Bold has
been my message to the people of the West, bolder is my message to you, my
beloved countrymen. The message of ancient India to new Western nations I have
tried my best to voice — ill done or well done the future is sure to show; but
the mighty voice of the same future is already sending forward soft but
distinct murmurs, gaining strength as the days go by, the message of India that
is to be to India as she is at present.
Many
wonderful institutions and customs, and many wonderful manifestations of
strength and power it has been my good fortune to study in the midst of the
various races I have seen, but the most wonderful of all was to find that
beneath all these apparent variations of manners and customs, of culture and
power, beats the same mighty human heart under the impulsion of the same joys
and sorrows, of the same weakness and strength
Good and
evil are everywhere and the balance is wondrously even; but, above all, is the
glorious soul of man everywhere which never fails to understand any one who
knows how to speak its own language. Men and women are to be found in every
race whose lives are blessings to humanity, verifying the words of the divine
Emperor Asoka: “In every land dwell Brâhmins and Shramanas.”
I am
grateful to the lands of the West for the many warm hearts that received me
with all the love that pure and disinterested souls alone could give; but my
life’s allegiance is to this my motherland; and if I had a thousand lives,
every moment of the whole series would be consecrated to your service, my
countrymen, my friends.
For to
this land I owe whatever I possess, physical, mental, and spiritual; and if I
have been successful in anything, the glory is yours, not mine. Mine alone are
my weaknesses and failures, as they come through my in ability of profiting by
the mighty lessons with which this land surrounds one, even from his very
birth.
And what
a land! Whosoever stands on this sacred land, whether alien or a child of the
soil, feels himself surrounded — unless his soul is degraded to the level of
brute animals — by the living thoughts of the earth’s best and purest sons, who
have been working to raise the animal to the divine through centuries, whose
beginning history fails to trace. The very air is full of the pulsations of
spirituality. This land is sacred to philosophy, to ethics and spirituality, to
all that tends to give a respite to man in his incessant struggle for the
preservation of the animal to all training that makes man throw off the garment
of brutality and stand revealed as the spirit immortal, the birthless, the
deathless, the ever-blessed — the land where the cup of pleasure was full, and
fuller has been the cup of misery, until here, first of all, man found out that
it was all vanity; here, first of all in the prime of youth, in the lap of
luxury, in the height of glory and plenitude of power, he broke through the
fetters of delusion. Here, in this ocean of humanity, amidst the sharp
interaction of strong currents of pleasure and pain, of strength and weakness,
of wealth and poverty, of joy and sorrow, of smile and tear, of life and death,
in the melting rhythm of eternal peace and calmness, arose the throne of
renunciation! Here in this land, the great problems of life and death, of the
thirst for life, and the vain mad struggles to preserve it only resulting in
the accumulation of woes were first grappled with and solved — solved as they
never were before and never will be hereafter; for here and here alone was
discovered that even life itself is an evil, the shadow only of something which
alone is real. This is the land where alone religion was practical and real,
and here alone men and women plunged boldly in to realise the goal, just as in
other lands they madly plunge in to realise the pleasures of life by robbing
their weaker brethren. Here and here alone the human heart expanded till it
included not only the human, but birds, beasts, and plants; from the highest
gods to grains of sand, the highest and the lowest, all find a place in the heart
of man, grown great, infinite. And here alone, the human soul studied the
universe as one unbroken unity whose every pulse was his own pulse.
We all
hear so much about the degradation of India. There was a time when I also
believed in it. But today standing on the vantage-ground of experience, with
eyes cleared of obstructive predispositions and above all, of the
highly-coloured pictures of other countries toned down to their proper shade
and light by actual contact, I confess in all humility that I was wrong. Thou
blessed land of the Aryas, thou wast never degraded. Sceptres have been broken
and thrown away, the ball of power has passed from hand to hand, but in India,
courts and kings always touched only a few; the vast mass of the people, from
the highest to the lowest, has been left to pursue its own inevitable course,
the current of national life flowing at times slow and half-conscious, at
others, strong and awakened. I stand in awe before the unbroken procession of
scores of shining centuries, with here and there a dim link in the chain, only
to flare up with added brilliance in the next, and there she is walking with
her own majestic steps — my motherland — to fulfil her glorious destiny, which
no power on earth or in heaven can check — the regeneration of man the brute
into man the God.
Ay, a
glorious destiny, my brethren, for as far back as the days of the Upanishads we
have thrown the challenge to the world: न प्रजया धनेन
त्यागेनैके अमृतत्वमानशुः — “Not by progeny,
not by wealth, but by renunciation alone immortality is reached.” Race
after race has taken the challenge up and tried their utmost to solve the
world-riddle on the plane of desires. They have all failed in the past — the
old ones have become extinct under the weight of wickedness and misery, which
lust for power and gold brings in its train, and the new ones are tottering to
their fall. The question has yet to be decided whether peace will survive or
war; whether patience will survive or non-forbearance, whether goodness will
survive or wickedness; whether muscle will survive or brain; whether
worldliness will survive or spirituality. We have solved our problem ages ago,
and held on to it through good or evil fortune, and mean to hold on to it till
the end of time. Our solution is unworldliness — renunciation.
This is
the theme of Indian life-work, the burden of her eternal songs, the backbone of
her existence, the foundation of her being, the raison d’être of her very
existence — the spiritualisation of the human race. In this her life-course she
has never deviated, whether the Tartar ruled or the Turk, whether the Mogul
ruled or the English.
And I
challenge anybody to show one single period of her national life when India was
lacking in spiritual giants capable of moving the world. But her work is
spiritual, and that cannot be done with blasts of war-trumpets or the march of
cohorts. Her influence has always fallen upon the world like that of the gentle
dew, unheard and scarcely marked, yet bringing into bloom the fairest flowers
of the earth. This influence, being in its nature gentle, would have to wait
for a fortunate combination of circumstances, to go out of the country into
other lands, though it never ceased to work within the limits of its native
land. As such, every educated person knows that whenever the empire-building
Tartar or Persian or Greek or Arab brought this land in contact with the
outside world, a mass of spiritual influence immediately flooded the world from
here. The very same circumstances have presented themselves once more before
us. The English high roads over land and sea and the wonderful power manifested
by the inhabitants of that little island have once more brought India in
contact with the rest of the world, and the same work has already begun. Mark
my words, this is but the small beginning, big things are to follow; what the
result of the present work outside India will be I cannot exactly state, but
this I know for certain that millions, I say deliberately, millions in every
civilised land are waiting for the message that will save them from the hideous
abyss of materialism into which modern money-worship is driving them headlong,
and many of the leaders of the new social movements have already discovered
that Vedanta in its highest form can alone spiritualise their social
aspirations. I shall have to return to this towards the end I take up therefore
the other great subject, the work within the country.
The
problem assumes a twofold aspect, not only spiritualisation but assimilation of
the various elements of which the nation is composed. The assimilation of
different races into one has been the common task in the life of every nation.
