Chapter 3
To
attempt to penetrate through the indeterminate confusion of present tendencies
and first efforts in order to foresee the exact forms the new creation
will take, would be an effort of very doubtful utility. One might as well
try to forecast a harmony from the sounds made by the tuning of the instrument.
In one direction or another we may just detect certain decisive indications,
but even these are only first indications and we may be quite sure that
much lies behind them that will go far beyond anything that they yet suggest.
This is true whether in religion and spirituality or thought and science,
poetry and art or society and politics. Everywhere there is, at most,
only a beginning of beginnings.
One thing seems at any rate certain, that the spiritual motive will be
in the future of India, as in her past, the real originative and dominating
strain. By spirituality we do not mean a remote metaphysical mind or the
tendency to dream rather than to act. That was not the great India of
old in her splendid days of vigour, - whatever certain European critics
or interpreters of her culture may say, - and it will not be the India
of the future. Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong
element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose
her great, her sovereign powers in that direction; but Indian metaphysics
are as far removed from the brilliant or the profound idea-spinning of
the French or the German mind as from the broad intellectual generalising
on the basis of the facts of physical science which for some time did
duty for philosophy in modern Europe. It has always been in its essential
parts an intellectual approach to spiritual realisation. Though in later
times it led too much away from life, yet that was not its original character
whether in its early Vedantic intuitional forms or in those later developments
of it, such as the Gita, which belong to the period of its most vigorous
intellectual originality and creation. Buddhism itself, the philosophy
which first really threw doubt on the value of life, did so only in its
intellectual tendency; in its dynamic parts, by its ethical system and
spiritual method, it gave a new set of values, a severe vigour, yet a
gentler idealism to human living and was therefore powerfully creative
both in the arts which interpret life and in society and politics. To
realise intimately truth of spirit and to quicken and to remould life
by it is the native tendency of the Indian mind, and to that it must always
return in all its periods of health, greatness and vigour.
All great movements of life in India have begun with a new spiritual thought
and usually a new religious activity. What more striking and significant
fact can there be than this that even the new European influence, which
was an influence intellectual, rationalistic, so often antireligious and
which drew so much of its idealism from the increasingly cosmopolitan,
mundane and secularist thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
precipitated in India from the very first an attempt at religious reformation
and led actually to the creation of new religions? The instinct of the
Indian mind was that, if a reconstruction of ideas and of society was
to be attempted, it must start from a spiritual basis and take from the
first a religious motive and form. The Brahmo Samaj had in its inception
a large cosmopolitan idea, it was even almost eclectic in the choice of
the materials for the synthesis it attempted; it combined a Vedantic first
inspiration, outward forms akin to those of English Unitarianism and something
of its temper, a modicum of Christian influence, a strong dose of religious
rationalism and intellectualism. It is noteworthy, however, that it started
from an endeavour to restate the Vedanta, and it is curiously significant
of the way in which even what might be well called a protestant movement
follows the curve of the national tradition and temper, that the three
stages of its growth, marked by the three churches or congregations into
which it split, correspond to the three eternal motives of the Indian
religious mind, Jnana, Bhakti and Karma, the contemplative and philosophical,
the emotional and fervently devotional and the actively and practically
dynamic spiritual mentality. The Arya Samaj in the Punjab founded itself
on a fresh interpretation of the truth of the Veda and an attempt to apply
old Vedic principles of life to modern conditions. The movement associated
with the great names of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda has been a very wide
synthesis of past religious motives and spiritual experience topped by
a reaffirmation of the old asceticism and monasticism, but with new living
strands in it and combined with a strong humanitarianism and zeal of missionary
expansion. There has been too the movement of orthodox Hindu revivalism,
more vigorous two or three decades ago than it is now. The rest of India
has either felt vibrations of some of these great regional movements or
been touched with smaller ones of their own making. In Bengal a strong
Neo-Vaishnavic tendency is the most recent development of its religious
mind and shows that the preparatory creative activity has not yet finished
its workings. Throughout India the old religious sects and disciplines
are becoming strongly revitalised, vocal, active, moved to a fresh self-affirmation.
