Nationality has to be built on self-knowledge and self-culture, on a correct understanding of the — past and a courageous shaping of the future. We have sufficiently realised our inherent national strength and need not be afraid now of a frank examination of some outstanding weaknesses. Our number is so large that even in a crippled condition
it is not possible for other people to ride roughshod over our rights and feelings with impunity for any length of time. We and the world at large have known enough of our past history, culture and achievement, and no reasonable person would consider us an uncivilised race though some of our national defects are frankly admitted. We are not behind any other people in our intellectual capacity or moral eminence and should not need any bolstering up of vital shortcomings in a spirit of vain prestige. Providence has made our country so abundantly self-sustaining that even the most cruel economic exploitation will not disable us beyond a certain limit. The continuance for some years or decades more of the uncomfortable imperialism imposed upon the country by its present rulers will not ruin us beyond redemption. There is nothing
in fact which ought to dissuade us from a fearless examination and exposure of some of national foibles which have kept us in the tutelage of other nations and cultures for many centuries in the past, and which are even to-day, the main source of our inefficiency as a nation. If at any time the Indian, nation ceases to live, it will undoubtedly be a case:
o’er suicide and not of murder. All the circumstances, historical, cultural, racial, geographical and economic are in favour of India existing as a strong united nation. No possible combination of external forces can deprive us of our rights or deny us our independence, or exploit us; unless our own internal unfitness allows them to prey upon us. If, therefore,. we have been fettered in the past and are even now enslaved, it must be more due to our persistence in our follies than to the superiority of the conquerors.,
- A small group even civilised people may be kept under subjection by an immense y stronger group.
- By sheer physical force A numerous community of uncivilized people may be subjected by a 3. smaller nation more civilized and better organized . But
a huge nation numerically and culturally great, as Indian ,Cannot be dominated by mere force by another smaller nation, except with their consent.
Voluntarily given or helplessly admitted as a consequence of internal disruption. We have been great in the past; why are we not great to-day? We were masters of our country at one time; why are we now a subject people? We were a united community once; how did all the present suicidal differences arise? We could withstand and repel the invasion of foreign adventurers in- good old days;.
why are we unable to protect ourselves now? We-were, at one time, ‘teaching the rest of the world’ religion as well as politics, arts and sciences; why are we-now sitting at the feet of other nations to learn to rule ourselves? We cannot attribute this colossal fall from such eminence to any external circumstance or characterize it as a freak of history. The fatal disease must be in our own constitution.
What is that disease? Our ancestors must have egregiously blundered in the past and so must have fallen. We must be similarly blundering in the present.
INTRODUCTION
or we would not be what we are—a nation under guardianship. We must answer these self-questions honestly if we would recover our strength.
No sense of false prestige should stand in the way. Nations are being made and unmade, raised up and pulled down as toy-houses by the restless people of Europe, regardless of human life and in defiance of all the noble sentiments which sustain that life from age to age. We too might be tempted to build a cheap nationality on flimsy foundations. It is possible to hide the cancer that is consuming us, with laurels of organised self-flattery and false patriotism. It is possible to frighten the foreign master into a relaxation of his grip upon us by an exhibition of feigned unity and strength. We have been doing a good deal of both these things. A long-suffering people may be excused for adopting such methods in their natural eagerness for a larger life. But unless we radically cure ourselves, the greatness and freed lost we may again lose in the future, even if we succeed in extricating country from British Imperialism now.
