CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III

A CENTURY OF WORLD-WIDE UPSURGE

WHILE THE CRITICAL eighteenth century was the indirect cause of the decisive event that changed India's political destiny, the century that followed witnessed the beginning of tremendous movements whose consummation in the twentieth has been one of the greatest events in all history. The nineteenth century in India as in Europe was the veritable seed-time of mighty ideas that took shape in the next. It was indeed for the whole world, as F.S. Marvin would say, *a century of hope' for which evolutionary Nature had been at work in the previous century through wars and revolutions. Her aim in the nineteenth century appeared to be to prepare the mind of the race for its regeneration into a new consciousness that would lead to and sustain a fresh adventure of the world's soul towards a greater and grander fulfilment in the future. To this adventure mankind is being impelled largely by the very problems it itself created in the nineteenth century. And this is one of Nature's ways to realise her aim in human evolution.

The nineteenth century saw the birth, growth and expansion of remarkable political and cultural movements in Europe and other parts of the world. They helped forward the cause of human progress as nothing else had done before. Large ideas, vast hopes, wonderful visions stirred the heart and soul of man and he began to feel that a new world was about to be born. Not that these movements solved their self-evoked problems but the ideas and ideals that inspired them certainly brought about a wholesome reorientation of the mental outlook of the century.

One of the causes of the all-round change in the life of man was the Industrial Revolution. It brought in wealth and wealth gave leisure, and leisure, where properly utilised, prompted cultural creation. Industrialisation gave a tremendous push to commerce and commerce sought expansion through colonisation, and colonisation backed by Christian missions helped in spreading European ideas. Thus came into being colonies and spheres of influence with various concomitant problems some of which are still defying solution.

Science which has done so much for industrial progress is another of man's outstanding achievements but it has at the same time released forces far too powerful for his control. While rendering more complex the individual and collective life of man, it has been at once his weal and his worry. And when he declared that Science was 'the only means of certain knowledge, and that anything unknowable to Science must remain

unknowable for ever,' he stood self-blinded, his mind self-condemned, condemned to its own limitations, shutting out from itself the higher values of the infinite which are ever open to it above its own domain. Another self-created problem.

Yet Science and scientific thought have helped considerably in developing two powers of man—reason and individualism. These have liberated him from much of the medieval obscurantism that sat heavy on his mind and soul. But by themselves they cannot lead him to the highest good, though, while serving as the necessary basis of his quest, they may point to it as some mysterious ultimate. Meanwhile, man's exclusive reliance on and adherence to them creates yet another self-defeating problem.

The eighteenth century was ringing with the cry for freedom and its first outburst was the movement in the New World that culminated in the birth of a new nation whose rapid growth in the next century enabled it to play an important role in the international life of humanity. The Revolution in France was a struggle for the attainment of great ideals none of which have been fully realised as yet in the life of any nation or, for the matter of that, even in social life anywhere, although they were the flaming ideals of the inspired thinkers who conceived and proclaimed them as the ideals of the whole human race.

Nevertheless, what the French Revolution accomplished was by itself an achievement necessary at that stage of the collective evolution of mankind. The overthrow of established government in America and France, and the final consolidation of the democratic structure of the British Parliament proved to be the most powerful factors in the growth of national consciousness in the Continent. The result: liberation of Italy, unification of Germany, and the beginning of a world-wide movement which eventually brought freedom to almost all subject peoples of the world by the mid-twentieth century. Among the revolutionary ideals of the eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century Europe that inspired this movement were visions of a glorious future of mankind in the development of which each progressive nation had its own contribution to make for which freedom was the first necessity. The great Italian seer and revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini's vision of his country's freedom, of Europe's and the world's future, was a magnificent one; while it aimed at giving Europe a new message and a new civilisation, it evoked a ready response in the hearts of all peoples struggling for freedom.

