819 / 822
ETERNAL INDIA
encyclopedia
tion which it is my proud privilege to place before it in a correspond-
ingly solemn manner. I believe there are a large number of amend-
ments coming before the House. I have not seen most of them. It is open
to the House, to any member of this House, to move any amendment and
it is for the House to accept it or reject it, but I would, with all respect,
suggest that this is not the moment for us to be technical and legal about
small matters when we have big things to face, big things to say and big
things to do, and, therefore, I hope that the House will consider this
Resolution in a broadminded manner and not lose itself in wordy
quarrels and squabbles.
I think also of the various constituent assemblies that have gone
before and of what took place at the making of the great American
nation when the fathers of that nation met and fashioned a constitution
which has stood the test for so many years, more than a century and a
half, and of the great nation that has resulted, which has been built up
on the basis of that constitution. My mind goes back to that mighty
revolution which took place also over one hundred fifty years ago and
the constituent assembly that met in that gracious and lovely city of
Paris which has fought so many battles for freedom. My mind goes
back to the difficulties that the constituent assembly had to face from
the king and other authorities, and still it continued. The House will
remember that when these difficulties came and even the room for a
meeting was denied to that constituent assembly, they betook them-
selves to an open tennis court and met there and took the oath, which
is called the Oath of the Tennis Court. They continued meeting in spite
of kings, in spite of the others, and did not disperse till they had finished
the task they had undertaken. Well, 1 trust that it is in that solemn spirit
that we too are meeting here and that we too whether we meet in this
chamber or in other chambers, or in the fields or in the market place,
will go on meeting and continue our work till we have finished it.
Then my mind goes back to a more recent revolution which gave
rise to a new type of state, the revolution that took place in Russia and
out of which has arisen the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics,
another mighty country which is playing a tremendous part in the
world, not only a mighty country, but for us in India, a neighbouring
country.
So our mind goes back to these great examples and we seek to
learn from their success and to avoid their failures. Perhaps we may not
be able to avoid failures, because some measure of failure is inherent
in human effort. Nevertheless, we shall advance, I am certain, in spite
of obstruction and difficulties, and achieve and realise the dream that
we have dreamt so long.
From Nehru,
Independence and After,
speech in the Constituent
Assembly in 1946 as it prepared to adopt its basic declaration of
objectives.
The "Decline of the West" being in reality only the decline of
capitalism, the crisis of Western civilisation means only disintegration
of the bourgeois social order. In that context, India's "spiritual mission"
appears to be a mission with a mundane purpose, namely, to salvage a
social system based upon the love of lucre and lust for power. It is not
suggested that the believers in India's spiritual mission are all conscious
WISDOM OF INDIA
of its reactionary implication. Probably very few of them are. Most of
them may be credited with a sincere antipathy for capitalism. But
antipathy does not necessarily give birth to a desire to go farther than
capitalism. It indicates an attachment to pre-capitalist social condi-
tions, which are idealised. Objectively, it is therefore the token of a re-
actionary social outlook. Indian spiritualism is not different from the
Western kind. The merit of a philosophy is to be judged by its historical
role and social significance. The sincerity or otherwise of its protago-
nists is altogether beside the point.
The preachers of India's "world mission" nevertheless take their
stand on the dogmatic assertion that Indian philosophy is different from
Western idealism.
The basic principles of idealist philosophy, together with the
survey of its medieval and pre-Christian background, prove that this
assertion is utterly groundless. While the emotional aspect of Indian
speculation is well matched, if not surpassed, by Christian mysticism,
intellectually it can hardly claim superiority to Western idealism, either
modern or ancient. With regard to transcendental fantasies, the West-
ern mind has been no less fertile. The great Sage of Athens, the seers
of Alexandria, the saints of early Christianity, the monks of the Middle
Ages- - that is a record which can proudly meet any competition. On
the question of moral doctrines, Christianity stands unbeaten on the
solid ground of the Jewish, Socratic, and Stoic traditions. Should the
modern West be accused of not having lived up to those noble
principles, could India conscientiously be absolved of a similar charge?
The claim that the Indian people as a whole are morally less corrupt,
emotionally purer, idealistically less worldly, in short, spiritually more
elevated, than the bulk of the Western society, is based upon a wanton
disregard for reality....
The most commonly agreed form of India's world message is
Gandhism. Not only does it dominate the nationalist ideology: it has
found some echo outside India. It is as the moralising mysticism of
Gandhi that Indian thought makes any appeal to the Western mind.
Therefore, an analysis of Gandhism will give a correct idea of the real
nature of India's message to the world.
But Gandhism is not a co - ordinated system of thought. There is
little of philosophy in it. In the midst of a mass of platitudes and
hopeless self-contradictions, it harps on one constant note— a concep-
tion of morality based upon dogmatic faith. But what Gandhi preaches
is primarily a religion: the faith in God is the only reliable guide in life.
The fact that even in the twentieth century India is swayed by the naive
doctrines of Gandhi speaks for the cultural backwardness of the masses
of her people. The subtlety of the Hindu philosophy is not the measure
of the intellectual level of the Indian people as a whole. It was the brain-
child of a pampered intellectual elite sharing power and privileges with
the temporal ruling class. It still remains confined to the comparatively
small circle of intellectuals who try to put on a thin veneer of modern-
ism, and represents nothing more than a nostalgia. The popularity of
Gandhi and the uncritical acceptance of his antics as the highest of
human wisdom knock the bottom off the doctrine that the Indian people
as a whole are morally and spiritually superior to the Western. The fact
is that the great bulk of the Indian people is steeped in religious super-