Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/561

 to the intentions and motives of those among us who would fall back on the Shastras for working out a new social scheme for the people of India, I must take the liberty to say that that method seems to me to be inadequate, —nay more positively injurious. The Shastras are worthy of all reverence as handing down to us the traditions of a by-gone civilization. No social reformer can afford to despise them, or to neglect their study. But it is abundantly manifest that rules and observances and institutions, that suited the men of a by-gone age, can hardly suit us, who live under a very different environment. The method of finding in the Shastras chapter and verse in support of this or that reform may carry us some little way forward, and that only after a long struggle over texts and interpretation; but I feel convinced that such a re-casting and re-construction as would eliminate from our social life the elements that have for so long held an iron sway, and paralysed our intellectual and moral energies, could be achieved only by modifying the Shastraic injunctions, and not by a tacit conformity to them. I have said that the method under criticism is injurious, and my reason for saying so is that what might be gained by placing reform on a false basis is nothing as weighed in the scales against what must be lost. This wrong method will and must stand in the way of many important reforms that every true friend of India would wish to see accomplished, and I would, therefore, impress upon your minds the necessity for giving this subject your most earnest consideration. By all means venerate the past; be proud of the relics of ancient civilization that abound in India; admire our ancient philosophy for its depth and subtlety and penetrative insight; and love our ancient literature for its sweetness and pathos and wealth of profound moral and religious sentiment. But remember that the richer the legacy you have inherited from the dead, the stronger the obligation to make the lives of present and future generations something the better for your self-denying labors in the cause of national progress.

I fear I have already overtaxed your patience. I shall content myself, therefore, with making a mere mention or two other important duties that you have to perform. You have to cultivate the study of your mother-tongue, and to improve it to such an extent as to make it a fit medium for the communication of Western ideas in Science and Philosophy. You have to promote the education of your women, and to make your fellow-countrymen understand that the education a woman wants is not that which will make her a better sort, of household drudge