To Sri Aurobindo Mazzini was 'a prophet and creator who was busy with the great and eternal ideas which move masses of men in all countries and various ages.... He was a mighty soul, a citizen of Eternity, who summed up the soul of humanity and belongs to all humanity'. Mazzini believed in 'the progressive divinisation of man' and in the fulfilment of nationalism in internationalism. Signs are there today of the beginnings of a new Republican Italy, a United States of Europe, and One Humanity,

as foreseen by Mazzini. These would, said he, take their final forms when they discovered and became conscious of their spiritual foundations. His words and ideas of unity and freedom were among the inspiring factors in the early upsurge of Indian nationalism.

But as the nations developed in their consciousness as distinct collective entities they developed also extreme forms of national egos of which, in recent history, mankind has seen two brutal exhibitions—a third problem, perhaps the most baffling of all. A notable political step taken towards a solution was the introduction of a system of international control of affairs or congressional government which, after a series of revolutions and wars, was tried in Europe during the greater part of the first half of the nineteenth century. However incohate, it showed a healthy and hopeful trend of things towards the future unification of the race.

In the world of thought the rise of Romantic Idealism in Germany was an important event. It was another cosmic force which like freedom worked in the mind of other countries—France, England, America— pointing to a brighter future for the human race. Sri Aurobindo says and Gerald Heard reiterates that Vedantic and literary ideas from India were an important factor in the rise and growth of this movement in Germany. And their influence in the three other countries is well-known. Kant showed in his concept of 'Universal History' how the freedom of the individual to develop to his highest possibilities could be reconciled with the developing society. Hegel's thesis in his 'Philosophy of History' was that man was a progressive and perfectible being. And Nietzsche was Was dreaming of 'a new race of Supermen'. Beethoven's symphonies expressed the inner struggle of the human soul and its victory in that Joy which is 'the ultimate refuge of mankind'. Goethe in his Faust—the prologue of which was modelled on Kalidasa's Sakuntala—symbolised 'the perpetual unrest of man', 'his ceaseless yearning for the fulness of life'.

It is well known how the ideas of the French thinkers were among the motivating forces of the French Revolution. A few years later, Condorcet declared that man is capable of 'infinite improvement'. Human ills can be mitigated by progress, said Comte in France ; by the spread of knowledge, said Buckle in England. Darwin's theory of evolution and those of others on the same subject showed, however vaguely, the continuity of man's growth. Spencer identified progress with evolution. He held that 'the ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain.' Matthew Arnold defined culture as 'pursuit of perfection'. The English Romantic poets discovered something of heaven in things of the earth. Some of them, called by Sri Aurobindo 'the poets of the Dawn' saw vision of a new world of freedom and harmony, and sang of its glory. The spiritual impulse is even more marked in the poetry of Whitman, Carpenter, Yeats, A.E. and Tagore, 'the forerunners', according to Sri Aurobindo,

of the coming new age of the Spirit. In America the Transcendentalist of Concord echoed the Vedantic idea that 'within man is the Soul of the Whole.... Man is a stream flowing into the ocean of infinity'.

In the nineteenth century, liberalism, born in England in the seventeenth century, developed into a definite political creed recognising the importance of the individual in the body-politic, of man's personal liberty, his freedom of speech, association and religious opinion, his freedom from undue interference by the State in his private affairs. In its application to practical politics, liberalism took on yet wider connotations through its exposition by John Stuart Mill whose writings containing, as they did, the germs of socialistic ideas influenced political thought and action of several countries not only of Europe but also of Asia, particularly India where liberal ideas found easy acceptance and quickened the national upsurge.

The nineteenth century is also marked by the growth of socialistic ideas. The 'birth cry of modern socialism' broke out from its two famous exponents whose influence on the human mind is wide but not deep in that the more important of their prophecies with which they popularised their doctrines have been belied by later developments. Socialism has, however, awakened the masses to a consciousness of their rights as human beings and as equal citizens of the State. And Nature is perhaps using the movement as an indirect medium of their preparation for a larger awakening in the coming age of the Spirit.

