India and Indian Polity

In Service of India

India of today is being viewed from many points of view. According to some, India will be a developed country by 2020, and we have already a vision book on this theme by the former President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Kalam. According to some, India is heading towards becoming a global country with immense potentiality and power so as to contribute to the steering of the world. Economic growth of recent years is being hailed in many quarters; and optimists visualize India’s resurgence in glorious terms.

We are voluntary optimists and even if we have reasons that some great dangers are awaiting in the coming years on account of ecological, economic and political factors, we wish to strive to hold out bright promises for the future. We maintain that India had begun to become reborn during the first twenty years of the last (20^th) century, and even though the last sixty years of India’s development have failed to nourish the rebirth of India, we feel that India has deeper resources which can be tapped, and the people can be united to make resurgent India a vibrant reality during the next twenty years. We are optimists, and we would like to spread optimism in many ways that are likely to develop in the coming years.

We would like everyone of us to accept the role of a pilgrim, a pilgrim who aspires to seek the highest and the best and to strive to contribute his or her best to learn, to know and empower oneself and the others so that each one of us practices the highest and the best means to aspire and to act.

Our highest priority ought to be the care of the children and the youth, who will be the builders of the future. India should be a leading country to demonstrate that the sovereignty of the country is not the sovereignty of the consumer, nor is it the sovereignty of the parliament; it is the sovereignty of the child and the youth. We should be able to demonstrate that we can create the right atmosphere, the right environment and the right facilities and equipment, as also the right attitudes among parents, teachers and leaders so that everyone strives in the country to contribute his or her best for the highest welfare of the children and youths, in terms of physical education, vital education, mental education, aesthetic education, ethical education and spiritual education. In fact, the highest priority of the country must be assigned to education.

But above all, we need to have in the parliament, — the one central institution representing the people of the country, — the very qualification for the membership of which should satisfy two criteria – possession of capabilities and possession of honesty. We have still not found ways and means by which we can secure in the parliament and in our legislative bodies men and women of character and capability in sizeable numbers. As yet, we have not had in our country, any massive movement that will insist on electoral reforms. We have not realized that our constitution requires radical changes and that without these changes people’s energies cannot be generated and channelised in the right directions. We must give the highest priority to electoral reforms and political reforms.

Knowledge is power; the whole world today is obliged to generate knowledge and seek fulfilment through the power that can be generated by knowledge. The future of the world rests on the quest of knowledge and on technologies that are fashioned to utilize knowledge. But even the quest of knowledge needs to be guided by the consideration of the ends, which need to be fulfilled, and the knowledge of ends is generated from wisdom. Mere accumulation of knowledge is not wisdom; there are three conditions by which knowledge can be ripened into wisdom. There is, first, the attempt to conceive universality and to dwell in increasing universalisation of consciousness; secondly, there must be continuous effort at building bridges of the past with the present and also an effort to continue to build bridges between the present and the future. This requires a constant learning of the lessons from the past and application of the lessons to test them on the anvil of the problems of the present; and this necessitates building up of the visions of the future. Finally, wisdom is ripened in the laboratory of goodwill. To generate goodwill all the time and under all circumstances, builds up in the a society perceptions and insights that are not deluded by appearances but are capable of penetrating the appearances and in reading the messages from the realities that are striving to manifest against obstacles of appearances. India was at one time a storehouse of wisdom; resurgence of India will ultimately be judged by the effort that we can make to recreate our country as a storehouse of wisdom. In order that all this can happen, we need to concentrate on three tasks of which Sri Aurobindo has spoken in his essays on Indian Renaissance. We should recover the stores of wisdom, which were built in the past and study them in fullness. We should reformulate these stores of wisdom by applying them on the anvil of the present in search of solutions of contemporary problems, and since today India is growing into globality, we need to develop a new synthesis: synthesis of the east and west, synthesis of the knowledge of Matter and Spirit, and the synthesis of the perfectibility of the Individual and the collectivity. To study this vast programme should be the highest activity of the leaders of thought, culture and action of today and tomorrow.

Let us recall the following statement of Sri Aurobindo on the three tasks of the renascent India.

“The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge is the second; an original dealing with modern problems in the light of the Indian spirit and the endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society is the third and most difficult. Its success on these three lines will be the measure of its help to the future of humanity.”

Let us invite all of us to the service of our country and to the service of the world and dedicate ourselves to doing whatever we can under this inspiring idea. If we can sincerely begin the task by simply contemplating on this idea of the resurgence of India, then whatever we can and whatever we ultimately do will be justified.

Implications of Grassroot Democracy for Human Resource Development

Measures which are currently being taken to extend the experience of democracy at the grassroot level signify a radical turning-point in our recent history, necessitating a fresh thought and faster rate of progress in the educational and cultural fields. Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches — this is a basic premise of democracy, and the quality of democracy depends upon the degree and extent to which knowledge is spread and shared among the masses of the people. It also depends upon the quality of knowledge that is so spread and shared. This means wider and higher extension of education and culture covering all levels of individual and social existence.

Democracy is not a mere process of election; it is fundamentally a state in which each individual has the requisite freedom to determine voluntarily his or her process of growth and development. Ideally, each individual should be enabled to exercise his or her freedom in such a way that the individual and social progress is effectuated with increasing levels of harmony — the individual inspired by social good and the society inspired by care for the highest good of each individual. We are far from this state, but this is, in effect, the inner heart of democratic socialism, and it is this goal to which the current measures are leading us to realise in actual practical terms.

We are rapidly preparing ourselves for a big change. We are growing out of the narrow and egoistic boundaries of the consumer society to the freer and wider horizons of the learning society. In the consumer society, the chief concern is to multiply wants and means of satisfaction; in the learning society the chief concern is to think and strive for increasing degrees of the harmonised individual and social good. In terms of education and culture, the learning society is as different from the consumer society as is the north from the west.

Learning society implies, in terms of education and culture, three inter-related programmes: (i) Lifelong learning; (ii) Integration of education and culture; and (iii) Pursuit of Excellence.

Life-long learning is the process by which individuals continue to develop their knowledge, skills, interests and cultural attainments throughout their life-times. Lifelong learning is a ’motherhood’ issue, and it overarches all aspects and all levels of learning, formal, non-formal and informal. Lifelong learning project has a special role in promoting workplace skills and in stimulating participation by increasing number of people in the civic, cultural and collective life of the country.

In promoting lifelong learning, education and culture will have to be integrated in a manner unprecedented hitherto. Culture is a larger set of which education is a sub-set and education supports and is supported by culture. For the present purpose, culture may be defined as a progressive cultivation of higher faculties of rationality, morality, aesthetics and spirituality, their multi-sided expression in suitable and varied forms, and their increasing influence on lower levels of thought, feeling and activity so as to uplift them by sublimation, conversion or transformation and embody in them the higher reaches of consciousness, power, expression and action. Our programme of the integration and culture will acknowledge the cultural dimension of development and affirm the Indian cultural identity in the context of the emerging world-culture. It will aim at broadening participation of all levels in culture and at promoting international cultural cooperation.

The concept of the pursuit of excellence will be the corner-stone of life-long learning. We shall look upon pursuit of excellence, not as something relevant to a small minority of the gifted, but as an endeavour expected of every individual member of society. For pursuit of excellence means deployment of effort on the limits of individual ability in ways that test personal boundaries and push back those boundaries. Our programme should be directed to stimulate this deployment of effort from everyone, whether gifted or average or disadvantaged or handicapped.

These three inter-related programmes can also be interwoven with the vast educational effort that has been generated in recent years. Different levels of education can be so designed that at various terminal points candidates enter the portals of workplace with sufficient capacity to continue to learn throughout their life-times. Various programmes and curricula of education can be redesigned so as to integrate education and culture. And, at all levels and in all forms of education, due emphasis could be laid by appropriate means on pursuit of excellence.

This would mean faster pace of reform of education envisaged in the new education policy and programme of action. It may also mean, to a considerable extent, reprioritisation of various programmes. It may also mean higher allocation of funds for human resource development. But these are matters of detail and they can be worked out through group meetings and consultations.

Swarajya - Rethinking

INDIAN COUNCIL OF PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH

NATIONAL SEMINAR

RETHINKING OF SWARAJYA.

Swarajya: Rethinking

(In the light of Sri Aurobindo)

KIREET JOSHI

Chairman, Auroville Foundation

24-25th January, 2000

Conference Room No. 2, India International Centre Lodhi Road, New Delhi

Swarajya: Rethinking

(In the light of Sri Aurobindo)

As we look back in order to look ahead, we are seized with a sense of dissatisfaction despite lists of achievements and accomplishments that can be presented to us since we attained independence in 1947. We recall those glorious years of the first decade of the 20th century when the message of Nationalism had begun to spread in the country with electric rapidity. We recall how at that time the programmes of Village Samitis, passive resistance, boycott, arbitration, national education and Swadeshi movement were formulated and implemented with rare courage and heroism, and we wonder where that courage and heroism can be detected today. We recall how the soul of the nation had begun to stir the hearts of the people under the inspiring gospel of Swarajya, despite repressive measures of the British Rulers and powerful resistance from the loyalists and even from the distinguished leaders of the Congress who were attached to Moderatism. The movement that had started in Bengal and put forward Swarajya as the ideal in 1905, had created in three brief years, a mighty power that could inspire great sacrifices and indomitable persistence in the face of persecution. Do we find that ideal of Swarajya and its unaccomplished agenda vibrating and inspiring our people today?

It was at that time that Sri Aurobindo had written in Bande Mataram the following words:

"Swaraj is the alchemic stone, the Parash-Pathar, and we have it in our hands. It will turn to gold everything we touch. Village Samitis are good, not for the sake of village samitis but for the sake of Swaraj. Boycott is good, not for the sake of Boycott but for the sake of Swaraj. Swadeshi is good, not for the sake of Swadeshi but for the sake of Swaraj. Arbitration is good, not for the sake of arbitration but for the sake of Swaraj. If we forget Swaraj and win anything else we shall be like the seeker whose belt was turned indeed to gold but the stone of alchemy was lost to him for ever."¹

Let us bring back to our mind with clarity and definiteness the ideal of Swarajya, so that we can fruitfully rethink and prepare a new agenda for ourselves. The ideal of Swarajya was clearly defined by the Nationalists as nothing less than independence whether within the Empire, if that be possible, or outside it. They had opposed the moderates who desired self-government within the British Empire, but were willing to wait for it indefinitely. They had announced that the nation could not and ought not to wait, but must stir itself immediately if it was not to perish as a nation. They disagreed with the loyalists who believed that Indians had not the capacities or qualities necessary for freedom and that even if they succeeded in developing the necessary fitness, they would do better for themselves and mankind by remaining as a province of the British Empire. The moderates, who believed that the nation was too weak and disunited to aim at freedom were not convinced that India had in the measurable future the means or strength to win independence or keep it if won. They, therefore, had put forward Colonial Self-Government as their aim and were unwilling to attempt any methods we presuppose strength and cohesion in the nation. The Nationalists, on the other hand, held that Indians were as capable of freedom as any subject nation could be and their difficulties were the results of servitude and could only be removed by the struggle for freedom. They held that the choice not between autonomy and provincial Home Rule or between freedom and dependence, but between freedom and national decay and death. They further held that the past history of the country and the prevailing circumstances were of such a kind that the great unifying tendencies which were till then baffled by insuperable obstacles had at last found the right condition for success. They believed that the fated hour for Indian unification and freedom had arrived. They urged that India should strive to be free, that she could be free and she would, by the impulse of her past and the-then prevailing circumstances would inevitably be driven to the attempt and the attaining of national self-realisation.

The ideal of Swarajya meant absolute autonomy from foreign rule. It underlined the right of every nation to develop its own life by its own energies according to its own nature and ideals. It rejected the claim of aliens to force upon India a civilisation inferior to the Indian civilisation or to keep Indians out of their inheritance on the untenable ground of a superior fitness.

The ideal of Swarajya did not involve hatred of any other nation. It rejected bureaucratic administration so as to make it democratic; it opposed the alien government in order to make it indigenous; it resisted the foreign control in order to retain its Indianness. It declared that the ideal of Swarajya had its basis in universal love and brotherhood and it looked beyond unity of the nation and envisaged the ultimate unity of mankind. The unity that it envisaged had to be a unity of brothers, not the unity of the master and the serf, of devourer and devoured.

Swarajya was not to be limited to mere political freedom; the concept was that of freedom vast and entire, freedom of the individual, freedom of the community, freedom of the nation, spiritual freedom, social freedom, political freedom. It was underlined that social freedom can only be born where the soul of man is large, free and generous, not a slave to petty aims and thoughts. It was also realised that social freedom cannot be a result of social machinery but of the freedom of the human intellect and the inevitability of the human soul. It was pointed out that if political freedom is absent, the community has no great ends to follow and the individual is confined within a narrow circuit in which superiority of caste, wealth or class is the only ambition which he can cherish. Similarly, it was pointed out that spiritual freedom can never be the law of many in the absence of political freedom. It was urged that compassion to all creatures is the compassion of the sainthood, and the perfect Yogin is he who is engaged in the welfare of all, sarvabhutahite rahtah; the perfect Yogin does not forget that God is not only in himself but in all the creatures, and for those who have not the strength, spiritual freedom in political servitude is a sheer impossibility. Sri Aurobindo, while describing the contents of Swarajaya had written:

"By our political freedom we shall once more recover our spiritual freedom. Once more in the land of the saints and sages will burn up the fire of the ancient Yoga and the hearts of her people will be lifted up into the neighbourhood of the Eternal."²

This is not the occasion to recount the difficulties that had to be surmounted in pursuing the ideal of Swarajya. It took long many years for the Congress itself to adopt the ideal of Swarajya as the nationalists conceived it, and even then the comprehensiveness of the ideal was never fully adopted. This was unfortunate, and in the meantime due to certain policies which were followed by the Congress and by the British Rulers, the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity was never tackled with clear vision and firm handling. As a result, when freedom was attained in 1947, a big price had to be paid by way of partition of the country, and even the political freedom came to be cast in the form of democracy as understood and practised in the West.

At the time when we are rethinking of Swarajya, we need to bring back to our mind the fullness of the ideal and to point out that if India is floundering today, it is because we have not utilised political freedom as a means to the greater ends that were and are imperative if India is to bring out her potentialities which are relevant to the cause of what may be called her true renaissance and to the services she can render to the entire humanity. For India has not only to be free politically but even economically, socially, and spiritually; political freedom is not enough, India has also to be united; India has also to utilise her political freedom to attain her true greatness.

Sri Aurobindo has made a detailed study of the problems that have to be confronted and resolved if India is to be reborn in the true sense in which the word renaissance conveys to us. Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that Indian Renaissance can become a thing of many possibilities both to herself and the world; for the possibilities involved in the re-arising of her force are in many respects those of genius unlike any other and India’s genius is very different from the mentality and spirit that have so far governed the modern world. Sri Aurobindo had foreseen that India’s Renaissance will enable her to keep her essential spirit, to keep her characteristic soul, but there will be a great change in our body. As he points out:

"The shaping for itself of a new body, of new philosophical, artistic, literary, cultural, political, social forms by the same soul rejuvenescent will, I should think, be the type of the Indian renascence, − forms not contradictory of the truths of life, which the old expressed, but rather expressive of those truths restated, cured of defect, completed."³

In this context, Sri Aurobindo has indicated three lines on which India needs to develop herself. In the first place, the most essential work that has to be accomplished is that of the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness. The second line of development would be to bring about the flowering of its spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge. And the third line would be to deal with modern problems with originality, derived from the light of Indian spirit and to endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of her spiritualised society.

One of the important problems to which Sri Aurobindo has drawn our attention is that of the true unity of India. In his message of 15th August 1947, he underlined this theme in the following words:

"India today is free but she has not achieved unity the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India’s internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may finally come about under whatever form — the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India’s future."⁴

Another important problem to which Sri Aurobindo has referred is that of Indian culture and external influence. He pointed out that any attempt to remain exactly what we were before European invasion or to ignore in future the claims of a modern environment and necessity is foredoomed to an obvious failure. He urged that we must necessarily take into account all the modern world around us and get full knowledge of it, for otherwise we cannot live. Sri Aurobindo speaks of a double action, a self-development from within which is the greatest intimate power of being and by which it is itself, reception of impacts from outside which aims at accumulation of one’s own individuality and making into material of self-growth and self-power. He saw clearly that the two operations are not mutually exclusive, nor is the second harmful to the first except when the inner genius is too weak to deal victoriously with its environmental world. As he points out:

"The man who most finds and lives from the inner self, can most embrace the universal and become one with it; the svarat, independent, self-possessed and self-ruler, can most be the samrat, possessor and shaper of the world in which he lives, can most too grow one with all in the Atman. That is the truth this developing existence teaches us, and it is one of the greatest secrets of the old Indian spiritual knowledge."⁵

Sri Aurobindo finds that the present moment is opportune for arriving at a synthesis of the East and the West. He points out that the West is itself labouring to outgrow the limitations of its own conception and precisely by a rapid infusion of the ideas of the East, which are now freely streaming into Western thought, poetry, art, ideas of life. This infiltration does not aim at overturning the Western culture, but aims at transforming, enlightening and aggrandising its best values and to add new elements which have too long been ignored or forgotten. He, however, warns that India should not allow her cultural independence to be paralysed, for it would be singular if, "While Europe is thus intelligently enlarging herself in the new light she has been able to seize and admitting the truths of the spirit and the aim at a divine change in man and his life, we in India are to take up the cast-off clothes of European thought and life and to struggle along in the old rut of her wheels, always taking up today what she had cast off yesterday."⁶

Even in respect of political and sociological ideals, Sri Aurobindo perceives a new realisation in the West, which will compel reconsideration of democratic, capitalistic and socialistic institutions which have endeavoured to apply the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity but failed to do so. In this light, India has to consider these principles in the light of her own genius and attempt to create a new social, economic and political order where these principles can be practically implemented in their harmony and synthesis.

And, first, India has to consider whether the parliamentary democracy which it has borrowed from the West can be so remedied that the political power gets vested in the entirety of the people and not merely in some who are mighty on account of their money power and their power to manipulate situations by means that are unethical. Sri Aurobindo has suggested that there were many experiments in the past Indian history in the field of polity, and if these experiments were allowed to arrive at maturity, India could have developed a system that could have been an alternative to the modern methods of political democracy. At a time today when India is thinking of the need to change its Constitution, it would be appropriate for us to ensure that only those who combine honesty and capability can come to wield the political power.

It is, however, necessary to underline that the success of new structures and procedures will depend upon the kind of education that we shall provide to the children, youths and to the public in general. Sri Aurobindo had already written a series of articles on National Education in 1909 and published them in the Karmayogin. The aims and methods of National Education that he had outlined are directly relevant to our present needs.

Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that the one important and favourable development which has taken place in the modern world is the affirmation of the right of all individuals as members of the society to the full life and full development of which they are individually capable. As he points out:

"It is now fixed that social development and well-being mean the development and well-being of all the individuals in the society and not merely a flourishing of the community in the mass which resolves itself really into the splendour and power of one or two classes."⁷

In addition, Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that a deeper truth which modern individualism has discovered, is that the individual is not merely a social unit, that his existence, his soul, a being, who has to fulfil his own individual truth and law as well as his natural or assigned part in the truth and law of the collective existence. Sri Aurobindo pointed out that right and claim to live and grow are not founded solely on his social work and function, that he is something in himself, as this is an idea, a truth, which is intellectually recognised and given its significance by Europe, agrees at its root with profoundest and highest spiritual conception of Asia and has a large part to play in the moulding of the future.

Sri Aurobindo has spoken of the coming of the subjective age and has warned against false subjectivism as distinguished from true subjectivism. He wants India to grasp the distinction between the true and false subjectivism so that she can avoid the perils of those experiments which gave rise to fascist and totalitarian theories and practice in the West in the recent history. Sri Aurobindo has, after considering the right relationship between the individual and the society, formulated the ideal law of social development, and considering the goals that India can serve because of her genius and past history, it would be for her to give practical formulation of that ideal law. It appears that it is the tasks that flow from this practical formulation that would give the right content of Swarajya for India today.