Foreign domination has never been an unmixed evil in the growth -of nations. On the other hand, it has in many cases helped to bring out the latent strength and individuality of the conquered people as a reaction against subjection, and purge the evils which made foreign domination possible. It has often instilled courage into the hearts of the subject people to reconstruct their own national life and make it formidable against foreign aggression as well as internal disruption. Most of the nations of Europe had to pass through the ordeal of domination before they emerged into independent national existence. In Russia and England the domination of a foreign race and a ruling caste proved to be nature’s preparation for uniting the peoples and making them two great nations. Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Balkans were each subjected to the uncomfortable and often oppressive rule of conquerors before they realised their nationality. A loose psychological or cultural , unity or, vaguer still, spiritual unity such as India claims for possess, is not a sufficiently concrete foundation tor welding the composite population of this vast country into a stable political unity. If British Imperialism will bring home to us the necessity of organising ourselves for effective functioning as a nation and crush out the obstinate elements of dis-union, we shall have learnt the lesson which Providence has been forcing us to learn through many centuries of internal wars, foreign invasions and restless yearning for peace Find liberty. The spirit of angry revolt is becoming widespread; but it seems to be directed chiefly against the present rulers and very little an against the more dangerous enemies within the country–the social and religious injustices inequalities, intolerancws and exploitation. In the early days of the national movement social and religious reconstruction was recognize as an essential part of struggle for freedom. The national leaders were enthusiastic reformers who stressed the need to harmonise the conflicting elements and to evolve a truer national life based on a more substantial equality, justice and brotherhood. That vital part of nation-building is being deplorably neglected by the later fighters for freedom. There is a growing tendency to precipitate the complete removal of British control irrespective of consequences, and even a defiant refusal to consider the consequences. Too much reliance is ,being placed on the catchwords and methods of European political agitation. The peoples’ true interests are being overlooked. It is time to protest.
INTRODUCTION
one of the cardinal tenets of our faith is that God rules according to the law of Karma (action and reaction) giving unto each nation according to its worth and its past Karma (acts). The misfortune -which has dogged our steps for so many long centuries must have its justification in our bad Karma. We must fearlessly investigate our past to know where we have erred and how we can rectify our mistakes.
“We are hoping to build a modern nation on the imaginary greatness of the past and not on the strength of present attainments. We rely for success more on a clever and often false presentation of our case than on a just settlement of accounts. We are adopting the ancient method of the Vedas and the Puranas of blackening the character and belittling the greatness of our adversaries in order to gain victory, while our own foibles and wickedness’s remain unaltered. We are taught to believe that we are a unique people superior to all the rest of mankind, as if we can attain freedom by this sort of self-adulation or yogic meditation on the divinity of our national self. We are persuaded to forget all the present injustices, oppressions and suffering in order to preserve the sublime culture of our ancestors which has kept us in ignorance, poverty and servility all these centuries. We are assured that the intellectual and moral slavery of the masses, for generation after generation through their exploitation by a class of hereditarily superior men, resulting in the ruin of both, is a divinely ordained “destiny” and that the economic profiteering of the British rulers is the only danger to our existence. We are induced to take for granted that the good things of modern civilization, such as liberty, equality and fraternity, material progress, scientific advancement, economic well-being, organized charity and institutional religion, are all either intrinsically bad in themselves, or wholly unsuited to our peculiar constitution or are but mere unrealisable dreams leading only to disappointment, while all along, the sermonisers have been absorbing and unscrupulously using for self-aggrandisement and exploitation of the masses most of the evils and cruel weapons of modern civilization. They remind us again and again, that the Aryan masters of India who called the natives Rakshasas, and Vanaras, prayed to the gods for the annihilation of the whole native race, denied to them true religion and all other amenities of civilisation, used the powers of government, religion, literature and wealth to forge fetters of subjection of the masses and to preserve their own monopoly of all the things worth living for in this
world, attacked, conquered, enslaved and emasculated us, as a divinely ordained plan for the preservation of Eternal Dharma, for our gradual spiritual evolution through many births and deaths, and for the general civilising of humanity with the sacrifice of our manliness and freedom in the fire of Aryan lust and selfishness. While these benefactors of humanity are still keeping their strangulating grip round our throats they want us to fight against British Imperialism and politely console us by saying that it is their strong grip that preserves mutual friendship and co-operation. We have lived the life of self-abnegation too long; the iron has eaten into our flesh and is beginning to break our bones. Our minds reel when we think of the oblivion which surrounds us. The Aryan masters unrelentingly look on, preferring to die with their slave brethern to living as equals in a community of free men and women. Our pathetic story has not been told, because our tongues have lost their capacity to speak.” A considerable section of the intelligent masses of India have begun to think in the above strain and are growing distrustful of their Hindu masters.
