The Past and the Future
(On Nationalism, pp 469-475,
September 25, 1909)
OUR CONTEMPORARY, the Statesman,
notices in an unusually self-restrained article the recent brochure
published by Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy from the Modern Review under
the title, "The Message of the East". We have not the work before us
but, from our memory of the articles and our knowledge of our
distinguished countryman's views, we do not think the Statesman has
quite caught the spirit of the writer. Dr. Coomaraswamy is above all a
lover of art and beauty and the ancient thought and greatness of India,
but he is also, and as a result of this deep love and appreciation, an
ardent Nationalist. Writing as an artist, he calls attention to the
debased aesthetic ideas and tastes which the ugly and sordid
commercialism of the West has introduced into the mind of a nation once
distinguished for its superior beauty and grandeur of conception and
for the extent to which
it
suffused the whole of
life with the forces of the intellect and the spirit. He laments the
persistence of a servile imitation of' English ideas, English methods,
English machinery and production even in the new Nationalism. And he
reminds his readers that nations cannot be made by politics and
economics alone, but that art also has a great and still unrecognised
claim. The main drift of his writing is to censure the low imitative
unIndian and bourgeois ideals of our national activity in the
nineteenth century and to recall our minds to the cardinal fact that,
if India is to arise and be great as a nation,
it
is not by imitating
the methods and institutions of English politics and commerce, but by
carrying her own civilisation, purified of the weaknesses that have
overtaken
it,
to a much higher and
mightier fulfilment than any that
it
has reached in the
past. Our mission is to outdistance, lead and instruct Europe, not
merely to imitate and learn from her. Dr. Coomaraswamy speaks of art,
but
it
is certain that a man
of his wide culture would not
exclude, and we know
he does not exclude, thought, literature and religion from the forces
that must uplift our nation and are necessary to its future. To recover
Indian thought, Indian character, Indian perceptions, Indian energy,
Indian greatness, and to solve the problems that perplex the world in
an Indian spirit and from the Indian standpoint, this, in our view, is
the mission of Nationalism. We agree with Dr. Coomaraswamy that an
exclusive preoccupation with politics and economics is likely to dwarf
our growth and prevent the flowering of originality and energy. We have
to return to the fountainheads of our ancient religion, philosophy, art
and literature and pour the revivifying influences of our immemorial
Aryan spirit and ideals into our political and economic development.
This is the ideal the Karmayogin holds before
it,
and our outlook and
Dr. Coomaraswamy's do not substantially differ. But in judging our
present activities we cannot look, as he does, from a purely artistic
and idealistic standpoint, but must act and write in the spirit of a
practical idealism.
The debasement of our mind, character and tastes by a grossly
commercial, materialistic and insufficient European education is a fact
on which the young Nationalism has always insisted. The practical
destruction of our artistic perceptions and the plastic skill and
fineness of eye and hand which once gave our productions pre-eminence,
distinction and mastery of the European markets, is also a thing
accomplished. Most vital of all, the
spiritual and intellectual divorce
from the past which the present schools and universities have effected,
has beggared the nation of the originality, high aspiration and
forceful energy which can alone make a nation free and great. To
reverse the process and recover what we have lost, is undoubtedly the
first object to which we ought to devote ourselves. And as the loss of
originality, aspiration and energy was the most vital of all these
losses, so their recovery should be our first and most important
objective. The primary aim of the
prophets of Nationalism was to rid
the nation of the idea that the future was limited by the circumstances
of the present, that because temporary causes had brought us low
and
made us weak, low therefore must be
our aims and weak our methods. They pointed the mind of the people to a
great and splendid destiny, not in some distant millennium but in the
comparatively near future, and fired the hearts of the young men with a
burning desire to realise the apocalyptic vision. As a justification of
what might otherwise have seemed a dream and as an inexhaustible source
of energy and inspiration, they pointed persistently to the great
achievements and grandiose civilisation of our forefathers and called
on the rising generation to recover their lost spiritual and
intellectual heritage. It cannot be denied that this double effort to
realise the past and the future has been the distinguishing temperament
and the chief uplifting force in the movement, and
it
cannot be denied that
it
is bringing back to
our young men originality, aspiration and energy. By this force the
character, temper and action of the Bengali has been altered beyond
recognition in a few years. To raise
the mind, character and tastes of
the people, to recover the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan
character and the high Aryan outlook, the perceptions which made
earthly life beautiful and wonderful, and the magnificent spiritual
experiences, realisations and aspirations which made us the
deepest-hearted, deepest-thoughted and most delicately profound in life
of all the peoples of the earth, is the task next in importance and
urgency. We had hoped by means of National Education to effect
this
great object as well as to restore to our youth the intellectual
heritage of the nation and build up on that basis a yet greater culture
in the future. We must admit that the instrument which we cherished and
for which such sacrifices were made, has proved insufficient and
threatens, in unfit hands, to lose its promise of fulfilment and be
diverted to lower ends. But the movement is greater than its
instruments. We must strive to prevent the destruction of that which we
have created and, in the meanwhile, build up a centre of culture, freer
and more perfect, which will either permeate the other with itself or
replace
it
if destroyed. Finally, the artistic awakening has been commenced by
that young, living and energetic school which has gathered round the
Master and originator, Sj. Abanindranath Tagore. The impulse which this
school is giving, its inspired artistic recovery of the past, its intuitive anticipations
of the future, have to be popularised and made a national possession.