Another remarkable idea that governed a number of progressive minds is the so-called anarchistic thought—that much-misunderstood but inevitable phase in the development of the human spirit. Its inner meaning lies in the evolutionary nisus or impulse of man's soul to break through all artificial, mind-made bounds to a wider consciousness which is for man to develop as the condition for a higher life. It started in England, was echoed in France, but found its larger expression in Russia, perhaps because of the mystic element in her mental make-up, as pointed out by Nikolai Davilisky. It was a great ideal which Nature held up before Europe to see how she would respond. The ideal is still there awaiting its hour of realisation when it would be a dynamic force contributing to the growth of the spiritual revolution through which man will rise to a higher consciousness. But the revolution itself may largely be a subjective one with subjective results. The collectivist anarchists or, as they are called, 'social idealists' have nihilism for their extreme school of anarchism.

The ideologies of nihilism, anarchism or revolution aiming at remaking society into a perfect form imbued the minds of most of the world-famous Russian writers of the nineteenth century who vindicated the sovereignty of individual freedom, and portrayed the struggle of man's soul against the ills that afflict him. The world-wide influence of their works was certainly a new force in the nineteenth century upsurge.

While the poetry and thought of the nineteenth century were in the

main romantic and idealistic, its art and literature showed a marked tendency towards realism. The impressionist was a realist, although somewhat etherialised, determined to paint only the visible. He was vitally interested in the scientific interpretation of nature. Realism, as a distinct literary movement, began in France. It had its exponents in England, Germany and Russia, who laid bare the hidden springs of human action in all their stark reality. Some of them suggested that human nature might change through the creation of a better order of society.

The principal ideas that motived the movements developing in Europe did not take long to spread to countries beyond, particularly to those with which European nations had already come into contact through their political and commercial expansion. European civilisation began thus to extend its influence all over the world, rapid means of communication accelerating the process. But with these ideas also arose and grew insistent their inevitable problems. If Western culture today is a dominant element of world culture, its problems too are equally pressing world problems. This is the main justification for the reference made here to the extraordinary cultural phenomenon of the nineteenth-century Europe with which resurgent India is intimately bound up. In fact, the cultural upsurge of nineteenth-century India forms part of the world upsurge in the same century. Tndia's awakening', said Poet Tagore, 'is part of the world awakening.'

Both in the world of culture and commerce Europe and Asia knew each other from very early times. China's silk-route carried not only her silk but her ideas to Western Asia and the Mediterranean countries. India's historical connections with Greece and Rome from pre-Christian times continued for centuries. The contact between Europe and Asia in modern times was more or less a revival of old relationships though in the beginning it was of a different nature and not so happy so far as Asia was concerned. Yet it is an event that seemed to have been decreed by Nature for the future progress of the human race. Asia and Europe must unite so that humanity might advance towards a new cycle of life in the One World governed by a new synthesis of Asia's spirituality and Europe's materialism.

Whereas the impact of Europe on India took its definitive turn about the middle of the eighteenth century, it started in Japan about the midble of the next. But Japan being a free country, European culture could not very much penetrate her life. A Japanese writer once said, 'We borrowed their machine, not their Shakespeare.' Nevertheless the influence was there and was growing, though it never attained the form of a cultural conquest. Japan, as indeed any Asian country, never lost her soul and her characteristic inclinations distinguish her life and culture even today. Yet Japan is the first Asian nation to acquire technological modernity and become a modern nation.

Soon after America's entry into their country for purposes of trade the Japanese realised that they might profit by their contact with America And when their leaders overthrew the military rule of the Shogunate and restored the emperor, and then used the imperial authority to overthrow feudalism and introduce Occidental industry, the New Japan was born, whose rapid rise in the present century is a phenomenon of great significance. With much of what was really beneficial to her, Japan imbibed some of Europe's evils too, the worst of which was imperialism and something of her 'machinism'. But conditions have changed and seem to be changing fast towards a betterment of her relations with others. As one of the great peoples of Asia, Japan has her contributions to make in the creation of a New Asia, and along with it, the New World of Tomorrow.

