PART TWO CHAPTER XII   VISION OF MOTHER INDIA1   THE MIND-NINETEENTH CENTURY was for Bengal a crucial period when the disruptive effects of the Western impact were at their worst, 'the intoxication of the new wine' playing its havoc even on the promising youths of Calcutta. It was in this period and in a town twenty-five miles from Calcutta that Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya had his English education to which he might have owed his rationalistic bent of mind. Happily, side by side with English, his wise father put him, even when he was a child, in the current of the Sanskrit lore of his own country. Later, as the truths of Indian culture got hold of his mind more and m

CHAPTER XVIII1   LIGHT OF LIBERTY   BUT THE FLOWERING of the renaissance in art, science, literature and love of country, however splendid and inspiring, could in no way suffice to raise the whole being of the nation to its highest stature. And the leaders did not take long to realise that no free development was possible in any field whatever under the conditions of subjection which acted like slow poison on the body-politic. This was also the feeling of some clear-sighted Englishmen. Speaking about the British colonies in America and India, Thomas Paine, that 'apostle of political liberty', said that colonialism in any form was an evil whose disastrous consequences were not

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 pre

PREFACE   THE sages of ancient India have always held that at critical moments in history mighty souls appear on earth manifesting a power of God or representing the Godhead himself in order to liberate man from the overwhelming darkness and help the collective advancement of the race. They are the bringers of new dawns whose light and force reaffirm the Ideal and inspire fresh endeavours to realise it.         It is these souls that are the real makers of history. It is in their life and work that lies the deeper meaning of Carlyle's concept of 'Universal History' which 'is at bottom the History of the Great Men Who have worked in the world.' He adds : 'History is the essence of num

CHAPTER XIV   AWAKENER OF SOULS   'YE ARE CHILDREN of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth—sinners ? It is a sin to call man so....You are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal....' Thrilling words of fire uttered in the accents of a god, addressed through an American audience to the whole of humanity, echoing the voice of the Rishi in the Upanishad : śṛnvantu viśve amṛtasya putrāḥ, 'Hearken unto me, ye children of immortality on earth.' Thus spoke one who only fifteen years back had been somewhat of an agnostic, putting to one religious leader after another the challenging question : 'Sir, have you seen God ?' till his

CHAPTER XIX   'NEW LIGHT,' 'NEW WORLD'1   'RISING FROM OUT  of the solitary depths of the dark was a faint voice ringing in the ear: tapaḥ, tapaḥ, tapaḥ ! It was the voice of the Mother, of the World-Mother in the garb of Mother India on the threshold of a new life. Tapasya brought India into being, tapasya made her great, tapasyakept her immortal amid a thousand catastrophes, tapasya will give her a new body, endow her with a new youth, a new beauty and a new greatness, fill her with a new hope and a new victory, to the delight and ecstasy of her children....Give up attachment to soulless forms, plunge into the cave of your heart and draw strength from tapasya. Free the country

CHAPTER XV   SINGER OF DAWN         That the sun of India's destiny would rise again and herald the dawn of a new day of greatness and glory was the vision of almost all those who led the progressive movements in nineteenth-century India. Some of them also held that India's future would be greater than her great past. Vive-kananda's however was a Yogic vision. In the certitude of this vision he saw 'the Ancient Mother rejuvenated to conquer the world by her spirituality'. He perceived the rebirth of India into the light and strength of her soul, which would, in God's own time, bring about a resurgence of the world's soul. Sri Aurobindo said that this is how man would open to the t