. The intemperance of our habits does not im- Imediately show its effects when we are in the 'vigour of our youth. But it gradually consumes that vigour, and when the period of decline sets in then we have to settle accounts and pay off our debts, which leads us to insolvency. In the ^West you are still able to carry your head high, though your humanity is suffering every moment from its dipsomania of organizing power. India also in the heyday of her youth could carry in her vital organs the dead weight of her social organizations stiffened to rigid perfection, but it luis been fatal to her, and has produced a gradual paralysis of her living nature. And this is the reason why the educated community of India has become insensible of her social needs. They are taking the very immobility of our social structures as the sign of their perfection,— and because the healthy feeling of j)ain is dead in the limbs of our social organism they delude them- selves into thinking that it needs no ministra- tion. Therefore they think that all their energies need their only scope in tl^e political field. It is like a man whose legs have become shrivelled and useless, trying to delude himself that these limbs have grown still because they have attained their ultimate salvation, and all 126 NATIONALISM that is wrong about him is the shortness of his sticks.
So much for the social and the political regeneration of India. Now we come to her industries, and I am very often asked whether there is in India any industrial regeneration since tlie advent of the British Government. It must be remembered that at the beginning of the British rule in India our industries were sup- pressed, and since then we have not met with any real help or encouragement to enable us to make a stand against the monster commercial organizations of the world. Tlie nations have decreed that we must remain purely an agri- cultural people, even forgetting the use of arms for all time to come. Thus India is being turned into so many predigested morsels of food ready to be swallowed at any moment by any nation kvhich has even the most rudimentary set of teeth in its head.
India therefore has very little outlet for her industrial originality. I personally do not believe in the unwieldy organizations of the present day. Ttie very fact that they are ugly shows that they are in discordance with the whole creation. The vast powers of nature do not reveal their truth in hideousness, but in beauty. Beauty is the NATIONALISM IN INDIA s ignature which the Creator stamps upon FUs works whe n He is satisfied with them. All our products that insolently ignore the laws of per- fection and are unashamed in their display of ungainliness bear the perpetual weight of God s displeasure. So far as your commerce lacks tke is uutnue.^ Be aut y and her twin brother Truth require leisure and self- control for their growtJi. Hut the greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and cojisume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, moulding them into money. It is this ugly vulgarity of commerce which brought upon it the censure of contempt in our earlier days, when men had leisure to have an unclouded vision of perfection in humanity. Men in those times were rightly ashamed of the instinct of mere money-making. But in this scientific age money, by its very abnormal bulk, has won its throne. And when from its eminence of piled- up things it insults the higher instincts of man, banishing beauty and noble sentiments from its surroundings, we submit. For we in our mean- ness have accepted bribes from its hands and our NATIONALISM imagination has grovelled in the dust before its immensity of flesh.
But its very unwieldiness and its endless complexities are its true signs of failure. The swimmer who is an expert does not exhibit his muscular force by violent movements, but ex- hibits some power which is invisible and which shows itself in perfect grace and reposefuhiess. The true distinction of man from animals is in his power and worth which are inner and invisible. But the present-day commercial civilization of man is not only taking too much time and space but killing time and space. Its movements are violent, its noise is discordantly loud. It is carrying its own damnation because it is tramp- ling into distortion the humanity upon which it stands. It is strenuously turning out money at the cost of happiness. Man is reducing himself to his minimum in order to be able to make amplest room for his organizations. He is deriding his human sentiments into shame because they are apt to stand in the way of his machin^.
In our mythology we have the legend that the man who performs penances for attaining immortality has to meet with temptations sent by Indra, the Lord of the immortals. If he is NATIONALISM IN INDIA 129 lured by them he is lost. The West lias been striving for centuries after its goal of im- mortality. Indra has sent her tlie temptation to try her. It is the gorgeous temptation of wealth. She has accepted it, and her civilization of humanity has lost its path in tiie wilderness of machinery.
This commercialism with its barbarity of ugly decorations is a terrible menace to all humanity, because it is setting up the ideal of power over that of perfection. It is making the cult of self- seeking exult in its naked shamelessness. Our nerves are more delicate than our muscles. Things that are the most precious in us are helpless as babes when we take away from them the careful protection which they claim from us for tlieir very preciousness. Therefore, when the callous rudeness of power runs amuck in the broad- way of humanity it scares away by its grossness the ideals which we have cherished with the martyrdom of centuries.
The temptation which is fatal for the strong is still more so for the weak. Anj^ I do not welcome it in our Indian life, even though it be sent by the lord of the Immortals. Let our life be simple in its outer aspect and rich in its inner gain. Let our civilization take its firm stand K NATIONALISM K NATIONALISM upon its basis of social co-operation and not upon that of economic exploitation and conflict. How to do it in the teeth of the drainage of our life-blood by the economic dragons is the task set before the thinkers of all oriental nations who have faith in the human soul. It is a sign of laziness and impotency to accept conditions imposed upon us by others who have other ideals than ours. We should actively try to adapt the world powers to guide our history to its own perfect end.
From the above you will know that I am not an economist, I am willing to acknowledge that there is a law of demand and supply and an infatuation of man for more things than are good for him. And yet I will persist in believing that there is such a thing as the harmony of com- pleteness in humanity, where poverty does not take away his riches, where defeat may lead him to victory, death to immortality, and where in the compensation of Eternal Justice those who are the last may yet have their insult transmuted into a golden triumph.
THE SUNSET OF THE CENTUEY THE SUNSET OF THE CENTURY ( Written in the Bengali on the last day of last century) 1 The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood -red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred.
The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance.
2 The hungry self of the Nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its own shameless feeding.
For it has made the world its food, NATIONALISM And licking it, crunching it and swallowing it in big morsels, It swells and swells Till in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden shaft of heaven piercing its heart of' grossness.
3 The crimson glow of light on the horizon is not the light of thy dawn of peace, my Motherland, It is the glimmer of the funeral pyre burning to ashes the vast flesh, — the self-love of the Nation — dead under its own excess.
Thy morning waits behind the patient dark of the East, Meek and silent.
4 Keep watch, India.
Bring your offerings of worship for that sacred sunrise.
Let the first hymn of its welcome sound in your voice and sing “Come, Peace, thou daughter of God’s own great sufiering.
THE SUNSET OF THE CENTURY 135 Come with thy treasure of contentment, the sword of fortitude, And meekness crowning thy forehead.”
5 Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful With your wliite robe of simpleness.
Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul.
Build God’s throne daily upon the ample bare- ness of your poverty And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.
THE END Printed by R. & R. Ci ark, Limited, Edinburgh.