of mind, body and spirit in a harmonious culture is important
\nas well as the pure spirit; for the form is the rhythm of the spirit. It
\nfollows that to break up the form is to injure the spirit’s self-\u00adexpression or
\nat least to put it into grave peril. Change of forms there may and will be, but
\nthe novel formation must be a new self-expression or self-creation developed
\nfrom within; it must be characteristic of the spirit and not servilely borrowed
\nfrom the embodiments of an alien nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

Where
\nthen does India actually stand in this critical hour of her necessity and how
\nfar can she be said to be still firmly seated on her eternal foundations?
\nAlready she has been largely affected by European culture and the peril is far
\nfrom over; on the contrary it will be greater, more insistent, more impera\u00adtively
\nviolent in the immediate future. Asia is re-arising; but that very fact will
\nintensify and is already intensifying the attempt, natural and legitimate
\naccording to the law of competi\u00adtion, of European civilisation to assimilate
\nAsia. For if she is culturally transformed and conquered, then when she again
\ncounts in the material order of the world, it will not be with any menace of
\nthe invasion of Europe by the Asiatic ideal. It is a cultural quarrel
\ncomplicated with a political question. Asia must become culturally a province
\nof Europe and form politically one part of a Europeanised if not a European
\nconcert; otherwise Europe may become culturally a province of Asia, Asiaticised
\nby the dominant influence of wealthy, enormous, powerful Asiatic peoples in the
\nnew world-system. The motive pf Mr. Archer’s attack is frankly a political
\nmotive. This is the burden of all his song that the reconstruction of the world
\nmust take place in the forms and follow the canons of a rationalistic and
\nmaterialistic European civilisation. On his reasoning, India, if she adheres to
\nher own civilisation, if she cherishes its spiritual motive, if she clings to
\nits spiritual principle of formation, will stand out as a living denial, a
\nhideous "blot" upon this fair, luminous, rationalistic world. Either
\nshe must Europeanise, <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-6  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

rationalise, materialise
\nher whole being and deserve liberty by the change or else she must be kept in
\nsubjection and adminis\u00adtered by her cultural superiors: her people of three
\nhundred million religious savages must be held down firmly, taught and
\ncivilised by her noble and enlightened Christian-atheistic Euro\u00adpean warders
\nand tutors. A grotesque statement in form, but in substance it has in it the
\nroot of the matter. As against the attack, – not universal, for understanding
\nand appreciation of Indian culture are now more common than before, – India is
\nindeed awaking and defending herself, but not sufficiently and not with the
\nwhole-heartedness, the clear sight and the firm resolution which can alone save
\nher from the peril. Today it is close; ‘let her choose, – for the choice is
\nimperatively before her, to live or to perish. <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nwarning cannot be neglected; recent utterances of European publicists and
\nstatesmen, recent books and writings against India and the joyful and
\nenthusiastic welcome they have received from the public of occidental
\ncountries, point to the reality of the danger. It arises indeed as a necessity
\nfrom the present political situation and cultural trend of humanity at this
\nmoment of enormous decisive change. It is not necessary to follow the writer in
\nall the viewpoints expressed in his book. I cannot myself accept in full his
\neulogy of the mediaeval civilisa\u00adtion of Europe. Its interest, the beauty of
\nits artistic motives, its deep and sincere spiritual urgings are marred for me
\nby its large strain of ignorance and obscurantism, its cruel intolerance, its
\nrevolting early-Teutonic hardness, brutality, ferocity and coarseness. He seems
\nto me to hit a little too hard at the later European culture. This
\npredominantly economic, type of civilisa\u00adtion has been ugly enough in its
\nstrain of utilitarian materialism, which we shall err grossly if we imitate;
\nstill it has been uplifted by some nobler ideals that have done much for the
\nrace. But even these are crude and imperfect in their form and need to be spiritualised
\nin their meaning before they can be wholly admitted by the mind of India. I
\nthink too that the author has a little underrated the force of the Indian
\nrevival. I do not mean its outward realised strength, for that is very
\ndeficient, but the inevitability of its drive, its spiritual and potential
\nforce. <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-7<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

And he has made a
\nlittle too much of the servile type of Indian who is capable of mouthing the
\nportentously obsequious imagination that "European institutions are the
\nstandard by which the aspirations of India are set". That, except for the
\nra\u00adpidly dwindling class to which this spokesman belongs, has its truth now
\nonly in a single field, the political, <\/font>
\n– a very important<\/font><\/span> exception, I admit, and one
\nwhich opens the door to a peril of stupendous proportions. But even there a
\ndeep change of spirit is foreshadowed although it has not yet taken definite
\nform and has now to meet a fresh invasion of furious Europeanism inspired by
\nthe militant crudeness of proletarian Russia. Again he does not attach a
\nsufficient importance to the increasing infiltration of India’s spiritual
\nthought into Europe and America, which is her characteristic retort to the
\nEuropean invasion. It is from this point of view that the whole question takes
\non a different aspect. <\/font><\/p>\n

Sir
\nJohn Woodroffe invites us to a vigorous self-defence. But defence by itself in
\nthe modem struggle can only end in defeat, and if battle there must be, the
\nonly sound strategy is a vigorous aggression based on a strong, living and
\nmobile defence; for by that aggressive force alone can the defence itself be
\neffec\u00adtive. Why are a certain class of Indians still hypnotised in all fields
\nby European culture and why are we all still hypnotised by it in the field of
\npolitics? Because they constantly saw all the power, creation, activity on the
\nside of Europe, all the immobility or weakness of a static inefficient defence
\non the side of India. But wherever the Indian spirit has been able to react, to
\nattack with energy and to create with eclat, <\/i>the European glamour has
\nbegun immediately to lose its hypnotic power. No one now feels the weight of
\nthe religious assault from Europe which was very powerful at the outset,
\nbecause the creative activities of the Hindu revival have made Indian religion
\na living and evolving, a secure, triumphant and self-assertive power. But the
\nseal was put to this work by two events, the Theosophical movement and the
\nappearance of Swami Vivekananda at Chicago. For these two things showed the
\nspiritual ideas for which India stands, no longer on the defence but aggressive
\nand invading the mate\u00adrialised mentality of the Occident. All India had been
\nvulgarised and anglicised in its aesthetic notions by English education and
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-8<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

influence, until the brilliant and sudden
\ndawn of the Bengal school of art cast its rays so far as to be seen in Tokyo,
\nLondon and Paris. That significant cultural event has already effected an
\naesthetic revolution in the country, not yet by any means com\u00adplete, but
\nirresistible and sure of the future. The same pheno\u00admenon extends to other
\nfields. Even in the province of politics that was the internal sense of the
\npolicy of the so-called extremist party in the Swadeshi movement; for it was a
\nmovement which attempted to override the previous apparent impossibility of
\npoli\u00adtical creation by the Indian spirit upon other than imitative Euro\u00adpean
\nlines. If it failed for the time being, not by any falsity in its inspiration,
\nbut by the strength of a hostile pressure and the weakness still left by a past
\ndecadence, if its incipient creations were broken or left languishing and
\ndeprived of their original significance, yet it will remain as a finger-post on
\nthe roads. The attempt is bound to be renewed as soon as a wider gate is opened
\nunder more favourable conditions. Till that attempt comes and succeeds, a
\nserious danger besets the soul of India; for a political Europeanisation would
\nbe followed by a social turn of the same kind and bring a cultural and
\nspiritual death in its train. Aggression must be successful and creative if the
\ndefence is to be effective. <\/font><\/p>\n

This
\ngreat question must be given its larger world-wide import if we are to see it
\nin its true lines. The principle of struggle, conflict and competition still
\ngoverns and for some time will still govern international relations; for even
\nif war is abolished in the near future by some as yet improbable good fortune
\nof the race, conflict will take other forms. At the same time a certain growing
\nmutual closeness of the life of, humanity is the most prominent phenomenon of
\nthe day. The War has brought it into violent relief; but the after-war is
\nbringing out all its implications as well as the mass of its difficulties. This
\nis as yet no real concert, still less the beginning of a true unity, but only a
\ncompelling physical oneness forced on us by scientific inventions and modern
\ncircumstances. But this physical oneness must necessarily bring its mental,
\ncultural and psychological results. At first it will probably accentuate rather
\nthan diminish conflict in many directions, enhance political and economic <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-9<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

struggles
\nof many kinds and hasten too a cultural struggle. There it may bring about in
\nthe end a swallowing unification and a destruction of all other civilisations by
\none aggressive European type. Whether that type will be bourgeois economical or
\nlabour materialistic or a rationalistic intellectualism cannot easily be
\nforeseen, but at present in one form or another this is the actuality that is
\nmost in the front. On the other hand, it may lead to a free concert with some
\nunderlying oneness. But the ideal of the entire separateness of the peoples
\neach developing its sharply separatist culture with an alien exclusion law for
\nother leading ideas and cultural forms, although it-has been for some time
\nabroad and was growing in vigour, is not likely to prevail. For that to happen
\nthe whole aim of unification preparing in Nature must fall to pieces, an
\nimprobable but not quite impossible catastrophe. Europe dominates the world and
\nit is natural to forecast a wester\u00adnised world with such petty differences as
\nmight be permissible in a European unity given up to the rigorous scientific
\npursuit of the development and organisation of material life. Across this
\npossibility falls the shadow of India. <\/font><\/p>\n