Let me conclude by quoting from Sri Aurobindo, that ideal law of social development:

"Thus the law for the individual is to perfect his individuality by free development from within, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development in others. His law is to harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate and to pour himself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for the community or nation is equally to perfect its corporate existence by a free development from within, aiding and taking full advantage of that of the individual, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development of other communities and nations. Its law is to harmonise its life with that of the human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only ideally one divine family, but even then, when it has succeeded in unifying itself, to respect, aid and be aided by the free growth and activity of its individuals and constituent aggregates."⁸

Philosophical Foundations of Indian Nationalism

INDIAN COUNCIL OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH

NATIONAL SEMINAR

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS

INDIAN NATIONALISM

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

KIREET JOSHI

CHAIRMAN

INDIAN COUNCIL OF PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH, NEW DELHI

10.30 A.M.

28th FEBRUARY 2003

VENUE:

NEHRU MEMORIAL MUSEUM & LIBRARY TEEN MURTI HOUSE, NEW DELHI - 110 011

Philosophical Foundations of Indian Nationalism

There is a sense of something mysterious, invisible and intangible when we think of the concept and reality of the nation. For it is difficult to seize the essentiality of the truth of nationality and nationalism. A nation may exist, and yet it may not be recognisable; it may take birth and grow, and yet be overpowered or overshadowed by larger aggregates such as empires or leagues. The development of a nation may take long periods of centuries for its destructive formation as in the case of France, Germany and India. It may develop in many directions, but not yet integrally. A nation may be recognised as such by some leaders of the country, but not necessarily by the common mind in its self-consciousness. It rests on a geographical unity, and yet this unity can become fragmented or disrupted or divided for short or long periods. A nation may attain even political unity as also geographical unity, and yet its centrifugal and centripetal forces may not be in harmony with each other or in a balanced state of equilibrium. There may be rise and fall in the self-awareness of nationalism; new questions may arise in the course of tide and ebb of nationalism that may disturb the manifestation of what may be called the soul of the nation. And yet, the seer of the soul of the nation will always recognise it and work for its manifestation.

Political history focussed on the development of human aggregates, particularly of empires and nations, can be variously interpreted for arriving at differing notions of nationality and nationalism. During the first decade of the 20th century, when nationalist philosophy came to preponderate in our country, there were conflicting notions as to what constituted a nation and whether India was really a nation or could become a nation and whether nationalist contentions in regard to nationalism could be justified. We find a brilliant exposition of these views as also their evaluation in the pages of Bande Mataram (1906-08) through which Sri Aurobindo provided not only a most luminous and revelatory philosophy of Indian nationalism but also uplifting force of inspiration which created in the whole country a new spirit of awakening whereby the people were infused with enthusiasm, faith and hope. The cry of Bande Mataram was heard on all sides, and people felt it glorious to be alive and dare and act together. Philosophy of nationalism that was articulated was a philosophy of the truth of the Indian nation and its history, the philosophy of Swaraj, the philosophy of ends and means, the philosophy of patriotism, and the philosophy of education and national reconstruction. And the way and the speed with which this philosophy succeeded in a short period of two years in breaking the old apathy and timidity and in fixing in the national consciousness the idea and force of Swaraj and the programme through which Swaraj was sought to be attained has been rightly looked upon as a miracle and an unparalleled achievement in the entire world history of nationalism.

There were basically three important standpoints in regard to nationalism that were in conflict with each other during the momentous period during which the pages of Bande Mataram were being written. There was, first, the viewpoint of the Loyalists; there was, secondly, the view of the Moderates, and there was thirdly, the view of the Nationalists who were also misleadingly labelled by the Moderates as extremists. According to Loyalists, Indians did not have the capacities and qualities necessary for freedom, and even if they succeeded in developing the necessary fitness, they would, it was argued, do better for themselves and mankind by remaining as a province of the British Empire. According to this view, India cannot, should not and will not be a free, great and united nation, and that India should remain satisfied with good governance by the British rulers and a limited share in the administration. The Moderates believed that India was too weak and disunited to aim at freedom; they welcomed independence if it came, but they were not convinced that India had in the measurable future the means or strength to win freedom or keep it if won. According to them, colonial self-government should be India’s aim and they were unwilling to attempt any methods which presupposed strength and cohesion in the nation. The Moderate view was that India may eventually be united, self-governing within limits and prosperous, but not free and great. As against both these views, the Nationalists held that Indians were capable of freedom and that their defects were the results of servitude and could only be removed by the struggle for freedom. They maintained that the choice was not between freedom and dependence, between autonomy and provincial Home Rule, but between freedom and national decay and death. They held that the past history of our country and present circumstances are of such a kind that the great unifying tendencies hitherto baffled by insuperable obstacles had at last found the right condition for the success. They believed that the hour for national unification and freedom had arrived and India should strive to be free and that India could be free and that she would, by the impulse of her past and present, be inevitably driven to the attempt and the attainment of national self-realisation.

There was at the same time another line of thought, according to which diversity of race in India, diversity of religion in India, and diversity of language in India precluded India from becoming a nation and that there was no possibility of creating a nationality in our country. In answer to this perilous contention which was formulated by Mr. N.N. Ghose of the Indian Nation, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

"Rather we find that every nationality has been formed not because of, but in spite of, diversity of race or religion or language, and not unoften in spite of the co-existence of all these diversities. The Indian Nation has itself admitted that the English nation has been built out of various races, but he (N.N. Ghose) has not stated the full complexity of the British nation. He has not observed that to this day the races which came later into the British nationality keep their distinct individuality even now and that one of them clings to its language tenaciously. He has carefully omitted the striking example of Switzerland where distinct racial strains speaking three different languages and, later, professing different religions, coalesced into and persisted as one nation without sacrificing a single one of these diversities. In France three different languages are spoken; in America the candidates for White House address the nation in fourteen languages, Austria is a congeries of races and languages, the divisions in Russia are hardly less acute. That unity in race, religion or languages is essential to nationality is an idea which will not bear examination. Such elements of unity are very helpful to the growth of a nationality, but they are not essential and will not even of themselves assure its growth. The Roman Empire though it created a common language, a common religion and life, and did its best to crush out racial diversities under the heavy weight of its uniform system failed to make one great nation."⁹

Sri Aurobindo also enumerated essential elements of nationality, namely, geographical unity, a common past, a powerful common interest impelling towards unity and certain favourable political conditions which enable the impulse to realise itself in an organised Government expressing nationality and perpetuating its single and united existence. He acknowledged that common interests may be provided by a part of the nation, a race or community, uniting the others under its leadership or domination, or by an united resistance to have a common pressure from outside or within. He underlined that a common enthusiasm coalescing with a common interest is the most powerful fosterer of nationality. He concluded:

"We believe that the necessary elements are present in India, we believe that the time has come and that by a common resistance to a common pressure in the shape of the boycott, inspired by a common enthusiasm and ideal, that united nationality for which the whole history of India has been a preparation, will be speedily and mightily accomplished."¹⁰

The theme of Indian nationalism occupied Sri Aurobindo throughout his life, and he wrote on this subject even when he had left in 1910 active participation in the political activity on account of his total occupation with the future of India and the world and with the integral yoga that he was developing and perfecting as an aid to the solution of the evolutionary crisis of humanity. This theme was developed by him in four of his books that he wrote during 1914 and 1921, namely, The Life Divine, The Foundations of Indian Culture, The Ideal of Human Unity and The Human Cycle. In these books, we find illuminating analysis and exposition uncomparable in depth and context with any other analysis and exposition of what may be called the philosophical foundations of nationalism and Indian nationalism. These foundations, as we discern them in Sri Aurobindo’s writings, are those relating to the philosophy of the individual and the aggregate, philosophy of the national aggregate and national unity, philosophy of nationality and nation-state, and philosophy of nationalism, internationalism, and universality.

The philosophy of the individual and the aggregate underlines an inevitable interconnection between the human being and humanity, which is the largest aggregate for human beings. But this interconnection is mediated by the individual’s membership of various groups of smaller or larger dimensions. And, at an important stage of development, the formation of nations is initiated, and the resultant formation of national unity follows three stages.

There is, first, some kind of looser yet sufficiently compelling order of society and common type of civilisation to serve as a framework within which the edifice of the nation can arise. The next stage is marked by a period of stringent organisation directed towards unity and centrality of control and perhaps a general levelling and uniformity under that central direction. Finally, there comes about a period of free internal development, which because of the gains of second stage of development, would no longer bring with it the peril of disorder, disruption, arrest of the secure growth and formation of the organism. The first stage depends upon the past history and present conditions of the elements that have to be welded into a national unity.

Although the spirit, form and equipoise worked out differently in different parts of the world, the motive force that everywhere was the necessity of a large effective form and common social life marked by fixity of status through which individual and common interests might be brought under the yoke of a sufficient religious, political and economic unity. The institution of a fixed social hierarchy seems to have been a necessary stage for the first tendencies of national formation. But in the second stage, there comes about the modification of the social structure so as to make room for a powerful and feasible centre of political and administrative unity. This stage is marked by a strong tendency towards the abrogation of liberties, and we can see here the historical importance of a powerful kingship in the evolution of the nation-type, as it actually developed in the medieval times. The monarchical state concentrated, in its own activities, the whole national life. But the powerful structure and closely-knit order of things were tolerated so long as the nation felt consciously or subconsciously its needs and justification. However, once when that need was fulfilled, conventions developed during the second stage came to be questioned with the growth of self-consciousness among the common masses of the people. This questioning could no longer be suppressed or permanently resisted. Hence, there came about the collapse of the old world and the birth of a new age.

As Sri Aurobindo points out, the nation-unit is not formed and does not exist merely for the sake of existing; its purpose is to provide a larger mould of human aggregation in which the race, and not only classes and individuals, may move towards its full human development. A stage must therefore come when in all directions, men and women have to come into their own, realise the dignity and freedom of humanhood within them and give play to their utmost capacity.

As a result, the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity came to be formulated and the nation-unit is launched on a new path of maturity. Freedom of the nation and battle for freedom, equality and justice marks the third stage of development. Looking towards the future of this third stage, Sri Aurobindo states:

"Perhaps liberty and equality, liberty and authority, liberty and organised efficiency can never be quite satisfactorily reconciled so long as man individual and aggregate lives by egoism, so long as he cannot undergo a great spiritual and psychological change and rise beyond mere communal association to that third ideal which some vague inner sense made the revolutionary thinkers of France add to their watchwords of liberty and equality, ─ the greatest of all the three, though till now only an empty word on man’s lips, the ideal of fraternity or, less sentimentally and more truly expressed, an inner oneness. That no mechanism social, political, religious has ever created or can create; it must take birth in the soul and rise from hidden and divine depths within."¹¹

This is the stage which is marked by what Sri Aurobindo calls the discovery of the nation-soul, and with this discovery there arises the question of relationship among nation-souls and their relationship with the universal-soul. And this question is centrally related to the question of internationalism and universality.

III

It is against this background that we can profitably study the development of India as a nation and its nationalism. The evolution of India, according to Sri Aurobindo, gives evidence that the essential nation-unit was already existent presiding over the geographical boundaries ranging from the Himalayas up to the Southern Indian Ocean perceived as Rashtra even by the early Rishis of the Rigveda.¹²

"In this instance, we see that the conversion of the psychological unity on which nationhood is based into the external organised unity by which it is perfectly realised, has taken a period of more than two thousand years and is not yet complete. And yet, since the essentiality of the thing was there, not even the most formidable difficulties and delays, not even the most persistent incapacity for union in the people, not even the most disintegrating shocks from outside have prevailed against the obstinate

subconscious necessity. And this is only the extreme illustration of a general law."¹³

Commenting on the emergence of the nationalist movement in India in the early part of the twentieth century, Sri Aurobindo points out that it was a part of a world-wide movement where nations were seen feeling for their source, trying to find them, seriously endeavouring to act from the new sense and make it consciously operative in the common life and action. This tendency was most powerful in new nations or in those struggling to realise themselves in spite of political subjection or defeat. The reason that Sri Aurobindo assigns for this phenomenon is that it is these nations that needed more to feel the difference between themselves and others so that they could assert and justify their individuality as against the powerful super-life which tended to absorb or efface it. And, Sri Aurobindo continues, precisely because their objective life was feeble and it was difficult to affirm it by its own strength in the diverse circumstances, there was more chance of their seeking for their individuality and its forces of self-assertion in that which was subjective and psychological or at least in that which was of subjective or psychological significance. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"The movement of 1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception."¹⁴

The basic ontological foundation of the philosophy of the individual and the aggregate and of nationality and national unity is to be found in Sri Aurobindo’s concept of the reality of the individual spirit and that of the cosmic spirit. According to Sri Aurobindo, the individual is not merely an ephemeral physical creature, a form of mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but a being, a living power of eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit. It is for this reason that Sri Aurobindo points out that the primal law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development, to find itself, to discover within itself the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it.

In the same way, society, community or nation is also a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifestation of the cosmic Spirit, and it is there to express and fulfil in its own way and to the degree of its capacities the special truth and power and meaning of the cosmic Spirit that is within it. It is for this reason, Sri Aurobindo observes, that the primal law and a purpose of the society, community or nation is to seek its own self-fulfilment; it strives rightly to find itself, to become aware within itself of the law and power of its own being and fulfil it as perfectly as possible, to realise all its potentialities, to live its own self-revealing life. The interrelationship between the individual and the nation can therefore be harmonised when there is a surge and discovery both of the individual and of the nation as also of the nations of their inner souls and the process of finding in these souls the secret of their true development and their drift towards progressive perfection.

Sri Aurobindo sees in the heart of the nationalist movement of India and in the attainment of freedom for India a great possibility of opening a new age in which India can, because of its treasures of spiritual knowledge, discover further secrets whereby Spirit and Matter can be synthesised, and the luminous knowledge of the spirit can illumine and transform the physical life of the earth. India has also the possibility of becoming a pioneering partner in the task of formulating new forms of the largest aggregate in which each nation can relate itself with other nations and bring about a harmonious world-unity in which ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity can find their progressive harmony and fulfilment.

There is today much contest in respect of the concept of nation and nationalism, and it is even sometimes suggested that in the coming days of internationalism, globalisation and larger aggregation in the formation of a possible world union, nations and nationalities will be overpassed and the world will enter into post-national stage of existence. This debate and conclusion need to be considered seriously in the light of the real truth of the philosophical foundation of nationalism, Indian nationalism and its possible future.

Sri Aurobindo makes an important distinction between political unity and real unity, and pointing out the fact that the world history shows that there was in the ancient cycle of development a wide pre-national empire building, which is in contrast to modern cycle of nation-building. In other words, empires have been created in the past, indicating the tendency to overshoot nation-units even before they attain any maturity or stability, and that this shows that nation is not a final unit of aggregation. But at the same time, Sri Aurobindo points out that although empires have exhibited political unity, they have not shown to have in them the force of real unity. He states:

"Empires exist, but they are as yet only political and not real units; they have no life from within and owe their continuance to a force imposed on their constituent elements or else to a political convenience felt or acquiesced in by the constituents and favoured by the world outside. ... If the political convenience of an empire of this kind ceases, if the constituent elements no longer acquiesce and are drawn more powerfully by a centrifugal force, if at the same time the world outside no longer favours the combination, then force alone remains as the one agent of an artificial unity."¹⁵

Empires are, according to Sri Aurobindo, perishable political unities, in contrast to the nation, a real unity, which is immortal and which will remain so until a greater living unit can be found into which nation idea can merge in obedience to a superior attraction.

Again, dwelling upon the distinction between political unity and real unity, Sri Aurobindo states that this distinction must be made because "...it is of the greatest utility to a true and profound political science and involves the most important consequences. When an empire like Austria, a non-national empire, is broken to pieces, it perishes for good; there is no innate tendency to recover the outward unity, because there is no real inner oneness; there is only a politically manufactured aggregate. On the other hand, a real national unity broken up by circumstances will always preserve a tendency to recover and reassert its oneness."¹⁶

Sri Aurobindo has given the example of the Greek Empire which has gone the way of all empires, but the Greek nation after many centuries of political non-existence, again possesses its separate body, because it has preserved its separate ego and therefore really existed under the covering rule of the Turk. Similar is the example of Italy and in the example of Germany. In all these cases, as was in many others, the unification of Saxon England, medieval France, the formation of the United States of America, Sri Aurobindo points out that there was a real unity, a psychological distinct unit which tended at first ignorantly by the subconscious necessity of its being and afterwards with a sudden or gradual awakening to the sense of political oneness, towards an inevitable external unification. It is, Sri Aurobindo concludes, a distinct group-soul which is driven by inward necessity and uses outward circumstances to constitute for itself an organised body.

Just as the individual is an ontological Spirit, and therefore it can never be reduced to become a mere cog in a machine, even so nation is a living spirit and soul, and therefore it can never permanently be reduced to a status of a mere province of larger and largest aggregates. At the same time, Sri Aurobindo underlines the fact that humanity is turning today towards world unity, and the central problem for the human endeavour in this connection will be as to how the nation will adjust itself to the pressure of the forces that are today creating phenomena which are global, world-wide and planetary in character.

In this connection, Sri Aurobindo makes a distinction between national ego and national soul, corresponding to the distinction in regard to the individual life where the superficial ego is seen to be distinct from the true individual soul. The mark of egoism, according to Sri Aurobindo, is its superficiality and its ignorant attempt to arrive at superficial unity whether that ego is individual or national. The mark of the ego is its sense of division from all the rest, its pretension to be entirely independent in a poise of superiority over all the others. Corresponding to this ego, Sri Aurobindo points out, there is no real reality. There is no ontological superficial reality, there is no independent divided entity which is superior to all the rest. The true individual, on the other hand, has indeed distinctiveness, but is not divided from the others. The true individual and the true nation-soul are characterised by mutuality, interdependence and inner oneness that manifests in diversity. Based upon this philosophical foundation, Sri Aurobindo perceives the future of nations as entities seeking and finding their inner souls by virtue of which they will remain free but mutually interdependent, and this, in turn, will provide the form of world unity that is supportive and not destructive of the nations. Sri Aurobindo speaks of a world union of free nations, each having status of equality, and all contributing through their distinctive capacities to the fund of richness and variety at the global level.

Sri Aurobindo formulates therefore an ideal law of social development in which the truths of the individual, of the nations and of humanity are all reconciled and synthesised. This is the law as he has formulated:

It can be said that the fulfilment of this ideal law of social or national development is the task that still remains to be fulfilled. In this task, Indian nationalism can play a leading role. But before that task can be fulfilled, there are still some others which need to be initiated and developed. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of three aims that free India should concentrate upon. In the first place, a great effort must be made for the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depths and fullness. Sri Aurobindo considers this to be the most essential work. Secondly, an endeavour must be made for the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge. The third aim that should be pursued should consist of an original dealing with modern problems in the light of Indian spirit, and the goal should be to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society. According to Sri Aurobindo, India’s success on these three lines will be measure of its help to the future of humanity.

Let me close with the following prophetic words of Sri Aurobindo, which give us a great inspiration and enthusiasm for the continuance of the work of Indian nationalism for today and tomorrow:

"India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word;

she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident’s success and failure, but still the ancient memorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma."¹⁸

The Citizen, Constitution and Value-Education

CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE RASHTRIYA JAGRITI SANSTHAN

DHARAM HINDUJA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF INDIC RESEARCH

SYMPOSIUM

CITIZENS AND THE CONSTITUTION

ADDRESS

KIREET JOSHI

PRESDENT

DHARAM HINDUJA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF INDIC RESEARCH

2nd MARCH, 1998

INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE ANNEXE 40, LODI ESTATE, NEW DELHI

The Citizen, Constitution and Value-Education

May I begin by congratulating Dr. Subhash Kashyap for his extremely instructive book — "Citizen and the Constitution". It abounds with insights and penetrating comments that throw open the heart of the Constitution and provide valuable guidance to the citizen so as to make him or her a living, vibrant and even a combative limb of the society.

Dr. Subhash Kashyap and Mr. Justice Verma have also provided stimulating expositions of various aspects of our Constitution, how this Constitution expresses the will of the people and how citizens derive their rights and obligations as also their value-system from the provisions of the Constitution. The insights which they have presented are valuable not only in respect of jurisprudence and legal interpretation but also in respect of the guidance that can be derived for an extremely important domain in the field of education, namely, that of value-education.

Educationists have been spending a great deal of time in listing values that should form part of the curriculum; but often they forget to underline those values which have been enunciated in the Constitution. The Preamble itself speaks of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Articles 14-19 bring out Fundamental Rights, which follow from the basic values laid down in the Preamble. Articles 25-30 lay down further rights in respect of conscience, religion, management of religious affairs and protection of interests of minorities. Certain social values have also been underlined in the Directive Principles of the State. And, significantly, Article 51-A lays down Fundamental Duties, detailed enunciation of which provides ample guidance in fixing incontrovertible values that citizens of the country must pursue.

There are, however, three most important words in the very Preamble of the Constitution; they represent the basic features of the Indian constitutional polity, a number of values can be derived from them, but they deserve to be discussed in a spirit of partnership among educationists, jurists and other experts for purposes of clarification and for deriving proper guidance. They are: Democracy, Socialism and Secularism.

The first question is as to what is democracy and what values we can derive from this great principle. Normally, democracy has come to mean in our country Parliamentary democracy, processes of elections, and values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, all of which have been encumbered with certain restrictions. These restrictions are necessary for practical guidance and legal enforceability, but in the field of education, where values are to be fostered, not merely from the point of view of enforceability but even in terms of intentionality and in terms of intrinsic axiological sense, we must have a wider canvas of understanding, defining and practising.

