Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c3.63

c3.63

In the meanwhile, however, we must set our ordinary people free; remove the obstacles in their path relating to use of their local physical and material resources, and encourage them to use their talents to rebuild their own shattered worlds in their own various ways (even, if required, by withdrawing those laws and rules which tend to block whatever they attempt, and keeping our advice and criticism to ourselves). Only then can other local relationships and linkages begin to come alive; societal manners and memory pertaining to specific activities begin to get awakened; and the rebuilding not remain a mere copy of the past. By taking account of the world around it, Indian society will begin to integrate such elements of Western or other technologies that seem to it as relevant and stimulating for its own base.