Far too long have we kept our culture outcasted in the confines of our indigenous Sanskrit pathasalas - for undue respect makes for untouchability as much as undue contempt.
There was a time when the excess of dignity of the Mikado of Japan kept him practically a prisoner in his palace, with the result that not he, but the Shogun, was the real ruler. When it became necessary for him to reign in fact, he had to be brought forth from his seclusion into the public view. So was the culture of our Sanskrit pathasala confined within itself, disdainfully ignoring all other cultures of the world. It was belauded, as having come straight from Brahma's mouth, or Siva's matted locks, or some equally superhuman outlet of irruption, so that it was unlike anything else anywhere in the world, and had to be kept apart, guarded from contamination by the common people. Thus it became the Mikado of our country, while foreign culture, gaining strength from its perfect freedom of movement and growth and its humanness, dominated the situation like the Shogun. Our reverence is reserved for the one, but all our taxes are paid to the other. We may launch out invectives against the latter in private, we may lament over our slavery to it; but, all the same, we sell our wife's ornaments and mortgage our ancestral home to pay its dues to the last farthing when we send our sons to its durbar.
It will not do to keep our culture so reverently shackled with chains of gold. The age has come when all artificial fences are breaking down. Only that will survive which is basically consistent with the universal; while that which seeks safety in the out-of-the-way hole of the special will perish. The nursery of the infant should be secluded, its cradle safe. But the same seclusion, if continued after the infant has grown up, makes it weak in body and mind.
There was a time when China, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome had, each of them, to nurture its civilization in comparative seclusion. The greatness of the universal, however, which was more or less in each, grew strong within its protecting sheath of individuality. Now has come the age for co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings, that were reared within their enclosures, must now be transplanted into the open fields. They must pass the test of the world-market if their maximum value is to be obtained.
So we must prepare the grand field for the co-ordination of the cultures of the world, where each will give to and take from the other; where each will have to be studied through the growth of its stages in history. This adjustment of knowledge through comparative study, this progress in intellectual co- operation, is to be the key-note of the coming age. We may hug our holy aloofness from some imagined security of a corner, but the world will prove stronger than our corner, and it is our corner which will have to give way, receding and pressing against its walls till they burst on all sides.
But before we are in a position to stand a comparison with the other cultures of the world, or truly to co-operate with them, we must base our own structure on a synthesis of all the different cultures we have. When, taking our stand at such a centre, we turn towards the West, our gaze shall no longer be timid and dazed; our heads shall remain erect, safe from insult. For then we shall be able to take our own views of Truth, from the standpoint of our own vantage ground, thus opening out a new vista of thought before the grateful world.
There was a time when the excess of dignity of the Mikado of Japan kept him practically a prisoner in his palace, with the result that not he, but the Shogun, was the real ruler. When it became necessary for him to reign in fact, he had to be brought forth from his seclusion into the public view. So was the culture of our Sanskrit pathasala confined within itself, disdainfully ignoring all other cultures of the world. It was belauded, as having come straight from Brahma's mouth, or Siva's matted locks, or some equally superhuman outlet of irruption, so that it was unlike anything else anywhere in the world, and had to be kept apart, guarded from contamination by the common people. Thus it became the Mikado of our country, while foreign culture, gaining strength from its perfect freedom of movement and growth and its humanness, dominated the situation like the Shogun. Our reverence is reserved for the one, but all our taxes are paid to the other. We may launch out invectives against the latter in private, we may lament over our slavery to it; but, all the same, we sell our wife's ornaments and mortgage our ancestral home to pay its dues to the last farthing when we send our sons to its durbar.
It will not do to keep our culture so reverently shackled with chains of gold. The age has come when all artificial fences are breaking down. Only that will survive which is basically consistent with the universal; while that which seeks safety in the out-of-the-way hole of the special will perish. The nursery of the infant should be secluded, its cradle safe. But the same seclusion, if continued after the infant has grown up, makes it weak in body and mind.
There was a time when China, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome had, each of them, to nurture its civilization in comparative seclusion. The greatness of the universal, however, which was more or less in each, grew strong within its protecting sheath of individuality. Now has come the age for co-ordination and co-operation. The seedlings, that were reared within their enclosures, must now be transplanted into the open fields. They must pass the test of the world-market if their maximum value is to be obtained.
So we must prepare the grand field for the co-ordination of the cultures of the world, where each will give to and take from the other; where each will have to be studied through the growth of its stages in history. This adjustment of knowledge through comparative study, this progress in intellectual co- operation, is to be the key-note of the coming age. We may hug our holy aloofness from some imagined security of a corner, but the world will prove stronger than our corner, and it is our corner which will have to give way, receding and pressing against its walls till they burst on all sides.
But before we are in a position to stand a comparison with the other cultures of the world, or truly to co-operate with them, we must base our own structure on a synthesis of all the different cultures we have. When, taking our stand at such a centre, we turn towards the West, our gaze shall no longer be timid and dazed; our heads shall remain erect, safe from insult. For then we shall be able to take our own views of Truth, from the standpoint of our own vantage ground, thus opening out a new vista of thought before the grateful world.
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