Islam has recently shared in the general stirring and attempts to return
vitally to the original Islamic ideals or to strike out fresh developments
have preceded or accompanied the awakening to life of the long torpid
Mussulman mass in India. Perhaps none of these forms, nor all the sum
of them may be definitive, they may constitute only the preparatory self-finding
of the Indian spiritual mind recovering its past and turning towards its
future. India is the meeting-place of the religions and among these Hinduism
alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as
a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought,
realisation and aspiration. What will finally come out of all this stir
and ferment, lies yet in the future. There has been an introduction of
fresh fruitful impulses to activity: there has been much revival of the
vitality of old forms, a new study, rehabilitation, resort to old disciplines
and old authorities and scriptures, - we may note that Vedanta, Veda,
Purana, Yoga, and recently the same thing is being initiated with regard
to the Tantra, have each in their turn been brought back into understanding,
if not always yet to a perfect understanding, to practice, to some efficacy
on thought and on life; there has been an evolution of enlarging truth
and novel forms out of ancient ideas and renewed experience. Whatever
the last upshot may be, this spiritual and religious ferment and activity
stand out as the most prominent feature of the new India; and it may be
observed that while in other fields the tendency has been, until quite
recently, more critical than constructive, here every impulse has been
throughout powerfully creative. Especially, we see everywhere the tendency
towards the return of the spirit upon life; the reassertion of a spiritual
living as a foundation for a new life of the nation has been a recognisable
impulse. Even asceticism and monasticism are rapidly becoming, no longer
merely contemplative, self-centred or aloof, but missionary, educative,
humanitarian. And recently in the utterances of the leaders of thought
the insistence on life has been growing marked, self-conscious and positive.
This is at present the most significant immediate sign of the future.
Probably, here lies the key of the Indian renaissance, in a return from
forms to the depths of a released spirituality which will show itself
again in a pervading return of spirituality upon life.
But what are likely to be the great constructive ideas and the great decisive
instruments which this spirituality will take to deal with and govern
life, is as yet obscure, because the thought of this new India is still
inchoate and indeterminative.
Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of
the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by
which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes
in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new
horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate.
Philosophy in India has been the intellectual canaliser of spiritual knowledge
and experience, but the philosophical intellect has not as yet decidedly
begun the work of new creation; it has been rather busy with the restatement
of its past gains than with any new statement which would visibly and
rapidly enlarge the boundaries of its thought and aspiration. The contact
of European philosophy has not been fruitful of any creative reaction;
first because the past philosophies of Europe have very little that could
be of any utility in this direction, nothing of the first importance in
fact which India has not already stated in forms better suited to her
own spiritual temper and genius, and though the thought of Nietzsche,
of Bergson and of James has recently touched more vitally just a few minds
here and there, their drift is much too externally pragmatic and vitalistic
to be genuinely assimilable by the Indian spirit. But, principally, a
real Indian philosophy can only be evolved out of spiritual experience
and as the fruit of the spiritual seeking which all the religious movements
of the past century have helped to generalise. It cannot spring, as in
Europe, out of the critical intellect solely or as the fruit of scientific
thought and knowledge. Nor has there been very much preparing force of
original critical thought in nineteenth century India. The more original
intellects have either turned towards pure literature or else been busy
assimilating and at most Indianising modern ideas. And though a stronger
thought tendency is now beginning, all is yet uncertain flux or brilliantly
vague foreshadowing.
In poetry, literature, art, science there have, on the contrary, been
definite beginnings. Bengal in these, as in many other directions, has
been recently the chief testing crucible or the first workshop of the
Shakti of India; it is there she has chosen to cast in the greatest vivacity
of new influences and develop her initial forms and inspirations. In the
rest of India there is often much activity of production and one hears
here and there of a solitary poet or prose-writer of genius or notable
talent; but Bengal has already a considerable literature of importance,
with a distinct spirit and form, well-based and always developing; she
has now a great body of art original, inspired, full of delicate beauty
and vision; she has not only two renowned scientists, one of the two world-famous
for a central and far-reaching discovery, but a young school of research
which promises to count for something in the world's science. It is here
therefore that we can observe the trend of the Indian mind and the direction
in which it is turning. Especially the art of the Bengal painters is very
significant, more so even than the prose of Bankim or the poetry of Tagore.
Bengali poetry has had to feel its way and does not seem yet quite definitively
to have found it, but Bengal art has found its way at once at the first
step, by a sort of immediate intuition.
Partly this is because the new literature began in the period of foreign
influence and of an indecisive groping, while art in India was quite silent,
- except for the preposterous Ravi Varma interlude which was doomed to
sterility by its absurdly barren incompetence, - began in a moment of
self-recovery and could profit by a clearer possibility of light. But
besides, plastic art is in itself by its very limitation, by the narrower
and intense range of its forms and motives, often more decisively indicative
than the more fluid and variable turns of literary thought and expression.
Now the whole power of the Bengal artists springs from their deliberate
choice of the spirit and hidden meaning in things rather than their form
and surface meaning as the object to be expressed. It is intuitive and
its forms are the very rhythm of its intuition, they have little to do
with the metric formalities devised by the observing intellect; it leans
over the finite to discover its suggestions of the infinite and inexpressible;
it turns to outward life and nature to found upon it lines and colours,
rhythms and embodiments which will be significant of the other life and
other nature than the physical which all that is merely outward conceals.
This is the eternal motive of Indian art, but applied in a new way less
largely ideaed, mythological and symbolical, but with a more delicately
suggestive attempt at a near, subtle, direct embodiment. This art is a
true new creation, and we may expect that the artistic mind of the rest
of India will follow through the gate thus opened, but we may expect it
too to take on there other characteristics and find other ways of expression;
for the peculiar turn and tone given by the Calcutta painters is intimate
to the temperament of Bengal. But India is great by the unity of her national
coupled with the rich diversity of her regional mind. That we may expect
to see reflected in the resurgence of her artistic creativeness.