At the highest level, democracy is based upon the idea of categorical imperative of which Immanuel Kant, the famous German Philosopher, gave certain alternative formulations, one of which is directly relevant to our purposes here. In that formulation, we are asked to treat every individual as a member of realm of ends and to treat every individual not merely as a means to an end but as an end in himself or herself. Educationally, therefore, we need to underline this individualistic sense of democracy and its deeper consequences for the educational methodology and contents. It is necessary in the educational processes to bring home to students the value of their own individuality as also of all others, and to guide them as to how to discover the core of their individuality, and yet at the same time, to be so universal and unegoistic that the core of individuality of all others comes to be respected; understood and embraced. And, it would also be necessary to bring out in the educational methodology how teachers have to respect the individuality of every student and, therefore, how educational process should not be merely child-centred but centred on the deeper soul of the child which has its own intrinsic value and which is, therefore, an end in itself. It would also seem in order if, in the contents of education, it is brought out that what is valuable is not democracy in any particular form, which easily becomes plutocracy, but something that may rightly be called democratic democracy.

Similarly, when we speak of socialism as a value, we need to go to its root-value rather than its various forms, which are current in the world, and all of which are not necessarily value-oriented. The real value of socialism lies in creating the awareness that the individual needs to universalise himself or herself to such an extent that one contributes to the highest social welfare, and that those who represent the collective mind and soul must strive to bring about the highest welfare of each individual. Mere political or legalistic view of socialism may not necessarily approximate to the deepest values that need to be conveyed through the education system. In the present political situation of the country, we do not know whether our country is deviating from socialism in its increasing advocacy of privatisation, and we do not know what would be the judicial view of many economic reforms, if they are challenged on the ground that they are inconsistent with socialism, which is the basic feature of our Constitution.

Similarly, we need to have greater clarity in regard to the word "secular", which occurs in the Preamble. In a certain sense, materialism and materialistic values can incontrovertibly be defended as secular, whereas many other values can be controverted, since they can be shown to be inconsistent with what is defined as secularism in several dictionaries. Even the statement of objects and reasons provided in the 80th Amendment Bill of 1993, which was introduced but not ultimately passed, and which attempted to give a clearer definition of "secularism", may not be found to be satisfactory, when we try to understand this word in the context of the great Indian secular tradition, which emphasises the synthetic view that encourages the bringing about of unity of religions on the basis of shared moral and spiritual values.

In fact, the lack of clarity in regard to secularism has seriously crippled educational concerns for value-education and education for character development. And if the present crisis through which our country is passing today is really that of crisis of character, we cannot but feel greatly pained that the lack of clarity in regard to this important word has been a major contributory to the present deplorable situation. In fact, if a wise policy has to be devised in respect of value-education, we shall have to appeal to our experts in the country to clarify the concept of secularism in great detail, — particularly, keeping in view the entire theme of value-education as discussed in the important reports of Education Commissions, such as those of Dr. Radhakrishnan and Dr. Kothari and also many other reports, books, and reflections, which have been brought out not merely after the independence, but even before, when our great freedom struggle was being fought in the country. In this connection, it would be useful to make reference to the very important book written by Dr. Subhash Kashyap "Delinking Religion and Politics", which is incisive in presenting many important issues, and which has in particular dealt with the question of values in the context of Secularism.

This study, as also many other studies, should be taken into account while framing the national policy on value-education. We should remove those obstacles which have prevented the implementation of even elementary but salutary recommendations which were made by Dr. Radhakrishnan that education about religions is not inconsistent with the Constitution and that at least at the higher levels of education, students should be acquainted with the main principles of different religions.

The question of the autonomy of moral values and dependence of these values on religions should also be brought out very clearly. We should also make a distinction between moral and spiritual values, on the one hand, and those values, which are tied to any particular religion and creed. This will help in fostering the study of moral and spiritual values, which are normally discouraged under the fear that they may be anti-secular. The concept of dharma also has to be brought out clearly in contrast to the meaning that is attached-to-the word "religion", "religionism", "sectarianism", etc.

May I suggest that value-education is extremely important and deserves to be given the highest priority in the educational agenda of the country. Eminent leaders like Mr. Justice Verma, Dr. Subhash Kashyap, Dr. Lall and many others who are present here should come together to discuss this important theme so that the educational world may get greater clarity from the experts of the Constitution, jurisprudence, dharma shastra, and other luminaries.

Apart from the problems that we have discussed so far, there are important issues even with regard to other aspects of the Constitution, even in regard to Article 51-A, which lays down Fundamental Duties.

Let us hasten to state that the very idea of introducing Fundamental Duties in the Constitution is not only remarkable but is in total harmony with the Indian ethos, which has given greater importance to the concept of obligations, duties and questions of allegiance than to that of Rights.

However, having introduced this very important Article, certain important problems in regard to value-education have arisen. What were, it is asked, actually the noble ideals, which inspired our national struggle for freedom? Are they all homogeneous and free from conflicts?

What exactly is the duty that follows from the injunction to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture? What duty, for example, follows from the fact that this rich heritage cannot rightly be preserved if Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian or Arabic are not only accorded importance but even such a special importance that increasing number of students get encouraged and facilitated to learn these languages, particularly, when the present language policy is increasingly alienating our new generations from the rich heritage of our composite culture, mainly because we have not provided to them any adequate competence in these languages?

It is understandable that the Constitution cannot be expected to provide full guidance to the theme of value-education. Educationists and other experts have to work diligently in developing full contents and scope of value-orientation in education. For example, pertaining to each aspect of human personality, there are a number of values, which should be cultivated in order to promote the ideal of integral education. Thus, for example, physical education promotes values of health and harmony of physical beauty; vital education should promote values of love, light, courage and heroism; mental education should promote values of clarity, synthesis and mental silence; moral education should cultivate good-will, and goodness, — both in the internal life and in the external life; aesthetic education should promote the values of joy and creativity; and spiritual education should promote widest universality, unity and oneness. One of the important issues in this connection is to resolve dilemmas that occur from the conflict between the rational and the ethical and the aesthetic, the aesthetic and the ethical, and the rational and the moral and the spiritual. This is an extremely difficult task but must be dealt with squarely by educationists so as to provide the right guidance to all connected with education and, indeed, to all committed to national development.

We also speak of Indian system of values, which need to be promoted in order to preserve Indian identity and promote the synthesis of Indianness with the growing demands of universality and synthesis of cultures.

Here, too, the Constitution can come to our help but not fully. One of the important values that Indian culture specially emphasises is the pursuit of transcending egoism, and ego itself. Another important value is that of comprehensiveness, and the pursuit of this value requires us to look upon our own preferred idea as something temporary and provisional, demanding the arrival of such comprehensiveness that our own preferred idea and even the diametrically opposite ideas get so united, that we become free from attachment to our own ideas and opinions and allow the comprehensive idea to succeed. A third value is special emphasis on shreyas as opposed topreyas, — the value of the moral and spiritual good as opposed to that which is merely pleasant. Another Indian value is contained in the concept of dharma, which is uniquely Indian, which is at once positive and normative, in the sense that is describes the underlying rhythm of life and the law of harmony and also prescribes it and prohibits deviation from it. Again, the value that we attach to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is something uniquely Indian in the sense that they are valued most and they are cherished more, and on the call of which we are inspired to renounce everything. How to emphasise these Indian values is an important item in the agenda of educationists working on value-education.

In addition, we also need to take into account how these values can be reconciled with those values, which are pouring upon us from the West, and which are also valuable both for the progress of India and of the world. These values include those of work ethos, prosperity and dynamism; they also include values of scientific temper and thought, of originality and criticality. At higher levels of the question of cultural synthesis, we need to emphasise the values that the French culture lays on clarity and precision, that the German culture lays upon organisation, that the English culture lays upon utility and accommodation, that the Japanese culture lays upon beauty, that the American culture lays upon freshness, openness and stress upon results. In the context of the new emphasis on what Swami Vivekananda calls "man-making education", we must include the values that make each one of us a citizen of the world. We need, therefore, to look into all these aspects, and although the time available here is rather limited, it remains to be emphasised that a very difficult task remains to be accomplished, if we are to provide to our system of education, the right and comprehensive orientation towards values.

While the guidance available from Constitution is of immense value, since it can provide us basic components of value-education and describe to us the rights and duties of the citizens, we should at the same time emphasise that the human being is more than a citizen; for the soul and spirit has its own special needs, demands, rights and duties, and allegiances, and these fall within the special domain of education and these domains teach us how to go beyond law lawfully and how to build higher and higher systems of law, higher and higher demands of civilisation and culture.

It is in fashioning the values appropriate to these deeper aspects that the responsibilities of the educationists assume their proper and vast significance. And this task also brings out the need for greater collaboration between educationists and experts in the domain of the Constitution.

The Genius of India

"We do not belong to the past dawns but to the noons of the future."

India will certainly keep her essential spirit, will keep her characteristic soul, but there is likely to be a great change in the body. Spirituality is the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is.

She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendours of the spirit.

Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman. And with the logical practicality and sense of science and organised method which distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way.

Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind. But that was not and could not be her whole mentality. When we look at the past of India, what strikes us next is her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life, her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness. For three thousand years at least, − it is indeed much longer, − she has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an inexhaustible many-sidedness, republics and kingdoms and empires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences and creeds and arts and poems and all kinds of monuments, palaces and temples and public works, communities and societies and religious, orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychic sciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics and administration, arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades, industries, fine crafts, − the list is endless and in each item there is almost a plethora of activity. She creates and creates and is not satisfied and is not tired; she will not have an end of it, seems hardly to need a space for rest, a time for inertia and lying fallow.

European critics complain that in her ancient architecture, sculpture and art there is no reticence, no holding back of riches, no blank spaces, that she labours to fill every rift with ore, occupy every inch with plenty. Well, but defect or no, that is the necessity of her superabundance of life, of the teeming of the infinite within her. She lavishes her riches because she must, as the Infinite fills every inch of space with the stirring of life and energy because it is the Infinite.

India of the ages is not dead, all that was in India’s past is still dormant, it is not destroyed; it is waiting there to assume new forms.

The third power of the ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality, at once austere and rich, robust and minute, powerful and delicate, massive in principle and curious in detail. Its chief impulse was that of order and arrangement, but an order founded upon a seeking for the inner law and truth of things and having in view always the possibility of conscientious practice. India has been pre-eminently the land of the Dharma and the Shastra. She searched for the inner truth and law of each human or cosmic activity, its Dharma; that found, she laboured to cast into elaborate form and detailed law of arrangement its application in fact and rule of life.

The European eye is struck in Indian spiritual thought by the Buddhistic and illusionist denial of life. But in itself that was simply one result, in one direction, of a tendency of the Indian mind which is common to all its activities, the impulse to follow each motive, each specialisation of motive even, spiritual, intellectual, ethical, vital, to its extreme point and to sound its utmost possibility. It knew that without a "fine excess" we cannot break down the limits which the dull temper of the normal mind opposes to knowledge and thought and experience, and it had in seeking this point a boundless courage and yet a sure tread.

Yet it is notable that this pursuit of the most opposite extremes never resulted in disorder. In every extreme the Indian spirit seeks for a law in that extreme and a rule, measure and structure in its application.

Besides, this sounding of extremes is balanced by a still more ingrained characteristic, the synthetical tendency, so that having pushed each motive to its farthest possibility the Indian mind returns always towards some fusion of the knowledge it has gained and to a resulting harmony and balance in action and institution.

Mother Durga! Rider on the lion, trident in hand, thy body of beauty armour-clad, Mother, giver of victory, India awaits thee, eager to see the gracious form of thine. Listen, O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest in this land of India. O Mother, India awaits thee...

The mass of Indian action is still at the moment proceeding under the impress of the European motive and method and, because there is a spirit within us to which they are foreign, the action is poor in will, feeble in form and ineffective in results, for it does not come from the roots of our being. Only in a few directions is there some clear light of self-knowledge. It is when a greater light prevails and becomes general that we shall be able to speak, not only in prospect but in fact, of the renaissance of India.

India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident’s success and failure, but still the ancient, immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma.

We do not belong to the past dawns but to the noons of the future.

The Indian Renaissance

The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work. The flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge is the second. An original dealing with modern problems in the light of Indian spirit and the endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society is the third and most difficult. Its success on these three lines will be the measure of its help to the future of humanity.

-Sri Aurobindo

Vitality of India

Let me begin with a prayer that arose long ago from the profoundest depths of the Indian soul and which gives us the formula of the secret of the vitality that one can witness in the history of Indian Culture:

सह नाववतु । सह नौ भुनक्तु । सह वीर्यं करवावहै । तेजस्विनावधीतमस्तु । मा विद्विषावहै । ओउम शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ।।

"Together, may He protect us; together may He possess us; together may we make unto us strength and virility. May our quest be full to us of light and power. May we never envy". (Taittiriya Upanishad)

As this prayer reveals, our vitality proceeds from the protection that we seek from the source of our being for our togetherness; it proceeds from our aspiration for the joy of being possessed by our source in our mutual fellowship; it proceeds from our cooperative effort to increase strength and vitality; it proceeds from our quest for knowledge, wisdom, and consciousness-force; it proceeds from the constant vigilance to be free from envy and hatred. And our constant hymn is that of Peace and Peace again and Peace still again.

At the outset, we may underline the enigma of the unique continuity of our culture and ask as to how we can explain that enigma. There must be a source of that continuity. That source must have been tapped in some mighty moments of our quest, and the waters of the energy must have flowed down mightily like the holy Ganga and must have fertilized the soil of our life so vigorously that our culture has constantly been able to draw upon the waters of that fertility that can replenish us in perpetuity.

A study of Indian history, free from prejudices and narrow frameworks of interpretation, will take us straight to the Veda and the Upanishads that speak to us of the heroic search and attainment by the Rishis of Oneness and unity of existence,- not in mere flights of imagination or philosophical speculations, - but in repeated and verifiable and abiding realizations of knowledge by identity. From then onwards, we find the sense of the Infinite and lofty spirituality pervading the entire atmosphere of the Indian culture, never failing in infusing the needed source of creativity in the later periods of our history. Even when moments and epochs of our history seemed to be threatened and affected by exhaustion, decline or plunge into obscurity and darkness, It was the ancient reservoir of spiritual force that kept our lamp of life burning and imparting to the people the call of awakening and power of rejuvenation. In one word, in “spirituality”, we can sum up the secret source of continuity of our culture over thousands of years, and also of its vitality.

III

The vitality of Indian culture is not the restless fever of turbulent ambition, but the creative outpouring of a quest for the highest and a joy that delights in creative expression in hundred directions and dimensions. In what field has India not dared to venture and attain pinnacles of acquisition, possession and mastery? Ancient India was not only in the first rank of achievement in the field of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, surgery, and all the branches of physical knowledge which were practised in ancient times, but she was also, along with the Greeks, the teacher of the Arabs from whom Europe recovered the lost habit of scientific enquiry and got the basis from which the modern science started. Again, in many directions India had the priority of discoveries, such as- just to cite two examples from many—the decimal notations in mathematics and in the perception that the earth is a moving body,

चला पृथ्वी स्थिरा भाति । (chaļa prithvi sthira bhati)

The earth moves and only appears to be still, said the Indian astronomer many centuries before Galileo. A remarkable feature of the Indian mind was the close attention to the things of life, a disposition to observe minutely its salient facts to systematise to found in each department a science, shastra, well-founded scheme and rule. The life of Indian mind and its vigorous vitality is to be seen not only in its ceaseless quest of spiritual truths and robust philosophical reasonings but also in its aesthetic profoundity and creative output stretching over centuries and over millennia. Inexhaustible vital energy seeking to create massively and minutely is manifest in various forms of Indian art and architecture. In temples and palaces and elsewhere, we find endless expression of Oneness of the infinity, infinite multiplicity which fills Oneness, and the wealth of ornament, detail, circumstance, the infinite variety and repetition of the worlds- not only our world but all the planes,-suggests the infinite multiplicity in the unity of Oneness.

And, again, the Indian ancient and medieval political, administrative, military and economic organisation strikes us as an outstanding achievement.

Along with loftiest spirituality, robust intellectuality and inexhaustible vital pulsation, India developed and perfected a subtle and complex concept of dharma,- as distinguished from religion,-concept of the law of development of life in its self-exceeding normative pursuits. All this speaks not only of vigorous vitality but also of vitality informed of the scrupulous wisdom of equilibrium and mastery. Speaking of the vitality of India, Sri Aurobindo states, and I quote:

“India has not only had the long roll of her great saints, sages, thinkers, religious founders, poets, creators, scientists, scholars, legists; she has had her great rulers, administrators, soldiers, conquerors, heroes, men with the strong active will, the mind that plans and the seeing force that builds... The Rishi in ancient India the outstanding figure with the hero just behind, while in later times, the most striking feature is the long uninterrupted chain from Buddha and Mahavira to Ramanuja, Chaitanya. Nanak, Ramdas and Tukaram and beyond them to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and Dayananda. But there have been also the remarkable achievements of statesmen and rulers, from the first dawn of ascertainable history which comes in with the striking figures of Chandragupta, Chanakya, Ashoka, the Gupta emperors and goes down through the multitude of famous Hindu and Mahomedan figures of the middle age to quite modern times. In ancient India there the life of republics, oligarchies, democracies, small kingdoms of which no detail of history now survives, afterwards the long effort at empire-building, the colonisation of Ceylon and the Archipelago, the vivid struggles that attended the rise and decline of the Pathan and Moghul dynasties, the Hindu struggle for survival in the south, the wonderful record of Rajput heroism and the great upheaval of national life in Maharashtra penetrating to the lowest strata of society, the remarkable episode of the Sikh Khalsa...It was not men of straw or lifeless and willless dummies or thin-blooded dreamers who thus acted, planned, conquered, built great systems of administration, founded kingdoms and empires, figured as great patrons of poetry and art and architecture or, later, resisted heroically imperial power and fought for the freedom of clan or people... The modern Indian revival...is only a repetition of a phenomenon which has constantly repeated itself throughout a millennium of Indian history."¹⁹

There are, indeed, critics who, even while conceding the greatness of Indian culture, are inclined to dispute the magnitude of the vitality of the culture. Their arguments center around the fact that India failed to achieve unity throughout its long history and it was only a foreign power that could affect that unity at a time when the weakness of Indian vitality had become quite evident. It has also been argued that in spite of the vitality of the Indian mind that accounted for multi-sided achievements in spirituality, religion, philosophy, ethics, science, technology and arts and crafts, India could not sustain the force of the vitality, particularly after the twelfth century, and that the preoccupation of India with too much of religion led ultimately to the eclipse of Indian culture as witnessed at the rise of the British rule. Finally, it has also been argued that despite the talk of the Indian Renaissance, the vitality of Indian culture seems to have faded into the background with the impact of the external influence. Indian leadership, it is argued, political or otherwise, has shown sterile imitativeness during the last fifty years, as a result of which the feebleness of Indian culture stands out strikingly, and this may prove ruinous with the increasing march of globalization. There are in these criticisms certain truths but also certain elements of misunderstanding and misreading of Indian history coupled with disabling confusions. We can comment on them here only briefly.

Let us first deal with the question of Indian unity and underline the distinction between the concept of unity and that of uniformity. Indeed, India has never achieved uniformity, since it never endeavoured to pursue the vain idea of unification, as the Romans did, through the process of uniformity—and thus to waste its vital force in an endeavour that inevitably leads to stagnation, fall, decay and death.

India admitted and nursed diversity even while underlining the theme of oneness, not numerical oneness but spiritual oneness. The famous Vedic pronouncement, ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti acknowledges very clearly the idea of Oneness that is consistent with diversity. Uniformity demands mechanical adherence to state-power; unity demands, on the other hand, a more difficult practice of voluntary togetherness. And if there has been one central message of India, it is, as the Veda prescribed right at the beginning of civilization, Samgachchhadhvam, our Samwadadhvam, move together, conduct mutuality through dialogue and agreement. Not imposition from above but assimilation and synthesis from within this has been the method of India. And quite successfully, considering how India dealt with the forces of foreign invasion and with varieties of currents of thought and conflicting creeds and religions. Even in the field of knowledge, India has sought the application of the highest principle of synthesis. And who can deny that the search and achievement of unity demands greater vitality than the search and achievement of uniformity?

We may admit that the political unity of India was secured only under the yoke of the British yoke. But what about cultural unity? And could the British have secured political unity without the unshakeable foundation of the cultural unity that was long established by the Indian genius? We may discern in the quest of Angirasa, Yajnavalkya and Gargi and Maitreyi the birth of the unifying soul of the Indian nation, – the soul of mutuality and unity, the soul of creative force of multi-sided thought, discovery, invention, and art and craft, and the soul that is Mother India described so vividly by Bankim Chandra, mother smiling benignly and fruitfully and flowing rapidly with waters of life and vitality and strength, abalá keno? That soul achieved marvellous union of diverse peoples stretched over as large an area as a continent or a sub-continent.