In the beginning China looked upon the Western impact as 'the White Peril'. Through her contact with the nations of Europe who entered China for commercial and missionary purposes, Western ideas began to enter the Chinese mind, and the movement that started in the nineteenth century resulted in the establishment of the Chinese Republic early in the present century under the leadership of one who was a Christian. Whatever China may be today, she has a great destiny to fulfil for which she has lived on through the ages. Her ancient idea of the whole human race as one family in he Cosmic Mother of Taoism has an important bearing on the future unity of mankind.

In India the nineteenth-century upsurge started first in Bengal 'chosen by the Shakti of India as her first workshop'¹ where she threw up new forces and new personalities that became makers of a new epoch, bringers of a new dawn in every sphere of national life. Plastic in her mind, open in her heart, intuitive in her soul, 'Bengal has eminently the gifts which are most needed for the new race that has to arrive.... She has a mighty willpower which comes from the long worship of the Shakti and practice of the Tantra that has been part of our culture for many centuries.'² Naturally therefore Bengal soon grew up into a centre of wider awakening in the whole country. The progressive movements that had their birth in Bengal began to expand to all India and prepare her for the great work she is destined to do for the spiritual regeneration of the human race.

Historically speaking, the nineteenth-century upsurge in Bengal could be traced back to the eighteenth, in 1757. Here the overwhelming superiority of organised resistance was undermined by the great betrayal. Then followed the Sannyasi rebellion of a dedicated band of freedom-fighters. Next the Midnapur uprising—that unique popular revolt— and the outbreak of 1857; the first bullet at the foreigner went off from Barrackpur in Bengal. Isolated instances, no doubt. But they showed the will to freedom that had never deserted the race.

¹ Sri Aurobindo : The Renaissance in India, p. 60.

² Sri Aurobindo : The Brain of India, pp. 3-5.

Bengal was the first in India to receive Western culture. In the beginning its reactions seemed to disrupt her own order of life and culture. But she did not take long to work these out and become herself again. What she achieved then is her splendid history of recent times. 'It is Bengal', says Sri Aurobindo, 'which first recovered its soul, respiritualised itself, forced the whole world to hear of its great spiritual personalities, gave it the first modern Indian poet and Indian scientist of world-wide fame and achievement, restored the moribund art of India to life and power, first made her count again in the culture of the world, first, as a reward in the outer life, arrived at a vital political consciousness and a living political movement not imitative and derivative in its spirit and central ideal.'¹

All these and many more Bengal was able to achieve because she had in the nineteenth century a galaxy of luminaries who lit up her sky from horizon to horizon. About a hundred in number, they were men of outstanding genius in art and literature, religion and mysticism, science and philosophy, law and politics, who along with their compeers in other parts of the country enriched the world of culture in various ways and made wonderful contributions to the growth of resurgent India. It was indeed a springtide of cultural activity that has left a rich legacy of their inspired labours. The leading figures in these movements were not only pioneers but makers of a New India with her part to play in the making of a New World.

The upsurge of India's creative soul in Bengal was the first phase of her resurgence in modern times. That it was also the starting-point of a larger resurgence of Asia's soul is evidenced by the awakenings in other Asian regions linked to India by age-old cultural ties, ties that were cemented mainly by the diffusion of her art and religion. From their keen observation and study Taraknath Das and C. F. Andrews, both distinguished publicists of international fame, held in their articles in The Modern Review of the twenties, that with the renaissance of Bengal began not only the renaissance of India but of the whole of Asia. Now, four decades after, there is a clearer proof of their view. How this movement is going to culminate in a rebirth of the world's soul will be seen later. India, says Sri Aurobindo, is the hoary guardian of the Asian idea of the spiritualisation of life which is the next step of evolutionary Nature to help man grow into his destined divine perfection.

As early as 1908 Sri Aurobindo pointed out through the columns of the Bande Mataram that India's resurgence was a most dynamic factor in the resurgence of Asia. And this he reaffirmed in his Independence Day Declaration of 15 August 1947. That this his prevision started materialising itself almost from the beginning of the present century, more intensively from 1947, is current history. Guy Wint, an observant British

¹ Sri Aurobindo : The Ideal of Human Unity, p. 260 ( American Edn.)

publicist, in making a dispassionate review of the recent events in his book Spotlight on Asia, has fixed on 1947 as a very important landmark in the history of modern Asia and Africa. But there can be no denying the fact that in this mighty movement of the soul of these continents the impact of the West has played a significant role.

