... advantage of two extraneous circumstances to create a prejudice and confuse the real issues. They have the immense advantage of attacking India when she is prostrate and in the dust and, materially, Indian civilisation seems to have ended in a great defeat and downfall. Strong in this temporary advantage they can afford to show a Page 118 superb and generous courage in kicking the surrounding dust... of the decline of her culture, but not as a result of its most valuable elements. A later eclipse of the more essential elements of her civilisation is not a disproof of their original value. Indian civilisation must be judged mainly by the culture and greatness of its millenniums, not by the ignorance and weakness of a few centuries. A culture must be judged, first by its essential spirit, then by its... boldly aggressive. Not survival alone, but victory and conquest are the promise of its future. Page 120 But our critic does not merely deny the lofty aim and greatness of spirit of Indian civilisation, which stand too high to be vulnerable to an assault of this ignorant and prejudiced character. He questions its leading ideas, denies its practical life-value, disparages its fruits, efficacy ...
... Indian Culture The Renaissance in India VI A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - 6 These are the principal lines upon which the structure of Indian civilisation was founded and they constitute the power of its conception of life. I do not think it can be said that there is here any inferiority to other human cultures or to any established conception... of culture, these are the things that raise the life of man above a crude, primitive barbarism. If a civilisation is to be judged by the power of its ideas, their power for these great uses, Indian civilisation was inferior to none. Certainly, it was not perfect or final or complete; for that can be alleged of no past or present cultural idea or system. Man is in his inmost self an infinite being, in... spirit, if it is willing to understand, master and assimilate novel growths and necessities, then there is a rebirth, a fresh lease of life and expansion, a true renascence. Page 168 Indian civilisation passed in its own large and leisurely manner through all these stages. Its first period was that of a great spiritual outflowering in which the forms were supple, flexible and freely responsive ...
... still in existence. We can reply on the cultural issue from the view-point of the past and the valuation of different cultures as acquired contributions to the growth of the human race, that Indian civilisation has been the form and expression of a culture as great as any of the historic civilisations of mankind, great in religion, great in philosophy, great in science, great in thought of many kinds... moment are figments of Utopia, but may become to a more developed humanity the commonplaces of their daily environment, the familiar things of the present which they have to overpass. How stands Indian civilisation with regard to this yet unrealised future of the race? Are its master ideas and dominant powers guiding lights or helping forces towards it or do they end in themselves with no vistas on the... draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible victory and rise from apparent helplessness and decay in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of a more splendid life. This is what Indian civilisation is now rearising to do as it has always done in the eternal strength of its spirit. The greatness of the ideals of the past is a promise of greater ideals for the future. A continual expansion ...
... into submission or to force even out of them new syntheses, new harmonies, new creations? The answer stares us in the face if we correctly read the story of the rise and fulfilment of ancient Indian civilisation: Her first period was luminous with the discovery of the Spirit; her second completed the discovery of the Dharma; her third elaborated into detail the first simpler formulation of the... cast down by despair. But the Gita still comes to us with terrific urgency, giving us a shot in the arm and energising us into right and resolute action. In the days of its plenitude, Indian civilisation took equal note of the primacy of the Spirit and the immediate claims of phenomenal life. Life was a movement, a progression, a battle; and life was complex, and human nature was complex. Whether... freedom.... Not a noble but ever death-bound manhood is the highest height of man's perfection: immortality, freedom, divinity are within his grasp.... On this first firm and noble basis Indian civilisation grew to its maturity and became a thing rich, splendid and unique. While it filled the view with the last mountain prospect of a supreme spiritual elevation, it did not neglect the life of ...
... or Roman civilisation from this outlook and miss little that was of importance; but Indian civilisation was not only a great cultural system, but an immense religious effort of the human spirit. The whole root of difference between Indian and European culture springs from the spiritual aim of Indian civilisation. It is the turn which this aim imposes on all the rich and luxuriant variety of its... of Indian religion and, behind all its thousand forms, its one common essence. If there were nothing else to be said in favour of the spiritual genius of the Indian people or the claim of Indian civilisation to stand in the front rank as a spiritual culture, it would be sufficiently substantiated by this single fact that not only was this greatest and widest spiritual truth seen in India with the... must be many authorities. An alert readiness to acknowledge new light capable of enlarging the old tradition has always been characteristic of the religious Page 187 mind in India. Indian civilisation did not develop to a last logical conclusion its earlier political and social liberties,—that greatness of freedom or boldness of experiment belongs to the West; but liberty of religious practice ...
