India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
The attitude of India has changed to meet the changed attitude of the
Governments of India and Great Britain. But let none imagine that that
consequential change of attitude connotes any change in her
determination to win Home Rule. She is ready to consider terms of peace,
but it must be “peace with honour,” and honour in this connection means
Freedom. If this be not granted, an even more vigorous agitation will
begin.
LOSS OF BELIEF IN THE SUPERIORITY OF WHITE RACES
The undermining of this belief dates from the spreading of the Arya
Samaj and the Theosophical Society. Both bodies sought to lead the
Indian people to a sense of the value of their own civilisation, to
pride in their past, creating self-respect in the present, and
self-confidence in the future. They destroyed the unhealthy inclination
to imitate the West in all things, and taught discrimination, the using
only of what was valuable in western thought and culture, instead of a
mere slavish copying of everything. Another great force was that of
Swami Vivekananda, alike in his passionate love and admiration for
India, and his exposure of the evils resulting from Materialism in the
West. Take the following:
Children of India, I am here to speak to you to-day about some
practical things, and my object in reminding you about the
glories of the past is simply this. Many times have I been told
that looking into the past only degenerates and leads to
nothing, and that we should look to the future. That is true.
But out of the past is built the future. Look back, therefore,
as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are
behind, and after that, look forward, march forward, and make
India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was. Our
ancestors were great. We must recall that. We must learn the
elements of our being, the blood that courses in our veins; we
must have faith in that blood, and what it did in the past: and
out of that faith, and consciousness of past greatness, we must
build an India yet greater than what she has been.
And again:
I know for certain that millions, I say deliberately, millions,
in every civilised land are waiting for the message that will
save them from the hideous abyss of materialism into which
modern money-worship is driving them headlong, and many of the
leaders of the new Social Movements have already discovered
that Vedanta in its highest form can alone spiritualise their
social aspirations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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