The Foundations of Indian Culture And the Renaissance in India - By Sri Aurobindo | POST 28

The Foundations of Indian Culture

And the Renaissance in India - By Sri Aurobindo

POST 28

Indian Culture and External Influence

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Summary

In considering Indian civilisation and its renascence, I suggested that a powerful new creation in all fields was our great need. Invaded by another civilisation almost her opposite, India can only survive by confronting this raw, new, aggressive world with fresh creations of her own spirit. In this connection I spoke of the acceptance and assimilation from the West. This question of external influence and new creation from within is seminal.

But it is possible to hold that while new creation is our way of life and salvation, no acceptance of anything western is called for. That is the sense of a comment on these articles in a Bengali literary periodical. But the writer goes on to add that the idea of taking over what is best in occidental civilisation is a false notion. An entire return upon ourselves is our only way of salvation.

There is much to be said here both in favour and criticism. Though the attempt to imitate the West—provided it was not merely mechanical—was a mistake, it had been a biological, a psychological necessity, even inevitable. We have taken over the novel, the short story, the critical essay; the method and instrumentation of inductive science; the press, the platform, political agitation, the public association. The question is not of renouncing these but what we do with them. But the taking over of forms is not the heart of the question. We must be able to take over certain ideas, energies and institutions and deal with them, as our ancestors did, in our characteristic way of being and shaping action, for instance, with European industrialism, with its good and bad.

In the context whatever helps me to find myself more intimately, nobly, with a greater and sounder possibility of self-creation is good; whatever carries me out of my orientation, weakens my being is bad for me. So understood, the real point is not the taking over of this or that formal detail, but a dealing with great effective ideas, like social and political liberty, equality, democracy. These ideas are not so much modern or European as that they are of importance for the future of man. Only we must not take them crudely in their European forms but work these out in keeping with our own conception of life.

I take it as self-evident that it is neither desirable nor possible to exclude everything that comes to us from outside. A living organism must recast the things it takes to suit its own law and form and characteristic action. Mentally, vitally and physically I do not grow by a pure self-development from within in a virgin isolation. There is in every individual existence a double action, a self development from within and a reception of impacts from the outside. The two operations are not mutually exclusive, nor is the second harmful to the first except when the inner genius is too weak to deal victoriously with its environmental world. As we rise in the scale we find that the power of conscious self-determination increases more and more. Those who live most powerfully in themselves, can also most largely use the world and all its material for the Self—and, it must be added, most successfully help the world and enrich it out of their own being. That is the truth this developing existence teaches us, and it is one of the greatest secrets of the old Indian spiritual knowledge.

To live in one’s self is, then, the first necessity. But also not to be able to use the material that the life around offers us is a serious deficiency and a danger to the existence. To a healthy individuality it may act as an irritant or a stimulus, and while there is peril and perplexity, there is also the opportunity of a great self-developing transformation or an immense and vigorous renascence.

The group-soul differs from the individual only in being more self-sufficient. The Greek, the Indian and the Chinese are examples of this intense living from within in a profound differentiation from all surrounding cultures. But at no time did Indian culture exclude altogether external influences, but included whatever struck or impressed it; and in the act of inclusion harmonised the new elements with the spirit of its own culture. Nowadays a strong separative aloofness is no longer possible.

Any attempt to remain exactly what we were before the European invasion will surely fail. We cannot go backward to a past form of our being, but we can go forward to a large repossession of ourselves in which we shall make a better, a more living and real use of the intervening experience. We cannot be “ourselves alone” in any narrow, formal sense, and all this taking account of things, which we must, of the governing ideas and problems of the modern world, modifies the subjective being.

So, fidelity to our own spirit, nature, ideals, the creation of our own characteristic forms in the new age and new environment, but also a masterful dealing with the external influences which need not be and cannot be a total rejection . Therefore, there must be an element of successful assimilation. Each capable Indian must think it out or, better, work it out. The spirit of the Indian renascence will take care of the rest, for the creation of a new and greater India.

by -Unknown

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