And even political unity was not absent in the varied periods of Indian History. The idea of Chakravarty was a great political concept hammered out by the ancient Indian polity in order to hold together conflicting centrifugal and centripetal forces. The Maurya Empire and subsequent empires right up to the Moghul Empire were all efficient and prosperous and covered vast areas of India, if not all the parts of the vast country.

Finally, we may have to appreciate the fact that right from early days, India had the intuition of the fact that freedom is the highest value, not only spiritually and morally but even politically, and that political freedom of the individual and the group flourishes most when the units of social life are small. This is the reason why Indian polity encouraged and respected varieties of republics and kingdoms of smaller dimensions at the risk of allowing preponderance of centrifugal forces. In fact, it may be said that the vitality of India has been strengthened throughout the long march of Indian history by the recognition of centrifugal forces and by the constant nourishment of centripetal forces through forms of culture rather than through the yoke of politics or state-power.

Let us now examine the argument regarding the ebb of Indian vitality, which is alleged to have been witnessed from the 12th century onwards. It is true, let us admit, that like every history of culture, India too had periods of tide and ebb. But we should reckon the proportions of ages of history. India’s history had begun much earlier than that of very many nations of the world. In fact, India had lived vigorously for at least three millennia uninterruptedly before the ebb set in the development of Indian culture around the 12th century. But the remarkable fact is that for nearly eight centuries thereafter India continued to struggle with great force, and even when in the 18th century India plunged into obscurity and confusion, Indian culture survived, and within one century it recovered so much of strength so as to usher in a promising period of the Indian renaissance.

We have also to note that the 12th century of Indian history marked the birth or growth of all the modern Indian languages, and all these languages since then have been developing with vigour and strength. The literature produced in these languages is not only massive but also bears a stamp of the renewal of vitality of the people of the different regions of the country.

Again, during this period, even though the Muslim conquest was effected rapidly enough in the North, the South long preserved its freedom. Even after the extinction of the kingdom of Vijayanagar, there was not a long distance of time when the Mahrattas arose and struggled for freedom.

It is also remarkable that, during the same period, consistent with the Indian spirit of assimilation and synthesis, a great effort was made in India to bring about some kind of harmony between two civilisations-one ancient and indigenous, the other medieval and brought in from outside. There was a remarkable attempt to synthesise Hinduism and Islam. Akbar attempted it from the side of Islam; Nanak attempted it from the Hindu side. We have also to note that the Mughal empire was both great and magnificent, and immense political genius and talent was employed in its creation and maintenance. This empire stood high in military and political strength, economic opulence and the brilliance of art and culture.

One of the criteria of the vitality of the country could be the measure of productivity and wealth. From this point of view, the country had reached a peak in the time of Shahjahan comparable to the peak attained under Chandragupta Maurya. Will Durant states: "Shahjahan’s treasury was so full that he kept two underground store rooms, each of some 150,000 cubic feet capacity were filled with silver and gold."²⁰

Thus it can be seen that even in the declining period of India’s culture, India’s vitality showed clear signs of creativity, heroism, economic richness and power to struggle and to survive and to maintain continuity against adverse odds.

We may also note that before the night and temporary end of strength in the 19th century, two remarkable creations embodied the last effort of the political Indian mind to found the foundation of new life under the old conditions. The first was the Maratha revival inspired by Ramdas’ conception of dharma and cast into shape by Shivaji. The second was Sikh Khalsa, which was an astonishingly original and noble creation and its face was turned not to the past but to the future. But the conditions were not then in existence that could have made possible a successful endeavour.

We must admit that during the time when in the 18th century, the country was proceeding towards the night, the majority of Indians had fallen into inertia, but it cannot be said that the reason for this was that India had become too religious. We must make a distinction between religion and spirituality. True spirituality rejects no new light, no added means or materials of our human self-development and Indians of that time had become too inert to admit new light or fresh means of intellectual or spiritual progress. It was increasing loss of true spirituality that can explain that period of the collapse of Indian culture. India deviated into excessive externalism of ceremony rule, routine, mechanical worship, and the public life became most irreligious, egoistic, self-seeking, materialistic. On the other hand, world-shunning asceticism too drew away the best minds who were lost to the society. But the root of the matter was the dwindling of the spirituality, the decline of intellectuality and freedom, the waning of great ideals, the loss of gush of life. All this was a sign of disabling exhaustion of a great and pulsating life-force of a great nation. But as the later history proved, it was only an intermediate period during which the ever-burning light of the Indian spirituality breathed a new force. And when India awoke, there began to develop a high spiritual sense that gave us back the old amplitude of Indian spirituality and inspired us to develop a wider scope, so that every aspect of life was placed on the anvil of spiritual Tapasya. We entered into a promising age of Indian renaissance.

VII

We may now examine the theme of Indian vitality light of the Indian Renaissance, which commenced in right earnest in the later part of the 19th century. And the first remark that we may make is that the real force that broke the night of the 19th century was spiritual. At first, the pioneering leaders found the spiritual light of the ancient Vedanta and they gave birth to Brahmo Samaj; but beyond the Vedanta lies the light and power of the Veda, and Swami Dayananda opened the gates for the new India to breathe once again the vitality of the ancient Vedic Rishis, and this gave birth to Arya Samaj. And overtopping these two great movements, Mother India summarized the entire history of Indian spirituality in the life and sadhana of Sri Ramakrishna, who took the kingdom of heaven by storm, and seizing one yogic method after another with an incredible rapidity returned again and again to the realization and possession of the Spiritual Reality by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of intuitive knowledge. He gave a synthesis not only of the essential spiritual truths contained behind varieties of religions that were born and developed in India but also of religions like Christianity and Islam that were born and developed elsewhere. But this was not all. India’s spiritual recovery was not meant only for India, and Mother India wanted the fruits of that recovery to spread in the world for the upliftment of the entire human race. And this is the work that began when the mighty young monk, Vivekananda, prepared and commissioned by Sri Ramakrishna, delivered the message of the Vedanta to the West. The youthful hermit and robust yogi, the very glance of Shiva, radiated a new vitality and strength and force all electrified by spirituality that is not content to live in world-shunning hill-top, but which bursts out on the dynamism of life in order to lift it up to higher summits. The Indian Renaissance went further on this line of development, and Sri Aurobindo presided the flowing of Indian spirituality into a vast integrality that synthesized the East and the West, and the past and the present in order to open the doors of a great and glorious future both for India and the world. We have been led from the dawns of the past towards the noons of the future.

It is also remarkable that the spiritual force that burst upon India provided the motivating power to the idea and development of Indian freedom struggle. Every great leader of this struggle ‒ whether Bal, Pal and Lal or Sri Aurobindo, whether Ranade Gokhle or Gandhi ‒ was inspired by the reawakened light from the Veda or the Upanishad or the Gita. The moral and spiritual atmosphere of the struggle uplifted increasing masses of people and filled them with new vitality, new inspiration for sacrifice, and new vibration of youthfulness. The attainment of freedom was a splendid boon of the reawakened vitality of India.

The third great achievement of the reawakened vitality of India has been in the fields of poetry, literature, art and science. A new kind of literature, with a distinct spirit and form began to develop under the influence of creative leaders like Bankim and Tagore; Jagdish Chandra Bose, inspired by Vedanta, proved to the scientific world the unity of matter and life and mind; Dr. C.V. Raman’s scientific work was recognized at the international level and was honored, like Tagore’s work, by the award of the Nobel Prize. Groups of young scientists with their programmes of research has come to be counted to be important in the international field of science; and in the field of art the Bengal school recovered the eternal motive of Indian art and its forms began to manifest the intuitive suggestions of the infinite in the finite.

Again, in the field of education, India entered into a great endeavour of radical experimentation, and it took at least five great and novel forms, first, under the inspiration of Dayanand Saraswati, in recovery of the ancient spirit of the gurukul system, second, under the inspiration of Swami Vivekananda, in building new schools for man-making education, third, under the inspiration of Rabindra Nath Tagore, in creating the harmony of spirit and nature and freedom to grow from narrow boundaries into the vastness of universality: fourth, under the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi in seeking the unity of hand, heart and head relevant to the grass-root needs of masses of Indian people, and fifth, under the influence of Sri Aurobindo, in creating a vast programme of integral education for human unity and integral perfection.

In several other fields, ‒ particularly in the field of social reforms, a good deal of work was accomplished during the freedom struggle, and old forms began to crumble under the pressure of the environment created for the emergence of the women power and for the empowerment of weaker sections of the society. There emerged an increasing sense of the necessity of renovation of social ideas and expressive forms awaking to the deeper yet unexpressed implications of the perennial spirit of Indian culture.

VIII

One of the promises of the Indian Renaissance was that India, ‒ Free India, ‒ will play its legitimate role in the neighboring countries and in the world at large, that it will foster unity of South Asia, unity of Asia as a whole and the unity of the world. Efforts in the direction of the fulfillment of this promise have been considerable, and India has shown able statesmanship in contributing to the development of the Commonwealth, in initiating and nurturing the Non-Aligned Movement and in creating and fostering SAARC. India’s contributions to United Nations Organization and its international agencies have also been substantial. In particular, India has stood high in holding up the ideal of peace and brotherhood and in the development of UNESCO’s programme of education of international understanding and culture of peace. India’s recent world Conference on Dialogue of Civilizations is one of the recent proofs of India’s ability to get a Declaration approved unanimously.

There are many other achievements, the list of which cannot be presented here, but there is still something much more that could have been done or which, in any case, should be done, if India is to manifest its supreme vitality not only for the sake of India’s own rejuvenation but also for meeting the expectations of the world from India on account of her long record of achievements in the field of Science right up to Medieval Age and in the field of Spirituality throughout the entire history. What India needs to do now is to come forward to lead the way for the right synthesis of Science and Spirituality.

The propitious fact is that at a global level, in the field of science, momentous developments have occurred during the recent decades. An important result of these developments is the emergence of the theme of Consciousness, ‒ the theme that is at the heart of the Indian vitality. Contemporary findings in this field confirm the perennial theme of Indian wisdom, the theme of the unity of Matter and Mind and the presence of Consciousness as one unifying and underlying reality of the universe. Nothing can be more remarkable and suggestive than the extent to which modern Science confirms, in the domain of Matter, the conception and even the very formulae of language which were arrived at, by a very different method, in the Vedanta; for instance, that Vedantic expression of the Swetaswatara Upanishad which describes things in the cosmos, as one seed arranged by the universal Energy in multitudinous forms.

No more can the mechanist or dualistic conception of the universe hold the scientific field with obligatory force. The advances such as those by Heisenberg, Louise de Broglie, Erwin Schrodinger, David Bohm, Freedman, J.S. Bell, and others have brought to light such a new aspect of reality that the Cartesian and Newtonian concept of the universe can no more be sustained. The latest developments in quantum mechanics, particularly those derived from Bell’s theorem, have obliged the scientists to enquire not only in the mystery of Consciousness but even into the primacy of the unity of Consciousness. Roger Penrose, for instance, in his book “Shadows of the Mind” states:

“The perception and scope of physical laws, as presently appreciated, is extraordinary... Nevertheless, within the possibilities that these laws allow us, we must try to find an opening for a hidden non-computational action that the functioning of our brains must somehow be taking advantage of.... There are reasons for believing that it must be of a particularly subtle and elusive kind. Suffice it to say that we require something essentially different from the pictures that we have been presented with in our physical theories so far, either classical or quantum."

David Bohm, the celebrated Physicist, has also come to accept the inadequacies of the mechanist notions. He points out, and I quote:

“The quantum theory presents, however, a much more serious challenge to the mechanistic order, going far beyond that provided by the theory of relativity... If all actions are in the form of discrete quanta, the interactions between different entities (e.g. electrons) constitute a single structure of indivisible links, so that the entire universe has to be thought of as unbroken whole. In this whole each element that abstract in thought shows basic properties (wave or particles, etc.) that depend on its overall environment in a way that is much more reminiscent of how the organs constituting living beings are related, than it is of how parts of a machine interact”.²²

Bohm has gone far deeper in his analysis of the relationship between Matter and Consciousness, and starting from the Cartesian view of that relationship, he has departed from that view and has concluded that Matter and Consciousness are manifestations of an “implicate order",²³

It has now become clear that the methods that Science employs for its investigations are not adequate for the kind of wholeness that is involved in the implicate order. It is evident that Science is poised for a Great Shift, and if at this stage the Indian methodology of its ancient science of Yoga is brought forward, it will provide invaluable aid for effecting the needed great shift. It is also possible that a new form of Science might emerge, ‒ science that integrates the study of Matter and Consciousness or Spirit. It might also integrate the study of all the universal domains of existence.

This possibility and the practical consequence that might emerge are bound to have important implications for the advancement of the world in the directions that are connected with humanistic goals. And it is in this direction that one can turn to measure the vitality of India. Historians like Basham, Toynbee and Will Durant who have scanned civilizations in their expanding horizons unanimous that the world will gradually turn to India and Indian wisdom, sooner rather than later. Will Durant states, are and I quote:

"It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to us such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all, our numerals and our decimal system. But these are not the essence of spirit; they are trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future.... Perhaps, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit and unifying, pacifying love for all living things”.²⁴

In my view, that moment has arrived, and with the acceleration of the necessity to synthesise Science and Spirituality, India will have to manifest greater vitality than it has done so far, so that it can meet the expectations that this moment embodies.

Fifty years of independence have given us ample proof of the vivid vitality of our country. In every important field, progress has been registered. It is, however, true that much more could have been attained, much greater awakening could have been secured, greater prosperity could have been generated and distributed for the upliftment of all instead of that of selected sections of our society.

We have, however, to realize that right at the moment we attained freedom, our unity was fractured, and the partition has kept us continuously crippled. Our population has grown manifold, and we are now one billion plus, sixth of the world’s population. Wars inflicted by Pakistan on our country and the invasion of China in 1962 afflicted upon us not only major shocks but obliged us to spend huge portions of our scare finances on security and defence. The cult of violence and terrorism, which is today a worldwide phenomenon, has also spread in India, and it has greatly disturbed our internal peace. There are many other similar factors that we can enumerate, but the fact that we have been able to meet the challenges is itself a proof of our vitality, although we should have liked to give a better kind of proof.

It has, however, been argued that the world has during the last few decades rapidly become global, but we have not been able to keep pace with the spread of globalization. It has also been pointed out that India has shown great weakness in reacting to the external influences, which have increasingly poured over our country. It has been contended that India has not shown the capacity to deal with its problems with any kind of originality and that we have betrayed some kind of sterile imitiativeness. We must admit that there is both truth and force in this criticism. It is true that we are getting engulfed by the march of globalisation, and we do not have any original approach to deal with this phenomenon, except to point out the evil of hegemony that it carries in its march and the disastrous consequence it is likely to inflict on our culture. It is also true that we have accepted democracy, and we are quite gratified that our democracy has been vibrant and that we have multiplied democratic institutions in various walks of life. But, impartially speaking, it is true that we have imitated largely the Westminster model as also to some extent the U.S.A. model in developing the forms of our democracy

We have accepted socialism, and we are gratified that we have endeavoured to implement the ideal of equality in various ways; but is it not true that we have remained we largely confined to the foreign models of five-year plans, and governmental control? We have accepted the ideal of development, and we feel happy that we are gradually able to satisfy the standards of development prescribed by the World Bank and similar institutions. But must acknowledge that we ought to have evolved our own criteria of development, and we should have combated forces of consumerism, that we should have advocated sustainable consumption instead of the misconceived idea of sustainable development. We have, indeed spoken of secularism and we feel that it is a matter of proud achievement. But is it not true that we have imported into our polity the western conflict between religion and state in the name of secularism? Is it not true that we have not adequately developed and fostered our own original concept of secularism, which has to be fundamentally spiritual in character? We should have encouraged the unity of religions by combating their exculisivism. Is it not true that in the name of secularism, we have encouraged the loss of dharma, which is a unique concept developed by our Indian culture through the ages which obliges politics to be guided by high principles of ethics and considerations of Lok Samgraha?

There are, indeed, those who believe that India will be greatly profited, if the external influences succeed; for they feel that India will then truly be renewed, and will become modernized, and it will be able to sit with pride in the company of the developed countries. But, those who understand the depth of the truth of India cannot feel reconciled with this attitude. For these so-called progressive and developed countries of the world are themselves experiencing the strangulating effects of uncontrollable mechanization, depersonalization and dehumanization and are looking for the liberating wisdom and knowledge which India possesses in its depth, even though in its outer life, it has still not recovered its inner strength and vitality to the extent that is needed.

The country needs a new polity, a polity of cooperation, unity and integrity; our country needs a new economy, an economy centered upon sustainable consumption, economy of prosperity that is shared by all, prosperity marked by sarvodaya. India has to demonstrate its power of originality in creating new forms of economy, and we can do this if we can recover our deeper self and learn the art of meeting the external influences and employ the processes which are indigenous to our country, namely the processes of selective reception, harmonizing assimilation and uplifting synthesis. In the profound sense developed by India through the ages, the sense of universal brotherhood, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, there is no great distinction between the external and internal; we stand for the idea of the synthesis of the east and the west. In both the East and the West, there is a common aspiration for the individual and collective perfection, and India can receive from the West and give in return all that is valuable in the respective civilizations and which can promote the individual and collective perfection and their ideal synthesis.

Let me add last word. India has manifested inexhaustible vitality through the ages; during the last few centuries, there was exhaustion and even a temporary sleep. India has awakened with renewed energy and vitality. This vitality is not yet in its full bloom, and we need to find ways and means by which India blossoms in its full glory. But the most important instrument for this is education, which India has largely neglected and allowed its development to grow manifold in the image that the British had imprinted upon us during our period of subjection. We have to recover the truths of our national system of education, we have to develop education that is humanistic, education that is integral and which nourishes the physical, the vital force and the metal powers of the students under the guidance of the Spirit.

We have to find ways and means by which the treasures of spiritual knowledge are brought to the door-steps of the students of our country; we have to Irrigate our pursuits of science, technology, philosophy and critical knowledge with the streams of wisdom that are available to us in our heritage, so that while we look forward and work for the future, we ensure that our foundations are well-grounded in all that was noble and great in our past.

Finally, our curriculum has to be recast in such a way that the Indian heritage to which our children have a natural right is transmitted to them in the right perspective, and our curriculum should also provide for a new synthesis relevant to our times, synthesis of the East and the West, synthesis that can sustain and uplift not only India but the whole world.

Our vitality consists in the fact that we can envisage today more and more clearly not only our goal but also the lines of development and that we have the force and energy to build new roads with courage and voluntary optimism. Let us recall, in this connection, the potent words of Sri Aurobindo:

“India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident’s success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, liſting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma."²⁵

Contribution of India to World Civilisation

There is a need to project India’s contributions to world’s civilisations so as to highlight the past, present and future of India.
It is also necessary to underline the need of the recovery of the ancient knowledge that flourished during the period of the Vedic culture and to show how the contemporary emphasis on science is in consonance with the Vedic culture, which was knowledge based. For what we need for moving towards the future successfully, we have to conceive of world culture of the future, which will be knowledge-based and which would be acceptable to the modern scientific mind.

The idea is not to create a museum or to organise an exhibition, but to provide living experience by employing modern technology of visual presentation of a film, which can have five dimensional effect.
Once the basic film is produced, it can also be cast into CD-ROM. The same can also be put in the computer with some additional features so that we can converse with the computer, put questions and receive answers.

III

The first part of the film should highlight Vedic culture and Indus Valley civilisation of ancient India, indicating how the reminiscences of Indus Valley civilisation bring out the state of advanced knowledge in respect of a number of sciences, arts, architecture and engineering and trade.
It may also be highlighted that the Vedic culture looks upon the Veda as book of wisdom and knowledge embodying a holistic vision of Man, Nature and Ultimate Reality.

Development of a number of religions in the world can be traced to the Vedic knowledge.
We can even now see in the words of the founders of religions such as Buddha, Moses, Christ, Mohammed and others who have spoken in their message of the truths, which have been expounded in the Veda.

Vedic culture can be shown to have emphasised the simple fact of human life and its purity and simplicity, where one can show human beings, including prophets and incarnations, have the same origin in mother’s womb and how they return to the mother earth in the dissolution of the body. This should also help to show that the human beings on the earth have inherent oneness and that they are born and leave the world without any labels of religion or race.

In order to demonstrate that Vedic culture was knowledge-based, it may be highlighted that India made original contributions to the development of ancient astronomy, mathematics, medicine and many natural sciences. India’s contributions to the arts and crafts can also be highlighted. Contribution of India to philosophy, ethics, administration and statecraft can also be displayed.
Special emphasis can be on the contributions made by the Upanishads to the entire orientations of India’s development. It can further be shown that the words of Upanishads are to be found in all the religions of the world that developed in course of time in human civilisation.