... The Renaissance in India "Is India Civilised?" - 2 This question of Indian civilisation, once it has raised this greater issue, shifts from its narrow meaning and disappears into a much larger problem. Does the future of humanity lie in a culture founded solely upon reason and science? Is the progress of human life the effort of a mind, a continuous collective... ous. Evidently, we cannot without falling Page 68 into exaggeration and absurdity narrow the sense of the word and impoverish the significance of the past strivings of the race. Indian civilisation in the past has been and must be recognised as the fruit of a great culture, quite as much as the Graeco-Roman, the Christian, the Islamic or the later Renaissance civilisation of Europe. ... certainty of an approximative understanding, what is the need of an aggressive defence of Indian culture or of any defence at all? Indeed, what is the need for the continuance of any distinctive Indian civilisation in the future? East and West will meet from two opposite sides and merge in each other and found in the life of a unified humanity a common world-culture. All previous or existing forms, systems ...
... the works of the practical intelligence and, especially, that it was sterile in political experiment and its record empty of sound political construction, thinking and action. On the contrary, Indian civilisation evolved an admirable political system, built solidly and with an enduring soundness, combined with a remarkable skill the monarchical, democratic and other principles and tendencies to which... external attack and totalise the free play and evolution, in its unity and diversity, in the uncoerced and active life of all its constituent communal and regional units, of the soul and body of Indian civilisation and culture, the functioning on a grand and total scale of the Dharma. This was the sense in which the earlier mind of India understood the problem. The administrative empire of later times... spirit in the political life of her peoples. Page 438 Meanwhile the empire served well enough, although not perfectly, the end for which it was created, the saving of Indian soil and Indian civilisation from that immense flood of barbarian unrest which threatened all the ancient stabilised cultures and finally proved too strong for the highly developed Graeco-Roman civilisation and the vast ...
... from it gush still the life-giving waters of a perennial and never failing inspiration. This period, this activity, this grand achievement created the whole difference between the evolution of Indian civilisation and the quite different curve of other cultures. For a time had come when the original Vedic symbols must lose their significance and pass into an obscurity that became impenetrable, as did... more penetrated and suffused by a great saving power of spirituality and a vast stimulating and tolerant light of wisdom from a highest ether of knowledge. The second or post-Vedic age of Indian civilisation was distinguished by the rise of the great philosophies, by a copious, vivid, many-thoughted, many-sided epic literature, by the beginnings of art and science, by the evolution of a vigorous ...
... Indian Spirituality and Life The Renaissance in India IX Indian Spirituality and Life - 3 It is essential, if we are to get a right view of Indian civilisation or of any civilisation, to keep to the central, living, governing things and not to be led away by the confusion of accidents and details. This is a precaution which the critics of our culture... human mind and, if at all realised in his members, would turn human life into a divine superlife. And not until this third largest sweep of the spiritual evolution has come into its own, can Indian civilisation be said to have discharged its mission, to have spoken its last word and be functus officio , crowned and complete in its office of mediation between the life of man and the spirit. The past ...
... rational government and lead them beyond their first natural formulations, until it can find for life the clue to a spiritual freedom, perfection and greatness. The preeminent value of the ancient Indian civilisation lay in the power with which it did this work, the profound wisdom and high and subtle skill with which it based society and ordered the individual life, and encouraged and guided the propensities... flexibly intellectual, scientific and aesthetic, patient and tolerant of life's difficulties and human weakness, but arduous in self-discipline. This was the mind that was at the base of the Indian civilisation and gave its characteristic stamp to all the culture. But even this was only the foundation and preparation for another highest thing which by its presence exalts human life beyond itself ...
... Indian Polity The Renaissance in India XXIII Indian Polity - 3 The socio-political evolution of Indian civilisation, as far as one can judge from the available records, passed through four historical stages, first the simple Aryan community, then a long period of transition in which the national life was proceeding through a considerable variety of ... the degradation and disintegration, with no sufficient means for revival or new creation, of the socio-political life of the people. At the height of its evolution and in the great days of Indian civilisation we find an admirable political system efficient in the highest degree and very perfectly combining communal self-government with stability and order. The State carried on its work administrative ...
