# The Modern Review/Volume 29/Number 4/Our Swadeshi Samaj

THE MODERN REVIEW
OUR SWADESHI SAMAJ
By Rabindranath Tagore
(Specially translated for the Modern Review)
[This paper was read by the author some 16 years ago on the occasion of a Government resolution bearing on Water Scarcity in Bengal. It is extraordinary how closely it touches the present feeling in the Country—Ed., The Modern Review]
In our country the king has made wars, defended his territory and administered his laws, but the social organisation has attended to everything else, from the supply of water to the supply of knowledge, so simply and naturally that the repeated floods of new sovereignty, which swept over the land with the advent of each new era, did not reduce us to brutes by destroying our dharma, nor scatter us into vagabondage by breaking up our social structure. The kings incessantly battled against one another, but in our murmuring bamboo groves, amidst the shade of our mango orchards, temples were being raised, rest-houses for wayfarers established, and water-reservoirs excavated, the village schoolmaster taught his simple lore, higher philosophy was not lacking in the tols, and the village meeting-places were resonant with the chanting of the Ramayana and the singing of Kirtans. The social life did not depend upon outside aid, nor did outside aggression perceptibly mar its serene beauty.
It is a trivial matter that we should be deploring the scarcity of water to-day. The root of it is the thing, above all things, which should cause us the deepest misgiving,—the fact that our mind is no longer in our own social system, that our whole attention is directed outwards. If a river, which has always flowed by the side of some village, deserts it and betakes its current elsewhere, then the village loses its water, its fruits, its health and its commerce. Its gardens become wildernesses, and the tangled growths which lodge in the cracks of its decayed prosperity become the haunt of bat and owl.
The current of man’s mind is of no less importance than a river. This current of old had kept pure and joyful the cloistered shade of Bengal’s villages,— but now the mind of Bengal has been distracted and turned away from its village homesteads. That is why its temples are in ruins, for there are none to repair them, its pools are insanitary, for there are none to clear out the slime, the dwellings of its wealthy ones are deserted and no joyful festivity resounds therein. So now it is the government which must give us water, government which must give us health, and for our very education we must cringe at the door of government. The tree which used to bear its own blossoms now stretches its withered branches upwards, petitioning for a rain of flowers from on high. What if its prayer be granted,—of what avail to it would be such make-believe bloom?
The state is the sovereign power in England. The old time Raj-shakti in our country was different. In England the state is mainly responsible for the well-being of the people, but in India this was so only to a limited extent. Not that the king had not to maintain and reward the sages who gave free education to the people in religion and science,—but that was only in part. The real responsibility lay on the householder. If the king stopped his ​grants, or even if the land was kingless, these primary activities of the community would not suffer any serious check. Not that the king did not provide water-reservoirs for the people, but no more than what all wealthy men considered it their duty to do. The neglect of the king could not dry up the water resources of the country.
In England every one is at liberty to pursue his self-interest, his personal comforts and amusements. They are not burdened with communal duties. All the greater cares rest on the state. In our country it was the king who was comparatively free, and on the people was cast the burden of their civic obligations. The king warred and hunted, whether he spent his time attending to matters of state or to his personal pleasures was a matter for which he might be accountable to dharma, but on which the people did not leave their communal welfare to depend. The responsibility for this was divided in a wonderfully adaptive way among the members of the community themselves.
For this reason what we understand as dharma permeated the whole social fabric, each one had to practise the discipline of self-restraint, each one had to conform to dharma.
This shows that the seat of life of different civilisations is differently placed in the body politic. Where the responsibility for the welfare of the people lies, there beats the heart of the nation, and if a blow should fall thereon, the whole nation is wounded unto death. In England the overthrow of the state would mean destruction for the nation. But disaster can only overtake our country when its social body, its Samaj, is crippled. That is why we have never staked our all to resist a change of sovereignty, but have clung with might and main to the freedom of our Samaj. It is, I say, because all good works depend in England upon the state, and in India upon the social organisation, that in England to save the state is to save the country, and for India to live is to preserve her social institutions.
