I know my voice is too feeble to raise itself above the uproar of this
bustling time, and it is easy for any street urchin to fling against me
the epithet of "unpractical." It will stick to my coat-tail, never to be
washed away, effectively excluding me from the consideration of all
respectable persons. I know what a risk one runs from the vigorously
athletic crowds in being styled an idealist in these days, when thrones
have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism, when
the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet
when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling
with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your
southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad
hills,--with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden
horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance,--the music of
eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky
and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the
poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of
all sentiment,--that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man
will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which
can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern
era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies.
NATIONALISM IN INDIA
Our real problem in India is not political. It is social. This is a
condition not only prevailing in India, but among all nations. I do not
believe in an exclusive political interest. Politics in the West have
dominated Western ideals, and we in India are trying to imitate you. We
have to remember that in Europe, where peoples had their racial unity
from the beginning, and where natural resources were insufficient for
the inhabitants, the civilization has naturally taken the character of
political and commercial aggressiveness. For on the one hand they had no
internal complications, and on the other they had to deal with
neighbours who were strong and rapacious. To have perfect combination
among themselves and a watchful attitude of animosity against others was
taken as the solution of their problems. In former days they organized
and plundered, in the present age the same spirit continues--and they
organize and exploit the whole world.
But from the earliest beginnings of history India has had her own
problem constantly before her--it is the race problem. Each nation must
be conscious of its mission, and we, in India, must realize that we cut
a poor figure when we are trying to be political, simply because we have
not yet been finally able to accomplish what was set before us by our
providence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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