GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

ARCH/fiOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA

CENTRAL
ARCHEOLOGICAL
LIBRARY

ACCESSION NO \ 9) 46 t)
CALL No. 901. 0 9 54
_ ttufc_
IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY
INDIAN CIVILISATION?
IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY
INDIAN CIVILISATION?

/?Q/-095>
. Hid ' ■ ’

ASIA PUBLISHING HOUSE

BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . NEW DELHI . MADRAS

LUCKNOW . LONDON . NEW YORK

PRINTED IN INDIA AT

AND PUBLISHED B\

ASIA PUBLISHING ;
 FOR

“ ADIB ”

M>» . • >■ .V V .p

ZZ' ..-,. ' . * » 1-r

CONTENTS

Preface ix
Preliminary 1

I The Background 9

II The British Nationalism 46

III The Process of Synthesis 96

IV The Forces for and against Synthesis 112

V The Emergence of a New Indian

Civilisation 139

Postscript 205
PREFACE

This little book has grown out of my

participation in the seminar on ‘Traditional Values

in India ’ conducted under the UNESCO scheme
for dialogues between East and West.
I found that the majority of the eminent philosophers
and publiemen, who contributed to that discussion in
Delhi, seemed still to pose the concept of a ‘Spiritualist’
East as against a * Materialist ’ West. So, with Dr. Tara
Chand, Professor Humayun Kabir and a few others, I
found myself questioning whether the old philosophies of
India, which were certainly dominantly idealistic, were
valid among our people, today, when a ‘Socialist Pattern
of Society’, a secular democracy based on a parliamentary
system, and a planned economy, are operating in our
midst. Also, whether it was not necessary to look the gift
horse of the profit-centred, machine-ridden, aggressive
Western civilisation in the mouth at the same time as
we accept the important values of the West. I asked
what kind of values we really had in the past or have
now, and whether we want a death-giving routine
civilisation or a creative civilisation in which man is not
divided from man, culture from culture, continent from
continent, but progresses, through genuine expression
of his talent and satisfaction of his daily needs, with
mutual aid, into becoming a whole man. Curiously,
C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer, himself an old philosopher,
who presided over the seminar, was just enough to pass
me a note, after my exposition, complimenting me 4 on
the shower bath * I had administered, ‘ or rather on the
needle bath ’, as he put it. I must confess that I was
 X PREFACE

encouraged, because I had felt myself a comparatively

innocent lamb bleating in a den of roaring lions.
Since then I have enlarged my comments and given
the necessary historical background to show that even the
few traditional values, Univcrsalism, Tolerance and
Compassion, which might once have moulded the
behaviour 0f the Indian people, are more valid in their
assertion by our leaderships than they are in actual
practice, even by the official intelligentsia. I do not deny
that we wish them to be operative, and have probably
succeeded, to some extent, in infusing them into our
political and social policies. But I doubt if a very large
number of people really believe in them and practice
them, because of the rigours of over two hundred years
of Imperialist rule through which we have passed, and
the personal greed, selfishness and lack of values promoted
by the dominant tiger economy of the Western kind
accepted by us ad hoc after the attainment of freedom,
in spite of the proclaimed ideal of the Socialist Pattern
of Society. Our caste bias, linguistic chauvinism and
small state-mindedness arc no less divisive.
I have suggested that in order to give a deeper and
moral real basis to democratic socialism we might sign a
minimum manifesto for a broadbased Indian humanism,
which is implicit in our contemporary emphasis on
‘ Destination Man ’ and the methods of self-giving as
against self-withholding. If the ancient philosophies
will not answer to our problems, nor will eclecticism.
Since the UNESCO seminar, this essay has appeared,
in an enlarged form, in Comprtndre, Volume 20, as part
of a Dialogue on India.
PREFACE xi

I have rewritten the whole as a book and sent it to

press, so that it may serve as a basis for discussion. I am
conscious that I may have erred on the moot points by
overstatement of the humanist point of view, in a society
which still tends to pose every question simply in terms
of power, religion, money, caste and language, or as
an issue between the yogi and the commissar. The
tentativeness of my approach is implied in the question
mark of the title-

Khandala
August, 1962 M.R.A.
PRELIMINARY

There is no doubt that India occupies a

somewhat unique position in the world today.

Actually, it is connected by airways and steamships
with the main continents of the shrinking globe, so that
one can travel, in a few hours, to and from it. It is
governed by a parliamentary democracy, combined
with a planned economy of industrial and agrarian
development, approximating to a ‘socialist pattern of
society’. And yet even a cursory look at its cities,
towns and villages reveals the survival, on its almost
continental landscape, of different peoples, with varied
outlooks, different social and mental habits, dressed in
all kinds of outer habiliments. And if one penetrate*
further into the heart and mind of its people, one finds
that the vast majority of them hold to certain values
of its remote or recent past, while the forces of the
second world Industrial Revolution threaten to grip
them ever more tightly in their hold. Also, while the
orthodox and conservative elements fight a rearguard
action against everything new, the influential minority
of its forward intelligentsia, in spite of the recalcitrants,
are busy integrating the culture of the 3rd century b.c.,

the 4th century a.d., and the medieval periods, with

the machine civilisation, which came in from the West
at the end of the 18th century and which has matured
into the contemporary atomic age of the mid 20th
century.
 2 , PRELIMINARY

It is inevitable, therefore, that the spectacle of India

should confuse the outsiders. Indeed, many Indians
of today are themselves confused by the clash of forms,
values and habits. And, often, it is difficult to absorb
and understand this country, or to discern a clear
direction of advance towards the future, among its
intricate and complex strains.
Like a modern Janus, Jawaharlal Nehru, looks to
India’s long past and to the realisable future, while he
stands in the centre of all these conflicts. But this
man of destiny, who has not only been India’s Prime
Minister, since the transfer of power from British to
Indian hands, but who is an historian and eclectic thinker
at the same time, will have done a good deal towards
making the India of today. So it is important to heed
his words. Unquestionably, his assertion of the concept
of co-existence of various countries, with their differing
social systems, owes a good deal to the main doctrine,
not of tolerance as the orthodox philosophers call it,
but of intolerant-tolerance which has sometimes been
practised in India, in spite of invasions, incursions
and inner conflicts. The growth of the individual
sovereign citizen to his highest potentialities, through
the larger community, can only be realised, in the
modem world, according to Nehru, in this way by
submitting science to the tests of moral values. And
the Panchshilla, or the five principles, defined by him,
sound almost like an edict of Ashoka, the Buddhist
Emperor, of the 3rd century b.c., even as they supply
concrete suggestions for a balanced life for the nations
and individuals of the world of today.
In fact it is this doctrine of co-existence and peace.
PRELIMINARY 3

with its implied dynamic neutralism or non-alignment,

that supplies the background for the efforts to build
•a contemporary Indian Civilisation, different from
the old feudal Civilisations and also different from the
aggressive high powered Civilisation of the West.
Of course, the process from which this attitude
towards political, social and cultural questions has
emerged is, in itself, the result of a silent revolution,
which the West did not wish to notice, and which has,
therefore, been somewhat hidden from the view of the
world.
For instance, in a recent essay, Prof. Harry
D’Gideonsc, President of Brooklyn College, writes:

‘There is much talk of freedom and technology

in India, but there is very little awareness that the
material well-being of the West is largely a byproduct
of western, spiritual and moral ideas, plus a positive
attitude towards work ’. (“ An Unsentimental Look
At India,” Harper’s Magazine, 1954).

And commenting on these observations on India,

in an editorial, the New York Herald Tribune says:

‘Their approach to industrialisation is socialistic;

■they refuse private American investments but demand
gifts or loans from the American Government to
•their Government for building American type
industry without colonial interference. By. some
mystic means, clear only to them, these' Indians
-would forswear the Western world while enjoying
its benefits, by languidly shaking the tree \
 4 PRELIMINARY

This is a cruel mis-statement of the real position.

And, of course, not all Americans, who react against
world shattering armaments, perpetual cold war and
the feverish struggle for still higher standards of living,
think this way. All the same, it is symptomatic of
one kind of Western attitude.
On the other hand, in Europe, there is a general
suspicion about the concept of co-existence, as also-
some surprise that India has dared to think, even to a
very modest extent, of the welfare of human beings as.
a practical objective for the first time in its history.
There are quite a few leaders of the European,
intelligentsia, who have given up the concept that
' men make their own history *, as also the ideals of the-
French Revolution of 1789, which ushered a new
philosophy of freedom for the whole world. These
thinkers are put out either, because this philosophy of
freedom took hold of larger numbers of peoples and
became a fighting and effective philosophy, or because
they see the rapid emergence of the Asian and African
peoples towards freedom, a concept which only
Europeans had so far enjoyed, as an unwholesome
phenomena. They increasingly reject the lessons of
the European renaissance and the advance of science
to untold power, on the excuse that the latter is being
used for merely destructive purposes. Professor
Michael Polyani, the Hungarian exile in Oxford,,
thinks that the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment
has released moral passions which aim at the perfection
of the human society, but which issue in ‘ moral excesses v
or in ‘ moral inversion and to the use of violence-
as the way to attain Utopian ends. Like a few others,,
PRELIMINARY 5

he believes that ‘ nihilism is a complete non-sequitcr

from the premises of secular rationalism’. And many
other thinkers, frightened of socialism, twist and turn
the concept of freedom, matured in the West. The*
existentialists, particularly, tend to deny social structures
and consider the universe merely absurd. The
humanism, rationalism, the evolutionism, and the
hopeful notions of progress of the 19th century, tend
to be discarded. And it has become a mark of distinc¬
tion among intellectuals to prefer the aristocratic
privilege of saying neither ‘ yes ’ nor ‘ no in order to
avoid the necessity of action. They sway endlessly
between religious and social justice, morality and
politics, between the vertical and horizontal man.
And some, like Andre Malraux, go back on their
humanist ideals in open alliance with reaction; while
others, like Arthur Koestlcr, merely denigrate all
rebellions or struggles in Asia and Africa.
Naturally, therefore, people begin to imagine that
hell has been let loose in Asia and Africa and that the
East is menacing the West. And it is believed in
certain intellectual circles of the West, that«the individu¬
alistic democracy dreamed of by the 18th century
rationalist philosophers has only produced that
anarchistic form of Utopia which heads the beginning
of every revolutionary movement *!
In actual fact, however, what has happened, over
the last half a century, is a transformation, mainly
through science, but also through a gradual process
of synthesis, of Europe and Asia, which is symbolised,
to some extent, by the liberation movement of India
and other Asian-African countries.
 6 PRELIMINARY

There has been a resurgence, which is twofold:

First of all, there has been the struggle to get rid of
alien oppression and exploitation resulting in the
'freedom of almost all countries of Asia, and some of
the colonial countries of Africa. In the second place,
there has been going on the fusion of the values of
Asian civilisations with the inner values of Western
civilisation: particularly the ideas of the renaissance,
the encyclopaedists of France and the revolutionaries
of ’89. The second process began almost two centuries
ago. Therefore, of the values of the modern period
it is very difficult to say, which value is indigenous
and which has been adopted from the West, so inextri¬
cably are they mixed up together, mostly through
the impositions of the imperialists and sometimes
through the deliberate choice of natives.
Now, some Westerners say: * We wish to blow away
the thick smog of sentimentality that has been generated
by ambassadors, give away bureaucrats, and almost
all the other literati, who have lately enjoyed free
round trips to the do-nothing sub-continent of poverty,
passivity and sacred kine’. The others, gush over
India’s * spiritualism,’ stay in well-known ashrams,
photograph aboriginal women, preferably with nothing
on, and admire the past art without wanting to look
at the present efforts. They have no use for the steel
mills and the hvdro-electric works, because these are
supposed to be exclusively * European products, for
European use, made through European technicians’,
nor do they sec the effort to retain the contact of the
creative hand with the making of things; and, of course,
they suspect the ‘ Socialist pattern ’ to be merely
PRELIMINARY 7

communism in disguise.
This basic misunderstanding arises from the fact,
that those who are attempting to shape a Contemporary
Civilisation in India have been thinking aloud without
producing an ersatz commodity called the new India.
And they have made mistakes, giving less thought
to the problems of integration of machines to man than
was necessary. At the same time, they have been
asking what values to take from the past, how to inherit
them, and whether they can be inherited at all. Also,
what to take from other people — how much of it
and in what form. Obviously, the process of synthesis
of cultures is not like a school-boy’s arithmetic, merely
addition and subtraction. Behind the ideas of the
past, there were many social facts, and behind the
heterogeneous beliefs there were the mental struggles
of many generations. And behind the mechanical
Civilisation of the West was the ferocious man-eater
of the profit system. All these facts and ideas have
to be sifted, because this was not done during the
period of Western domination, to any extent, as there
was a natural tendency to exalt everything European
by the rulers and everything Indian by the Indians.
Now, however, there is a process of rediscovery and
the various traditions have begun to be assessed.
Of course, the very joy of rediscovery often obfuscates
the purpose for which the researches were launched.
And no one will understand the Indian mind if this
process of inheriting the past, with a view to synthesis
with the present, is not studied from the compulsion
to sec that it is a serious, if halting, effort towards
shaping a new destiny.
8 PRELIMINARY

It is my contention that there is already evident in

India the trend towards the synthesis, from which a
possible agri-industrial contemporary Indian Civilisation
based on respect for the individual may emerge, that
the clash of cymbals, the sparks of illumination, and
the thunder of loud words, may yield to some balance,
which may contribute a corrective to its own inherent
contradictions and frustrations, that arise from many
surviving bad mental and social habits as well as from
the blind acceptance >of some of the worst things from
the West, and which may help to resolve conflicts
elsewhere. Perhaps the new communities of Asia
and Africa may develop by default. Armaments may
reach saturation point; the El Dorados of money-making
may recede and the American way of life may be
upturned. A creative era may begin if a world
shattering war could be avoided.
But in order to indicate which way India is moving,
I would like to analyse some of the inner strains of the
past, which weigh so heavily on India, to explain some
of the seeming confusions and disparities, and what
may be the possible direction of advance.
In this way, the huge question mark ‘Whither
India ? ’ which hangs on our heads may be answered,
even though in a partial manner.
Also, India’s relation to the outside world, not only
in foreign policy, but in the more intimate fields of
social and human relations, may become a little more
obvious.
 CHAPTER I

THE BACKGROUND

Apart from the rounded phrases and

cliches about the traditional ‘ spiritualism * of India’s

past, which is often contrasted with the * materialism ’
•of the West, it is fairly clear that there are certain
residual values, which have survived in broken but
recognisable forms, in our country, through long
periods of history, especially among the masses, from
the culture that arose about 3000 years ago and which
persisted, inspite of adjustments, modifications and
adaptations, until the 18th century. It is not necessary
here to summarise the various parts of Indian ‘ history ’
in the European sense of that word, because that
history has not yet been reconstructed from the surviving
fragments, but we have to understand the mental
processes by which certain residual values were held
tenaciously until a century or two ago, and which are
•still surviving in broken forms. Thus the main phases
of ' history * may be summed up, so as to provide the
background of the past for an easier understanding
of the present.
The Indian population, as it is today, seems, from
the evidence of skulls in pre-historic cemeteries, to be
the blend of three major original stocks. These were:

(1) The Dravidians — a dark, neolithic people,

akin to an older stock found in southern Arabia and
north east Africa;
 10 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

(2) The Mediterraneans — scattered from the

Ganges to Spain;
(3) The Mangolians.

Then there were several minor aboriginal stocks,

akin to the Melanesians of the Pacific area and small
strains of Iranian, Greek, Scythian, Hun, and West
European blood.
The fusion of these and other ethnic units took a
long time and the roles of the various races have been
far too complex to be analysed here. But it seems that
once these various strains entered India, they were
absorbed and slowly lost their alien character.
The assimilative genius of India through which this
happened is almost unique. And important natural
traits follow from it. Assimilation, however, did not
always amount to integration. The conflict of attitudes
and ideas continued throughout, at feverish pace,
and left an uneasy social balance.
Let us study the phases of development in the mixing
of these strains:

Proto-Dravidian

The first known phase, the Proto-Dravidian civilisation,

has come to light since the discovery of the ancient
civilisation of Mohenjodaro in Sind, Harappa and
Rupar in the Punjab, Luthal in Gujerat and Mahcshwar
in Central India.
The people of Mohenjodaro and Harappa seem to
have had some, relation with those of Sumeria and
possibly with the Mediterranean civilisation of remote
THE BACKGROUND It

antiquity, like those of Crete and Etruscia.

It is sometimes said that the configuration of the-
earth may have been different at that time and the
proverbial flood of the Bible may have intervened to
separate these peoples who shared the worship of the
mother cult. But all this is speculation.
At any rate, it is quite certain that the people of'
Mohenjodaro, and Harappa, lived in cities, solidly
built of brick on a rectangular plan, with a well thought
out system of plumbing, public baths and other civic
amenities. Their pottery, jewellery, and other crafts,,
betoken all the signs of the chalcolithic bronze age.
They grew and wove cotton, and traded in it, with
other countries across the waters, in vessels which
look like the modern ‘ Dhow.’ They had a primitive
script and made figurines of their gods, among which
the trident of the later Hindu God, Shiva, appears..
They probably had cults and totemic social structures,,
like those of early Egypt. They fell before the first
waves of the Aryan invaders who were coming down
via Assyria and Iran.
There is a vast gap of time between the Proto-
Dravidians and the Dravidians. But for lack of exact-
knowledge we can only group the two peoples together
in the first phase of Indian history. These Dravidians
were either an indigenous forest peoples or came down,
from elsewhere and spread all over India.
Our knowledge of them is limited and mainly derived,
from their successors. They arc described as Krsnahy.
black-skinned; Anasah, Pug-nosed; Adevayu, Godless;-.
Ayagvan, devoid of rights; Mrdhravacah, babblers;.
Sinadevah, phallic worshippers; Dasalvas or Dasusr
12 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

robbers or slaves.
They seem to have elaborated the cult of the mother
goddess (which also flourished in the Aegean at that
time) of tree spirits, snake spirits, nymphs, fauns,
dryads and fairies. And they believed in the philosophy
of birth and rebirth in this Samsara, Universe; Moksha,
or release from which, could be secured through good
deeds. These people seem to have moved down
towards the south after Aryan infiltration.

The Aryan Infiltration

The second phase of the Aryan infiltration was perhaps

the most vital.
It has been sometimes called immigration, but it
may be more aptly called a brutal invasion, which was
as cruel as resistance to it was tough.
The main body of the Aryan hordes seem to have
come down somewhere from the steppes of Asia or
further north about 2000— 1500 u.c. And it took
a long time before the invaders won complete sway
over the country. For the Dravidians fought bravely
-and contested each of their settlements. The Aryans
were formidable warriors and possessed superior
weapons. They probably brought their wonderful
.horses and outflanked the heavy moving Dravidians.
-Also they invoked the help of the war-God, Indra,
and begged him to hurl his thunderbolt against the
brick walled cities of the Proto-Dravidians, which
seemed like iron forts; and the inspiration of this
ideology may have helped them.
Although the evidence is still scanty, the hostilities
THE BACKGROUND 13

between these two elements lasted a long time. AIL

the same, this is the major historical date in India’s
ancient history. For even through the raging conflicts
in which the physical conquests were with the invaders,
the spiritual victory ultimately lay with the invaded.
The phenomenon of the Aryan invasion may be com¬
pared to what happened in Greece at an important
juncture in history. There, the blond barbaric Dorian
conquerors fell upon the more elaborate civilisation,
of the Cretans, smashed it, looted it, but learnt some
lessons before it perished, thus building out of it a
nobler Hellenic culture. The Persians did the same
to the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The Greeks
did the same to the Egyptians, and the Romans did
the same to the Greeks.
Similarly, the Aryan conquerors, speaking an Indo-
European language, came down through the Hindukush,
and secured the pastures for their big herds of cattle.
Being a mainly wandering pastoral people, they were
illiterate and culturally far behind the Dravidians-
whom they subdued.
But through the union of these two strains there
arose a tremendous synthesis of cultures, which has-
come down to us in the Sanskrit language, in Vedic
and Upanishadic metaphysical thought, the epics-
Ramayana, the Mahabharala, the magical tantras and the
later classical literature from which were to arise the
vernacular tongues, Punjabi, Gujerati, Bengali, Marathi,
Oriya, etc.
As the alien conquerors brought few women with
them, they began to marry Dravidian women, took,
over their beliefs, the doctrine of birth and rebirth
:i4 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

in Samara, and release from the troubles of the world,

.through good deeds.
The main strains of the joint religion which was
formulated during the period of conflicts and mixtures,
• centres around certain profound speculations about
the origin of the world. There is an alliance with the
forces of nature, with the energies behind the mighty
mountains, the great storms, the magnificent dawns
and other inner powers and spirits, which the fertile
imagination of these early men seized upon. Thus
were conceived the Vedic Gods: Rudra, the God of
wind; Indra, the God of rain; Usha, the dawn; Varuna,
who encompasses the very heavens. The four Vedas,
or inspired books. Rig, Tajur, Atharva and Sam give a
fairly adequate idea of the cosmogony and practices
• of the time, probably somewhat influenced by the
Sumerian and Babylonian traditions.
After the earlier mixtures with the indigenous
•populations, about the time of the composition of
.Atharva Veda, it seems that the Aryan priestcraft
ordained a caste system, based on Varna, colour.
The Brahmins seem to have reacted against the
increasing influence of Dravidian cults, associated
with the phallus, and the prominence which Rudra-
Shiva was acquiring in the eyes of the populace. They
sought to exalt Toga, meditation, as a higher form of
worship, began to insist on reverence for the bull and
the cow, which had hitherto been sacrificed and eaten
freely.
The four castes into which society was divided, also
became inevitable through the division of labour,
.rendered necessary in the towns and setdements, which
THE BACKGROUND 15

rose in such places in the Indo-Gangetic basin, as

Puskaravati, Taxila, Asandvant, Hastinapura, Indcr-
prastha, Virata, Nagara, Kampilya, Ahicchatra,
Kasi, Ayodhya and Mithila. These four castes were:
Brahmins or priests; Kshatriyas or warriors; Vaishas
or traders; Sudras, the lowest workers; and untouch¬
ables beyond caste.
Some of the Kshatriya warriors did not accept
the discrimination involved in caste. And a literature
of protest and inquiry began to grow up through the
metaphysical truths uttered by the hermits who retired
to the forests. The aphorisms, spoken by the sages
in the mountains and the jungles, arc called the
Upanishads, or forest books.
These show a broad philosophy of belief in the One
principle, Brahma, who becomes many, when the
<lcsirc to split Himself into Many arises in His heart.
There is a corresponding urge in the Many, to attain
unity with the one, by transcending the various forms
and processes of sense experience and thought-texture
involved in the constant flux of the phenomenal world
called Maya, Illusion.
Apart from the Upanishads, there were also compiled
certain books called Brahmanas, in which there is some
evidences of contact with the Assyrians, from whom
certain rituals, like the involvement of seventeen
•officiating priests in a sacrifice, were borrowed.
The human history of the fratricidal wars of the
Aryans is recorded in the two epics, the Ratnayana and
the Mahabharata. In the later book, the doctrine of the
king of kings emerges and it is likely that various
dynasties struggled for power from decade to decade
 16 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

and century to century. And most of the political and

social values were established during this time.
If we take the Bhagavad Gita, which is an appendix,
to the Mahabharata, as an index of the thinking of the
time, we get a glimpse of how the Hindus understood
the concept of freedom. As against the limited
definition of freedom in contemporary politics, freedom,
did not mean self-government or autonomy, but
emancipation from desire. The contemporary concept
of freedom entails the presence of choice, which is
clearly rooted in desire, or in self-interest. On the
other hand, Lord Krishna in the Gita offered the choice
based on Dharma, which means that one has to choose
that which is right, or ordained as right. Thus the
conception of morality is rather like Kant’s categorical,
imperative, in so far as what is right is supposed to be
right, because the king of kings with the divine light
in his eyes, says so.
In the midst of the many conflicts of dynasties and
ideas, among the upper orders, one thing remained
relatively unchanged, generation after generation t
The self-sufficient Indian village.
It is likely that the very defects of the Hindu caste
order, its sense of discrimination, and its closed nature,
proved, for some time, to be useful, for these small'
self-governing village republics of India, lasted out,
almost intact, till about two centuries ago. For while
kingdoms rose and fell, this real unit of Indian life
survived.
The main principle behind the village social structure
was that there was no private property in land. All the
villagers had the right to cultivate the land apportioned
 BACKGROUND 17

to them by the Panchayats or the councils of five; and

the other land was held in common; as well as the
forest land from which the fuel wood and the other
amenities were taken. Even the king, who was
suzerain, did not own the land, but had the right to
collect revenue, in lieu of his promise to defend the
country, keep roads in good repair and to arrange
public works. The taxes were paid in kind, by the
peasants. And even the services of the potter, the
carpenter, the smith, the school teacher, the tanner and
the sweeper, were paid for in grain.
If it is asked, as it is often asked, how India could
survive, in spite of the many changes at the main centres,
then the answer is to be found in the self-governing,
self-sufficient village, from which people moved away
in troubled times, only to come back and reclaim their
heritage, again and again. The hereditary institutions
of the craftsmen lasted out, based much more on caste
than on occupation; and though the religious sanctions
of caste reinforced social ostracism, caste kept the
village intact, though moribund. There is no
parallel anywhere else in the world to the rigidity and
exclusiveness of the caste system, which limited social
intimacy and confined marriage to one’s own caste
or subcaste. The privileged Brahmanical order had
ensured against all change by a subtle psychology of
ritualistic worship and it was difficult to break this
static order.
The only good that survived from the primitive
communism of the village was its integral connection
with the earth; the relation betw-ccn a man’s soul and
his job to the extent to which ritual did not crush the

2
 18 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

soul altogether; and some sense of harmony with

nature.

Revolts Against Hinduism

The third phase of Indian history is marked by the

revolts against Hinduism. The hidebound character
of the Hindu system, called forth various reactions
among which, however, the Godless humanism of
Gautama, the Buddha, and the non-violence of
Mahavira Jina, were the most spectacular. These
two prophets of the 6th century n.c. allied themselves
with the most oppressed peoples and attracted even
the various feudal oligarchies of kshatriyan kings,
leading to new waves of thinking and feeling.
The Buddha, himself born of a noble family, aimed
at social equality and the dissolution of caste. He
advocated compassion, or tenderness, for every thing,
and preached anti-Brahmanism, though he subscribed
to the Hindu theory of birth and rebirth in Samara,
Universe, from which Moksha could be achieved into
Nirvana, the state of absorption into a noble nothingness.
Mahavira Jina preached the non-hurting of all
living beings, humanitarianism and vegetarianism;
and his teaching has remained influential all over India
until this day.
The invasion of India by Alexander of Macedon
shook the consciousness of the people though, as they
moved away from the villages and came back after
his withdrawal, the shock was absorbed.
And then the mighty dynasty of the Mauryas arose,
-with a far-flung empire modelled on the empire of the
THE BACKGROUND 19

Achaemenid Persian Emperor, Darius, whose kingdom

had once spread to the Sind and Punjab but tottered
before the Macedonian onslaught and was lost in
ruins. The Mauryas absorbed the Asiatic part of the
Empire left by Alexander in numerous Greek settle¬
ments, which spread from Bactria down to Kashmir
and from Afghanistan to the Middle East. Chandra-
gupta Maurya, the founder of the empire, with his
minister, Chanakya, established international contacts
and a comparatively stable government. Chandra-
gupta gathered many elements, specially Persian and
Greek, into the court and his minister, Chanakya,
gave a new meaning to the concept of ‘ the king of
kings
The composite culture, which arose from the mingling
with the west Asiatic elements, from which the Aryans
had come, with the Caucasian, Assyrian, Iranian,
Schythian, Dravidian, Achaemenid, Greek and
other indigenous complexes, evolved into an eclectic
juxtaposition in this period.
Ashoka (323-262 b.c.) the third of the great Maurya
Emperors, unified the greater part of India and Central
Asia, adopted the humanist and pacifist gospel of the
Buddha and spread it through his missionaries and his
•edicts, written in the Kharosthi scripts, adapted from
the Assyrian-Persian tradition of records on rocks and
pillars.
The tender Buddhist civilisation, popularised by
this king, was in intimate touch with Hellenism and
Iranian Culture, both of which contributed permanent
values to the creative art of the Maurya, Sunga, Kushan
and Satvahana dynasties before the beginning of the
20 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

Christian Era.
And revolutionary changes took place in the political
life and social thought of the people during the six
centuries from the 3rd century b.c. to 3rd century a.d.
Even the literature of India may have been
affected, on the evidence of St. Chrysostom (a.d. 117),.
who says that the poetry of Homer is sung by the
Indians. And this evidence is corroborated by-
Plutarch and Aelian.
This may account for similarities in the themes of
the Ramayana and the Iliad. Also, the stage plays of
the Greek masters, Sophocles and Aeschylus, may-
have had something to do with the Hindu classical
drama, though, according to Indian concepts, tragedy
is r.o part of drama, because pain is an essential part
of becoming, while the Greek drama was based on the-
concept of the unknown fates, who govern man’s,
destiny but leave man free to choose between alter¬
natives.
We do not exactly know the exact extent of the-
comminglings, but words like Yavanika, the drop
curtain, obviously came from Yavana or the Greeks,,
because the Indian stage had previously been round,
admitting complete unity between actors and the-
audience. The saurical comedies of the Greeks may
have affected the humorous vein in the Mrchhakatika
of the 6th century a.d. as the Greek tradition in India
had not quite expired by that time. In the field of'
astronomy also, there were borrowings. For, says
the Gargi Samita: ‘ The Yavanas arc barbarians and
yet the signs of astronomy began with them, and for
this they must be reverenced like the Gods.* The
 THE BACKGROUND 21

Greeks, who had learnt the Zodiac from the Baby¬

lonians, gave this to the Indians, who had also already
learnt from the Babylonians the art of divining the
future by means of stars. The Hindus gave the concept
of dama, value or price, to the Greeks, who called it
drachme.
The ancient tradition of carving stone, which had
been evolved by the Proto-Dravidians in Harappa,
had not died out. This was based on the interior
realisation of the vital breaths (prana), and energies
which inform life, so that, in the Harappa torso, wc
sec the swelling of the forms from within as against
the Greek idea of imitating muscle and bone of the
human figure as an archetype. Strangely enough,
however, the two opposed concepts met in the Indian
Buddhist tradition of sculpture, shaped by the Greek
provincial sculptors of the Kabul valley, as well as of
Ethdcmis, Dcmatrya, and Sakala right down to
Peshawar, Taxila, Mathura and even Pataliputra.
The Buddha had forbidden his followers from forming
his image, the faith being represented, according to
his Hinayana, negative, teaching, by symbols like the
Bodhi tree, the Chatra, and the Dharmachakra Parvalana,
turning of the wheel of law. The people of Gandhara
had adopted the Mahayana (greater vehicle) Buddhism,
after the first Buddhist Council met in Peshawar.
The Hindu Sunga general, who founded a dynasty
after murdering the last Mauryan king, ruled from
Magdha. The attitude of the Hindu Sungas, towards
the Buddhist and the Greeks, was one of active hostility.
.During the 1st century after Christ, or thereabouts,
a Hindu counter reformation asserted itself and sought
22 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

to uproot the hold of Buddhism on the poor people.

The abbots of the Buddhist monasteries, from Gandhara
to Sarnath, and down to Bharut and Sanchi, had
grown fat with the alms given by the laity. The
monks did not participate in the birth, marriage and
death ceremonies of their followers. Thus the Hindu
priestcraft, patronised by the Sungas, who actively
intervened in such ceremonies, subtly ousted the more
rational Buddhist doctrine, though Buddhism spread
from its northern centres to the western coast, to the
Deccan,. to south-east Asia and upwards to Tibet,
China, Korea and Japan.
The basis of the Hindu counter reformation was the
doctrine of henotheism, according to which the three
main Vedic deities, who had been assuming great
importance for the people, were exalted to the position
of supreme Godhood, and worship, with a more personal
devotion than the pure contemplation with which
the supreme Brahman had been hitherto honoured.
Vishnu, the blessed incarnation of Supreme God,
became the centre of the doctrine of Hindu faith,
called Vaishnavism, which was to flourish over the
greater part of northern and central India. Shiva,
ihe wild primeval god of the mountains, of forests and
storms, became the chief reincarnation of the great
Creator and the symbol of Shivaism; Shakti, the consort
of Shiva, ihe dynamic mother goddess, who had been
the common deity of the peoples from northern India
to Crete, Etruscia and up to Nomay, and had come
down, through the magical cults of the Proto-Dravidians
of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, and the Dravidiaos,
now became the main symbol of the divine in the cult
THE BACKGROUND 23

of Shaktism.
These three forms of Brahmanical theism knit
together the Hindu faith for the next two thousand
years to come. There were, of course, setbacks, through
foreign incursions, changes of doctrine and belief,
with adaptations and reinterpretations, but the basic
religio-philosophica! hypothesis of the Upamshads
and the Brahmanas (so-called forest books), about the
One and the Many, was sustained on the basis of the
caste order and the working faith in the transmigration
of souls through good and bad deeds.
The Hindu view of life came to be accepted essentially
as a spiritual progression. At the centre of it was the
urge for self-realisation. All knowledge was considered
divine by origin. And the efficacy of intuition, over
and above reason, was emphasised for the purpose of
attaining union with God. The bonds of ignorance
could be cut by the intellect, but the final merging
into the supreme required an act of total inner surrender.
In order to promote self-realisation, the four portions
of life were dedicated to four essential ends. These
were:

(1) Dharma — the discharge of duties and

obligations and the practice of virtue;
(2) Artha — the acquisition of wealth for use;
(3) Kama — the enjoyments of the pleasures of
life;
(4) Moksha — or the freedom from the sense of
wanton desire and attainment of full liberation.