... Indian Polity The Renaissance in India XXI Indian Polity - 1 I have spoken hitherto of the greatness of Indian civilisation in the things most important to human culture, those activities that raise man to his noblest potentialities as a mental, a spiritual, religious, intellectual, ethical, aesthetic being, and in all these matters the cavillings of... owing to the unique mentality of the race fixed themselves, became prominent characteristics Page 387 and gave a different stamp to the political, economic and social factors of Indian civilisation. The hereditary principle emerged at an early stage and increased constantly its power and hold on the society until it became everywhere the basis of the whole organisation of its activities ...
... (1918-1921). This was undertaken as a reply to a considerable work by Mr. William Archer criticising and attacking Indian civilisation and culture in all its domains: at that time this critic's views were typical of a very general attitude of the European mind towards the Indian civilisation and its special character, forms and creations and to combat the self-depreciation awakened in the Indian mind ...
... and deeper spirit. None of them express the whole secret spirit behind, but they derive from it their main ideas and their cultural character. Together they make up its soul, mind and body. In Indian civilisation philosophy and religion, philosophy made dynamic by religion, religion enlightened by philosophy have led, the rest follow as best they can. This is indeed its first distinctive character, which... and is less loud and confident in expression, but still subsists, is the whole foundation of Mr. Archer's philippic. This is evident from the nature of all the objections he brings against Indian civilisation. When you strip them of their journalistic rhetoric, you find that they amount simply to this natural antagonism of the rationalised vital and practical man against a culture which subordinates ...
... motives of all such attacks. But his book was important, not so much as an answer to a particular critic, but because it raised with great point and power the whole question of the survival of Indian civilisation and the inevitability of a war of cultures. The question whether there has been or is a civilisation in India is not any longer debatable; for everyone whose opinion counts recognises the... civilisation unique in its character. Sir John Woodroffe's purpose was to disclose the conflict of European and Asiatic culture and, in greater prominence, the distinct meaning and value of Indian civilisation, the peril it now runs and the calamity its destruction would be to the world. The author held its preservation to be of an immense importance to mankind and he believed it to Page 55 ...
... individual his contribution to the intellectual, economical and military life and needs of the community without paying any heed to the demands of his individual nature and temperament. The ancient Indian civilisation laid peculiar stress on the individual nature, tendency, temperament and sought to determine by it the ethical type, function and place in the society. Nor did it consider man primarily as a... only are conscience and nature violated by the arbitrary fiat of the military State, but national defence carried to an insane extreme makes its best attempt to become a national suicide. Indian civilisation on the contrary made it its chief aim to minimise the incidence and disaster of war. For this purpose it limited the military obligation to the small class who by their birth, nature and traditions ...
... jail reform. I was surprised and displeased at this request and refused it." 105 Questioned about the significance of the title of the series, Sri Aurobindo said: "This title did not refer to Indian civilisation but to Congress politics. It is not used in the sense of Aladdin story, but was intended to imply the offering of new lights to replace the old and faint reformist lights of the Congress." 106... the next article, for, it is vital to a proper understanding of Sri Aurobindo's political thought and action, and the militant nationalism of which he was the prophet. VII "Indian civilisation... made it its chief aim to minimise the incidence and disaster of war. For this purpose it limited the military obligation to 145. "I thought to call up the soul of Italy, and I only ...
... But as far as India was concerned, they were rather intolerant and dismissive. James Mill's History of British India (1858), for instance, was a sustained attempt to show the inferiority of Indian civilisation and thus to justify British rule in India. The Liberals and the missionaries supplied the most uncompromising and harsh critiques of Indian society and culture. It would seem that the idea of... Indian attitudes to the Western impact. Elsewhere I have suggested that there are a variety of responses to this Western impact ranging from a position which begins with the insufficiency of Indian civilisation to one that proclaims its total self-sufficiency. Of course, these positions were as strategic as they were actual; that is, they signified different ways of coping with the superior power of... essay, Sri Aurobindo discusses the appropriateness or lack thereof of the term "renaissance" for what happened in India (1-4). He refutes some common European misconceptions on the nature of Indian civilisation, misconceptions that have been echoed by Westernised Indians too (5-6). In order to do so he outlines three characteristics of ancient Indian society. He says that "spirituality is indeed the ...
