The bringing about of an intellectual unity in India is, I am told, difficult to the verge of impossibility owing to the fact that India has so many different languages.

But every people in the world, in order to attain its greatness, must solve some great problem for itself, or accept defeat and degradation. All true civilizations have been built upon the bedrock of difficulties. Those who have rivers for their water supply are to be envied, but those who have not must dig wells and find water from the difficult depth of their own soil. But let us never imagine that dust can be made to do the duty of the water simply because it is more easily available. We must bravely accept the inconvenient fact of the diversity of our languages, and at the same time know that a foreign language, like foreign soil, may be good for pot culture, but not for that cultivation which is widely and permanently necessary for the maintenance of life.

Then let us admit that India is not like any one of the great countries of Europe, which has its one language, but like Europe herself branching out into different peoples having different languages. And yet Europe has a common civilization with an intellectual unity which is not based upon uniformity of language.

In the earlier stage of her culture the whole of Europe had Latin for her language of learning. It was like her intellectual bud-time, when all her petals of self-expression were closed into one point. But the perfection of her mental unfolding was not represented by that oneness of her literary vehicle. When the great European countries found their individual languages, then only the true federation of cultures became possible in the West and the very differences of the channels made the commerce of ideas in Europe so richly copious and so variedly active. In fact, when natural differences find their harmony, then it is true unity; but artificial uniformity leads to lifelessness. We can well imagine what the loss to European civilization would be, if France, Italy, Germany, England, through their separate agencies, did not contribute to the common coffers their individual earnings. And we know why, when the German culture tried to assert its sole dominance, it was hailed as a calamity by all Europe.

There was a time with us when India also had her common language of culture in Sanskrit. But, for the completeness of her commerce of thought, she must have all her vernaculars attaining their perfect powers, through which her different peoples may manifest their differences of genius to the full. This can never be done through a language which is foreign, containing its own peculiar associations which are sure to hamper our freedom of thought and creation. The use of English inevitably tends to turn our mind for its source of inspiration towards the West, with which we can never be in close touch of life; and therefore our education will mostly remain sterile, or produce incongruities. The diversity of our languages should not be allowed to frighten us; but we should be warned of the futility of borrowing the language of our culture from a far-away land, making stagnant and shallow that which is fluid near its source.

It is unthinkable that we should cease to write petitions in English, or abdicate our seats in the obscure region of the subordinate service. For the present, we have sorrowfully to acknowledge the fact that, English being our court language, it acts like an artificial tariff, gradually driving away our mother-tongue from our life of culture into the insignificance of domestic use.

But this is perpetuating for us the heavy and costly burden of all the alien features of our Government, incomprehensible to the masses of our population. It involves the cruel necessity of a host of English-knowing middlemen for carrying on relationship with the governing power in matters of the smallest detail. I believe that India is the only country in the world where the Government has an Agricultural Department, which publishes its bulletins for the benefit of the cultivators in a language unknown to them, making these poor cultivators pay the cost of this heartless joke played upon themselves.

The Government has expensive arrangements made for everything necessary to be translated from the vernaculars into English, in order to make the administrative work of a foreign country lazily convenient for the few English officials engaged in this task. But, for the three hundred millions of people inhabiting this country, are kept strictly purda-nashin, behind a foreign language, the codes of law, the proceedings of the legislative councils, the lectures of the Governors addressed to the people, and all the important Government communications affecting their life. This makes us wonder all the more at the last remnant of the sense of humour exhibited in our railway stations, where the names are actually inscribed in the Indian alphabets to help the Indian travellers. In fact, our rulers have made their duties cheap for themselves, but immensely expensive for the people they have come to govern.

This has created a most unnatural situation for us, making our own language an obstacle in our pathway of success, thus generating among our educated men a humiliating pride in being able to perform the rope-dancer's feat of skill by leading their knowledge of English over the perilously thin line of correct grammar. And merely for this we have no other option but fondly to overlook all vital defects in our present system and with grateful tears accept from its hands a stone in place of bread. For not only have we to pay the cost of our government with taxes, but also with our own language and with our own true culture, upon which depends the salvation of our motherland for all time to come.