The Methodology of Young India.
The most signal feature of the Indian intelligentszia today is the spirit of self-criticism and a sceptical questioning in regard to their own achievements. This intellectual discontent is manifest in Young India's valuation not only of the individual personalities but also of the organized institutions. Never more in India is anything likely to be accepted as a solution of the problems of science or of life without challenge. Revolt has come to stay with the Indians as a most effective method in cultural advance.
1. Pluralism in Politics.
It is too well known how since 1905 the spirit of revolt has continuously been in operation in Indian public life. This has been the prolific source of creative political differentiation. These seventeen years India has therefore witnessed the rise and fall of leaders and parties which may almost be discribed as kaleidoscopic. Neither the monistic control of a patriot-despot nor the monopoly influence exercised by any single nationalist association has been tolerated in the political pluralism of Young India. And Indians have been advancing all this time simply because the message of tomorrow has invariably replaced the platitude of today.
Right now, the shibboleths, whatever they be, propounded by champions of Swarâj, whoever they are, have no chance of being accepted at their face-value unless these articles of faith can satisfy the quo warranto of the hour, i.e., unless they can justify their promulgation in the eye of the leaders who are peeping out of the horizon of adolescence. At every moment in Young India's history the past has thus been challenged by the future. And what is known ostensibly to be the most important organ of public life has after all but bidden its time to be overthrown by more vitalizing agencies.
2. Protestants in Science.
The history of chemical research at Calcutta presents a parallel picture of pluralistic differentiation which is so obvious in the political sphere. The monistic despotism of investigations bearing on the compounds of mercury to which Prafulla Chandra Ray had been led by his antiquarian researches in the Hindu chemistry of rasa (mercury) would have become identical with a systematic torture on Indian intellect had it not been attacked at an early date by the individuality of Biman Bihari De who started off tangentially in the direction of organic compounds and organic derivatives in colour chemistry. Individuation was initiated simultaneously by Rasik Lal Datta who may be credited with having created in Bengal the atmosphere of industrial chemistry in lines untried hitherto in India by foreign or Indian enterprise. The success of these "protestants" has ensured the Indian intelligentszia against any particularistic obsession in chemical research. The readers of European and American chemical journals are aware of the diversity of problems which have been engaging the attention of Indian workers in the laboratories.
In the realm of physics also Indian atmosphere today is quite clean and free. The newly founded Bose Institute is not the only place of international importance where the manufacture of instruments and the interpretation of physical phenomena are carried on in India. The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (Calcutta), founded about 1885, has at last come to its own in recent years on account of the many investigations of first rate dealing with light and sound which have been conducted under its auspices by C.V. Raman and his associates. Almost as a protest against Bose's physico-physiological investigations these researches of Raman's as well as those by Phamindra Nath Ghosh in applied optics at the University College of Science (Calcutta) have served to enrich Young India's students of physics with a freedom of outlook and individuality of manipulation.
3. Revolt against Orientalists.
Equally if not more epoch-making is the revolt which has declared itself in the domain of historical scholarship. The traditional standpoint of "orientalists", both foreign and Indian, which used to pin the civilization of Asia in general and of India in particular down to an alleged pessimism, subjectivism and religiosity has been subverted once for all by a new school of antiquarians and interpreters. The findings of Indian researchers1 such as B. N. Seal, R. K. Mookerji, K. P. Jayaswal and others are objectively demonstrating the fundamental identity in the psyche and in institutional developments of the East and the West.
Not the least characteristic contribution to the logic of Young India in historical scholarship is that furnished by Jadu Nath Sarkar's investigations in Moghul-Maratha India, which have throughout been a silent protest against the obsession of Indian intellect by the studies bearing on "ancient Hindu culture." The multiplicity of historical interests thus ushered in has in recent years grown by leaps and bounds, thanks partly to the idealism of Asutosh Mookerjee, head of the university at Calcutta. Indian history or sociology today is not the monopoly of the Sanskritists, Arabists, or of Pali and Persian scholars. Young India has learned to appreciate the labours of workers who are attacking the historical problems of India from the evidences of Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and other living languages. We have come to realize that one can be respected as a great historian even if his entire work is based exclusively on certain vernacular manuscripts.
The liberalization of mind effected by this heterogeneity of historical scholarship is being pushed further by the demand which has been raised from time to time that some of India's best intellects should make it a point to specialize in the "ideas of 1905",—in the achievements and philosophy of contemporary India in the perspective of their international bearings. Nay, it is also coming to be recognized by educators and statesmen that the brain of India must not remain satisfied with Asia but proceed to grapple with the problems of Europe and America as well, in short, with the questions that affect the general civilization of all mankind.