... defeatist as before. Sri Aurobindo thought that the time had come to ask the right questions about culture and to formulate answers in a spirit of "aggressive defence": This question of Indian civilisation, once it has raised this greater issue, shifts from its narrow meaning and disappears into a much larger problem. Does the future of humanity lie in a culture founded solely upon reason and science... one judges a nation's culture, not by its perversions or its decadent futilities, but rather by its positive achievements and the promise it holds for the future. What, then, was the image of Indian civilisation and culture in is heyday, an image tarnished indeed in later times, but not wholly invisible, nor wholly without its power of inspiration: ...a thing rich, splendid and unique. While... Ancient Indian polity knew neither industrialism nor parliamentary democracy of the kind that we associate with modern England or America (or, for that matter, post-Independence India). Indian civilisation passed from the simple Aryan community of pre-history, through many transitionary experimental formations in political structure and synthesis, to the complicated monarchical State - ...
... later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill. [A] The Gods of the Veda— An enquiry into the true significance of the hymns of the Rigveda. The Vedas are the roots of Indian civilisation and the supreme authority in Indian religion. For three thousand years, by the calculation of European scholars, for a great deal more, in all probability, the faith of this nation, certainly... historical truth at the basis of the old persistent tradition, but a historical truth only, a truth of origin, not of present actuality. The Vedas are the early roots of Indian religion, of Indian civilisation; but they have for a long time past ceased to be their present foundation or their intellectual substance. It is rather the Upanishads & the Puranas that are the living Scriptures of mediaeval ...
... The Renaissance in India Indian Culture and External Influence In considering Indian civilisation and its renascence, I suggested that a powerful new creation in all fields was our great need, the meaning of the renascence and the one way of preserving the civilisation. Confronted with the huge rush of modern life and thought, invaded by another dominant... Western civilisation. We claim to set right this undue preponderance, to reassert the Asiatic and, for ourselves, the Indian mind and to preserve and develop the great values of Asiatic and of Indian civilisation. But the Asiatic or the Indian mind can only assert itself successfully by meeting these problems and by giving them a solution which will justify its own ideals and spirit. The principle ...
... any contact with the culture of India and the East. 3 At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, Page 5 assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda... 5 appeared serially in the Arya . These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture, the true meaning of the Vedas, the progress of human society, the nature and evolution of poetry, the possibility of the unification of the human race. At this time also he began ...
... he did not abandon either his ideas or his hope of an effective action. [New Lamps for Old, the series of articles he published in the Indu Prakash, was on Indian civilisation.] This title did not refer to Indian civilisation but to Congress politics. It is not used in the sense of the Aladdin story, but was intended to imply the offering of new lights to replace the old and faint reformist ...
... published from 1914 to 1921, in which he wrote most of his important works.) Page 84 We have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this dolorous phenomenon [of the decline of Indian, civilisation]. The patriot attributes our decline to the ravages of foreign invasion and the benumbing influences of foreign rule; the disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy, the evil, the... draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible victory and rise from apparent helplessness and decay in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of a more splendid life. This is what Indian civilisation is now reprising to do as it has always done in the eternal strength of its spirit. 72 April, 1919 There is nothing in the most ascetic notes of the Indian mind like the black gloom ...
... tapasya", those who can use these means need no outward aids for this knowledge. This also is sufficiently clear and positive. The tradition of a mystic element in the Veda as a source of Indian civilisation, its religion, its philosophy, its culture is more in consonance with historical fact than the European scouting of this idea. The nineteenth-century European scholarship writing in a period... tradition, the fact of a mystical element in the Veda fits in perfectly with this historical truth and takes its place in the history of Indian culture. The tradition of the Veda as the bed-rock of Indian civilisation—not merely a barbaric sacrificial liturgy—is more than a tradition, it is an actual fact of history. But even if an element of high spiritual knowledge, or passages full of high ideas were ...
... grotesque. To develop to the full the intellectual, the dynamic Page 240 and volitional, the ethical, the aesthetic, the social and economic being of man was an important element of Indian civilisation,—if for nothing else, at least as an indispensable preliminary to spiritual perfection and freedom. India's best achievements in thought, art, literature, society were the logical outcome of ...