Naturally England is busy keeping the state ever alert, eternally vigilant. And we having read in her school, have come to the conclusion that the continual poking of Government out of its indifference is the whole duty of the Indian man. We somehow seem to have become incapable of understanding that putting a blister on someone else’s body is not a way to cure one’s own malady.
We love to argue, and here it may be argued whether or not it is better to centralise the business of public welfare in the hands of a specialised Government rather than leave it loosely spread over every member of the community. What I say is, that this may be a good subject for a debating club, but its discussion cannot lead us anywhere, for in England the state depends on the continued goodwill of the people, which has been evolved by a natural process. We cannot get to this state by discussion and, though it be perfection itself, we must perforce do without it!
The Government in our country—the Sarkar— has no relations with our social organisation—the Samaj, so that whatever we may seek from the former must be paid for out of our freedom. From whichever of its duties our Samaj seeks relief by getting it done by the Sarkar, to that extent will it be disabled with an incapability which was not of its essence in the past. To-day we are striving, of our own accord, to place in the hands of the Sarkar the whole duty of our Samaj. So long many a new sect has arisen in our Samaj, each with its own special manners and customs, without protest or penalty from the larger body. Now we are crystallised into rigidity by the Englishman’s law, and every departure is compelled to declare itself non-Hindu. The innermost core of our Samaj, which we have been carefully guarding within our bosoms, through the ages, is at last exposed to outside aggression. That is the calamity,—not water-scarcity.
In the old days those who were decorated by the Imperial power of the Moghuls, and called to share its counsels, did not find their fullest satisfaction in these honours. They gave a higher place to the approval of their own Samaj. And for the highest reward, which even Delhi had ​not in its gift, they had to come and stand at the cottage door of the village of their birth. Acknowledgment as a high-souled member of the community by the meanest there, meant more than the highest Maharajaship conferred by the Sarkar. In those days they had learnt to value appreciation by the motherland in the very depths of their being, and the pomp of the metropolis, or the glories of the imperial audience chamber never succeeded in drawing their hearts away therefrom. Therefore, there was no water-scarcity then, and all the adjuncts of true human culture were to be found in the life of the village.
To-day it adds not to our happiness that our countrymen should hail us as blessed, and so does our endeavour fail to be directed towards our country. It has now become necessary for requests and reminders to come to us from the Sarkar. There is nothing within us to impel us to take the natural course ourselves, for have we not signed away our birthright to the white man,—are not our very tastes put up for sale in his shops?
I feel I may be misunderstood. I do not mean that each one of us should cling to the soil of his native village and that there is no need to stir outside it to gain knowledge or recognition. The Bengali cannot but be grateful to the forces of attraction which have drawn him out, roused his faculties, and broadened his mind by widening his sphere of activity. But the time has come to remind the sons of Bengal that they must not turn topsy-turvy the natural relations of within and without. Men go abroad to earn, and come home to spend. To make the best use of our powers in the outside world, we must keep our heart true within. But, as the last Provincial Conference showed only too clearly, we have now changed all that. We went to confer with our provincial brethren, but our language was foreign. We have learnt to look upon the English-educated man as our next-of-kin, and cannot realise that all our politics are futile if we cannot make one with us the whole community, from the highest to the lowest. We have become used to keeping the great mass of our countrymen outside our deliberations and so have set up an impassable barrier between them and ourselves. We have from the very first spared no effort or artifice to win the heart of England, but have clean forgotten that the heart of our own country is of greater value and requires at least as much of striving for its conquest.
The ultimate object of political work is to mould the mind of the people into one. It is only in our unfortunate country that the idea finds place of calling a series of operations designed to capture the mind of the foreigner by the name of political education. If we acknowledge the conquest of the country’s heart to be the supreme gain, we must cast aside the foreign methods which we have learnt to consider so necessary in business matters, and bring full into our view the avenues which have always been open, and still are available, as thoroughfares to the heart of the motherland.
