Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/398

382 i.e., the federation of different Indian nations (in India real provincial boundary is conterminous with linguistic area). As the matter stands today, the provincial national feeling is more potent than the sentimental “Indian” feeling. The critics on India say that India is devoid of national feeling as it is a heterogeneous country, and any talk of freedom is an artificiality created by the agitators. We need not be ashamed at this stupid criticism. It is not a fault that India is not a homogeneous one, and heterogeneous peoples can as well demand freedom and liberty to exist separately. If India cannot be a centralized and homogeneous nation like that of England and France, she can be a Bundestatt, i.e., a federation of states. If the iron hammer that shaped the heterogeneous elements of England into one compact nation under the Plantagenets, and that of France under the Bourbons lacked in the immediate past in India giving rise to modern heterogeneity, that could not be helped; and in the present on the lack of that unifying hammer India perhaps is developing into different nationalities which though deplorable yet the psychological moments of separate development cannot be prevented under the présent conditions. The vastness of the geographical area and its diversities are prompting the centripetal tendencies; and under the present circumstances India is on the road to break up into different provincial nationalities based on local language and character. But this centripetal tendency can be combated by the centrifugal tendency of introducing one language for all India which will create the “acquired mental homogeneity” which is necessary for the development of all-India nationhood, but it is a vision at present. Also the future will decide the fate of the cultural fight waged around denominational differences. The history of the world so far has shown that the bond of mother tongue is more potent than that of religion. And it can be safely said that in a land of complex problems, like that of India, the bond of religion alone when put against