Poetry and literature in Bengal have gone through two distinct stages
and seem to be preparing for a third of which one cannot quite foresee
the character. It began with a European and mostly an English influence,
a taking in of fresh poetical and prose forms, literary ideas, artistic
canons. It was a period of copious and buoyant creation which produced
a number of poets and poetesses, one or two of great genius, others of
a fine poetic capacity, much work of beauty and distinction, a real opening
of the floodgates of Saraswati. Its work was not at all crudely imitative;
the foreign influences are everywhere visible, but they are assimilated,
not merely obeyed or aped. The quality of the Bengali temperament and
its native aesthetic turn took hold of them and poured them into a mould
of speech suitable to its own spirit. But still the substance was not
quite native to the soul and therefore one feels a certain void in it.
The form and expression have the peculiar grace and the delicate plastic
beauty which Bengali poetical expression achieved from its beginning,
but the thing expressed does not in the end amount to very much. As is
inevitable when one does not think or create freely but is principally
assimilating thought and form, it is thin and falls short of the greatness
which we would expect from the natural power of the poet. That period
is long over, it has lived its time and its work has taken its place in
the past of the literature. Two of its creators, one, the sovereign initiator
of its prose expression, supreme by combination of original mentality
with a flawless artistic gift, the other born into its last glow of productive
brilliance, but outliving it to develop another strain and a profounder
voice of poetry, released the real soul of Bengal into expression. The
work of Bankim Chandra is now of the past, because it has entered already
into the new mind of Bengal which it did more than any other literary
influence to form; the work of Rabindranath still largely holds the present,
but it has opened ways for the future which promise to go beyond it. Both
show an increasing return to the Indian spirit in fresh forms; both are
voices of the dawn, seek more than they find, suggest and are calling
for more than they actually evoke. At present we see a fresh preparation,
on one side evolving and promising to broaden out from the influence of
Tagore, on the other in revolt against it and insisting on a more distinctively
national type of inspiration and creation; but what will come out of it,
is not yet clear. On the whole it appears that the movement is turning
in the same direction as that of the new art, though with the more flexible
utterance and varied motive natural to the spoken thought and expressive
word. No utterance of the highest genius, such as would give the decisive
turn, has yet made itself heard. But some faint promise of a great imaginative
and intuitive literature of a new Indian type is already discernible in
these uncertain voices.
In the things of the mind we have then within however limited an area
certain beginnings, preparatory or even initially definitive. But in the
outward life of the nation we are still in a stage of much uncertainty
and confusion. Very largely this is due to the political conditions which
have ceased in spirit to be those of the past, but are not yet in fact
those of the future.
The fever and the strain born from the alternation of waves of aspiration
with the reflux of non-fulfilment are not favourable to the strong formulation
of a new birth in the national life. All that is as yet clear is that
the first period of a superficial assimilation and aping of European political
ideas and methods is over. Another political spirit has awakened in the
people under the shock of the movement of the last decade which, vehemently
national in its motive, proclaimed a religion of Indian patriotism, applied
the notions of the ancient religion and philosophy to politics, expressed
the cult of the country as mother and Shakti and attempted to base the
idea of democracy firmly on the spiritual thought and impulses native
to the Indian mind. Crude often and uncertain in its self-expression,
organising its effort for revolt against past and present conditions but
not immediately successful in carrying forward its methods of constructive
development, it still effectively aroused the people and gave a definite
turn to its political thought and life, the outcome of which can only
appear when the nation has found completely the will and gained sufficiently
the power to determine its own evolution.
Indian society is in a still more chaotic stage; for the old forms are
crumbling away under the pressure of the environment, their spirit and
reality are more and more passing out of them, but the façade persists
by the force of inertia of thought and will and the remaining attachment
of a long association, while the new is still powerless to be born. There
is much of slow and often hardly perceptible destruction, a dull preservation
effective only by immobility, no possibility yet of sound reconstruction.
We have had a loud proclaiming, - only where supported by religion, as
in the reforming Samajes, any strong effectuation, - of a movement of
social change, appealing sometimes crudely to Western exemplars and ideals,
sometimes to the genius or the pattern of ancient times; but it has quite
failed to carry the people, because it could not get at their spirit and
itself lacked, with the exceptions noted, in robust sincerity. We have
had too a revival of orthodox conservatism, more academic and sentimental
than profound in its impulse or in touch with the great facts and forces
of life.
We have now in emergence an increasing sense of the necessity of a renovation
of social ideas and expressive forms by the spirit of the nation awaking
to the deeper yet unexpressed implications of its own culture, but as
yet no sufficient will or means of execution. It is probable that only
with the beginning of a freer national life will the powers of the renaissance
take effective hold of the social mind and action of the awakened people.