The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t9.3

c14.s9.t9.3

It is impossible to overlook this fundamental defect in the mentality of Rāmachandrapant as perhaps of other Indians of his age. The same shortcoming is to be observed in the character of still greater and more influential and powerful men among his contemporaries and predecessors, for instance, Akbar the Great, Śivāji the Great and Aurangzeb, men who guided the destinies of the Indian people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In regard to the cultural growth of the world both Hindus and Moslems were equally ignorant and defective in outlook and statesmanship. Both demonstrated the poverty or rather the bankruptcy of their intelligence by remaining blind to the greatest reality of their age, namely, that some of the Western countries had already established their claims to be utilized as the *gurus* of the Hindu and Moslem scholars, artisans, and soldiers. Indian statesmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries must have already felt that in certain branches of material and military life they could not do without the assistance, nay, guidance of the few Westerners who happened to be present in India as travellers or merchants. But none of them appear to have felt that the time had come for them to organize scientific missions to the lands of these men equipped with the new qualifications. The fact that Indian *paṇḍits* and *mollahs* would have to learn at the feet of the European Brahmans and Maulavis beyond the seas in the *chatuṣpāṭhis* and *maktabs* of Europe was not realized by the greatest Hindus and Mussalmans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although they were already conscious on account of daily experience that the men beyond the seas had in certain spheres of life already proven their worth in a significant manner.