Nobody should have failed to notice how the alleged nationalist school of "Indian art" has gradually been losing its unitary sway on the imagination and reason of Young India. Already several sculptors and painters of no mean importance have risen in view,—whose manipulations in volume and colour have by sheer emergence automatically served to challenge the conventions rightly or wrongly associated with the name of Abanindra Nath Tagore. A happy consummation all the more noteworthy,—because the revolt has come not with the flourish of theoretical manifestoes and lectures but pragmatically in the course of actual creations of beauty. In art as in other spheres there is today no one India, there are Indias.
4. Varieties of Intellectual Experience.
The more or less dead monotony of India's intellectual being, such as it existed, say, about a decade ago, has been broken by several other agencies. Among them we should note the curiosity which has been awakened in the varied phenomena of experimental psychology, the world-wide subject matter of anthropology, and the epochal evolution of fine arts. Needless to remark that these novel intellectual experiences have not only enlarged the vision of Young India but have also generated an element of soulenfranchizing idealism in the life's pursuits and careers of the educated classes.
The same emancipation of intellect from the thraldom of the conventional pursuits,—school-teaching, the bar, and the medical profession,—has likewise been effected by the inventions and manufactures to which the technical genius of Young India has given birth. These achievements, industrial and commercial, have succeeded in diverting the brains of educated and half-educated men from exclusively literary, speculative and theoretical avocations to fruitful, practical and creative channels. The cumulative protest of India, as registered in the daily history of the seventeen years of the Swadeshi Movement, against the over-scholastic and almost mediaeval system of training offered in the official institutions has already borne some fruit,—in so far as today the mind of the Indian intellectuals is very often bent on utilizing the material resources of the country for the production of national wealth. The revolution in ideas brought about by such successes as those of pottery works, glass factories, and so forth is of high spiritual value in the inventory of India's urges of life. And as such. the industrial and commercial pioneers of Young India have certainly contributed their quota to the methodology of revolt in our approach to the problems of truth.
5. The Novel Urges of Life.
No less has the logic of Indian life been transformed by the successful activities of Indians in foreign countries. At a time when the field of work before Young India was circumscribed within Indian boundaries and confined really to petty concerns, this opening up of new lands and discovery of larger problems for India's intellectuals has been tantamount to a veritable yugantâra in Indian social milieu. India's activity today is measured not only in terms of the achievements at home but also of the work accomplished abroad.
In the midst of all this expansion it would still have been extremely regrettable if scientific research or industrial and commercial enterprise had absorbed the principal part of Young India's energy. Luckily, therefore, a vigorous protest against the mania for money-making as well as against the craze for "original" investigation in the arts or sciences has been furnished in the new springs of action which patriotism has been able to create during all these years. The standard of spiritual urge in India is being set today not only by the academicians, authors, scholars, inventors and business experts but also by such men and women as have taken to public life, social service, political propaganda, rural reconstruction, and last but not least, to proletarian upheaval.
It is but in keeping with the pluralistic trend of Young India's spirituality that of late there has appeared an incessant attack on the institutions of established reputation. It may be considered to be a fit theme for self-congratulation that Young India's mentality is not prepared to submit to the Periclean or Napoleonic dictatorship of its own "enlightened despots",—howsoever great and good the results already attained by it or howsoever necessary it may have turned out to be for historical and environmental reasons.
6. A New Creed.
Naturally the very creed of Young India has been transformed by the storm and stress of the Swarâj period. There was a time, previous to August 7, 1905, the birth-day of the Swadeshi Movement, when the most soul-stirring message for Young India used to be Vivekânanda's "Ma! âmây mânush karo!" "He mâi! mujhko âdmi bânâo!" "Mother! make me man!" The experiences and self-realizations of the swarajists have enabled the Indian youth to outgrow that call.
To-day the faith of India's life is awakened by the slogan: "Duniyâ! âmâr tâmbe esho", "Re prithwî! mere kabje me â jâo!" "Re jâhân! mere gor par sojâo!" "I command thee, O world! come and be prostrate at my feet!" For, Young India has already attained its manhood, aye, its men and women are heroes, martyrs, and conquerors.
Once more has India learned to proclaim in the spirit of Purusha (Man) in the Alharva Veda declaring himself to the Earth: "Mighty am I, Superior by name, upon the earth, conquering am I, completely conquering every region." And this proclamation of the creed of digvijaya (conquest of the quarters) the world has heard in the all-grasping, all-risking sâdhanâ of Young India's energists.