Sir
\nJohn Woodroffe quotes the dictum of Professor Lowes Dickinson that the
\nopposition is not so much between Asia and Europe as between India and the rest
\nof the world. There is a truth behind that dictum; but the cultural opposition
\nof Europe and Asia remains an unabolished factor. Spirituality is not the
\nmonopoly of India; however it may hide submerged in intellec\u00adtualism or hid in
\nother concealing veils, it is a necessary part of human nature. But the
\ndifference is between spirituality made the leading motive and the determining
\npower of both the inner and the outer life and spirituality suppressed, allowed
\nonly under disguises or brought in as a minor power, its reign denied or put
\noff in favour of the intellect or of a dominant materialistic vitalism. The
\nformer way was the type of the ancient wisdom at one time universal in all
\ncivilised countries -literally, from China to Peru. But all other nations have
\nfallen away from it and diminished its large pervasiveness or fallen away from it
\naltogether as in Europe. Or they are now, as in Asia, in danger of abandoning
\nit for the invading economic, commercial, indus\u00adtrial, intellectually
\nutilitarian modern type. India alone, with <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-10<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

whatever fall or
\ndecline of light and vigour, has remained faithful to the heart of the
\nspiritual motive. India alone is still obstinately recalcitrant; for Turkey and
\nChina and Japan, say her critics, have outgrown that foolishness, by which it
\nis meant that they have both grown rationalistic and materialistic. India alone
\nas a nation, whatever individuals or a small class may have done, has till now
\nrefused to give up her worshipped Godhead or bow her knee to the strong
\nreigning idols of rationalism, commer\u00adcialism and economism, the successful
\niron gods of the West. Affected she has been, but not yet overcome. Her surface
\nmind rather than her deeper intelligence has been obliged to admit many Western
\nideas, _ liberty, equality, democracy and others, – and to reconcile them with her Vedantic
\nTruth; but she has not been altogether at ease with them in the Western form
\nand she seeks about already in her thought to give to them an Indian which
\ncannot fail to be a spiritualised turn. The first passion to imitate English
\nideas and culture has passed; but another more dangerous has recently taken its
\nplace, the passion to imitate Continental European culture at large and in
\nparticular the crude and vehement turn of revolutionary Russia. On the other
\nhand, one sees a growing revival of the ancient Hindu religion and the immense
\nsweep of a spiritual awakening and its significant move\u00adments. And out of this
\nambiguous situation there can be only one out of two issues. Either India will
\nbe rationalised and indus\u00adtrialised out of all recognition and she will be no
\nlonger India or else she will be the leader in a new world-phase, aid by her
\nexample and cultural infiltration the new tendencies of the West and
\nspiritualise the human race. That is the one radical and poignant question at
\nissue. Will the spiritual motive which India represents prevail on Europe and
\ncreate there new forms congenial to the West, or will European rationalism and
\ncom\u00admercialism put an end for ever to the Indian type of culture? <\/font><\/p>\n

Not
\nthen, whether India is civilised is the query that should be put, but whether
\nthe motive which has shaped her civilisation or the old-European intellectual
\nor the new-European material\u00adistic motive is to lead human culture. Is the
\nharmony of the spirit, mind and body to found itself on the gross law of our
\nphysical nature rationalised only or touched at the most by an <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-11<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

ineffective spiritual
\nglimmer, or is the dominant power of spirit to take the lead and force the lesser
\npowers of the intellect, mind and body to a more exalted effort after a highest
\nharmony, a victorious ever-developing equipoise? India must defend herself by
\nreshaping her cultural forms to express more powerfully, intimately and
\nperfectly her ancient ideal. Her aggression must lead the waves of the light
\nthus liberated in triumphant self-\u00adexpanding rounds all over the world which it
\nonce possessed or at least enlightened in far-off ages. An appearance of
\nconflict must be admitted for a time, for as long as the attack of an opposite
\nculture continues. But since it will be in effect an assis\u00adtance to all the
\nbest that is emerging from the advanced thought of the Occident, it will
\nculminate in the beginning of a concert on a higher plane and a preparation of
\noneness. <\/font> <\/p>\n

Page-12<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n


\n 2<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/font>HIS<\/font>
\nquestion of Indian civilisation, once it has raised this greater issue, shifts
\nfrom its narrow meaning and disappears into a much larger problem. Does the
\nfuture of huma\u00adnity lie in a culture founded solely upon reason and science? Is
\nthe progress of human life the effort of a mind, a continuous collective mind
\nconstituted by an ever changing sum of transient individuals, that has emerged
\nfrom the darkness of the incon\u00adscient material universe and is stumbling about
\nin it in search of some clear light and some sure support amid its difficulties
\nand problems? And does civilisation consist in man’s endeavour to find that
\nlight and support in a rationalised knowledge and a rationalised way of life? An
\nordered knowledge of the powers, forces, possibilities of physical Nature and of
\nthe psychology of man as a mental and physical being is then the only true
\nscience. An ordered use of that knowledge for a progressive social effi\u00adciency
\nand well-being, which will make his brief existence more efficient, more
\ntolerable, more comfortable, happier, better appointed, more luxuriously
\nenriched with the pleasures of the mind, life and body, is the only true art of
\nlife. All our philo\u00adsophy, all our religion, <\/font>
\n– <\/font> <\/span>
\nsupposing religion has not been out\u00ad<\/font><\/span>grown and rejected, – all our science, thought, art,
\nsocial structure, law and institution must found itself upon this idea of
\nexistence and must serve this one aim and endeavour. This is the formula which
\nEuropean civilisation has accepted and is still labouring to bring into some
\nkind of realisation. It is the formula of an intelligently mechanised
\ncivilisation supporting a rational and utilitarian culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

Or is not the truth of our being rather
\nthat of a Soul em\u00adbodied in Nature which is seeking to know itself, to find
\nitself, to enlarge its consciousness, to arrive at a greater way of existence,
\nto progress in the spirit and grow into the full light of self-\u00adknowledge and
\nsome divine inner perfection? Are not religion, philosophy, science, thought,
\nart, society, all life even means only of this growth, instruments of the
\nspirit to be used for its <\/span><\/p>\n

Page-13<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

service and with this
\nspiritual aim as their dominant or at least their ultimate preoccupation? That
\nis the idea of life and being, – the knowledge of it, as she claims, – for which
\nIndia stood till yesterday and still strives to stand with all that is most per\u00adsistent
\nand powerful in her nature. It is the formula of a spiri\u00adtualised civilisation
\nstriving through the perfection but also through an exceeding of mind, life and
\nbody towards a high soul-culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

Whether
\nthe future hope of the race lies in a rational and an intelligently mechanised
\nor in a spiritual, intuitive and religious civilisation and culture, – that,
\nthen, is the important issue. When the rationalist critic denies that India is
\nor ever has been civilised, when he declares the Upanishads, the Vedanta, Bud\u00addhism,
\nHinduism, ancient Indian art and poetry a mass of bar\u00adbarism" the vain
\nproduction of a persistently barbaric mind, <\/font>
\nwhat he means is simply that civilisation is
\nsynonymous and <\/font> <\/span>identical with the cult
\nand practice of the materialistic reason and that anything which falls below or
\ngoes above that standard does not deserve the name. A too metaphysical
\nphilosophy, a too religious religion, – if not indeed all philosophy and all re\u00adligion,
\n– any too idealistic and all mystic thought and art and every kind of occult
\nknowledge, all that refines and probes beyond the limited purview of the reason
\ndealing with the phy\u00adsical universe and seems therefore to it bizarre,
\nover-subtle, excessive, unintelligible, all that responds to the sense of the
\nInfinite, all that is obsessed with the idea of the Eternal, and a society
\nwhich is too much governed by ideas born of these things and not solely by
\nintellectual clarity and the pursuit of a material development and efficiency,
\nare not the products of civilisation, but the offspring of a crudely subtle
\nbarbarism. But this thesis obviously proves too much; most of the great past of
\nhumanity would fall under its condemnation. Even ancient Greek culture would
\nnot escape it; much of the thought and art of modern European civilisation
\nitself would in that case have to be damned as at least semibarbarous.
\nEvidently, we cannot without falling into exaggeration and absurdity narrow the
\nsense of the word and impoverish the significance of the past strivings of the
\nrace. Indian civilisation in the past has been and must be recognised as <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-14<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

the fruit of a great
\nculture, quite as much as the Graeco-Roman, the Christian, the Islamic or the
\nlater Renaissance civilisation of Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