... critic's title to write on Indian culture and dismiss it authoritatively as a mass of barbarism. It is not then for a well-informed outside view or even an instructive adverse criticism of Indian civilisation that I have turned to Mr. William Archer. In the end it is only those who possess a culture who can judge the intrinsic value of its productions, because they alone can enter entirely into its ...
... y handled—some of them can be read, developed with great lucidity and charm in that remarkable compilation of European discoveries and fallacies, Mr Romesh Chandra Dutt's History of Ancient Indian Civilisation. Nothing indeed can be more ingenious and inspiriting, nothing more satisfactory at once to the patriotic imagination and our natural human yearning for the reassuringly familiar. But are such ...
... and defeat a force of invincible victory and rise from apparent Page 115 helplessness and decay in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of a more splendid life. This is what Indian civilisation is now rearising to do as it has always done in the eternal strength of its spirit." 1 Sri Aurobindo × ...
... the curriculum. It is well known that the dictum "know thyself" was not merely the motto of the ancient Greek civilisation, but the message of that motto was greatly emphasised in the ancient Indian civilisation also. The Taittiriya Upanishad itself analyses different levels of self-consciousness {Brahmānandavalli, Chapters 1-5), and based on the knowledge of the relationship between Puruṣa con ...
... them. PURANI: It seems he wants to do social service, village uplift work through his Vratachari folk dances. According to him it is the lower castes in India that have preserved the real Indian civilisation. Even the Harijans— SATYENDRA: Not even! It is the Harijans who are the real custodians of Indian culture. SRI AUROBINDO: All I can say is that the Pondicherry Harijans are cleaner than ...
... was regarded as a legitimate means of action, even though legal systems in different countries laid down varying conditions and restrictions on the use of violence. 'It is remarkable that Indian civilisation had even in early stages tried to organise human society Page 108 in such a way that incidence of war could be minimised, and it had also laid down that war should be fought only for ...
... his talk, Sri Aurobindo told the French visitors that, next to India, he loved France most, and the proposed Institute might afford facilities to students from all over the world to study the Indian civilisation with its many elements in creative interactions. On the political front, it was Sri Aurobindo's suggestion to the French and Indian Governments that, while Pondicherry and the other French ...
... War-God the grand religious fable. Kalidasa, who expressed so many sides and facets of it in his writings, stands for its representative man and genius, as was Vyasa of the intellectual mood of Indian civilisation and Valmiki of its moral side. It was the supreme misfortune of India that before she was able to complete the round of her experience and gather up the fruit of her long millenniums of search ...
... of Virgil, if not of Lucretius. The exact date matters little. It is enough that we find in Kalidasa's poetry the richest bloom and perfect expression of the long classical afternoon of Indian civilisation. The soul of an age is mirrored in this single mind. It was an age when the Indian world after seeking God through the spirit and through action turned to seek Him through the activity of the ...
... mark. His translation of the Rigveda by its ease and crispness blinds the uninitiated reader to the fact that it may be a very pretty translation but it is not the Veda. His history of ancient Indian civilisation is a masterly compilation, void of original research, which is rapidly growing antiquated. In fact, the one art he possessed in the highest degree and in which alone it can be said that he did ...
... Indian Art The Renaissance in India XII Indian Art - 1 A good deal of hostile or unsympathetic Western criticism of Indian civilisation has been directed in the past against its aesthetic side and taken the form of a disdainful or violent depreciation of its fine arts, architecture, sculpture and painting. Mr. Archer would not find much support in his ...
... against bringing officials into contempt. Even at that risk we must take leave to say that we can only hope Mr. Risley's ethnological science is less remarkably muddled than his knowledge of Indian civilisation and literature. In his exhortation to Indian womanhood to stand fast to its ancient moorings he jumbles together Swayamvaras, the rape of the Sabines and Shacuntala in a miraculous fashion! At ...
... the sordid interests of British capital to crush the resurgent life of India and baffle the attempt of the children of Vedanta to recover their own country for the development of a revivified Indian civilisation. The two foulest crimes against the future of humanity of which any statesman in recent times could possibly have been guilty, have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of honest ...
... British capital to crush the Page 1127 resurgent life of India and baffle the attempt of the children of Vedanta to recover their own country for the development of a revivified Indian civilisation. The two foulest crimes against the future of humanity which any statesman in recent times could possibly have committed have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of Mr. John Morley ...
