Page:Letters from Abroad.pdf/32

 23

was defended by the railway directors as being necessary for the salvation of the passengers souls.

Only think in this connexion of the ideal which the life of Akbar represented. This Emperor’s soul was not afraid, for its own safety, of the touch of a neighbouring humanity, but of the want of touch, Aurangzeb, on the other hand, who was certainly “intelligent and enlightened” and meticulously eareful about keeping intact what he considered to be his soul, represented a force, insolent and destructive. Such an enormous difference in the ideals of these two most powerful monarchs of Moghal India sprang from fundamentally different interpretations of the world ‘soul’.

Lowes Dickenson has mentioned the possibility of India being benefited by her contact with the West. Very likely he meant the contact to be like that of the root of a tree with the water in the soil. I admit that the light of Europe’s culture has reached us. But Europe, with its corona of culture, is a radiant idea. Its light permeates the present age; it is not shut up.in a single bull’s eye lantern, namely, some particular people from Europe who have come to us in India. Yet we are repeatedly asked to be grateful to this bull’s eye lantern and prostrate ourselves before it with loyalty and reverence. But such a thing is not possible ; for it is a mere lantern, it has no soul. Not only that, but it circumscribes the light to a narrow