7. The Doctrine of Satyâgraha.
If it were necessary to sum up in one word the logic of Young India's life,—such as it has been operating in the spirit of protest, in the conception of the sacredness of individual personality and in the consequent pluralism of mental and moral shakti (energies)—we should not have to wander far from our daily actions to seek the appropriate abstract term. For, is it not in the doctrine of Satyâgraha, of devotion to truth, backed as it is by the espousal of martyrdom, that the kernel of India's present individualism, of the glorification of our individual worth and manhood, to be found in its most generalized and philosophical form? Satyâgraha, as a tenet of non-conformism, of swadharme nidhanam shreyah, of the right to die in one's truth, in one's own duties, and in one's "station" in life, as Plato or the neo-Hegelians would put it, is the spiritual key to the methodology of our life and learning. And as such the logic of satyâgraha is a distinctive contribution to the social philosophy of contemporary mankind, the twentieth century phase of Kant's "categorical imperative" or Martin Luther's "freedom of the Christian man."
8. The Gospel of Shakti-Yoga.
And here it were well to remember that Asia has never been reconciled to the defeat inflicted upon her by Europe. The events in India from 1757 to 1857 and the spoliation of China in 1842 and of Persia in 1853 have only served to convince leading Asians of the need for a more thorough preparedness in order to consummate the great retaliation. It is, therefore, as a period of long-drawn-out armistice that Asia has regarded the last three generations of her humiliation. Saiyad Jamaluddin of Persia, the organizer of Pan-Islam, and Kang Yu-wei, the John the Baptist of China's revolt against the West, are no greater embodiments of the militant reaction to European domination than are one and all of the great men who have furnished for a whole century the intellectual and moral backbone of the movement which has culminated in the Indian Swarâjist Rebellion of 1921.
The spirit of modern India is the spirit of protest, resistance and challenge. Whether the story is 'old of Ram Mohan Roy. (1772-1833) of Bengal, the first Prince Ito of New Asia, or of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi of Gujarat, in whose tactics of satyâgraha (devotion to truth) or passive resistance the labourleaders of the world are discovering to-day the revolutionary methodology of all disarmed races and classes, or of Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1893), of the United provinces, the energizer of Indian Islam, or of Dadabhai Naoroji (1821-1917), the Parsi, who rediscovered sva-raj (self-determination) from ancient Hindu polity as the inspiring goal of modern India, or of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) of the Deccan, who furnished Indian patriots with their war-philosophy in the message, "Close the Penal Code, Open thy Gîtâ (the bible of mystical militarism), or of Lajpat Rai of the Punjab, who has sought in Urdu to assimilate for his countrymen all the radical elements in modern thought from Mazzini to Lenin, nay, of Surendra Nath Banerjea, the indefatigable agitator against the British Government's policy of "divide and rule," it is the story of invincible will, of a Satanic self-assertion and pride and a vindictive intelligence, such as are but naturally to be expected of persons nurtured in the traditions of Tipu Sultan, le citoyen Tipou (c 1798), the Moslem martyred monarch of Mysore, and Shivaji (c 1674), the Frederick the Great of the Hindus.
If some of modern India's great men have claims to be remembered more in the social and religious and literary fields than in the political, the spirit of resistance, challenge and revolt is none the less characteristic of their message and life-work. Consider, for example, Dayananda (1824-1893) with his militant call to Vedic theology and his declaration of war against the missionaries of Christ; and Vivekânanda (1862-1902) with his gospel of Napoleonic energism and triumphant defiance of the West; consider, too, Kali Charan Banurji (1847-1907), the seer of an "Indian Christianity" emancipated from European ecclesiastical control. And is not Rabindranath Tagore also, notwithstanding his occasional neo-platonic public utterances, in the estimation of his followers but the singer of songs and writer of essays which are filled, like those of Whitman and Shelley, with the spirit of revolution?
In every department of life in India to-day, political or cultural, everybody who is anybody is a fighter, a fighter against some social obscurantism, whether Hindu or Moslem, some alien despotism, some vassalage in art or some industrial thraldom, or some subjection in scientific or philosophical theory. In such fights lies the emancipation of his soul. These subversions constitute his perpetual sâdhanâ. Verily Shakti, energy or force, is the very deity of India's men and women.
And this energism (Shakti-yoga) is but normal with the genius of the people. For, what else is Indian culture but the successful consummation of the Promethean strife,—from epoch to epoch? And of this, as the folk-mind learns it from Bhartrihari's (c 800) Niti-shataka (Century of Verses on Morals, stanza 80), "the most typical landmark is bodied forth in the cosmic struggle of the gods for the acquisition of nectar, amrita (immortality or death-lessness).
Notes
- Vide Bibliography D. in Pol. Inst. and Theor. of the Hind.↩