Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 2.pdf/238

542 I hope I can claim to be duly conscious of the glories of my own country, but my fervent prayer is that such consciousness may never make me forgetful of the earliest message of our seers, the message of unity, in which the forces of disruption have no place. I can hear, from over the seas the wailing of men questioning themselves: "Wherein was our sin,—in what part of our thoughts, of our education,—that this terrible suffering is ours today?" May the reply of our Rishis reach them: "There can be no blindness and sorrow, where all beings are known as oneself and the Unity is realised." I can hear, from over the seas, the cry for Peace. We must give them the message of our great forefathers: "Peace is where the Good is; the Good is where there is Unity."

Unity is peace; for Unity is the Good.

I am fully conscious of the glories of my motherland, so it shames me even to think, that now, on the eve of the new age, when the command of Rudra, the Terrible, has gone forth to sweep away the rubbish of decayed ages, this same rubbish should be piled up into an altar for her worship. He who is Peace, who is Good, is the One Universal Refuge of all the different Nations of men. Cannot the chanting of the mantra,—Shantam, Shivam, Advaitam,—with the first fresh glow of the dawning era, rouse in us once more our ancient love of truth?

It is the dream of my heart, that the culture-centre of our country should also be the meeting ground of the East and West. In the field of business, antagonism still prevails; it struggles hard against reconcilement. In the field of culture, there is no such obstacle. The householder, who is exclusively occupied with his domestic concerns and is chary of his hospitality, is poor in spirit. No great country can afford to be confined to its kitchen, it must have its reception room where it can do honour to itself by inviting the world.

India has only government institutions, or their prototypes, for her education. By far the greater part of it consists in begging for the crumbs of other people's attaining. When begging becomes a habit, the lack of hospitality ceases to cause shame. So the Indian Universities have no compunction in proclaiming themselves mendicants with nothing to offer in return for what they receive. It is not true, that nothing is expected from them. I have often been confronted in Europe with the question: "Where is India's voice?" But when the enquirer from the West comes to India, and listens at her door, he says: "The words which we hear are only the feeble echoes of our own words,— the mere parodies of things preached by us." To me, it has always seemed that, when the Indian disciple of Max Muller boasts in strident tones of his Aryan descent, there is heard all the blatant noise of the Western brass band; and also when in a frenzy of condemnation he rejects the West, there is heard only the most discordant sounds of the Western tunes.

It is my prayer that India should, in the name of all the East, establish a centre for the culture of Truth to which all may be invited. I know she lacks material wealth, but she has no lack of spiritual wisdom. On the strength of the latter she may invite the world, and be invited into every part of the world, not to hang round the threshold, but to take the seat prepared for her in the inmost chamber. But even that honour may be left out of sight. The real object of our endeavour should be to realise truth in our inner nature and then to manifest it in the outer world,—not for the sake of expediency: not for gaining honour, but for emancipating man's spirit from its obscurity. The ideal revelation of soul must be expressed, through all our education and through all our work, and then by honouring all men we shall ourselves be honoured, and by welcoming the new age we shall ourselves be freed from the burden of senility. The mantra of that education is this:

"He, who realises all creatures in himself and himself in all creatures, is never obscured."