But
\nthe essential question remains open; the dispute is only narrowed to its
\ncentral issue. A more moderate and perspica\u00adcious rationalistic critic would
\nadmit the past value of India’s achievements. He would not condemn Buddhism and
\nVedanta and all Indian art and philosophy and social ideas as barbarous, but he
\nwould still contend that not there lies any future good for the human race. The
\ntrue line of advance lies through European modernism, the mighty works of
\nScience and the great modem adventure of humanity, its effort well founded not
\nupon specu\u00adlation and imagination but on ascertained and tangible scientific
\ntruth, its laboriously increased riches of sure and firmly tested scientific
\norganisation. An Indian mind faithful to its ideals would contend on the
\ncontrary that while reason and science and all other auxiliaries have their
\nplace in the human effort, the real truth goes beyond them. The secret of our
\nultimate perfection is to be discovered deeper within us and things and Nature;
\nit is to be sought centrally in spiritual self-knowledge and perfection and in
\nthe founding of life on that self-knowledge. <\/font><\/p>\n

When
\nthe issue is so stated, we can at once see that the gulf between East and West,
\nIndia and Europe is much less profound and unbridgeable now than it was thirty
\nor forty years ago. The basic difference still remains; the life of the West is
\nstill chiefly governed by the rationalistic idea and a materialistic preoccupa\u00adtion.
\nBut at the summits of thought and steadily penetrating more and more downward
\nthrough art and poetry and music and general literature an immense change is in
\nprogress. A reaching towards deeper things, an increasing return of seekings
\nwhich had been banished, an urge towards higher experience yet unrealised, an
\nadmission of ideas long foreign to the Western mentality can be seen
\neverywhere. Aiding this process and aided by it there has been a certain
\ninfiltration of Indian and Eastern thought and influence; even here and there
\nwe find some growing recognition of the high value or the superior greatness of
\nthe ancient spiritual ideal. This infiltration began at a very early stage of
\nthe near contact between the farther Orient and <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-15<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

Europe
\nof which the English occupation of India was the most direct occasion. But at
\nfirst it .was a slight and superficial touch, at most an intellectual influence
\non a few superior minds. An academic interest or an attracted turn of scholars
\nand thinkers towards Vedanta, Sankhya, Buddhism, admiration for the subtlety
\nand largeness of Indian philosophic idealism, the stamp left by the Upanishads
\nand the Gita on great intellects like Scho\u00adpenhauer and Emerson and on a few
\nlesser thinkers, this was the first narrow inlet of the floods. The impression
\ndid not go very far at the best and the little effect it might have produced
\nwas counteracted and even effaced for a time by the great flood of scientific
\nmaterialism which submerged the whole life-view of <\/font>later nineteenth-century
\nEurope.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

But
\nnow other movements have arisen and laid hold on thought and life with a
\ntriumphant success. Philosophy and thought have taken a sharp curve away from rationalistic
\nmate\u00adrialism and its confident absolutisms. On the one hand, as a first
\nconsequence of the seeking for a larger thought and vision of the universe,
\nIndian Monism has taken a subtle but powerful hold on many minds, though often
\nin strange disguises. On the other hand, new philosophies have been born, not
\nindeed directly spiritual, vitalistic rather and pragmatic, but yet by their
\ngreater subjectivity already nearer to Indian ways of thinking. The old limits
\nof scientific interest have begun to break down; various forms of psychical
\nresearch and novel departures in psychology and even an interest in psychism
\nand occultism, have come into increasing vogue and fasten more and more their
\nhold in spite of the anathemas of orthodox religion and orthodox science.
\nTheosophy with its comprehensive combinations of old and new beliefs and its
\nappeal to ancient spiritual and psychic systems, has everywhere exercised an
\ninfluence far beyond the circle of its professed adherents. Opposed for a long
\ntime with obloquy and ridicule, it has done much to spread the belief in Karma,
\nre\u00adincarnation, other planes of existence, the evolution of the em\u00adbodied soul
\nthrough intellect and psyche to spirit, ideas which once accepted must change
\nthe whole attitude towards life. Even Science itself is constantly arriving at
\nconclusions which only repeat upon the physical plane and in its language
\ntruths <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-16<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

which ancient India
\nhad already affirmed from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge in the tongue
\nof the Veda and Vedanta. Every one of these advances leads directly or in its
\nintrinsic meaning towards a nearer approach between the mind of East and West
\nand to that extent to a likelihood of a better under\u00adstanding of Indian thought
\nand ideals. <\/font><\/p>\n

In
\nsome directions the change of attitude has gone remark\u00adably far and seems to be
\nconstantly increasing. A Christian missionary quoted by Sir John Woodroffe is
\n"amazed to find the extent to which Hindu Pantheism has begun to permeate
\nthe religious conceptions of Germany, of America, even of England" and he
\nconsiders its cumulative effect an imminent "danger" to the next
\ngeneration. Another writer cited by him goes so far as to attribute all the
\nhighest philosophical thought of Europe to the previous thinking of the
\nBrahmins and affirms even that all modern solutions of intellectual problems
\nwill be found anti\u00adcipated in the East. A distinguished French psychologist
\nrecently told an Indian visitor that India had already laid down all the large
\nlines and main truths, the broad schema, of a genuine psychology and all that
\nEurope can now do is to fill them in with exact details and scientific
\nverifications. These utterances are the extreme indications of a growing change
\nof which the drift is <\/font>unmistakable.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

Nor
\nis it only in philosophy and the higher thinking that this turn is visible.
\nEuropean art has moved in certain directions far away from
\nits old moorings; it is developing a new eye and opening in its own manner to
\nmotives which until now were held in honour only in the East. Eastern art and
\ndecoration have begun to be widely appreciated and have exercised a strong if
\nsubtle influence. Poetry has for some time commenced to speak uncertainly a new
\nlanguage, – note that the world-wide fame of <\/font>Tagore would have been
\nunthinkable thirty years ago, <\/span><\/font>
\n– <\/font> <\/span>
\nand<\/font><\/span> one often finds
\nthe verse even of ordinary writers teeming with thoughts and expressions which
\ncould formerly have found few parallels outside Indian, Buddhistic and Sufi
\npoets. And there are some first preliminary signs of a similar phenomenon in
\ngeneral literature. More and more the seekers of new truth are finding their
\nspiritual home in India or owe to her much of their inspi\u00ad<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-17<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

ration or at least
\nacknowledge her light and undergo her influ\u00adence. If this turn continues to
\naccentuate its drive, and there is little chance of a reversion, the spiritual
\nand intellectual gulf between East and West if not filled up, will at least be
\nbridged and the defence of Indian culture and ideals will stand in a stronger position.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

But
\nthen, it may be said, if there is this certainty of an ap\u00adproximative
\nunderstanding, what is the need of an aggressive defence of Indian culture or
\nof any defence at all ? Indeed, what is the need for the continuance of any
\ndistinctive Indian civilisation in the future? East and West will meet from two
\nopposite sides and merge in each other and found in the life of a unified hu\u00admanity
\na common world-culture. All previous or existing forms, systems, variations
\nwill fuse in this new amalgam and find their fulfilment. But the problem is not
\nso easy, not so harmoniously simple. For, even if we could assume that in a
\nunited world\u00ad-culture there would be no spiritual need and no vital utility for
\nstrong distinctive variations, we are still very far from any such oneness. The
\nsubjective and spiritual turn of the more advanced modern thought is still
\nconfined to a minority and has only very superficially coloured the general
\nintelligence of Europe. More\u00adover, it is a movement of the thought only; the great
\nlife-motives of European civilisation stand as yet where they were. There is a
\ngreater pressure of certain idealistic elements ill the proposed reshaping of
\nhuman relations, but they have not shaken off or even loosened the yoke of the
\nimmediate materialistic past. It is precisely at this critical moment and in
\nthese conditions that the whole human world, India included, is about to be
\nforced into the stress and travail of a swift transformation. The danger is
\nthat the pressure of dominant European ideas and motives, the temptations of
\nthe political needs of the hour, the velocity of rapid inevitable change will
\nleave no time for the growth of sound thought and spiritual reflection and may
\nstrain to burst\u00ading-point the old Indian cultural and social system, and
\nshatter this ancient civilisation before India has had time to readjust her
\nmental stand and outlook or to reject, remould or replace the forms that can no
\nlonger meet her environmental national necessities, create new characteristic
\npowers and figures and find <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-18<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

a firm basis for a
\nswift evolution in the sense of her own spirit and ideals. In that event a
\nrationalised and Westernised India, a brown ape of Europe, might emerge from
\nthe chaos, keeping some elements only of her ancient thought to modify, but no
\nlonger to shape and govern her total existence. Like other coun\u00adtries she would
\nhave passed into the mould of occidental modern\u00adism; ancient India would have
\nperished. <\/font><\/p>\n

