BY BLAIR MACLENAHAN

India is now on the eve of a great change in her political life. Whether this change will come about with greater or less rapidity one does not know. But that a change is inevitable is the important consideration. I believe it is now generally conceded that matters have gone too far to make any other conclusion possible.

It is true that Indians have been disappointed many times in their aspirations and to some extent have lost confidence. But they must see that at present new conditions exist. Never before have world conditions been what they are; never has the human race as a whole seemed to be brought so close together; never have the peoples of all nations shared information with one another touching their several national problems; never has the internationalisation of human sympathies been so near in spite of differences that will ever divide, in some measure, one national group from another. From this, it is obvious that we are entering a new age when the morality of nations will take an upward step; when not only India will enjoy the rights of a free people, but all other peoples as well; when justice will not reign solely in limited areas, but will extend throughout the whole world, to nations and races as well as to private individuals in favoured places.

With the dawn of this on-coming day, there will appear above the horizon a new principle of international relations, which will perhaps recognize a nation even as an Outlaw Nation, with all its humiliating consequences, which fails to live up to the new standards of honour expected of nations occupying a respectable place in civilization.

So, I say, let Indians now look forward with confidence to the day when they will enjoy the promised fruits of their longings, their aspirations and their prayers, and prepare to become in due time a nation among the nations of the earth. What then lies next ahead that India may be made ready for the great change, that she may in a very real sense "come properly prepared" for the limited statehood which will first be offered her? As this is a problem of the very first magnitude, I would ask, "What are Indians doing to meet it effectively?"

Perhaps a casual visitor to your land, one who is neither English nor Indian, but who nevertheless has long held India close in his thoughts, may, on this point, venture a few suggestions that may, he hopes, prove helpful. He does so because he feels that there is no time to be lost at this critical juncture and that leading Indians must do something and do it speedily to rouse India from the age-long lethargy and help her to take a necessary interest in this world and its material affairs (and especially the world of India itself) from the highest practical standpoint. It may be all well enough for a people to set their hearts and minds constantly on gods of unseen worlds, but if in doing so they neglect the essentials of the world in which they live, what has been gained? It may be philosophically conceivable that this world is a relative illusion in the sense that it has its birth, its period of maintenance, and in the course of untold millions of years will meet with death, and so in the ultimate is impermanent. But what, let me ask, has this to do with us for whom, during our brief span of life, the conditions here are all too real? Is there anyone of your gods who can say that hunger is not real so long as it lasts; or sickness or pain or sorrow, or poverty, filth and neglect? Such terms as real and unreal can be used by the highly placed person in human progress without misunderstanding. He will always know, when be is using them, that he is dealing with conceptions covering periods of time inconceivable in their length: but being wise he never thinks of applying the thought of the temporary, the illusory, or unreal to this world of such stupendous duration in the sense that we may neglect its duties and its opportunities without offending the universal law of life, whether that law be expressed as the whim of the gods to be regulated by prayers or ceremonies, or as the one unchanging and unchangeable Will, the divine expression of the Real.

But when the uneducated masses get a whiff of this high breath of heaven in the form of teaching suitable only to the understanding of trained minds, at home in metaphysical concepts, they surely do make a sad picture of things.

One has only to look at India today to see the catastrophic results of a religious obsession which is but a misunderstanding of a great metaphysical truth of life which has been converted into an ignis fatuus alluring its devotees into bogs of material neglect and degeneracy. To pay constant and continuous homage to a life that is speculative and at least admittedly unseen and purely traditional, and to neglect the life here and now which everyone who is born must endure until death, is hardly intelligent. At least let us who have come into this world of so-called unreality conduct ourselves while here so as to leave it a more perfect and beautiful world when we go, thus insuring greater happiness and progress to those who shall come after us (and this may even include our own re-incarnated selves). If your forefathers had done this in their past, your condition would have been far different from what it is today. So long as we have to come here and live, let us do so as gods living a self-made, magnificent environment, and not as dumb-driven slaves wallowing in filth and ugliness, amid ignorance, suffering and disease. This can be done without giving up one whit of the present religious fervour, and that is the wonderful part of it. On the contrary, a great civilization based upon the highest ideals of material progress with a dominant infusion of spiritual purpose will triumph over all other civilizations and will lead in all the true arts, sciences and philosophies down the ages to come. Let that not be forgotten.

