The Genius of India AN EXTRACT FROM "THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA" BY SRI AUROBINDO ISBN : 81-900584-6-0 This text was first published in the English monthly Arya (1918). Introduction by Christine Devin @ 1998,Editions Auroville Press International Photographs by Olivier Barot @ 1998, Editions Auroville Press International Published by Edit ion s Auroville Press International, Auroville, 60 5 101, Tamil Nadu - INDIA . Pr in ted at the Auroville Press , 1998. Vande Mataram Series Volume 4 This book is the fourth in a series entitled "Vande Mataram" which has as its goal to make known a

PUBLISHER'S NOTE The text presented here is taken from a series of essays written by Sri Aurobindo in 1918 and published in the Arya, an English monthly, under the title The Renaissance in India. Our aim in publishing this short extract is to trigger a reflection on what constitutes the specific genius of this country and what it is that Sri Aurobindo meant by a rebirth or a resurgence of India.

  THE GENIUS OF INDIA Contents Pre-Content Publishers Note   Introduction   The Genius India            

THE GENIUS OF INDIA* What was this ancient spirit and characteristic soul of India? European writers, struck by the general metaphysical bent of the Indian mind, by its strong religious instincts and religious idealism, by its other-worldliness, are inclined to write as if this were all the Indian spirit. An abstract, metaphysical, religious mind overpowered by the sense of the infinite, not apt for life, dreamy, unpractical, turning away from life and action as Maya, this, they said, is * The title is ours (the Editor) Page-15 India; and for a time Indians in this, as in other matters, submissively echoed their new Western teachers and masters. They le

  THE GENIUS OF INDIA Contents Pre-Content Publishers Note   Introduction   The Genius India            

  The Genius of India         AN EXTRACT FROM "THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA" BY SRI AUROBINDO     ISBN : 81-900584-6-0 This text was first published in the English monthly Arya (1918). Introduction by Christine Devin @ 1998,Editions Auroville Press International Photographs by Olivier Barot @ 1998, Editions Auroville Press International Published by Edit ion s Auroville Press International, Auroville, 60 5 101, Tamil Nadu - INDIA . Pr in ted at the Auroville Press , 1998. Vande Mataram Series Volume 4 This book is the fourth in a series entitled "Vande Mataram" which has as its

INTRODUCTION When one thinks of India's future, two things immediately come to the mind: first that India's culture, like that of many other countries, is increasingly threatened by the tendency towards uniformisation; and secondly, that the concept of rebirth necessarily implies a new body, it cannot mean a return to the past. So the only solution seems to lie in a two-fold movement: on one side, to become conscious of what was, is, and will be the essential spirit of India, that which constitutes her uniqueness and can never be destroyed, in other words to discover again what at the deepest level Indianness means; and then, once this has been found, to make it the centre of ev