Certain
\nminds would see in this contingency no disaster, but rather a most desirable
\nturn and a happy event. It would mean, in their view, that India had given up
\nher spiritual sepa\u00adration and undergone the much needed intellectual and moral
\nchange that would at least entitle her to enter into the comity of modern
\npeoples. And since in the new world-comity there would enter an increasing
\nspiritual and subjective element and much perhaps of India’s own religious and
\nphilosophical thought would be appropriated by its culture, the disappearance
\nof her antique spirit and personal self-expression need be no absolute loss.
\nAncient India would have passed like ancient Greece, leaving its contribution
\nto a new and more largely progressive life of the race. But the absorption of
\nthe Graeco- Roman culture by the later European world, even though many of its
\nelements still survive in a larger and more complex civilisation, was yet
\nattended with serious diminutions. There was a deplo\u00adrable loss of its high and
\nclear intellectual order, a still more calamitous perdition of the ancient cult
\nof beauty, and even now after so many centuries there has been no true recovery
\nof the lost spirit. A much greater diminution of the world’s riches would
\nresult from the disappearance of a distinctive Indian civilisation because the
\ndifference between its standpoint and that of European modernism is deeper, its
\nspirit unique and the rich mass and diversity of its thousand lines of inner
\nexperience a heritage that still India alone can preserve in its intricate
\ntruth and dynamic order. <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\ntendency of the normal Western mind is to live from below upward and from out
\ninward. A strong foundation is taken in the vital and material nature and higher
\npowers are invoked and admitted only to modify and partially uplift the natural
\nterrestrial life. The inner existence is formed and go\u00ad-<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-19<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

verned by the external
\npowers. India’s constant aim has been, on the contrary, to find a basis of living
\nin the higher spiritual truth and to live from the inner spirit outwards, to
\nexceed the present way of mind, life and body, to command and dictate to
\nexternal Nature. As the old Vedic seers put it, "Their divine foundation
\nwas above even while they stood below, let its rays be settled deep within
\nus," nicinah sthur upari budhna esam asmen antar nihitah ketavab syuh. <\/i>Now
\nthat difference is no un\u00adimportant subtlety but of a great and penetrating
\npractical consequence. And we can see how Europe would deal with any spiritual
\ninfluence, by her treatment of Christianity and its inner rule which she never
\nreally accepted as the law of her life. It was admitted but only as an ideal
\nand emotional influence and used only to chasten and give some spiritual colouring
\nto the vital vigour of the Teuton and the intellectual clarity and sensuous
\nrefinement of the Latins. Any new spiritual development she might accept would
\nbe taken in the same way and used to a like limited and superficial purpose, if
\nan insistent living culture were not there in the world to challenge this
\nlesser ideal and insist on the true life of the spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

It
\nmay well be that both tendencies, the mental and the vital and physical stress
\nof Europe and the spiritual and psychic impulse of India, are needed for the
\ncompleteness of the human movement. But if the spiritual ideal points the final
\nway to a triumphant harmony of manifested life, then it is all-important for
\nIndia not to lose hold of the truth, not to give up the highest she knows and
\nbarter it away for a perhaps more readily practi\u00adcable but still lower ideal
\nalien to her true and constant nature. It is important too for humanity that a
\ngreat collective effort to <\/font>realise this highest ideal, <\/font> <\/span>
\n– <\/font> <\/span>
\nhowever imperfect it may have been<\/font><\/span>,
\ninto
\nwhatever confusion and degeneration it may temporarily <\/font>
\nhave fallen, <\/font> <\/span>
\n– <\/font> <\/span>
\nshould not cease, but
\ncontinue.<\/font><\/span> Always it can recover its force
\nand enlarge its expression; for the spirit is not bound to temporal forms but
\never-new, immortal and infinite. A new creation of the old Indian svadharma,
\n<\/i>not a transmuta\u00adtion to some law of the Western nature, is our best way to
\nserve and increase the sum of human progress.            
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-20  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

There arises the necessity of a defence and a
\nstrong, even an <\/font>
\naggressive <\/font> <\/span>
\ndefence; for only an aggressive defence can
\nbe effec\u00ad<\/font><\/span>tive in the conditions of the
\nmodern struggle. But here we find ourselves brought up against an opposite turn
\nof mind and its stark obstructive temper. For there are plenty of Indians now
\nwho are for a stubbornly static defence, and whatever aggressive\u00adness they put
\ninto it consists in a rather vulgar and unthinking cultural Chauvinism wl1ich
\nholds that whatever we have is good for us because it is Indian or even that
\nwhatever is in India is best, because it is the creation of the Rishis. As if
\nall the later clumsy and chaotic developments were laid down by those much mis\u00adused,
\nmuch misapplied and often very much forged founders of our culture. But the
\nquestion is whether a static defence is of any effective value. I hold that it
\nis of no value, because it is incon\u00adsistent with the truth of things and doomed
\nto failure. It amounts to an attempt to sit stubbornly still while the Shakti
\nof the world is rapidly moving on her way, and not only the Shakti of the world
\nbut the Shakti in India also. It is a determination to live only on our past
\ncultural capital, to eke it out, small as it has grown in our wasteful and
\nincompetent hands, to the last anna: <\/font>
\nbut to live on our capital without using it for
\nfresh gains is to end in bankruptcy and pauperism. The past has to be used and
\nspent as mobile and current capital for some larger profit, acquisition and
\ndevelopment of the future: but to gain we must release, we must part with
\nsomething in order to grow and live more richly, <\/font> <\/span>
\n– <\/font> <\/span>
\nthat is the universal law of existence. Otherwise
\nthe life within us will stagnate and perish in its immobile torpor. Thus to
\nshrink from enlargement and change is too a false confession of impo\u00adtence. It
\nis to hold that India’s creative capacity in religion and in philosophy came to
\nan end with Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhwa and Chaitanya and in social construction
\nwith Raghu\u00adnandan and Vidyaranya. It is to rest in art and poetry either in a
\nblank and uncreative void or in a vain and lifeless repetition of beautiful but
\nspent forms and motives. It is to cling to social forms that are crumbling and
\nwill continue to crumble in spite of our efforts and risk to be crushed in
\ntheir collapse<\/font><\/span>.<\/p>\n

         
\nThe objection to any large change
\n<\/font> <\/span>– <\/font> <\/span>
\nfor a large and bold change
\nis needed and no peddling will serve our purpose – can be given a plausible
\nturn only if we rest it on the contention that<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Page-21<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

the forms of a culture
\nare the right rhythm of its spirit and in breaking the rhythm we may expel the spirit
\nand dissipate the harmony for ever. Yes, but though the Spirit is eternal in
\nits essence and in the fundamental principles of its harmony immut\u00adable, the
\nactual rhythm of its self-expression in form is ever mutable. Immutable in its
\nbeing and in the powers of its being but richly mutable in life, that is the
\nvery nature of the Spirit’s manifested existence. And we have to see too
\nwhether the actual rhythm of the moment is still a harmony or whether it has
\nnot become in the hands of an inferior and ignorant orchestra a discord and no
\nlonger expresses rightly or sufficiently the ancient spirit. To recognise
\ndefect in the form is not to deny the inherent spirit; it is rather the
\ncondition for moving onward to a greater future amplitude, a more perfect realisation,
\na happier outflow of the Truth we harbour. Whether we shall actually find a
\ngreater expression than the past gave us, depends on our own selves, on our
\ncapacity of response to the eternal Power and Wisdom and the illumination of
\nthe Shakti within us and on our skill in works, the skill that comes by unity
\nwith the eternal Spirit we are in the measure of our light labouring to
\nexpress; <\/font> yogah karmasu kausalam.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This from the standpoint of Indian
\nculture, and. that must be always for us the first consideration and the
\nintrinsic standpoint. But there is also the standpoint of the pressure of the
\nTime-\u00adSpirit upon us. For this too is the action of the universal Shakti and
\ncannot be ignored, held at arm’s length or forbidden en\u00adtrance. Here too the
\npolicy of new creation imposes itself as the true and only effective way. Even
\nif to stand still and stiff within our well-defended gates were desirable, it
\nis no longer possible. We can no longer’ take our single station apart in
\nhumanity, isolated like a solitary island in the desert ocean, neither going
\nforth nor allowing to enter in, <\/font>
\n– <\/font> <\/span>if indeed we
\never did it. For good or for ill the world is with us; the flood of modern
\nideas and forces are pouring in and will take no denial. There are two ways of
\nmeeting them, either to offer a forlorn and hopeless resistance or to seize and
\nsubjugate them. If we offer only an inert or stubborn passive resistance, they
\nwill still come in on us, break down our defences where they are weakest, sap
\nthem <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-22<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