Let us try and imagine what we should have done if we really had some message which we wanted to deliver to the country. Instead of getting up a meeting in the English style we should have organised a grand mela. There arrangements for play and song and festivity galore would bring crowds hurrying from the most distant places. There we could hold our markets and our exhibitions of home-made goods and agricultural produce. There we could award prizes to our bards and reciters and those who came to sing or play. There we could arrange lantern lectures on sanitation. There we could have heart to heart talks with each other, and bethink ourselves of ways and means, in regard to all matters of national interest,—and with gentle and rustic alike we could hold communion in our own language.
Our countrymen are mainly villagers. When the village desires to feel in its veins the throb of the greater life of the outside world, the mela has always been its way of achieving that object. The mela is the invitation of the village to the world into its cottage home. On such festive occasion the village forgets its narrowness in a ​hospitable expansion of heart. Just as in the rains the water-courses are filled with water from the sky, so in mela time the village heart is filled with the spirit of the Universal.
These melas are altogether a natural growth in our country. If you call people to a formal meeting they come burdened with doubt and suspicion and it takes time for their hearts to open. But those who come to a mela are already in the open, holiday mood, for they have left plough and hoe and all cares behind. So that is the place and time to come and sit by the people and hold converse with them. There is not a district in Bengal where, at different times in the year and at suitable places, melas are not held. We should make a list of these times and places to begin with, and then take pains to make acquaintance with our own people through this open door.
If the leaders of the country will abjure empty politics and make it their business to give new life and objective to these melas, putting their own heart into the work and bringing together the hearts of Hindu and Muslim, and then confer about the real wants of the people,— schools, roads, water reservoirs, grazing commons and the like, then will the country soon awaken into life.
It is my belief that if a band of workers go about from district to district, organising these melas of Bengal, furnishing them with new compositions by way of Jatras, Kirtans and recitations, with bioscope and lantern shows, gymnastics and legerdemain, then the money question will give no trouble. In fact if they undertake to pay the zamindars their usual dues on being allowed to make the collections, they will stand to make considerable profit. And if this profit be used for national work, it would result in uniting the organisers of the mela to the people with a stronger tie, and would enable them to get acquainted with every detail of the life of the country. The valuable functions they could then perform in connexion with the national awakening would be too numerous to recount.
Religious and literary education has always been imparted in our country in the midst of the joy of festivity. Now-a-days, for one reason or another, the zamindars have been drawn away to the metropolis, and the festivities on the occasion of the weddings of their sons and daughters are limited to the dinners and nauches given for their rich town friends, the poor tenants being often called upon to pay extra impositions for the purpose. So the villages are losing all their joy, and the religious and literary culture, which was a feature of all festivity, and used to be the solace of man, woman and child alike, is getting to be more and more beyond the means of ordinary people. If our suggested band of organisers can take back this current of festivity to the villages, they will reclaim the desert into which the heart of the nation is fast lapsing.
We should also remember that the drying up or pollution of our reservoirs is not only a cause of water-scarcity, but of disease and death as well. So also many of our melas, originating in the name of some religious festival, have degenerated, and far from being a source of education are becoming centres of corruption. Fields which are neglected not only do not yield crops, but breed noxious weeds. If we do not rescue these institutions from such foul decay we shall be guilty before our country and our dharma.
I have said this much to give an example of how we can approach our countrymen in a natural way, and also to give an idea how, by organising and regulating our existing institutions, it may be possible to make them fruitful of untold blessings to the country at large.
Those who are unable to pin their faith on petitioning the Government as the highest form of political activity are dubbed pessimists by the opposite school. That is to say, they think that we refuse to beg because we are pessimistic as to the quantity or quality of the alms. But let me say as clearly as I can that I have never been one of those who seek the consolation of the grape-forswearing fox, and that I have never preached the superiority of self-determination because of the big ​stick with which Government goes for over-importunate beggars. On the contrary, I say that a dependence on the favours of others is the sign of the truly pessimistic wretch. I refuse to be a party to the attitude that unless we bend our knees and fold our hands there is no hope for the country. I believe in our country and I have a great respect for the powers of our people. And, above all, I know for certain that if our present unity be not a realisation of India’s essential oneness from within, if it be something depending on the changing of his mood by the foreigner, then is it doomed to repeated futility.