VII

In tracing the history of Indian religions and also of those of other religions that developed in the world, two important features of Indian religions can be emphasised: (i) this religion did not have any fixed dogma or creed, and it assimilated numerous religions and showed how religious conflicts can be overcome by avoiding exclusivism; (ii) in Indian history, there was no conflict between religion and philosophy and religion and science.
It would also be salutary to show that prophets, incarnations and founders of religions have endeavoured to provide a method or law of life, which can solve the problems of the society in which they lived and flourished.
These religions, however, tended to be institutionalised, and evils of institutionalisation crept into religions with resultant division of camps of religions, which also got split into various sub-sects.
As a result, there is today a serious problem of religious conflict as witnessed in different parts of the world, Ireland, Bosnia, etc.

VIII

There is an urgent need, therefore, to recover the spirit of Vedic culture, which looks upon Nature and Man in terms of universality. Earth, water, fire, air and space have common characteristics and same kind of manifestations all over the world. One cannot speak of anyone of them as something belonging uniquely to one particular religion or to the other. Similarly, the human body and human organs function in the same way universally, and one cannot speak of the principles of life and death except in universal terms.
We have to discover that which is common in humanity and the element of oneness that we find in the world.
Today’s humanity presents a spectacle of conflicts and growing violence. In this context, the message of Vedic culture comes to us with strong emphasis and enables us to transcend conflicts and to live in harmony and peace

A Critic of Mr Archer on Indian Culture

William George Archer (OBE – Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) was born on 1 February 1907, and studied first history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then Hindi, Indian history and law at the School of Oriental Studies in London. He subsequently served in the Indian Civil Service, in Bihar from 1931 until around 1947, when India gained independence.

Books on India by Mr. Archer

Kangra Painting. 1952. Bazaar Paintings of Calcutta: The Style of Kalighat. 1953. Garhwal painting. 1954. Indian paintings from Rajasthan. 1957. The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry. Ethical and religious classics of East and West, 1957. Central Indian Painting. 1958. India and Modern Art. 1959. Indian Painting in Bundi and Kotah. 1959. Indian Miniatures. 1960. Kalighat Drawings. 1962. Paintings of the Sikhs. 1966. Kalighat Paintings: A Catalogue and Introduction. 1971. Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills. London. 1973. The Hill Of Flutes: Life, Love And Poetry In Tribal India: A Portrait Of The Santals. London: 1974.

In order to understand Hinduism properly, two important things have to be emphasized. First of all, we have to appreciate that Hinduism is a non-dogmatic religion always inclined to include all religious and spiritual disciplines. It would have assimilated even Islam and Christianity, but it is Islam and Christianity which have resisted the inclusive process of Hinduism. Secondly, Hinduism not only responds to the supra-rational and rational demands of human nature, but it expands itself increasingly to respond even to the emotional, dynamic, vital, aesthetic and physical demands. In doing so, it respects each individual in his upward movement. Therefore, Hinduism does not provide one uniform system for all but attempts to give to each individual what he needs at his present stage of development and make for his upward and integral movement. This aspect is not sufficiently realized by the western mind which tends to give a uniform frame for all. As a result, it has failed in keeping religion alive. It wants religion to be purified and reformed, but it seeks purification and reform only by means of reason and not by spiritual means. Hinduism is seeking its purity and reforms by adopting spiritual means, and this would seem to be the real strength of Hinduism.

It has been accused that Indian religion lacks ethical content. This accusation is almost monstrously false. If we look for evidence, we shall find that Hindu thought is constantly filled with Dharma. The idea of Dharma is its major chord; Dharma, next to spirituality, is its foundation of life. Every ethical idea has been acknowledged, questioned, experimented upon and given a place in the total scheme of an ascending movement of life. There is also ample evidence that greatest virtues were not only advocated by India but also greatly practiced in older times. In spite of the degeneracy which took place in later periods one can notice a considerable insistence on ethical life throughout the history of India. Some of the many qualities which are greatly emphasized in Indian culture became depressed only when Indian Culture became depressed only when Indian people came to be subjugated and when the freedom was clipped. What is then the reason for it to be accused by the western mind of the want of ethical content? The answer to this question is twofold: first of all, the western mind came to underline that part of Indian teaching which gives greater importance to knowledge than to action. But it did not notice that it has been clearly underlined that one cannot attain to knowledge without attending to the sattwic mentality, which can be cultivated only by pursuing high ethical principles as the Geeta has very well stated, doers of evil cannot find the divine knowledge.

The second reason is that India gives a greater importance to inner motivation that to outer conduct, and Indian thought also recognizes that ethical life has several stages forming a graded path of ascension. In this graded path, ethical laws can be seen to be relative, so that what is ethical at the lower level is surpassed by a higher law which is not imposed upon the lower stage. Thus, for example, Ahmisa, non-violence, is the highest ethical law of Dharma, Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah, but at the same time it gives more importance not to the actual non-killing but to the control of the inner states like hatred and envy which lead to the acts of killing. Moreover, it permits killing, but limits it only to that section of people who are expected to defend the society against the aggressor, against the evil-doer, and even then, that section of warriors are insistently demanded to develop high qualities of mercy, chivalry, respect for the non-belligerent, the weak, the unarmed, the vanquished, the prisoner, the wounded, and the fugitive. The Western mind is not able to appreciate the inwardness of the Indian ethical attitude and its wise relativity which allows each individual to develop gradual levels of ethicality. The western ethicist lays down high standard as the counsel of perfection, but it does not have the plasticity to admit stages of progress and approval of lower stages of achievement of ethicality. But when Indian culture is rightly understood, it will become clear that Hinduism with its magnificent examples of all sides of the Dharma, Jainism with its austere ideal of self-conquest, and Buddhism with its high and noble ethics are not inferior in ethical teaching and practice to any religion and system, but rather take the highest rank and have had the strongest effective force.

Having considered and seen that these criticisms of Hinduism are either false or invalid, we can now turn to consider the farther yet common charge. This charge is the damaging accusation that Indian culture depresses the vital force, paralyses the will, gives no great or vigorous power, no high incentive, no fortifying and ennobling motive to human life. It is to this accusation that we shall next turn to.

RATIONALISTIC CRITIC

It is always useful to understand our own culture from the point of view of the alien because that may give us a fresh point of view and material for self- introspection. But the alien point of view can be that of sympathy and even of self-identification or of a dispassionate critic or even of a hostile critic. From the first kind of critic, we get a revelation of our ideal aspects or even of our own soul, even though it might not bring out adequately our imperfections. The second kind of critic may give us some kind of a balanced view of our merits and demerits and even though he might miss much that belongs to our soul, his criticism might give us fresh estimate from which we can learn a great deal. The third kind of critic may also help us because sometimes we need to look at ourselves quite harshly and our imperfections may come to our light more vividly. We can also learn to appreciate opposite stand points and get at the source of opposition. Wisdom, insight and sympathy grow by this kind of criticism.

The book on India written by Mr. Archer cannot come even in the category of hostile criticism. For hostile criticism must at least be a criticism and not a slander or false witness, — which is the case with Mr Archer’s criticism. It is true that this book is a wholesale and unsparing condemnation. And if this were the case, it would have been really useful because we could have had at one place a totality of a point of view. But Mr. Archer’s book is vitiated in its hostile criticism by three important factors.

Firstly, this book has an ulterior motive, a political motive, to prove at any cost India’s backwardness so as to suggest that India does not deserve self-government.

Secondly, this book, instead of being a book of criticism is actually a literary journalistic pugilism. It is addressed to an ignorant audience and has, therefore, the liberty of making misstatements and exaggerations in the hope of convincing that audience how he is able to make a living adversary prostrate and defeated. There is no sanity, justice or measure and like a boxer, the critic displays the appearance of staggering and irresistible blows. All this is not only occasional, — if it was occasional, it would be sometimes permissible and even interesting and amusing. Actually, the critic is found to be beating about the bush, and this brings us to the third defect of criticism.

And this third point is that the critic knew absolutely nothing for the most part about the things on which he is passing confident damnatory judgments. This book, therefore, can be regarded as a journalistic fake. Without knowing metaphysics, he has passed judgments on Indian Philosophy; without knowing comparative religion and claiming to be a rationalist, he regards religion as error, and advises Hinduism to follow in the footsteps of Christianity mainly because, as he really points out, Christians seriously don’t believe in their religion. Even admitting his incompetence about music, he places Indian music to a position of helpless inferiority. In the fields of Arts and Architecture, his judgments betray narrowness. Although Drama and Literature are supposed to be his speciality, his arguments are so superficial that one wonders how he got the reputation of a literary critic.

It is useful to turn to a foreign critic in order to have a comparative study, — this is even indispensable. But if one wants to have a definitive view, one should turn to those who have authority in regard to the subject matter. For example, in order to obtain judgment of Indian philosophy, one should not go to Mr. Archer or Dr. Gough who know very little of philosophy, but one should turn to Emerson or Schlegel or Nietzsche or even to Cousins and Schopenhauer.

In the matters connected with religion, one should not go to Begbie or to a European atheist and rationalist, but to somebody like Tolstoi or else one could even turn to a cultured Christian missionary who may have an inevitable bias but who will not dismiss religion as a barbarous superstition. In the matters of Arts, one should consult some recognized authority like Ferguson or to critics like Mr. Havell, or else to Okakura or Mr. Laurence Binyon. In the matters of Literature there is hardly anyone who has any firsthand knowledge of Sanskrit and Prakrit tongues. Hence, it is difficult to turn to any Western critic. But even then one could turn to Goethe, whose epigram on Shankutala is enough to show the worth of Indian writing.

There is still a purpose in turning to a critic like Mr. Archer. But that purpose is greatly overshadowed by the absurdity of the criticisms that Mr. Archer advances against Indian Culture. This absurdity is visible when he describes one of the postures of meditation as though according to the Indian view that posture itself was the best way of ascertaining the truth of Universal. This absurdity is once again exhibited when he pronounces that there is no real morality in Hinduism and that Indian Psychology is gloomy and easily inclined towards whatever is monstrous and unwholesome. These absurdities and falsehoods lead us to conclude that truth speaking is not one of the ethical virtues and in any case need not be a part of rationalist criticism of religion.

According to Mr. Archer, there is no real morality in Hinduism. This criticism is blatantly based on untruth, on something that is contrary to facts. But Mr. Archer contradicts himself and pays a grudging tribute on the altar of truth. He proceeds to say that Hinduism talks too much of righteousness and it has many admirable ethical doctrines. Having admitted this truth, he complains that Hinduism is illogical. Why? Because it ought not to be ethical; its presence does not suit Mr. Archer’s thesis. Such is the irrationality of Mr. Archer who claims to be a champion of rationalism.

Consider, for example, Mr. Archer’s objections to Ramayana. He argues that Rama and Sita are much too virtuous. Rama is too saintly for human nature, and therefore, not relevant to humanity. But is it true? Is Rama not like Christ or St. Francis, who are admittedly in Mr. Archer’s view not beyond the pale of human nature? Mr. Archer then proceeds to point out that Sita is so excessive in her virtue as to verge on immorality, a statement that verges on being idiotic.

In spite of all this, if all that Mr. Archer had to say was also deplorable, one would have left Mr. Archer with only a contemptuous silence as a sole possible reply. But fortunately, all Mr. Archer’s criticisms are not so deplorable. Although he writes crudely, he still expresses with sufficient accuracy the feeling of recoil of the average occidental mind when he first comes into contact with the unique characteristic of Indian culture.

It is this feeling of recoil of the average occidental mind, which needs to be understood so that we can find out its value.

For it is through the average mind that we get best of the root of psychological differences. It enables us to diminish the force of the prejudices or to reconcile the opposites. It is in the average mentality that we have a better chance to deal with this kind of a problem. In this Archer helps us admirably.

Mr. Archer represents an average and typical occidental mind, which may be well educated but without genius and riddled with rigidity, but capable of giving an appearance of weight. This is, in fact, the mind and standpoint of an average Englishman. In another example of the same average mentality, which is, however, an appearance lifted up by the crude and barbaric genius is that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling who was led to affirm the permanent incompatibility of the East and the West. Why antagonism arises in the mind of the average occidental critic can be seen through writings of men like Mr. Archer and Mr. Rudyard Kipling and this study could be quite interesting and illuminating for our true purpose.

It may be argued that it would not be rewarding to study the criticisms of Indian culture advanced by rationalistic thinkers like Mr. Archer or Mr. Rudyard Kipling, particularly when they have political bias and when their mentality represents only one of the recent phases of Europe, and that, too, a phase which is already passing away with the advent of much more recent trend, which is not so unsympathetic.

The answer to this argument is that that particular phase, which Mr. Archer and Mr. Rudyard Kipling represent is likely to remain for quite some time in a condition among the largest bulk of people of Europe who belong to the average mentality, and it is that mentality which gives us the best opportunity to bring to us, when examined, the real cause of the misunderstanding between the East and the West. This mentality is not like that of an ancient Greek which is in a certain sense and in a certain direction nearer to the India mind, and this is shown by the fact that men like Pythagoras or Alexander or Menander could understand India with a greater sympathy. It is, therefore, best to turn to the rationalistic occidental mind in its average journalistic mode of superficial thinking; for then we shall get the direct point of encounter with the source of opposition of the average European against the Indian. It is there in its very instinct that will be revealed how and when the Indian approach to life creates resistance and misunderstanding. That mind may not be fully equipped with full information or intelligent study, but it will have sureness of instinct and its action will reveal those things, which are alien to its mental outlook.

The fact that Mr. Archer begins his attack by making religion and philosophy as the principal target shows that he has been able to perceive that since these two are essentials of Indian culture, once they are demolished, he would have succeeded in demolishing the whole theme of Indian culture.

Actually, every culture has three aspects: Upward will, ideal and thought turned upon the ideal; second, creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis and imagination; and thirdly, practical and outward formulation. These three are represented, respectively, by (1) religion and philosophy; (2) Art, poetry, literature; (3) Society, politics and outward frame of external life.

These three together give the totality of the culture, and in judging a culture, one has to discern what has been the main preoccupation and in what way it has been expressed. In Indian civilization, religion and philosophy have been the main preoccupation, as it has been of the more developed Asiatic people. But in India, this preoccupation has been extraordinary and its pervasiveness has been thoroughgoing. For this reason, Indian civilization has been described as Brahminical civilization. But there has been no domination of the priest in this culture, although in some lower aspects of the culture, priestly mind has been too prominent. As a result, although the priest had no hand in shaping the great lines of the culture, it has been shaped by the philosophic thinkers and religious minds. A prominent aspect of Indian culture has been the development of a class whose business was to preserve the spiritual tradition, knowledge and sacred laws of the race. That this class could succeed in this task for thousands of years and yet did not come to monopolize shows a special characteristic of Indian culture. The important fact that emerges is that Indian culture has been throughout a spiritual, and inward looking, religio-philosophical culture, and that everything else has been derived from this central peculiarity; even external life has been subjected to it.

Mr. Archer attacks Indian religion and philosophy unsparingly. He may show sympathy or concessions in respect of other aspects of Indian culture, but he shows no concessions in respect of Indian religion and philosophy. He does not want India even to claim that it has been religious and philosophical. For he knows that if that claim is conceded, India will have a right to tell the critic to demand from him an effort to rise up to its heights, in the domains of religion and philosophy, and then to come forward to advocate whatever he wants to profess. Therefore, in order to escape this situation, Mr. Archer simply announces that India has no religion and India has no philosophy that its so called religion is an irrational animistic cult of monstrosity and that Indian philosophy is unspiritual. Indeed, in this effort, he lands himself in a paradoxical absurdity and inconsistency which destroys his case by sheer overstatement.

Even then, from whatever Mr. Archer has argued, two important issues emerge:

(1) Which is better as a leader of mankind — spiritual and religio-philosophical life or the rationalistic and external view of life?

(2) If spiritual conception of life has value and power to lead mankind, the second question is whether India has developed its culture under this conception to its best possible degree and whether it is most helpful to the growth of humanity towards its highest level?

The western civilization has been developed and shaped by the vitalistic rational idea. It is true that during the Greek period of Greco-Roman culture, a small class of people developed a high culture of thought. It is also a fact that when the West was invaded by the Eastern spiritual religion and philosophical conception, the West rejected these invading forces and thrust them into a corner. As a result, the western religion has been the religion of life, of earth and terrestrial humanity; its idea has been of intellectual growth, vital efficiency, physical health and enjoyment, a rational social order.

Consequently, when the Western mind is confronted by Indian culture, it feels an automatic repulsion. It is unable to understand different ideas and forms of Indian culture and feels in them unfamiliarity, strangeness, irrationality, abnormality and plethora of unintelligible thoughts, which, again, bear the appearance of the supranatural and of falsehood. Everything there seems to be of the wrong shape. If the western point of view looks at it with the eyes of the old orthodox Christianity, Indian culture appears as a thing of hell, and abnormal creation of demons. If it looks with the modern orthodox rationalistic eyes, he feels that culture to be a nightmare, not only irrational, but antirational. Even those who are moderate, who want to avoid an extreme attitude, find Indian culture to be incomprehensible and distasteful.

In any case, to the average occidental mind, everything seems in Indian culture to be a repellent confusion, ‒ Indian philosophy, Indian art, Indian society. Even when this view has undergone some modifications recently, it still subsists. And it is that which constitutes the foundation of Mr. Archer’s attack.

Fundamentally, the criticism of the western mind represents natural antagonism of the rationalized, vital and practical intelligence against a culture which subordinates reason to a supranatural spirituality. It cannot appreciate the close connection that exists in India between philosophy and religion which are truly her true soul. Indian philosophy supports the knowledge of the spirit and inspires the pursuit of the aim which Indian religion lays down as the supreme goal of existence. On the other hand, Indian religion attains sublimity from the spiritual philosophy which supports it.

If we ask as to how Mr. Archer expresses his antagonism to Indian culture, it can be summarized in three statements of accusations. Firstly, he points out that Indian philosophy is too philosophical. Secondly, the metaphysical philosophy of India is too metaphysical, and that metaphysics in any case is a worthless thing. And, thirdly, he argues that Indian philosophy, with its pessimism, asceticism, with its theory of karma and reincarnation discourages and even kills the personality and the will-power. And, if we study these criticisms one by one, it will be clear that they are not dispassionate and that they are only the exaggerated expressions of a mental dislike and a fundamental difference of temperament and standpoint.

It honors philosophers but allows their works to remain untouched except by a few minds of exceptional turn. Plato, of course, had declared that philosophers must be the right rulers and best directors of the society, but the west has looked upon this declaration as the most fantastic and unpractical of notions. On the other hand, the Indian mind has always looked upon the Rishi, the thinker, the seer of spiritual truth as the best guide not only in the domains of religion, morality, but also in the domain of practical life. Even today anyone who can give a spiritual truth which helps life and its activities is readily regarded as a Rishi.

The Indian mind derives its guidance for life from the ultimate truths of existence. To the European mind, the ultimate truth are not really relevant to life as they are regarded more often truths of the pure reason, which is abstract and remote from life. These truths of the pure reason are remote from mind, life and body which alone can provide verifying "tests of values". That is the reason why Mr. Archer considers all philosophy as speculation and act of guessing, and reproaches Indian mind for taking philosophical speculations seriously. This, he feels, is quite unspiritual because it seems to mistake groping for seeing and guessing for knowing, whereas it might appear that for him "spirituality" consists in taking physically sensible as the only knowable and in taking the knowledge of the body as if it is the knowledge of the soul and the spirit. Mr. Archer is bitterly sarcastic over the idea that philosophy and yoga are the best ways to know the Universe. Even though his descriptions of Indian philosophy are gross misrepresentations, they do indicate the general attitude of the normal positivist mind of the occident.

Mr. Archer is evidently wrong in labelling Indian philosophy as speculative; for Indian philosophy itself abhors speculation; it insists on testing its conclusions on the anvil of experience. The western mind takes pride in applying its method of verification on the anvil of experience, experimental analysis, synthesis, reason, intuition. But these are the very tests that India has been insisting upon in regard to all its thinking and all its body of knowledge. The only difference is that whereas the west is limited only to the scrutiny of physical nature or the everyday tests of our surface psychology, India has an expanded scope which covers the truths of the soul and spirit, and therefore it refers for verification to deeper psychological and spiritual experience. The very thing that Mr. Archer invites us so pressingly to abandon, namely, yoga, it is itself a well tested method of verification to which Indian philosophy always turns for ultimate support for its conclusions, so that philosophy may not remain speculative in character.