This fourfold order of life, which was later codified

24 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

in books called Dharmashastra, became the basis of

Indian culture, because this scheme did not involve
rejection of the world, but embodied precautions
against the temptations of losing sight of the goal of
self-realisation. And it remained a dynamic view
for nearly seven hundred years. Moreover, the very
comprehensiveness of this doctrine about life enabled
Hindu thought to absorb many incidental and outside
doctrines, in the attempt at the unity of the world of
spirit and matter, which were seen not as antagonistic
to each other but as complementary and vitally related.
In the first four hundred years of the Christian Era,
this reformation led to a cultural renaissance.
The Sungas had absorbed the two currents of thought,
Hindu and Buddhist, and patronised a tremendous
artistic activity in the country, which was considerably
influenced by the Greeks. The Greeks were converted
to Vaishnavism and Buddhism, respectively. Hellio-
dorus and Menander were a few of the men who
accepted these faiths.
The railings at Barhut and Sanchi, round the
Mauryan Buddhist stupas, were achieved in this age.
Helliodorus erected a pillar in honour of Vishnu at
Besnagar, where the Yakshi figure in polished stone
had already been hewn.
The Sungas were followed, in Magdha, by short¬
lived families of Kanvas, while Greeks and Parthians
evolved new frontiers.
At this stage the Saka invasions began.
THE BACKGROUND 25

More Foreign Incursions

The fourth recognisable phase of Indian Civilisation

begins with foreign incursions, inaugurated by the
coming of the Sakas.
They flooded the country in great waves, spreading
into Sind, Punjab and southwards. Although they
were invaders, they came to settle down in the land
and made India their home. They established five
important principalities: Sind, Taxila, Mathura, Malwa
and Maharashtra. They subdued the Satavahanas
and other dynasties and began to build a common
culture with the people whom they had reduced.
They patronised literature and science. For instance,
the Saka Satrap in Ujjain, Rudradaman, had his
exploits recorded in chaste Sanskrit on the Girnar
hill. Surprisingly enough, while the Andhra Satava¬
hanas were Brahmins, who recorded their epigraphs
in Prakrit, it was the foreign Sakas, who, from a.d.

J50 onwards, gave India her classical Sanskrit style

after this language had been matured in the Brahamanas
and Arnayakas. Also, they patronised astronomy.
They made the city of Ujjain the Greenwich of that
time. And this and the other Greek sciences came
to be studied in Malwa.
The Kushans were a later wave of Sakas, who also
settled down mostly in the north, though they ventured
as far as Orissa and south-east India. They accepted
Buddhism and patronised the indigenous sculptors,
to evolve a fine synthesis of the Greek style with the
Indian mental images. The great school of carving
in Mathura bears witness to their vital faith in the
26 IS THERE a CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

teaching of the Buddha, revived under the famous

emperor, Kanishka, in the 1st century a.d., through
the Mahayana, or greater vehicle conference held by
him in Peshawar.
The Kushans popularised the long flowing choga,
from which later our Achkin was to be evolved. Also,
they brought the kurla and the tight pyjama-hkt lower
garment. The tall boots, worn by Kanishka in his
Mathura statue, continued to be worn by horse riders,
and were also adopted for riding in the warmer eastern
India as evidenced by the Surya image at Konarak
in Orissa. It is likely that they brought sun-worship
with them and familiarised this Surya image, though
the God Surya had already appeared in the vedic
religion as an anthropomorphic deity. But the
Kushans obviously initiated the personal worship of
the Surya image, and it is from their example that
this worship became possible in the Martand Temple
in Kashmir and in Bahvarchi or Bharaich in Uttar
Pradesh. They also built Sun Temples in Multan,
where the first wave of Sakas had founded settlements.
The Saka and Kushan coins bore the figure of Surya,
(Sun) and Chandra (Moon) on their faces.
Although the Sakas and the Kushans met stiff
opposition from the Satavahanas, and, later, from
Chandragupta Vikramaditya, they survived and were
absorbed by the Indian people. And for a long time,
that is to say, until the 10th century, they ruled over
the Kabul valley, Punjab and Sind under the title of
Sahi kings, guarding the frontiers of India up to the
Hindukush for sixty generations. The composite
culture evolved by them had a lasting influence. The
THE BACKGROUND 27

Mahayana, or the greater vehicle school of Buddhism,,

broke down the rigidity of the Hinayana, or the lesser
vehicle school, and vitalised the teachings of the Buddha,
until it swept over India as an almost pagan cult
absorbing the ancient Dravidian worships. The lovely
Takshis (tree spirits), with their naked sensuous bodies,
hewn by the loving hands of sculptors, restored woman,,
in all her allurement, to worship among the people.
In fact, the tender humanism of the Buddha flowered
only through the delicate sensibilities of the Saka and.
Kushan nobility.

The Classical Renaissance and the Kingdoms

of the South

The fifth pliose of Indian Civilisation began under the-

Gupta Emperors who ruled for nearly 300 years. This
has been called the Golden Age of India, during which
time the bulk of northern, western, eastern and central
India came under the influence of a single dynasty.
The Guptas were Hindu kings, who revived the
fourfold order of their ancestral religion, and made
it the basis of Indian culture. As this fourfold scheme
did not involve the rejection of the world but embodied
precautions against the temptations of losing sight of
the goal of self-realisation, it remained a dynamic
view for considerable periods. The comprehensiveness
of the Hindu doctrine about life now enabled Hindu
thought to absorb many more incidental and outside-
doctrines, restating the unity of the world of spirit
and matter, which were seen not as antagonistic with,
each other but as complementary to each other.
28 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

In the first 400 years of the Christian Era, this Hindu

wave led to a social and cultural renaissance, through
which the previous composite strains of literature and
.art were synthesised and flourished as never before
or after under the stable dynasty of the Gupta Emperors.
And many of the values of the past were refashioned
.and clothed in the most sensitive poetry in Sanskrit
and bequeathed to later generations. There were
.frequent controversies between the Hindus and the
Buddhists and the Jains, which helped to generate
.a certain tolerant-intolerance, that was to come down,
in the various periods, as a residual operative value
with the emphasis more on intolerance than tolerance.
Also, the adventurousness of the human spirit in the
India of that time, and its assimilative, all-embracing
•character, reaffirmed the kind of universalist view of
the Vedas to which nothing was alien.
The incapacity of later Gupta kings to hold the
northern Empire intact, led to political disunity under
attack from outside elements. The Hindus became
-defensive and began to codify their culture. The
Smiritis and law codes were redefined to save the caste
system, which had almost broken down through the
constant influx of foreigners. The caste regulations
were stiffened, even child marriages being sanctioned
to avoid the danger of alien peoples taking away
-young virgins. The aliens, who had come without
-women, were now rejected from Hinduism though
.-still admitted to the worship of the god Shiva. And
the holy books, Puranas, sometimes admitted the low
oaste people to a place in heaven. This codification
•of thought led to formalism and rigidity, in or about J
THE BACKGROUND 29“

the 4th century a.d., and the dynamic of the Golden

Age was lost. The Sanskrit language itself became
a pastime for the grammarians, and the Prakrits, or'
the spoken speech of the people, began to take the-
place of the classical language. The great Gupta
tradition of sculpture and painting, which was the
halcyon point of Indian achievement in the temples
of Uttar Pradesh, and the monasteries of Ajanta,
began to decline from its sense of reality and intense-
colours into decorative patterns, and sentimental
prettiness.
These weaknesses were, of course, intensified by the
new waves of invasions, which the Sahis of the north,
could not prevent. For a century or more the
Scythians, the Huns and the Jats, came down in waves
and penetrated deep into the countryside, in spite of
the spirited defence of the indigenous dynasties. The-
confusion of Indian society was aggravated. The
central Empire broke up. And people moved south¬
wards to safety and better lands, reaching as far down,
as south-east Asia, where Indian monks and merchants
had already been adventuring for more than two
centuries.
In the face of foreign attacks, the Indian mind'
closed up. The worst characteristics of the caste-
system were accentuated and the whole people became
divided into smaller and smaller principalities, with,
small-state-mindedness as the obsessive trait of the
various kingdoms.
The self-sufficient village alone remained intact,
decadent and static, but lasting out through its naturah
assets of fuel, wood, cornland, wild fruit, water, airr
■30 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

the Sun and other graces of nature, as also the sheer

biological sense of survival. There was, indeed, an
attempt at a Hindu revival in the forest kingdoms
and many temples came to be built, in honour of the
-God Shiva, whose help was invoked in the defence
against foreigners. There was enough vitality in this
revival to enable the people to hold certain bastions;
Thus, at the end of the 5th century, the Abhiras (Ahirs)
began to build up a mighty kingdom in the west and
•deliberately concocted their genealogies with the wish
to be related to Lord Krishna, the god of the cow¬
herds of the later Mahabharala period. The Gujars,
another milkman tribe, gave their name to Gujerat,
and became mixed up with the Gurjara Pratiharas
•of Central India. The Jats infiltrated into Rajasthan.
The Huns, who came last from China had swept across
•Central Asia, had broken the back of the Roman
Empire and swooped down on the granaries of northern
India, thus shattering the remnants of the Gupta
Empire. They met with opposition, here and there,
retreated, regrouped their forces and returned to
settle down in India.
These conquering tribes could not be accepted into
the Hindu caste system. And they would not submit
to the position of Sudras. Thus they came to be
acknowledged as a new and distinct kind of Kshatriya
warrior community.
A purificatory ceremony was held at Mt. Abu, and
they were collectively admitted into the Hindu fold.
The five famous Rajput families, Agnikulas, were
-supposed to have arisen from the sacrificial fire. These
-Rajputs were to occupy Rajputana and fought with
THE BACKGROUND 31

courage and persistence against all the later oncomcrs,

performing Johur, or absorption in fire and light, against
advancing forces and committing their women to
Sati, or immolation in the flames of fire, against foreign
hordes.
The early medieval revival in the arts, which was
based on the worship of Shiva, did not, however,
unite the country.
The only unity in northern India, after the Gupta
Empire, came under Harshavardhana, who combined
the throne of Thaneshwar and Kanauj.
In the south the great contemporary of Harsha¬
vardhana was Pulakesin II, the western Chalukya
king, who drove back Harsha when the latter tried to
cross the Narbada.
Further south, was the formidable contemporary of
both Harsha and Pulakesin, the Pallava King,
Narasimhavarman, from Kanchi, who attacked and
sacked Badami, the capital of Pulakesin II.
The 7th and 8th century a.d. witnessed many feuds
between the western Chalukyas of Badami and the
Pallavas of Kanchi. At last, in the 8th century, the
•Chalukyas lost their throne to the Rashtrakutas, who
had been a powerful dynasty in the Deccan and of
whom King Krishna had built the magnificent rock
cut temple of Ellora. The Rashtrakutas had constant
quarrels with the Cholas, who succeeded the Pallavas
and eastern Chalukyas in Andhra.
After Harsha, while the Gurjara-Pratiharas ruled
Central India till the 11th century, with Mahirbhuja
as the most spectacular King of this line, Bengal was
under the Pal dynasty. And Kashmir enjoyed tremen-
32 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

dous glory under Lalildatya who built the town of

Parihaspura and the famous Sun Temple at Martand*
The Palas, who ruled over eastern India from the
4th century to the 8th century downwards, were
Buddhists. They inspired much Buddhist learning,,
specially at" Nalanda. The eastern Gangas of Orissa
had a long and continuous history — the most
formidable of this line being Ananta Varmachodaganga
in the 11th century, and Narasimha in the 13th century.
The first built the temple of Puri and the second was
responsible for the great temple of Konarak.
The Rashtrakutas of the Deccan were overthrown
by the Chalukyas. And then new Chalukyas ruled
from Kalyani, and one of their line, Vikramaditya.
VI is well known.
The Cholas in the south were succeeded by Pallava*
in the middle of the 9th century. They patronised both
temple sculpture and painting and had bronzes of the
gods cast. The Cholas also struck out towards the north.
Rajindra Chola got as far as the Ganges and into
south-east Asia, where he crippled the power of
Saikudras with his mighty fleet. Rajindra Chola’s
grandson, Kulottunga, combined the eastern Chalukya
and Chola thrones. The formidable power of the
Cholas was eclipsed by Pandya Jatavarman, who blazed
forth in the 13th century a.d.

The Hoysalas took the place of the western Chalukyas.

and the Yadavas replaced the eastern Chalukyas.
The Yadavas were themselves swept aside by the
Rasktyas about the 12th century a.d.
All these were finally smashed by Malik Kafur, the
General of Ala-ud-Din Khilji, at the beginning of the
THE BACKGROUND 33

14th century a.d.

The last great Hindu Kingdom in the south was that
of Vijayanagar, which continued from about the middle
of the 14th century to 17th century, in spite of its clashes
with the Muhammadan Sultans. The great King,
Krishna Devaraya, of this line, was a magnanimous
and enlightened monarch, who had several beautiful
temples built and renovated many more all over South
India. The death knell of the Vijayanagar Empire
was sounded by the battle of Talikota, when the
Sultanates of Bidar, Bijapur, Golkondaand Ahmadnagar
took over for a short period, being themselves swept
aside by the growing Mughal power in the north.
Thus, although we see a unique kind of mental unity,
which bound the various parts of the country, the
diverse strands of the population still remained alien
to each other. For instance, the Ahirs, the Gujars,
the Jats and the Rajputs, evolved distinct physical and
communal habits, in spite of their absorption into the
Hindu body politic. And the south, though professing
Hinduism, was also divided.
The lack of social and political cohesion of the early
medieval India had been an open invitation to foreign
armies. The vacuum at the centre was always inviting.
And the history of the south in the Medieval period
only follows the sequence of events of the break-up
of the Hindu kingdoms of the north.

Impact of Muslim Invasions

In this way had begun the sixth phase of Indian culture

which was marked by the impact and absorption of

3
34 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

the various waves of Muslim invasion.

The first of these, under Muhammad Bin Kasim,
In a.d. 712, was merely a forage raid to the north and
west of India. It soon passed but left the influence
of Islam on our country.
At that time, the Arabs were playing the role of the
advance guard of Islam, all over the lands between
the Oxus and the Indus in the east, to the shores of the
Atlantic in the west, and from the Caspian Sea in the
north, and to the Nile in the south. The words of the
Prophet Muhammad had become a mission for the
adoration of the One God in the hands of his followers
during the century after the Prophet’s death. The
Arabs had preserved the remnants of Greek philosophies
and their own sciences. They borrowed mathematics
and medicine from the Indians, wrapped up this and
other knowledge in the paper, which they learnt to
make from China, and propagated this illumination
in the West.
Thus they did not always enter other countries, as
is often alleged, under the militant banner of Islam,
but as the champions of a new enlightenment.
For instance, the conquest of Sind brought benevolent
kingdoms under the settlers and, for three hundred
years, the Arab Generals of that part of the country
ruled in a kind of co-cxistcncc with formidable neigh¬
bouring Hindu kingdoms.
The next wave of Muslim conquest under Subuktigin
and Mahmud of Ghazni, in the 9th century, were more
ruthless, and these were followed by sixteen incursions
by the same Mahmud.
Singly, some of the Indian princes repulsed Mahmud.
THE BACKGROUND 35

But, as they could not unite, this conqueror carried

all before him, looting treasures, breaking temples and
■carrying off people as slaves. The impact of this
monarch lasted for nearly a century and a half, on
northern India, where his descendants ruled over
diverse clans, tribes and peoples, on an area spreading
from Afghanistan to the lower fringes of the Punjab.
Although the Muslim power constantly threatened
the Hindu dynasties from the striking points of the
Punjab, the local princes failed to get together. And
■when a second great wave of Muslim conquest assailed
them under Muhammcd Ghori, this time the Muslim
sway spread permanently over northern India, from
Kabul to Lahore, and thence to Delhi and Bengal.
Thus Delhi became, from now on, the capital of the
loosely knit Muslim Empire, whose feudatory princes
and generals ruled in the provinces.
Soon, the outsiders were absorbed into the Indian
population and became easygoing through the com¬
parative luxury which they enjoyed from the fertile
earth.

Tartars and Mughals

The seventh phase of Indian history began with the

Tartar invasion ofTimur the Lame, in 1398, which shook
the centre of Delhi as well as the provincial Sultanates.
At this stage, a combination of Hindu kings, based
on reinforced Shaivism, under Rajput leadership, was
on the point of overthrowing the Empire of Delhi.
But a new conqueror broke in from the north. This
was Babur, a descendant of Timur the Lame. He
36 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

captured Delhi in 1526, broke the rising Rajput power

in the following year and founded the Mughal dynasty.
After temporary withdrawal against Pathan resistance,
Babur’s son, Humayun, returned to India, and, from
then on, the paramount power of the Mughals held
sway over the country until the end of the 18th century.
This seventh phase of Indian Culture posed the
problems of the clash between Hinduism and Islam
and, to a large extent, solved these problems.
Under Akbar the Great, a larger measure of centrali¬
sation and unity was achieved, than had been possible
since Ashoka and the later Guptas. The spiritual
crisis was resolved by the king proclaiming a new
religion, which was a mixture of Hinduism and Islam.
In the time of the previous Muslim dynasties, the
closed system of the Hindus had met the closed system
of the Muslims. The former was pantheistic, caste-
ridden and idol-worshipping, with all kinds of ancillary
faiths juxtaposed with it. The latter was a Unitarian
system, based on the brotherhood of all believers who-
must be converted at all costs, with or without the
sword. The genius of Akbar saw the chasm which
divided his Hindu and Muslim subjects. And, with a
remarkable insight into the future, he began, tolerantly,
to find ways and means to reconcile his people to each
other.
Although his constructive and beneficial policies
did not succeed completely, the synthesis between the
alien and native cultures proceeded. They were
periods of iconodasm and persecution, but also there
was a constant intermixture. The Muslim princes
and the nobility often married Hindu wives. And
THE BACKGROUND 37

there was little tension between the two creeds in the

villages, the converted Muslims being mostly Indians
who had inherited racial memories in common with
the Hindus.
Thus a new cosmopolitan culture of various elements
began to pulsate in India, formed out of the sublime
Persian poetry in fusion with the deeper Hindu epic
and lyric verse. Unlike the Sakas, the Huns and the
Jats, the new Muslims had brought a sense of social
organisation and new rules of conduct. These began
to influence Indian social polity and were moulded by it.
The contribution of Islam to Indian Culture was,
therefore, immense. The Muhammadan Sufi mystical
thought merged into Indian mysticism. The Persian
and Arabic languages took on. local colour. Many
Muslims had already begun, under the pre-Mughal
Sultans, to write and compose verse and prose in the
local languages and dialects. But the indigenous
Khariboli, evolved, in the Mughal army camps, into the
new style of mixed speech, called Urdu; and to the
development of this both Hindus and Muslims were
to contribute. In fact, this Urdu language helped
to build up Hindi prose and became a common
language, Hindustani, which is prevalent more or less
all over India today.
The new land tenure of Akbar, organised by his
finance Minister Raja Todar Mai, brought about a
major reform on the land, revitalising the village
economy and introducing some elements of a near
social revolution. Certainly, India became united,
for the first time, after eleven centuries. And those
elements of disunity which remained, were healed by
 38 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

the teaching of several medieval saints and social

reformers. Among these, Nanak and Kabir founded
two new religions which were based on the fundamental
urge for ending communal discord and achieving
emotional integration of the people. The craftsmen
of India mingled with the artisans who came from
abroad and an eclectic style of architecture began to
be evolved. The Saracenic and the Central Asian
styles, mixed with the native elements of the Silpa
Shastras, and domes and towers and arches and mehrabs,
began to set off to effect the mosques and palaces and
tombs of the Muslim patrons. Their charm was
enhanced by the geometrical designs of gardening and
horticulture, which were decorativcly introduced into
all plans for buildings. The miniature painting, based
on a mixture of decorative Persian models and rich
Hindu colourings, had become a distinctive style under
the pre-Mughal Sultanates. The patronage of the
Mughal Emperors gave the miniatures a new elegance
and sensitiveness, born of a poetical outlook. The
Mughal contribution to Indian music was also fairly
extensive. New tunes of great variety enriched the
heavy Hindu strains, and the enlightened dynasty as
well as the nobility also promoted the Kathak dance
style, through which an ancient Hindu form assumed
a decorative splendour which has survived till this
day. The first planned city of India at Fatchpur
Sikri, under Akbar, was also the expression of a synthetic
philosophy of life. The new clothes fashioned on the
costumes of the Sakas and Kushans took root. And,
both in small and big things, the composite Indian
civilisation of these four or five centuries seems, in its
THE BACKGROUND 39

achievements, to be the equal of its contemporaries in

Europe.

European Penetration

The eighth phase of Indian culture, which began with

the European infiltration was, however, to be the most
crucial, both for good or ill, in our country.
And there was a certain inevitability about it, which
sprang from the different social, economic and political
forces which had begun to confront each other since
the 15th century a.d.
For it is quite clear that while the Indian feudal
civilisation, even under the Mughals, remained pastoral
and agrarian in the villages of India, incapable of any
spontaneous new development, because of the basic
self-sufficiency of the isolated, and yet resilient, Indian
village economy (where no one owned land, but every
one enjoyed certain rights in it), the Europeans brought
a new development, based on the Western stresses, in
Great Britain. No important and vital class of com-
prodor bourgeois had arisen in India, like the mercantile
middle classes of the West. And, as no social movement
stirred the feudal political and economic structure
after Akbar, so the fundamental reformation, which
was at work in the world of religion and thought, did
not embrace the whole of India, specially the areas
where the Europeans first settled down. Above all,
neither Hindu speculation, nor the Muslim Koranic
doctrines, encouraged in India the methods of experi¬
mental science, against introvert and mystical faiths,
which latter were insistent on individual self-realisation
40 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

as against the European Christian doctrine of ‘ Love

Thy Neighbour As Thyself that had humanised the
Graeco-Roman ideal of the all-powerful state, based
on reason and stimulating inquiry into social, aesthetic
and physical well being. So that while the general
atmosphere in India conduced to a sensitive and
humane attitude, based on certain traditional natural
values, it still accepted a variety of ways of living,
feeling and thinking, in spite of the acceptance of caste
exclusiveness and communal non-interference, as a
philosophy of life. On the other hand, the intellectual
attitude which had grown up in Europe, from the
reformation in religion and the renaissance built on
new knowledge of the physical sciences, was attended
by a mighty technical advance which was to smother
the more introvert civilisations of Asia, and destroy
them almost in a single fell swoop.
It is under these conditions that the two civilisations
of India and Europe met, when the waves of sea-borne
invasions began and finally led to the conquest of India
by the East India Company, as the agents of British
commercial power.
This phase, which was marked by the Western
invasion of India, was the most far reaching in its
effects, not only because it led to the completest domina¬
tion of our political life by members of an alien race,
for the next 200 years, but because it struck at the very
roots of our civilisation and culture, and thus began
to transform, change or destroy the residual human
values which had accrued to us in some state of preserva¬
tion, in spite of our social decay.
There was no pre-meditated, deliberate and studied
THE BACKGROUND 41

Attack, by the British, on the inner fabric of Indian

Civilisation. The alien rulers were, in the main,
taking certain practical steps to subjugate the conquered
territories and to introduce certain, according to them,
convenient social forms and create conditions to carry
out the exploitation of the country, for their own
benefit, in a manner natural to all outside elements,
but particularly characteristic of the Imperialist con¬
querors from the West who came to dominate Asia
And Africa.
The crucial factor, in all this, was that the British
represented a totally different form of civilisation from
the Indian. They were the precursors of a giant
industrial revolution, which was, in itself, based on
at least three previous social changes in English history.
They had absorbed into their lives the results of the
first Baronial revolution through which the feudal lords
had obtained the Magna Carta from King John, and
won the power to own private property in land in
lieu of various tributes to the king. The British had
inherited the consequences of the struggle of the young
lords of the 15th century, who limited the powers of
the monarchy. The British were heirs to the Crom¬
wellian puritanical revolt, during which the head of
King Charles was chopped off. They had brought
about the bourgeois revolution of the 18th century,
by which the middle sections became the greatest
organised industrial force in Western Europe, smashed
the Portuguese, Dutch and French rivals and established
the widespread British Empire. Obsessed with the
•correctness of their mission, to bring the blessings of
British rule and Christianity to the natives of the East
42 IS THERE a CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

they went ahead, introducing such machine forms as-

were quite alien to the structure of Indian Society,
without much comprehension of the inner nature of
the subject peoples.
The most vital of these measures was the new land
system, which they brought into their territories in
Bengal, under the Pcrmanant Settlement Act of Lord:
Cornwallis. This law vested private property in land
among the people who had never known private owner¬
ship of land, but who had always enjoyed certain,
rights in land, such as the right to till as many fields
as a family in the village wanted, the right to graze
the cattle on common lands, and the right to collect
fuel wood from the common forest.
Actually, the British wanted to expedite the collection
of taxes from the population whom they did not know.
Thus they appointed a certain number of middlemen,
called the ‘ Brown Barons ’, to collect revenue from the
villagers on the condition that these tax gatherers
would pay a certain portion to the Sarkar keeping the
rest for themselves.
The ‘ Brown Barons ’ naturally became extortionate
and imposed various legal and illegal taxes on the
peasantry, such as elephant tax, the tax for the marriages
of the landlord’s relatives, and the tax for the birth
of his sons, etc.
The peasants, who had come into the ownership
of their small plots and holdings, through the new law,
were often forced to sell out their plots to the * Brown
Barons \ Thus the small peasants became progressively
poorer, while the tax gatherers acquired vast estates.
And the increasingly expropriated peasantry began
THE BACKGROUND 43>

to trek towards the towns as a potential lumpen

proletariat.
The British initiated certain industries in India.
They thought that in this way they would be nearer
the raw materials, which they were hitherto exporting
to Great Britain; nearer the cheap labour, which had
become available in plenty; and nearer the ultimate-
market. Unfortunately for them their industries in
India began to offer stiff competition to similar indus¬
tries in Great Britain, which were importing raw
materials from the colonics, paying higher wages to-
their own labour force, and spending money on freight,,
before the finished goods reached the colonial market.
So they slowed down industrial development in India,,
besides choking the beautiful handlooms of the Indian
weavers which still offered competition.
The British land reform thus represented, not the-
mere impact of the West on India, but a tremendous
social revolution, which was to alter the basic relations,
of Indian society and bring in such economic relations,
which by their play and interplay, brought the-
ancicnt Indian feudal society, with its residual tradi¬
tional values, into the orbit of the commercial profit¬
making, mechanical, cash nexus system of the West.
Besides the inner changes of Indian economy, the
British imposed a central, unitary system of Government
on India, to administer their estate properly. They
introduced a railway system and roads to carry their
army from one place to the other. They improved
the postal service and brought swifter means of
communications. And as they could not transport
enough white Sahibs to fill the inferior posts in the-
 -44 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

administration, they initiated a system of education

by which they could produce native clerks, with just
•enough smattering of the English language to fill the
registers and read Government orders. They delibe¬
rately excluded the knowledge of the Indian classical
languages and ancient learning from the curriculum
of the British Indian universities and rejected Indian
culture through the expert pronouncement of Lord
Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education, as so much
fanciful myth and legend
From now on there was no choice for the Indian
people, but to approximate to those political, economic
and social conditions which were necessary for material
survival.
The cash nexus society of the West had come in,
-and payment in kind, by the production of grain, had
.gone forever. The crafts were starved. The peasants
impoverished. And every individual in India became
subject to the fluctuating laws of the capitalist system,
which had already begun to dominate all the processes
-of life in the West. The class system of Europe was
superimposed on the caste systems of India.
The fact that the British allowed Indian religions to
prevail, specially after the bitter lessons of the Mutiny,
■did not help to reform the various indigenous faiths.
And while pretending to respect Indian susceptibilities,
the rulers allowed the Hindu and Muhammadan laws
to operate in the courts, thus helping to retain many
of the antiquated and obsolete feudal customs, habits
and traditions in a state of chronic putresence.
They discouraged the few individuals who wished
to go beyond feudalist India, and alien Imperialist
THE BACKGROUND 45-

negation, to synthesise the best traditions of their native

land with the most advanced scientific knowledge of
the West. All social and political reforms were pooh-
poohed. And the crisis of the spirit in the lives of the
intelligentsia became harrowing in the extreme. Not
only was there loss of liberty, but there was disruption
and chaos all around. These conditions did not
permit an easy synthesis. All the Indian values were
ignored, and there seemed to be no way to redefine
them or revitalise them under alien contempt and
growing native neglect. The whole of Europe was
an unknown quantity, real knowledge of which was
censored by various ordinances.
The implications of this impact have been so wide
and deep that we will have to study them in the pages
that follow-, in order to understand how difficult has
been the task of the Indians of the contemporary period
in seeking to define the hypotheses of a Contemporary
Indian Civilisation.
 CHAPTER II

THE BRITISH NATIONALISM

One of the hidden aspects of the impact

•of the West on India, which did not immediately reveal

itself to the people, lay in the fact that the British had
come to India, as the representatives of a highly
•organised nation.
I have already indicated how the three or four
middle class revolutions in Great Britain had led to the
industrial revolution, which brought in the machine
power. What has to be emphasised is the fact that the
invasion of India by the advance guard of the British
nation was quite different from any other incursion
•which India had known 'before.
The hordes of Scythians, Kushans, Huns, Mongols
and Pathans, who had descended upon India in the
past were mainly poverty-stricken adventurers who
had organised themselves into bands of robbers and
brigands, and had wandered down south in search of
food. The scarcity of easily available natural resources
in their own lands and periodic drought were the
driving force which impelled them to leave their homes.
And though they were able to prevail over the more
leisurely people, the blood-sucking wolves began to
•eat vegetables. The process of social adjustment was
not always successful, but it was continuous.
But the tides which swept over from the West
introduced new elements that sought neither adjustment
nor allowed it. It was like a flood which swept over

46
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 47

•our whole country.

In its essence, it was a machine monster, hungry
And greedy, not only for the fruits of the earth but for
human flesh and blood.
What is more, the giant was blind — it was a montage
man composed of neatly arranged screws and bolts,
with commerce for one arm, and politics for another,
diplomacy for a third and violence for a fourth.
Already, it had reduced the natives of Great Britain
into wage slavery, divided them into classes, bound
them in the iron hoops of industry and made humanity
into a marketable value. There was nothing ‘ of the
divine image in this Goliath’, as Rabindranath Tagore
has put it, * because it functioned with the highest
efficiency’. The Indians could not even understand
how this enormous square-cut demon had been manu¬
factured. And, through the rise and fall of various
civilisations, wc had seen that man’s instinctive and
creative powers were not dammed up. Our social
instincts were always allowed to be active within the
framework of our homes and farms and workshop
by the alien rulers.
We had known human races, strong and weak and
cruel, but also merciful,'unlike us and yet like us. But
we had never known such a Demon as this ‘ Great
British Nation ’.

What was this Nation?

