To those who hoped for a more rapid and widespread fusion of Indian and Western ideals, some of the phenomena which have marked the latter-day revival of Hinduism and the shape it has recently assumed in Mr. Gandhi's "Non-co-operation" campaign, may have brought grave disappointment. But the inrush of Western influences was assuredly bound to provoke a strong reaction. For let us not forget that to the abiding power of Hinduism India owes the one great element of stability that enabled her, long before we appeared in India, to weather so many tremendous storms without altogether losing the sense of a great underlying unity stronger and more enduring than all the manifold lines of cleavage which have tended from times immemorial to divide her. Hinduism has not only responded for some forty centuries to the social and religious aspirations of a large and highly endowed portion of the human race, almost wholly shut off until modern times from any intimate contact with our own Western world, but it has been the one great force that has preserved the continuity of Indian life. It withstood six centuries of Mahomedan domination. Could it be expected to yield without a struggle to the new forces, however superior we may consider them and however overwhelming they may ultimately prove, which British rule has imported into India during a period of transition more momentous than any other through which she has ever passed, but still very brief when compared with all those other periods of Indian history which modern research has only recently rescued from the legendary obscurity of still earlier ages? We are witnessing to-day a new phase of this great struggle, the clash of conflicting elements in two great civilisations. A constitution has been inaugurated at Delhi to bring India into permanent and equal partnership with a commonwealth of free nations which is the greatest political achievement of Western civilisation, and the latest prophet of Hinduism, applying to it the language of the West, has banned it forthwith as a thing of Satan, the offspring of a Satanic government and of a Satanic civilisation. His appeal to India is intended to strike many and various chords, but it is essentially an appeal to the ancient forces of Hinduism which gave India a great civilisation long before Europe, and least of all Britain, had emerged from the savagery of primitive man. Englishmen find it difficult to understand the strength of that appeal, perhaps because they do not realise how deep and vital are the roots of the civilisation to which it appeals. CHAPTER II THE ENDURING POWER OF HINDUISM