where <\/font> <\/span>
\nthey
\nare stiffer, and where they can do neither, steal in<\/font><\/span> unknown or
\nill-apprehended by underground mine and tunnel. Entering unassimilated they
\nwill act as disruptive forces, and it will be only partly by outward attack but
\nmuch more by an in\u00ad<\/font>ward <\/font> <\/span>
\nexplosion
\nthat this ancient Indian civilisation will be shat\u00ad<\/font><\/span>tered to pieces. Ominous sparks are already beginning
\nto run about which nobody knows how to extinguish, and if we could extinguish
\nthem, we should be no better off, for we should yet have to deal with the
\nsource from which they are starting. Even the most rigid defenders of the
\npresent in the name of the past show in their every word how strongly they have
\nbeen affected by new ways of thinking. Many if not most are calling pas\u00adsionately,
\ncalling inevitably for innovations in certain fields, changes European in
\nspirit and method which once admitted without some radical assimilation and
\nlndianisation, will end by breaking up the whole social structure they think
\nthey are de\u00adfending. That arises from confusion of thought and an incapa\u00adcity
\nof power. Because we are unable to\/think and create in cer\u00adtain fields, we are
\nobliged to borrow without assimilation or with only an illusory pretence of
\nassimilation. Because we cannot see the whole sense of what we are doing from a
\nhigh inner and com\u00admanding point of vision, we are busy bringing together
\ndisparates without any saving reconciliation. A slow combustion and swift
\nexplosion are likely to be the end of our efforts. <\/font><\/p>\n

Aggressive
\ndefence implies a new creation from this inner and commanding vision and while
\nit demands a bringing of what we have to a more expressive force of form, it
\nmust allow also an effective assimilation of whatever is useful to our new life
\nand can be made harmonious with our spirit. Battle, shock and struggle
\nthemselves are no vain destruction; they are a violent cover for Time’s great
\ninterchanges. Even the most successful victor receives much from the vanquished
\nand if sometimes he appropriates it, as often it takes him prisoner. The Western
\nattack is not confined to a breaking down of the forms of Eastern culture;
\nthere is at the same time a large, subtle and silent appropriation of much that
\nis valuable in the East for the enrich\u00adment of Occidental culture. Therefore to
\nbring forward the glo\u00adries of our past and scatter on Europe and America as
\nmuch <\/font>of <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

Page-23<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

its treasures as they
\nwill receive, will not save us. That liberality will enrich and strengthen our
\ncultural assailants, but for us it will only serve to give a self-confidence
\nwhich will be useless and even misleading if it is not made a force of will for
\na greater creation. What we have to do is to front the attack with new and more
\npowerful formations which will not only throw it back, but even, where that is
\npossible and helpful to the race, carry the war into the assailant’s country.
\nAt the same time we must take by a strong creative assimilation whatever
\nanswers to our own needs and responds to the Indian spirit. In certain
\ndirections, as yet all too few, we have begun both these movements. In others
\nwe have simply created an unintelligent mixture or else have taken and are
\nstill taking over rash, crude and undigested borrowings. Imitation, a rough and
\nhaphazard borrowing of the assailant’s engines and methods may be temporarily
\nuseful, but by itself it is only another way of submitting to conquest. A stark
\nappropria\u00adtion is not sufficient; successful assimilation to the Indian spirit
\nis the needed movement. The problem is one of great immediate difficulty and
\nstupendous in its proportions and we have not yet approached it with wisdom and
\ninsight. All the more pressing is the need to awaken to the situation and meet
\nit with original thinking and a conscious action wise and powerful in insight
\nand sure in process. A mastering and helpful assimilation of new stuff into an
\neternal body has always been in the past a peculiar power of the genius of
\nIndia.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

Page-24<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\n3<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nBUT
\nthere is yet another point of view from which the challenge put in front of us
\nceases to be an issue crudely and provokingly phrased in a conflict of
\ncultures. Instead it presents itself as a problem with a deep significance; it
\nbecomes a thought-provoking suggestion that affects not only ours but all
\ncivilisations still in existence. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

We
\ncan reply on the cultural issue from the viewpoint of the past and the
\nvaluation of different cultures as acquired con\u00adtributions to the growth of the
\nhuman race, that Indian civilisa\u00adtion has been the form and expression of a
\nculture as great as any of the historic civilisations of mankind, great in
\nreligion, <\/font>great in philosophy, great in
\nscience, great in thought of many<\/font><\/span> kinds, great in literature, art and poetry, great in
\nthe organisa\u00adtion of society and politics, great in craft and trade and com\u00admerce.
\nThere have been dark spots, positive imperfections, heavy shortcomings; what
\ncivilisation has been perfect, which has not had its deep stains and cruel
\nabysses? There have been consider\u00adable lacunae, many blind alleys, much
\nuncultured or ill-cultured ground; what civilisation has been without its
\nunfilled parts, its negative aspects? But our ancient civilisation can survive
\nthe severest comparisons of either ancient or mediaeval times. More
\nhigh-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more
\nnoble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old
\nEgyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilisation, more
\nintellectual than the European prior to the eighteenth century, possessing all
\nthat these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating
\nand wide in influence of all past human cultures. <\/font><\/p>\n

And
\nif we look from the viewpoint of the present and the fruitful workings of the
\nprogressive Time-Spirit, we can say that even here in spite of our downfall all
\nis not on the debit side. Many of the forms of our civilisation have become
\ninapt and effete and others stand in need of radical change and renova\u00adtion.
\nBut that can be said equally well of European culture; for <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-25<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

all its recently
\nacquired progressiveness and habit of more rapid self-adaptation, large parts
\nof it are already rotten and out of date. In spite of all drawbacks and in
\nspite of downfall the spirit of Indian culture, its central ideas, its best
\nideals have still their message for humanity and not for India alone. And we in
\nIndia hold that they are capable of developing out of themselves by contact
\nwith new need and idea as good and better solutions of the problems before us
\nthan those which are offered to us second-hand from Western sources. But
\nbesides the comparisons of the past and the needs of the present there is too a
\nviewpoint of the ideal future. There are the farther goals towards which
\nhumanity is moving, and the present is only a crude aspiration towards them and
\nthe immediate future we now see in hope and strive to bring about in form, only
\nits crude preparatory stage. There is an unrealised standard of the ideas which
\nto the mind of the moment are figments of Utopia, but may become to a more developed
\nhumanity the commonplaces of their daily environ\u00adment, the familiar things of
\nthe present which they have to over\u00adpass. How stands Indian civilisation with
\nregard to this yet unrealised future of the race? Are its master ideas and domi\u00adnant
\npowers guiding lights or helping forces towards it or do they end in themselves
\nwith no vistas on the evolutionary potentialities of the earth’s coming ages?
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nvery idea of progress is an illusion to some minds; for they imagine that the
\nrace moves constantly in a circle. Or even their view is that greatness more
\noften than not is to be found in the past-and that the line of our movement is
\na curve of deterio\u00adration, a downward lapse. But that is an illusion created
\nwhen we look too much upon the highlights of the past and forget its shadows or
\nconcentrate too much on the dark spaces of the present and ignore its powers of
\nlight and its aspects of happier promise. It is created too by a mistaken
\ndeduction from the phe\u00adnomenon of an uneven progress. For Nature effects her
\nevolution through a rhythm of advance and relapse, day and night, waking and
\nsleep; there is a temporary pushing of certain results at the expense of others
\nnot less desirable for perfection and to a super\u00adficial eye there may seem to
\nbe a relapse even in our advance. Progress admittedly does not march on
\nsecurely in a straight <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-26<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

line like a man sure
\nof his familiar way or an army covering an unimpeded terrain or well-mapped
\nunoccupied spaces. Human progress is very much an adventure through the
\nunknown, an unknown full of surprises and baffling obstacles; it stumbles
\noften, it misses its way at many points, it cedes here in order to gain there,
\nit retraces its steps frequently in order to get more widely forward. The
\npresent does not always compare favourably with the past; even when it is more
\nadvanced in the mass, it may still be inferior in certain directions important
\nto our inner or our <\/font>outer welfare. But earth does move forward after all,
\n<\/font> epur <\/font> <\/i><\/span>
\nsi <\/font> <\/span>
\nmuove. <\/font><\/i>Even
\nin failure there is a preparation for success: our nights carry in them the
\nsecret of a greater dawn. This is a fre\u00adquent experience in our individual
\nprogress, but the human collectivity also moves in much the same manner. The
\nquestion is, whither are we marching or what are the true routes and harbours
\nof our voyage? <\/font><\/p>\n