It was a peculiar product of the higher economic and

political grouping of the people, organised by the class
society, on the profit-making system, called capitalism.
48 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

which wanted to pass off the burden of slavery from its

own working and lower middle sections, because they
struggled against economic servitude, and which,
therefore, began to invest capital in the technically
underdeveloped countries of the world, and assumed
the form of a vast Imperialism.
As the British Nation was seeking self-preservation
in this way, it could only become the instrument of
power and not of human ideals. The organisation
of this power, with the help of scientific knowledge of
the renaissance in Europe, equipped it with amazing
energy. And it conquered everything before it.
Only, it had other rivals in Europe, among the Dutch,
the Portuguese, the French and the German nations.
And although the British nation outfought most of its
rivals, the greed for material prosperity, which was
the cue for passion of all these neighbouring European
societies, filled them all with mutual jealousy. And
this brought obsessions of fear and hatred, based on
suspicions, about who was growing more powerful
and who was becoming less powerful. When the
competition for power grew keener, the organisations
for achieving supremacy grew vaster. And selfishness
reigned everywhere. Military solutions, in the form
of world wars, then became inevitable, crushing the
remaining human values.
As this abstract monster began to rule India, the
human touch was more or less lost. The rulers did
not need to know our languages, values or faiths and
lived secluded lives in their sequestered bungalows,
except when they came out to govern. They hired
wage slaves, whom they ordered about from a distance.
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 49

The strange colour of their skins made them more

remote, giving them the aura of beings of another world,
frightening in their potencies. And the inhuman
steel frame of officialdom which they evolved, made
them more like the tyrannical demons of hell. They
may have been sensitive to the personal love of the
girls they had left behind. Certainly, the bulk of the
ruling race was not in the least aware of the joys and
sorrows of the inferior races, among whom they had
come to live. Indeed, they promoted the myth of a
superior ruling white race.
Unfortunately, for these rulers, the fertile Indian
population were not merely, as the British thought,
teeming millions, but individuals surviving from broken
down ancient cultures, who could feel pain if you
pricked them, who could smile if you tickled them,
who could laugh at their own frailties as well as the
absurdities of the rulers. The bloodless policies of
British bureaucracy ignored this fact. For instance,
the rulers threw millions of Indian weavers on the
scrap heap of death, at one go, because the home
market did not want any competition from the finest,
Dacca muslins. And in this and similar ways the
‘ octopus of abstractions’, which was the British nation
spread its tentacles into the great spaces of India,
sucked up the remotest and most inbred societies by the
laws of its power and bleached the plains with the bones
of the peasantry and craftsmen, generation after genera¬
tion. The value of human personality, of individual
life, the problem of its growth through education of the
sensibility, and its betterment, were more or less for¬
gotten. Colonies, though the liberals fought over

4
 50 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

them at home in Parliament, exploitation for gain,

was all that mattered in the empire, and every
instrument was organised for this purpose.
Although the British ruling classes perfected this
concept of the capitalist nation and its main organ,
Imperialism, the example was catching, at first through¬
out the West, but also in several parts of Asia. For
instance, apart from the European nation-imperialisms,
there soon arose in Asia itself, the Japanese nation-
imperialism. The Samurai of the small islands in the
north Pacific modelled themselves on the ruling classes
of the small islands in the Atlantic, adopted the machine
civilisation on the profit basis, and began, aggressively,
to organise themselves into a military force which
defeated the Czarist Russian nation-imperialism and
conquered vast spaces in Asia, spreading death and
destruction everywhere in the name of trade and
co-prosperity.
The peoples of Great Britain, who had struggled
against their ruling classes, had thrown up an important
intelligentsia which protested against the capitalist
machine civilisation and sought to wrest power from
the conservative nationalist elements. The declassed
intellectuals, with the help of the working people,
succeeded in initiating the great socialist movement,
which was to culminate in several victories for the
labour movement from the early 20th century onwards.
But the surplus money of British Imperialism had
already corrupted the lower middle classes and had
given them a limited stake in the profit system, upset
their balance and knit them together under the shadow
of the mechanised organisation of the Empire, until
"THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 51

they aped the example of the upper classes.

The epidemic of evil, the concept of the nation state,
had thus spread into almost every comer of the world,
and its microbes of greed and selfishness began to cat
into the vital life of man, until fear, suspicion and
hatred and unhealthy competition created the at¬
mosphere for more aggrandisement. In this at¬
mosphere, the humanitarian labour movements were
defeated and capitalism armed itself to the teeth. The
First World War between the Germans and the British
Imperialists involved half mankind, because these
two rivals were struggling on the one side to gain more
colonies, and on the other, to defend what they had.
In one country, socialism broke through from the orbit
of national capitalist Imperialism and the Soviet State
was established, under the leadership of a socialist
intelligentsia in league with the workers. But the
lesson of the Russian revolution was not heeded and
ihe cult of the nation grew all around, accumulating
to itself more power and higher efficiency even in
Russia. Monopoly capitalism appeared, in its most
intense form, as fascism in Italy, Germany and Japan,
insolently challenging the rival imperialisms, as well
as the socialist society of the U.S.S.R. The final
reckoning between the rival imperialisms could not
be prevented, in spite of an awakened world intelle-
gentsia and the almost universal growth of socialist
consciousness. The Second bloody World War
involved the whole of humanity and decimated
millions of homes, apart from bringing torture and
death and utter misery to the human family.
Although the force of the concept of the ‘ nation-
 52 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

state-imperialism ’ has expanded itself to a large extent*

and nationalism, as the desire for freedom from foreign
rule of the many peoples of Asia, has prospered, and
half the world has gone socialist, the dynamic, violent
and restless surviving European imperialisms, in
alliance with the economic and militarist imperialism
of America, are now threatening the entire world,
because they do not want socialism, in its communist
form, or even in its democratic forms, to be established
in the newly liberated countries of Asia, Africa and
South America. Some of the intellectuals of these
Imperialist countries, though liberal, suspect the welfare
state to be the source of totalitarianism. And to
escape responsibility for the aggressiveness of their
politicians talk of the values beyond, ‘ need of the search,
for significance and quality in a life beyond welfare.
We have no doubt that the lessons of the brave thoughts
of the liberal and socialist intelligentsia of Western
Europe, specially Great Britain, have been the main
source of enlightenment among us in India. But
those of our intellectuals who have learnt the true
lessons of democratic fi*cedom from the West, have had
to learn these in spite of the British nation. The love*
the hospitality, and the personal friendships we enjoyed
in Great Britain were always accompanied by insults
from Imperialism. At any rate, we all know, how
the organised might of the Western nations acts like
an invisible wall, checking the free flow of European
scientific and humanitarian culture into the colonial
or excolonial countries of Asia and Africa. And it is
significant that if India became free, it was because
of the moral strength of the Indian liberation movement.
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 53

in alliance with those men of conscience in the British

liberal and labour movements whose humanity had
remained intact, in spite of the corrosive forces prevailing
in the great British nation.
Some of us are aware of the dangers of the infectious
disease of the aggressive nation, catching the rich in
our own country. Unfortunately, the only gift that
the ruthless British power gave to India was in terms
of a rigorous law and order. The milk of human
kindness, by way of education, had run dry on the
shrivelled breasts of the British nation. As for the
life-giving impulses of health, there was never any
money from the gains of exploitation. And we have
inherited, in spite of the fundamental belief in non¬
violence of our leadership, the bureaucracy, the army,
the police, the C.I.D., and the power of the preventive
detention acts, as well as a 19th century capitalist
mentality, in spite of the fact that the present day
ruling circles were brought up on the self-giving
doctrines of Mahatma Gandhi.
Still, since the transfer of power from British to
Indian hands, our people have sought to bring some
humanity into the atrophied roots of the steel frame
of the bureaucracy. We have tried to put some
tenderness into the eyes of the machine monster of
capitalist civilisation, left among us, by putting heart
into the wielders of the machine, in so far as we have
sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to covert the new industrial
economy into a 1 Socialist Pattern of Society’, for the
good of the men, women and children of a vast popula¬
tion. Our enlightened Prime Minister has spoken
against aggressive nationalism, rather than assume
54 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

the same iron coat of mail of the still rampant

Imperialisms of the world. We have tried not to join
the brotherhood of ‘ modern hooliganism and loot
as Rabindranath Tagore called it, but have expressed
a tentative belief that all the peoples of the world
might be left free to develop their physical, moral and
intellectual resources, not against each other, in 1 the
wrestling match of powerfulness ’ of the various heads
of states, armed with atomic weapons, but in the new
brotherhood of co-existence, in spite of differences of
social and political systems, so that the world might
survive the present atomic stockpiles of armaments,
into the future.
We appeal, not from smug complacency, but from
the position of people who were condemned to disregard
our own humanity for more than two hundred years,
to the peoples of the West to give up the cult for more
and more hats, coats, shoes, houses, and motor-cars
only for themselves but poverty for the black, brown
and yellow peoples of the world. And we refuse to
participate in the campaigns of the surviving Imperialists
for keeping down the'helpless peoples of Africa in the
lust for profits and power. We say that the myth
of the nation as German nationalism has promoted it for
more than half a century is the greatest evil of the
modern world. And we feel that a commonwealth of
humanity has to be created by equitable sharing of
basic wordly goods. We are pained by the self righteous¬
ness of the moralists of the West who consider
socialism to be the source of tyranny and lies and .who
regard the communists as a mere species of pariahs.
We contend that the present cold war, between
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 55

the highly armed nations of the West and the communist

half of the world, makes a caricature of our hopes,
because it threatens to engulf the world in a final total
war. And we suggest that the resources, made available
by the near perfection of science, could be used for
building up the havenots of the world, if even five
per cent of these resources can be spent on peace time
reconstruction rather than on instruments for a deadly
war. As the reconstruction may be on other lines
than those preferred by the Monopoly capitalists, there
is no real response from the Imperialists.
In the great choice between fanatical narrow
nationalism, built on profits for one people against
the other, on gluttony and the new god, ‘ high standard
of living ’, and the distribution of the resources of the
one world to all its peoples, we prefer the life-giving
impulse which says that the unfit will not go to the
wall, that they shall not die. We feel that policies wrhich
lead to social and economic welfare do indeed make
for internal awakening, because the education and the
health of the individual is in itself the path to the
search for all those values which go to make the whole
man. And thus we believe that those who refuse to
consider human ‘ needs as values, unconsciously
promote the economic doctrine of ‘ the survival of the
fittest ’, refuse the opportunity for the renewal of
mankind — and of helping the individual to become
a whole man. The preachers of a closed spiritual life
thus end up as the enemies of the struggle against the
odds of building up, and the removal of all those lesser
pains, which may become the task of the future leisure
society growing through self-giving human impulses.
56 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

The poet Rabindranath Tagore warned the aggressive

nations of the world, from the midst of the First World
War, of the nemesis awaiting them if they pursued only
profit and power. This warning fell on deaf ears in
the West. But it is important to restate it if the shoots
•of tenderness are to be allowed to grow and survive
in the world community, in any association for the
creative life, for beauty, love and human solidarity:

* This progress of power attains more and more

rapidity of pace ’, said Tagore. * And for the
reason that it is a detached part of man, it soon
outruns the complete humanity. ... Thus man,
with his mental and material power, far out¬
growing his material strength, is like an ex¬
aggerated giraffe, whose head has certainly shot
up miles away from the rest of him, making normal
communications difficult to be established. This
greedy head, with his huge dental organisation,
has been munching all the topmost foliage of the
world. But the nourishment is too late in reaching
his digestive organs, and his heart is suffering
from want of blood. Of this present disharmony
in man’s nature, the West seems to have been
blissfully unconscious. The enormity of its
material success has diverted all its attention
towards self-congratulation in its bulk. ... It
is superficial enough to think that all tomorrows
are merely todays.’
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 57

Christianity

The second great influence, which came with the

British from the West, was Christianity.
Unfortunately, the padres of the Christian church
were mostly of the same colour as the white Sahibs,
who ruled the country. And the first impression was
•created that there had come, from the West, two weapons
to destroy the Indians — the sword and the cross.
So the influence of the great religion of Christianity
was very meagre among the educated classes, though
some of the lower sections of the population, specially
those who suffered from the discrimination of the caste
order, accepted the Christian faith.
The practical social ethic of the Christians had some
effects on the people, in so far as the missionaries
founded schools and colleges, hospitals, orphanages
and other social welfare centres. The Hindu, Muslim,
the Sikh and the Parsee religions began to emulate
the example of these missionaries, by founding institu¬
tions of this kind of their own, both through imitation
•of Christian ideals and as the means of countering
the influence of the Christian Church among their
•own followers. Therefore, though the greater attention
paid to the welfare institutions by the missionaries
remained an object lesson to the other faiths, the
influence of their proselytising was soon checked.
On the doctrinal side, the narrowness of Christianity,
contrasted unfavourably with the comprehensive, rather
closely knit, philosophies of the Hindus. The Western
Christian said: God had sent his only son Jesus to
suffer for humanity and to intercede, on behalf of
 58 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION 5*

mankind, for salvation. The Hindus and the Muslims,,

as well as Sikhs, could not believe that Jesus was ‘ the
only son of God but considered Jesus as one of the
many prophets of mankind. The Hindus, particularly,
did not believe in the finality of any one revelation.
Also, the Christian Church talked of the two motifs
of human action, hunger and love, as the fundamental
sources of human co-operation in the material world;
but, so far as India was concerned, in actual practice,
the Christians separated these two motifs from each
other. Love, as implied in the sharing of life, was
considered self-transcending and was insisted upon as
a way of self-realisation. But the missionaries did not
link this love motif with the satisfaction of the hunger
motif. And to the extent to which Indian Christianity
constantly preached that love integrates and unites
human beings, but did nothing very much to help the
poor flock in its struggle to satisfy the hunger motive,
Christianity tended to become in India more and more
a religion of escape from the servitude of the caste
order.
This historical transformation of the teaching of
Jesus, who had chased the money changers out of the
arena and struggled against the Roman Empire, led
to the falsification of the words and meanings of
Christianity, particularly in its Protestant form. And
only a few radical padres, like C. F. Andrews, Edward
Thompson and Pandita Rama Bai, who allied them¬
selves with the cause of Indian freedom and social
reform, were listened to. The Jesuits of the Catholic
Church brought a culturally richer form of Christianity
than the Protestants, and the Catholic missionaries
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 59'

always seemed more ready to live brave lives in the

interior under the most arduous conditions. But the-
inherent inability of the Catholic Church, with its
centre in Rome, to sanction those pagan practices,
which lingered in the Indian racial unconscious with
the ever present cosmogony of ‘ dark gods made even,
this form of Christianity, compare unfavourably with
Hinduism, which was all-inclusive even though caste
ridden.
The early Christian Church, founded in south-west
India, by St. Thomas, achieved more success, because-
it made the belief in God involve, among other things,,
the capacity to live as a part of the whole of things,,
in a world which was one. But, even in the south,,
socialism was to prove to be a greater challenge than
Christianity, because, in spite of its puritanical ethic,,
it seemed to recapture for men the capacity to live-
as a part of things, that is to say, it united the motives,
of hunger and love. In vain does the Catholic Church
warn the people of the dangers of totalitarianism,,
when it refuses to incorporate the well being of people
as an important part of its teaching and considers
‘ needs ’ to be only a relative factor in the aspirations-
of men.
Thus the Christian religion, which had, in Europe,
a vital social ethic, failed in India' to convert the whole-
population, or even a large part of it. And the Indian
intelligentsia was forced to take not from the Christians
of the affluent societies, but from the early Christians,
those doctrines which suited their own purpose, in
promoting the mental and material well being and
social security of all citizens, without embracing the-
•60 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

kingdom of heaven as European Christianity had

proclaimed it.
Threatened on all sides, the Christian Church now
tends to repeat the scriptures. ‘ Greater things than
these shall ye do’, Jesus had said. ‘ We are workers
together with God’, St. Paul had said. And the
welfare work of the Christians is often inspired by
these words. But, at the same time, the missionaries
and the vassal churches of the Pope, as well as the
branches of the Church of England owned by Great
Britain, spend vast sums in combating freedom and
socialism, even as they subsidise denominational
education which preaches the values of the false gods
of Capitalism. So while the more honest missionaries
work selflessly in the villages, the source of their money
power is tainted. Thus instead of the truth that,
■* And God created man in his own image the com¬
promisers of both the Catholic and Protestant Church
make man in the image of Cardinal Spellman, or the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who hold the purse strings
and sometimes back the bomb, advising mankind
that the promised destruction of the world is at hand
and should be welcomed.
As long as the organised Churches connive at the
continuance, by many of their heads, of social injustice,
suppression of freedom, and racial inequality, they
cannot hope to convert the oppressed in the many
parts of the world to the belief in the healing balm of
•Christianity.
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 61

The Indian Intelligentsia and the Struggle for Freedom

In spite of the excruciating ordeal which Indian society

had to undergo to adapt itself to the changes brought
in by the British, some of the foremost leaders of Indian
thought began to study the intellectual, social and
political problems at issue before them. There were
those among them who harked back to the past and
wanted to revive it entire, with their great nostalgia,
for a vanished golden age. There were some others,,
who had forgotten the past and wished to bury all
that remained of it, and go forward to the new publicity-
stimulated, gadget-mongering civilisation of the West.
They were a few, however, who began the more difficult
task of synthesis, of trying to inherit from the past
some of the remnants of traditional values which were
still operative and seeking to fit them into the modern
perspective. These last rejected the superficial British.
Indian system of education, probed the philosophies
and social systems of Europe to accept those impulses
from the West which might be absorbed into Indian
polity.
The essential nature of all the reactions of the Indian
intelligentsia, of a hundred years ago, was mainly
political. On account of the official prohibition, the
most important leaders often expressed themselves in
religious terms, or through pamphlets on social reform
or merely as logic-chopping intellectuals. But the funda¬
mental urge behind a few of their protests was political.
In this sense, it may be said, that there has been no-
important intellectual of the last five or six generations
in India who did not include political cause in his
>62 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

work, for life in India is politics and politics is life.

And politics itself has been compounded of socio¬
economic and cultural urges, as well as of ideas
based on facts. It is true, that the ideas seem often
to be more important than the facts, because the ideas
have remained valid, even when the movements
founded on the facts were crushed by authority, or
failed for lack of cohesion among the protagonists.
All the same, it was the combination of ideas and facts
which was to lead to the freedom of India from foreign
rule. And, curiously, it was the combination of
ideology in action in certain individuals that made the
most important Indians of the 19th and 20th centuries
into examples. Those who merely held on to ideas
failed as miserably as those who acted blindly without
thought. But the few who integrated ideas and acts
and who were dedicated and gave themselves, against
those who withheld themselves, won leadership. This
was inevitable in a country where a small self-educated
intelligentsia had to teach the illiterate masses and carry
the people along. In India, when the medieval
doctrinal faith had really broken down it needed a good
railway engine to pull a large number of goods wagons
behind it.
The basic fact which seems to have provided the
cue for passion of the intelligentsia, was the Imperialist
•denial of the right of the Indian people to affirm their
personality on any plane, and the denigration of the
values of Indian literature, art and culture. The
political and economic relations of the British and the
Indians were, for nearly 200 years, those of masters
and slaves. So it was very seldom possible for the
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 63

British to meet the Indians (except the sycophants),

•on the basis of friendship and mutual esteem.
The chief controversy through which these differences
•came to a head centred, as I have mentioned before,
round Lord Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education, in
which he had declared the bulk of the classical literature
•of India in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, as well as in
the modern languages, ‘ to be fit only for the waste
paper basket He had further proclaimed that ‘ what
Creek and Latin had been in civilising barbaric Russia,
so the English language would be in civilising the
Indians And on the basis of these formulations he
had recommended the adoption of the English
language as the via media for education in the British
Indian universities, which were soon to be founded.
This dictum of Lord Macaulay split the intelligentsia
into two camps: the Orientalists (including a number
of Englishmen), who wanted only the classical languages
of India and the vernaculars to be taught in the
universities; and the Occidentalists, who wanted, both
the Indian learning as well as those parts of the
renaissance enlightenment of Europe which Macaulay
had not dreamt of giving to the Indian youth.
The differences were magnified by the fact that the
shop-keeping East India Company officials, their
soldiers, contractors and missionaries, were in a hurry
to make money, to buy and sell and preach and civilise,
while the indigenous population, weak and debilitated
through conquest, could only obey. The Westerners
seemed to be only aware of differences of beliefs, customs
and clothes and food, but did not have time to look
for the reasons why human beings in India preferred
 64 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?'

their peculiar way of life. Of course, the Indians were-

not supposed to be human, but merely coolies. The-
Fcrungies had little time to read the books of the
natives, to hear their songs or to understand their
religions.
These prejudices were mitigated, to some extent, by
pioneer English orientalists, whose curiosity was aroused
and who took up studies in philology, history and
philosophy in a dispassionate manner and undertook
the translation of important texts.
Actually, Warren Hastings, one of the first Governors-
General of the East India Company, whose political
attitudes and personal corruption were typical of the
many agents of John Company of the time, became
a patron of oriental learning, and showed a deep
interest in the legal systems of the Hindus and the
Muslims.
Sir Charles Wilkins (1750-1836), another employee
of the John Company, invented and cast printing types
of Persian and Bengali alphabets, translated the Gita
into English, and rendered the tales of the Hitopadesa.
He was one of the first Europeans to study ancient
inscriptions.
Sir William Jones (1746-1813), linguist, lawyer and
Sanskrit scholar, translated the history of Nadir Shah
from Persian to French, at the age of 24. He founded
the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and translated Jayadeva’s
Gita Govinda. In collaboration with Pandit Radha
Kant Sharma, he also rendered the Shakuntala of
Kalidasa into English.
Henry Colebrooke (1765-1837), became one of the
first scholars of Sanskrit and founded the Royal Asiatic
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 65

Society of Great Britain in 1823.

William Carey (1761-1834), a Christian missionary,
translated the Bible into Bengali and founded the
agri-horticultural society of India and also established
a society for education of Indian women.
John Gilchrist, of the company’s medical service,
published, during the years 1787-1790, the English-
Hindustani Dictionary, which he had compiled with the
help of Mir Amman of Delhi.
Father Thomas Stephens sought the help of some
Saraswat Brahmins of Goa, learnt Sanskrit, Marathi
and Konkani, and wrote the first grammar of an Indian
language by a European.
James Princep deciphered the Ashokan inscriptions
in 1837.
These, and other learned orientalists, certainly
impressed the Indian intelligentsia, but remained
exceptions to the general run of the Company's officials,
who naturally came, not to interpret cultures but to
find political and military solutions for economic gain.
And the behaviour of these representatives of the great
British nation was surpassed by the racial hatred of the
planters and settlers, and the religious fanaticism of
the semi-educated missionaries, and the overall
exploitation by all.
Certainly, however, the admirable work of the
orientalists tended to make the Indians among the
Occidentalists intensely self-conscious.

Undoubtedly, most of the well-to-do natives took

to English education in the universities of Calcutta,
Bombay and Madras, which had become full-fledged
institutions by 1857, because of the lucrative employ-

5
66 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

ment possible through association with the East India

Company. These men did not know very much of
India’s past and seldom realised that they would lose
their cultural identity with the loss of economic and
political freedom. They found rationalisations for
their collaboration with the British in the cliche that
‘ politics is against the spiritual life that the authorities
stand for ‘ gradual education of Indians towards self-
governing institutions ’, and that the Indians, were
* slavish ’ anyhow.
The might of the Company had persuaded several
people to become unpatriotic time-servers and money
grabbers and hangers-on of the ruling power. And
although they professed the Western way of life, and
excused their alliance with authority in the name of
liberal education, they merely became hybrid products
of the British-Indian Universities, because these places
had been designed merely as machines for producing
the kind of clerks and the lower ranks of the professional
services whom the British preferred as cadres for their
services.
There were a few eminent Indians, who had realised
that some aspects of our traditional religions had
reached the lowest depths of decay in meaningless
rituals. And they accepted Christianity as a rationali¬
sation of their personal predicaments. Men like
Lala Bihari Dey, K. M. Bannerji and Govind Dutt,
were not the kind of men who were swayed by the
mere glamour of the white Sahib’s life in being converted
to Christianity.
Above them all, however, were the band of self-
conscious and enlightened Indians, who knew that
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 67

the British were not the only Europeans, and that,

beyond the Imperialist’s contempt, there was the whole
achievement of European science and illumination.
Some of them had heard of or read Bacon, Harvey,
Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Boyle,
Locke, Spinoza, Lovisier, Dalton, Kant, Hegel, Diderot,
Voltaire and the rest. They also understood the
reasons for the political weaknesses of the country and
of its mental disintegration. And they took the attitude
of an advance guard, mostly on their own, and some¬
times together.
Already, Tafazzul-Hussain Khan of Calcutta, an
official of Nawab Asaf-ul-Daula, had translated
Newton’s Principia into Persian, and attempted to
translate other well-known mathematical works from
English.
Mirza Abu Talib Khan (1752-1807), born in
Lucknow of Turkish and Persian parentage, came to
the court of the Nawab of Bengal, accompanied an
Englishman to Europe at the age of forty, realised the
importance of sea power eighty years before Mahan's
-classical work on this subject, and asserted that the
economic disparity between the ruling classes and the
masses militates against material development and
cultural progress.
The Reverend Krishna Mohan Bannerji had edited
the first Encyclopedia, Vidya Kal Padruma, in thirteen
volumes in Bengal by 1850. Ishwar Chander Vidya-
sagar, (1820-1891), one of the first Indians to evolve
modern Bengali prose, was the pioneer of progressive
thought, and his importance as a forward intellectual
has not even yet been realised in India.. •
68 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

Henry Dcrozio, a Eurasian, infused a new spirit of

rebellion among the educated youth of Bengal.
Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873), rendered
the epic Ramaycuna into English.
Bankim Chandcr Chatterji was the first great novelist
of modern India, who wielded the Bengali language
as a powerful medium for the presentation of human
and political truth.
Sir Syed Ahmed (1817-1898), was the most forward
Muhammadan of his time, in so far as he castigated
his co-religionists for their intellectual backwardness
and led them to accept education, against which they
had reacted because of their political defeat at the
hands of the British.
The most important of these pioneers, wras, however.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who may be called the ‘ father
of the Indian renaissance ’, and the founder of India’s
modern self-consciousness. The vision of this great
man is clearly evident from the stand he took on the
new policy of education.

‘ If it had been intended to keep the British nation

in ignorance of real knowledge’, he wrote to Lord
Amherst, ‘ the Baconian philosophy would not have
been allowed to replace the system of the schoolmen,
which was best calculated to perpetuate ignorance.
In the same manner, the Sanskrit system of education
would be the best calculated to keep this country
in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British
legislature. But as the improvement of the native
population is the object of the Government, it will
consequendy promote a more liberal and enlightened
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 69

system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural

philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, with other useful
sciences, which may be accomplished by employing
a few gentlemen of talent and learning, educated in
Europe and providing a college, furnished with
necessary books, implements and other apparatus.’

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was not a machinc-mongering

prophet. He knew Sanskrit, Bengali and English, had a
smattering of Greek, and was, in every sense of the word,
a man of wide learning, varied experience and extra¬
ordinary vision, who wished to take over what was life-
giving in the matrix of Western civilisation. And his
attitude was symptomatic of an important section of
society, which was wedded to religious and social
reform, as well as to an objective outlook towards
Europe. And it was through his impulse and the
activities of a number of men of like mind all over India,
that several new religious bodies were founded.
In 1816, Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Atmaya
Sabha. In 1828 came the allied Brahmo Samaj. In
1839 was founded Dcvendranath Tagore’s Tatwa
Bhodhani Sabha. In 1867, was established the Prtahna
Samaj in Bombay. In- 1875, the Arya Samaj came
into existence. In 1879, the Theosophical Society
was established in Madras. Later, came the Muslim
Ahmadiya Reform Movement in Punjab, and the
Ramakrishna-Vivekanand, a Hindu reform movement
in Bengal.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was one of the first Indians
who travelled to Europe. As the boat in which he
was travelling berthed at Marseilles, he saw a ship
 70 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

flying the flag of the French revolution. He immedi¬

ately insisted on being transported there, to salute
the symbol of liberty, fraternity and equality. Actually,
he had gone to London as the Ambassador of the king
of Delhi in the attempt to appeal, on behalf of the
Mughal dynasty, over the heads of the directors of the
East India Company, to the British King. Naturally,
his mission was resented by the John Company, his
person assailed and his work made impossible.
But Ram Mohan Roy had gone not merely as a.
representative of the Mughal dynasty. He made
friends with the Unitarian Christians and accepted the
truth, wherever he found it, an attitude which was
incorporated into the Brahnio Samaj. Further he
compaigned against the burning of widows, and, in
the words of Rabindranath Tagore [who was to be
his chief disciple] Ram Mohan Roy was ‘ the first man,
and the greatest, who realised the truth which
had been proclaimed in the shade of India’s forest
solitudes, the truth of the unity of all mankind
This great Indian, and citizen of the world, died in
Bristol, in 1833, and his work was carried on by the
Tagore family, both in pursuing the reforms which
were nearest to his heart and in clarifying the outlooks
of the people about the confusions which then beset
India, morally and politically.
Ostensibly, Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s political mission,
on behalf of the Mughal dynasty, to be recognised as
the Sovereign power, failed. But the embers of revolt,
which he had ignited among the Indians, were to burst
out in the first war of Indian Independence, which was
then called the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Before this
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 71

great event, the British had crushed the Sikh States

of the Punjab in the two battles of 1845 and 1848, and
its armies had swept everything before them in southern
and western India. 1857 thus marked the end of
the first phase of Indian political awareness.
In 1885, started the second phase, when the Indian
National Congress was founded. During the first
thirty years of this phase, the movements continued
to have a programme for constitutional reform on
liberal lines. But at the close of the century, the radical
wing of the Congress, led by men like Bal Gangadhar
Tilak, sought to use direct action against the British
power, on the lines of the American civil war, to secure
Swaraj, which was proclaimed to be ‘ the birthright
of every Indian’. The British power ignored the
liberals and violently crushed the radicals.
The vacuum was filled in the early years of the 20th
century by a totally unknown man, M. K. Gandhi,
who had practised Tolstoyan ideas of non-violence in
South Africa against the white discrimination before
the First World War. Gandhi had read Ruskin’s
Unto the Last. And this, he say's, brought, * an instan¬
taneous and practical transformation in my life. I
could not sleep that night. I determined to change
my life in the light of that book.’ He has put down
the sum of what, he has learnt in his Autobiography:
‘ The good of the individual is contained in the good
of all. A lawyer’s labour has the same value as a
barber’s in as much as all have the same right to earning
their livelihood from their labour. A life of labour,
that is to say, of the tiller of the soil, and handicraftsman,
is a life worth living.’
 72 IS THERE A CONIEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

These three principles, in spite of many contradictions

brought by political exigencies, dominated him through¬
out his life. And he tried to reduce these principles to
practice.
During the Boer war in South Africa, when the
Boers were fighting the British for independence, he
sided with the British, because he then believed that
the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world.
He even raised an ambulance unit during the Zulu
rebellion of 1907, and tended the wounded, only to
learn that repression can be as bad as war, in so far
as it becomes a man hunt. Thus he realised not only
the value of the ancient Indian doctrine of compassion,
but knowing that his struggle through life would be
hard, he tried to achieve complete self control through
Brahmacharya, abstinence from sex and the temptations
of sex. Thus, he experimented with Salyagraha, which
he understood as ‘ soul force ’ or ‘ truth force * in his
own and in his followers’ struggle against the humiliating
restrictions placed on Indians by the South African
Government.
The genius of Gandhi lay not so much in bis doctrines,
which are often inconsistent, but in the uncanny
manner in which he could feel the pulse of the masses
and ally himself with them.
On his return to India, he gave up the European
style of life, which he had cultivated as a law student
in London and deliberately adopted a peasant’s life
and outlook. He denounced the town life, and began
to live in a village, thus evolving his ideas of a new
peasant civilisation, in accord with the life of India’s
seven hundred thousand villages. And he picked up
 THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 73

the philosophy and traditional knowledge of the folk,

which had come down from father to son, and son to
son, as an amalgam of the truths of Buddhist, Hindu
and Jain thought. And, curiously, he discovered
certain simple techniques of protest against the alien
authority, which were rooted in the peasant conscious¬
ness, like the symbolic fasts he observed, which derived
from the ancient custom of Dharna, which literally
means gripping or seizing. The aggrieved person
■used to sit fasting at the door of a man who had wronged
him, until death released him from his penances. As
there was no way of joining issue with British rule,
Gandhi adopted a kind of Dharna, or passive resistance,
sometimes reinforced by fast, and sat on the threshold
of the British Empire in India. If he had died through
one of these fasts, he felt that the conscience of the
British would be stirred. And if he survived, he knew
that the people would rally around him, as he had
taken their sufferings onto himself. Gandhi’s Dharna
was influenced by his knowledge of passive resistance
of the non-conformists against Mr. Balfour’s Education
Act, and the hunger strike of the English women
suffragettes and the Irish rebels.
It is, however, in the wider context of Salyagraha,
or soul force, that the practical implications of Dharna
must be understood. Gandhi expected from himself,
and from all those who offered Salyagraha, complete
truthfulness and integrity. And he broadened the
concept to include Civil Disobedience, which meant
the refusal to pay taxes or to co-operate with the Govern¬
ment by taking service under it. And he considered
non-violence as a weapon of civil disobedience. The
74 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

idea of non-violence may have derived from Tolstoy,

but it had profound affinities with Ahimsa, harmlessness,
which Gandhi interpreted as non-violence.
These doctrines actually took shape through the
trials and errors of the campaigns he launched, from
before the First World War till the Second World War.
The concept of non-violence was so directly opposed
to the cult of violence of the West, and to the brutality
of the British authorities in India, that it seemed to
assume a dramatic character. It is likely that he
himself and Vinobha Bhave were the only persons who
succeeded in being truly non-violent, while their
followers often gave way to coercive acts against the
provocations. But as some of the physically strongest
peoples of India began to accept, on their bodies
and minds, punishment at the hands of the police, the
doctrine seems to have been adopted by more people
than world opinion was inclined to believe.
The most effective criticism of Gandhi’s doctrine of
Ahimsa, which has been offered, is that by the poet
Rabindranath Tagore, who was a devoted friend and
admirer, but sometimes differed from the Mahatma
in his role as an intellectual.