The world-wide upsurge in the nineteenth century threw into prominence the scientific and materialistic character of Western civilisation, of which reason was the very soul and centre. And it is by the cultivation of reason that the mind of modem man has been very near fulfilling its utmost possibilities through which and transcending which man would grow in readiness for a higher power than reason, the next destined step of human evolution. This higher power is attainable not by the *positivist' mind but by higher states of consciousness where intuition is the governing principle. The mind of the nineteenth-century Europe, as seen before, showed faint touches of its intuitive faculty in her new poetry and new thought, and even in her scientific advances. All these presage a glorious future for man. This is the beginning of how Europe will discover her spiritual soul to the birth of which the East had made remarkable contributions in ancient times and to which modern India has given a fresh spiritual impetus.

Anyway, the West's growing achievements in the world of life and matter provide the needed basis on which, through her developing intuitive bent and through other forces, her life as well as humanity's will reshape itself in the infinite dimensions of the Spirit. Besides, the ideas, visions and discoveries—the cultural advances of the nineteenth century—were indications enough of a broad and world-wide beginning of an age of Subjectivism. As these subjective tendencies develop—and there are promising signs in the twentieth century thought-world—they will give rise to an Age of the Spirit. In this process India plays and will continue to play a leading role.

But before she sets about it the East must have a knowledge of the essential truths of Western civilisation, a direct experience of its ways of life. Hence the impact on her of the West,—the impact which gave to the somnolent peoples of Asia a rude awakening, an awakening to their own ancient heritage in whose immortal ideals they found the source of their strength, the strength that had sustained them through the long millenniums of their history. The experience of the shock of events and the return to the moorings of their soul started them on a new life inspired with a new sense of hope and confidence. But to their ancient ideals the Asian peoples, especially the Indians, began to turn with their reasoning mind sufficiently quickened by their contact with the West.

All these point to a new movement that has to grow and ultimately lead towards the creation of the spiritual civilisation of the future. Notwithstanding the fact that modern Western culture is the mother of many prog-

ressive ideas which are more or less intimations of a greater future for humanity, it has raised also serious problems that are now confronting both East and West and causing world-wide tension.

These problems are fundamentally problems of harmony, of peace, freedom and unity, culminating in harmony. Intrinsically, this harmony is the Harmony of the Whole that exists in the Home of the Infinite Truth where One is All and All is One and which is far beyond the world of mind. Man has therefore to rise to a consciousness above the mental and discover there the truth of this harmony. The soul of Asia enshrines this vision. And India possessing this secret in her soul 'preserves the Knowledge that preserves the world', says Sri Aurobindo. Her reawakening in recent times is part of the world movement which is India's portion to foster first by herself revisioning the Ancient Truth and then declaring it to others and herself living it so that the most glorious synthesis of the greatest achievements of the Mystic East and of the Pragmatic West may find its highest fulfilment in the coming Age of the Spirit which will see the birth of a New World of Truth and Light. This is the underlying reason of the resurgence of India that started in the nineteenth century and that has since been, under the veil, gaining in strength from moment to moment despite obstacles thrown in the way.

An active exemplar of the synthetic mind of India, Bengal was chosen as the congenial field for the growth of the larger synthesis the seeds of which had been sown in her mind and heart by her ancient mystics.

There were several other external causes due to which Bengal became the centre of the new awakening. The English merchants came and established their trading stations first in Surat, Bombay and Madras, and last of all in Bengal mainly because of the strategic and commercial importance of her geographical position. Through these merchants and the Christian missionaries who had preceded them, came Western ideas and ways of life whose impact was a historic event of far-reaching consequences. Why Bengal reacted almost immediately to this impact was due inwardly to the psychological factors already enumerated, and outwardly to her being comparatively free from the conflicts among the princes that were then often breaking out in other parts of the country. Besides, the Sakti of India willed that Bengal must rise out of her helpless condition of dire distress to do her destined bit for India. The darkness that descended on India in the eighteenth century was nowhere so dark as in Bengal. Apart from the decadence of her cultural life, she fell a sorry victim to wanton exploitation by foreign intruders. It was sheer loot. 'A gold-lust unequalled since the hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortes' and Pizarros' age filled the English mind. Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until she had been bled white'¹: this is the opinion of the English historians of India, Edward Thompson and G. T. Garrett.