To Mr. Archer and to the minds that are like that of Mr. Archer, facts and ideas which are a part of yogic knowledge and relationship between religion, philosophy and yoga lie beyond the narrow range and fall outside their entire arc of knowledge. But even if they could come under their preview, they would reject them, and in this rejection, the average western mind will fully concur. The notion of yoga, of spiritual experience, of reconciliation, between religion and science, between philosophy and science, between science and spirituality, — all these notions seen to that mind absurd and incomprehensible. The positivist mind of the west regards Indians and Theosophists and Mystical thinkers as a disreputable clan, and it would like to bundle their ideas as a bunch of hieroglyphs, which are entirely undecipherable. This positivist mind can understand dogma, priesthood even Bible, even though it may dismiss them; but the idea that dogma can be substituted by a verifiable statement of spiritual experience, which can also be reconciled with psychological experience and scientific truths, and which can even provide a constructive method of self-perfection, — this is rather baffling, even offensive to the average positivist mind of the west. For in the west, science and philosophy have quarreled with each other, science and religion have quarreled with each other, even philosophy and religion have quarreled with each other. Indeed, they co-exist in Europe, but they are not a happy family, and they live in an atmosphere of civil war.

It is not surprising that positivist mind of the west which lives in that atmosphere of civil war should feel a sense of shrinking from the Indian thought where there has been a harmony between religion and philosophy and yoga which is based on systematized well-tested psychological experience. It is bound to dismiss that tradition of Indian thought so that it can live in peace of mind with its self-satisfied attitude. Unfortunately, this peace of mind is bound to be greatly disturbed by the recent trends which are now developing in the west, and which are coming nearer to the Indian thought and Indian way of thinking, which to Mr. Archer appears to be so monstrous.

III

The criticism that has been so far made by Mr. Archer has really no sharp edge; in fact, it turns against the critic. Indian culture, by placing high value on philosophy and by establishing its religion upon spiritual and psychological experience stands out as a supreme part of the highest type of civilization. Indian culture in this respect does not need to abase itself before western positivism or even before the ancient achievements of rational enlightenment or the modern achievements in the field of its scientific thought and technology. At the most, it can be said that Indian culture is different, but it is certainly not inferior; on the contrary, its motive and its spiritual nobility constitute for it a distinct element of superiority.

It is necessary to stress the superior elements of Indian culture, because the critics take advantage of two extraneous circumstances to create a prejudice and confuse the real issue. The first circumstance is that India is today lying prostrate and in the dust, and it is easy to argue that materially India has ended in a great defeat and downfall, although in reality it is only a temporary phase. The assailants can afford to show India a sick and wounded, although she is really a lioness, but only caught in the net of the hunters. Because of the temporary decline of today, they can try to persuade the world that this lioness had never any strength and virtue in her. Today they stand with their triumph of reason and science, since their success is worshiped by cultured human beings in an unprecedented manner. The second circumstance, which is favorable to them, is that they happen to represent India to the world at a time when her civilization, after at least two thousand years of the most brilliant and many sided activity, has lost for a time everything except two things: memory of her past and a religious spirit which has always been living even though for a long time it was depressed and obscured, and which has now begun to revive-strongly.

The question is as to why Indian culture has failed and fallen into a state of eclipse, even though it may be temporary. This question can be touched upon separately. For the present moment, however, it may simply be said that a culture should not be judged merely because there has been a failure in material terms. Take, for example, the instance of Greece which failed and fell by the invasion of militarist Rome. Does it prove that philosophy, aesthetics, poetry and intellectuality of Greece were devoid of value? And does it mean because Rome triumphed and conquered, Rome had a greater civilization and higher culture? Let us take another example, ‒ the instance of Judea. It had developed a remarkable religious culture, but the Jewish State was destroyed. Does it mean that the religious culture of Judea is lessened by that destruction? The Jewish people later on showed a great commercial capacity during their long period of dispersion. But does it mean that that commercial capacity has a greater value than the value of ancient religious culture? Both Greece and Judea stand out in their respective fields for their achievements in the field of the mind and heart, inspite of their failure. Therefore, while judging Indian culture, the value of its spirituality stands by its lofty and multi-sided achievements and should not be adversely judged simply because that culture lies today so low.

At the same time, it may be admitted, and this has always been admitted by Indian culture that material and economic prosperity are a necessary part of the total effort of the human civilization, even though they are not its highest or most essential parts. And, again, if India is to be judged from that point of view, it must be asserted that India can claim equality in respect of both material capacity and prosperity with any ancient and medieval country. It may even be added that no people before modern times had reached such higher peaks of achievements as India had achieved in the domains of Commerce, splendour and social organization. This is a historical fact, and to deny that fact will only prove a singular prejudice and an imaginative misreading. There was a time when the west used to stigmatize the prosperity of Asia and of India as a sign of barbarism, because at that time it was less opulent. Ironically, circumstances are strangely reversed. That less opulent west has truly become opulent and has also truly become barbaric. But that opulent barbarism points to the nakedness of India and a squalor of her poverty and argues that these are the proof of the worthlessness of a culture.

The evidence of the greatness of India’s ancient and medieval achievements in all domains of practicality and materiality is indubitable, and it can contradict those critics who are merely ignorant or who want to criticize for the sake of journalistic or political interest. That there was an element of failure and defect cannot be doubted; that element was unavoidable because the totality of the problem of India was very large in its scale, and the conditions of those times were not favorable to avoid that failure. But would it be justified to exaggerate that failure and count it against the civilization? To do so, would be a singular severity of criticism, and if such severity were applied to other civilizations, hardly any civilization could survive in regard to its claims of greatness or success.

It is true that in the end, there has come about a great failure; but that failure has been due to the decline of her culture, and it is not a result of its most valuable elements. The essential elements get eclipsed in due course of time, but that cannot be regarded as a disproof of their original value. Indian civilization must be judged mainly by the culture and greatness of its millenniums, not by the ignorance and weakness of a few centuries.

A culture must be judged, first, by its essential spirit; second, it must be judged by its accomplishments, and, lastly, by its power of survival and its power of renovation. In all these three respects, Indian culture emerges with a high record of success. Because there is at present a temporary decline, the hostile witness refuses to see its power of survival and renovation. But the fact is that Indian civilization is now alive, its constant habit of survival and adaptation is again at work; it is not merely defensive, ‒ not any longer, but boldly aggressive. Not mere survival, but victory and conquest are the promise of its future.

Mr. Archer denies the lofty and great aim of Indian civilization, ‒ and that does not really matter because it can easily be seen that it arises from ignorance and prejudice. But he also questions its leading ideas, its practical life-values, its efficacy and character. If we ask as to what is the root of this criticism, we shall find that it arises from the positivist mind which is attached to the normal values of life, and it cannot enter into a true understanding of a different kind of a point of view that looks beyond to something greater, eternal and infinite.

Take, for instance, the criticism that India has no spirituality and that India has succeeded in killing the germs of all sane and virile spirituality. Evidently, this surprising criticism springs from a view of spirituality or the use of the word spirituality which has nothing to do with what should really mean by the word spirituality. The true meaning of spirituality is that it is an aspiration to go beyond body, life and mind, contact with the inner soul and spirit and union with the eternal, which can liberate the soul in man from its bondage to the lower parts of the being. That is how the Indian thinking has always conceived of spirituality.

But the positivistic critic gives the name of the spirit to some high passion and the effort of the emotions, will and reason, ‒ not directed to the infinite but to the finite. To him, idealism of Homer that burns with heart and suffering is sane and virile spirituality. For him, the calm and compassion of Buddha or the meditation on the eternal or the knowledge of the sage and rapture of the saint and the heroism of the Karma yogin which is raised above egoistic desire into the divine and universal will, these things which India values most and which can be attained only by great effort of will and thought, are not sane and virile.

To the western rationalist and positivist, Homer, Shakespeare, Raphael, Spinoza, Kant, Charlemagne are to be regarded as typical examples of spirituality, not Buddha or Christ, or Chaitanya or St. Francis or Ramakrishna. This is like saying, in the artistic field, that Vanban, Pestalozzi and some other artists were true heroes of artistic creation, instead of Vinci, Angelo, Shakespeare or Rodin. This brings out very clearly the oppositions of the standpoints and we begin to understand the inwardness of the difference between the west and India.

The western criticism emphasizes volitional individuality, and it does not understand when Indian culture speaks of transcendence of individuality; it thus misunderstands and presents only one side of the Indian mind and presents also false notions of pessimism, asceticism,, karma and reincarnation as though they constitute the whole Indian metaphysics and philosophy. Its criticisms are often based upon ignorance, and it misleads or puts aside the real evidence. At a certain time, this criticism had even managed to influence the mind of educated India. It is, therefore, best to present the true picture of Indian philosophy, Indian spirituality and their effects on life and on the achievements in various domains of thought, practical endeavor and organization of life.

It can at once be affirmed that Indian philosophy has never prevented the study of physical nature. To argue otherwise is to state a gross unfact and to ignore the magnificent history of Indian civilization. India was in the first rank in Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Medicine, Surgery, all the branches of physical knowledge which were practised in ancient times. In fact, India was, along with the Greeks, the teacher of the Arabs; and it is the Arabs from whom Europe recovered the lost habit of scientific enquiry; it was only then that Europe got the basis from which modern science started. In many directions India was forerunner in the field of discoveries, such as those of decimal notation of mathematics or the perception of the moving earth in the field of Astronomy. Indian mind was encouraged to study and observe minutely the multiplicity of things of life, and this had given rise to systematized observations so as to find in each department a science, shastra. This can be regarded as a good beginning of the scientific tendency as opposed to unsubstantial ethereal metaphysical speculation.

It is true that Indian science stopped developing rather abruptly somewhere near the 13th century. It was followed by a period of darkness and inactivity and this prevented it from proceeding forward or sharing the development of modern scientific knowledge. But this was not the result of metaphysical thinking. As long as metaphysics was alive and was growing, science, too, was alive and developing. Actually, soon after the cessation of the growth of Indian science, Indian philosophy, too, ceased to develop.

It is true that Indian metaphysics did not depend on the truths of physical nature for understanding the truths of ultimate existence. This is where Indian metaphysics differed from modern philosophy. The Indian philosophy founded itself upon the truths of the experimental psychology and on a profound psychic science. But this also required a study of mind, and since mind is a part of nature, it depended upon the study of this point of nature. India’s success in regard to psychological knowledge was greater than in physical knowledge. This was inevitable because it was nearer to the spiritual truth of existence which has been India’s principal field of seeking.

It is also true that Indian culture established a greater harmony between philosophical truth and truth of psychology and religion than the harmony that could be established between philosophical truth and truth of physical nature. But this was because physical science had nowhere in the world arrived at that time at the great universal generalizations on the basis of which a synthesis of philosophical truth and truth of physical nature can be forged. And yet, it is a remarkable fact that from the earliest thought of the Vedas, the Indian mind had recognized the operation of the same general laws in all the three fields of existence, spiritual, psychological and physical. Indian thought has discovered right from early times the universal presence of life; it had also affirmed the evolution of the soul in Nature in a graded manner from the vegetable and the animal to the human form. It is only now that the modern science is re-affirming from its own side certain truths of this knowledge of evolution. Surely, these things could have never resulted if Indian metaphysics was barren and empty or if Indian thinkers and scientists were bovine navel-gazing dreamers.

It is simply a misrepresentation to say that Indian culture denies all value to life and terrestrial interests. To admit the adverse comments of the European mind in this regard, would amount to reducing Indian Philosophy to a mere formulation of the Nihilistic school of thought or the Illusionistic school of thought. The real fact is that from the ancient times, India has founded its culture upon four human interests, namely — Kama, Artha, Dharma, and Moksa, meaning thereby — desire and enjoyment, next, material, economic, and other aims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct and the right law of individual and social life, and lastly, spiritual liberation. And it was the function of the culture to lead these four elements of life in man and to build some kind of harmony of these forms and motives. Except in a very few cases, fullness of life was regarded to be a necessary precondition of the surpassing of life. So, it is a misstatement to say that Indian culture insists on the unimportance of the life of the moment, As such, India did not advocate a general rush to the cave and the hermitage.

If we look at the Indian literature, we shall clearly find that it was characterized by symmetry of life and vividity of life. It is true that some philosophical and religious writings were devoted to the withdrawal, but even then these are not as a rule contemptuous of value of life.

Undoubtedly, Indian mind has laid a great stress on spiritual liberation but this was not the only thing to which importance was given. It looked equally at ethics, law, politics, society, the sciences, the arts and crafts, rather everything that appertains to human life. Even if we take only one example, namely, great treatise of Sukraniti, we shall find that it was a fine monument of politics and administrative genius. If we come to Indian arts, we find that it was also devoted as much to the court, and city and to cultural ideas as to the temples. In the field of education, it can be said emphatically that Indian education of women as well as of men was much more may-sided and comprehensive than any system of education before modern times. To prove this, we have strong evidence in our hands which might satisfy the positivist European mind.

It is also a living fact that spiritual life to the Indian mind was a nobler thing than the life of external power and enjoyment. The soul that lives in God is more perfect than the soul that lives only in outward mind. This is the cardinal point where the difference between the east and the west occurs. The West has acquired the religious mind. It has not possessed it by nature, whereas India has constantly believed in the existence of other worlds behind of which the material world is only the antechamber. India has always seen a self within us, greater than the mental and vital self, greater than the ego. But it does not mean that Indian mind has neglected human life. It is true that ancient Indian Aryan has placed spirituality on the highest pedestal; on the other hand, it recognised other human possibilities too. This is shown by the fact that we have in Indian system four Varnas and four orders of life, which shows that Indian culture was not deficient of other human possibilities. But with the advent of Buddhism in India and its exaggerated and enormous extension to ascetic ideals, the balance of the four orders was upset. From the whole system of these four orders, consequently, only two orders were left: life of the householder and that of the ascetic, nothing in between. Buddhism by its tense exaggeration and its hard system of opposites, in the end weakened the life of Indian society. But this was not the only aspect of Buddhism. It too had another side and that of action and creation, which gave a new light, new life, and new ideal power to life.

Then came the illusionism of Shankara, with the influence of which life was depreciated too much as an unreality and ultimately not worth living. But this dogma was not universally accepted, nor admitted without a struggle. Shankara was even denounced as a masked Buddhist.

The later Indian mind came to give a great importance to the idea of Maya, but popular thought and sentiment was never wholly shaped by it. In the meanwhile, religions which see in life a play of God, gained a great prominence. The educated Indian mind only recently has reasserted Shankara’s Mayavada and has started considering it as the one to be the highest thing, if not the whole of Indian Philosophy. But against this tendency there has arisen another powerful tendency and that of not replacing spirit by life and life by spirit, but towards a spiritual possession of mind, life and matter. However, it is true that the ascetic ideal of Hinduism which was at one time very prominent and was the spine of life mounting into the eternal existence, tended to crush the infrastructural edifice of life.

But here also we should get the right view, away from all exaggeration and false stress. Mr. Archer’s allegation against Indian belief in Karma and re-incarnation is that these are anti-vital elements, a view, which is totally ridiculous, totally preposterous. He further argues that it teaches the unimportance of life and escape from life. This is also a misrepresentation. In fact, the doctrine of Karma and re-incarnation preaches that the soul has a past and a future. Its past helps us in forming its present and shaping its future. As such, there is nothing in this doctrine which depresses the importance of present life; on the contrary, this doctrine gives utmost importance to action; the reason is that it only determines the immediate future but also subsequent future.

No doubt, if present life is considered as only an ephemeral moment without any past and future, it certainly results in attributing to the present moment an exclusive importance. But this view will confine human soul only in the prison of that moment. It may give a feverish intensity to action, but it is hostile to calm, joy and greatness of the spirit. Certainly, the idea that our present suffering is a result of our past actions leads us to accept our present condition with greater ease and quietude and resignation. And it may cause a quietistic fatalism in a time of great national weakness; this may lead to an extinction of fire of the endeavor. But in the records of the most rigorous past of Indian culture, we do not find quietistic fatalism, but the note of action, of tapasya.

The doctrine of rebirth and Karma was given another turn in Buddhism, where the message was that of succession of rebirth as a chain of Karma from which the soul must escape into the eternal silence. This has strongly affected Hinduism but whatever is depressing in it doesn’t necessarily follow from the doctrine of rebirth; it is a result of other elements which have been stigmatized as an ascetic pessimism by the vitalistic thought of Europe.

Element of pessimism is not peculiar to Indian mind. It was prevalent all ancient civilizations. The cultures, which lived long, enjoyed much, experienced much, finally found that life was full of sufferings and that all is vanity and vexation of the spirit and there is nothing new in the world. It is nothing but pessimism. European pessimism was so great that it never expected any joy here except temporarily hope beyond. The concept of the medieval European religion regarding eternal hell waiting for man beyond the grave has an element of pain and terror alien to Indian mind. This is the mind of ascetic pessimism, which Europeans possessed.

Indian mind believes also in the suffering of the world, but it believes that it can be got rid of by spiritual peace and ecstasy. We can cite a few examples to prove this. Buddhistic teachings laid a great stress on impermanence of the world and pain and suffering in the entire universe. But this can be overcome if we achieve the highest spiritual goal ‒ the Nirvana, which is considered as the only state of ultimate calm and joy, open for everybody, not where heavenly joy is reserved only like in Christianity for a few individuals. Even Shankara’s illusionism preached not a gospel of sorrow, but the final unreality of worldly joy and grief and the whole worldly life. It does admit the validity of life and allows its values to those who dwell in the ignorance; it places before man the possibility of a great effort. Apart from illusionism, Indian mind has accepted life as a game of God and it sees beyond this life real happiness and joy, nearness and ecstasy in the arms of God. A luminous ascent into godhead was always held to be a consummation well within man’s grasp. This cannot be called pessimism.

Another allegation of Mr. Archer against Indian culture is that it is full of asceticism. This fact is also misstated. Truth is that no great culture can be sustained without the element of asceticism in it. It means self-denial and self-conquest by which man represses his lower impulses and rises to greater and greater heights of his nature. Indian asceticism is a noble effort towards a higher joy, not a mournful gospel of sorrow. Only a human mind ensnared or beset by vitalistic desire for pleasure and restlessness may not be able to appreciate the greatness and nobility of asceticism.

But, at the same time, it must be admitted that there were exaggerations in the ascetic effort of India. No doubt, asceticism did become self-torture, a crude repression of the nature, a tired flight from existence or an indolent avoidance of the trouble of life and weak recoil from the effort demanded of our manhood. These things are inevitable when the effort is prescribed not to a few individuals but to large sections of people. We do not consider asceticism as the true solution of the problems of life, but it can be said firmly that the effect that its exaggeration had in India, a nobler spirit behind them than the vitalistic exaggerations.

Finally, it can be said that Indian spirituality has never been quietism or a conventional monasticism, but it was a high effort of the human spirit to rise beyond the life of desire and vital satisfaction and arrive at the highest calm, peace and real ecstasy. The question now is whether this is essential or not for the perfection of mankind. If the answer is in the affirmative, then the further question is whether it should be confined the limited number of human beings or it should spread to the entire human civilisation.

We have so far dealt with the life-values of Indian philosophy. But a right judgment of these life-values is intimately bound up with a right appreciation of the life-values of Indian religion.

In India, religion and philosophy cannot be divided from each other. Indian philosophy is the organized intellectual theory of the deepest truths and powers that lie at the heart of Indian religion. On the other hand, Indian religion is Indian spiritual philosophy put into action and experience. Whatever does not come under this description is either social framework or external ritualism or survival of all supports and additions or an excrescence or dead habit, contracted in periods of fossilisation or ill-assimilated extraneous matter. The inner principle of Hinduism has been synthetic, acquisitive, inclusive unlike the religious spirit of Christianity or Islam.

But before we take the Western hostile critic in his dealings with Indian religious philosophy, it is as well to consider what he has to say about other side of Hinduism. For he has a great deal to say and it is unsparing and without measure, although he does not like Mr. Begbie to whom Sir John Woodroffe has made reference and who denounces Hinduism with intemperate drunkenness and with hatred and uncharitableness, he is still unsparing in his condemnation, illogical and filled with the spirit of misrepresentation and exaggeration. We shall turn to him because even from his crude mass we shall be able to disengage why the uncritical and why even many critical minds betray their salient and typical antipathies ‒ which alone is useful to discover.