Therefore it is always incumbent on us to inquire and find out what is the true way of India. To establish a personal relationship between man and man was always India’s main endeavour. Our relationships extended to the most distant connections, continued unrelaxed with children even when grown up, and included neighbours and villagers irrespective of race or caste. The householder was bound by family ties to preceptor and teacher, guest and wayfarer, landlord and tenant,— not ties prescribed by religion or law, but of the heart. Some were as fathers, others as sons, some as brothers, others as intimates. Whomsoever we came into contact with we drew into the circle of relationship. So we never got into the habit of looking on man as a machine, or a tool for the furtherance of some interest.
There may be a bad as well as a good side to this, but it was the way of our country,—nay more, it is the way of the East.
We saw this in the Japanese war. War is doubtless a mechanical thing now-a-days and those who engage in it have to act and become as parts of a machine. And yet every Japanese soldier was something more than a machine. He was not reduced to a blind piece of war material, nor to a blood-thirsty brute. They all remained related to their Mikado and their country in a reverential self-dedication. So, in our old days, our warriors did not go to their death like pawns moved by an unknown player, but, through their chiefs, each of them dedicated himself to the Kshatra-dharma. No doubt this made the ancient battle-field resemble a vast sacrifice of self-immolation and the westerner may exclaim that it was magnificent, but not war, but the Japanese by not neglecting their pristine magnificence, while making efficient modern war, won the admiration of East and West alike.
Anyhow, that is our nature. We are unable to turn necessity to account unless we first purify it with the touch of personal relation. And so we have often to take on ourselves extra burdens. The ties of necessity are narrow and confined to the place of business. If master and servant are merely so related, their commerce is confined to the giving and taking of work and wages, but if personal relations are brought in, then is the burden of each cast on the other through the whole gamut of their respective joys and sorrows.
Let me give a modern illustration of what I mean. I was present at the Provincial Conferences of Rajshahi and Dacca. Of course we all looked on the work of the Conference as a serious piece of business, but what took me by surprise was, that the demands of hospitality, and not of the business of the day, were the more conspicuous — as if we had accompanied a bridegroom to his wedding — and the requirements of our comfort and our amusement were so insistent that they must have strained our hosts to the limit. If they had reminded us that we had come to do patriotic work and that there was no reason to suppose that we had laid them under some eternal obligation, they would have been justified. But it is not our characteristic to admit business as an excuse for keeping to one’s own concerns. However business-like our modern training may be making us, the host must still be above mere business considerations. We cannot allow even business to remain untouched by the heart. And so at the Conferences we were less impressed by the business done than by the hospitality received. Those meetings of our countrymen, with all their western paraphernalia, were unable to get rid of their eastern heart. So, also, with the Congress, that much of it which is truly national — its hospitality ​— has played an abiding part in the national regeneration, while its work ends with its three-day’s session and is heard of no more during the rest of the year.
This eastern hospitality, which is of India’s very nature, is a source of great joy to her when it can be offered on a grand scale. The individual hospitality of the householder used to be expanded in the old days into a vast Yajna in order to find its completest realisation. That, however, was in the distant past. So when India got this recent opportunity of throwing open her guest-house once more, she was overjoyed, and India’s Goddess stepped in and took her long unused seat. And thus it happened that, even in the midst of the outrageously outlandish speechifying and clapping of hands in our Congress and Conferences, our Mother smiled on us once more, happy that she could serve out of her humble store to each one of her guests, albeit understanding but little else of what it was all about! She would have been happier still if, instead of this book-learned, this watch-and-chain-bedecked assembly, she had found rich and poor, cultured and rustic, invited and uninvited, gathered together as in the Yajnas of old, to join this festivity. May be, in such case, there would have been less of material to go round, but the Mother’s blessing would have fallen in richer abundance.
