AGRARIAN HUMANISM

That India is neither heaven nor hell but is exactly on the surface of the earth, that Indians are neither angels nor devils but just men with the rights and duties, the good qualities and defects of other men,–all such primary data have been left unheeded, and as a result Indians have lost India, the Indian peasant has lost the Indian countryside. He has become the slave of the soil and of custom, of the heat and of the rain, of money and money-lenders, the victim of landlaws and landlords, of a hundred agencies that have cramped his initiative, shrivelled up his individuality, and isolated him in misery and despair. He has lost his grip on the land and his grit in work; he is no more the soul of the countryside. Nothing short of an upheaval will give the countryside back its soul; the rallying cry should be, not man, back to the land,’ but ‘the land, back to man’; India must be given back to the Indian, and the countryside to the peasant; the property regime, the method of cultivation, the circumstances and agencies of agriculture, must be turned upside down; the land must not hold the peasant, but the peasant must stand on the land with his two feet well planted on the soil and his head high; in other words, rural India must be saved by agrarian humanism.

We do not refer to that silly humanism which makes man the lord of heaven and earth, which ignores spiritual values and religious concerns, and has no room for God; but we want the humanism which makes man the master of soil, plants and animals, the equal of his fellow beings, the ruler of his destiny; we want him to be his old self again, to stand upright, to possess anew his soul which is in danger of being devoured by Capitalism and Communism. Only then will he be free to develop his ideal, fulfill his role, and realise his best self.

–A. Lallemand in The New Review, Calcutta. (March)

COLOUR AND RACE IN U. S. A.

But when the investigator of race conflict in the United States has given full weight to economic causes, he will come upon something else not so easily explained. He will find, permeating strata of society that cannot be affected by economic competition, and among persons totally aloof from all interests of or intercourse with the workers, a strange, malignant, bitter and persisting hatred of all human beings of African ancestry. He will find white men of station, wealth, and even of education, conspiring to prevent legislation against lynching, and secretly or openly gloating when a lynching has been done. He will be compelled to admit that this hatred among such men is often carried to extremes that seem hardly sane, and elsewhere would be deemed incredible. To understand this feeling among such men (and women) is the most difficult Part of the inquiry and yet unescapable if the problem is ever to be comprehended and solved.

The source of this part of the evil goes back to the great drama of the American Civil War–and beyond it. We are to remember that chattel slavery in the United States was, from the foundation of the Republic onward, confined to the Southern part of the country, where it gradually created a baronial aristocracy closely resembling that of medieval feudalism. . . . The slave-owners being thus secured in the veritable satus of ‘gentlemen’ were at liberty to spend their time in self-approval and made full use of the privilege; also in contemplating the degraded state of their Northern compatriots. Altogether, they were qualified to win, and in full measure they had, the favourable regard of the governing class in England and therefore England’s valuable support in the Civil War toward which they were steadily tending.

–Charles Edward Russell in The Aryan Path, Bombay. (March)

THE POWER OF RAMAKRISHNA

In Ramakrishna we get the best human symbol of holiness, which is God. His spiritual strivings and realisations are to be taken as valid and in agreement with the deepest truth of the universe, because they form the sole explanation of the Power he embodied in life, namely, the divine characteristic of holiness which could dispel the corruption of even a cesspool mind. In his biography we get ample evidence of the sanctifying influence that used to radiate from his personality and transform the lives of men by miracle, as it were. But this in itself would not have made him continue to be a Power in the spiritual realm even after his exit from this stage of the world, had it not been for the fact that an ever-increasing number of men are discovering the most perfect symbol of Divinity in the Very imprint his personality has left on the history of human thought and achievement–a symbol of holiness that could excite in them an awareness of God and impart in some measure at least the radiance and elation of the highest category in the scale of valuation. It is also to be noted that unlike in the case of ordinary religious symbols, there is in him a universality of appeal that transcends the limitations of countries and cultures and goes straight into the heart of man, provided there is in it, in some measure at least, a dissatisfaction with the life of the senses, and a yearning for holiness. If one cares to discover the power of Ramakrishna, one must look for it in this direction.

–The Vedanta Kesari, Madras. (March)

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