Mr. Archer’s basic criticism against Hinduism is that it is totally irrational. He, of course, casually admits the philosophical elements in Hinduism but he disparages, he dismisses it and even pronounces that it is positively harmful. He alleges that Indian people have always gravitated towards the form rather than the substance and towards the latter rather than the spirit. It may immediately be remarked that this kind of gravitation is universal, and that is a feature not only in religion but also in society, politics, and arts, literature and even in science. It may even be remarked that Europe has a worst record in this regard and has therefore, hardly any title to cast this reproach in the face of the East. For in Europe people have not only gravitated towards forms and outward ritualism but have even constantly fought, killed, burnt, tortured, imprisoned, persecuted for the sake of outer form, for dogmas, for words, and forms of church government. Mr. Archer, forgetting the story of Europe, misrepresents the history of Indian religion and argues that this gravitation afflicts the Indian religion more than any other creed. He maintains that higher Hinduism scarcely exists except in certain small reforming sects and current Hinduism. He contends that Hinduism is a popular religion and it is the cult of monstrous folklore of oppressive and paralysing to the imagination. And it may again be remarked at once that Hinduism is marked by an access by the creative imagination rather than a paralysis. But Mr. Archer paints Hinduism as animism and magic, and argues that Indian people have displayed a genius for obscurity, formalism and degradation. He concedes that India has possessed great thinkers but points out that she has not been benefited by them and taken the help of their thoughts to introduce rationality and nobility in its religion. He thinks that even the Russian peasant or devotion of the Spanish is more rational and more enlightened than the Indian’s. Archer’s constant tune is that Indian religion is irrational and anti-rational.

Mr. Archer is astonished and disgusted with the obstinate survival of the old religious spirit, and the large anti-religious types; he is impatient that these things have not been submerged by the flood of modernism and its devastating utilitarian free thought. He argues that even China and Japan have undergone changes, but India still clings to the past. He regards Hinduism as a superstition full of performances of piety, and these performances are repulsive to the free enlightened secular mind of the modern times. He contends that the daily practices of the Hinduism fall outside the pale of civilisation. It might seem that Mr. Archer would have thought that Hinduism was somewhat humane and tolerable if it had discarded all its practices and confined them only to church attendance on Sundays and to marriage and funeral services and some such practices, which are found in Christianity. He finds Hinduism to be a great anachronism of the modern world, which has not been cleansed for so many centuries. He looks upon Hinduism as Paganism, a wholly unfiltered Paganism; he believes that Hinduism pollutes rather than purifies and it is the lowest in the scales of world religions. He even proposes the ingenious remedy for Hinduism. He argues that even though Christianity is rather irrational, it can still be used as a remedy, because it has proved its power in destroying Paganism in Europe. He, therefore, advocates that Christianity and especially Protestant Christianity will be at least a good preparatory step, although ultimately, India must turn towards the noble freedom and stainless purities of atheism and agnosticism. But even if the preparatory step cannot be taken in spite of numerous famine conversions that Christianity is affecting, he would like Hinduism to get itself filtered in one way or the other. And he concludes that until that filtration has taken place or until that hygienic operation has been executed, India must not be allowed an entry on equal terms into the group of civilised nations.

Mr. Archer has argued that Hinduism is irrational and that it is Paganism. But these two arguments would not be able to demolish the worth of Hinduism. For there is an increasing perception, even in Europe, that reason is not the highest of human mind and that reason cannot be made a judge of religious and spiritual truths. In regard to Paganism, plenty of cultivated minds are able to admit that pre-Christian Paganism had many great and beautiful things, and world has not become better by losing Paganism. Hence, to say that Hinduism is irrational and paganism does not stir many Westerners to feel repelled by Hinduism. Hence, Mr. Archer brings a third argument against Hinduism. His argument is that Hinduism is devoid of moral worth and ethical substance. This argument is very effective because most of the modern minds like to subscribe themselves to morality, even though they may not practise it. Indeed, Mr. Archer finds it difficult to substantiate its charge, but he goes about his arguments without scruple and without measure. He argues that Hinduism talks much of righteousness, but it has never claimed moral teachings as one of its functions. This is, of course, is a strange argument because a religion cannot talk of morality without performing the function of moral teaching. And yet to argue that Hinduism talks much of righteousness without performing the function of moral teaching is like arguing that a square cannot make a claim to be a quadrilateral. Mr. Archer’s main argument is that although the Hindu is comparatively free from the grosser Western vices, it is not because he is intrinsically ethical, but his social system binds him so much to the barbarous idea of the Dharma that he has hardly any opportunity to depart from his social law. In other words, the Hindu is moral by compulsion, not moral through freedom which Western civilisation provides to its people. In any case, Mr. Archer concludes Hinduism has melancholy proclivity towards whatever is monstrous and unwholesome. This in substance, Mr. Archer’s unfounded but unmeasured denunciation of Hinduism. And with this statement, we may leave Mr. Archer and turn ourselves to disengage the temperamental sources of his dislike and anger.

We must ask for the real reason, temperamental reason, for understanding of the great lines of divergence between the East and the West.

The West is characterised by the cult of inquiring practical reason and the cult of life. Whenever these two cults come to predominate, the West flourishes powerfully. Examples are those of periods of Greek culture, of the Roman world before Constantine who adopted Christianity as its religion, the Renaissance and the modern age with its high tide of industrialisation and physical science. In all these periods, practical reason and pulsation of life have dominated. In contrast, when these two powers have ebbed, the European mind has entered into much confusion and darkness. When, for example, Christianity entered into Europe, it failed to accomplish its mission; Christianity could not spiritualise Europe, it could only do something towards humanising Europe in certain ethical directions; for Christianity denied the supremacy of reason and asked for control over the satisfactions of life impulses and perfect flowering of life-force.

In Asia there has been no predominance of reason and the cult of life, and these two were not found to be incompatible with the religious spirit. As a result, surge of spiritual light has also been accompanied by the tide of fresh systems of thought, poetry, arts and flowering of material life into splendour. This is what we find in the great ages of Asia, and in India when it began with the Vedic age and when there was a great spiritual surge in the period of Upanishads and when Buddhism flooded widely over the country or when Vedanta, Samkhya and the Puranic and Tantric religions flourished and when Vaishnavism and Shaivism flowered in Southern kingdom. On the other hand, we find that with the ebbing of spiritual light and power, India passes through weakness of the powers of thought and light, and weakness overpowers it to such an extent that there is a real decline or even beginnings of decay.

To rise to the spirit is the aim of all the powers and instruments of culture, but differences arise in regard to the ways of approach. Europe has its own proper Dharma, and it can find spiritual truth only when life and reason develop to their highest point of culmination and at last arrive at spiritual truth as a crown and as a revelation. Europe cannot at once rise to the spiritual truth. On the other hand, Asia, or at any rate, India lives naturally by a spiritual influx from above. When there is a flood from spirituality, her powers of mind and life also flower. Actually, Asia and Europe represent two divergent waves, and both combined together would bring about the totality of integral perfection. But until humanity becomes truly broad so as to draw together and reconcile all, Asia and Europe have to run on divergent lines. In the view of this understanding, there is no point for the European to speak of barbarism of Asia and for the Asian to speak of the barbarism of European. As far as masses of people are concerned, they are both in Asia and in Europe barbarians, labouring to civilise themselves. But in the upward movement of culture, we have to realise, how both move upwards on different lines and how these two lines can be considered to be complementary for the richness and completeness of the growing orb of the human culture.

If we and want to understand why the Eastern Western are psychologically in conflict with each other, we have to realise that the Western mind emphasises life and all things that are visible and tangible, whereas the Asian mind emphasises inner search of the Spirit. We may notice that even from religion the West tends to demand what is utilisable for the immediate visible world. The Greeks and the Romans looked on religious cult as a basis for the stability of the State. During the middle ages, when Christianity brought in the Oriental ideal and developed it to its great heights, the Western mind tried to assimilate an oriental ideal, but it never succeeded in firmly assimilating it; eventually, it threw it aside or kept in only for a verbal homage. The genuine temperament of the West rationalised the religious spirit, secularised it and almost annihilated it. And today religion has become in the West more and more a pale and ever-thinning shadow pushed aside into the small corner of the light. The Western march of progress has taken place outside the doors of the vanquished Church and developed the outward life, positive reason and materialistic science. On the other hand, when we examine the present moment of Asia, it can be seen that it is passing through a transitional period in which it is trying to assimilate the Western outlook and its earth-bound ideals. And it can be safely predicted that Asia will not succeed in assimilating the Western law of life firmly or for a long time.

The cult of life and reason, when divorced from the inmost in-look necessarily leads to the tendency that nourishes secularism. It is true that ancient Europe did not separate religion and light and thus it did not appear to be supportive of secularism. But ancient Europe first of all got rid of the oriental element of the mysteries from its religion; religion itself then became a secular institution, and it was used as a convenient aid to the government in sustaining its social and political institutions. Ancient Europe also developed philosophy and logical and practical reason, which threw away the relics of the original religious spirit. But when we come to modern Europe, we find that it has gone to the logical extreme and separated religion and life so as to nourish the tendency of secularism. Christianity attempted to spiritualise life, but modern Europe not only separated religion and life but even from Philosophy, art, science, politics, and from the social part and social existence. It went even farther, it secularised and rationalised also the ethical demand so that morality can stand on its own basis without any aid from religious sanction or spiritual experience. There is even a tendency to get rid of ethics itself, not only by rising above ethics as spiritual experience claims to do, but by breaking out of its barriers to enjoy an exultant freedom of the play of the vital desire. In this process, religion has been left aside; what is left of religion is an impoverished system of belief and ceremony to which one might or might not subscribe a superficial pigmentation of dogma, sentiment and emotion.

For some time the intellectual idea did not invade religious belief vehemently. The old pagan symbolism was already thrown out at an early stage; the Divine was supposed to be living in the celestial heaven along with the presence of the saints and the immortal spirit, aloof from the physical earth. But in due course, the reason demanded whether there was any proof in our sense experience of any world other than the physical. Even the blank and tepid Theism was subject to critical light of intelligence. It came to be argued that the world is governed by a physical law and by a moral law, by Reason or by Power by which one call by the name of God. But reason went still farther and questioned the need to posit any God at all, even as a hypothesis. As a result, the West reached the atheistic or agnostic cult of secularism. And the West is now looking forward to the full triumph of reason and life, if only that ambiguous infinite something will not interface with them and leave them alone for the future.

It is very clear from this amount of the way in which Western outlook has developed from stage to stage that it cannot tolerate the straining after the supra-rational and the infinite ‒ that earnest straining which has characterised Asia and India in particular. It may tolerate this straining if it was to be a moderate innocent indulgence of the speculative mind or the artistic imagination. But asceticism and other worldliness are abhorrent to its temperament and fatal to its outlook. pessimism as a passing mood, but it takes its stand on taking life as it is and making the most of it. It may allow to use the word spirituality, provided that word means high labour of a lofty intelligence, rational will, limited beauty and moral good, and provided it does not mean same inhumane, unattainable, infinite or absolute satisfaction. It may allow religion, provided it limits itself to this limited meaning of spirituality, provided it keeps itself within the bounds of the practical reason and an earthly intelligence. This is its basic poise, although there are some departures from it which are always to be found in a complex structure of culture.

This is the standpoint of the Western mind, and it is easy to see that it finds itself irreconcilable to the surviving force of Indian religion. It finds Indian mentality to be quite strange and even abhorrent when Indian philosophy admits the Infinite and the Absolute and justifies its demand on the soul of man. And he fails to understand how there are people in India who are ready to abandon the outward life and society and home and family in order to pursue the Beyond with a living belief in other worlds and re-incarnation and the whole army of other ideas whose truths are very unverifiable by the physical science. It finds the Indian attitude towards Yoga to be quite irrational because it holds experiences of Yoga more true than the experiments of the laboratory. The Western mind asks as to why India should not give up thinking of things which are unthinkable, since its own rationality has ceased to think about them. The West wants that India should not even think of art, culture and conduct because they are inconsistent with spirituality and religion. Its argument is that if India wants to pursue art and culture and conduct, it must abandon its irrational, its spirituality and religion. It is here that we find why there is apparent gulf between the Western mind and the Indian mind, and why the Occidental intelligence, finds Indian mentality to be abnormal or unintelligible, if not damnable.

So far we have dealt with the Indian religio-philosophical standpoint and the abhorrence that the Western mind feels towards it. But we can see farther that the Occidental critic finds it even more intolerable when that Indian religio-philosophical standpoint belittles the importance of life. It finds that in India asceticism ranges rampant and calls man to exceed the life of the body and even the life of the mental will and intelligence. And even where asceticism is combated, life is not found to be accepted anywhere in India for its own sake. This is in sharp contrast to the enormous stress that the Western mind lays on life, on force of personality, on individual will, and on the apparent man and the desires and demands of his nature. While the West encourages the flowering of the mental and the vital ego or permits subservience of the ego to the larger communal ego, the Indian ideal looks upon he ego as the chief obstacle to the soul’s perfection; while the Western temperament is Rajasic, dynamic and pragmatic, the Indian temperament is specially turned to the admiration of the Sattwic man for whom thought, spiritual knowledge and the inner life are the things of the greatest importance and to whom action is not important for its rewards and fruits but for its effects on the growth of the inner nature. It is, therefore, not surprising that the occidental mind should look upon these contrasts with much dissatisfaction. A recoil of antipathy and almost ferocious repugnance.

It is true that these specialities of Indian mentality, its admiration for the Sattwic ideals and its proposal to regard the ego as the chief obstacle to the soul’s perfection may seem to the occidental mind as false, anti-rational and depressing, but may not denounce them as evil and ignoble unless they are read in the context of such misrepresentations like those found in Mr. Archer’s more irresponsible strictures. But the occidental mind does not find itself reconcilable when it surveys the forms of the religion under whose influence the Indian mentality has developed its ideas regarding the Sattwic ideal and the ideal of soul’s perfection. For in that religion, the Western mind finds all those things, which it had exiled from its own culture. It finds in India a gigantic Polytheism and finds in India temples, images, priesthood, a mass of unintelligible rites and ceremonies, the daily repetition of Sanskrit mantras and prayers and in the belief of all kinds of supra-physical forces, saints, gurus, holidays, vows, offerings, sacrifice, a constant reference of life through powers of influence of which there can be no physical evidence. The Western mind finds this to be the unintelligible chaos, unabridged animism, and a monstrous folklore. It does not have the patience to understand the spiritual sense the Indian mind has put upon the system of beliefs and practices. It finds it intolerable that Indian mind has not only accepted to eliminate religion or to put it in a corner, but even it is prepared to fill the whole of life with religion.

It will be difficult to bring home to the Western mind the inner spirit that lies behind the complex system of religious belief and practices. If it is pointed out that the multitudes of Gods are living aspects of the One not understand how Infinite, the logical European mind does monotheism, polytheism, pantheism can be reconciled; if it is explained that the image worship is for the Hindu only a support at a supraphysical, the European does not understand how the physical and the supra-physical can become connected, because in the first place it does not have faith in the supra-physical. He thinks that any connection between the physical and supra-physical is a meaningless subtlety admissible only in imaginative poetry and romance.

We are now to consider whether Indian culture has the power for expansion of life and to establish the greatness and growth of the human race on the earth. A power merely to rise above into a transcendental reality, into silence and nirvana or to gravitate towards material death cannot be the source of sustainable culture. Indian culture was certainly sublime because it provided to people transcendental up-rush towards great heights; but it did even much more; it provided for great curiosity, knowledge, science, philosophical enquiry; it also provided for rich light and blaze of art, poetry and architecture, it even provided for long stability and orderly well-being, ripe and human society. But still we need to ask whether Indian culture went farther and whether it can satisfy the tests of a progressive life-power.

For if Indian culture had missed the care and cultivation of the progressive life-power, we have to declare that Indian culture suffered from a capital imperfection. It is this central question that we have to inquire into and arrive at a proper judgement.

Critics like Archer will readily argue that Indian culture has been a general failure in providing the right inspiration for the greatness of progressive life-force. These critics might admit that Indian philosophy may be sublime, its religious spirit fervent, its ancient social system strong, symmetrical and stable, its literature and its art good in their own way, but they point out that the salt of life is absent in this culture, the breath of will-power and the force of a living endeavour is missing. Archer points out that Indian religion and philosophy undervalue life and endeavour, and that life is compared to a movement of waves rising and falling helplessly and purposelessly. He finds that Buddha, who "never existed”, is one solitary character in the entire history of India; otherwise the individual is everywhere dwarfed and depreciated, except a pale featureless Ashoka. He points out that the character of Indian drama and poetry are lifeless exaggerations or puppets of supranatural powers; he finds Indian art to be empty of reality; and he finds whole history of civilization to be drab, effete and sorrowful. He concludes that there is no power of life, and no breath of life and no colour of life in Indian culture. These criticisms, when studied in the light of a first-hand acquaintance with Indian literature and history will be found to be a bitter misrepresentation, a violent caricature and an absurd falsehood. But still we must ask as to why the European mind gets this false impression when it studies Indian culture. And the answer is that there is a primary misunderstanding at the root. It is this misunderstanding which is to be understood and remedied. It arises because although India has lived and lived richly, splendidly, greatly, the will that has been operating in Indian life is different from that will which has been operating in the life of Europe. The Indian idea and plan of life have been peculiar, original and unique, and Indian values cannot easily be seized by an outsider. As a result, the supreme things of Indian life are easily open to hostile misrepresentation by the minds which are ignorant.

The life-value of a culture can be judged by the presence of three powers: (i) The power of its original conception of life; (ii) The power of forms, types and rhythms, it has given to life; (iii) the inspiration, the vigour, the force of vital extension of its motives manifested in the actual lives of men and of the community which flourished under its influence.

If we look at the European conception of life, we shall find that it regards life as a force that manifests itself in the material universe and that man is almost the only discoverable meaning. This may be regarded as the anthropocentric view, which concentrates on man in whom life is striving to arrive at some light and harmony, some efficient rational power, adorning beauty, strong utility, vital enjoyment, economic welfare. The European idea assigns great value to the free power of the individual ego and the organized will of the corporate ego; and the idea that it presents is centred on two things: the development of individual personality and an organized efficient national life. It is true that the European ideal assigns value also to the effort to govern life by reason, science, ethics, art and a restraining and harmonizing utility. It is also true that Christianity has added new tones, modified some tendencies and deepened others. At different stages of history there have been a greater complexity and largeness.

At present, the European idea of life is served by the idea of the great intellectual and material progress and has ameliorated political and social State government by science. There has come about a terribly outward and mechanical endeavour, which is, however, tempered by a more humanistic idea. But this is a passing phase, on which we may not lay too much emphasis.

The broad, permanent European conception of life is in its own limits a great and invigorating conception, imperfect and narrow at the top, shut in a heavy lid, poor in its horizons, too much of the soil, but still with a sense in it that is strenuous and noble. The Indian conception of life starts from a deeper centre and has an inner attitude which looks for spirit behind outer form and force. The Indian mind does not feel satisfied with anything that is short of the inmost spirit. It looks upon physical existence with a sense of the presence of the psychological and spiritual reality. Matter, life and mind are instruments of the spirit, and they are to be used for spiritual purposes. This is the reason why one talks of Indian spirituality. This is very remote from the dominant European idea, it is different even from the form given by Europe to the Christian conception of life.

But it does not mean that Indian culture concedes no reality to life; it allows material and vital aims and satisfaction, it even bestows a great care on actual human existence. It even goes farther and gives a tremendous impetus to arrive at some of the great heights of the development of their body, life and mind; it is only when the mind and heart and reason heighten to their greatest heights and powers that the embodied life can hope to open up to a greater life and power of the spirit; it is only when the individual mind is greatly widened that one can enter into a vast spiritual universal consciousness and a high spiritual transcendence. This conception impels the highest possible efforts of the body, life and mind; and in any case they do not sterilize or depress life. The human life was in ancient times looked upon as the greatest thing which even the gods in heaven desire to possess in order to experience something that is available only in the human life. These ideas exalt the life of man and make something like godhead its logical outcome.

The value that is given to human life in Indian culture can be judged more appropriately if we examine the Indian concept of the human being, of the human soul. The Vedantic thought and the thought of the classical ages went very far beyond anything conceived by the western thought in regard to human beings and souls. In the west, there are only two alternative ideas of man; man is either a passing phenomenon created by Nature so that he has no permanent sense or meaning, or else he is conceived under the Christian thought to be a soul manufactured at birth by an arbitrary breath of the whimsical Creator who is asked to seek salvation under impossible conditions so that he is far more likely to be thrown away into the burning refuse heap of Hell as a hopeless failure. It is true that sometimes the western thought has assigned a great significance to man’s reasoning mind and will so that man can even become better than God or better than what Nature has made him. As compared to this western thought, Indian conception of man is far more ennobling, inspiring and filled with the motive force of a great effort. The human soul, according to Indian view, is an inextinguishable spark of the supreme fire which is Divine and Eternal. The soul of man can even become identical with ineffable transcendence because in his uttermost reality it is already identical with that transcendence from which he has come and who is even greater than the godheads whom he worships. What he appears to be in his present stage is only his half-developed manifestation, and he has the capacity to pass to a supreme and extraordinary pitch of manhood; it is only when his height is reached that a greater freedom is opened up so that he can become semi-divine man, mukta, siddha. No human soul is to be thrown away into any eternal hell, because such a hell does not exist, and no soul is incapable of reaching to any highest perfection. The human soul can even become released in cosmic consciousness, he can realize himself in all and all in himself and realize himself as eternally one with the Supreme. He is not here on the earth to be shut up forever in his ego; he can break through any of his powers, through his heart of love and sympathy, through his will and dynamic drive towards right action, through his ethical nature and virtues and even through his aesthetic sense and through his seekings of delight and beauty; through any of these or all these powers he can attain to the highest. All powers are to be developed and perfected; no power is to be depressed or rejected as something incapable of attaining great heights and opening up to greater calm and wideness, joy and peace.