‘ I believe,’ the poet wrote in 1922 in reply to an

open letter received by him, ‘ in the efficacy of
Ahimsa, as the means of overcoming the congregated
might of physical force on which the political powers
in all countries mainly rest. But like every other
moral principle, Ahimsa has to spring from the depth
of the mind. And it must not be forced upon men
from some outside appeal of urgent need. The
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 75-

great personalities of the world have preached love,

forgiveness and non-violence, primarily for the sake
of spiritual perfection and not for the attainment
of some immediate success in politics or other similar
departments of life. They were aware of the diffi¬
culty of their teachings being realised within a fixed
period of time in a sudden and wholesale manner
by men whose previous course of life had chiefly
pursued the course of self. No doubt through a
strong compulsion of desire for some external result,
men are capable of repressing their habitual inclina¬
tions for a limited time, but when it concerns an
immense multitude of men of different traditions,
and stages of culture, and when the object for which
such repression is exercised, needs a prolonged period
of struggle, complex in character, I cannot think it
possible of attainment.’

This does not mean that Rabindranath Tagore-

objected to Mahatma Gandhi’s personal fasts. Nor
that he subscribed to violence. He felt that Ahimsa
was too idealistic a doctrine to succeed in impressing-
the bccf-cating British, who had won their Empire
mostly by force and fraud. It is true that there were
some among the British at home who felt guilty about
the misdeeds perpetrated by their brethren in India.
But Tagore believed that it would not be the uneasy
conscience of a few Britishers, which would bring India
freedom, but the logic of events. And he deplored
the mendicancy of Indian politics, through which, he-
felt, Indian politicians always begged for freedom from
the Government, tried to coerce it and became merely
76 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

opposition minded, then rejected the boons which

were granted as inadequate, and again launched
appeals, renewing the cycle of penances, extracted
boons and despair. It was Tagore’s film conviction
that freedom would not come merely as a gift from the
British, but from the resilience of the spirit of the people
from within themselves, and their sell-dependence,
until the Sarkar could not oppose them. For Tagore
believed in the life of the individual even more than
<3andhi; and to the poet the unity of nature and village
life was more real than to the politician, who
•encouraged the capitalists even as he preached the
values of cooperation to small communities.
The series of non-violence campaigns, the mass
arrests that followed, and the launchings of the
campaigns, or their withdrawal by Mahatma Gandhi,
■continued as a chain of actions and reactions between
the British Government and the Indian National
Movement, until the year 1942, when the Mahatma
announced his ‘ Quit India ’ Campaign against the
British. As usual, the British authorities interned the
leadership for the duration of the war. The people
became violent in protest and an underground struggle
proceeded until the end of the war in 1945.
The issue on which the Indian National Congress
bad launched its last great campaign was that, if the
Second World War was being fought for the defence
■of freedom against fascist domination and racism, then
India was willing to co-operate in the war effort to
•achieve victory against the fascists. The British
•Government did not concede freedom to India, but
sought to divide the Hindus and Muhammadans and to
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 77

keep all vetoing power in the hands of the Viceroy at

the centre. The authorities used India’s manpower
in the mercenary army in the fight against Hitler,
brought untold misery through famine in Bengal and
frustrated all attempts of the Indian people to find a
way out. The clash was, therefore, inevitable. And
Gandhi had only provided the outer symbol in the
slogan, ‘ Quit India \ As the violence piled up on
violence through the offensives and counter offensives
of the warring powers, the doctrine of non-violence
seemed to assume a world-wide significance. There
were always some English intellectuals, who having
revolted against the horrors of the Industrial civilisation,
had a secret hankering for a peaceful village life. They
ate vegetables and did charity and longed for a secure
existence, based on family gains, without any further
clashes of class, in the framework of village harmony.
As this kind of idyllic society was not available in the
West, they looked for it in a mythical East, not realising
that in the villages of Asia the wretchedness of the poor
peasants-has reached beyond wretchedness. And yet
these anarchists, pacifists and Utopians, were the only
sympathisers Gandhi could find in the West, because
at least they had grasped the reasons for the decay
of Western civilisation, and were not afraid of launching
the most direct criticism of the violent machine age.
The peoples of India, who had been struggling for
generations against tyranny, showed fight. The peasant
movement had already become a strong factor in the
Indian National struggle. The All-India Trade
Union Congress had launched several campaigns and.
nurtured socialist consciousness through the years..
78 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

There was a younger wing of the Indian National

Congress, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru,
who were avowedly socialist in their aims and perspec¬
tives. This wing had even evolved positive constructive
plans for India’s economic and social development long
before Independence was won. Their sympathies
were for democracy against fascism. The example of
these younger leaders had swept the students, the
fighting forces, and the peasants and the workers into
action, even when the Congress leadership was confined
to jail. The formation of the Indian National Army
by Subhas Bose from among the prisoners of war, fired
the imagination of the soldiers engaged in the British
-war effort. The naval ratings and officers revolted
against colour discrimination by the British officers,
in Bombay harbour in 1945. The threat of an all
India strike was in the offing. At this stage, the laljour
■Government, which had succeeded the arch Imperialist
Churchill, made an offer to transfer power to the
Indian National Movement, and to the Muslims, led
by M. A. Jinnah, on the basis of the partition of India
into Bharat and Pakistan. The division of the country
was resented by the Congress leaders, who had fought
•shoulder to shoulder with nationalist Muslims against
the British and their ally, the separtist leader, Jinnah.
Ultimately, however, as there was no other alternative,
India accepted partition rather than live in slavery.
The division of the country led to the most gruesome
.and horrible fratricide, both in the Punjab, which was
arbitrarily split, with the heads of the rivers on one side
and the torsocs on the other, and in Bengal, which was
truncated in the most inglorious fashion. Freedom
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 79

came to India, while the bitterness and suffering

continued the memories of alien rule right into our
•own generation.
Although Indian nationalism represented the urge
for freedom against foreign domination, while the
European nationalism had represented the urge for sclf-
aggrandisement of the greedy nations of the West, the
purity of motives in India was also sullied by the
incoming of selfishness, opportunism and jobbery
among the leading cadres of both the new nations of
India and Pakistan, which were founded on the debris
of British rule.
The exploitation of the sub-continent had left a
heritage of ruin, in so far as the social revolution had
been deliberately halted. And, although, like other
countries of the East, we had emerged into the second
half of the 20th century, we were supposed to be lotus
caters, with a vast, rich culture, without any interest
in modernity. We were supposed to be opposed to the
machines, ineffectual, inefficient and otherworldly.
And the prophets of doom told us that we would not
be able to carry on even for a day when and if the
British left. The course of the events has revealed
something different. We realised that wc had been
left behind technically, in spite of the rapid increase
of our industries by Indian entrepreneurs. We were
also short of capital investment, and wc did not enjoy
the social amenities of 20th century civilisation. All
the same, we had already outlined for ourselves, our
ideas of progress, through a parliamentary democracy,
accompanied by a series of Five Year Plans, which
would carry the social revolution forward. And the
 80 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

genius of the heir of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, who

has remained Prime Minister of this country now for
16 years, experimented with certain forms and ideas
about the real creative life of the individual which may,,
in spite of the present chaos produced by imitation
Fords and Rockefellers, be said to have laid the basis
of a new unique Indian Contemporary Civilisation*
to be realised through a synthesis of the surviving
traditional values of India and some of the techniques
of the West.
Whether this new civilisation can be achieved or
not, we shall ask a little later. Meanwhile, let us
examine the traditional values more precisely and
see to what extent they have survived in our midst.

The Surviving Traditional Values

What are the traditional values if any, which have

survived in their residual forms, into the present period?
There are roughly three main traditional values*
which seem to me to have survived from the past:

(a) Univcrsalism;
(4) Intolerant-tolerance;
(c) Compassion.

But are these values operative? And, if so to what

extent?
As I shall show later, they are not operative values
in the completest sense. But, because of the great
weight of the past on the Indian conscience, they play
some part in moulding our people, especially the vast
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 81
illiterate population, which has inherited the past in
the form of custom and convention, so that it is still
comparatively inaccessible to Western modes of propa¬
ganda, through newspapers, radio and television.
Somehow, there has survived a vast amount of
floating past knowledge, myth, legend, proverb, folk
tale, magic, superstition and prejudice, which carries
the emotions of the ancient times to the present days
and tends to become part of our history. Of course,
under the peculiar conditions of India, where history
was seldom written, until the modem period, we have
to stretch the European definition of history, to include
all the current mental and material attitudes which
have been inherited, even in their prutrescent forms,
into our present day thinking, so that we can choose
those surviving good habits which may help us to
keep the continuity of Indian creativeness. One of
the facts, which seems to be constant, through the
tangled skein of many events in our past history, is
that our people continued to be creative while dynasties
came and dynasties went, in the main cities. This
creativeness was often the attempt at emotional survival
against the Sankalpa, or the pain, of outer events.
Sometimes it took the form of genuine renewal of
living impulses; at other times it was merely repetitious
revival: and still at other times it took the form of
renascent efforts, especially under the patronage of
the upper orders. But as the poet, Iqbal, once said,
while Greece and Rome had perished in the form in
which they had flourished, the old civilisation of India
has survived to the present day, though in a somewhat
broken state. Our past seems to be like an old tree,
6
82 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

which has put on new leaves for every generation, as

though to give the people the shelter of its protection
against the inclemencies of the weather. And, though
this tree is very withered and hoary, we have found
that it has thrown roots from above, as though accepting
life impulses from wherever they came. So that when
we want to find our roots, we don’t generally have to
dig up the earth, but we can also find them coming
down from the air, as it were. At any rate, we do
look to the past for inspiration and often tend to cover
up the weaknesses of our present by exalting the past.
This habit is not a good one, since it often inflates our
vanity. And we tend to build processes, on the basis
of our alleged spiritual achievements, and go into the
modem world with false assumptions. And, it is not
very honest to accept all the surviving forms and ideas,
if they do not apply or are not useful for today.
Certainly-, it is dishonest to arrogate to ourselves airs
of importance on the possession of traditional values
which are supposed to be intact among us, though we
know that many of them are certainly not operative
now. We have to study our heritage, to analyse it,
find out the facts-on which our various patterns of
culture were built, and take only those values which
have some social basis today, and which can help us
to go forward.
Let us look at the three traditional values I have
mentioned above, and let us see what form they have
taken in our modem period?

Universalism: The first value, Universalism was

implicit in our culture from the earliest times. The
 THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 83

probable sources of this affirmation lay in the vast

landscapes which confronted the first incomers. Some
•of the earliest poetry of India in the Vedic hymns,
about 1500 years before Christ, is symptomatic of the
simple universal values of mankind, in their worship
of nature and in their bold, speculative outlook about
the meaning of creation. It is almost as though men
discovered not one part of the world but the whole
•cosmos for the first time. And the rhythms and
cadences of the early hymns flow like the first tides of
human consciousness towards the highest truths,
necessary to dispel the surrounding darkness. They
express some of the noble aspirations of man for the
one world of thought and experience. Often, the
truths sought are merely local and take the form of
bunches, vague feelings and outpourings of men,
spellbound with fear of the opposing elements. But,
here and there the poets break through, as in the hymn
of creation, in the Rig Veda, and are inspired by the
vision of the vast untrodden Indian earth, viewing the
landscape of northern India as only one part of the
whole cosmos or universe. And at their most eloquent,
these poems are wider in outlook than the somewhat
partial and clannish utterances of the time of the then
known world. The tone of this early Vedic poetry,
and of the later Upanishadic thinking, seems somewhat
presumptuous, as it speaks for the whole world and
not for any little comer of it, but it is univcrsalist in
feeling and sets the tone for much of the later writing
•of India.
In the subsequent Indian thought, this universalism
became interconnected with the pantheistic Dravidian
84 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

religious and philosophical ideas, which found favour

among the folk. As the old Hindu thought rested on
the doctrine of the One and the Many, according to
which all the multifarious phenomena of the Universe
are merely a reflection of the One supreme spirit, the
univcrsalist outlook was furthered in spite of the many
sharp social divisions which arose in the caste-ridden
society.
The primitive, communistic society had been based
for centuries on the belief that each human body was
a microcosm, symbolic of the bigger macrocosms.
The world was interpreted in mundane thought as
the outcome of the union of the male and the female.
And kinship with the whole earth was sought through
magical rites. The social adjustment with the
incoming people was a continuous process and, in spite
of many conflicts, it was always resolved in the way in
which the problems of eating, drinking, housing, and
clothing were solved. So that underneath the
sophisticated codes, imposed during the Aryanisation
of the previous Dravidian civilisation, the substratum
of opinion remained rooted in the customs of give and
take, prevalent among the people. Thus, there were
roughly two kinds of feeling current in the long history'
of feudalism in India, the subjectivist idealistic thought
of the upper orders, sophisticated, urbane, exclusivist,
relegating all excellence to inheritance based on the
right to unearned income from the land, for religious
rites performed on behalf of the people, and the vast
underlayers of the agro-craft community which had
come to consider the birth, of the whole universe on the
parallel of the birth of human beings. The subsoil
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 85

went on absorbing all the magical beliefs and used the

traditional implements, in common with the new
comers, while the upper strata fought out the battles
of ideas and physical battles. Now and then there
was a revolt on behalf of the lower strata against the
hierarchies on the top, releasing the creative and
critical spirit of the people. And thus the universalist
spirit, involving tenderness and human connection,
was furthered, as against the dominant idealistic
thought which sought to impose itself on reality,
guarding the purity of the God-inspired words against
the humanistic revolts.
Such a revolt was offered towards the end of the
Vcdic period in the 6th century b.c. by Gautama the
Buddha.
As has been explained already, the Buddha did not
believe in a Supreme God. He took from the people
their belief in Samara, the universe, as a sentient,
living reality. And, he questioned the various hypo¬
theses of upper caste thought, resolving his many
doubts, through reason and understanding. And
instead of the speculative delusional omnipotent God
of the Hindus, he evolved a series of rules of conduct,
based on compassion towards other human beings,
without the intricate subterfuges of Brahamanical
thought. He accepted the people’s speech, Prakrit,
and preached, in this language, the ultimate doctrine
of extinction in Nirvana, as the only way out of the pain
of existence.
The doctrine of Mahavira Jina, who flourished about
the same time, was also based on the ideas of tenderness
for everyone and everything
 86 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

But somehow, even during the mental struggle and

debates of these religions with each other and with
Hinduism, the emphatically sectional, racialist and
patriarchal doctrines of the Vedic period, tended to
permeate Hindu thought. So that while Hinduism,
based on the social order of caste, survived, because of
its acceptance of all primitive beliels, the more humanist
Buddhism and Jainism became redundant through
Hindu absorption of their truths. Thus the Univer-
salist feelings of the Buddhists and the Jains reinforced
Hindu pantheism and universalism.
Actually it was only through this universalist outlook
in everyday thinking, that the Greek, Kushan, Hun,
Scythian, Mongol, Arab, Pathan and Persian invaders
had been absorbed. Of course, the closed caste order
of the Hindus at the top met the closed order of beliefs
of the newcomers, specially the Muslims, but there
was a constant intermixture and fraternisation below.
In fact, because the invaders were fewer in number,
the converts from the conquered peoples brought their
civilisation and culture into the new faith they accepted.
And in spite of the sectarianism, rivalry and bitterness
of the hierarchies, the mental and social habits remained
rooted in the self-sufficient village below.
And even when the British conquest broke down
the old forms completely with the devastating force
of the comprehensive machine civilisation, the people
took revenge by adopting such Western techniques as
suited them and incorporated them into their old
cultural patterns. Thus, while the chassis of the motor
has always been European, the body of the bus is
generally built out of Indian wood; and the charms
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 87

and the magical ideas come from the countryside to be

hung against the driver’s seat; and the poems written
at the back of the lorry are culled from Indian folklore.
The Indians did not resist Western ideas, but the
foremost of them went, over the heads of the British
rulers, to Europe itself to learn the sciences and to
acquire the relevant techniques of the European civili¬
sation, rejecting the nationalism of the West into the
the bargain, and taking the direction of a creative
socialism. Thus it has become possible for the attitude
of Universalism subtly to permeate our attitudes.
This value, therefore, still remains a dynamic
characteristic, unconsciously operative, both among the
masses and the intelligentsia. From it springs the
doctrine of co-existence — the attitude of the human
family as one. The seas do not divide the continents,
but connect the various peoples who constitute mankind,
and the sky is the heavenly dome which encompasses
everyone in the cosmos.

Intolerant - tolerance: The second value,

Intolerant - tolerance, has suffered many vicissitudes.
During the Aryanisation of the country, the barbaric
nomads brought death and destruction to the Proto-
Dravidian and Dravidian civilisation of the Indus
Valley. And they were totally uncompromising in
the imposition of their beliefs on the people, subduing
them with a wanton disregard of their feelings. Only
the superior numbers of the Dravidian peoples, and
their advanced agricultural techniques and magical
ideas, conquered the simpler invaders. The mixing
of the strains was thus achieved through a relative
88 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

intolerant-tolerance on both sides.

All the noble ideas at the top had to contend with
the primitive communism of the Indian village, where
no one owned land but had rights in land. After the
first brush up, the newcomers had to settle down, in
the self-enclosed village, as neighbours, if not as friends.
There was plenty of fertile land for cultivation, for
catde grazing as well as for collecting fuel. Soon, an
uneasy peace prevailed and led to the period of accep¬
tance of new congeries of people among the millions
of other congeries, which went to make the cosmos,
called India.
The background of this social economic intolerant-
tolerance came from the instinctive animistic, pantheistic
primitive universalist attitude of people’s thought.
And Hindu religion, which had accepted so many
impurities from the Dravidians already, accepted the
other ways of approaching God in the intricate and
confusing hugger-mugger of idolatory, now giving
Kushan boots to the Sun god, then draping the mother
Goddess, who had always been naked. And they
personified each idea, ghost and spirit, in the vast
pantheon of which one or the other gods was irresistible
to men of the new religions. The highest sanctions
were given to this anthropomorphism by the great
god Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, when he said: ‘ I
give to everyone according to his worship’. In the
myths associated with this great god, he assumes ‘ the
forms desired by his worshippers’. The implication
of this was that there is a variety of ways of beliefs,
though the goal is the same, and that each of the many
.ways may be equally right — for who knows?
 THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 83

Of course, the social organisation of caste maintained

the essential cohesion of Hinduism. As no one could
be converted to the Hindu faith, but every one was
born in it, the believers could afford to look on, secure
against any real threat to their hegemony. And when
the fanatical Huns and Jats boasted about being better
Hindus, because they were defending the faith against
newcomers, a convenient formula was found to sanctify
their conversion — that they had arisen from the
sacrificial fire. The Brahmin oligarchy had, indeed,
evolved a subtle and intricate psychology of ritualistic
worship, by which it could keep its hold on the individual
as well as the mass. The priestcraft retained intimate
contact with the festivals of the laity. In this way,
the Brahmins succeeded in ousting the priests of other
religions from contact with the people, because many
monks of the other orders did not participate in the
customary ceremonies.
From this it can be argued that the Hindus did not
show- any real tolerance to the peoples of the other
faiths when some vital challenge came. And this
charge could be justified, to a large extent, in regard
to the treatment offered by Hindus to Buddhism,
Islam and Christianity, Only, in so far as Hinduism,
unlike other revealed religions, renounced the finality
•of its revelations, while the others insist on it, it has
remained a looser ideological discipline than the other
■dogmatic faiths, except for the rigidity of its caste
structure.
This is not to suggest that the kind of charitable
understanding of other peoples’ points of views has
percolated into the personal temperament of every
 90 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

Hindu. All the same, it is obvious that the pantheism

of the lower strata encouraged a kind of intolerant-
tolerance about alien modes. Perhaps, this intolerant-
tolerance, in its turn, left a residue of serenity and
gentleness in the Indian temperament, and besides
this the frequent conquests resulted in weakness and
cowardice. But the intolerant-tolerance is lapsing
now under the stresses of the cash-nexus-machine
civilisation of the West, though it may have remained
as a conscious unconscious sub-stratum for a long time
in the past.
Certainly, one must be on one’s guard against the
acceptance of this temperamental characteristic as a
uniform trait of the Indian people in the face of the
cash-nexus society, with the inherent challenge of
conflict, not only against alien nations but all other
faiths and orders in hard competition with each other.
The many passages of bitter history of Hindu-Muslim
rivalry, culminating in the communal riots of the
partition, as well as the linguistic riots of the present
day, show that, under the influence of new economic
social pressures, even so-called gentle people addicted
to intolerant-tolerance, and the doctrine of non-violence,
can become possessed of sudden hatred and neurosis,
like all other world communities where aggressive
nationhood has made violence almost a virtue and
where racialism is exalted as a valuable doctrine.
If one was asked, however, what is the distinctive
attribute of the average Indian, in the present world,
which is obsessed by the cold war, one would have to
say, that, essentially, perhaps because of the lack of
economic means which may make him an Imperialist
 THE BRITISH NATIONAL.SM 91

and a war monger, he is relatively more docile and a.

little less amenable to the cold war, and may believe
in the co-existence of individuals and nations more
readily, because he knows that without peace he has
no future as a human being.

Compassion: The third most important value,

which really follows from the two mentioned above
is the sense of compassion or understanding of the
failings of individuals and allowing for the improvement,
or growth in their personality, through devotion or
enlightenment.
Again, this is a negative virtue, because the individual
in his village community remained aloof from the
changes of dynasties at the top. Against the tyranny
of kings, and human invaders, there was probably no
surplus of energy left to employ against others. The
difficulties of the individuals were internal, that is to
say, of continuous social adjustment and not those of
organised power for defence or aggression. Self-
idolatory, or nation-worship, began to appear as a
phenomenon only under British rule, and even then
it was the desire to get rid of domination rather than
to achieve Imperialist domination over others. And
when the upper oligarchies rigidified the boundary
walls, the rebels from below took people away to the-
heart of nature, to teach them balance and poise. As-
the thunder and the black clouds of the tyrants passed,,
the problems of personal pain asserted themselves,
specially as the economic process remained ever
primitive, leaving the dead and the sick and the weak
to rot, through the rapacious greeds of feudalism
 •92 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

and the consequent neglect of public works.

The Buddha’s insistence on karuna, compassion, was
the direct result of the suffering he saw in life, the
heinous exploitation of the individual by feudal authority
and by the orthodox Brahmanical priestcraft, the
chosen ’ super race, permanently installed on top.
Thus any respect for the individual, which arose,
•came through recognition of the cruelties of feudalism,
its constant rapine, carnage and loot, as well as the
•oppression of the caste system. And the emphasis on
tenderness was the direct result of the suffering of the
lower orders. The philosophers felt not the direct
insult of personal humiliation but the indirect
humiliation of seeing other people humiliated.

Are these values operative?: The question will

be asked whether these three values of Indian civilisation
and culture are really operative today, or can be
actively practised in the context of India’s entry into
the modern world of capitalist enterprise which is still
more dominant than socialist planning.
Apart from what has been indicated already, the
answer to this question depends on the world situation
itself. If the forces of war engulf the human race,
then the human values professed by any individual or
group will disappear in the crucible of complete or
partial extinction. All that can be guaranteed is that,
because of the peculiar confusion of India’s history and
through the many defaults of the Indian temperament,
•coming down through repressive and patriarchal feudal
societies, the Indian social fabric has retained certain
•other negative virtues and residual ideas: it is clearly
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 9S

more universalist, tolerant and compassionate than

the fanatical, closed minded, self-righteous cold war
mongering nation-states of the West, which are bent
upon committing suicide rather than give up their
outmoded systems of profit making, organised self¬
ishness, greed and racial prejudice. And, until this
day, in the balance, it can be said that among the
eighty per cent of the Indian people the sensitiveness
to the values of the old culture has percolated, in spite
of the increasing vulgarisation, almost as the essence
of flowers of civilisation is invisibly distilled into the
perfume of culture.
On the other hand, the impact of the West still
continues to upset the balance, both through the
mechanical adjuncts of selfish economic gratification
and political power impulse brought about by mono¬
polies but also through direct intervention by the powers,
with cold war mentalities, bribing, corrupting and
seeking to demolish all neutralism in order to take India
into military alliances which have appeared as a kind of
death sentence against all moral and human values.
The greatest danger to the safeguarding of the
best things in our traditional culture has been the
corruption indulged by those who give, for partisan
interest, large scale bribes, to win over the younger
intelligentsia to conformism, with middle class Western
values. They seek security in this bought-up comrade¬
ship. They arc frightened of those who consider
culture to be not merely the acceptance of the past
wholesale, but as a process recreated through criticism
and even revolt. They regard all original thinking
as communism.
 '94 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

I am not certain whether the owning classes of India

-will not barter away our peaceful, humanist and
socialist aspirations to urges for personal profits and
power and leave the wreckage of millions of souls
behind to contemplate the big-bellied prosperity of
the few. But I do feel that conformism to middle
•class Western values is not really possible by any
conscientious intellectual, who sees that all those
human activities, which give meaning to our lives
cannot be restricted to the few but must gradually
include more and more awakened intelligences.
At the moment, every rustle of the movement of an
aeroplane in the air over Europe, sends a thrill of
terror, because it may be part of a twenty-four hour
patrol, or a spy plane about to release a hydrogen bomb
by mistake. These terrors, fears and hates, mock at
our humanity and leave us gasping for breath in the
vain attempt to believe whether our own traditional
values, however indifferendy held, but bom of historic
necessity, may not, after all, have some use for the
modern world.
Only our own task is of persistent rediscover)'. So
that we can, in this age of knowledge, possess millions
of peoples with information about the past, explain
the significance of ideas and feelings, to enable men
and women to inherit culture, self-consciously, rather
than ritualistically.
In this way people will take what they need, to give
meaning to their lives and not put too heavy a weight
■on their heads.
Also, in this way, they can link up the past with the
present. And, as in a smithy, where the metal is
THE BRITISH NATIONALISM 95

melted before being hammered into shape, it may be

necessary to break down the tradition, to pull it into
pieces, to reconstruct it.
Not the mere repetition of manlrams but the invention
of new values, is necessary through the revolt against
the rust of untruth which sticks to truth in the process
of transmission in paternalist societies.
 CHAPTER HI

THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS

Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the Modem Movement

After the words of raja ram mohan rov

asking for synthesis between the truths of the

renaissance enlightenment of Europe, and its sciences,
with the best values in ancient Indian Culture, had
been spoken, they began to be forgotten.
The Brahmo Samaj, which he had helped to found,
was abused by the orthodox Hindus and the whole
current of advanced thinking turned back on itself.
The question was often addressed by the revivalists to
the modernists: Do you prefer Sita of the Ramayana
or Helen of Troy of the Iliad?
On the one hand, there were the emancipated
followers of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Iswarchander
Vidyasagar, who initiated bold educational policies..
They were few, but they succeeded in forming a society
for the advancement of technical education; they
evolved a technical Institute, and the Bengal National
College. The illustrious names associated with this
movement were Taraknath Palit, Rash Bihari Ghosh,
Gurrudas Banneiji, Sadsh Chander Mukeiji, Brajin-
dranaih Seal, P. V. Mukeiji, Aurobindo Ghosh and
Rabindranath Tagore.
In spite of the genuine belief in cultural emancipation
of modem India, these intellectuals, except for rare
examples like Tagore, mostly forgot about the contribu-
THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS 97

tion to India, and world culture, of Islam-

On the other hand, the Hindu revivalists linked
themselves with the new movement for freedom. The
Shakti cult was revived by the novelist, Bankim Chander
Chatterji. Swami Vivekananda, the . follower of
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, spoke in the name of a
revived Vedantic idealism and challenged the West.
Aurobindo Ghosh said: ‘ Nationalism is not a mere
political programme; nationalism is a religion that
has come from god; nationalism is a creed by which you
shall have to live;’ Bal Gangadhar Tilak, from Maha¬
rashtra, wrote about the Aryans with great pride,
stressed the role of Shivaji, and the Western ghat
followed by caricaturing the sahibs of the West through
ridiculous images in their Ganpati festivals.
- The synthesis, preferred by Raja Ram Mohan Roy,
between Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Greek and Latin,
was ignored as a principle by the superficial modernists
and brushed aside by the revivalists. No one was in
touch with the villages and the middle class intelligentsia
was torn between two factions: one part anti-British
and the other part collaborationist.
The Muslims began to feel that the tide of national
consciousness was flowing towards the mother source
of the Ganges and nowhere towards the Jumna, on
which they had built their own two main capitals.
Therefore, the larger section of the educated Muslims
stood away from the Indian National Congress. In
fact, Sir Syed Ahmed, who was the doyen of the Aligarh
movement, and a believer in Anglo-Muslim synthesis,
openly discouraged the Muslims of Northern India
from joining the Congress. The other Muslim leaders

7
98 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

were mainly revivalists in their own peculiar manner,

as is obvious from the career of the Ahmediya-Wahabi
Movements. The Muslims could only look back on
the period of their supremacy in the past and the few
among them, who took to education, were derived
from the upper classes. It is true that against this
inhibited, reactionary trend of Muslim opinion, there
came the Ali brothers in Western India and Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad in Bengal. But these nationalist
Muslims could not answer for the predominantly
Hindu bias of their colleagues in the Indian National
Movement, even as they resented British efforts to
incite the Muslims against the Hindus.
Thus the age-old preoccupation of the upper orders
of Indian society, with the doctrinal purity of their
religions, resulted in the imposition of a narrow faction¬
alism on both Hindus and Muslims alike. And the
purity of religion became dogmatic adherence to the
word. And the divinely inspired word easily led to
its exploitation for political slogan mongcring.
The liberals at the top of the Indian National
Movement, who used to quote Mill and Burke against
the English, were succeeded by a number of politicians
who talked in terms of Mazzini and Garibaldi. But
the conservatives began to reject science and reason
and lent themselves to the orthodox faiths, asking
for freedom but denying the spirit of man which was
the core of Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s teaching about
the nature of progress.
THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS 99

Rabindranath Tagore

It was left to Rabindranath Tagore, to resuscitate the

thesis of Raja Ram Mohan Roy: to harmonise the
vital ideas of our tradition with the inner forms of the
West, to criticise, initiate and invent, in the new
•changed circumstances, rather than merely to follow
the past blindly.
‘ We have to consider that the West is necessary to
the East ’, he said. ‘ We are complementary to each
other, because of our different outlooks on life, which
have given us different aspects of truth. Therefore,
if it be true, that the spirit of the West has come upon
our fields in the guise of a storm, nevertheless it is
scattering living seeds that are immortal. And when
in India we become able to assimilate in our life what
is permanent in Western civilisation, we shall be in the
position to bring about a reconciliation of these two
great worlds.’
As has been said before, he found the one-sided
•dominance by the British Nation galling. And he
tried to unite the Hindus and Muslims and the Christians
in a religion of man, the kind of humanism that was,
unfortunately, derided both by the orthodox Hindus
and the Muslim mullahs and the Christian padres.
And it is significant of his courage that, though he
was born of an aristocratic family, in his later years
he was proud to be called a * leftist ’. He was deeply
moved by the poverty of the Indian people; and in
his Letter from Russia, he perceived the nature of the
solution for the Asian and African masses: * I do not
believe the punitive rod is inactive in the present
100 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

Russian regime, bur, at the same time, education

expands with extraordinary vigour.’ And though he
was a poet, who had loved the humanities all his life,
he took to writing on science for the children; to bridge
the gulf between the ancient philosophies and the
modern temperament.
He mocked at those who suggested that we had
aeroplanes in ancient India. And he created the
atmosphere in which the botanist J. C. Bose, the chemist,
P. C. Ray, and the statistician, Prafulla Mahalanobis,
could pursue their scientific researches with great
distinction.
This humanitarianism of Rabindranath Tagore
was a genuine fusion of the East and the West in his own
person. Eleven times, during his life, he had gone on
journeys to various parts of the world, and he had
searched deeply into the conflicts of the modem world.
And yet he believed that the East and the West needed
each other: ‘The mantram which gives our spiritual
vision its right of entrance into the soul of all things is
the mantram of India, the mantram of peace, of goodness,
of unity, Sanlam, Sivam, Adcaitam. The distracted
mind of the West is knocking at the gate of India for
this. And is it to be met there with a hoarse shout of
exclusion ? ’
The most permanent contribution of Tagore in the
work of synthesis was the founding of Viswa-Bharati,
the International University, at Shanti-Niketan in
Bolpur, Bengal, where he continued to practise some
of the ideals which might help mutual understanding
between the nations; where he initiated experiments
in rural reconstruction, in the establishment of the
the process of .synthesis . : 101

principle of 4 learning by doing and in evolving a

new curriculum of music and dance and the other arts
as part of teaching.
The gulf between traditional values and modern
knowledge remained unbridged, however, in spite of
Tagore.
There was no real basis for the quiet, slow work
necessary for creative living. For instance, the univer¬
sities of India, which might have been the places where
the honest scholars, pioneers and students may have
imbibed the newest knowledge and tried to integrate
it with the old truths of harmony with nature and life,
had mostly become machines for producing graduates,
where the teachers instructing big classes, suffered
from brain fag and were really much more interested
in the next grade of pay than in discoveries which may
help progress. The occasional books, written by the
distinguished scholars, suffered from orthodoxy. Prof.
Radha Kamal Mukerji was content to announce
that we had canals in ancient India. And his brother
Prof. Radha Kumud Mukerji, declared that the
Mauryan Empire, under Chandragupta and Ashoka,
was the world’s first secular welfare state. This Hindu
chauvinism was matched by the Muslim poet, Iqbal,
who wished to revert back to the dynamic outlook of
the Koran and said that 4 liberalism has a tendency
to act as a force of disintegration dius contradicting
many of his own forward ideas.
The literary intelligentsia remained averse to the
values of the • inventive science under the influence
of the English intelligentsia, which had steadily turned
its back on the Industrial revolution, from which
 102 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

it had gained. Nor did this intelligentsia know very-

much about India’s past. In time of stress, its members
fell back on the Vedanta philosophy for support,
culling their ideas from brilliant interpretations like
those of Professor Radhakrishnan and Das Gupta,
without going to the sources.
The campaigns and political struggles against
British rule, launched by Mahatma Gandhi, made it
difficult to have the time to pursue any genuine synthesis,
except by Tagore who continued to adventure with
a touch of rebelliousness, irreverence and even satire.