However that may be, what I was saying is, that India is unwilling to forego the sweetness of human relationship even in her work and business, and is ready to take on herself the extra burdens so arising. That is why, in the past, no outsider has had to be concerned with the succour of the helpless, the teaching of the young, the sheltering of wayfarers, or any other public good work. If to-day the old samajic bonds have ceased to hold, and if the giving of water and health and learning be no longer possible from within the broken-up Samaj, even that need not cause us to despair.
Hindu Dharma has always shown the way for each householder to transcend the narrowness of home or parish and relate himself to the universal. Each householder is still in the habit of making his daily offerings of Pancha-yajna to the Gods, the rishis, ancestors, humanity and all creatures. Why should it not be possible for him to maintain the same high relations with his country. Could we not set apart every day some offering, be it the smallest coin, be it half-a-handful of rice, in the name of our country? Would it be too much to ask of our Hinduism that it should unite us in concrete relations with this India of ours, the resort of our gods, the retreat of our rishis, the motherland of our ancestors? The relation of good works with our own land,—are we not to gain that for each one of ourselves, rather than leave it to others, and take our hearts off elsewhere?
We are ceaselessly bewailing the draining out of our money, but is it a thing of less moment that our heart should be enticed away? Does our patriotism, then, consist simply in urging others to do all good work, and is that what all our Congresses and Conferences are content to be busy with? No, that can never be! This state of things cannot last long in our country, for it is not of India’s nature. We who have uncomplainingly shared our hard-earned little with our destitute relations and connections without considering that to be any extraordinary sacrifice,— shall we say that we are unable to bear the burden of supporting our Mother? Is the foreigner to be for ever doling out alms and we crying ourselves hoarse because the doles are not generous to our liking? Never, never! Each one of us shall for every day of our lives, take up the burdens of our country. This shall be our glory, this is our Dharma. The time has come when each of us must know that he is not alone, that, insignificant though he be, he cannot be neglected, nor must he neglect the meanest.
If to-day we should say to one, “Go and work for your Swadeshi Samaj,” he would be utterly puzzled to make out how, where, on what and for whom he is to work. It is perhaps just as well that each individual should not be capable of deciding for himself his own programme of work. Therefore there must be a centre. ​Our bands of workers are often successful in making their enthusiasm blossom forth, but they fail to carry on till fruition. There may be many a reason for this, but one reason is, that they are unable to realise the oneness of their party, and so to maintain itr. So each one’s slackening responsibility gradually slips off his shoulders and cannot find a place. Our Samaj cannot afford to go on any longer in this way, because the opposing force which is seeking to devour it is well-knit and organised in its unity and moreover has introduced its tentacles through and through our social fabric, from our educational institutions to the shops dealing with our daily necessaries. In order to save ourselves from its fatal embrace, our Samaj must make the firmest stand in its united strength. And the only way is, to anoint some Samaj-pati to be our chief, and then for each one to rally round him as the symbol and representative of our union, not deeming it derogatory to render him the fullest obedience, for he shall represent the spirit of Freedom itself.
Such Samaj-pati may sometimes be the best of men, and sometimes not, but if the Samaj be alive and alert, that will not matter, for the worst of them can do it no permanent injury. On the other hand, the anointment of such a Chief is the best way to keep the Samaj in full vigour,—by dint of continually realising its strength in that of its representative it will become unconquerable. Under the Samaj-pati there will, of course, be subordinate leaders for each convenient division of the country, who will see to the doing of all needful good works and be responsible to the Samaj-pati for their due performance. I have suggested that each one should set apart a small voluntary contribution for his country as a matter of daily habit. This could be amplified by larger contributions out of expenditure on all festive occasions. In our country, where voluntary contributions have founded rich monasteries and built monumental temples, it should be easily possible for the Samaj to be adequately maintained, especially when by its good works it would be entitled to the gifts of the grateful as well.