Dr. Coomaraswamy
complains of the survivals of the past in the preparations for the
future. But no movement, however vigorous, can throw off in a few years
the effects of a whole century. We must remember also why the
degradation and denationalisation, "the mighty evil in our souls" of
which the writer complains, came into being. A painful but necessary
work had to be done, and because the
English nation were the fittest
instrument for his purpose, God led them all over those thousands of
miles of alien Ocean, gave strength to their hearts and subtlety to
their brains, and set them up in India to do His work, which
they have
been doing faithfully, if blindly, ever since and are doing at the
present moment. The spirit and ideals
of India had come to be confined
in a mould which, however beautiful, was too narrow and slender to bear
the mighty burden of our future. When that happens, the mould
has to be
broken and even the ideal lost for a while, in order to be recovered
free of constraint and limitation. We have to recover the Aryan spirit
and ideal and keep
it
intact but enshrined
in new forms and more expansive institutions. We have to treasure
jealously everything in our social structure, manners, institutions,
which is of permanent value, essential to our spirit or helpful to the
future; but we must not cabin the
expanding and aggressive spirit of
India in temporary forms which are the creation of the last few hundred
years. That would be a vain and disastrous endeavour. The mould
is
broken; we must remould in larger outlines and with a richer content.
For the work of destruction England
was best fitted by her stubborn
individuality and by that very commercialism and materialism which made
her the anti-type in temper and culture of the race she governed. She
was chosen too for the unrivalled efficiency and skill with which she
has organised an individualistic and materialistic democracy. We
had to
come to close quarters with that democratic organisation, draw
it
into ourselves and
absorb the democratic spirit and methods so that we might rise beyond
them. Our half-aristocratic, half -theocratic feudalism had to be
broken, in order that the democratic spirit of the Vedanta might be released and, by
absorbing all that is needed of the aristocratic and theocratic
culture, create for the Indian race a new and powerful political and
social organisation. We have to learn and use the democratic principle
and methods of Europe, in order that hereafter we may build up
something more suited to our past and to the future of humanity. We
have to throw away the individualism and materialism and keep the
democracy. We have to solve for the human race the problem of
harmonising and spiritualising its impulses towards liberty, equality
and fraternity. In order that we may fulfil our mission we must
be
masters in our own home. It is out of no hostility to the English
people, no race hatred that we seek absolute autonomy, but because
it
is the first
condition of our developing our national self and realising our
destiny. It is for this reason that the engrossing political
preoccupation came upon us; and we cannot give up or tone down our
political movement until the lesson of democratic self-government is
learned and the first condition of national self-fulfilment realised.
For another reason also England was
chosen, because she had organised
the competitive system of commerce, with its bitter and murderous
struggle for existence, in the most skilful, discreet and successful
fashion. We had to feel the full weight of that system and learn
the
literal meaning of this industrial realisation of Darwinism. It has
been written large for us in ghastly letters of famine, chronic
starvation and misery and a decreasing population. We have risen at
last, entered into the battle and with the boycott for a weapon, are
striking at the throat of British commerce, even as
it
struck at ours, first
by protection and then by free trade. Again
it
is not out of hatred
that we strike, but out of self- preservation. We must conquer
in that
battle if we are to live. We cannot
arrest our development of industry
and commerce while waiting for a new commercial system to develop or
for beauty and art to reconquer the world. As in politics so in
commerce, we must learn and master the European methods in order that
we
may eventually rise above them. The crude commercial Swadeshi, which
Dr. Coomaraswamy finds so distasteful and disappointing, is as integral
a part of the national awakening as the movement towards Swaraj or as the new
School of Art. If this crude Swadeshi were to collapse and the national
movement towards autonomy come to nothing, the artistic renascence he
has praised so highly, would wither and sink with the drying up of the
soil in which
it
was planted. A nation
need not be luxuriously wealthy in order to be profoundly artistic,
but
it
must have a certain
amount of well-being, a national culture and, above all, hope and
ardour, if
it
is to maintain a
national art based on a widespread development of artistic perception
and faculty. Moreover, aesthetic arts and crafts cannot live against
the onrush of cheap and vulgar manufactures under the conditions of the
modern social structure. Industry can
only become again beautiful if
poverty and the struggle for life are eliminated from society and the
co-operative State and commune organised as the fruit of a great moral
and spiritual uplifting of humanity. We hold such an uplifting
and
reorganisation as part of India's mission. But to do her work she must
live. Therefore the commercial preoccupation has been added to the
political. We perceive the salvation of the country not in parting with
either of these, but in adding to them a religious and moral
preoccupation. On the basis of that religious and moral awakening the
preoccupation of art' and fine culture will be added and firmly based.
There are many who perceive the necessity of the religious and moral
regeneration, who are inclined to turn from the prosaic details of
politics and commerce and regret that any guide and teacher of the
nation should stoop to mingle in them. That is a grievous error. The
men who would lead India must be catholic and many-sided. When the
Avatar comes, we like to believe that he will be not only the religious
guide, but the political leader, the great educationist, the
regenerator of society, the captain of co operative industry, with the
soul of the poet, scholar and artist. He will be in short the summary
and grand type of the future Indian nation which is rising to reshape
and lead the world.