Jaxaharlal Nehru

There was one man who seemed all this time to be

preoccupied with the ideas of Ram Mohan Roy and
Tagore, though he did not enjoy the advantages of as
varied a learning as his two predecessors. This man
was Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been working in close
collaboration with Gandhi, and was regarded by
many people as the natural heir to the Mahatma.
Born of an aristocratic Kashmiri Brahmin family, he
had been privileged to study in Harrow and Cam¬
bridge. Therefore he had read both law and sciences.
And, on his return home, he had plunged into nationalist
politics. He seems to have been aware of the intel¬
lectual mediocrity of many of his companions and
spent his jail terms mostly in reading and writing.
As he had been away from his daughter and had not
looked after her schooling, he began a series of letters
for her, during one of his longer spells in prison, concen¬
trating upon certain aspects of man's story in this
THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS 103

universe, which was later published as Glimpses of

World History. This narrative was influenced, to some
extent, by the concepts of Vico, Michelet and Marx,
that the creation of the means of production determines
man’s actions and thoughts in the everyday life, and
leads to the emergence of a superstructure of culture.
During another period spent in jail, he attempted a
rather eclectic, but, nevertheless, vital book, Discovery
of India, which confirmed in him some of those tentative
opinions, which he had formed through his mature
readings on the basic questions of India’s unity, the
country’s relation to Western thought and to the ancient
tradition. Always behind the exposition of ideas,
there was, in Jawaharlal, the compulsion of service
to the Indian people, whose wretchedness he had
sensed with an almost convalescent tenderness.
After he had returned from Europe in the thirties,
he had written:

‘ For many-months, I wandered about India and

millions of faces passed before my eyes. I saw a
thousand facets of this country of mine, in all their
rich diversity, and yet always with the unifying
impress of India upon them.
I sought to understand what lay behind those
millions of eyes that stared at me, what hopes and
desires, what untold sorrows and miseries unexpressed.
Glimpses came to me that illumined my vision and
made me realise the immensity of the problems of
the hundreds of millions of our people. *

Thus impelled, he had thrown himself into the

104 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

struggle for freedom to the exclusion of all other

considerations of family, profession, ease and even
his beloved books, though he carried a modest
library with him wherever he went. The lines of
Whittier, written about a similar person, are certainly
very apt in the description of Jawaharlal’s plight at
this time:

Forgo thy dreams of lettered ease:

Put thou the scholar’s promise by
The rights of men are more than these
He heard and answered, ‘ Here am I! ’
He set his face against the blast,
His feet against the flinty shard,
Till the hard service drew at last
Its own exceeding great reward.

As an active functionary of the Indian National

Congress, having occupied the position of secretary
of this institution, and sometimes as president, he gave
a direction to the great liberation movement, away
from national chauvinism of the last century, towards
a wider international outlook. He learnt from Gandhi
devotion to the peasantry, though, throughout, he
could not understand the Mahatma’s reliance on the
* inner voice • the old man’s attitude towards the
suppression of sex, cow worship, vegetarianism and
egocentric strategy of struggle. Also, he proclaimed
his own faith in socialism as the only way of alleviating
the condition of the many peoples in India as against
Gandhi’s doctrine of trusteeship by the rich of the poor.
JHe knew that the bulk of the nationalist opinion around
THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS 105

-him was reactionary, but he found supporters among

the youthful men of the left, and he may be said to
have given the direction for the positive advance of
India towards economic freedom, more than any other
Indian in our time, even if he has failed to produce
the necessary dynamic to build a socialist society.
It is true, that he has been an eclectic, and has not
had the time to work out any coherent system of thought,
before or even after he became Prime Minister of
India in the first National Government of 1947, after
the transfer of power from British to Indian hands.
But the tentativeness of his position gave him a certain
flexibility, away from doctrinaire rigidity, which was
very useful for him in balancing the many forces under
his direction. For instance, he has insisted on the
control of science through emphasis on moral values.
And though a believer in central planning to recover
from centuries of backwardness, he is anti-monopolist
and believes in small self-governing communities
working through local industries and multi-purpose
co-operatives in agriculture and crafts, to develop
individual taste and judgement even as he stands for
the major industries. The fundamental urges of his
temperament have remained radical, throughout;
and he has been distinguished, above his colleagues,
by the gift of penetration into the heart of a problem,
though he has seldom understood the character of the
men around him. Always, he has been able to pi'obe
the invisible mental background which determines
events. He has been rightly described as ‘ the man
of the age of tomorrow’. Perhaps, that is the reason
why he has not been able always, successfully, to take
 106 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

everyone with him. forward into history. He stood

head and shoulders above his companions, as a man of
towering intellect, but vasdllating in action, who
could not communicate the import of his ideas to the
people who worked with him. The working committee
of the Congress accepted his outlook on democracy,
but did not go very far towards accepting an Indian
kind of socialism. And his praise of some aspects of
Soviet planning left them cold. All the same, he
maintained his hold on the country, because of his
sacrifices and because of his addiction, to some extent*
to the Gandhian principles of integrating ideas and
acts, to become an example. In many ways, he
represents in his own person, the kind of synthesis-
which Raja Ram Mohan Roy had desired for India,
through the fusion of a comprehensive historical outlook
with an emphasis on the humanities. And, perhaps,
as he has himself acknowledged, he is a truer heir of
Tagore than of Gandhi. It seems, to many of us,
that he is the author of the concept of a contemporary
civilisation in India in which some degree of controlled
industrialisation would bring prosperity, without resort
to Imperialism, authoritarianism and a blind belief
in science, and without an overpowering cash-based
capitalist civilisation, with its tentacles of multiplied
wants, extravagant advertising, armaments and colonies-
For no one has been more conscious of the achievements-
and failures of the West than he. And he seems to have
projected his vision in a manner which embraces the
hope, not only for the browm peoples of Asia, but also
for the dark races of Africa, and very many more
besides, of a future in which the integral values of human
THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS 107

personality can be nourished without unnecessary

violence and hatred but with a slow reversal from the
destructiveness of Europe and America towards
creativeness and good neighbourly relations.
The process of synthesis, which began almost a
hundred years ago, but which proceeded, haltingly,
has certainly not been completed. The two entirely
different civilisations of India and the West cannot
coalesce without the acknowledgement by Europe
that aggressive armament drives must go, the colonies
must be freed. And social justice between the nations
has to be the norm, in giving back the gains of Imperia¬
list exploitation to the so-called backward countries.
And the enormous gap between the professions and
practices of Western democracies has to be closed.
Since, however, the British power, which unwittingly
introduced the forces of social revolution, but failed
to carry it out to its logical conclusions, is now out of
the way, the process of renewal begun, during the
last fifteen years of freedom, has certainly become more
intense under Nehru’s leadership.
The new changes arc not likely to produce results
very quickly, but they are fascinating even to those
who are involved in the process, because of the many
failures and the fewer gains.
Even to the complete cynics, it is already apparent
that a new pattern is emerging, in which some
part of the operative values of the past, described
above, may be worked into organic relation with the-
empirical and deeper needs of today, if the intelli¬
gentsia can be awakened.
The evidence of this pattern is not yet obvious ia
108 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

the cultural patterns before us, because such changes

arc never mechanical and obvious. Also, it is true,
that they are being applied half-heartedly, by an
intelligentsia, which is not persuaded about the need
of socialism.
But, importantly, this new Indian orientation seems
to be rooted in a broad humanist philosophical attitude
which, though not clearly stated, forms the inner basis
of the “ socialist pattern of society ”, that is accepted,
by and large, as the goal of India’s progress. And
its essence lies in the democracy which has been delibe¬
rately preferred as the instrument of change.
Perhaps the parliamentary democracy, which was
adopted after the departure of British power, is not
quite suitable to Indian conditions, unless it is adapted
To the social conditions obtaining in this country.
The British tradition of democracy has grown through
•at least two hundred years of conscious struggle to
achieve adequate representation of people and redress.
Therefore, it has attained legitimacy, some efficacy,
good constitutional rules and conventions, respect for
individual, liberties, a not too unfair competition
among parties (though the influential conservative
press weights the scales- against labour, with its half
lies and quarter lies), a number of talented men among
the many mediocrities of the politically active class.
The neutrality of the army, also the concept of
planned economic development.
These conditions were not present , in India at the
time of the transfer of power from British to Indian
hands. So that while the framework of Parliamentary
^Democracy is here, the education of the electorate
'the process of synthesis 10^

about their needs and interests has not proceeded,

apace. The bulk of the members of Parliament
represent the new owning classes and townspeoples,.
while the peasantry has little or no voice.
Only recently has the Government taken initiatives,
in regard to village participation in the secular
democratic process, and a broader distribution of
power through decentralisation into Panchayat Raj,,
or basic democracy.
The ruling intelligentsia in the steel frame of the-
bureaucracy is almost totally unaware of the lack of a.
dynamic belief in democracy in the countryside, and
it is content with the outer facade it has put up. The*
Government has little appreciation of the fact that,,
in Great Britain, the economic revolution preceded
the political evolution; whereas, in India, political,
power has been achieved before the socio-economic
transformation. The majority of the members’ of the
mammoth ruling party arc elected on tickets given to
them, not on merit, or on the basis of their constructive
work, but from considerations of how much money
power, influence and maneuvering ability they can
command. And the rule, which allows political
parties to be financed by capitalist enterprises, further
corrodes the basis of fair elections. Any cohesion that
may be in the ruling party is achieved through the
slogan of fighting communism. And legitimacy is
prized above everything else. The danger of one of
the factions taking over, with the help of the army, as
in several other free countries of Asia, is ignored,
because some groups are themselves pro-monopoly
capitalist and point to the example of advanced.
 110 IS THERE a CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

democratic countries, which have had to give up

•democratic forms, as parallels for securing strong
rule. Some of their publicists believe that it is necessary
to restrict the franchise and to create a responsible
and incorruptible Samurai.
If parliamentary democracy has survived so far,
it is mainly because of Mr. Nehru’s deep belief in it,
and because of his efforts to strengthen democratic
institutions, in spite of the many obstacles in his way.
He would rather encourage greater attachment to
democratic practice than limit political responsibility
at the Centre.
This has led to the personalisation leadership.
So that, in spite of his own willing submission to
democracy, Mr. Nehru has begun to seem an indcs-
pensable cornerstone of Parliament.
The reliance upon Nehru’s leadership, in fact the
•concentration upon his personality, has the effect of
making him weak, when he should be strong, and
■strong when he should be flexible. As a genuine
liberal, he is not susceptible to exaggerated self-
importance, beyond the limits of ordinary human
vanity. And yet he condones undemocratic trends
within his own party. One of his biographers has
-accused him of a ‘ lack of ruthlessness \ Certainly,
no one in the country would have objected if he had
been more forceful in the interest of promoting demo¬
cratic practice, of carrying out the ‘ socialist pattern ’
of the Five Year Plans, of co-operation on the land,
and of weeding out corruption from public life. There
was no danger of his own abuse of his great moral and
political authority. But, often, he has stood by as a
-THE PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS 111

silent, gentlemanly witness of the subversion of demo¬

cratic ideals, allowed pressure groups to work havoc
.in his own party, permitted the casteism, linguism
and provinciality of his own congressmen and then
mildly reproved the offenders or deplored the sad
state of affairs.
There is no doubt, therefore, that while Mr. Nehru’s
sensitive conscience is the source of Indian Democracy,
he has already allowed its structure to be weakened
by permitting scandalous intrigues against his principles
in his own party, paving the way for tremendous
inequalities, the lack of implementation of the plans
and growing national disintegration.
The initial gains of democracy were so obvious that
it would be tragic if it was allowed to be overthrown
after Nehru, for lack of imagination, strength and
reasoned patriotism, by a handful of pro-monopoly
politicians or religious fanatics. The survival of
Indian Democracy is all the more necessary, because
of its subversion by the Military Juntas in several
countries of Asia. And there will be little hope for
democracy in the new countries of Africa if the example
of India is not there.
Only the emergence of a strong group of Nehruite
democrats, more determined than Mr. Nehru himself,
can save democracy in India and all that at present
goes with it.
 CHAPTER IV

THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST

SYNTHESIS

The Crucible

What are the forces for and against

synthesis? In other words: What are the constituents

of the New Contemporary Indian Civilisation? And
how can the values of the past remain operative, in
view of the fact that the economic structures out of
which they rose are now dead and gone, while new
social forms of the West have become accessible to the
Indian people ?
At the centre of the ‘ Socialist Pattern of Society \
and the democracy through which it is to be achieved,
stand the various Five Year Plans. And at the core
of these plans stands the undefined but vaguely under¬
stood concept of man, as a growing integral human
being, as against the cog in the machine, or the conveyor
belt automaton.
As has been pointed out, throughout the last hundred
years, some of the pioneer thinkers tried to emphasise
the religion of man as against Hinduism and Islam;
and proposed a basic primary philosophy for the new
struggle. Both Tagore and Gandhi defined this
humanism in their own way. But both gave it mystical
sanctions, even as they instinctively grasped that these
sanctions may not be available to the bulk of the
Indian people.
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 113

Apart from Tagore, who defined humanism as a

coherent philosophy, Gandhi, who had only a few
ideas, (but knew how to act on them) linked up his
worship of man, even of the lowliest untouchables,
with a devotionalism akin to that of the mediaeval
saints. For him, the people were Daridra Narayan, the
poor gods. He encouraged non-violence and truth,
among them. Only, he went against his own deeper
prognostications and told the poor that the rich were
trustees of all wealth, which would be given away to
the people when the Ram Raj, or perfect government,
became possible.
The successor of these two leaders, thinker and man
of action, Nehru, also wishes to relate his ‘ Socialist
Pattern ’ to ‘ Spiritual Feelings Perhaps, he wishes
to interpret Socialism, apart from its scientific meaning,
as a moral doctrine against squalor of all kinds. Of
course, aside from vague references to ‘ Spiritual
Feelings ’, he has not given any religious sanctions to
his love of man. Aware of the dangers in the use of
atomic power, for total destruction, and with lingering
doubts about science and technology as the enemies
of creativeness, he has invoked spirituality as a corrective
against ‘ technology-run-mad \ Perhaps by ‘ Spiritual
Feelings ’ he means all those supporting ideal, cultural,
social and political values, which go to make living
cells and communities as against the football sweeps,
the Hollywood films and crime stories which are
necessary to substitute for the affections of the
conveyor belt man.
But when he talks of the socialist pattern, his followers
interpret him to mean socialism and he does not say

8
 114 IS THERE A COS-TEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

‘ no \ The trend of thinking represented by Nehru,

therefore, has actually found its reflection in almost
all the manifold activities of the Indian people during
the reconstruction programme of the last two Five
Year Plans.
It is not quite certain to what degree the people of
India are conscious of the shifting of emphasis from
their old religions and faiths to 4 Destination Man \
They are searching their hearts and minds and mix
up the slogans of the new age with the shibboleths of
the old ages. The fact that the education of the
intelligentsia, as a whole, and of the bureaucratic
intelligentsia, has been towards an acquisitive society,
makes for the negation of the very concepts which
are at the root of the plans. Besides, the lower middle
class, and the middle sections which were the backbone
of the Indian National Movement, have, after decades
of low standards of living, only recently come to power,
and wish to enjoy the gains of victory, which their
collaboration with Gandhi and Nehru has made
possible. So that, in their new role as Ministers in
the Central and the State Governments, they half¬
heartedly help to run the Five Year Plans, while the
scions of this very lower middle class become middle
class, prefer the American way of life, with its Cadillac*
and chev’s, large flats in the four big cities, full of
luxury goods brought from the black money or through
fabulous emoluments in the private sector of the mixed
•economy. Corruption is rampant on an unprecedented
scale, with evasion of taxes by the men of the tiger
economy, and the rich are getting richer, while the
poor reach lower depths of degradation. And yet
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 115

traditional values are invoked by the older generations.

Certainly, however, we are all involved from the
top downwards in the process of a planned society,
■which may work out its various formulations through
free discussion, in an elected Parliament, and provincial
legislatures, in municipal institutions, village panchayats
and the co-operative societies, when the pressures of
inflation and lack of production, of comparatively
low wages and high prices, leads to the tightening of
belts all around, and to the recognition that the destiny
of the Indian people is in their own hands and the
road to life is through socialism and to death
through unbridled capitalism, traditionalism and
hypocrisy.
One cannot tell at this stage, which way the wind
will blow: whether the lower middle class revolution
will complete itself in the formation of an important
middle class which will turn conservative and run
counter to Socialism, or whether the skeleton of the
planned economy will acquire flesh and blood and
proceed towards a non-acquisitive, egalitarian society
composed of congeries of small, fairly well-knit villages,
growing from within, by the use of science, without
succumbing to the power of the machine. The only
safeguard against the greed of the few in India is that
the rich themselves are a very poor rich, in terms of
the other capitalists of the world, who are not likely
to allow their ‘ native ’ brethren to become as powerful
as themselves. And the ‘ natives ’ cannot achieve
any capital accumulation, under the present taxation
laws, from which they might be able to monopolise
the economy of this country or the neighbouring
116 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

countries. Also, they need the co-operation of the-

state and of the new lower middle class, and the workers
and peasants, if production is to be achieved in a
technically backward country. And by no stretch
of imagination can Capitalism in India solve the pro¬
blems of feeding, housing and clothing of an ever
increasing population. Only under genuine Socialism,,
can a modicum of basic necessities be ensured.
Outwardly, therefore it would seem that the rich
have become richer and the poor poorer. But, as
Dr. C. D. Deshmukh, a brilliant Keynesian economist,
has pointed out: in the confused world of India, there
is no economic law which cannot be upset by those-
peculiar hangovers of bad mental and social habits
of the past, such as hoarding, feudalism, corruption
and the flourishing black market.
As, however, in India the political transformation
preceded the social and economic revolution, (contrary
to what happened in Great Britain, where the economic
revolution went parallel with, or forced political
changes), there is the hope that the inner compulsions
of Indian society cannot dethrone the poor from the:
centre of the picture they now occupy in the plans.
And, from this point of view, there is not much
difference between many of the Western peoples,
particularly in the Socialist countries, who are dedicated
to the concept of the welfare state, and the Indians
who are trying to complete the unfinished social
revolution and make India the youngest socialist
democracy of the world.
On the surface, it is clear that the socialist pattern,
of the kind evolved by Nehru, implies socialist humanism.
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 117

as the main faith of all the Indian peoples. But,

■underneath the exterior of contemporary India, there
are many pulls from all kind of feelings and ideas,
which may either be assimilated into this peculiar
synthesis or may make India fall into pieces. I feel
that some members of the Indian intelligentsia have
left room in their speculations for strands of thought
which seek to fit the Western kind of welfare state in¬
to the ancient pattern of culture, based on the deeply
introvert concept of God-realisation. Some of these
people lean back on the fourfold scheme of life, which
was defined for the feudal periods, in the eternal system
of idealist thought, enclosed in the books called the
Dharmashaslras.
This scheme, it may be recalled from a previous
reference, defined life as falling into four parts:

(1) Dkarma the discharge of duties and obligations

and the practice of virtue;
(2) Arlha the acquisition of wealth;
(3) Kama the enjoyment of the pleasures of life;
(4) Moksha freedom from the sense of want or
desire, or attainment of liberation.

Apart from those Indian philosophers, among the

ruling intelligentsia, who genuinely seek to use the
traditional nomenclature, because 'they believe in the
mystical sanctions behind them, there are a few
intellectuals who use the old words because they feel
that these arc more easily understood by the illiterate
peoples of India. These latter look for the nearest
equivalent for the words of international socialist
 118 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

thought in the Sanskrit language and in the Hindu

philosophical systems. This leads to confusion, unless
the old words are interpreted in a new way, as Gandhi
and Nehru have tried to do. But as the symbols and
terms of Hindu idealist thought were evolved for
different times, they do not seem to fit into the termino¬
logy of the new humanism, which seems to me, to be
based on the collective effort to improve the life of
man. Perhaps these intellectuals are dead set against
uniformity, which the new technological, urbanised,
bureaucratised social order everywhere portends.
Therefore, they want to keep room for the ‘ spiritual
restlessness * which may allow eccentricities. Also,
they still hanker after the clever use of phrases, which
may enable them to compete with those Western
philosophers who invent a difficult terminology, as
an escape from the need for action. And it is not
clear whether they are attempting a synthesis of values
or merely reconciling themselves to obscurantism.
There is no doubt that the terminology of Dharma,
as implying duties and virtues, is familiar to the Indian
masses. And it was useful in defining man’s attitude
towards the various political states which arose in
India. The self-sufficient village recognised the worth
of the individual, because of the insistence, in the
Hindu faith, on the salvation of each person, through
his own deeds. The individual thus owed certain
duties to state and society, but he also had certain
rights and claims on the state.
During the British occupation, however, the doctrine
of the inalienable belief in the worth of the individual,
for the purpose of salvation, came up against the
 THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 119

Graeco-Roman concept of society, in which the

individual can have his being and fulfilment mainly
through the state. The old agrarian village culture
of India had set definite limits to the authority of the
state. And Dharma, representing the responsibilities
and rights of the individuals, was above the state,
safeguarding the individuals against the encroachments
of the king. But the dominant European social
doctrine, from the time of Aristotle to the modem
aggressive state, has considered the state as the primary
concept, and the individual as only part of it; having
his being and finding his fulfilment through the state.
In fact, it may be argued that both the capitalist and
socialist states of Europe have been similar in this
main tendency. The state considers itself as an
organism made up of cells. The faith of the individual
is of small consequence, so long as the central organism
is thriving. And, in spite of certain checks and balances
in favour of freedom of the individual, the civil liberties
of the citizens, have constantly to be defended against
the society which negates the values of the individual
and his aspiration to govern himself without government.
Hence the long struggle of European socialists and
anarchists to attain the fullest powers for the individuals,
and hence Lenin’s promise about the inevitable
‘ withering away of the state’.
Since the British withdrawal, the Indian state,
inheriting the tradition of an Europeanised bureaucracy,
found itself the custodian of the European idea of the
state. And this form of government, in our country,
now confronts the old Indian ideal of the perfectibility
of each individual soul, through self-realisation of the
 120 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

ultimately spiritual goal. The concept of the Karma,

or good deeds of each individual, not only in this life
but in the past life, helping his self-realisation is integral
to his Dharna. And, the individual's development
through Karma implies that i£ in the caste order, he
happens to be a Brahmin, then he already has vested
interest in good deeds and may realise himself earlier
than an outcaste, or even other members of the lower
caste orders. In fact the idea of Dharma, was imposed
by the Brahmanical orthodoxy on the basis of Varna
Ashram, colour discriminadon and later, on the basis
of the caste system.
Jawaharlal Nehru has sometimes vaguely talked
in terms of Dharma, interpreting it as a doctrine of
rights and responsibilities. But, his opponent, Raja-
gopalachari, and many other more orthodox Hindus,
are Dharmabugs, who wish to revive the old doctrine
entire. And yet we have adopted a parliamentary
democracy of the Western European kind. And our
central government is concentrating on an all embracing
plan which brings into its overriding sphere each and
every soul, so that he can have his being and fulfilment
through the state.
How then is the concept of each individual, as the
custodian of his own personal salvation, to be reconciled
to a Socialist Indian state. The anarchic individualism
of the old Hindu doctrine does not fully share the
ideals of anarchism in the European sense either;
because the Indian belief in Karma leads to a denial
of the organised life which is the modem state.
The protagonists of Hindu individualism concede
that the rights of the individual have been traditionally
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 121

limited, even in the past by certain social considerations.

They refer to the Hindu concept of Lokasangraha,
■contending that the doctrine of the purposive activity
of man, in the interest of the world, can become the
Supreme Dharma of the individual; modifying the
anarchist character of the search of the individual for
.self-realisation. And they feel, that this can provide
the basis for a new kind of state, which blends the
good of the main organism, with its constituent parts,
that is to say, the individuals. The freedom of the
individual is thus supposed not to be against the common
good, because the doctrine of Lokasangraha connects
the individual activity with the purpose of organised
society.
I am not sure which of the two ideals, the European,
or the qualified Indian concept of the individual, in a
■vague connection with the state, will gain ascendancy
in the years to come. But it is quite clear that, at
almost each stage of development, the conflict between
the two ideals will become more and more apparent.
Certainly, the direction of the world struggle between
the forces of war and peace, will have a good deal of
influence on the concept of the state in relation to the
individuals who compose it. Ultimately no religious
or ethical touchstones seem to provide solutions for the
struggle between the two power blocs.
But, if there is no war, from deep within the orbit
of the Indian tradition of individualism, shorn of its
religious sanctions, may grow the gradual limitation
of the power of the state. Except that the old indivi¬
dualism will also have to shed its egoism and concern
for personal salvation and take on the bhakti yoga.
 122 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

or devotion through works, which integrates the:

individual into the community. This strain of India’s,
development was effectively worked into some kind
of a modem tradition by Mahatma Gandhi and could
have been emphasised by Nehru if he had taken to
the road, like Vinobha Bhave. Because the smalL
co-operatives, the Panchayats, and local industries*
all depend on the creation of a psychology of mutual,
aid and work as worship.
Perhaps this demands a new definition of the essential
nature of work under Socialism, which was at the core
of the old individualism but which decayed with caste-
stereotypes, and which needs to be reorientated. There
are seven functions of work in human psychology:
(1) one can cam one’s bread and the necessities;
(2) one develops skill through the perception and!
understanding of the technique of a job and derives
a sense of achievement; (3) one discovers the laws of
nature and society through the performance of any
single work; (4) one adds to the total of the fruits of
work to the community; (5) one enjoys the right to a
share of the fruits of labour; (6) one becomes an
integrated part of the community; (7) one seeks
through fellowship, the way to fulfilment, completeness
and wholeness.
The dedication to work then starts from the individual
and becomes the life of the community and higher
and higher groups, but the contact of the hand, the:
head and the heart, with human personality is sustained,,
both in the process and the realisation.
This process is reversed when the Capitalist asks:
All possible brain work should be removed from the
 THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 123-

shop, leaving only the foreman and gang boss’s-

work which is strictly executive in its nature. Each
man must grow accustomed to receiving and obeying
instructions, covering details, large and small, which,
in the past have been left to his own judgement.’
Music is on tap. And you can have chewing gum
and money for cinema.
The acquisitive system necessitates the creation of
many needs above human needs, through advertising.
And it is bound up with the alienation of men from all
creative ideals through emphasis on the assembly line.
Selection for work on basis of education and tempera¬
ment as well as work satisfaction is ignored irr fulfilling
targets of productivity.
We in India who have to produce more wealth
because of our desperate poverty and misery, have to
bear in mind the fact, which was ignored in ‘ the
cities of productivity ’ of the West, that, at the same
time as we build up, we must give some thought to
creativeness and the organisation of free, mutually
helpful communities.
The two trends have to be faced. And a decision
taken to condition men, lost to the repetitive processes,
to the life of crcativcness outside their jobs. The bulk,
of the people need not be herded into large towns.
And the emotional starvation can be replaced by the
values of a more abundant, fuller and more conscious
life.
This can only come from a genuine belief in the
worth of the human personality, away from the insidious
corrosions of the caste hierarchy of the Neo-Brahmins
of one kind or another, who still retain the belief in.
d 24 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

their chosen race superiority. The concept of human

personality has to be based on a clear and unambiguous
humanism, which may give meaning to the life of
millions of people in the obscure villages. This
philosophy can avoid the compromise of the Western
intelligentsia with the capitalist mass-media of propa¬
ganda, the sadism and violence of television programmes,
.and of artificial sexual excitement through films, as
well as delinquency through crime and horror books
.and comics. Again, we have to avoid, if possible, the
meaninglessness that has come from the vulgarisation
•of culture in the West, through the cynicism bred by
-a routine civilisation, making armaments through
fear and hatred and keeping up its morale by the lowest
•excitements of the tribalist passions of the cold war.
The lack of the high standards of the creative life, in
the education of the individual, the absence of emphasis
•on moral and human values, as much as hidebound
•customs and conventions, can make life meaningless
for human beings. And when such emptiness, frustra¬
tion and no-care sets in, it is easy to trust a leader
to do everything for a whole country. And a modem
military dictatorship is even worse than the rule, even
occasional, of the benign feudal oligarchy.
The peril, which faces the human personality in
India, or, indeed, in many parts of Asia, can only be
met by the inheritance of the vast stores of knowledge,
-through an expanding education, which may create
integrated individuals, with a capacity for insight.
Above all, the intelligentsia must explain the meaning
•of ‘ Destination Man ’ to the people.
Unfortunately, however, so far there has been little
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 125-

or no attempt in India to study the decay of culture-

in the capitalist countries of the West. There has been
no attention paid to the replacement of the sense of
inner reality in literature and art by luxurious decorative¬
ness. And the violent fight of the important thinkers-
of Europe and America, like Einstein, Russell, Dewey,
Whitehead, Sartre, has not been understood among
us. We tend to follow the politicians rather than the-
‘ mad Professors And our middle class craves for
the vulgarities pf the * affluent society ’ with an appetite-
which is nauseating.
The undefined scientific humanism of Nehru is at
the moment accepted mainly because of the weight
of state power which he represents, and because of the-
alliance of the state with the urges of the people. In spite
of many hangovers from the past, and the traditional
belief in Karma, the Indian people are, however, impel¬
led to demand certain primary necessities, such as food,,
clothing, education, health and work. That is why
Nehru recommends Socialism as their objective. But
what does this mean? Apart from the welfare state,
it also means, broadly speaking, a certain reorganisation,
of the social, economic and cultural structure to suit
India’s genius, its mainly agro-industrial life pattern..
Nehru does not insist on a rigid pattern, because he
does not wish for open conflicts to break out on the-
question of direction, etc. And he hopes that the basic
economic urges will help to create a unitary man, in
the midst of nature, leaving religion to the private
conscience, in the Tolstoyan sense, and joining in a.
co-operative commonwealth of work for the growing
individual in the small and big communities. This.
126 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

vagueness is frustrating, and it is already forcing a

battle of ideas, through which socialism must win.
The Indian state thus seeks, progressively, but too
:slowly to bring about a greater equality and removal
•of the discrepancies and big gaps that exist today in
the social structure, between those who may be said
to be more prosperous than others and the rest. The
•contradictions evoked by the use of the term ‘ Socialist
Pattern ’ rather than of Socialism are already too
obvious and there is too little explanation of the creative
Jife of society. All the same, the vague term ‘ Socialist
Pattern * has certainly provoked searching questions
and made the anti-intellectualism of the national
leadership somewhat suspect, because, apart from
Dharma, the people demand the fulfilment of their
real human needs and interests, almost as though they
were instinctively possessed by the concept of creative
Socialism.
Thus if it was the intention of Nehru, in talking of
* Socialist Pattern’, to develop the mental attitude of
the people into a co-operative attitude rather than an
acquisitive attitude, then it is possible that the compro¬
mise slogan has succeeded to a very small extent.
It has come to be recognised, by and large, that, under
the present conditions of India, it is not possible to
.allow an individual or a group ‘ to mount on the
.•shoulders of another group ’ to better itself.
In some countries which have gone through a long
process of industrialisation, perhaps the very rich
•could co-exist with the not so rich. But in a country,
which is heavily populated, where one cannot stretch
one’s arms without hurting someone else, brotherhood
"THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 127

and co-operation and the sense of the community

become necessary. And the powerful have to be
persuaded to restrain themselves.
This is the kind of feeling Nehru has put forward:
The urges and the genius of the people of India, and
the background and conditions in which they live,
make the ‘ Socialist Pattern of Society ’ desirable,
because no other pattern is likely to lead us to the
results we aim at within a measurable period of time.
4 The devil is after us ’, he says ‘ and we have to progress
rapidly. It is not a question of some people, or a few
individuals progressing, but of 360 million people
progressing and our taking them along with us. ’ And
he has linked this approach with the outside world.
* We cannot ignore international happenings and
events ’, he has insisted, 4 because the technically
advanced world is changing very fast and can envelop
the poorer countries The best contribution which
India can make, he feels, is to look after itself properly
and then to offer such advice as may be useful, in the
adjustments of psychological and political disputes
between the nations.
All that he has said, during the last fifteen years or
so, has, however, not broken down the inner resistance
of the obscurantists. This is seldom defined in coherent
terms. The Indian intelligentsia has not, except for
a few forward minds, applied scientific method to the
facts, urges, motifs, laws and values of-the past and the
present, in order to see what exactly we can reject
from the old periods and how we can fit our
intangible urges and values into the ‘ Socialist Pattern \
The scientists remain uninvolved in their laboratories;
 J 28 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

the pure economists remain addicted to free enterprise

against planning; the creative writers consider the
asking of fundamental questions to be merely propa¬
ganda and indulge in pure art and literature or descend
to commercialism. In the confusion, which thus
arises, the values of the old Dharma are not divorced
from their caste implications, but promoted by re¬
vivalist leaders, who want a theocratic Hindu state,,
or by politicians who function in terms of slogans for
opportunist party purposes and forget the needs of the-
people in their wish to build up a Samurai of the upper
middle class princes and merchant princes and land¬
lords.