In the light of this it would seem that India–that any people about to become endowed with the privileges and responsibilities of nationhood–should pause and indulge in a searching examination of herself, and find out wherein she is weak and has failed, and how she may best prepare herself for the great opportunity that lies ahead. There are a few essentials that at once suggest themselves as the ground-work of a united and progressive people.

First and foremost you must be economically free and self-sufficient, making your own goods for your own people and marketing the surplus abroad as you can. A sound economic foundation is the first essential, for it is on this that the entire well-being of a people rests. Any effort made to increase the demand for Indian products would be useful, and patriots should give to such movements every encouragement and assistance in their power. With their growth new demands will constantly be made upon the people to produce this and that not now being produced here, and improved products will also be demanded from time to time, and so you can gradually build up an economic system which ultimately may make itself felt the world over as in the past. India's potentialities in this regard are immense. To show why this is so would require an entire article of itself. Along with right economic development will come a living wage suitable to the raising of the standards of living, the establishment of universal education and sanitation, the growth of the various forms of social service, the cultivation of the arts, crafts and sciences and in general the acquisition of the true spirit of a nation which is yet but embryonic.

To this end the removal of the many barriers set up in times past which now divide man from man will be urgently required. In the days gone by, the world advanced by the creation of effective separated groups, each becoming strong or powerful by vitally individualizing itself and fighting for its existence. But today when the doors of every nation are thrown open to every other nation of the world, when the steamship, the train, the post, the telegraph, the radio and the air-ship have made the many national families of this world into one big human family, we can no longer continue to erect barriers and separate group from group, but must follow the inevitable trend of civilization and demolish all obstacles to the unity of life both within each nation, and ultimately between nation and nation.

In India there are staggering numbers of barriers separating its people, and so long as this continues you can never hope to have a united people, or a steady and powerful national consciousness. Aside from multitudes of barriers in the form of innumerable religious practices, of many vernaculars and hundreds of separate States, you have those numberless, out-of-date castes and divided sub-castes,–all which tend to keep India in a state of hopeless, inner disunity. It is one of the amazing facts of the Indian peoples that nowhere in the world is there a people whose highest religion emphasizes the principle of the unity of life in all its forms more emphatically or more beautifully, and yet there is no people less united in religion, language or political and social status. Let the mystery of this speak for itself.

But one thing is certain. The unity propounded by your fundamental teachings must sometime come out in the forms of daily life; else, with impressive opportunities confronting you, you will prove faithless not only to your best religious ideals but to your children and your children’s children for generations ahead–not to mention your unique duty to the world at large.

Then let us see what campaigns of unity you can set on foot; see how you can end this babel of many tongues, at least by the establishment of a universal secondary language, preferably the one most internationally used; and let us see what you can do to meet on the common basis of all religions, namely, the Brotherhood of Man, subverting all the differing formalisms to this one greatest of all the principles of religious teaching throughout the ages. Then you should study the causes of national and race failure elsewhere, and write it into India's plan that these things shall not pass into your public life. For example, the loss of the true home and its up-building influence in the West, resulting in youthful crimes over a widespread area. Save your home and your woman for the home. Again, note the wars and near wars caused by that ‘prestige’ and ‘face’ saving childishness that besets the pathways of nations all too full of the weakness of pride to cast it away. This does not belong to you, the India of the future: turn your back on it in the youth of your endeavour.

And above all bring into the lives of your youth the high privilege of universal, free and compulsory education and technical training, and into this infuse the universal civilizing principle of unity manifesting as the Brotherhood of Man at every point. With this principle guiding the thoughts, the aspirations, the speech and actions of your people there is no telling how far you, as a nation, may go in time towards leadership of all the world as a practical spiritually-inspired nation.

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