The Soul of India (An Old and Rare Book)

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THE SOUL OF a nation, her essential temperament, is mirrored in her socio-economic institutions, in her arts and culture, in her thought and religion and in many other lines of development and action. Every nation has her distinctive personality, her native genius, her essential way of being, her own uniqueness, which in some way contributes to the symphony of human culture. We have endeavoured here to unfold the personality of India, the larger lines of her development, the curve her cultural civilization has followed.

We have delineated her thought and action which make the warp and woof of her being, which forin the texture of her civilization, the canvas on the loom of time on which her being is imprinted.

A nation is not something accidential; it is the sum total of values which she as a distinct cultural group adores and lives by. She is an organic unity which has matured in course of centuries around its innate genius and basic ethos. It is not a conglomeration of mere individuals or groups.

To enter into the spirit of a culture, especially an alien culture, is indeed a difficult task. To know a nation one must love her.

Without loving her one cannot understand her, commune with her spirit; without drawing close to her one cannot delve into her mind, into the mystery which she is, into the secret of her deeper existence or discern her uniqueness. Sympathy is something artificial, it cannot lead to unravel the inmost secrets of a nation's culture, the essential way of her being. What is needed is a deep humility, a genuine desire to learn, listen and understand which comes with love and enables one to forget one's pride and prejudices, one's limited norms and canons to which reality always cludes. To gaze into her spirit, to have a peep into her soul, one must sit at her feet and leave aside all personal preferences and predilections.

An alien, especially a Westerner, is at a disadvantage to under- stand India. The self of India is so varied, large and complex, it is so subtle and elusive, being spiritual, it is so multi-dimensional or numerous lines without an underlying unity. Therefore, it is all the more important to delineate her soul. To the modern Indian too with his half-baked Western education she is a mystery and an enigma and her varying moods, the different strains of her soul, the threads picked up in the past and dropped and picked up again for launching fresh adventures are difficult to comprehend. Not only because of the multiplicity and variety of her being but also because of the subtlety and depth, the mystery of her being remains a mystery to many..

Our idea in writing this book is not to indulge in vain rhapsodies of vanished glories or to cultivate the idolatry of geography but to revivify the past to the man of the present, to indicate to him the broad outlines of India's development through tumultuous ages in order to clarify the meaning and purpose of her age-long endeavours, so that a greater and more glorious future may await her in fields of spirit as well as external achievements. One cannot begin with a clean slate, one cannot cut oneself from past gains or abruptly dissociate oneself from the cultural moorings which constitute the soul of a nation. It is on the bedrock of the luminous past and by drinking deep at the fount of her ancient wisdom that a timeless and glorious India can be rebuilt. That would also assure the continuity of her soul and culture. The knowledge of her heritage may stir her children to greater and nobler action to tide over the crisis of confidence in the national self by an act of knowledge and further summits of achievements. The dreams that India cherished in the adytum of her soul, the values she has been preserving through the ages may be a great help to the modern man who confronts enormous power in his hands with a hideous inner poverty.

At times her soul was ridden and heavy with the negation of the ascetic. Sluggishness or stupor may have overcome her because of the settling of the dust of the centuries or rusting of her fibre by the wear and tear of time. A great and ancient race might have been fatigued with great endeavours of the past and fallen into confusion and apparant sleep, a slough of despond might have induced in her an unbecoming fatalism. But she has awakened and is awakening despite the eclipse her soul underwent or suffered at times. She is shaking herself off the dust of centuries, the fatigue of time, the rust of ages and now she seems to slam the door in the face of the escapist ascetic withdrawal and launches herself into fresh adventures of life, though slowly and often reluctantly.

Time and again she lay at the feet of foreign conquerors, supine but united in stunned subjection. This often led to the abjection of her soul. But the consequent discontent broke into struggle and struggle reawakened her soul out of slough and inertia. Her life's discords might have been discouraging and disconcerting at times. But through the phalanx of opposing forces, we now see the first streaks of a golden dawn emerging.