Coeval with earth’s oldest empires which are now no
more than shadowy myths and memories, and yet contemporary with the youngest
world republics in the anguish of their struggle for liberty, India stands
supreme amid the marvels of historic survival, and unique among the miracles of
historic paradox.
For
her earliest record reaching back to periods so remote as to be legendary,
holds in a fine perfection of achievement those living principles of national
freedom and international federation which we are wont to consider the monopoly
of our modern age.
Incomparable
too and sublime in its austere, heiratic splendour is the tale of her spiritual
evolution which, through all the tumult and suffering of centuries of foreign
invasion and domination has kept the inmost Soul of India inaccessible and
unconquered, endowed with a perennial vitality and an unmeasured power of
ultimate self-renewal, able and ready after each dark epoch of political
tribulation to fulfil the prophecy of her own Shri Krishna, and “be born again
and again for the establishing of the national righteousness.”
To-day,
She-the Immutable, the Immemorial-endures once more the poignant travail of her
destined renascence, and her imminent To-morrow
can seek no lovelier inspiration than the chronicle of her immortal Yesterday, which offers an ideal so
comprehensive and complete in the far-famed efficiency of her elaborate civil
and military organisations, her commercial enterprise, her economic prosperity,
her matchless learning and her majestic art.
Her
old village democracies, self-governing and self-contained, were the living
units of an immense Imperial commonwealth; her ancient academies and
universities were the living temples of the national culture and the national consciousness;
her caravan-ways and her sea-ways conveyed to the furthest kingdoms of man not
only the precious treasure of her sumptuous merchandise, but the priceless
riches of her resplendent thought.
Her
civic life was conserved and sustained by that wondrous and versatile
caste-system which, now so bitter a source of strife and disunion, represented
in that stately era a true division of labour: separate social guilds for
united patriotic service. Her priests and her poets were the interpreters and guardians
of her transcendent wisdom; her warriors kept alive the tradition of her
chivalry and valour as keen and dazzling as their swords; her tillers and her
traders, her industrial and her pastoral people were all alike the custodians
of the national welfare and the national wealth.
And-highest
proof of a country’s civilization-her womanhood enjoyed a freedom and franchise
unknown in the modern world. For the woman of Ancient India had her lofty and
legitimate place and function in the daily life of her race. Not only was it
her sweet privilege to tend the hearth-fires and sacrificial fires in the happy
and narrow seclusion of her home, but wide as humanity itself were the
opportunities and occasions of her compassionate service, her intellectual triumphs
and her saintly renunciations. Her agile and brilliant mind had access to the
most intricate sciences and occult philosophies. Not seldom in her capacity as
queen, regnant or regent, was she called upon to prove the subtlety and
sagacity, the breadth and daring of her state-craft.
And
age after age, she vindicated the fidelity and fortitude, the courage and
devotion of her love, on the funeral pyre which was so often the crucible of
her purity, on the battlefield which was so frequently the altar of her heroism
in defence of the Indian Honour of which she was at once the symbol and the
shrine.
Shall
not the heirs of such illustrious ideals be justified in their belief that in
their splendid past lie the promise and guarantee of a splendid future? For, as
a great modern thinker has said “Not in
possessions but in ideals are to be found the seeds of immortality.” …
The Soul of India (Part I) by Sarojini Naidu, Sarojini Naidu Papers, NMML Archives
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