Western
\ncivilisation is proud of its successful modernism. But there is much that it
\nhas lost in the eagerness of its gains and much which men of old strove towards
\nthat it has not even attempted to accomplish. There is much too that it has
\nwilfully flung aside in impatience or scorn to its own great loss, to the
\ninjury of its life, to the imperfection of its culture. All- ancient Greek of
\nthe time of Pericles or the philosophers suddenly trans\u00adported in time to this
\ncentury would be astonished by the im\u00admense gains of the intellect and the
\nexpansion of the mind, the modem many-sidedness of the reason and inexhaustible
\nhabit of inquiry, the power of endless generalisation and precise detail. He
\nwould admire without reserve the miraculous growth of science and its giant
\ndiscoveries, the abundant power, richness and minuteness of its
\ninstrumentation, the wonder-working force of its inventive genius. He would be
\novercome and stupefied rather than surprised and charmed by the enormous stir
\nand pul\u00adsation of modern life. But at the same time he would draw back repelled
\nfrom its unashamed mass of ugliness and vulgarity, its unchastened external
\nutilitarianism, its vitalistic riot and the morbid exaggeration and unsoundness
\nof many of its growths. He would see in it much ill-disguised evidence of the
\nuneliminated survival of the triumphant barbarian. If he recognised its in\u00ad<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-27<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

tellectuality and the
\nscrupulous application of thought and scien\u00adtific reason to the machinery of
\nlife, he would miss in it his own later attempt at the clear and noble
\napplication of the ideal reason to the inner life of the mind and the soul. He
\nwould find that in this civilisation beauty had become an exotic and the
\nshining ideal mind in some fields a debased and exploited slave and in others a
\nneglected stranger. <\/font><\/p>\n

As
\nfor the great spiritual seekers of the past, they would experience in all this
\nhuge activity of the intellect and the life the sense of an aching void. A
\nfeeling of its illusion and unreality because that which is greatest in man and
\nraises him beyond himself had been neglected, would oppress’ them at every
\nstep. The discovery of the laws of physical Nature would not compen\u00adsate in
\ntheir eyes for the comparative decline <\/font>
\n–<\/font><\/span> for a long time it was the almost absolute cessation –
\nof a greater seeking and finding, the discovery of the freedom of the spirit.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

        But an unbiassed view
\nwill prefer to regard this age of civi\u00adlisation as an evolutionary stage, an imperfect
\nbut important turn of the human advance. It is then possible to see that great
\ngains have been made which are of the utmost value to an ultimate per\u00adfection,
\neven if they have been made at a great price. There is not only a greater
\ngeneralisaion of knowledge and the more tho\u00adrough use of intellectual power and
\nactivity in multiple fields. There is not only the advance of Science and its
\napplication to the conquest of our environment, an immense apparatus of means,
\nvast utilisations, endless minute conveniences, an irresis\u00adtible machinery, a
\ntireless exploitation of forces. There is too a certain development of powerful
\nif not high-pitched ideals and <\/font>there is an attempt, however external and therefore imperfect, to<\/font><\/span> bring them to
\nbear upon the working of human society as a whole. Much has been diminished or
\nlost, but it can be re\u00adcovered, eventually, if not with ease. Once restored to
\nits true movement, the inner life of man will find that it has gained in
\nmaterials, in power of plasticity, in a new kind of depth and wideness. And we
\nshall have acquired a salutary habit of many\u00ad-sided thoroughness and a sincere
\nendeavour to shape the outer collective life into an adequate image of our
\nhighest ideals. Tem\u00ad<\/font>porary diminutions will not count before the greater inner ex-<\/font><\/span>\u00ad <\/p>\n

Page-28<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

pansion that is likely
\nto succeed this age of external turmoil and outward-looking endeavour. <\/font><\/p>\n

If,
\non the other hand, an ancient Indian of the time of, the Upanishads, the
\nBuddhist period or the later classical age were to be set down in modern India
\nand note that larger part of its life which belongs to the age of decline, he
\nwould experience a much more depressing sensation, the sense of a national, a
\ncul\u00adtural debacle, a fall from the highest summits to discouragingly low levels.
\nHe might well ask himself what this degenerate pos\u00adterity had done with the
\nmighty civilisation of the past. He would wonder how with so much to inspire,
\nto elevate, to spur them to yet greater accomplishment and self-exceeding, they
\ncould have lapsed into this impotent and inert confusion and, instead of
\ndeveloping the high motives of Indian culture to yet deeper and wider issues,
\nallowed them to overload themselves with ugly accretions, to rust, to rot,
\nalmost to perish. He would see his race clinging to forms and shells and rags
\nof the past and missing nine-tenths of its nobler values. He would compare the
\nspiritual light and energy of the heroic ages of the Upanishads and the
\nphilosophies with the later inertia or small and broken fragmentarily derivative
\nactivity of our philosophic thought. After the intellectual curiosity, the
\nscientific development, the creative literary and artistic greatness, the noble
\nfecundity of the classical age he would be amazed by the extent of a later
\ndegeneracy, its mental poverty, immobility, static repetition, the comparative
\nfeebleness of the creative intuition, the long sterility of art, the cessation
\nof science. He would deplore a prone descent to ignorance, a failing of the old
\npowerful will and tapasya, <\/i>almost a volitional impotence. In place of
\nthe simpler and more spiritually rational order of old times he would find a
\nbewildering chaotic disorganised organisation of things without a centre and
\nwithout any large harmonising idea. He would find not a true social order but a
\nhalf arrested, half hastening putrescence. In place of the great adaptable
\ncivilisation which assimilated with power and was able to return tenfold for
\nwhat it received, he would meet a helplessness that bore passively or only with
\na few in\u00adeffectual galvanic reactions the forces of the outside world and the
\nstress of adverse circumstance. At one time he would see that <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-29 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

there had been even a
\nloss of faith and self-confidence so consi\u00adderable as to tempt the
\nintellectuals of the nation to scrap the ancient spirit and ideals for an alien
\nand imported culture. He would note indeed the beginning of a change, but might
\nperhaps doubt how deep it had gone or whether it was powerful enough to save,
\nforceful enough to upheave the whole nation from its cherished torpor and
\nweakness, enlightened enough to guide a new and robust creative activity
\ntowards the building of new significant forms for the ancient spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

Here
\ntoo a better understanding points to hope rather than to the flat despondency
\nsuggested by a too hasty surface glance. This last age of Indian history is an
\nexample of the constant local succession of night even to the most long and
\nbrilliant day in the evolution of the race. But it was a night filled at first
\nwith many and brilliant constellations and even at its thickest and worst it
\nwas the darkness of Kalidasa’s viceya-taraka prabhata-kalpeva sarvari, <\/i>"night
\npreparing for dawn, with a few just decipherable stars". Even in the
\ndecline all was not lost; there were needed developments, there were spiritual
\nand other gains of the greatest importance for the future. And in the worst
\nperiod of decline and failure the spirit was not dead in India, but only
\ntorpid, concealed and shackled; now emerging in answer to a pressure of constant
\nawakening shocks for a strong self-liberation it finds that its sleep was a
\npreparation of new potentialities behind the veil of that slumber. If the high
\nspiritualised mind and stupen\u00addous force of spiritual will, tapasya, <\/i>that
\ncharacterised ancient India were less in evidence, there were new gains of
\nspiritual emotion and sensitiveness to spiritual impulse on the lower planes of
\nconsciousness, that had been lacking before. Architecture, literature,
\npainting, sculpture lost the grandeur, power, nobility of old, but evoked other
\npowers and motives full of delicacy, vividness and grace. There was a descent
\nfrom the heights to the lower levels, but a descent that gathered riches on its
\nway and was needed for the fullness of spiritual discovery and experience. The
\ndecline of our past culture may even be regarded as a needed waning and dying
\nof old forms to make way not only for a new, but, if we will that it should be
\nso, a greater and more perfect creation. <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-30 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