A little consideration will convince anyone how necessary it is to have a centre to which the Shakti of the country may flow, where it will accumulate, and from which it can be appropriately distiibuted. No doubt we should contrive, as best we may, that disease should not gain entrance from without, but what if, in spite of us, it does come? Are we not to have our internal vital force ready to combat it? If such force be there, no outside aggression can reduce us to lifelessness, for its very dharma is to cure wounds, to co-ordinate efforts, and to rouse the fullest consciousness. Even the Government is in the habit of bestowing titles for good work, but we can only be truly rewarded when we receive the benediction of our own country. Such power of reward, therefore, must also be placed in the hands of our Samaj, else shall we deprive ourselves of a potent source of self-satisfaction. Lastly, there is the Hindu-Moslem friction, which it must be the duty of our Swadeshi Samaj to eradicate by equity of treatment and regulation of conflicting interests—failing this, repeated disruptions will only weaken it more and more.
Let us not mistrust our own Shakti, for it is clear that the time has come. Know for certain that India has always been endowed with the power of binding together. Through adverse circumstances of every kind she has invariably succeeded in evolving an orderly system, so does she still survive? On this India I pin my faith. Even to-day, at this very moment, she is wonderfully adapting herself to recent conditions. May it be vouchsafed to each of us to co-operate with her consciously,—not to succumb to material considerations and go against her.
This is not the first time that India has come into contact with the outer world. When the Aryans first came in, violent antagonisms were set up between them and the first inhabitants. The Aryans won, but the non-Aryans were not exterminated, as were the American and Australian aborigines. In spite of their different manners and modes of thought, they found a place in the Aryan polity. ​And, in their turn, they contributed variety to the Aryan Samaj.
Later there came another and more prolonged period of disruption. So long as Buddhism prevailed, there was intimate commerce between India and every kind of foreigner. Such intimacy was far more serious for her than any conflict, for, in the absence of the latter, the instinct of self-preservation is not awake, and indiscriminate mingling threatens to turn into disorganisation. That is what happened in the Buddhist age. During that Asia-wide religious inundation, widely differing ideals and institutions found entry unchecked.
But even when weltering in that vast chaos, India’s genius for synthesis did not desert her. With all that she had before, and all that had come upon her, she set to work to reconstruct her Samaj afresh, and in the midst of all this multifarious diversity she preserved and consolidated her unity of Ideal. Even now many ask, where in all these self-contradicting mutually-conflicting differences is the unity of the Hindu religion, of the Hindu Samaj? It is difficult to give a clear answer. The larger the circumference, the harder it is to locate the centre, but nevertheless the centre exists. We may not be able to lay our finger on the spot, but each one of us knows that the unity is there.
Then came the Mohamedans. It cannot be said that they had no effect on our Samaj. Synthetical re-actions began almost immediately, and a common ground was in course of preparation where the boundary lines between Hindu and Muslim were growing fainter and fainter. The followers of Nanak, of Kabir, and the lower orders of Vaishnavas are cases in point. But our educated classes do not keep in touch with the makings and breakings which are going on beneath the surface of the Samaj, among the common people. Had they done so they would have known that these re-actions have even now not ceased to work.
There has lastly come yet another religion with its different manners, customs and educational methods. And so now all the four great religions of the world are here together— Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohamedanism and Christianity. It is evident that India is God’s chemical factory for the making of a supreme religious synthesis.
Here, however, we must take note of one thing. The long and thorough disorganisation which characterised the Buddhist age, left behind it a shrinking timidity in the succeeding Hindu Samaj—an utter dread of novelty or change— which still peisists. This constant fearfulness is hampering its further progress, and makes it difficult for it to rise superior to obstacles. Any Samaj, which concentrates all its attention on sheer self-preservation, cannot freely move or act and comes to a state of death in life.
The barriers within which the Hindu Samaj then entrenched itself with all it could gather together, caused India to lose her place in the world. Once India was the world’s guru, for her free thought ranged fearlessly over religion, philosophy and science, far and wide. But from that high seat she is now deposed,—and that because fear has entered into her soul.
