BY K. RAMAKOTISWARA RAO

Values change as our outlook on life changes. Things once held most dear are put away as childish. This is not less true of nations than of individuals. In times of transition, especially, the change is so rapid that in the course of a single generation we seem to cover several centuries. In speaking of the West to-day, it is usual to refer to the transformation wrought by the Great War in the minds of men, even more than in their environment. To most people who were young when the war was in progress, the conventions, the traditions and the institutions of the pre-war era convey no meaning. It is difficult to believe that they could, at any time, have shaped men’s conduct. They belong to a world that is as dead as that of Caesar or Alexander.

India played a subordinate part in that war; she was tied to the chariot-wheels of England, and, right or wrong, England’s cause became hers. It was impossible that she should look upon the war as a life and death struggle, in the way the chief combatants did. In India’s case, the war was an interlude between two great upheavals. The decade before the war was covered by the movement associated with the partition of Bengal, but having nationwide repercussions. The decade after the war witnessed the birth of Non-co-operation. Since the beginning of the century, the spirit of nationhood has gathered increasing strength, assumed diverse forms, and achieved a revolution in our outlook similar to what the Great War did elsewhere.

The removal of Surendranath Banerjea from the Indian Civil Service and the voluntary resignation from the same service of Subash Chandra Bose half a century later, are striking episodes in our national history. The first was considered, at the time, a great calamity; the latter was hailed as an act of consecration to a great ideal. Between these two points, the national mind traversed the entire distance from subjection to Swaraj. For when young Surendranath and Romesh Dutt gained admission into the charmed circle of the Civil Service, they believed that they were storming a citadel; and the nation believed with them. Theirs was not an act of individual advancement but an offering of patriotic devotion. They were snatching from the rulers a fraction, however small, of their power. The Indian National Congress, from its inception, devoted most of its energy and the eloquence of its stalwarts to securing simultaneous examinations for the Civil Service. So late as 1913 the great Gokhale pleaded with fervour for the institution of simultaneous examinations. The proceedings of the Public Services Commission on which he served were followed with the greatest interest, because the Indianisation of the services was believed to be the foundation of all self-government. Nobody denies the value of administrative training or the need to build up a permanent public service manned by Indians to run the departments in a self-governing India. But an exaggerated love of administrative posts prevented people from seeing that even if every single one of these places were filled by Indians, India would not advance a step nearer Swaraj, so long as the Government of the land was directed by the Cabinet and Parliament of Britain and not by the free legislatures of a free nation. By 1921, when Subash Bose resigned, that sense had dawned.

This change in outlook went with an overwhelming desire to raise the status of India and Indians in the international sphere. For a century and more, the minds and hearts of Indians had been turned to England. English literature, English institutions, English modes of thought and expression exercised a strange fascination. The West meant England, and whatever light from other lands found its way here was invariably coloured by the English prism. If Indian students went abroad in search of higher education, they chose between Oxford and Cambridge. France, Germany or America was rarely thought of. Service under the Government of India was the highest good, and an Oxford or Cambridge degree was the way to achieve it. But the tide soon turned. The more enterprising and far-sighted amongst our youths spent long years at Harvard and Cornell, Berlin and Paris. The conviction was borne in upon them that India counted for little in international affairs. The nationals of the smallest countries enjoyed a higher status than themselves. It was not within their power to remedy the situation. Political equality with other nations was a long way off, but it was possible in the immediate present to win greater respect for Indian talent. Science and philosophy, art and literature were worth cultivating for their intrinsic value. But even "the things that are more excellent" gained an added excellence in our view when they enabled Indian savants to meet on equal terms the savants of other lands.

The award of the Nobel prize for literature to Rabindranath Tagore was a tllrning point in India’s fortunes. The honour was conferred on the Poet for poems in an Indian language. Edmund Gosse had introduced Toru Dutt and Sarojini Devi to the English public. W. B. Yeats rendered similar service for Gitanjali. But there was a vital difference; it was as a poet in Bengali that Tagore achieved eminence, though the judges had an English version of his songs before them, and the exquisite beauty of the Poet’s English prose was acknowledged. Modern Indian literature is like a spring welling up from the soil. Tagore is not a solitary warbler; in every province of India writers of distinction are expressing themselves through the provincial tongues. Part of this new literature may be jejune or ephemeral, but it is authentic. Its beauty and richness may be perceived through stray translations, or the brief articles in Indian journals indicating the main tendencies. A systematic attempt ought to be made to determine its value as a contribution to the literature of the world.

