Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c59.s4: § 7. The Indian Renaissance
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c59.s4
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- English
§ 7. The Indian Renaissance
v4.c59.s4.1
The Indian Renaissance was possible only because a principle was discovered by which India could throw herself into the full current of modern civilisation in the outer world without totally discarding her past. She could approach the temple of modern art and science not as a naked beggar, not as an utter alien, but as a backward and at present impoverished country cousin of Europe. She had a spiritual and intellectual heritage of which she need not be ashamed before the world. In fact, India was not called upon to plume herself in the borrowed feathers of European civilisation, she had only to assimilate modern thought and modern arts into her inner life without any loss of what she had so long possessed.
v4.c59.s4.2
Ram Mohan Roy was the first to reach the root principle of the Indian Renaissance; it is the belief that modern civilisation is not antagonistic to the heart of Hinduism, and that the external trappings in which the two civilisations differ are mere accidents. He preached and showed by his own life that India would not lose her soul by welcoming western science and thought, but she would thereby rather recover her lost glory. The basis of such a union between the modern west and the ancient east was the philosophy of humanism, which springs from the belief that God pervades the universe, *i.e.*, pantheism. Thus, the Hindu Vedāntist, the Islāmic Sufi, and the Christian Unitarian can worship at the same temple. So, he taught his countrymen to accept modern philosophy and science without fear or suspicion.
v4.c59.s4.3
The ground was prepared for this revolution in thought by the change in our education system which began in Bengal about 1810 and grew with increasing force from 1818. (Bengal will best serve as my illustration.) Education through the English language was the lever which moved the mediæval Indian world, after centuries of inertia under Muslim rule.
v4.c59.s4.4
The mere copying of the externals of European civilisation, without undergoing a new birth of the spirit, cannot produce a renaissance. It led only to the growth of the Anglo-Muslim culture of the Oudh Nawab’s Court, which was a bastard sprout producing no flower or fruit. In it the inner spirit of modern civilisation was wanting, and only the outer trappings of European life were borrowed and put on the persons of Indians who then looked like idiots or buffoons. No modern literature took its birth at the Lucknow royal court; the pictures and poetry it produced were mostly pornographic; Asaf-ud-daula used to eat 64 grains of the strongest Turkish opium every day. His successor, Sadat Ali knew English and a little French too, but turned out on the throne to be such a drunkard that he had to be assisted to his bed almost every night.
v4.c59.s4.5
This Renaissance was at first an intellectual awakening, and it influenced our education, thought, literature and art; but in the second generation (1840-1870) it became a moral force and set itself to reforming our society and religion. It began with our study of English literature and modern philosophy from books written in the English language, that is, with what is called higher or college education, as distinct from the mere knowledge of English for the work of clerks or interpreters to the British officers.
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As Sir Charles Trevelyan wrote in 1836, “The curiosity of the people is thoroughly roused, and the passion for English knowledge has penetrated the most obscure, and extended to the most remote parts of India. . . . There appears to be no limit to the number of scholars [in the English schools] except that of the number of teachers whom the Committee is able to provide.”
v4.c59.s4.7
In the next generation, the fruits of this English education produced a new and highly valuable literature in the provincial languages of India, at first by translation, next by adaptation from English works, and finally as original compositions. In these writings the influence of English literature and European thought is unmistakable, but equally unmistakable is their success in adapting the foreign spirit and literary model to the Indian mind and tradition. Their best specimens represent the spirit of England clad in a half-oriental garb, but there has been no wholesale borrowing from the west.
v4.c59.s4.8
As surely as the Renaissance in Europe was followed by the Reformation, so too, in India a modification of our social relations, our general outlook upon life, and our religious doctrines and practices was bound to result from our English education. Attempts at social reform began to take shape from 1855 under our own leaders. And the movement gained great impetus from the extensive legislative powers given to the people in the 20th century. Under British rule it was possible for an Indian to be in a minority of one, in his opinions and practices, and yet remain in society. In Mughal and Hindu times, such a free-thinker had to turn a homeless monk or the founder of a new outcaste sect, if he was not beheaded as a ‘public enemy.’ (Raghuvamsam, xv. 51.);—there was no place for him in the community.
v4.c59.s4.9
Modern India has become an independent, fully sovereign State. That political evolution has been made possible only by British imperialism. This is the reason why the noblest sons of India, like Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Dr. Prafulla Chandra Ray, and Gopal Krishna Gokhalé, have recognised a divine dispensation in the fall of the Mughal Empire, as looked at from before and behind.
Linked texts (1)
- Raghuvaṃśa — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit