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The Futurism of Young Asia: and Other Essays on the Relations Between the East and the West: Preface

The Futurism of Young Asia: and Other Essays on the Relations Between the East and the West
Preface
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table of contents
  1. Front Matter
    1. Title Page
    2. Table of Contents
  2. Preface
  3. Part I. The Futurism of Young Asia
    1. 1. A Critique of Social Philosophy
    2. 2. The Doctrine of Superior Races.
    3. 3. The Logic of the Occident.
    4. 4. The Alleged Pessimism of the Orient.
    5. 5. The So-called Opening of China.
    6. 6. The Real Cycles of Cathay.
    7. 7. The Comparative Method.
    8. 8. The Age of Modernism.
    9. 9. The Event of 1905.
    10. 10. The Demand of Young Asia.
    11. Notes
  4. Part II. Asia and Eur-America.
    1. Leavings of the Great War (1914-1918)
      1. 1. The War and Asia.
      2. 2. Revolution vs. Reaction.
      3. 3. Evacuation of Asia.
      4. 4. Bolsheviks and the British Empire.
      5. 5. A Monopoly in World Control.
      6. 6. Achievements of the War.
      7. 7. The Fallacies of Neo-liberalism.
      8. 8. Bulwark of World Peace.
      9. 9. The New Germany and Young Asia.
      10. Notes
    2. Persia and the Persian Gulf (1906-1919).
      1. 1. Reconstruction in the Persian Gulf.
      2. 2. The New Persia in Realpolitik.
      3. Notes
    3. Asia in Americanization.
      1. 1. The Race-Problem of the New World.
      2. 2. America's Ultimatum to Asia.
      3. 3. The Oriental Factor in the Immigrant Population.
      4. 4. The Basis of Discrimination.
      5. 5. Asians vs. Latins and Slavs.
      6. 6. Persecution of Asians in America.
      7. 7. Anti-Chinese "Pogroms" of the United States (1855-1905).
      8. 8. The Crime of Colour.
      9. 9. Americanism in the New Asia.
      10. 10. New Asian States and America.
      11. 11. India in the United States.
      12. Notes
    4. A View of France
      1. 1. Prevalent Notions about France.
      2. 2. The Atmosphere of Paris.
      3. 3. French Discoveries and Inventions.
      4. 4. Knowing France.
      5. 5. The Challenge to Young India.
      6. 6. A Call to Comradeship.
      7. 7. French Economics and India.
      8. 8. India in French Communism.
    5. Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity1
      1. 1. Method of Approach.
      2. 2. Christ-lore in History.
      3. 3. Confucianism and Buddhism Analyzed.
      4. 4. The Doctrine of Avatâra. (Deification of Man.)
      5. 5. Rapprochement in Religious Psychology.
      6. 6. The Ethical postulates of China, India, and Christendom.
      7. Notes
    6. The World's Great Classics.
      1. 1. Eur-American Methodology
      2. 2. The New Criticism.
      3. 3. Classicism and Christ-lore.
      4. 4. From the Mediaeval to the Romantic.
      5. 5. Folk-Imagination.
      6. 6. Inductive Generalization.
      7. Notes
    7. View-Points in Aesthetics.
      1. 1. Two Specimens of Art-Appreciation.
      2. 2. The Current Standard of Aesthetic Appraisal.
      3. 3. The Boycott of Western Culture.
      4. 4. Achievements of the Modern Mind.
      5. 5. The Alleged Indian Point of View.
      6. 6. Race-Ideals in Fine Arts.
      7. 7. Aesthetic Revolution.
      8. 8. Historical Art-Criticism.
      9. 9. Philosophical Art-Criticism.
      10. 10. The Themes of Art.
      11. 11. Swarâj in Shilpa.
      12. 12. The Art-In-Itself or Pure Art.
      13. 13. The Alphabet of Beauty.
      14. 14. Structural Composition or Morphology of Art.
      15. 15. The Idiom of Painting.
      16. 16. Form and Volume in Colour.
      17. 17. The Geometry of Sculpture.
      18. 18. The Mechanism of Colour-Construction.
      19. Notes
    8. Old India in the New West.
      1. 1. Naval Architecture.
      2. 2. The So-Called Bell-Lancasterian Pedagogics.
      3. 3. Shakuntalâ and the Romantic Movement.
      4. 4. The Gitâ in Europe and America.
      5. 5. Manu as the Inspirer of Nietzsche.
      6. 6. India in the Universities and Movies.
      7. 7. Sanskritic Culture and the "Comparative" Sciences.
      8. Notes
    9. Oriental Culture in Modern Pedagogics.
      1. 1. Asia in Liberal Culture.
      2. 2. Chinese Poetry.
      3. 3. China's Paintings.
      4. 4. A Modern Superstition.
      5. 5. The Pluralistic Universe.
      6. 6. Hindu Synthesis.
      7. 7. The India of Colonialists and Orientalists.
      8. 8. The Ideas of 1905.
      9. 9. Human Interests of Oriental Achievements.
      10. 10. Expansion of the Mind.
      11. 11. A Call to Cosmopolitanism.
      12. 12. The Message of Equality.
      13. Notes
  5. Part III. Revolutions in China
    1. The Beginnings of the Republic in China.
      1. 1. The Revolutionist Manifesto.
      2. 2. Despotism and Mal-administration.
      3. 3. East and West.
      4. Notes
    2. Political Tendencies in Chinese Culture.
      1. 1. Revolutions in Chinese History.
      2. 2. The Logic of the Fish.
      3. 3. Achievements and Failures of the Manchus.
      4. 4. The Chinese Herodotus on the Law of Revolutions.
      5. Notes
    3. Young China's Experiments in Education and Swarâj.
      1. 1. Swarâj before Education.
      2. 2. China's Educational Endeavours.
      3. 3. Embryology of Democracy.
      4. 4. "Absolute" Revolutions.
      5. Notes
    4. The Democratic Background of Chinese Culture.
      1. 1. Local and Gild Liberties.
      2. 2. Centralizing Agencies.
      3. 3. Chinese Political Philosophy.
      4. Notes
    5. The Fortunes of the Chinese Republic (1912-1919).
      1. 1. Revolutions and Reactions.
      2. 2. North and South in Chinese Politics.
      3. 3. Min Kuo (Republic) Triumphant.
      4. 4. Constitutional Agitation under the Manchus.
      5. 5. The Struggle over the Constitution in Republican China.
    6. The International Fetters of Young China.
      1. 1. Foreign Possessions in China.
      2. 2. China's Sovereignty in Realpolitik.
      3. 3. Bolshevik Renunciations.
      4. 4. The Demands of Young China.
      5. 5. The "Never-Ending Wrongs" of the Chinese People.
        1. I. Sphere of Influence.
        2. II. Extra-territoriality.
        3. III. Treaty-ports.
        4. IV. Financial Vassalage.
        5. V. Turiff Restrictions and Boxer Indemnity.
        6. VI. Industrial Tutelage.
        7. VII. Servitude of the Mind.
      6. 6. The Psychology of the Semi-Slave.
      7. Notes
  6. Part IV. Tendencies in Hindu Culture
    1. Fallacies regarding India.
      1. 1. Injustice to the Orient.
      2. 2. Secular Literature of the Hindus.
      3. 3. Humanity and Hindu Culture.
      4. 4. Greater India.
      5. 5. Epochs of Hindu Culture.
      6. 6. Hindu Institutional Life.
    2. International India.
      1. 1. Intercourse with the Egyptians.
      2. 2. With the Aegeans.
      3. 3. With the Semitic Empires of Mesopotamia.
      4. 4. With the Hebrews.
      5. 5. With the Zoroastrians of Persia.
      6. 6. With the Hellenistic Kingdoms.
      7. 7. With the Roman Empire.
      8. 8. With the Chinese.
      9. 9. With the Saracens.
      10. 10. With Europe during the Later-Middle Ages.
      11. 11. With Europe since the Renaissance.
      12. 12. The only "Dark Age" of India.
      13. Notes
    3. Humanism in Hindu Poetry
      1. 1. The Here and the Now.
      2. 2. Yearning after Fire.
      3. 3. Idealism.
      4. 4. Love and War.
      5. 5. Bhartrihari's Synthesis.
      6. 6. Mother-Cult.
      7. 7. Vishvanâtha, the Critic.
      8. Notes
    4. The Joy of Life in Hindu Social Philosophy.
      1. 1. Occidental Pessimism.
      2. 2. Hindu Militarism.
      3. 3. Buddhism in Hindu Culture.
      4. 4. Western Mysticism.
      5. REFORMAT
      6. 5. Hindu Materialism.
      7. 6. Hindu Achievements in Organization.10
      8. Notes
    5. An English History of India.1
      1. 1. Comparative History.
      2. 2. Smith's Fallacies.
      3. 3. Islam in India.
      4. 4. Hindu Period.
      5. 5. Modern India.
      6. Notes
  7. Part V. Young India (1905-1921)
    1. The Methodology of Young India.
      1. 1. Pluralism in Politics.
      2. 2. Protestants in Science.
      3. 3. Revolt against Orientalists.
      4. 4. Varieties of Intellectual Experience.
      5. 5. The Novel Urges of Life.
      6. 6. A New Creed.
      7. 7. The Doctrine of Satyâgraha.
      8. 8. The Gospel of Shakti-Yoga.
      9. Notes
    2. World-Culture in Young India.
      1. Notes
    3. Currents in the Literature of Young India.
      1. 1. Recent Bengali Thought.
      2. 2. The Songs of Young Bengal.
      3. FORMAT ALL POEMS IN THIS CHAPTER
      4. 3. Dutt and Sen.
      5. 4. Romanticism in Fiction.
      6. 5. Gujarati Prose and Poetry.
      7. 6. Songs of the Marathas.
      8. 7. Marathi Drama.
      9. 8. Hari Narayan Apte.
      10. 9. Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak.
      11. 10. Themes of Literature.
      12. 11. The Wealth of Urdu.
      13. 12. "National" Education.
      14. Notes
    4. Science and Learning in Young India.
      1. 1. Criterion of Intellectual Advance.
      2. 2. Extra-Indian Data.
      3. 3. Three Sciences Demanding Cultivation.
      4. 4. The Ideas of 1905.
      5. Notes
    5. A British History of Revolutionary India (1905-1919).1
      1. Notes
    6. Viewpoints on Contemporary India (1918-1919).1
      1. 1. An Antiquarian on Modern India.
      2. 2. A British Socialist on Young India.
      3. 3. India and the British Empire.
      4. 4. The Proletariat and Nationalism.
      5. 5. An Indian Interpreter.
      6. 6. Map-Making as a Function of Revolutions.
      7. 7. Two Indias.
      8. 8. An Attempt at Theorizing.
      9. 9. Why not a Pluralistic but Free India?
      10. 10. Comparative Politics.
      11. Notes
    7. India's Struggle for Swarâj (1919-1921).
      1. 1. The Roll of Honour.
      2. 2. All-round Boycott.
      3. 3. National Organization.
      4. 4. Ideas of 1905.
      5. 5. Social Service and Solidarity.
      6. 6. Proletarianism and Class-Struggle.
      7. Notes
    8. The Foreign Policy of Young India (1921).
      1. 1. India's Responses to the World.
      2. 2. Greater India.
      3. 3. The World-Test.
      4. 4. Young India in the International Balance.
      5. 5. The Foreign Affiliations of Indian Politics.
      6. 6. The Foreign Services of Young India.
      7. 7. Indian Embassies and Consulates.
  8. Appendix
    1. Notes

Preface

I.

Eur-America had been challenging Asia for about a century. It was not possible for Asia to accept that challenge for a long time. It is only so late as 1905 in the event at Port Arthur that Eur-America has learned how at last Asia intends to retaliate.

Eur-America had been challenging Asia for about a century. It was not possible for Asia to accept that challenge for a long time. It is only so late as 1905 in the event at Port Arthur that Eur-America has learned how at last Asia intends to retaliate. Naturally the challenge is twofold: political and cultural. Or rather, to be monistic for once, the political enslavement of Asia by Eur-America engendered also the cultural chauvinism among the scientists and philosophers of the West in regard to the East. Altogether a vast body of idolas has grown up under the aegis of that new species of despotism, viz. albinocracy and colonialism.

The reply from Asia is accordingly being offered in two fields of revolt: military and scientific. But, undoubtedly, the more Port Arthurs Asia can possess to her credit side the more effectively will the combined intellect of Europe and America be brought to its senses, and the more easy will it be for Young Asia to purge the world of the occidental idolas and usher in the Renaissance of the twentieth century.

Luckily for mankind, with the progress of world-events, with the increased opportunities for international intercourse and with the expansion of the mind generated by new data in anthropology, psychology and sociology, many of the liberal or radical politicians in Eur-America and some of its open-minded scientists and philosophers have begun to join the ranks of Asian insurgents both in politics and science. Thus is being facilitated the subversion of the superstitions which have been dominating the life and thought in the West.

The present volume of essays, disconnected and scrappy although they be, is like everything that Asia has done since 1905 in any field but another term in the series which is destined to bring about the great consummation. It will perhaps be regarded by the colleagues and comrades in the Western world as furnishing to a certain extent the logic or methodology which must have to operate in every process of Aufklärung before the final synthesis or reconstruction is reached.

II.

The Leitmotif of this volume—viz. war against colonialism in politics and against "orientalisme" in science,—is to be found in the first essay, which was a lecture at Clark University in the United States in February 1917 and which subsequently appeared as an article in the International Journal of Ethics, Chicago, July 1918. A good deal of the other essays has likewise arisen out of lectures delivered at the State Universities of California and Iowa, Columbia University, the University of Pittsburg, Western Reserve University (Ohio), Amherst College (Mass.), Rand School of Social Science (New York), and before art societies, churches, women's clubs, and business men's associations in different cities of North America.

Some of the views held forth in the present work have been given out in French while lecturing in Paris on the subject of art, once before the Association Française des Amis de l'Orient at Musée Guimet (February 1921) and a second time before the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Institut de France (July 1921). They constituted also the backbone of the lecture dealing with comparative literature which was given in English at the Englisches Seminar of the University of Berlin (February 1922). A part of the material in this book was used for a lecture in German on the social philosophy of Young India delivered before the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (March 1922) as well as before the "Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914" (April) and other societies in Berlin.

The contents of half of these essays are derived from the author's articles in American journals like the New York Times (March 11, 1917), School and Society (New York, April 14, 1917), the Journal of Race Development (July 1918, July 1919), the New York World (September 22, 1918), the Scientific Monthly (New York, January 1919), Journal of International Relations (July 1919, January 1921), Open Court (Chicago, August 1919, November 1919), Political Science Quarterly (December 1919, June 1920, March 1921), the New York Nation (July 3, 1920) and the Freeman (New York, July 28, 1920, and October 13, 1920).

The remaining chapters have appeared in one form or another in the Hindustan Review (Allahabad, July 1919), the Asian Review (Tokyo, July and October 1920), the Modern Review (Calcutta, September 1919, January, March and August, 1920, October 1921), the Collegian (Calcutta, No. 1, August 1920, No. 1, October 1921), the Journal of the Indian Economic Society (Bombay, 1921), Rupam (Calcutta, January 1922), the Hindustanee Student and the Cosmopolitan Student of the United States and in Young India (New York).

The article on Die Lebensanschauung des Inders which appeared in the Deutsche Rundschau of Berlin for January 1922 is in part based on one of the essays. Another essay in German entitled Die soziale Philosophie Jung-Indiens has been published in the same monthly for April, and this contains certain facts and ideas not made use of in the present publication.

III.

The appendix is gleaned from the Collegian, the fortnightly educational magazine of Calcutta (No. 1, January 1920 — No. 1, January 1922).

The group of Essays, "IV. Tendencies in Hindu Culture", is to be taken up with the author's previous writings in English, The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology, Vol. I (1914), Vol. II. Part I (1921), Love in Hindu Literature (1916), Hindu Achievements in Exact Science (1918), Hindu Art: Its Humanism and Modernism (1920), and The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus (1922).

Group III is backed by the author's studies on China in such publications as Chinese Religion through Hindu Eyes (1916) in English as well as The A.B.C. of Chinese Civilization (1922) and North China in Bengali.

The doctrine of vishva-shakti (world-forces) which often appears in these essays was first discussed in a Bengali lecture before the Literary Conference of Bengal held at Mymensingh in 1910. The essay was published in the original in the Prabâsi, the Bengali monthly of Calcutta, and then as a brochure in English entitled The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind (London, 1912). The theme has also been dealt with at some length in the volume of Bengali essays, Vishva-shakti (Calcutta, 1914), which was made out of the editorials in the monthly Grihastha.

The entire volume is in its ideological affiliations organically oriented to the author's experiences and investigations which form the subject matter of eight volumes in Bengali under the general title of Vartamân Jagat (Contemporary World). This series of books, based as it is on travel, has for its theme the survey of tendencies in industry, education, literature, science, art and social development, and comprises Egypt, Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Japan, China, France and Germany. In these travel-books, again, is continued the trend of thought registered in the Bengali book Sâdhanâ (Calcutta, 1912) in which were collected some of the author's lectures and essays since 1907.

Mohammedan Asia which has been but slightly touched upon in the present work is demanding the author's attention for an independent volume.

Because of the unity underlying the essays herein brought together and because of their "occasional" origin, repetition of certain facts and ideas was almost inevitable. But the material has been thoroughly revised and brought up to the end of the year 1921 wherever necessary, and repetition will be found to have been reduced to a minimum.

Thanks are due to the presidents and professors of the universities and the editors of the journals as well as to the numerous friends in the East and the West who have collaborated with the author in diverse forms during these several years of travel and study.

Berlin, October 1922.

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