As a result of the increased interest in contemporary literature in the Indian languages, our attitude to the study of English and its use as a medium of literary expression is undergoing a rapid change. Gifted writers like Harindranath Chattopadhyaya and K. S. Venkataramani, whose best work has so far been done in English, are now writing with even greater felicity in Hindi or Tamil. Within two or three decades we are likely to witness far reaching changes in this direction. In a linguistically divided Indian Federation the language of administration and of public instruction will be the provincial one for the province, and Hindi for all-India. English will be studied only by university students, businessmen, diplomats, or scholars who wish to keep in touch with the main currents of international culture. English poems, stories, or literary criticism may continue to be written by Indians, very much in the manner of the Romanised Gauls and Iberians of the days of the Empire who employed Latin. Such attempts will be valued if they faithfully interpret the Indian point of view. But the primacy will undoubtedly rest with the writers in the Indian languages. We shall not then witness the painful obsession about "correct English" or "the Englishman’s English." Indeed there is no valid reason why Indians writing or speaking English in the India of the future should be expected to do better than the Frenchmen or the Japanese.

With the spread of the Gandhian gospel, certain assumptions in the realm of economics are being widely challenged. Is the increased use of machinery inevitable? Is industrialisation the goal of progress? Does large-scale production by competitive methods imply equitable distribution of goods? The spinning wheel is not an isolated phenomenon; it is the symbol of protest against the modern rage for industrialisation. The emphasis has been shifted within recent years from wealth to well-being, from machinery to the man behind it. This is by no means a return to medievalism and obscurantism. On the other hand, it points to a further advance in economic organisation, and towards a more humane one. Cottage industries in rural areas run by electricity, families working on small agricultural holdings and borrowing modern implements on easy terms from co-operative societies, and universities planted in rural surroundings, in intimate touch with the lives of the common people, are steps towards a future in which the machine and the inventions of science will spread happiness and not destroy it. These will fall into their right place as the servants of man. This point of view will gain acceptance, because it seeks to purify and chasten the human spirit, and to establish concord where there is deadly strife.

In the study of the nation’s history a new orientation is taking place. Between the extremes of utter contempt for the past and unreasoning glorification of it, we are settling down to the view that during the chequered history of centuries there were achievements of which we might reasonably feel proud. The errors of outlook and of organisation which made for our weakness are recognised; the need for fresh effort to gather up all that is best and most vitalising is also felt; every Indian thinker of note to-day draws his main inspiration from the past of the race, while he is ready to profit from the experience of other nations, old or new. India wishes to enter the family of nations as an honoured and useful member who gives quite as much as she receives. Her contribution to that family will depend upon her ability to adjust herself to the world-forces, to breathe fresh life into age long institutions or destroy them if they are evil. She must give a new meaning to the old values.

To those that can discern, the modern tendency in India, in politics and economics, in art and literature, is towards a higher synthesis of matter and spirit. The poet and the painter, the musician and the actor are winning recognition as the creators and interpreters of beauty. We no longer discount their achievement in comparison with that of the scientist or the statesman. The Indian renaissance is full-blooded. Its facets are many and of remarkable splendour. The final fruition of our hopes, the realisation of the dreams of our prophets and poets, is yet in the future. But thought is power: great things are achieved in idea even before they are achieved in fact. To will and to plan greatly, to dream great dreams and see splendid visions–this is the auspicious beginning as well as the first condition of all advance. The prophets create the atmosphere for the coming of the statesmen. We who are so near to the events, are distressed by the apparent slowness with which the vision is translated into reality. Its loveliness fades; we seem to be groping in the dark; possibly we have run into a blind alley. That is the feeling which bas come over so many of us. The losses appear so great that we fail to notice the gains or even to realise that indeed they are gains. External changes are perceived with greater readiness than changes in spirit and in mental make-up. And yet, these are vastly more important.

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