Synthesis between Dharma as Rights and Duties and

Primary Social Seeds in the Sew Laws

The apperception of the conflict between the various

aspects of the Dharma ideal with contemporary human,
values, has led the Indian Parliament to enact a certain,
number of laws, to initiate the synthesis between India,
and the modem Western humanism. The most
important of these laws deals with the abolition of
untouchability and caste discrimination. The refusal
to allow the lowest castes to enter a temple has been
made a punishable offence and all opportunities for
education and service, and eligibility for the various
professions has been thrown open to the outcastes.
The second significant reform deals with the position,
of women in the Hindu society. Under the new laws,
polygamy has been abolished; women arc allowed to
ask for divorce and alimony and they can enter all
 THE FORCES FOR AMD AGAINST SYNTHESIS 129

the professions, on a basis of equality with the men,

on equal wages for equal work. The right to inherit¬
ance, and adoption, for women, are now on a par
with men.
A third category of reforms may be grouped under
those measures which have led to the emphasis on the
secular democratic nature of Indian society, thus
reducing religion to the private conscience. The
attitude behind these laws was what we have referred
to in estimating the traditional values of India, the
universalist approach of Indian culture, through which
this country has accepted certain truths from the
inside and absorbed what is of value in other cultures.
The groundwork for the absorption of many of the
ideas of the West had, as I have suggested, been laid
by the transformation of a primitive, self-sufficient
economy, to the laissez fairs capitalist economy of
Europe and Socialism during the last two hundred
ycal's. And many of the advanced thinkers of India
had written about the pernicious effects of caste, of
child marriage, about the prejudice against widow
marriage, and about the mixing of religious considera¬
tions in the affairs of secular democracy.
The political freedom of India, therefore, has not
led to the revival of all the out-moded laws of the
past — or to the resuscitation of antiquated social
organisms, even though the old prejudices die hard
and the good new laws are often negated in actual
practice through the survival of superstitions.
Thus there has been some attempt to look for the
social means to redeem part of the human suffering,
which is the result of man-made laws, though the lack
9
 130 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

of much creative literature in the languages of India,

with even the minimum social content, leaves the actual
conflicts on a legalistic plane, without the real disrup-
tionists coming into sensitive awareness of the people.
The new' constitution, inaugurated on January 26th
1950, not only proclaimed India as a Sovereign Demo¬
cratic Republic, but it also gave the solemn assurance
to secure for all its subjects, liberty of worship, equality
of status, and of opportunity, and to promote among
them all, fraternity, assuring the dignity of the
individual and the unity of the people.
These guarantees along with the fundamental rights,
have made the new Indian man, legally, the freest
individual, within one of the most liberal societies
of the world, except for our preservation of the preven¬
tive detention art of the British period, our continuation
of hanging as a method of punishment, and our rigid
laws on prohibition of drink and frank discussion of
sex, while allowing illicit liquor and commercial porno¬
graphy to prevail.
The economic reforms have helped, the laws to some
extent, to transform those feudal structures in which
the ugly social customs had their roots, but, as has
been mentioned above, the revolt against the old
customs does not figure in contemporary literature,
which is modelled mostly on the elegant books of
London, Paris and New York.
For instance, the untouchables, who were mostly
landless, have been benefited from the laws which had
abolished landlordism. And the cultivation of the
land, through the various irrigation projects, will
afford sustenance to millions of people who had no
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 131

hope until a few years ago. But, in actual fact, the

untouchables have a grim fight for every gain in the
villages.
The planned industrial economy also seeks to go to
the grassroots of Indian society, and may release a
tremendous amount of human energy, hitherto never
thought of as human at all, in the effort to develop the
rich material resources of the country; but its implemen¬
tation is in the hands of a bureaucracy, which is
conditioned to routine files, except where some ardent
young entrepreneur has drifted into the public
sector.
It is likely that industrialisation will lead to the
reorganisation of the social fabric, inherited from the
past, languages and outlooks in India itself in the next
generation. So only the direction of the future advance
seems to have been set in the midst of paternalist,
conservative society, without much creative education
to evolve a new kind of man.
Certainly, there seemed to be from the start of the
independence era, a grave lack of tolerance, or even
tolerant-intolerance, in our country. The fratricidal
killings among Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs in the
riots of the partition were so horrible, that it would be
the rankest hypocrisy to claim that tolerant-intolerance
has remained an operative value. Since then the
linguistic riots have only accentuated the bitterness
between the various parts of the population, until
Mr. Nehru, the author of the Punch Sheet, has been
constrained to ask: * Where is the tolerance ? There
is much brave talk about it, but there is little enough
of it in reality.’ The superficial covering of national
132 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

unity is bursting open. And narrow fanaticisms have

come out of our ‘ mental cupboard
The roots of the evil go deep: in bad education, lack of
emotional and intellectual integration, which is made
difficult, in a cash-nexus society, by the loss of will to
dispense social and economic justice to the various
regions of India by the followers of Mr. Nehru.

Synthesis of Traditional Values and External Relations

All the same, as an aspiration towards settling

disputes by discussion, or argument, rather than with
blows, and as a method of dissolving the cold war
everywhere, the ideal of the ancient Emperor, Ashoka,
informed the Pouch Sheel ‘ to argue for the purpose of
reaching, not victory, but truth
Since the Panch Sheel doctrine was put out, the heads
of several states of the world, including Great Britain
and Russia, have signed it. And, it was elaborated
into the ten principles at the conference of Asian and
African nations at Bandung.
During the last ten years, it would seem that though
the high principles embodied in the Panch Sheel have
not been attained, even internationally, except in
brave declarations of some of the great powers, the
influence of the doctrine among the ordinary people
of the world, hungering for peace in the face of the
threat of atomic war, has been fairly widespread.
The world-wide urge for the meeting of the heads of
states has continued to express itself in all countries
of the world. And Mr. Nehru may have derived
some satisfaction from the fact that wherever there
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS ' 133

is no prejudice against India’s dynamic neutrality,

and non-alignment with military blocs, there is a
genuine appreciation of the validity of his positive
approach of co-existence among the thinking people.
There is no doubt that this doctrine is based not
only on the few more or less operative traditional values,
but also arises from India’s internal desire to have last¬
ing peace in order to build up its technically backward
economy. All foreign policies are ultimately built
on the compulsions of a country’s inner political and
social life. And the Panch Sheel is no exception to the
rule. Since India cannot become an imperialist
power, even if she wishes to be one, but can only hope
to build up its human beings, if there are a hundred
years of peace, this doctrine may remain integral to
the building of the new India.
As the world, however, is tired of the stresses of the
cold war, it seems to accept, in some places willingly
and in other places unwillingly, the idea of co-existence
between different political systems, on the basis of
free social and economic competition.
Mr. Nehru, more than other people, has been sensitive
to the extraordinary changes which science has brought
about in the modern world. He is aware of the
challenge of the Hydrogen bomb and knows that
only twenty or so of these out of the stock of 75,000 in
U.S.A. and 50,000 in the U.S.S.R., arc enough to wipe
out one half of the world and bring slow radiation
death to the other half. In the age of space travel,
he knows of the danger of the missile and carrier weapons
and of the surprise attack. He also knows that these
advances of techniques are only the harbingers of
134 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

more vital changes to come, making nonsense of any

deterrent. And it is clear that even a war with
conventional armies would be devastating for the under¬
developed countries of the world.
Also, he knows that the present time is symbolic of
the tremendous internal revolutions taking place as a
result of the moral and technological changes which
are affecting human life, creating new thinking and
varying social structures. Every thing is changing,
and changing with a rapidity which makes it possible
for us to believe that five per cent of the money from
world disarmament may enable science to build up
the peoples of the whole of Asia and Africa in less than
twenty years to human status.
This part of Mr. Nehru’s argument has not yet been
understood by people in the advanced countries of
the West, seriously enough. The changes described
by Nehru can perhaps be seen only from the world
of the have-nots and not from the world of the haves,
because, in the advanced countries, the intelligentsia
is in complete despair about the future, whereas in
Asia and Africa faith in man and his future is inevitable
to the faith in life itself.
Actually, underneath the cynicism of the Western
intelligentsia, the fret is acknowledged that the moral
as well as the technological and scientific advance of a
country is the real test of its maturity. Those who
are already possessed of techniques, but immersed in
the day to day problems of routine, in Europe and
America, function in narrow grooves of thought, and
do not realise that the peoples of Asia and Africa are
thinking ahead, because they appreciate how the
THE FORCES FOR AND AOAINST SYNTHESIS 135

advance of man’s control over science and technology

has taken Europe, Russia and America to unprecedented
richness, and how these countries influence international
affairs and govern every sphere of activity.
Mr. Nehru holds that no ideology or approach can
ever be final from a scientific point of view, because
of new developments. Even in the realm of Commun¬
ism, he says, the firm and fixed ideology is being
reinterpreted.
The logic of this argument is simple enough. 'If
any person, or group, thinks that war is inevitable,
it obviously follows that all talk of disarmament is
nonsense. In that negative sense, co-existence, or
peaceful co-existence, has no meaning, because you
are inevitably going towards war and preparing for
it. As against this a very large number of countries,
almost all, one might say, have been progressively
rejecting the idea that war is inevitable, in spite of the
fact that the danger of war exists.’
According to this emergent belief that war is not
inevitable, which has so far withstood the propaganda
and provocations of the cold war, it has also come,
increasingly, to be believed that there need not be
inevitable armed conflict between different types of
society and systems, except open competition of various
forms of social polity.
Almost all the enlightened publicists and scientists
of the world agree that, with the weapons in the posses¬
sion of two blocs, war is not inevitable, unless it may
result from an accident or from an act of madness
on the part of some fanatic. Thus war is a thing which
can come by accident — which accident must be
136 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

prevented. So those who think that war is inevitable

shut their minds and do nothing to prevent it. This
attitude is incompatible with peaceful co-existence.
In fact, it is incompatible with the idea of countries
following their different policies in their own ways.
Following upon the doctrine of peace and co-existence,
or rather even before this doctrine was declared,
India had stood on the basic foundation of ‘ dynamic
neutrality * and non-alignment with the military pacts
of the two blocs.
This policy has stood the test of the last twelve
years and more, although there have been voices,
inside India, and pressures from outside, to make the
country deviate from this basic foundation of a neutra¬
list’s external policy.
Mr. Nehru has countered the arguments of those
who wish him to give up the non-alignment policy
for some help that India may receive. There are
various types of help, he says, but the best help one
can receive is to have friendly relations with every
country, even with those with whose policies we do
not agree. As for the material help, which is essential
to India’s economic progress, he contends that we
have taken it already in the form of financial help or
credits. ‘ Once you go and accept military help,
you arc inevitably sucked up into the vortex of military
thinking. This leads to the giving up of your basic
position and leads to active hostility on one side or the
other and you are drawn into the cold war immediately,
whether you wish it or not.5
Mr. Nehru believes that the attitude India has
taken by pursuing this policy of non-alignment has
THE FORCES FOR AND AGAINST SYNTHESIS 137

created a powerful impression on almost all countries

of the world, big and small. They have found that
this neutrality offers them an occasional way out in
time of serious crisis. If there was no acceptable
nation left in the world, then there may be conflicts
and rivalries and jealousies and the cold war might
lead to a hot war. Mr. Nehru holds the view that,
in spite of many failings, the policy India has pursued
in regard to international affairs has served India’s
cause and the cause of world peace.
So far as non-alignment is concerned, he has rein¬
forced his positive stand by dismissing the argument
that it is an acrobatic feat of balancing between two
sides or sitting on some spike fence. Non-alignment
is not a question of balancing between two groups, or
powers, or two policies, or ideologies. ‘ It is a question
of trying to do what wc think right and in the process
of doing it to try to be friendly and co-operative.’
Mr. Nehru believes that ‘ we have the right to express
our disagreements with those with whom we differ’.
But he wishes to avoid condemnations of those whom he
believes to be wrong, for condemnation involves
* assuming airs of moral superiority and makes people
angry ’. And already, ‘ there is far too much anger
and violence and hatred in the world
Non-alignment is, therefore, a positive policy, not
a mere feeble neutrality, nor a balancing feat.
And, above all, why should India be on this side or
that side of the warring factions, when this country
does not want war and the approaches of war-mongers ?
‘ India docs not see why it should be pushed about to
join one side or the other.’
 138 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN* CIVILISATION?

The outer framework of the five principles may

look like the edicts of Ashoka, but the Panch Sheel is a
doctrine, arising from the real physical, social and
political exigencies of the present Indian position, as
an Indian Ocean country, with a common border
with China and near the U.S.S.R., and as an example
to the still unfree countries of Asia and Africa. It
encourages belief in a future where the pool of human
and scientific resources of the world may help to build
up human lives in the technically under-developed
countries.
Therefore, in evolving the doctrine of the five
principles, the most important pre-occupation of the
ruling intelligentsia would appear to be the creation,
in the light of India’s operative values and Western,
democratic concepts, of a genuine synthesis. And,
perhaps, this is the only important success it can claim
in the evolution of a new Indian pattern of life.
 CHAPTER V

THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN:

CIVILISATION

Cultural Consciousness

Under the conditions of co-existence, india.

hopes for exchange of cultures in order to promote-

understanding between the nations.
Again, the intention of the Indian ruling intelligentsia
was to release those forces in its culture which had
been suppressed under foreign domination. National
independence was to mean not merely political freedom,
but the evolution of a civilisation in which the individual
human being would have his self-respect restored to
him and his self-confidence encouraged, which would
give him faith in the best things of India’s past, against
the Imperialist contempt, and for creative living in
the present.
This path had been pursued by the pioneers of
Indian thought, in the belief that the deeper relations
of humanity may come about. India’s political
awakening and cultural consciousness had been the
twin forces that played upon each other and produced
a national movement, which resulted in Independence
on August 15, 1947.
And through the century of active defiance against,
the predatory impulses of Imperialism, when European
capitalism was asserting its power, ignoring the-
contribution of subjugated ancient peoples, mocking-
 340 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

-at them, heaping iniquities up to the sky, and spreading

the infection of physical and moral ugliness with the
heartless belief in profits, outraging man’s sense of the
beautiful and the good, the Indian intelligentsia had
not spurned that part of the West which had turned
to humanity beneficently. Many of the pioneer
thinkers acknowledged Europe’s greatness, where her
greatness was undoubted. India had offered her love
•with all her heart and paid the homage of its admiration
for the heritage of literature and art which has been
poured out, as Tagore said 4 in an inexhaustible stream,
of truth and beauty from the finest minds of the west
fertilising all countries. No one denied that there
were titanic minds in Europe and America, who were
.sweeping the heights and the depths of the universe
•with the projections of inventive science, applying the
resources of those who still have hearts left to heal the
sick and alleviate the miseries of men, which we in
India had, through the long process of our dark feuda¬
lism, accepted in a spirit of fatalism or hopeless
resignation. There was a genuine appreciation in
India for the Europe which had made the earth yield
plenty, by coaxing and compelling the forces of nature
to man’s service, and we were dazzled by the search¬
lights of those who looked beyond the immediate and
the obvious and probed the very nature of the stars,
■often suffering martyrdom for ends which could not be
achieved, against the mendacity and narrowness of the
ignorant and the powerful. The giants of the European
•renaissance were honoured in our eyes for accepting
-failure without acknowledging defeat. The pure
stream of human love, of justice, and self-sacrifice.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION HI

which derive from the culture of the centuries, moved*

us. The spectacle of no.ble minds, who have stood for
the rights of man, irrespective of colour and creed,
who have braved insults and humiliations from their
own people in fighting for humanity’s cause and raising
their voices against the origins of militarism, against
rapacity and greed, which sometime possessed whole
peoples, were examples to us. Those who had made
reparations for wrongs, done in the past by their own
nations, against the weak, had earned our gratitude.
The men who had not lost their faith in the disinterested-
love of freedom, in the ideals which had no geographical,
frontiers i or national self-seeking, were our models.
‘ The fountain head of everlasting life we felt ‘ had.
not run dry in Europe
Therefore, we did not wish to revive our past culture-
as a compensation for our paucities in the present.
Instead, we began renascent efforts to recognise the-
literatures of our country in synthesis with whatever
Europe could teach us.
The .national government has sponsored three-
academics in order to enable this fusion to grow.
The Sahitya Akademi (the National Akademi of
Letters), of which Mr. Nehru has been the chairman
since its inception, has undertaken a programme of
translations from the classics of the world into the
fourteen languages of India. Apart from this, it has
established prizes for the best contemporary creative
works. And almost all the most significant writers
of the country have been the elected, or nominated,
members of its large general Council. Of course, the
Akademi has still an enormous amount of work to do,.
142 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

to fill up the gaps left by the British censorship of

advance guard literature of the West: but it is a dynamic
young Akademi, lull of a radical intelligentsia and
not a dead Akademi of the kind known in Europe,
elevation to which means that you are a monument
and not an active creative writer any more. The
dangers of complacency are inherent in any member¬
ship of an Akademi, and it is doubtful if the intelligentsia,
which is part of the Akademi, will retain its sense of
adventure, novelty and criticism. This danger
confronts the intelligentsia in all states, which give
patronage to culture. But there is room for the indi¬
vidual to make himself felt against institutionalised
literature, if he is a genuine rebel. But the patronage
by the state is necessary in a country, where the creative
arts have been starved of moral support, under an
alien Government, and where opportunities for
publishing, in the ordinary commercial world, are
unequal in the various languages.
Similarly, the Lalit Kala Akademi (National Akademi
•of Art) has initiated exhibitions of paintings,
sculpture, architecture and various seminars, in
order to help the growth of art consciousness all over
the country. As the task of organising creative
activities is very difficult over such a vast landscape,
with litde or no developments in the visual arts, this
Akademi has been somewhat hampered in stimulating
widespread consciousness. Art is, anyhow, difficult
to promote. Also, the Akademi is too small a body
yet to be able to cope with problems, which can only
be tackled by decentralisation, by opening of art
galleries, studios for poor artists to work in, by procuring
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 143

artists’ materials and constant exhibitions in order to

•educate the onlookers, whose ideas of art were rooted
in religion until just recently. Linked up with this
Akademi, however, is a national gallery of contemporary
art in Delhi, and a programme of publications, which
has already resulted in magazines and monographs
on ancient and modern arts. The emphasis on con¬
temporary art is still very weak, but that does not
mean there is any lack of creative efforts by struggling
young artists of unique talent in the country. And
there is a great unrest, often bitter, and acute criticism,
as it is being generally recognised that controversy
is good for art. Fortunately, this Akademi has re¬
cognised most of the experimentalists and gives room
for heroism and invention, in spite of its original bias
in favour of traditionalism.
The third institution, the Sangeet Natak Akademi
(National Akademi of Music and Dance) has to some
extent, been instrumental in helping the classical
styles of music and dance-art by recognising the eminent
practitioners and by giving scholarships to students.
But this Akademi has, unfortunately, so far concerned
itself with transmission of the tradition, without launch¬
ing on research for the renovation of the theatrical
arts .... Linked up with this Akademi is the famous
Folk Dance Festival, held every year, which has
released the urges of the rural masses for expression.
Apart from those three bodies, the government
has sponsored the National Book Trust, for publi¬
cations of important world books, at low cost, in
all the fourteen languages of India simultaneously.
This Trust has a programme of publications of seven
 144 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

kinds before it.

(a) The classical literatures of India;

(A) Translation of standard books from one
language to another;
(c) Translation of famous books from foreign
languages;
(d) Reproduction of Indian paintings, sculptures
and other art treasures;
(e) Standard works of Indian authors;
(/) Standard books in the educational, scientific,
artistic and other fields of knowledge;
(g) Works of living authors.

The establishment of various science laboratories in

different parts of India, besides the new technological
institutes, has provided incentives for pure and applied
research. The chief of these efforts is the Atomic
Energy Commission, which has dedicated itself to the
task of Atomic Energy for peace-time construction,
refusing to make experiments in atomic bombs.
The Indian Council of Cultural Relations, founded
by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, has been instrumental
in connecting India with the scholarship and arts of
India’s neighbours, particularly of the countries of West
Asia. Cultural scholarships have been offered to students
of Asian and African countries and hostels and friend¬
ship houses have been established to encourage
contacts between these students of various countries.
If the vitalities at the grass roots of the people have
not been quite touched, there are some tentative
efforts to keep alive their creativeness by encouraging
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 145

the handicrafts and handloom weaving, which have

always been the special pride of India. This method
enables the unemployed craftsmen to earn a modest
living in the indigenous crafts and keep alive their
talents, so that the Industrial revolution does not dam
up the genius and the skill of the people, as in the West,
and destroy the values of the individual handiwork
and co-operation, through the wholesale introduction
of merely repetitive and conveyor belt processes.
If it is asked whether Independence has led to the
real regeneration of Culture, our answer would be
more tentative.
There is no exact parallelism between the political
regeneration of a country and its creative development.
The deeper issues of life, as they are expressed in poetry
or prose, in painting or sculpture, deal with fundamental
human values. Therefore, poetry, for instance, becomes
a criticism of life. This requires a constant question¬
ing or rebellion of the creative artist. And even
disruption is necessary.
In the progress from a patriarchal society to demo¬
cratic forms, all the classic questions pose themselves
in India, some of which have already been asked in
the West. Can state patronage leave the artist free
to say what he likes? And what is his own responsi¬
bility in regard to expression? How much licence
can he take? Is it possible to encourage revolt in a
country where the mass media are used, as even in
the so called ‘ free * societies, for the purpose of veiled
propaganda, by prohibition and inhibition of facts or
feelings, which the current policy of the party in power
operate to safeguard its interest? And what is the

10
 146 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

remedy against the commercialisation of the arts by

profit-seeking dealers and publishers, who resort to
blatant publicity, speculation and other corrupt
practices for personal gain? Is it likely that the
honest artist, or writer, can ever earn a living by his
creative work in a market where the more sensational
bad art is promoted extensively, while anything that
exposes the lies and hypocrisy of society is neglected
and declared unpublishable? Isn’t it well known that
few rising poets can publish their poetry- through
ordinary publishers, ‘ because poetry does not sell ’ ?
And if an artist or writer cannot live on the sale of
his creative work, what kind of help can an enlightened
state give him to assure his creative output, without
attaching strings to the aid given? Is it likely that
the state can at least give speedy help to bona fide
sick or indigent artists, to enable them to tide over
emergencies, without the prolonged delays of the
bureaucratic grant-in-aid? Again, is it possible, in the
one world, already achieved by faster communications,
for the UNESCO bodies to create museums, galleries,
publishing facilities, so that the heritage of humanity
can be pooled and given to all peoples?
As our country is one of the new free countries, all
such questions could be profitably asked here, through
seminars. And though answers to the many problems
may not be forthcoming, we could set the example
for co-existence, and work to strengthen the world
republic of letters and arts, where there is much more
goodwill than there is among the politicians, in spite
of acute differences on the techniques and contents of
creative work. Perhaps, our non-alignment could
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 147

help us to bring together those sclt'-righteous intellectuals

of all sides, who suspect each other of being traitors,
to reveal to them the fact that the extension of culture
and education to wider and wider areas is being with¬
held because of petty cold war prejudices even among
the members of the intelligentsia. It is likely that the
Indian intelligentsia may help to make our time an
age of solidarity rather than of hatred and despair.
At any rate, it is necessary for us to link up with
the outside world from our parochial positions. For,
as everyone knows, the techniques of literature and
art have changed vastly through the influence exercised
by the forces of the giant new industrial revolution
in Europe, America and Russia. We have accepted
this new industrial revolution as part and parcel of
•our life, because we wish to create a highly organised
agro-industrial society in India. The machine forms
have brought new values, such as Democracy,
Secularism, Socialism and the Five Year Plans. And
many of our bad traditional values will wither away
under the impact of our newly accepted social forms.
The workers in Bombay or Calcutta, cannot now
•observe the caste system, however strong their pre¬
judices may be, because they have to draw water
together from the same pump, travel in the same train
and eat in the same canteen. The changing modes
of furniture, dress, and habitation, arc part of a new
•civilisation pattern, which will inevitably percolate
among our people, because they are more convenient
and cheaper. False reverence, the sentimental family,
and fake religion may disappear through the revolt
•of youth and changing social urges.
148 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

It would be untruthful to say that the enjoyment

and understanding of Indian Culture has already
become possible among wide sections of our people.
First of all, there arc few culture centres in the seven
hundred thousand villages of our country, which
make up the bulk of the population of this land. There
is some work being carried on, in this connection, by
the Community Development Ministry, but it is in the
nature of pilot projects.
Apart from this, the education programme of the
government has not succeeded in bringing the bulk
of the school-going children into the orbit of light.
The teachers are still paid very low salaries and little
effort has been made to change the curriculum in
order to bring it into line with the demands of the
new Socialist society. The drift towards mass produc¬
tion of graduates goes on and privileges in education
have not been diminished but only increased. The
emphasis on technical education excludes humanities
in actual instruction. The question of medium of
instruction has been hampered by controversies about
language, and though Hindi has been accepted as an
official common language, the translation of world
books into this language in order to prepare the way
for thorough instruction, in the next generation, has
not been organised on any clear basis. The bridge
of the English language is still effective in connecting
the various parts of India and the outside world. The
intelligentsia is confused about applying traditional
values to education and there is a tremendous compla¬
cency about the preparation of a new generation for
responsibilities in the future. And the question of educa-
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 149

tion and peace has hardly been studied in the light of

the aggressive tendencies fostered by the suppressions of
feudalism as well as by the modem machine.
There is a profound truth affecting the personal
life of people in any country: ‘Only the outward life
of a nation is made by a plan The actual criss-cross
of life, the resolving of conflicts between the private
and public cause, and the sense of purpose, or value,
can only be learnt through the creative arts, because
the sensitive writer or the artist, suffers in order to
expiate the pain of mankind and thus heightens the
consciousness and intensifies the emotions. Our
creative writers seem not to face this truth so much as
they %vorry about personal salvation through prayers and
austerities, when they are not completely commercialist
in outlook. The few who arc above the dilemma
tend to be cynical.
The task of living in any age is difficult enough.
But, to live in our difficult age and synthesise human
cultures, in order to prevent the vast death that awaits
mankind through the threatened war, and to release
humanity for the tasks of peace, requires men who
will open our hearts to compassion and our minds to
truth. The sources of inspiration for achieving this
release are there, but they are inhibited by commercia¬
lism in the creative arts, by the misuse of film for
providing kisch culture, and by the refusal of the
artists to face realities, because escapism is a much
more paying proposition. The inventions of the age
may have prepared the doom of the defenceless peoples
with hydrogen bombs, but many creative artists remain
addicted, in despair against the politicians, to entirely
 150 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN* CIVILISATION ?

private worlds or they take refuge behind pseudo¬

metaphysical platitudes, feeding upon their inner lives
without awareness of bhakli-yoga or the religion of
actualities. The failure of great works to arise
in the languages of India, or of great paintings and
sculptures, is not by itself a sign of any lack of vitality.
Only, there have not been enough books of knowledge
in the languages of our country, or enough expex-imeiita-
tion, or lifelong devotion by pioneers in the creative
field, to supply the background for the creation of
heightened books of passion. Mankind expects today
not merely an academic insight into past history,
but a way of looking at the problems of our own time,
in order that we may solve them and live more
abundantly and more intensely. Men in India also
demand a way of life now, a contemporary philosophy
of life, which may approximate more organically to
our democratic secular Socialist society of the Five
Year Plans, and give some significance to the history
which we are making, without getting us bogged
down in the backwaters of mere imitative capitalist
suburbanism.

