We must recognize that it is providential that the West has come to
India. And yet some one must show the East to the West, and convince the
West that the East has her contribution to make to the history of
civilization. India is no beggar of the West. And yet even though the
West may think she is, I am not for thrusting off Western civilization
and becoming segregated in our independence. Let us have a deep
association. If Providence wants England to be the channel of that
communication, of that deeper association, I am willing to accept it
with all humility. I have great faith in human nature, and I think the
West will find its true mission. I speak bitterly of Western
civilization when I am conscious that it is betraying its trust and
thwarting its own purpose. The West must not make herself a curse to the
world by using her power for her own selfish needs, but, by teaching the
ignorant and helping the weak, she should save herself from the worst
danger that the strong is liable to incur by making the feeble acquire
power enough to resist her intrusion. And also she must not make her
materialism to be the final thing, but must realize that she is doing a
service in freeing the spiritual being from the tyranny of matter.
I am not against one nation in particular, but against the general idea
of all nations. What is the Nation?
It is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. This
organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on
becoming strong and efficient. But this strenuous effort after strength
and efficiency drains man's energy from his higher nature where he is
self-sacrificing and creative. For thereby man's power of sacrifice is
diverted from his ultimate object, which is moral, to the maintenance of
this organization, which is mechanical. Yet in this he feels all the
satisfaction of moral exaltation and therefore becomes supremely
dangerous to humanity. He feels relieved of the urging of his conscience
when he can transfer his responsibility to this machine which is the
creation of his intellect and not of his complete moral personality. By
this device the people which loves freedom perpetuates slavery in a
large portion of the world with the comfortable feeling of pride of
having done its duty; men who are naturally just can be cruelly unjust
both in their act and their thought, accompanied by a feeling that they
are helping the world to receive its deserts; men who are honest can
blindly go on robbing others of their human rights for
self-aggrandizement, all the while abusing the deprived for not
deserving better treatment. We have seen in our everyday life even small
organizations of business and profession produce callousness of feeling
in men who are not naturally bad, and we can well imagine what a moral
havoc it is causing in a world where whole peoples are furiously
organizing themselves for gaining wealth and power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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