Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/397

1925] influence of Arya Samaj taking to Hindi language and Sanskrit script, will receive confirmation of these divisions! The same will be in the case of Guzerat and elsewhere. Thus the cultural fight that is going on between the Hindus and the Mohammedans and the various factors that are contending against one another are serving as hindrances to one growth of Indian nationhood.

Today the Indian leaders and patriots are raising their cry up to heaven on the sacred duty of forming an Indian nationhood, but it seems conscious attempt is not being made for it. When the patriots speak of an “Indian nation” they speak in the sense of political science, which defines that under a National Government India can become a nation. But that is an ephemeral basis for the Indian nationality. For that reason, the surer basis has to be created, and the leaders of thought and society must work towards it. And that surer basis is the community of character and language growing out of community of fate. The last we have got, the community of character is the result of the common evolution, but the community of language for all India is the desideratum. On that account popular Hindusthanee the language of the largest number of Indians, has to be made lingua franca. But the sting of religion has to be taken out of it. That is, the artificial Mohammedan Urdu and Hindu Hindi are not to be made the bones of contention, but the patois Hindusthanee should be made universal. And this would take the wind out of the sail of the attempted denominational basis of nationality through language! Thus given a common language and character under the wheel of a common evolution the Indian nationhood is assured.

But this is a dream of the future and a big hypothesis. Today the centripetal forces are at work, and as said before, different nationalities are being formed in the body-politic of India. This has been discerned by a few politicians, and on that account they are talking of a federation of Indian states,