The Need for a Philosophy of Life

All those who think of the problems of life, and even

those who do not think but merely work and live
empirically as ordinary human beings, have some
kind of philosophy of life. This philosophy is not a
monopoly of philosophers. Every human being is a
kind of philosopher. Without some kind of philoso¬
phical or ideological approach, we have no yardstick
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 151

by which to measure anything. And yet, though we

have become a modern state in India, with a ‘ Socialist
Pattern ’ of approach towards problems, the philoso¬
phies of life professed by the most important leaders
of the intelligentsia, are either various re-interpretations
of ancient Indian thought or intellectual positions
relevant to local problems in Great Britain, France
or America. We have few coherent systems of thought,
which may be in accord with the impulses and ideas
of our needs and interests in the 20th century.
Mr. Nehru’s education has been mostly in science,
law' and history. And, as he has not recently gone to
jail, he has not had the time to wrork out the ideology
behind the democratic socialist society of which he
is the head.
The younger intelligentsia is frightened of the older
professors and dare not come out to challenge the
validity of reviving the exalted idealist approach of
the Vedanta philosophies, in our time.
The efforts of Mr. Nehru to put forward the philosophy
of the Buddha as an acceptable doctrine for India,
during the 2500 year centenary of the Buddha, was
a heroic gesture, which, however, failed to arouse
consciousness about the meaning of life among the
intelligentsia.
Similarly, the attempt of the late Dr. Ambedkar to
embrace Buddhism, with all his scheduled caste
followers, has not solved the problem of the political
and social rights of the untouchables.
The recent researches of Prof. Debi Chatterji in the
Lokayata, people’s philosophies of India, reveal that
the point of view of the masses has remained instinctive
 152 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

and integral only to the primitive Communist society

of the past ages, surviving in the form of magical cults
among the poor, right through to the tantric doctrines
of our present iron age.
After our tentative researches in past philosophies,
it is possible to say that there were four or live attempts
at philosophies based on the dignity of man in the
past of India. As these humanisms have some relevance
for our present day society, I will note them below.
The first humanist wave of Indian thought was
represented by the teaching of the Buddha, who,
revolted against Hindu metaphysical idealism and
gave attention to the ignominious position to which
the lower caste Hindu population, and the poor, had
been reduced by the Brahmanical hierarchy. The
compulsion of tenderness from which Gautama started
to think about the problems of life was evoked by his
contemplation of the lot of a sick man, an old man,
and a poor peasant ploughing the soil. The sensitive¬
ness to the pain of these suffering mortals became
to him the symbol of the pain of the universe. The
Buddha rejected the idea of God, preached the eight¬
fold path of right action and right thought, as he
wandered across Northern India. And most of those
who listened to him were the down-trodden peoples
who had lost their status as human beings in the
society of that time. In the long history of feudalism,
not only in India, but in the various countries of Asia,
this message of tenderness for man remained a vital
faith, until the corruption of the upper hierarchy of
monks of the Buddhist order led to the decay of
Buddhism.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 153

The next great wave of humanism characterised

the teachings of the mediaeval Hindu saints, eacii of
whom rose from among the people against the
hierarchical excesses of the Brahmins and preached
the ideas of social and human justice within the Hindu
fold. They succeeded in humanising Hindu religion
for centuries, when this faith was on the defensive
against foreign attack.
The third wave came with Islam, which though
fanatical in so far as it converted people by force, was
yet proclaiming the brotherhood of men, with sanctions
in the individual soul, specially in the Prophet Muham¬
mad, who was to intervene on the judgment day on
behalf of all Muslims before God. The wide influence
which Islam exercised on the Hindu lower castes
was due to the casteless, egalitarian and democratic
message of Islam.
The fourth great wave was represented by Guru
Nanak and the Unitarian religion of Sikhism which he
founded. Nanak stood against caste, against sec¬
tarianism, for the unity of the Hindu and Muhammadan
outlooks, through one God; and the appeal of his
teaching, as of those of his followers, was mainly to
outcastes and the very poor peasants of Northern
India.
The fifth wave was heralded by the renascent thinking
of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his colleagues, who
wished to negate the worst aspects of Hinduism, and
of Christianity, and founded the Brahmo-Samaj in
Bengal. This current swept over the mind of Rabindra¬
nath Tagore, who taught specially, at the end of his
life, a religion of man, with mystical sanctions in an
 154 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

unknown presence he could not define. The humanism

of Gandhi, which was also not defined but followed
instinctively from his dedication to men of all faiths*
specially the lowliest untouchables, permeated the
mass consciousness to a larger extent than any doctrine
of man had done since the Buddha. Essentially,
however, Gandhi’s thinking is allied to that of Tagore’s,
because he also sought sanctions in God, or in the
inner voice, which he claimed to have heard from time
to time.
The sixth wave owed its inspiration to the late
M. N. Roy, a Communist revolutionary, who played
some part in the Russian Revolution, disagreed with
Stalin and formed the Radical Humanist party of
India. M. N. Roy w-as extremely well read in the
scientific literature of our age and came nearest to
defining the outlook of the young India during a period
when Socialism was not very much talked about.
The seventh wave is represented by the work of x
Jawaharlal Nehru and his followers, in so far as the
preamble of the constitution of India defined, under
his leadership, the service of Indian humanity as the
goal of our country’s progress. But as Nehru has not
had the time to sum up the ethos of the Five Year
Plan Society in clear philosophical terms, I am venturing
to put down a general interpretation of what the
democratic, secular, socialist pattern of society may
mean as a philosophy of life for our people. The
tentative hypothesis I put forward is in line with inter¬
national humanism, which is current in various countries
of the world, except that I am defining it as from the
.point of view' of a contemporary Indian.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 155-

This philosophy which, from my point of view, is as

much a protest against the various idealistic systems
current in India as a brief exposition of the implications
of our new outlook, docs not pretend to be any more-
than a plea for harmony among the intelligentsia to
share a minimum common outlook, in spite of differing
inner sanctions. Only, at the cost of seeming assertive,
I would like to contend that it is a socialist scientific
humanism, with an emphasis on human and moral
values, without the vagueness implicit in the * Socialist
Pattern ’ of Nehru, which hides many sins of omission
and commission by its mere vagueness.
On the other hand, I am opposed to those, like
Professor Michael Polyani, who decry humanism,
because they feel that the very plea for the perfection
of human society has resulted in ‘ moral excesses It
is true that the ideals of enlightenment have often
brought revolt against the existing political order. But
I welcome such revolt as a necessary part of the-
balancing process of history.
Also, it is not possible for me to reject the premises
of secular rationalism, because rationalism has served
the world already in giving several fresh starting points
for social and intellectual progress and towards giving
dignity to the individual, when romantic mysticism
often failed to recognise the primacy of all ocher indi¬
viduals except of the mystic himself. Although reason
mostly follows the emotions, and thus lends itself to
egoism, it can be humanised if both emotion and
reason are made to serve altruistic ends.
Equally, it is not possible to reject nationalism as a
terroristic ideology, merely because European
1156 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

nationalism, founded on the principle of the chosen

-race, colonialism and exploitation of other peoples,
•often imposed conformism of thought and behaviour
on its peoples and led to militarism. For nationalism
-can be the urge of supressed peoples to freedom. And
if it docs not lead to myth making, it is not likely, in
Asia and Africa, to become the jingoist Imperialism,
which it has tended to become in the West. Nationalism
as an attachment to language, dress, education and,
as the aspiration to throw off foreign domination,
provides opportunities to millions of people to become
human after centuries of oppression and degradation.
Perhaps, the decentralisation of national power, as
soon as possible, can guard against the dangers of the
central leadership seizing power, as well as the attempt
-to elevate patriotism to universal proportions.
Perhaps, the humanism I put forward is against
all organised faiths, though I feel that, by relegating
religion to private conscience, the tasks of social re¬
construction are more easily possible. Freedom of
conscience is, however, itself a touch-stone of humanism.
Only, it is gradually more amenable to the sanctions
of enlightened emotion, reason, science and imagination,
and goes to make that something unconquerable in
the spirit of man, which is proof against perversions,
untruth, social injustice and oppression.
Although I would like to define this humanist
philosophy for India today as the acceptance of man
.as a centre of all our thinking, feeling and activity,
and the service of man for the greater good of all
Jiumanity, in the material world, under the sanctions
of imagination, reason and creative democracy’, I am
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 15“

not attempting here to explain all the implications,

of this philosophy. I would like to recommend it, in
the first instance, shorn of much controversial termino¬
logy, as a working philosophy for our own people,
as they prepare for the welfare state. I do not exclude-
the profession of philosophers from looking at it for
what it is worth, though I am conscious that the
snobbery of academic thought, in which I myself had
my early training, may prevent the acceptance of
a doctrine which attempts to integrate humanism
with Socialism. I do not claim any specific originality
for this humanism, except that my emphasis on the
attainment of a classless society may have the fault of
barging in where angels fear to tread. I do not even
profess that this humanist outlook gives promise of
hasty fulfilment of all human desires to people on our
earth. In fact, several non-humanist, retrogressive
societies have survived in the modern world. But
if the aim of human life is to evolve individuals,,
potentially equal and free, then it is likely that, ulti¬
mately, a humanistic society created out of struggle
may be better fitted to take mankind into a future,
without war, and afford greater opportunities to
release the masses than societies which wish to .
exterminate others. Certainly, this humanism does-
not promise anything in the supernatural world. But
this humanism does make room for the various aspects
of human nature in our own time and seeks to restore
love as a living value among men. And though it
sets up imagination and reason as a final arbiter of
what is valuable in human life, it gives scope for the
emotional and intuitional side of man by insisting:
 1 58 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

•on creative art as the method for the achievement of

what is generally understood by the terms truth,
goodness and beauty.
I do not exclude the many other humanisms which
are current in the modern age, because I am fully
aware of the lessons of history and the richness of the
philosophic traditions of the world. Only I am on
the side of those who stand for a comprehensive
humanism in our time, derived from the historical
process itself, different in local emphasis, but funda¬
mentally addicted to the concept of * the whole man *
everywhere.
The main task of this humanism is to present as
consistent and intelligible a doctrine, comprising some
of the implications of a possible Indian scientific
socialism and to make the synthesis of reality and
aspiration in the minds and actions of living men.
Let me put down the chief premises of this humanist
philosophy:

(1) This humanism places man in the centre of

all things. And it struggles against all those forces
of class, caste and race, which stand in the way of
the emergence of human beings in their full dignity.
(2) This humanism believes that matter precedes
mind in any metaphysical attitude towards the
Universe. AH forms of supernatural thoughts are
myths and legends woven to justify the aspirations
of man in the face of the nature gods. The whole
of nature presents the totality of being and this
•cosmos is a constantly changing and intricate system
of relations of matter and energy, which have existed
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 159

long before human consciousness arose. Man has

to achieve harmony with nature rather than merely
hght it in every direction. Man is, and becomes,
•what he wants by transforming nature.
(3) This humanism believes that man is an
evolutionary product of the matter of which he is
part. The discoveries of human genius, with its
many laws and facts, have revealed that mind is
indivisibly conjoined with the functioning of the
body. And that the unity of body and personality
is indivisible, having no conscious survival after
death.
(4) This humanism, which puts man in the centre
of the Universe, believes that human beings possess
the potential power to understand many problems,
hitherto undreamt of, both in the relation to them¬
selves and to nature. Imagination, reason and the
scientific method are the weapons for this knowledge.
And the courage of men, without prejudice or pride
in facing truth, is the only pre-condition of this
approach.
(5) This humanism believes, in opposition to all
theories of fatalistic acceptance of God, predestination
and determinism, that human beings, conditioned
by man’s history, possess genuine freedom of creative
choice and action. And, within certain limits, set
by objective circumstances, every man is master
of his own destiny.
(6) This humanism believes in an ethic which is
based on human psychology and human values,
in this earthly existence, achieved through the
relations of persons and persons, and persons and
160 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

society. It considers the highest goal of life to be

the conquest of pain, and the realisation of social
and economic freedom and mental and emotional
awareness in order to gain wholeness. This is the
highest goal of mankind, irrespective of nation, race
or creed.
(7) This humanism believes that the individual
attains full manhood by integrating his personal
satisfactions and continuous creative self-development
through significant creative work with the hand, the
heart and the brain, such as may contribute to man’s
renewal, to the welfare of the community and express
the love of life, the awareness of death, and thus
balance the essentially unstable and the maladjusted
human personality, involved in the inevitable
conflicts of existence in this Universe.
(8) This humanism believes in the widest and
deepest possible development of creative art and the
awareness of beauty. It considers the transformation
of nature, through the human imagination, to be the
core of the aesthetic experience. And it places
poetry and creative art as a pervasive reality in the
lives of men, in order to help the emergence of
integrated personalities through the experience of
words, colour, sound and sensitive realisation of the
undertones of inner worlds of faculty and experience.
(9) The humanism believes in the brotherhood
of man through the affirmations of love. The
achievement of peace through the settlement of
disputes by discussion and negotiation becomes the
most important ideal of our time. The application
of new creative techniques to achieve a basic standard
EMERGENCE OF A NEW' INDIAN CIVILISATION 161

of living will be the instrument for a future economic

order, both national and international as against the
self-indulgence and ease of the rich. And genuine
democracy will be realised by the ‘ withering away
of the state’, gradually and progressively, at the
time when men have learnt to rule themselves and
grown to the status of integrated individuals.
(10) This humanism believes in the application
of imagination, reason and scientific method in all
human undertakings, making room for the under¬
standing of different instincts and emotions. It
encourages the democratic procedure, including
full freedom of expression and civil liberty, in all
political, economic and cultural life.
(11) This humanism believes in the constant
questioning of the basic assumptions and convictions
of inventive science, employing, throughout, human
tests based on moral values. In this sense, this
humanism does not wish to be dogmatic by asserting
reason on the one extreme and postulating intuition
on the other extreme. Instead, this humanism
remains a developing philosophy, open to experiment
and testing its theses in the light of newly discovered
facts, fresh insights and greater understanding.
(12) This humanism wishes to connect itself to
international humanism,so that, in spite of differences,
a comprehensive universalist oudook may prevail
on the basic issues common to mankind, and co¬
existence may be established and compassion for
the failings of men engendered.

11
 162 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

The Living and the Dead

If this is the kind of humanism which I feci India

aspires to, then, obviously, it demands a humanist
civilisation. From the loose manner in which the
word ‘ civilisation ’ has been used so far, let it not be
inferred that we wish for what is called Western civilisa¬
tion. We may want some of its interior values and the
products of its culture, but we are not interested in
emulating the ghastly cycle of its wars, to ensure its
profit system, its vested interests and its processes of
exploitation.
Perhaps the civilisation produced by the Industrial
Revolution of the West is a tragic example of the exploi¬
ting process, because it has been sustained throughout its
heyday by the sweat of whole colonial peoples, barring,
of course, such examples as the Nordic countries,
Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Not many people may have heard of the miseries
of the enclosure system, of the slow assassination of
millions of small craftsmen, who were dragooned into
bleak, soulless towns, for a shilling a day, and churned
up in the power-driven machines of those gaunt new
factories in the Midlands. The philosophers deplored
the negation of human dignity and the loss of social
and spiritual values in the subhuman slum life, where
the few rich and powerful employers condemned the
erstwhile peasants and artisans, but the lone voices
■of the intellectuals were not heard. In fact intelligence
became suspect. For it was a disability, a hindrance
to production, sowing the seeds of doubt about
mechanical work, and corroding the very foundations
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 163

of the new exploiting social order. The chain of

repetitive machines in the industries was multiplied
to make more profit for the capitalists, and all creative
opportunities were denied in the interests of money.
In order to keep the neo-serfs in a tolerable state of
contentment, all kinds of mind-killing diversions were
introduced, the instinct for gambling was played
upon and the bifurcation of people into classes was
encouraged, to build an order in which the values of
* get rich quick and kick every man into the ditch
were to become widespread. The glorification of
money, of social snobbery and national power, based
on armed might and conquest of colonies and empires,
resulted in a surplus for the few', to indulge in luxury
goods and escapist diversions, while it led to the social
and cultural impoverishment of the bulk of the people.
The moral and social sensibility of men were so
completely weakened that they willingly acquiesced
in their own inferior status, their cultural degradation,
and aped the so-called upper orders, helping actively
in the suppression of ‘ black, brown and yellow ’
peoples, who were to become the new proletariat of the
* white ’ races. The success of the various Western
nations in achieving this transformation was uneven.
So the advance of one led to jealousies among the
others and each of them began to prepare for war
against the other, to wrest colonies from those who had
acquired more space in Asia, Africa and America,
in the initial bid for securing raw materials and markets.
God was bought up through the subservient churches,
and, often, the cross went side by side with the musket,
machine gun and warship to convert the heathen to
164 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

the way of the only son of God. Mammon reigned

supreme. The First World War of 1914-1918, smashed
up a generation and ushered the concepts of Socialism
and no more war, and the intellectuals began to ques¬
tion the rapacious greed of Western capitalism.
The civilisation based on the cash-nexus, which had
fragmented society, as well as the individual, and in
which people lived on the excitements provided by
football pools, horse racing, greyhound racing, cinema,
horror and crime books and television, survived the
First World War blood bath and became endemic.
The dexterous use of the mass media of communication
enabled the ruling cliques to promote for themselves
behind the smoke-screen of buildings a new peace.
The victors of the First World War had ‘formed a
company of grave diggers to allot the graves’. But
the ghosts of rival capitalisms refused to be buried.
And Fascism, Nazism and Militarism, arose to threaten
the old dug-in Imperialisms, again on the question
of colonies, now called lebensraum. The glut of con¬
sumers’ goods in the industrially forward countries
had led to the identification of the good life with the
maximum consumption of luxury goods. And now
the greed of those who had been left behind or crushed
in the rat race, like the Germans, the Italians and the
Japanese, was enshrined by their demagogic rulers
into the worship of riches and material abundance
and the divine right of the ‘ superior more highly
armed, races, to enjoy these by enslaving the inferior
races. The Imperialists helped to arm the Fascists
in the hope that, if they wished for territorial gains,
they could secure these from the Socialist Soviet Union.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 165

rather than from the West. Unfortunately for the

Wrestemers, the Nazis turned upon those who had
nourished them, and the second bigger, and bloodier,
world conflict began, encompassing the whole world
in its vast and intricate stranglehold. Millions of
innocents perished in this giant conflict and the newest
and most frightful weapons of destruction were invented
to preserve the ‘ freedoms * of the Atlantic Charter.
Needless to say, these very freedoms were denied to
the colonies for the possession of which this renewed
blood-thirsty struggle had been launched. And,
again, efforts were made to demolish the very roots of
Socialism. Communist Russia, which had sought to
defend itself by all the means open to war and diplomacy
had to fall back before it could survive. After seven
years, the Western capitalist Imperialist democracies,
allied to a toughened Stalinist Soviet Union, won the
battle of attrition against the Nazis, Fascists and
Militarists — but, on V-Day, the West announced
through its press, the necessity of a third world war
to banish Communism once and for all from the earth.
The spectre that haunted the Imperialists had, however,
already spread to half the world, and the erstwhile
Western empires and colonies in Asia and Africa were
demanding freedom.
The capitalist greed for more raw materials, and
larger markets for its consumers’ goods, reached
hitherto unprecendented heights in the U.S.A., itself
at one time a colony of the British Empire. ‘ In many
ways the U.S.A. once the owner of the seemingly
inexhaustible natural treasure, was in danger of
becoming a have-not nation declared Time in 1951.
166 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

Of course, ‘ civilisation ’ had progressed here ‘andU.S.

was using more iron, steel, petrol, newsprint, rubber
and almost everything else than all the world put
together ’. And it appointed its chief god * High
standard of Living ’, the ‘ American way of Life ’ and
‘ Freedom ’ as the chief gods of_thc world, making a
trinity in whose name it began to build military and
economic alliances all over the globe. There had to
be an enemy. So Communism was declared to be
the arch-devil, which was threatening all the wonderful
values which the U.S.A., as the military and spiritual
leader of the Western and the noncommunist Eastern
world, stood for. ‘ Those who are not with us are
against us ’, was the unwritten law of the American
statesmen. And, as the new Asian and African
countries, which had wTested political freedom from
the Western Imperialists, were too busy trying to put
their houses in order after centuries of exploitation
and were neutralist in the crusade against Communism,
each one of them was dubbed pro-communist and
bullied and coerced through the local agents, to join
up in the holy crusade for a third world war. The
American atom bombs needlessly thrown on a nearly
vanquished Japan at the end of the Second World War
were improved upon through hazardous nuclear tests,
until a stockpile of seventy-five thousand of the most
deadly hydrogen bombs was reported to be ready to
annihilate Russia. The North Atlantic Military alliances
of the West has bases from which patrols of live bombs go
out twenty-four hours of the day and night, to circumvent
any moves by the Reds, and the danger of accidental
war breaking out is discounted. Meanwhile the
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 167

atmosphere of cold war is deliberately engendered in

order to poison the minds and hearts of the people,
lest they might suddenly see through the subterfuges
of their rulers and relax the attitude of hatred, which
has been built up on top of the fear of the hordes of
Asia swooping down upon the Christian civilisation
of the West and destroying it at one fell swoop. Those
who consider this propaganda quite unreal, ask for
disarmament, and they arc told that ‘ wc must be
prepared for the worst, while we talk to the recalcitrant
Russians about the banning of the nuclear tests, the
reduction of stockpile and some bargain on conventional
arms'.
Of course, the U.S.S.R. has been reacting against
the threats of the Western Imperialists by outbidding
them in outer space, rocket-missile research, while
building up a stockpile of almost fifty-five thousand
hydrogen bombs, and collecting all the communist
countries into the Warsaw Pact, through which each
communist state is pledged to come to the help of the
other. The more hostile the Imperialists seem, the
more intense becomes the defence mechanism of the
Communists, as witnessed by the rigid stand of the
People's Republic of China, after a decade or more of
non-admission into the United Nations Organisation
by the U.S.A. and its lesser partners. And, although
the Stalinists may still believe in the policy of * tooth
for a tooth and eye for an eye’, the comparative restraint
of the U.S.S.R. has been shown by the fact that they
have not gone to war in spite of the provocations offered
by the various military bases with which the Western
alliance, and especially the Americans, are ringed
 168 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

around the communist countries. Also, the new leader¬

ship of the Soviet Union has been pressing for total
disarmament and negotiation on outstanding disputes,
which have so far been evaded by clever arguments
and very little action. This has, of course, led to the
strengthening of the Stalinists in the U.S.S.R.
itself and the intensification of the arms race and
nuclear tests, and bullying and blustering by China.
As the conflict between the two giant blocs deepens,
tile liberated ex-colonics of Western Imperialism,
economically destitute and spiritually frustrated, seek
to renew themselves from the devastation of years of
neglect, while the still unfree colonies of the European
powers in Africa are struggling against the most
ruthless and tyrannical oppression with bare hands.
The ushering in of democratic and socialist forms into
these old societies is complicated by the attempts to
get economic aid without political strings attached and
by insidious interventions of all kinds including the
use of arms intended for the war between ideologies
for the suppression of the liberation movements in the
still unfree countries. Imperialist statesmen arc not
ashamed to ally themselves with the Racialists in
Africa, and sometimes openly declare that they share
the ‘ development of human personality * as a common
value in the colonies with fascists like Salazar of Portugal.
And larges cal e and organised wars of reconquest
have been fought by some of the Western Imperialists
against the African peoples, with the use of NATO arms,
and a complete disregard of human values. So that,
in spite of the extension of the realm of appetites and
indulgences among the ruling circles, there is evident.
 EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 169

among ihe younger generation, a restlessness and

despair against the spiritual corruption that follows
upon the breakdown of all moral scruples. On the
other hand, the intellectuals condemn science, which
is mostly concerned with facts and is used by the
politicians. And they do not see that different societies
can have different values, and that the real task is to
correlate these differences of social and political outlook,
allow free competition between ideologies in peace
and co-existence, and hope that the human instinct
for inner freedom will win. They do not even accept
that the intellectual is better fitted for the tasks
of reconstruction than the party politician.
What is known to us as the capitalist Western
civilisation is thus obviously in decay. The inner
corrosion .is even worse than the outer instability.
Whether it be the ‘ American way of life ’, or European
arrogance, this order, based on exploitation and money
values, denies self-expression and creativeness,
substituting the multiplication of needless wants of
pleasure, competitive gladiatorial associations, that
live on excitement, for human solidarity, and self-
indulgences for genuine calm. There is no doubt
that this civilisation seems dynamic, but even a dog
can run round and round chasing its own tail and
seem to be highly active. Actually, the momentum
of its advance is sustained by armaments, which betoken
violence and war. And, as the machines of destruction
begin to dictate their own terms, the inner disquiet
gives way to widespread neuroses, and the lack of
connection between a man’s efforts to earn a living,
his work and his soul, culminating in a lack of responsi-
 170 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

bilily, which creates its own mushrooms of doubts on

the barren hills of the tormented sensibility. Thus
man, the most timid of animals, who has hardly escaped
from the fears of the prehistoric ages, assumes postures
of strength, which lead to fanatically held last-ditch
prides, to defend the indefensible and to participation
in the joint hysteria of one community against another
or one nation against another. And, all the time,
the cue for passion comes from the insecurities at the
root of the concept of affluence, which lead to the
denial of human genius and the innate ability of man
to create at a higher level than ever before those tilings
he needs for the renewal of his life breath. The egoism
which feeds on the pleasures of the slot machine is the
deepest enemy of the shared cultures of the earlier,
more primitive civilisations, where wrongs were
righted by the rediscovery of moral truths. But now
this amoral Western civilisation is beyond all morality,
unable to correct itself, short of the renunciation of
permanent war as a weapon for settling international
disputes and without putting the individual and his
renewal from the midst of the death forces at the centre
of the new teaching. The abandonment of the lusts
of power, money and privilege, and the generous
extension of bread and wine to the millions of ‘ un¬
touchables ’ of all countries may alone redress the
dangerous imbalance. Perhaps, the satisfaction of
the genuine needs of all human beings may enable
science, misused till now, to help in the manifold and
intricate tasks of rebuilding the creative societies. . . .
At the moment, however, there is no room for
complacency.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 171!

Certainly, the predominantly false aspects of Western

civilisation cannot recommend themselves to growing
new peoples. All we can say when we sec it heading
for destruction is: ‘Remember the splendours created
by your painters, and poets and makers of symphonies.
And limit your appetites for things so that others may
live.’
We do not then in India wish to import Western,
civilisation entire or copy it. We wish to take from
it only the creative values, the abilities in the arts and
skills which make men into gods.
In theory, at least, the direction given to the new
India by its most important thinkers has been guided
by genuine fears about the wholesale imitation of the
perversions of the machine civilisation. But there is
no need to disguise the fact that compromises on the
essential question of whether we are to be a socialist
commonwealth of a new Indian kind, or a carbon copy
of American capitalism, have introduced confusion of
aims which makes our policies worse confounded.
The new American policy to absorb the neutralists,
with large-scale bribes of aid, poses a threat, because-
it may inhibit the release of that dynamism at the grass
roots which can come from the use of our own hands
and brains to build our own lives at every- level, from
the village community upwards. The fear of aggression,
from our neighbours also leads to the militarisation
of our minds, leading to the use of precious human
and material resources for defence rather than for educa¬
tion and re-education for peace. And there seems to
be not much hope, at the moment, of our reversion
to the inner objectives of building a different kind of.-
 372 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

society from the West, until the cold war, in its many
implications, engulfs us from all sides.
But the choice before us, and before mankind, is
.also dramatic: are we to achieve the transition from
the first three thousand years of man’s history of war
to the next hundred years of peace, or are we
.all to drift, slowly but inexorably, into the third world
war?
On the choice of either alternative depends all
Jiopes for the future.
Of course, the adventure of preventing war and of
helping to establish a human order beckons uncommitted
■countries like India.
And here we may reckon up the odds: confusion
persists.
In India the vast apathy of millions of people in the
grip of many old dead customs and beliefs on which
are superimposed the new-fangled fashions of the West,
-docs not easily yield to living impulses. There are
-a number of integrated individuals who have assimilated
some of the best traits of Indianr.ess and genuine
Westernism. The bulk of the thinking people, however,
are unable to get out of their grooves of imitative
Anglo-Saxon habits on the one hand and orthodox
revivalism on the other. Some of the occidentalists
have acquired a thin veneer of superficial Europeanism,
like neckties and ball-room dancing, but refuse to
understand the culture of Europe and look like montage-
men, bad compromises between East and West, while
the revivalists hold tenaciously to the * custom ’ mentality
■even when they use aeroplanes of the jet and atomic
•age and need a new kind of philosophy to cope with
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 173

the problems of modem man.

The difficulties of evolving a new pattern of civilisation,
in the brief space of a generation, in a country as big
as Europe without Russia, full of diverse peoples, with
intricate ramifications of individual belief and social,
conditioning are enormous. It would be a miracle,
indeed, if the assimilation of various discordant strands,
of culture had taken place in the short time since
India became free. Certainly, a new Indian culture,
the poetry of the new Indian civilisation, may need
the struggle of many generations before it comes to
fruition. For even the more modest aim of evolving-
a 1 Socialist Pattern ’ seems, in the present context
of sharply opposed economic, social and linguistic
urges, to be difficult enough in our country. And the
prospect of drifting into the moods, attitudes and
habits of acquisitive Western civilisation seems
frightening in the extreme.
All that can be claimed perhaps, is that the direction,
of a new kind of humanist socialist civilisation has-
been set, which does not believe in violence as do even
some of the liberal societies of the West, and
which is not based on the fatalist hypothesis of
ancient India. The outlines define the geography
of a possible pattern, waiting for flesh and blood to-
possess it with a dynamic of change commensurate
with the noble aspirations before us.
So that while it is obvious that India may be evolving
a contemporary life concept of its own, it would be
dishonest to proclaim it as anything like a finished
thing and to pretend that it is any more than an
unconscious tentative life-view, with many unresolved
 174 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

•conflicts, challenges and contradictions in it.

Let us record some of the actual adverse features
as well as the bad social and mental habits which
•corrode the foundations of our hopes for the emergence
•of the new pattern.

Is there A Fundamental Unity in India ? Casteism,

Parochialism, Communalism, Linouism. First of all,
it is an ugly fact that since the liberation of India
from foreign rule, the unity achieved in our country,
through the struggle against Imperialism, seems to
have given place to much disruption, based on casteism,
parochialism, communalism, and linguism. Therefore
grave doubts have arisen about the possibility of
achieving the ‘Socialist Pattern’, because the concepts
of political unity and a secular democratic state
-themselves seem to be at stake. And many people
have begun to ask: ‘Is there a fundamental unity in
India’?
The answer to this question seems, during the
-transition, when the many forces of chaos, confusion,
bitter rivalry and self-aggrandisement are active, to be
-certainly not in the affirmative.
It would seem that the release of the acquisitive
urges not only among upper groups and classes, but
-also in the stronger and the more dominant areas,
at the cost of the less developed states, has created
bitterness, which threatens to divide the country into
•so many different parts. The opportunism of the
ruling Congress Party, or rather of certain reactionary
groups within it, has tended to set a bad example to
-chauvinist sections in various regions of the country.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 175

For instance, the Congress Party allied itself to the

•communalist parties, the Muslim League, the Hindus
and the Christians, in order to defeat the essentially
social democratic Communist Party, which was in
power in the small state of Kerala in 1960. Similarly
it has allowed the fanatical Hindu protagonists of
Hindi language to suppress the Urdu language,
because, though spoken and read by millions of Hindus
and Muslims alike, Urdu was accepted by Pakistan
as the official language. And the actual treatment
of minorities, in spite of good laws, is discriminatory.
The distribution of jobs to the have-nots is hampered by
nepotism of the majority communities and conscious
or unconscious laws against the underprivileged.
The class order seems to perpetuate itself through the
ruling party’s affiliations with capitalism for election
funds. The opposition parties, Communist, Socialist,
Swatantfa, are equally opportunist in aligning them¬
selves with communal parties while the communal
parties are frankly sectarian.
Thus the efforts to achieve a practical policy of
peaceful co-existence and integration at home have
been half-hearted and inadequate, leading to fratricidal
riots between Assamese and Bengalis in Assam and
between Hindus and Muslims in Madhya Pradesh,
-while there is a seething bitterness underneath the
surface, mainly based on economic rivalries, which
■can easily become communal passion. The building
up of monopolies in certain areas leads to suspicions
and fears.
The adoption of a lingua franca, by the exaltation
of one language called Hindi, above the others, and
 176 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

the refusal, even by Government spokesmen, to adopt

the emergent spoken Hindustani, which is understood*
for ordinary communication, in north, south, east
and west and centre, has proved to be a disuniting
factor.
There is no doubt that the centre has given much,
thought to the programme for achieving a more-
natural and conscious unity than we have known in
the past. But the risks inherent in the survival of the
dominant capitalist structure have not been faced
with any degree of intensity, and the value of cohesion
has not been accepted by various sections of the
bureaucracy in administering the benefits of the public
sector of the plan. The first refusal of the Union
Government to concede the linguistic states of Maha¬
rashtra and Gujcrat, because big business did not w*ant
to lose the rich Bombay city to Maharashtra, showed
how money-power still plays a decisive part in our
country in spite of the ‘ Socialist Pattern’.
In view of this the doctrine of the five principles of
co-existence and peace has been rightly criticised by
foreigners, because though recommended as a recipe
for better international relations, we have not been
able to practise this ideal among our own various,
states, communities, religions, and languages.
During election time, secularism tends to be forgotten
by almost all political parties, and alliances with,
communal parties, as also with higher or lower caste
groups, are forged for temporary ends. Underneath,
the facade of one happy family, the minorities, even
in the ruling party, feel insecure.
In an interview given by Jawaharlal Nehru to the
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 177

journalist, R. K. Karanjia, on the question, ‘ Is

India a Nation? ’ the Prime Minister has tried
to give a deeper analysis on which he has based the
positive conclusion that, given time, we may be able
to achieve a more conscious unity than we have had
in the past and strengthen the essential unity at the
base of the diversity of our people.
Ancl yet, speaking at the Congress session held in
Bhavnagar in January 1961, he was constrained to
ask people: ‘ How much communalism, casteism,
provincialism or language chauvinism, lingers in each
one of us ? ’
Some of us believe that our intelligentsia has failed
to understand that the problem of disruption can be
solved only if we analyse the situation in the context
of the two ideas which have been struggling for power
within our national liberation movement.
What were these two concepts?
There is no need to disguise the fundamental fact
that, in spite of the basic cultural unity, which came
down as a residual value, through the main religions,
there were long years of conflict between Hinduism
and Buddhism, between Hinduism and Islam and
Sikhism, as well as between all these and Christianity.
And, within Hinduism, there was a constant imbalance
between the castes. The dominant orthodoxies were
always dividing people between narrow domestic walls.
The great saints and reformers of all times, from the
Buddha downwards, made it their chief mission to
preach unity and to integrate the various communities.
And the deeper traditions of the main religions had
built an inner pervasive unity for more than two

12
 178 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

thousand years.
Also, as has been obvious from the historical back¬
ground presented in the beginning of this book, despite
the three or four waves of political unity, imposed by
Ashoka Maurya, the Guptas, Akbar and the British,
it was the small state-mindedness of the many Indian
princes and their feudal oligarchies that led to weakness,
division and defeat.
Only in the freedom movement, which started
against the most comprehensive invasion by the British,
did a sense of togetherness arise; which, ultimately,
succeeded under the cementing genius of Gandhi, in
bringing integration among the people for a brief
period, specially among the Western-educated Indian
intelligentsia.
• Now one of the concepts which helped to give a
strong base to the national movement was the doctrine
of synthesis put forward by Raja Ram Mohan Roy,
Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, and later
by Jawaharlal Nehru. They have all believed that
modern India would benefit from the belief in the
sanctity of the individual conscience that had survived
in the best minds of the past. Also, they have hoped
that the learning of Europe would strengthen the
belief in the sovereign individual. And that the wisdom
of India, as well as the contemporary anarchist emphasis
.on the development of the individual, would give the
necessary strength of character, which would make
human beings resilient against all coming disasters.
They declared the doctrine of unity in diversity. And
they sought sanctions for this in the age-old land system.
They have, all pointed to the basic democracy of the
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 179

village Republic, its self-government and its resilience

(until the frontal assault of the British capitalist
individualism) as the best safeguard against the
onslaught of the king’s power. In fact they demanded
integrated education as the instrument for the perfection
of human beings and the struggle against inequality
of opportunity and for creative unity among the various
-castes, communities and factions.
On the other hand, the petty politicians, who accepted
nationalism as it was practised by many of the
Imperialist European nations, were unconsciously
.asking India to imitate the bcliaviour of the Western
nation-states. These people wanted India to be just
like any other European nation-state, building on the
capitalist profit system, the sense of glory and power
and individual self-aggrandisement. They probably
■wanted to impose conformity of thought on the popula¬
tion as some of the European leaders had done. They
did not see that the logical development of the nation¬
state in Europe, built on the cash-nexus, was Imperialism,
which transferred the burden of exploitation from
the home country to the colonies and spheres of
influence. They were blissfully unconscious that from
the selfishness, greed and power impulses of the
Imperialist nation-states grew Fascism.
Many of the Indian merchants, turned would-be
capitalists, had already begun to emigrate and exploit
Africa and other underdeveloped countries of Asia.
And at home they had begun to oppress the industrial
workers on the parallel of the Japanese capitalists and
Lhe Samurai.
The great and noble ideals of the liberation move-
 180 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

ment in India were fortunately evolved by an intelli¬

gentsia, which was against national chauvinism and
for which the urge for national freedom was a prelude
to the economic freedom of the people of our country.
But the mercantile classes were promoting the acquisitive
mentality among the lower middle class and demanded
the gains of victory as soon as the freedom struggle
had been won. The fact that these sections mostly
belonged to the giant Hindu majority brought no
securities to the minorities.
The concept of a co-operative Commonwealth, in
which the millions of Indian people would grow to
real freedom, with equality of opportunity and socialism
as the goal, therefore, came face to face with the concept
of the nation-state.
When socialism was put before the people, as the
main goal, the acquisitive minded classes began, from
the point of view of their petty gains, to encourage
not the nation-state idea (because they were ill-equipped
to harbour such ambitions), but small-state-mindedness,
achieving their putrid ends through communal
bickerings, casteist factionalism, linguistic snobbery
and the meanest squabbles about the loaves and fishes
of office.
‘ The revolution was national in the fullest sense
of the word *, Jawaharlal Nehru has said, ‘ shaking the
whole land and taking all the people with it forward
to freedom ’. But, after its realisation, the revolutionary
ideals were forgotten, in the attempts, even of the
followers of Gandhi, to win the economic gains of
victory' for themselves and the five thousand families.
The concept of economic freedom’, or the ‘ Socialist
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 181

Pattern ’ of society, as the central objective of Govern¬

ment, has thus been somewhat perverted by reaction
from the start.
If this concept of Socialism could be kept in view'
all the time, the fissi parous tendencies would soon
disappear. For deep underneath the mass discontent
and chaos arc the pulls for higher wages, more food,
more water, electric power and giant plants of the
Five-Year Plans. At the moment, if one part of the
country is found suitable either geographically or for
other social considerations, then the others feel they
are being discriminated against. The emphasis on
social justice would help to dissolve the local doubts
and fears. And a certain amount of social efficiency
may seem like a limitation of freedom, but would
ultimately result in a more genuine freedom, because
it would bring greater equality all round.
Mr. Nehru sees hope in the basic village democracy,
which has been recently initiated through the councils,
called Panchayats. If this had been thought out
earlier, then the parliamentary democracy at the top,
which expressed the interests of lower middle class and
middle class only, might have had a strong peasant
base. The benefits of planning would have gone
right down and the vital reorganisation of the country
would have begun from the healthy new shoots. In
that way the district boards, municipal committees,
state councils and Central Parliament, would have
received fresh blood; and the whole fabric of economic
development would have gone hand in hand with
political democracy.
As it is, the problem of unity still remains a vague
182 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

hope. Of course, unity and integration cannot be

imposed. But the growth of these processes can be
accelerated immediately, by emphasis on economic
equality on the one hand and by a new kind of education
on the other, both of which factors have not yet received
enough attention from the Government in spite of the
directives of the Prime Minister.