From the earliest Vedic times, India has endeavoured to find out all the possible paths to attain spiritual liberation, of the Siddha, Bhagawata, Mukta. And India had succeeded in arriving at the discovery of this goal and put it forward as the common highest aim and universal spiritual destiny of the soul that is in every human creature. The positivist western mind finds it difficult to understand this goal, and it seems to be through its Christian associations a blasphemy against the solitary greatness of God. It is true that in ancient Europe the Stoics, Platonists, Pythagoreans had made some approach to this aspiration, and even afterwards a few rare souls have envisaged or pursued it through occult ways. It is true that even once again this aspiration appears in poetry in the West or through movements like Theosophy. But Western science and philosophy and religion still regard it with scorn, with indifference or with condemnation.

Indian thought recognized that the ideal of spiritual liberation and perfection can be reached only by building up a bridge of gradual ascent from the present actual imperfect state of ordinary life. The Indian conception in its early soundness did not think of ascetic and violent means by which springs of life are dried up or destroyed. Even in the period of decline when exaggerated asceticism came to be pursued, life was still regarded as an intermediate reality, and the concept of the world as an illusory Maya, which was put forward very powerfully by one school of thought was resisted by several other theories. In some, it can be said that Indian thought recognized that the normal life must be passed through to fulfil its ordinary purpose, and various powers of life must be developed; even enjoyments of life were fully taken in their own level. The spiritual perfection was conceived as the crown of a long, patient flowering of the spirit of life and nature. At every step in human progression, action in life, will in life had their importance right from the earliest stages to the last stages.

Indian conception of life and existence is centred in the belief in a gradual soul evolution with a final perfection and human life as its first direct means and often repeated opportunity. Human life is seen in the figure of an ascent in spirals or circles, and there is room within it with all terrestrial aims, activities and aspirations. Hundred forms of the pursuit of knowledge, complex play of emotions and refinements, developments of aesthetic faculties and rich and robust and heroic life of action, all this has come in the scope of Indian life. Indian culture never depressed or mutilated the activities of our nature, subject to a certain principal harmony and government. It allowed their extreme value. It is impossible to escape the sense of fullness of human life and action if one reads the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the rest of the literature in Sanskrit and in the later tongues, and if one tries to understand the massive remains of other cultural works and social and political systems and speculations.

Culture must first enrich, enlarge and encourage human life; but at a higher level it must also provide a system of social and individual life with a guiding law by which vital forces can come to be subjected to some moral and rational government, until a higher freedom, a spiritual freedom, perfection and greatness are discovered and pursued. Ancient Indian civilization did this work with profound wisdom and high and subtle skill and organized society and ordered the individual life in such a way that the entire human nature and propensities are finally turned towards spiritual realization. But never did it lose sight of the use of life as a discipline for spiritual perfection and the passage to the Infinite.

Two main truths of existence have governed the Indian mind: first is the idea that human growth must pass through stages; and the second is that at every stage we have to acknowledge the complexity of life and nature of man.

In the initial stage of life, kama and artha, hedonistic desire and self-interest were given great importance. But they were not allowed to make unbridled claim; a higher law was imposed, the higher law of Dharma. India perceived and even permitted the development of materialistic aim as seen in the philosophy of the Charvakas; but unlike the western attitude to materialism or even to what is unjustly called paganism, India placed before man a higher law and did not favour colossal egoism either of the mind or of senses, of the Asura or of the Rakshasa. That higher law was called Dharma.

Dharma as understood in Indian culture is not a creed or cult or ideal inspiring ethical and social rule. It is at once religious law of action and deepest law of our nature. But since natures differ, positions and works of individuals differ, Dharma develops in accordance with each individual nature and in respect of each position and work. The general Dharma is the same for everyone and that is that every action of life, internal and external, should be so developed that at every stage there is enabling inspiration to rise to the next stage of development until the stage is reached where the spiritual consciousness determines spontaneously what is to be done and manifested. That is the reason why India did not impose one rule on every one uniformly but developed a system and framework so that each has his own proper function and rule and ideal for that function. Indian culture did not allow lawless impulsion of desire and interest; even in the frankest following of desire and interest, it provided a governing and restraining, guiding lines. Indian Dharma was thus developing law for each individual appropriate to his stage of development, but universal too in the broad lines which all have to pursue. A special concept was that of adhikara, the concept which underlined the degree and turn of development and capacity of the individual, so that what was demanded of each individual was appropriate to his adhikara.

What is universal in Indian Dharma is the law of ideal perfection for the developing mind and the soul of man. The ideal perfection was conceived as a combination of certain high and large universal qualities, and the self-perfecting individual was described as Arya, Shrestha, Sajjana, Sadhu. The ideal was not confined to a purely moral idea but it embraced the perfection of the total human nature. It included great qualities of heart, of character, of power of wisdom and even openness to poetry, art and beauty and an educated capacity and skill and works; at a deeper level, it included the quality of inner being and even love of God, seeking after the Highest; it had the dimension of social relations and qualities that make an ideal father, son, husband, friend, and ideal master and servant, king and sage, member of clan or of the group. The ideal is clearly portrayed in the written records of ancient India during millennia and it is the very life-breath of Hindu ethics. This ideal was spirit-wise and worldly-wise, deeply religious, nobly ethical, firmly yet flexibly intellectual, scientific and aesthetic, patient and tolerant of life’s difficulties and human weaknesses but arduous in self-discipline. This ideal gave to all the culture of India its characteristic stamp.

But this was only the foundation and preparation, but the ideal went beyond the Dharma and it was raised up to the great aim of spiritual perfection. It declared that mere nobility or highest manhood, which is death-bound is not the greatest height of man’s perfection; beyond law, there is the freedom of the spirit; beyond death there is divine immortality. It was this ideal that was held before the inner eye of the soul; the entire life of the individual was ennobled by the aim, and the whole ordering of society was cast into a scale of graduated ascension towards the supreme summit.

In sum, it can be said that the claim of desire, interest and natural functioning were recognized and even fulfilled, although all of them were controlled, uplifted and widened by Dharma. And beyond that, higher spiritual consciousness was kept throughout in view as the supreme goal of life.

Indian culture succeeded in keeping this supreme ideal and goal in front of everyone, and it provided ways and disciplines by which one could realize the liberating truth or could follow at distance this higher aim according to his nature andadhikara. Besides, a number of revered and powerful practitioners and mighty masters of disciplines were found amidst the people, and they proved that the spiritual perfection was not a far-off intangible ideal but it was realizable and practicable. The spiritual idea governed and enlightened and gathered around itself all the life motives of a great civilized people.

VII

It is clear that the structure that was built up on these principal lines provided to Indian civilization the flowering of life and gave impetus to an upward elevation towards the highest possible and realizable perfection. Nothing here discouraged life, and if a civilization is to be judged by the power of this idea and by the power of great uses, Indian civilization was inferior to none. No culture can claim perfection, and Indian culture was not perfect; but Indian idea seized with a remarkable depth and comprehensiveness on the main truths and needs of the whole being, on his mind, life and body, his artistic, ethical, intellectual parts of nature, his soul and spirit and gave them a subtle and liberal, a profoundly large, high and wise, a sympathetic and yet nobly arduous direction. More is still possible, but so far more cannot be said for any past or any existing culture.

While it is true that Indian culture had great and noble governing and inspiring ideals, it has also certain harmonious forms and rhythms, certain moulds into which these ideas can run and settle, although it is natural to be prepared for a lesser perfection, a greater incompleteness. For no mould or form can fully express what is intended, and a time comes when the form has to lose itself in uplifting transformations so as to arrive at new and richer synthesis.

In every history of great cultures, we find a passage through three periods. There is, first, a period of large and loose formation; there is a second period in which forms, moulds, rhythms come to be fixed; and there is a third but critical period of old age, decay, and disintegration. This last stage is that of supreme crisis in the life of a civilization; if it cannot transform itself, it declines further and collapses in a death agony brought about by the rapid impact of stronger and more immediately living though not necessarily greater or truer powers or formations. At that stage, if it is able to renovate its ideas, if it can liberate itself from its limiting forms, if it can give a new scope to its spirit, if it can assimilate novel growth and necessities, then there is a rebirth, a fresh lease of life and expansion, a true renascence.

We can see in the history of Indian civilization all these three stages, and today when we are in the midst of a violent and decisive crisis brought about by the in-flooding of the West, we are required to understand the special significance of each of these stages so that we can see how its course is now uplifted by the strong hope at a great revival, transmutation and rebirth. In order to understand the essential spirit of Indian civilization, we must go back to the early epoch of the Vedas and Upanishads and its heroic creative seedtime, when spiritual out-flowering took place in forms which were supple, flexible and freely responsive to its essential spirit. If we want to study the fixed forms which developed in its second period, we shall find the powerful intellectuality from where shastras developed, when philosophy and science, legislation and political and social theory and many-sided critical thought developed, and when religious life came to arrive at fixation, and art, sculpture, painting and architecture took their forms and developed their specific laws of forms. If we want to discover the limitations because of which it failed to develop its whole or its true spirit, we shall find them by studying its period of decline. If we want to discover as to what on new lines Indian culture is likely to follow in its transformation, we must study what lies beneath the still confused movements of the present crisis through which a new birth or renascence is being shaped. At present, however, we shall study only the developed forms and the principal rhythms, which persisted through its greater eras.

Indian culture had asked two important questions while building up a firm outward basis on which its spirit and its idea in life can be practically developed in a secure manner. The first question was as to how to deal with the natural life of man and how to allow sufficient scope and variety and freedom and still make it subject to Dharma, a law of function, a law of type and law of the unideal human tendencies and also a law of highest ideal intention. And the second question was how to direct that Dharma towards its own exceeding so as to permit the secure freedom of the spiritual life. Indian culture from an early stage seized upon a double idea, which resulted in the double system of the four varnas and the four ashramas, four graded classes of society and four successive stages of developing human life.

The ancient chaturvarnya should be distinguished from the caste system, which is its later disintegrated degeneration and gross meaningless parody. It should also be distinguished from system of classes which we find in other civilizations. Its distinguishing idea was based upon the perception that human beings fall by nature into four types, the brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, shudra. The economic order of society was cast in the form and gradation of these four types, each class served one economic purpose. But the Indian idea went farther; it assigned the supreme position to religion, thought and learning; these were not only at the top of the scale, but they had the dominant power. It went still farther and it fixed the status of the individual not by his birth, but by his capacities and inner nature. Unfortunately, this very important and distinguishing feature did not last long; if it could have been kept alive it would have been a very clear mark of distinctness, a superiority of a unique kind. But in practice, we find that birth became the basis of varna. But even then there was something very distinguishing in the varna system which has made of this social structure a thing apart and sole in its type, and we must ask as to what that distinguishing mark was.

That distinguishing feature was that the varna system did not adhere completely to the economic rule. In the early ages, there was a considerable flexibility, and even in the later period when the caste system became more rigid, there was sufficient confusion of economic functions, which provided flexibility. In the long run, the Indian society did not escape the general law by which forms become mechanical and soulless. As a result, varna system was overtaken by deficiencies; it lost the true sense and degenerated into a chaos of castes, which had developed evils which must be eliminated but which are found to be difficult to be eliminated. But the original varna system was a well devised and necessary scheme in its time; it gave the community the firm and nobly built stability for providing the basis for a high cultural development, a stability hardly paralleled in any other culture. And if we examine the system, we shall find that, as interpreted by the Indian genius, it became a greater thing than a mere outward economic, political and social mechanism.

The specialty of varna system lay in the ethical and spiritual content that was poured into the four-fold society. It was this inner content of thevarna system which was its distinguishing feature. How was this inner content fashioned and secured? The following points may be noted in this connection:

It was emphasized that the intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual is the central need of the race;
Society itself is only a necessary framework for this growth;
Society is a system of relations, and relationships provide a framework, medium, field, conditions and nexus of helpful influences;
A secure place was given to each individual, and each individual was asked to give to society what he could give by his own self development;
Birth came to be accepted as the first gross and natural indicator, since heredity was to Indian mind a factor of the highest importance, although birth is not and cannot be the sole test of varna. And it was rather the turn of temperament and its intellectual and ethical and spiritual capacities that really determined the test of varna.

There came to be developed a rule of family living and a system of education that emphasised individual observance and self-training, so that each individual came to be carefully trained in the capacities, habits and attainments, and each individual was habituated to the sense of honour and duty necessary for the discharge for the allotted function in life. Each was equipped with the science of the things he had to do, the best way to succeed in it, and to attain to the recognised perfection of his activities; in addition to this special function and training the system provided facilities for study and perfection in sciences, arts, graces of life, ‒ and in ancient India they were taught with minuteness, thoroughness and subtlety and were available to all men of culture.

The varna-system did not stop here; it went farther.

Indian culture provided to each individual the elevating idea that no matter, what varna one belongs to, each one by following the highest ideal or Dharma of his specific nature and temperament, he will be led to discover his own self, his inmost soul which is a spiritual portion of the infinite, one in its essence with the eternal. Each one was told that apart from fulfilling his place in the society, his basic purpose of life was to discover his self and his soul, and this he can discover by fulfilling the ideal of his specific Dharma. Once the ideal of Dharma is reached, one can grow out of the limitations in which he was trained; having fulfilled Dharma, he can go beyond it to the eternity of his self, into the fullness of freedom, greatness, and bliss of the immortal spirit. Then one attains to the freedom of Divine liberty, moksha. In that state of Divine liberty one can either act for the good of all the living things or else turn to enjoy in solitude the bliss of eternity and transcendence. This was most distinguishing feature of the varna-system.

This system further provided an extremely important aid for every individual. This aid was the object of the four Ashramas, a framework that gave to the individual a scale and relation for his life which could be made into a kind of ladder rising from one stage to the next. Four stages were recognised: the stage of the student, the stage of the householder, the stage of the forest-dweller, and the stage of the free super social man, parivrajaka. The student life provided training in the necessary arts and sciences; but more importantly it provided the discipline of the ethical nature, and in the earlier days, it also imparted a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In the earlier days the training was given by someone who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently, education became more intellectual and mundane, and it was imparted in cities and universities that aim less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge and more at instruction and training of the intelligence. But in the beginning, the Aryans were prepared in some degree for the four great objects of this life, artha, kama, dharma and moksha.

In the stage of the householder, one was able to serve the purposes of artha, kama and dharma.

In the third stage, the individual retired to the forest to live in a broad freedom to work out in seclusion the truth of the spirit. If he so willed, he could gather around him young students and seekers and impart to new rising generations his knowledge as an educator or a spiritual teacher.

In the last stage of his life, he was free to throw off every remaining tie and to wander over the world in an extreme spiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying only the barest necessities, communicating with the universal spirit, making his soul ready for eternity.

This circle was not obligatory for all, the great majority never went beyond the first two stages; many passed away in the vanaprastha stage; only the rare few entered into the life of the wandering recluse parivrajaka. But this profound conception of the cycle of four stages kept before each individual the full course of the human spirit in his view. Each one could take advantage of this scheme according to its actual growth and it could be fully utilised by those who were sufficiently developed in their present birth to complete the circle.

This was the firm basis on which Indian civilisation grew to its maturity; it became rich, splendid and unique; it grew to astonishing heights of culture and civilisation; it lived with a noble, well-based, ample and vigorous order and freedom.

Indian culture developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries. It rose to the highest possible ideals and no mean practice of knowledge and culture. It gave a great impetus to arduous heroism, to kindness, philanthropy and human sympathy and oneness. It laid the inspired basis of wonderful spiritual philosophies, it examined the secrets of external nature and discovered and lived the boundless and miraculous truths of the inner being. It fathomed self and understood and possessed the world.

As the civilisation grew in richness and complexity, the intellect towered and widened, but intuition waved or retreated into the hearts of the saints and adepts and mystics. Society became more artificial and complex, less free and noble. A time came when artha and kama were in some direction developed at the expense of the dharma. The lines of the dharma were filled and stamped with such rigidities that it stood in the way of the freedom of the spirit. Spiritual liberation was pursued in hostility of life and not as its full-orbed results and high crowning.

But still the soul of India was kept alive, some strong basis of old knowledge continued to inspire and harmonize. Even when deterioration came and a small collapse, even in confusion and petrified ignorance, the old spiritual aim and tradition continued to save the Indian peoples. It continually swept back in the race of new waves and high outbursts of life-giving energy. Even now it rises once more in all its strength to give the impulse of a great renascence.

Notes

Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume I, p.699
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Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume I, page 701
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Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume 14, page 399
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Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume 26, pp. 404-405
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Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume 26, pp. 404-405
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Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume 14, page 431
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Sri Aurobindo, Collective Works, Centenary Edition, Volume 15, page 20
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Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works, Centenary Edition, Volume 15, pp. 63-64
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Sri Aurobindo: Bande Mataram, Centenary Edition, Vol. 1, pp.506-07
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Sri Aurobindo: Bande Mataram, Centenary Edition, Vol. 1, p.507
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Sri Aurobindo: Social and Political Thought, Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, page 360
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See, for instance, Rigveda, X.121.4: यस्ये॒मे हि॒मव॑न्तो महि॒त्वा यस्य॑ यस्ये॒मे हि॒मव॑न्तो महि॒त्वा यस्य॑ समु॒द्रं र॒सया॑ स॒हाहुः । यस्ये॒माः प्र॒दिशो॒ यस्य॑ बा॒हू कस्मै॑ दे॒वाय॑ ह॒विषा॑ विधेम ॥ (Under whose greatness on the one side are the snow peaks of the Himalayas and on the other is the sea with the river-waters, whose both arms are these directions, whom else can we offer our oblations) There was indissoluble national vitality necessitating the inevitable and ultimate emergence of the organised nation. Nation-unit is basically an expression of a natural psychological unity or of the nation-soul. In the striking example of India’s development, what is remarkable to observe, however, is the operation of centrifugal forces, the character of which was strong, numerous, complex, and obstinate. And yet the centripetal tendency can also be seen right from the earliest times of which we have records and are typified in the ideal of Samarat, Chakravarty Raja and the military and political use of the ashwvamedha and rajsuya sacrifices. Ramayana and Mahabharata, the two great national epics, illustrate this theme. Mahabharata recounts the establishment of a unifying dharmarajya or imperial reign of justice. Ramayana starts with an idealised description of such a rule pictured as one existing in the ancient and sacred past of the country. Subsequent political history of India is marked by a succession of empires, indigenous and foreign, each of them destroyed by centrifugal forces, but each bringing the centripetal tendency nearer to its triumphant emergence. Sri Aurobindo points out that it is a significant circumstance that the more foreign the rule, the greater has been its force for the unification of the subject people. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
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Sri Aurobindo: Social and Political Thought, Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, page 289
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Sri Aurobindo: Social and Political Thought, Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, pp. 32-33
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Sri Aurobindo: Social and Political Thought, Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, pp.285-86
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Sri Aurobindo: Social and Political Thought, Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, pp.286-87
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Sri Aurobindo: Social and Political Thought, Centenary Edition, Vol. 15, pp.63-64
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Sri Aurobindo: The Foundations of Indian Culture, Centenary Edition, Vol. 14, pp.380-381
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Sri Aurobindo: The Foundations of Indian Culture, Collected works, Centenary Edition, Vol. 14, p. 186-8
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Will Durant: Our Oriental Heritage, p. 481. Even Clive who came much later stated that India was “a country of inexhaustible riches”.[^21]
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Lajpat Rai, England’s Debt, 25.
David Bohm, "Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, pp. 7, 214.
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David Bohm, "Wholeness and Implicate Order", pp. 174-5. which enfolds all that “which is”. This is strikingly similar to Vedantic notions whereby the seeker prepares himself physically, mentally and spiritually to have a grasp (or realization) of the implicate order, Tat, which is the common ground of both ‒ Matter and Consciousness.
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Will Durant, A Story of Civilization, Volume I, p. 633.
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Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture, Indian Polity-4, pp. 380-81.
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At the Feet of the Mother.

India and Indian Polity

In Service of India

Implications of Grassroot Democracy for Human Resource Development

Swarajya - Rethinking

Swarajya: Rethinking

Philosophical Foundations of Indian Nationalism

Philosophical Foundations of Indian Nationalism

The Citizen, Constitution and Value-Education

The Citizen, Constitution and Value-Education

The Genius of India

Vitality of India

Contribution of India to World Civilisation

A Critic of Mr Archer on Indian Culture

Notes