Our timidity has caused us to stop all voyaging on the high seas,—whether of water or of wisdom. We belonged to the universe but have relegated ourselves to the parish. Our shakti has become the womanish shakti of thrift and conservation, and our masculine adventurous curiosity has owned defeat. Our treasure, which used to multiply by commerce, is now hoarded in the zenana store-room, it increases no longer, and whatever we may lose out of it is lost for good.
We must realise that every nation is a member of humanity and each must render an account of what it has created for the weal of mankind. By the measure of such contribution does each nation gain its place. When any nation loses its creative power, it hangs limp like a paralysed limb, for there is no virtue in mere continued existence.
India never fought for domination, nor scrambled for spoils. China, Japan and Tibet, who are so careful to bar their windows against the advances of Europe, welcomed India with open arms as their ​guru, for she had never sent out her armies for plunder and pillage, but only her messages of peace and goodwill. This glory, which India had earned as the fruit of her self-discipline, was greater than that of the widest of Empires.
When with the loss of our glory we, with our bundled-up belongings, were huddled together in our corner, it was high time for the Britisher to come. At his onslaught the defensive barriers of our crouching, run-away Samaj began to give way in places, and through the gaps the Outside, in dread of which we had shrunk into ourselves, came hurtling in upon us. Now who shall thrust it back? With this breaking down of our enclosure we discovered two things — how wonderfully strong we had been, how miserably weak we have become.
And to-day we have likewise understood that this policy of funk will not do. The true way of self-defence is to loose our inherent powers. The policy of protection by imitation of the conqueror is a self-delusion which will not serve, either,—the imitation cannot prevail against the reality. I repeat, therefore, that the only way to stem the tide of waste of heart and taste and intellect is, to become our true selves, consciously, actively and with our full strength. Our dormant shakti must awake at the impact of the outside, for to-day the world stands sorely in need of the priceless fruits of the discipline of our ancient Rishis. God will not allow these to go to waste. That is why, in the fulness of time, He has roused us by this agony of suffering.
The realisation of unity in diversity, the establishment of a synthesis amidst variety,—that is the inherent, the Sanatan Dharma of India. India does not admit difference to be conflict, nor does she espy an enemy in every stranger. So she repels none, destroys none, she abjures no methods, recognises the greatness of all ideals, and she seeks to bring them all into one grand harmony.
By reason of this genius of India, Hindu, Moslem and Christian need not fight here for supremacy, but will find common ground under the shelter of her hospitality. That common ground will not be un-Hindu, it will be more especially Hindu. And however foreign the several limbs may be, the heart will still be the heart of India.
If we but realise this God-given function of India, our aim will become true, our shame will depart from us, and we shall revive the undying shakti of India. Before that great day comes, call once on the Mother! The One Mother who, through the ages, has been nourishing her children from her eternal store of wisdom and truth, preserving them from destruction, drawing them nearer one another, and to Herself.
We had once learnt to despise riches, to make poverty beautiful and glorious. Shall we to-day insult our Sanatan Dharma by falling prostrate before money? Shall we not once more be fit to serve our Mother, to build anew her fallen house, by taking up a clean, disciplined, simple life? It was never reckoned a shame in our country to eat off plantain leaves—the shame was in eating by oneself alone. Shall we not get back this sense of shame? Shall we not be able to forego some of our comforts, some of our luxuries, so that we may have enough to serve to all our brethren? Will that which was once so easy for us become impossible to-day? Never!
Even in her uttermost extremity India’s tremendous power has secretly and calmly regained victory for herself. I know for certain that this school-taught obsession of ours will never be able to prevail over that imperishable power. I know for certain that the deep note of India’s call has already found a response in our hearts, and that, unknown to ourselves, we are slowly but surely going back to her. Here, standing at the crossing of the ways, with face turned towards Home, and eyes fixed on the pure light of its sacred lamp, call once on the Mother!
Free translation by Surendranath Tagore