\u00a0 <\/span>For after all it is the will in the being
\nthat gives to circums\u00ad<\/font>tances
\n<\/font> <\/span>their
\nvalue, and often an unexpected value; the hue of <\/font>
\napparent actuality is a misleading indicator.
\nIf the will in a race or civilisation is towards death, if it clings to the
\nlassitude of decay and the laissez-faire of the moribund or even in strength
\ninsists blindly upon the propensities that lead to destruction or if it
\ncherishes only the powers of dead Time and puts away from it the powers of the
\nfuture, if it prefers life that was to life that will be, nothing, not even
\nabundant strength and resources and intelligence, not even many calls to live
\nand constantly offered opportunities will save it from an inevitable
\ndisintegration or col\u00adlapse. But if there comes to it a strong faith in itself
\nand a robust will to live, if it is open to the things that shall come, willing
\nto seize on the future and what it offers and strong to compel it where it
\nseems adverse, it can draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible
\nvictory and rise from apparent helplessness and decay <\/font> <\/span>
\nin a mighty flame of
\nrenovation to the light of a more <\/font> <\/span>splendid
\nlife. This is what Indian civilisation is now rearising to do as it has always
\ndone in the eternal strength of its spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\ngreatness of the ideals of the past is a promise of greater ideals for the
\nfuture. A continual expansion of what stood be\u00adhind past endeavour and capacity
\nis the one abiding justification of a living culture. But it follows that
\ncivilisation and barbarism are words of a quite relative significance. For from
\nthe view of the evolutionary future European and Indian civilisations at their
\nbest have only been half achievements, infant dawns point\u00ading to the mature
\nsunlight that is to come. Neither Europe nor India nor any race, country or
\ncontinent of mankind has ever been fully civilised from this point of view;
\nnone has grasped the <\/font>whole <\/font> <\/span>
\nsecret
\nof a true and perfect human living, none has ap\u00ad<\/font><\/span>plied with an entire insight or a perfectly
\nvigilant sincerity even the little they were able to achieve. If we define
\ncivilisation as a harmony of spirit, mind and body, where has that harmony been
\nentire or altogether real? Where have there not been glaring deficiencies and
\npainful discords? Where has the whole secret of the harmony been altogether
\ngrasped in all its parts or the complete music of life evolved into the
\ntriumphant ease of a satisfying, durable and steadily mounting concord? Not
\nonly are<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-31<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

there everywhere
\npositive, ugly, even "hideous" blots on the life of man, but much that
\nwe now accept with equanimity, much in which we take pride, may well be
\nregarded by a future hu\u00admanity as barbarism or at least as semi-barbarous and
\nimmature. The achievements that we regard as ideal, will be condemned as a
\nself-satisfied imperfection blind to its own errors; the ideas that we vaunt as
\nenlightenment will appear as a demi-light or a dark\u00adness. Not only will many
\nforms of our life that claim to be ancient or even eternal, as if that could be
\nsaid of any form of things, fail and disappear; the subjective shapes given to
\nour best principles and ideals will perhaps claim from the future at best an
\nunder\u00adstanding indulgence. There is little that will not have to undergo
\nexpansion and mutation, change perhaps beyond recognition or accept to be
\nmodified in a new synthesis. In the end the com\u00ading ages may look on Europe and
\nAsia of today much as we look on savage tribes or primitive peoples. And this
\nview from the future, if we can get it, is undoubtedly the most illuminating
\nand dynamic standpoint from which we can judge our present, but it does not
\ninvalidate our comparative appreciation of past and extant cultures. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>    For this past and present are creating the greater
\nsteps of <\/font> <\/span>that future and much of it will
\nsurvive even in that which sup\u00adplants it. There is behind our imperfect
\ncultural figures a per\u00admanent spirit to which we must cling and which will
\nremain per\u00admanent even hereafter; there are certain fundamental motives or
\nessential idea-forces which cannot be thrown aside, because they are part of
\nthe vital principle of our being and of the aim of Nature in us, our svadharma.
\n<\/i>But these motives, these idea-forces are, whether for nation or for
\nhumanity as a whole, few and simple in their essence, and capable of an
\napplication always varying and progressive. The rest belongs to the less
\ninternal layers of our being and must undergo the changing pressure and satisfy
\nthe forward-moving demands of the Time-Spirit. There is this permanent spirit
\nin things and there is this persistent svadharma <\/i>or law of our nature;
\nbut there is too a less binding <\/font>
\nsystem of laws of successive formulation, <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> rhythms of the
\nspirit, forms, turns, habits of the nature, and these endure the mutations of
\nthe ages, yugadharma. <\/i>The race must obey this <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-32<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

double principle of persistence and
\nmutation or bear the penalty a decay and deterioration that may taint even its
\nliving centre. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\nCertainly we
\nmust repel with vigour every disintegrating or injurious attack; but it is much
\nmore important to form our own true and independent view of our own past
\nachievement, present <\/font> <\/span>position
\nand future possibilities, <\/span>– <\/span><\/font>what we were, what we are and what we may be.
\nIn our past we must distinguish all that was great, essential, elevating, vitalising,
\nillluminating, victo\u00adrious, effective. And in that again we must distinguish
\nwhat was Jose to the permanent, essential spirit and the persistent law of our
\ncultural being and separate from it what was temporary and transiently
\nformulative. For all that was great in the past cannot e preserved as it was or
\nrepeated for ever; there are new needs, there are other vistas before us. But
\nwe have to distinguish too what was deficient, ill-grasped, imperfectly
\nformulated or only suited to the limiting needs of the age or unfavourable
\ncircumstances. For it is quite idle to pretend that all in the past, even at
\nits greatest, was entirely admirable and in its kind the highest consummate
\nachievement of the human mind and spirit. After\u00adwards we have to make a comparison
\nof this past with our present and to understand the causes of our decline and
\nseek .e remedy of our shortcomings and ailments. Our sense of the greatness of
\nour past must not be made a fatally hypnotising lure to inertia; it should be
\nrather an inspiration to renewed and greater achievement. But in our criticism
\nof the present we must not be one-sided or condemn with a foolish impartiality
\nall that It are or have done. Neither flattering or glossing over .our downfall
\nnor fouling our nest to win the applause of the stranger, we have to note our
\nactual weakness and its roots, but to fix too Our eyes with a still firmer
\nattention on our elements of strength, our abiding potentialities, our dynamic
\nimpulses of self-renewal.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nA second comparison has to be made between the West
\nand India. In the past of Europe and the past of India we can observe with an
\nunbiassed mind the successes of the West, the gifts it brought to humanity, but
\nalso its larger gaps, striking deficien\u00adcies, terrible and even
\n"hideous" vices and failures. On the other balance we have to cast
\nancient and mediaeval India’s achievements and failures. Here we shall find
\nthat there is little <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-33<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

for which we need
\nlower our heads before Europe and much in which we rise well and sometimes
\nimmeasurably above her. But we have to scrutinise next the present of the West
\nin its strong success, vitality, conquering insolence. What has been great in
\nit we shall allow, but take deep note too of it.; defects, stumblings and
\ndangers. And with this dangerous greatness we must com\u00adpare the present of
\nIndia, her downfall and its causes, her vellei\u00adties of revival, her elements
\nthat still make for superiority now and in the future. Let us see and take
\naccount of all that we must inevitably receive from the West and consider how
\nwe can assi\u00admilate it to our own spirit and ideals. But let us see too what
\nfounts of native power there are in ourselves from which we can draw deeper,
\nmore vital and fresher streams of the power of life than from anything the West
\ncan offer. For that will help us more than Occidental forms and motives,
\nbecause it will be more natural to us, more stimulating to our idiosyncrasy of
\nnature, more packed with creative suggestions, more easily taken up and
\ncompletely followed in power of practice. <\/font><\/p>\n

. <\/font>
\nBut far more
\nhelpful than any of these necessary compa\u00ad<\/font><\/span>risons
\nwill be the forward look from our past and present towards our own and not any
\nforeign ideal of the future. For it is our evolutionary push towards the future
\nthat will give to our past and present their true value and significance.
\nIndia’s nature, her mission, the work that she has to do, her part in the
\nearth’s des\u00adtiny, the peculiar power for which she stands is written there in
\nher past history and is the secret purpose behind her present sufferings and
\nordeals. A reshaping of the forms of our spirit will have to take place; but it
\nis the spirit itself behind past forms that we have to disengage and preserve
\nand to give Jo it new and powerful thought-significances, culture-values, a new
\ninstru\u00admentation, greater figures. And so long as we recognise these essential
\nthings and are faithful to their spirit, it will not hurt us to make even the
\nmost drastic mental or physical adaptations and the most extreme cultural and
\nsocial changes. But these changes themselves must be cast in the spirit and
\nmould of India and not in any other, not in the spirit of America or Europe,
\nnot in the mould of Japan or Russia. We must recognise the great gulf between
\nwhat we are and what we may and ought to strive <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-34<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

to <\/font><\/i>be. But this we must do not in any spirit of discouragement or denial
\nof ourselves and the truth of our spirit, but in order to measure the advance
\nwe have to make. For we have to find, its true lines and to find in ourselves the aspiration
\nand inspira\u00adtion, the fire and the force to conceive them and to execute. <\/font><\/p>\n

