The Genius Of India

Introduction

When one thinks of India's future, two things immediately come to the mind: first that India's culture, like that of many other countries, is increasingly threatened by the tendency towards uniformisation; and secondly, that the concept of rebirth necessarily implies a new body, it cannot mean a return to the past. So the only solution seems to lie in a two-fold movement: on one side, to become conscious of what was, is, and will be the essential spirit of India, that which constitutes her uniqueness and can never be destroyed, in other words to discover again what at the deepest level Indianness means; and then, once this has been found, to make it the centre of everything else, assimilate to it all that is received from the outside, and evolve out of it a new creation.

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In today's world, external influences are inevitable and a certain number of them perhaps not wholly undesirable, but the way in which these are assimilated is crucial. The reaction to external influences, says Sri Aurobindo, should be neither outright rejection, nor blind and mechanical imitation. If certain elements are seen as desirable, because they would contribute to the richness of India, then when absorbed they should be transmuted and In dianised.

"Now that the salvation, the reawakening has come, said Sri Aurobindo, India will certainly keep her essential spirit, will keep her characteristic soul, but there is likely to be a. great change in the body. The shaping for itself of a new body, of new philosophical, artistic, literary, cultural, political, social forms by the same soul rejuvenescent will, I should think, be the type of the Indian renascence, — forms not contradictory of the truths of life which the old expressed, but rather expressive of those truths restated, cured of defect, completed."

In the light of this, without going further, it becomes imperative to reflect on the first question: what is the essential spirit of India, what

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does Indianness mean? To this question, which is often dealt with in a superficial or incomplete way, these few pages of Sri Aurobindo are a masterly, all-embracing, yet concise answer. Sri Aurobindo looks here at the past of India, not for the sake of the past, but to find hidden in its folds a finger pointing towards the future. He tells us: this is the Indian spirit, this is the Indian ideal, this is the bent of the genius of the race; now that is your center; from this centre, act and create.

This text is not a study of ancient India, although it does analyse the powers of the ancient spirit of India. It is rather a very precise description of the instruments that are at the disposal of India for building her future. One cannot but wish that this text form part of the curriculum of all Indian schools, as well as that of schools all over the world. For indeed to understand the true nature of India is not only indispensable for her children, but necessary for all those who aspire to a rebirth of the entire earth.

The Editor

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