¹ Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India, p. 83.

That this was at the back of the Industrial Revolution in Britain is believed by the American historian, Brooke Adams, who says : 'Very soon after Plassey, the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the 'industrial revolution' began with the year 1770... Plassey was fought in 1757'¹. 1770 is also the year in which Bengal was ravaged by a most terrible famine that swept away a third of the population of Bengal and Bihar. The famine was the worst possible calamity to visit Bengal following the loot valued by authorities at no less than three hundred crores of rupees in terms of the Indian currency of 1900. While the plunder among other things caused a shocking depletion of the country's wealth and an acute silver shortage in Bengal until the close of the eighteenth century, the famine, says Karl Marx, was 'manufactured' by the servants of the East India Company who bought up the rice stock of the country and refused to sell it except at fabulous prices. Appalling poverty stalked the land as an embodied curse. And its dire* consequences were writ large on the fair face of this once prosperous country.

But matters did not end here. The policy of the East India Company to prohibit export of Indian goods to outside countries and to protect British industries against Indian products, crippled India's foreign and inland trade. The crippling was at its worst by the middle of the nineteenth century. 'The British have utterly destroyed the manufactures of India by their manufactures' was the admission in 1841 of Labouchere, Chancellor of the Exchequer in England. Be it noted that in the seventeenth century 'India was the hub of the world in commerce'.

Poverty and economic ruination apart, the administration was anything but efficient and happy. The English East India Company whom Plassey, Bedara, Wandiwash, Buxar and Diwani had made virtual masters of considerable parts of India, had not yet been able to organise a government worth the name. Warren Hastings, an employee of the Company who became Governer-General in 1774, had observed in 1772 that this government was 'a confused heap of undigested materials as wild chaos itself. Burke characterised it as 'one of the most corrupt and obstructive tyrannies that probably ever existed in the world'.

The social and religious life of the people was equally corrupt and obstructive. With its iniquitous caste rules, society was dominated by the upper classes who enjoyed certain exclusive rights and privileges the reckless abuse of which sapped the entire social system. The religious life was under the sway of a deadening priestcraft—a mass of set practices of empty rituals and soulless externalia with nothing but untruth and unreason as its substance. There were rampant everywhere all sorts of superstitious beliefs and malpractices which were degrading perversions of Tantric, Vaishnavic and other cults.

¹ The Law of Civilisation and Decay, p. 259.

Much of the literature of the time, despite its richness in vocabulary, sprang from a vitiated taste. 'The style and spirit both became depraved, the former by a vainglorious pendantry which made descriptions grotesque by their overdrawn niceties, the serious passing into the burlesque and the latter by scurrilous obscenities'.¹ As regards education, there was no system worth the name calculated to foster a particular type of culture. The time-honoured Tols, the centres of learning and wisdom in the days of old, had suffered from general degeneration, and whatever of them existed did little more than the memorising of texts on traditional lines. The Muslim Maktabs and Madrasas fared no better, though they were in request as they taught Arabic and Persian a knowledge of which was necessary for public service.

Thus was it that every sphere of national life was nothing but a dismal picture of decadence. There seemed to be no great ideal before the country, nothing to inspire it to high and noble endeavours. Indeed the darkness of the country could hardly be deeper. For Bengal in particular, and more or less for India as a whole—rare and scattered lights apart—the eighteenth century was virtually a period of Cimmerian darkness. It was now high time for the dawn to break. And it did break with the birth in 1774—three years after the tragic famine—of a heroic soul, a pioneer par excellence, the first resounding voice of India's national aspirations, the bearer of a message of hope.

¹ D. C. Sen : History of Bengali Language and Literature, p. 620.