An
\noriginal truth-seeking thought is needed if we are to take this stand and make
\nthis movement, a strong and courageous intuition, an unfailing spiritual and
\nintellectual rectitude. The <\/font>courage <\/font> <\/span>
\nto
\ndefend our culture against ignorant Occidental criti\u00ad<\/font><\/span>cism and to maintain it against the gigantic modem
\npressure comes first, but with it there must be the courage to admit not from
\nany European standpoint but from our own outlook the <\/font>
\nerrors <\/font> <\/span>
\nof our culture. Apart from
\nall phenomena of decline or<\/font><\/span> deterioration we should recognise without any
\nsophistical denial those things in our creeds of life and social institutions
\nwhich are in themselves mistaken and some of them indefensible, things
\nweakening to our national life, degrading to our civilisation, dishonouring to
\nour culture. A flagrant example can be found in the treatment of our outcastes.
\nThere are those who would excuse it as an unavoidable error in the
\ncircumstances of the past; there are others who contend that it was the best
\npossible solution then available. There are still others who would justify it
\nand, with whatever modifications, prolong it as necessary to our social
\nsynthesis. The excuse was there, but it is no justification for con\u00adtinuance.
\nThe contention is highly disputable. A solution which condemns by segregation
\none-sixth of the nation to permanent ignominy, continued filth, uncleanliness
\nof the inner and outer life and a brutal animal existence instead of lifting
\nthem out of it is no solution but rather an acceptance of weakness and a cons\u00adtant
\nwound to the social body and to its collective spiritual, intellectual, moral
\nand material welfare. A social synthesis which can only live by making a
\npermanent rule of the degradation of our fellowmen and countrymen stands
\ncondemned and fore\u00addoomed to decay and disturbance. The evil effects may be
\nkept under for a long time and work only by the subtler unobserved action of
\nthe law of Karma; but once the light of Truth is let in on these dark spots, to
\nperpetuate them is to maintain a seed of disruption and ruin our chances of
\neventual survival. <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-35<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

Again,
\nwe have to look on our cultural ideas and our social forms and see where they have
\nlost their ancient spirit or real significance. Many of them are now a fiction
\nand no longer in accordance with the ideas they assume or with the facts of
\nlife. Others even if good in themselves or else beneficent in their own time,
\nare no longer sufficient for our growth. All these must either be transformed
\nor discarded and truer ideas and better formulations must be found in their
\nplace. The new turn we must give them will not always be a return upon their
\nold significance. The new dynamic truths we have to discover need not be parked
\nwithin the limited truth of a past ideal. On our past and present ideals we
\nhave to turn the searchlight of the spirit and see whether they have not to be
\nsurpassed or enlarged or brought into consonance with new wider ideals. All we
\ndo or create must be consistent with the abiding spirit of India, but framed to
\nfit into a greater harmonised rhythm and plastic to the call of a more luminous
\nfuture. If faith in ourselves and fidelity to the spirit of our culture are the
\nfirst requisites of a continued and vigorous, life, a recognition of greater
\npossibilities is a condition not less indispensable. There cannot be a healthy
\nand victorious survival if we make of the past a fetish instead of an inspiring
\nimpulse. <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nspirit and ideals of our civilisation need no defence for in their best parts
\nand in their essence they were of eternal value. India’s internal and
\nindividual seeking of them was earnest, powerful, effective. But the
\napplication in the collective life’ of society was subjected to serious
\nreserves. Never sufficiently bold and thoroughgoing, it became more and more
\nlimited and halting when the life-force declined in her peoples. This defect,
\nthis gulf between ideal and collective practice, has pursued all human living
\nand was not peculiar to India; but the dissonance became especially marked with
\nthe lapse of time and it put at last on our society a growing stamp of weakness
\nand failure. There was a large effort in the beginning at some kind of
\nsynthesis between the inner ideal and the outer life; but a static regulation
\nof society was its latter end. An underlying principle of spiritual idealism,
\nan elusive unity and fixed helpful forms of mutuality remained always there,
\nbut also an increasing element of strict bondage and minute division and
\nfissiparous complexity in the <\/font><\/p>\n


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

\n<\/div>\n
\n

social mass. <\/font> <\/span>The great Vedantic
\nideals of freedom, unity and the godhead in man were left to the inner spiritual
\neffort of indi\u00adviduals. The power of expansion and assimilation diminished and
\nwhen powerful and aggressive forces broke in from outside, Islam, Europe, the
\nlater Hindu society was content with an im\u00adprisoned and static
\nself-preservation, a mere permission to live. The form of living became more
\nand more narrow and it endured a continually restricted assertion of its
\nancient spirit. Duration, survival was achieved, but not in the end a really
\nsecure and vital duration, not a great, robust and victorious survival. <\/font><\/p>\n

And
\nnow survival itself has become impossible without ex\u00adpansion. If we are to live
\nat all, we must resume India’s great interrupted endeavour; we must take up
\nboldly and execute thoroughly in the individual and in the society, in the spiritual
\nand in the mundane life, in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in
\nthought, in political and economic and social formu\u00adlation the full and
\nunlimited sense of her highest spirit and know\u00adledge. And if we do that, we
\nshall find that the best of what comes to us draped in Occidental forms, is
\nalready implied in our own ancient wisdom and has there a greater spirit behind
\nit, a profounder truth and self-knowledge and the capacity of a will to nobler
\nand more ideal formations. Only we need to work out thoroughly in life what we
\nhave always known in the spirit. There and nowhere else lies the secret of the
\nneeded harmony between the essential meaning of our past culture and the en\u00advironmental
\nrequirements of our future. <\/font><\/p>\n

That
\nview opens out a prospect beyond the battle of cultures which is the immediate
\ndangerous aspect of the meeting of East and West. The Spirit in man has one aim
\nbefore it in all man\u00adkind; but different continents or peoples approach it from
\ndiffe\u00adrent sides, with different formulations and in a different spirit. Not
\nrecognising the underlying unity of the ultimate divine motive, they give
\nbattle to each other and claim that theirs alone is the way for mankind. The
\none real and perfect civilisation is the one in which they happen to be born,
\nall the rest must perish or go under. But the real and perfect civilisation yet
\nwaits to be discovered; for the life of mankind is still nine-tenths of bar\u00adbarism
\nto one-tenth of culture. The European mind gives the <\/font><\/p>\n


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

\n<\/div>\n
\n

first place to the
\nprinciple of growth by struggle; it is by struggle that it arrives at some kind
\nof concert. But this concert is itself hardly more than an organisation for
\ngrowth by competition, aggression and further battle. It is a peace that is
\nconstantly breaking, even within itself, into a fresh strife of principles,
\nideas, interests, races, classes. It is an organisation precarious at its base
\nand in its centre because it is founded on half-truths that dete\u00adriorate into
\nwhole falsehoods; but it is still or has been till now vigorous in constant
\nachievement and able to grow powerfully and to devour and assimilate. Indian
\nculture proceeded on the principle of a concert that strove to find its base in
\na unity and reached out again towards some greater oneness. Its aim was a
\nlasting organisation that would minimise or even eliminate the principle of
\nstruggle. But it ended by achieving peace and stable arrangement through
\nexclusion, fragmentation and im\u00admobility of status; it drew a magic circle of
\nsafety and shut itself up in it for good. In the end it lost its force of
\naggression, weakened its power of assimilation and decayed within its bar\u00adriers.
\nA static and limited concert, not always enlarging itself, not plastic becomes
\nin our human state of imperfection a prison or a sleeping chamber. Concert
\ncannot be anything but imper\u00adfect and provisional in its form and can only
\npreserve its vitality and fulfil its ultimate aim if it constantly adapts,
\nexpands, progresses. Its lesser unities must widen towards a broader and more
\ncomprehensive and above all a more real and spiritual oneness. In the larger
\nstatement of our culture and civilisation that we have now to achieve, a
\ngreater outward expression of spiritual and psychological oneness, but with a diversity
\nwhich the mechanical method of Europe does not tolerate, will surely be one
\nleading motive. A concert, a unity with the rest of man\u00adkind, in which we shall
\nmaintain our spiritual and -our outer independence will be another line of our
\nendeavour. But what now appears as a struggle may well be the first necessary
\nstep, before we can formulate that unity of mankind which the West sees only in
\nidea, but cannot achieve because it does not possess its spirit. Therefore
\nEurope labours to establish unity by accom\u00admodation of conflicting interests
\nand the force of mechanical institutions; but so attempted, it will either not
\nbe founded <\/font><\/p>\n

Page-38<\/font><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

at all or will be founded on sand.
\nMeanwhile she wishes to blot every other culture, as if hers were the only truth
\nor all the truth of life and there were no such thing as truth of the spirit.
\nIndia, the ancient possessor of the truth of the spirit, must resist It
\narrogant claim and aggression and affirm her own deeper truths in spite of
\nheavy odds and against all comers. For in its preservation lies the only hope
\nthat mankind instead of marchin\u00adg to a new cataclysm and primitive beginning
\nwith a constant repetition of the old blind cycles will at last emerge into the
\nlight d accomplish the drive forward which will bring the terrestrial evolution
\nto its next step of ascent in the progressive manifesta\u00ad<\/font>tion of the Spirit<\/font><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\nPage-39<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I  The Issue: Is India Civilised?   A BOOK under this rather startling title was published some years ago by Sir John Woodroffe, the well-known…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","wpcat-18-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","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=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}