The Hiatus in Planning.

The second adverse factor in the building up of our

new pattern (implicit in the first) lies in the for¬
midable difficulties of economic reconstruction of our
country, in a manner commensurate with our vast
needs.
In this context, what, in brief, is the actual economic
situation of our country?
In one phrase the answer is that we are engaged
in the attempt at sheer physical survival, even though
we have gone forward in many sectors of our economy
and the death rate has fallen since the British left India.
During the last years of the Second Five-Year Plan,
one of the Presidents of the Indian National Congress,
Mr. Dhebcr, gave some rough figures in his presidential
address, which may be cited as almost official data.
The appalling truth of these statistics must be
accepted:

(1) There are about two hundred million of the

four hundred million people in India who work only
five months in a year, perhaps due to land operations
being limited to one harvest on account of inaccessi-
4
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 183

biiity of water or difficulties of terrain.

(2) There are about anything from thirty to
fifty million people who are totally unemployed,
of which twenty million are field labourers, about
eleven million being the lower middle class intelli¬
gentsia. There are fourteen thousand children born
everyday, four thousands deaths per day, resulting
in a gain of ten thousand new mouths to feed,
making up our total population 436 millions according
to the census of 1961.

(3) The food deficit of about twenty per cent in

the Second Five-Year Plan period has not yet been
wiped out.
(4) The targets of the Second Five-Year Plan
for industrial development brought India’s income
to 42% per capita. Unfortunately, this got lost
somewhere, because the actual income of the people
did not show a rise. Since then we wish to
appoint a commission to find out what happened
to this increase.
(5) The price level has not been maintained; the
cost of living has gone up by nearly 500% since
1948, while wages have remained more or less at
the old levels; and the taxation of various commodi¬
ties which are basic necessities has lowered the
standards of the middle class, the lower middle
class, the workers, and the peasantry, while the very
rich have grown richer. And, of course, there has
been no attempt at fixing a national minimum wage,
old age pensions, or adequate social and health
insurance. .
 184 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

The situation revealed by these figures would be

very dark if we do not bear in mind, that, relatively
speaking, we have gone beyond the sluggishness of the
British laissez Join period throughout the national
plans. And we have certainly given a positive direction
to our economic advance. But the progress has been
slow and India has certainly not turned the comer
from grim poverty to anywhere near the affluent
society, though the upper classes live in the fond belief
that they live and move and have their being in
America or Great Britain.
The guiding hand of Mr. Nehru and the National
Development Council offer the hope that the Third
Five-Year Plan may be crucial in rescuing India from
near breakdown to something like balance. The presence
of the four steel plants in the public sector, the five big
dams, and the rise in production in certain areas of
our industries, shows what Mr. Nehru calls, ‘ a
perceptible advance’.
It is doubtful, however, whether, as Mr. Morarji
Desai, the Finance Minister asserts, that we have gone
from a ‘ static to a ‘ dynamic ’ economy.
The paradox of the building of a socialist society,
and the completion of the half-finished social economic
revolution, in spite of the wide margin given to the
selfish aims of the recalcitrant private sector, stares us
in the face, because, while the targets of our planning
are designed modestly enough to keep the people
going, the acquisitive minded in our country emphasise
private gain, work against the public sector and un¬
consciously tend to sabotage our efforts at the wellbeing
of all through prejudice in favour of the security of
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 185

the few.
Thus while there is progress, it is not rapid enough
for lack of a dynamic among the whole people. Also,
importantly, the advance from the abjectly low level
of existence forward to a tolerable life, is frustrated by
the growth of population, far in excess of the achieve¬
ments of the planned economy. As the anticipated
increase of population, according to present figures,
is estimated at ten million a year, and we can keep
the balance only if we create four to five million jobs,
very little relief from a rise in income can be expected
within the next twenty years.
Unfortunately, the partial success so far achieved
has been rendered possible by enormous foreign aid.
About thirty per cent of the investment of certain
plants came from abroad and from our own accumula¬
tion of sterling balances. Our domestic resources
could not be relied upon to provide even twenty
per cent investment in the past. And if domestic
investment of about twenty per cent is not achieved,
as also a rate of production growth of seven to eight
per cent, which would double the present rate, then
the ghosts of generations of new Indians will continue
to hover across the horizon. The efficient use of
foreign aid may accelerate our economic expansion,
but much more depends on bridging the gap between
the admirable theoretical planning and the practical
execution of the schemes put forward.
As the growth of population is particularly marked
in the rural areas, and some of this can be ofiset by
increased production of food, the problem of the land
becomes immediate. First of ail, the unemployed
186 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION >

field labourers will need to be given land. The under¬

employed rural population will need water, cheap
fertilisers, working service co-operatives, so that the
present antiquated modes of production can be changed.
The partial success of community development gives
some hope, but it will have to be more energetically-
pursued with the help of a voluntary land army recruited
from among the unemployed and the students during:
their vacations. The stability of agricultural prices
will have to be guaranteed against the present un¬
certainties. The establishment of buffer stocks has
already helped to stabilise the price level, but the
hoarders and black marketeers need to be vigilantly
watched if all these measures are to yield results,
because of the heavy indebtedness of the peasantry to
the money lenders in almost all parts of India.
As the execution of the plan is mainly in the hands
of an inefficient, uninspired and almost heartless
bureaucracy, the administration of the public sector
will have to be cleaned up and new trained cadres
provided to raise the small percentage of total production
in this public sector, at a rapid rate, otherwise it cannot
contribute enough to the expansion of investment.
The increase of exports over imports alone could
bring the necessary money to buy the extra machinery.
And this has not been realised by the feudal mercantile
classes, who often do not sell according to sample and
thus bring the country’s prestige down in the foreign
markets, apart, of course, from the Western step¬
motherly attitude to Indian exports.
The question of growing monopolies, and undue
concentration of economic wealth in the hands of the
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 187

few, has to be checked directly by regulation and not:

merely by the growth of small scale-industries, whiclv
may be expected to limit the power of monopolies or
increase employment, but cannot take the economy-
forward.
Futhermore, the income of the upper middle classes,,
which has been increased vastly, can yield taxation,
if the consumption of capital gains and high incomes
can be taxed, the wealth tax restored, and evasion of
taxes stopped.
In so far as the economic reconstruction of India
seems to be implicit in the Five-Year Plan economy,
the fact of political unity also depends, importantly,
on the development of economy. And each area
becomes dependent on the Other, with the whole-
country, acting as a common market or economic bloc.
This demands the spread of knowledge of the new
Industrial Revolution among the poorer sections, so
that by the awareness of improved agrarian and
scientific techniques, they can grow into the changed
world where sectionalism, superstition, and other
such mental and social bad habits, may disappear in
favour of a secular humanist outlook.
In fact, the present crucial situation demands the
utmost out of the people, great leadership and intense
devotion of the kind that Mahatma Gandhi brought
to the struggle for political freedom. Only a Govern¬
ment of national unity, fighting the emergency on the
basis of the war against poverty, can really produce-
the necessary dynamic to turn the comer, without
violence or disruption. And the ruling intelligentsia,
will have to learn the ‘ gospel of dirty hands ’ and.
 188 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN* CIVILISATION ?

actually do the constructive work, before the people,

specially the peasantry, will move forward.
And only by emphasis on the social and economic
base of our peace policies, can these ideas have the
chance to persuade foreign powers to give up the
-compulsions of force and divert the energies towards
building a co-operadve commonwealth of mankind.

Positive factors. The positive gains of planned

•economy and the negative factors are noted below,
from the findings of the Planning Commission.
Since the inauguration of the Five-Year Plan in 1951
the national income has risen by about 40 per cent
which means 35 per cent per year.

The produedon of food grains has risen from

50 to 75 million tons.
The industrial output has increased by 50 per cent
•except in cotton and jute.
Coal produedon has increased from 32 to 53
million tons.
Pig iron produedon has increased from 1*6 to
3*4 million tons.
The produedon of steel has increased from 1*4 to
3 million tons.
The production of fertilisers has increased seven
fold.
The production of bicycles has gone up ten fold.
The number of small-scale industries has risen
substantially.

The rate of new investment, which was below 5

EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 189'

per cent of the national income in 1950 has risen to

11 per cent at the end of the Second Plan and will be
14 per cent by the end of the Third Plan.

Negative factors. The population growth has

risen by an annual figure of ten million and will
have increased by eighty millions in 1961, so that
five million new jobs will have to be created every
year to keep some balance.
The present rate of capital investment is below
par and will have to be boosted to twenty per cent
of the national income, if the present poverty is not
to remain a permanent feature.
Prices have risen beyond wages, and the need for
price control has not been attended to, nor is there
any attempt at a national minimum wage.
Contribution of direct taxes to national efforts is
about three per cent, total taxation being hardly ten
per cent of the national income. And while the-
taxation of lower middle class and middle class groups
has risen, those who enjoyed capital gains and high
incomes have not been taxed out of their extra gains
or punished for evading taxes.

Social and mental bad habits. The third adverse

factor includes many miscellaneous details, which may
be described as our social and mental bad habits
that have arisen mainly from the long eras of
feudalism and alien rule. No amount of sermonising
will remove them. Only education of the new
generations may change these bad habits. They
are mentioned here in the effort to explain our
.190 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

.shortcomings rather than in the spirit of belittling our

.people.
In spite of the recent legislation against untoucha-
bility, the Vamadharma postulate of the conservative
Swatantra party still implies retention of caste as the
.social basis of Hinduism. The Gandhian method of
destroying caste by attacking untouchability, though
-extremely subtle, was too inoffensive to destroy it.
The new laws allowing entry to outcastes in the Hindu
•temples have not met with much success, in spite of the
heavy penalties imposed on the non-observers of the
measures. For instance, when the untouchables
entered the Vishwanatba Temple in Benaras, the
Brahmins just left that temple and built another a little
way away, because the old temple had been polluted.
In a village, about thirty miles from Delhi, the whole
untouchable population was turned out of their
hutments by the caste Hindus, without even so much
.as a murmur among the law givers. In the whole
of South India, the caste complex is still a rigid frame¬
work of awkward human relations and the B rail min
anti-Brahmin struggle is only a surface indication of
the profound orthodoxies at work in Maharashtra.
Perhaps, as Mr. K. M. Panikker has said, it was the
martyrdom of Gandhi, and the shock it administered,
which really proved to be the turning point from the
strongly held idea of reviving the Hindu state, with
the caste system entire, to the concept of a secular
state. But even so there are elements in our country
who wish to counter the theocratic state of Pakistan
with a more rigid theocratic state of Hindustan.
Also, there are certain reactionary elements among
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 191

the big capitalists, who would like to use Hindu

orthodoxy, in co-operation with the army to set up
a neo-fascist Hindu state, based on the perverted use
of the idea of Dharma. The minorities, though protected
by the law, as I have stated above, still feel insecure
in regard to avenues of employment and equal citizen¬
ship.
The concept of nonviolence was believed in action
to a large extent by Gandhi and seems to have died
with him. The Mahatma took it from the Jain
teachings, which have regarded nonviolence as the
highest religion. Ahimsa or nonviolence, in this faith,
signified the withering away of attachment and other
passions. Their appearance was considered as Hirnsa.
In this noble form, it is doubtful if it has ever been
practised in India by more than a few people, except in
the form of cowardice. For it entailed the conquest
-of one’s passions, vice, pride, lust, vanity, anger, greed
and ambition. And even one of these besetting
weaknesses made for Himsa. The stresses of the feudal
society had led to extreme violence in all its forms.
The poet Tagore, as we have seen, once chided Gandhi
for wrongly believing that the sanction of nonviolence
could bind many people. And the poet was proved
right because Mahatma Gandhi withdrew his
nonviolent campaigns every time he launched them.
Perhaps, it can be said, that the followers of Gandhi
learned to take body blows from the British police
and army without hitting back. Otherwise, as every¬
where else in the world, so in India, the ideals have
remained theoretical. At the moment, there is a
growing denial of the spirit of nonviolence, even among
 192 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

the remaining followers of Gandhi; some of the most

devoted ones among them have used the coercion of
law to impose prohibition and have opened fire on unar¬
med followers of opposite political parties. The linguistic
riots have shown widespread civic violence. The
business life of hard boiled Indian merchants in the
big cities of India, expresses the violence of the upper
orders almost in the form in which the Japanese
capitalists crushed millions of workers in the sweat
shops for three generations. The attitude of the
high castes and upper classes is relentlessly violent in
thought if not in deed. And the followers of various
creeds display all the signs of aggressiveness bom of
age-old orthodoxies. Sex suppression and prohibition,
has meant colossal increase in crime. Only the
national and international peace policies of Jawaharlai
Nehru seem to keep these myriad expressions of frailty
and falsehood and anger in control. And, as com¬
pared to other peoples in the world, we can enjoy the
negative virtue of not being highly armed.
The memories of the murders during the partition*
as well as after, leave no room for complacency. They
should remind the sensitive and the enlightened*
that in moments of exacerbation, Indians are likely
to fight each other and shed blood, as wantonly as
any other people.
Again, Mr. Nehru’s policy of non-alignment to-
keep the cold war out of India, has helped to prevent
the Indians from participating in the kind of attitude
of bitterness, hostility and resentment, which the states,
of Europe and America seem to harbour against each
other. It is surprising, that the policy of our Govern-
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 193

ment succeeded in this regard, although the real

effects of a repressive, patriarchal society, such as ours,
had actually stimulated violence, even on the birth
of freedom. The only hope of maintaining our inter¬
national policy lies in the capacity of our future Govern¬
ments to maintain non-alignment abroad and encourage
genuine nonviolence at home until it becomes a habit
of the multitude.
Also, it may be pointed out that the constant
equivocation between the aspirations towards Dharma,
of the conservative political parties, and the working
out of its obligations in actual fact, is highly deceptive.
Mr. Rajagopalachari, for instance, and his colleagues,
often talk of Dharma while exalting the habits of an
acquisitive society. This leads to the practice of
many bad habits, which are neither permitted by the
old culture, nor preferred by those who respect the
principles of a new humanist life-view.
One of the most important examples of hypocrisy
in this matter is the question of cow killing. After
the Vedic Aryan period, during which the cow, espe¬
cially the calf, had been eaten with great relish, there
arose a tenderness for the milk-giving cattle. And
later, killing of the cow became a crime in Hindu
society. Today, while worshipping the cow, the
average Hindu will leave the cattle to die unfed, with¬
out any stirring of conscience. The draining of the
cattle wealth of the country, by allowing the cnfeeble-
ment of the cattle, through exaggerated sentimentality,
may portend a national disaster, but reactionary
opinion is unable to sec the cruelty of maintaining
sick cattle, thus depriving many human beings of

13
 194 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

food and being untrue to both their real Dharmao as

well as to the secular state.
The concept of Truth, which was the core of
Gandhism, seems to have lapsed, except in the lives
of a few devout followers, in the corruption of the
tycoons and profit-makers and opportunist political
leaders, as everywhere in the West.
On the other hand, in spite of the fact that they
know this, many intellectuals still deliberately equate
the whole of Indian thought with spirituality, and the
whole of Western behaviour with materialism. Under
British rule, it had become a national habit to find
compensation for our paucities as against the mundane
sensationalism of the West and its hankering after worldly
goods. As we have still not acquired many w'orldly
goods, the cliche about Indian spirituality is often used.
The only sanction for this is: that a good many literate
people repeat prayers in languages they do not under¬
stand, practise ritualistic pujapath, like the people who
go to church on Sundays in the West, but still boast
about spirituality. The boasts about spirituality would
not be so embarrassing, but they stand in the way of
social development, in so far as they generate prejudices
and sentiments which cannot stand the tests of accepted
human values and rational analysis. And they
prevent the new religion of man from emerging through
the morass of ignorance and superstition.
One of the more humorous little failings of middle
class India is the indulgence in astrology. The
opening of any public institution is determined by the
astrologer; almost every film company keeps one or
the other of these busybodies working out horoscopes;
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 195

and the rich retain personal astrologers even as they

maintain expensive dogs; and quite a few educated
people will go to an illiterate priest before undertaking
an air journey. This kind of belief in 4 what the stars
foretell * is, of course, a constant feature even in the
more scientific West. But Mr. Naylor’s predictions
in the newspapers are more often treated as jokes in
other countries, but they seem to be taken literally
by otherwise intelligent businessmen in India. This
may be an indication of the profound Indian mind,
■which still leaves many aspects of human life to the
unresolved worlds of spiritual experience. But, some¬
how, it encourages the idea of the average Indian
as a transcendentalism nobly occupied with the salvation
of his soul, when, in actual fact, the very opposite is
true of many people. For, in reality, even the super¬
stitious peasant of today proves to be a practical man
of the world: at nightfall, when he sits round to
smoke a kukah with his companions, he talks not so
often of the supreme God but of the dire needs of his
body, of the prices in the market, the prospects of the
harvest, the cruelty of the officials, money lenders,
landlords and the police. The lower middle classes,
with their superficial acquaintance with modem
gadgets and their false pride and respectability, begin
to exhibit the same dual allegiance to God and
Mammon, as their Western counterparts, only in
more ridiculous forms. The upper orders arising
from the crest of an early capitalism, whose progress
is being indifferently arrested by the planned economy,
have, unconsciously, resurrected the most despised
of the Indian gods, Kubera, with his round belly and
 196 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

put him on the highest pedestals, while they pay lip

service to the higher gods before going to work.
The upper rank of the populations of the four major
cities, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Delhi, therefore
offers a spectacle of imitationism, commercialism,
corruption and vulgarity which is the most sickening
feature of our present malaise. The most superficial
customs of the West, like cabaret, gambling on cards
and horses, speculation on the stock exchange, flourish,
while a few millions lie on the pavements in each city
because they have nowhere to rest their heads. The
corruption may be due to the amount of black money
which has come into circulation. The false sense of
prosperity that was created among a number of people
during the Second World War has survived. The
presence of a few rich millowners and businessmen,
and film stars with showy American can, and cheap
women's magazines to boost them gives a picture
which is entirely out of focus, as the contrast with
jupda hutments, running open sewers, litter-ridden
streets and pestering beggars, brings home the real
truth about ourselves. Only a very few men and
women of the richer classes, or the middle sections,
seem to give a thought to the lives of the poor who
live not far away from them. As for the villagers, they
seem farther away from the cities and small towns
than London, Paris and New York, because the Boeing
jet constellations fly to capacity from the aerodromes.
In such a society the acceptance of illegal gratification,
bribery and corruption, became a natural phenomenon.
The introduction of prohibition, over certain areas,
in the misguided zeal of the pure to practise some of
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 197

the teachings of Gandhi, has brought about a vast

network of illicit distillation, with its attendant social
•degradations, gambling, prostitution, juvenile crimi¬
nality, decay and physical death. And yet the so-called
honest protagonists of prohibition persist, dishonestly,
in the refusal to face the facts they know about in
their consciences.
These and other bad mental and social habits,
may be transitional, but they have to go if wc arc to
create a new society with any grace, with our unique
contribution of goodwill for mankind as a whole.

Survival

The picture of India in the minds of most

outsiders is that of the eighty per cent peasant
population, working hard to survive in the seven
hundred thousand or more villages.
Actually, the features which excite the sensibility
when one looks at the multi-coloured image of India
are, apart from the seven thousand villages in slow
movement, the big dams which have already begun
to provide water and electric power to vast areas;
steel plants, which are going up in different parts of
the country; a few of the community development
schemes and extension services which have begun to
transform the lives of the villagers; the determination
to encourage handlooms and handicrafts to keep the
craftsmen from the degradation of poverty and
frustration of his creativity; the will to use atomic
energy for peaceful reconstruction; and, above all,
the policy of co-existence which has been urged from
198 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

the highest platforms in India. The last value seems,,

to some extent, to have led to the stabilisation of those
forces in the world that are against war, both hot and
cold, and which may succeed in maintaining the world
balance. And, perhaps, India may play some part
in bringing about disarmament, which will literally
bring hope of life to millions of innocent people.
Also, if one travels to various countries of the world'
it is likely that one might be struck by the great talents
of the Indian people, also their comparative ignorance
of world forces in disruption and deadlock and their
comparative lack of that wild fanaticism for war in a
hate-ridden world.
I would like to recall that having lived in Europe
for over a generation between two world wars, and
having visited the West again and again during the
last fifteen years, I have felt the intensification of
aggressiveness, delinquency and of the peculiar neuroses
of bitterness and hatred in the prosperous West, from
which I have always returned to India with a kind of
nostalgia, which is not so much the wish for home as
a quest for comparative calm in the world of irritation,
fear and anger. Perhaps, the adventure of seeing India
building up from the 4th century and the 18th to 20th
century, in spite of tremendous difficulties and setbacks
draws one back. But, perhaps one comes running
back through disgust against the drift of the Western
European countries from the concept of the welfare
state, the sensation mongering of the Western and
American press, and of the other media of mass
communication, the commercialisation of advertising
as well as of literature and an, through the horror.
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 199

crime and sex books, and the still dormant attitude of

racial and Imperial arrogance against Asian and
African peoples in Europe.
It is likely that those of us in India, who are still in
touch with the small agro-industrial village societies,
which live in a certain harmony with nature, recline
back to this even static society, and wish to look at the
gift horse of the high-pressure, profit-centred, Western
industrial revolution in the mouth before accepting
it wholesale. In spite of the penalties of a slower
adjustment, it is important to use science rather than
be used by it. And socialism, or mutual aid, is a
better foundation for the start of our new history than
the money-grabbing, aggressive capitalist state which
becomes inevitably chauvinist and Imperialist and
generates the values of the ‘ bitch goddess success ’
against the mutual confidence among men, co-operation,
respect and the sharing of burdens together. These
latter were the hallmark of our earliest primitive
village republics, through which some part of our
civilisation lasted, in spite of the rapacities of feudalism
and the terrible impact of the West. And if we do
not renovate these values as integral parts of our
* Socialist Pattern ’, our society will share the same
death throes as the exploiting civilisation forced upon us.
For, if civilisation is to mean the breakdown of the
organic life of the community, the disturbance of
man’s creative relation to his daily tasks, and appoint¬
ment of money as the only reward for labour, then the
building up of large fortunes, social prestige and gigantic
political power begins to take precedence over all
deeply human aims, such as the making of beautiful
200 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION?

things, of the poetic sensibility of man, and of a culture

which is capable of renewal through constant search
and questioning. Through the historical periods,
man has tended to make useful things with the highest
skill, so that they often give pleasure to look at. The
whole integrity of human beings depends on the fact
that they give the best hours and the most intense
energy to their daily labour. In fact, never has the
mind and soul of man been known to grow, except
through creative expression. And we probably know
much more about those eras of the past of which
work in clay, fibre, bronze, paint and words has
survived, because the various qualities of workmanship
reveal the quality of the minds of those civilisations
which produced them.
Thus, if the contemporary' civilisation we hope to
build, avoids the pitfalls of the Western industrial
civilisation, it may be worthwhile taking some of its
techniques, without borrowing the profit system behind
it. For the exaltation of a managerial class and a
few ‘ back room boys *, and the reduction of the great
body of workers to varying degrees of repetitive labour,
will lead to a civilisation which, like its Western
counterpart, is the antithesis of a creative civilisation.
In this context, India could become a kind of
laboratory for the experiment of building a new kind
of human society. The seven hundred thousand
villages could become the nuclei of the co-operative
commonwealth we have always talked about. The
basic Panchayat democracy could decentralise power
and gear the production of food and daily wants to
self-sufficiency. The improvement of communications
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 201

would bind one village to the other and to the dispersed

towns, built in the heart of nature, and such household
things as are not produced in the village could be
•secured from small-scale industries, through a barter
economy. The basic democracies could regulate their
own growth and promote self-government in order,
ultimately, to abolish the power politician. These
integrated, self-governing communities could elect
District Councils of fifteen or twenty similar communi¬
ties, and achieve a much higher self-sufficiency by
dovetailing old industries. The vital problem of
adjustment and grievances, from the village level to
the district, would create lively democratic struggles.
And these would be reflected in the regional
councils, legislatures and central parliament. Thus
the all-powerful State at the centre would begin ‘ to
wither away ’. And the filthy, money-grabbing
possessiveness of the upper and middle classes could
be liquidated by taxing out the monopolists and by
the distribution of wealth all around. The shifting
of emphasis from property and possession to mutual
aid would release the kind of aspirations, enthusiasms
and values that a creative society lives upon if it is
building together through communities, rather than
through individualist megalomaniacs and egocentric
dictators, who never allow the potentialities of other
human beings to be realised. Self-giving would
replace saving oneself: the living impulses would
replace the forces of death—the inhibitions,
prohibitions and frustrations of unused natural talents
in men and women. And people would come to the
top not because of wealth but through their ability
202 IS THERE A CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CIVILISATION ?

to surpass each other, in healthy competition in the

arts and skills which make men truly human.
We in India have constandy felt, during the years
of the liberation struggle, that the ultimate aim of
society is to make individuals, who might live with
some sense of harmony, among their own groups,
and among the bigger groups in the modern states,
and supra states of the emerging One World.
The struggle to create such individuals has, I suppose,,
been the main achievement of many human cultures.
And the forces of history, which have been working
in various parts of the world, have, indeed, given to
the modem age many men and women, who have
led the world to the stage when, with the unbounded
knowledge available, humanity can avoid nuclear war
and usher in the genuine hope of a good life for all
mankind and of international friendship. This direc¬
tion seems to be .blurred everywhere, however, by
a certain lack of emphasis on the value of the ‘ whole
man' as the goal of civilisation, through the insistence
on specialist knowledge, bifurcated in partisan truth,
in which suburban outlooks and almost tribalist
passions hold sway. The principles of the evolu¬
tionary growth of the human personality through
the ever widening and ever deepening processes and
aspirations of. culture, seem to be forgotten in sectional,
national-chauvinist and cold war achievements.
On the other hand, since the survival of India
makes it necessary for it not to become an Imperialist
nation, it may contribute a will for peace, as wrell
as for some balance and calm in internal reconstruction,
which may help humanity in a very small way, to tilt
EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION 203-

the balance in favour of the continuance of the human

race at a possible human level.
If then the direction of the tentative Contemporary
Indian Civilisation, aspiring to peace and deeply
human values, can be maintained, the enlightened
people everywhere may recognise their twin brothers
among those Indians who are struggling to keep a few
lamps of the human spirit alight in the enveloping
darkness of our time.
POSTSCRIPT

Since this book was written, the funda-

mental doctrine of the five principles, elaborated by
Jawaharlal Nehru and Chou-en-lai, has been negated,
in practice, by the Government of the People’s Republic
of China, through its deliberate, cold-blooded and
massive invasion of India.
The policy of non-alignment, which was the basic
approach of our government to the two military blocs,
is threatened, because of India’s need for large-scale
aid in defensive weapons. The whole concept of
dynamic neutrality, professed by various Asian and
African States, has been dealt a severe blow by Li
Shao Chi.
Mr. Nehru has, however, sought to maintain non-
alignment as the cornerstone of India’s approach,
to the blocs, in spite of the betrayal by China of the
principles it has solemnly agreed to observe. During:
his speech in the Indian Parliament on November 8, ’62r
he said:

‘ This help, that is given to us, is unconditional

and without any strings. It does not affect directly
our policy of non-alignment which we value. The
countries which have helped us have themselves
recognised this and made it clear that they do not
expect us to leave that policy. ’

I am not sure to what extent the forces that stand

for war, will not seek to attach some strings to their aid,
in spite of the general wish of both the blocs to preserve
 205 POSTSCRIPT

the non-alignment of our country. They know that if

India is drawn into the orbit of the cold war, it might
make the launching of the third world war by one side
or the other almost inevitable.
The balance between the irrational elements, who
fish in troubled waters, and the saner peoples who wish
to avoid a major catastrophe, has to be kept, with a
good deal of vigilance, against jingoism at home and
cold war strategy abroad.
Meanwhile, those people in the outside world who
accuse India of inconsistency, because it defends its
interest by military means, in spite of the reluctance
of its leadership to use armed might anywhere, may
take to heart the casual aside of N. S. Khrushchev,
on the necessity for defence against aggression in his
letter of 24th October, 1962;

‘ It is well known that if one tries to mollify a

robber by giving him at first one’s purse, then one’s
coat, etc., the robber will not become more merciful,
will not stop robbing. On the contrary, he will
become increasingly insolent. Therefore, it is neces¬
sary to curb the highwayman in order to prevent
the jungle law from becoming the law governing
relations between civilised people and states ’.

I hope that Mr. Khrushchev will himself remember

these words in dealing with his recalcitrant ‘ comrades ’
in China, and will condemn the unabashed invasion
of India by the troops of the People’s Republic of China,
across both the northern and eastern frontiers of our
-country.
POSTSCRIPT 207

If some Stales break international law, make alliances

by destroying principles, and become opportunist
in the lust for self-aggrandisement, that does not mean
the Indian people should give up their sincere beliefs
in world peace, in the necessity of disarmament, the
banning of nuclear tests, the settlement of disputes
through negotiations and the reconstruction of the
world through the co-cxistcncc of States with different
ideologies.
The attitude of our people in the national crisis has
justified the hope that our government will not allow
the reactionary chauvinist elements in this country,
and their friends abroad, to break the unity of the most
conscious intelligentsia with the under-privileged
sections, who have contributed so generously to the
defence.
Our war effort, it has to be remembered, is only
an effort to secure the peace without dishonour, in
order to pursue the more terrible war against poverty,
backwardness and daily humiliation, faced by our
population since the denuding of our resources by our
erstwhile exploiters, oppressors and denigrators.
And in the twin tasks of the defence of our terri¬
tories, and the reconstruction of our social and
economic life, the resilient values put forward by
Jawaharlal Nehru will remain the cornerstones of
our policies.
Poetry and courage arc the ethos of our efforts to
build the tentative hypothesis of a new contemporary
Indian civilisation. _ T

k M. R. A.
A book that is shut is but a block

gf GOVT. OF INDIA ^
£ Department of Archaeology M
7 NEW DELHI