... all classes, but in social functions and connections also there was a free association and equality. We see a similar democratic equality, though of a different type, in the earlier records of Indian civilisation. The rigid hierarchy of castes with the pretensions and arrogance of the caste spirit was a later development; in the simpler life of old, difference or even superiority of function did not carry ...
... is obscurely indicated in the old traditions of the mysteries. In prehistoric India we see it take a peculiar and unique turn which determined the whole future trend of the society and made Indian civilisation a thing apart and of its own kind in the history of the human race. But these things are only a first beginning of light in the midst of a humanity which is still infrarational as well as in ...
... mythology, as it has come down to us, full of delicate psychological suggestions, is a legacy of the Orphic teaching. It would be only consonant with the general tradition if it turned out that Indian civilisation has throughout been the prolongation of tendencies and ideas sown in us by the Vedic forefathers. The extraordinary vitality of these early cultures which still determine for us the principal ...
... The siege will be over in ten minutes. Lipi. "Efficient tapas". Interpretation.—"commences from today." Lipi. "European civilisation in extremis". Lipi. 21 years 4 of strife before Indian civilisation is willingly accepted in its flawless perfection. The siege is broken. From this moment the full unrest[r]aint. Page 52 Although the siege is broken, it is renewed from time ...
... slightest (as sheer Spinozism would) the status of the transcendent deity, the Super-Person, the absolute Purusha who, as the Vedas appreciatively quoted by you in your books say at the dawn of Indian civilisation, came down in one-fourth of himself and kept three-fourths above. The Catholic Church can never accept the immanence and omnipresence resulting from such a manifestation or "self-creation" ...
... place and when the national life was in danger owing to internal decadence and external invasion the strata or classes or castes grew rigid not only as a result of an ebb in the true spirit of Indian civilisation but also in consequence of conditions threatening Indian society with chaos. The caste system as it lingered on up to now was more or less a harmful and superficial institution, but in its origin ...
... has its uses! [ Draft opening of another version ] We have had recently in India a great abundance of speculations on the real causes of that gradual decline and final arrest which Indian civilisation no less than European suffered during the Middle Ages. The arrest was neither so sudden as in Europe nor so complete; but its effect on our nation, like the undermining activity of a slow poison ...
... obscurely indicated in the old traditions of the mysteries. In prehistoric India we see it take a peculiar and unique turn which determined the whole future trend of the society and made Indian civilisation a thing apart and of its own kind in the history of the human race. But these things are only a first beginning of light in the midst of a humanity which is still infrarational as well as ...
... and the Indian development of religion and spirituality was guided, up-lifted and more and more penetrated and suffused by the Vedantic saving power of spirituality. The next stage of Indian civilisation, the post-Vedic stage was marked by a new climate as a result of the efflorescence of intellectual search and rise of great philosophies, many-sided epic literature, beginning of art and science ...
... mate, etc. Of course, here we are far from the austere self restraint of Vyasa. If Vyasa was "a granite mind", Kalidasa was the "supreme poet of the senses". It mirrors the evolution of Indian civilisation and in a way, applied to literature, this is a very practical illustration of the different periods of India's development. Sister Nivedita The tale of Nala and Damayanti as ...
... began a systematic exploitation of the Indian people. Page 6 Despite this political division and total disunity, the concept of India existed. There was still a notion of Indian civilisation and culture existing in this geographical space called India. And that was because there was a strong fundamental unity based on a cultural and spiritual oneness that ran like the thread holding ...
... occidental, education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly the political movement ...
... himself expresses his attitude to all human cultures:" There is here no real question between barbarism and civilisation, for all masses of men are barbarians, labouring to civilise themselves".5 He does not assert that Indian culture ________________________________ 5 The Foundations of Indian Culture, P. 93 Page 41 is the highest and others are not needed or useful : "There is a... came to an end with Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva and Chaitanya".9 He evaluates the two cultures and their achievements in following terms : " From the view of evolutionary future European and Indian Civilisations at their best have only been half achievements, infant dawns pointing to the mature sunlight that is to come"10. He can forecast a severe judgment of the future against the present : " The... the hour, the velocity of rapid inevitable change will leave no time for the growth of sound thought and spiritual reflection and may strain to bursting-point the old Indian cultural and social system, and shatter this ancient civilisation. "24 " There is need to emphasise this aspect of our culture, for, even though India is politically free the danger to her culture is, perhaps, greater than ever ...
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