Early Cultural Writings

Letters from Abroad - VI

Dear Biren,

There are moments in the career of peoples, empires, continents, orders of things when the forces of life pause between a past vitality and a rapidly advancing decay, atrophy or dissolution. You have often heard me say this of our still persistent and reluctant mediaeval system in India and you have not wondered, but you are surprised when I give the same description of this vaunting and dominant Europe. Why? Because it is vaunting and dominant? I think so. There are two hypnotisms that work with an almost miraculous power upon men's minds, the suggestion of the habitually repeated word and the suggestion of the long-established or robustly accomplished fact. Men are almost entirely led or stayed by blind hopes or blind hopelessnesses. They are ever ready to cry "As it was yesterday, as it is now, so it shall be for ever," or to sigh "This thing is, has been, promises to be; how can I ever overcome it? In the centuries to come perhaps, but for me my limits are set and a wall has been built around me." My friend, the thing that looks so huge, mighty and impressive from without, wears a very different appearance when you look into its secret places and sound its walls and foundations. There are certain edifices, characteristic of European modernity, which lift a tremendous height and showy mass to the sky,—therefore they are called vulgarly skyscrapers, for are they not truly abhramliha?—but some houses very showily built have an ugly habit of descending suddenly in ruin without any previous warning either to their inmates or to the envious huggers of the plain in the vicinity. Then they are said to have been jerry-built. Now, modern European civilisation is just such a jerry-built skyscraper.

You have not misapprehended my meaning, though you wonder at it. These hollow worm-eaten outsides of Hinduism crumbling so sluggishly, so fatally to some sudden and astonishing dissolution, do not frighten me. Within them I find the soul of a

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civilisation alive, though sleeping. I see upon it the consoling sentence of God, "Because thou hast believed in me, therefore thou shalt live and not perish." Also, I look through the garnished outsides, gaudy, not beautiful, pretentious, not great, boastful, not secure, of this vaunting, aggressive, dominant Europe and I have seen written on the heart of its civilisation a sentence of death and mounting already from the heart to the brain an image of annihilation.

O this Europe with its noise, its childish vanity, its barbarous material pomp and show, its puerile clashing of sabres and rattling of wheels, its foam and froth of a little knowledge, its mailed fist, its heart of lead, its tremulous, crying nerves, its sinews all unstrung with a luxury and debauch it is not great enough of soul to indulge itself in with the true ancient Titanism. One notes too its fear of the darkness of death, its clinging to life, its morbid terror of pain, its braggart tongue and coward action, its insincerity, dishonesty, unfaith, its romantic altruistic dreams so soon ended and changing into a selfish and cynical proclamation of interest, power and pleasure,—one sees its increasing brain, its perishing will. It is not in noble figures that she presents herself to my imagination, this sole enlightened continent, it is not fear or respect that they awaken in my mind, these civilised superior nations. I see a little girl wearing a new frock and showing herself off to Mamma and all the world, unable to conceal her pride and delight in the thought that never was a frock so new and nice or a little girl so pretty,—never was and never will be! I think of a very small boy to whom somebody has given a very big cane—one can see him brandishing it, executing now and then an exultant war-dance, tormenting, tyrannising over and plundering of their little belongings all the smaller boys he can get within his cane's reach, not displeased if they show a little fight so that he can exhibit his heroic strength of arm by punishing them. And then he adorns himself with glittering Victoria crosses and calls on all his associates to admire his gallant and daredevil courage. Sometimes [it reminds me] of an old man, a man very early old, still strong in his decrepitude, garrulous, well-informed, luxurious, arrogant, intelligent, still

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busy toddling actively from place to place, looking into this, meddling in that, laying down the law dogmatically on every point under the sun, and through it all the clutch already nearing the brain, the shaking of the palsy already foreshadowed in tremulous movement and uncertain nerve. Very true, Europe, your frock is the cleanest and newest, for the present, your stick the biggest, your war-dance a very frightening spectacle—frightening even to yourselves—with Krupp and Mauser and machine gun what else should it be, you are indeed for a while the robust, enlightened oldster you seem. But afterwards? Well, afterwards there will be a newer frock, a bigger stick, a war-dance much more terrible and a real Titan grasping at the earth for his own instead of the sham.

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