Paper:-4(Indian writing in English)
Topic:-Sri Aurobindo’s views on Indian culture
Name:-Kailas Gohil
Roll No:-17
Class:-sem-1
Email Id:-kailasgohil1998@gmail.com
Introduction:-
Sri Aurobindo, the herald of India, is unique in interpreting Indian culture. He has distinctly advanced the thought of the age on the subject. The meaning of India’s cultural history is deepened and widened in the fluent ideas and thoughts imbued in his writings. Stung by the ignorant foreign criticisms against Indian culture, Sri Aurobindo has given a new scope to the hitherto unknown world of thought. He estimated Indian culture more as an advocate of the human trend towards spirituality and inner development as different and distinct from that towards materiality and external achievement. His approach was not merely the voice of an advocate of the East, but of one who, upholding the East, pleaded in the best interests of humanity itself, for an integral, synthesis of the East and the West. He loved the spiritual East; but equally admired the vital West. He believed that real fulfilment and perfection of man lay in the scientific development of a real evolutionary spirituality. The image of Indian culture is tarnished indeed in later times but not wholly invisible, nor wholly without its power of inspiration. Sri Aurobindo could see India’s reviving hour of a new dawn, the old force asserting itself once again in all its native strength to give the impulse of a great renaissance.
Sri Aurobindo gave us the panorama of India’s past cultural history in a stimulating and enlightening manner. It was really deplorable if such living ancient Indian culture in its declining condition was attacked by European modernism, was overpowered in the material-field and was betrayed by the indifference of her children. There was a stupendous rush of change coming over the whole world as a result of the recent scientific development. The whole world, including India, is about to be forced into the stress and travail of a swift transformation. Hence there was every danger that European nationalism and commercialism may put an end forever to the spiritual culture of India. The political westernisation was followed by a social turn of the same kind and brought a cultural and spiritual death consequently. All India had been vulgarised and anglicised in its aesthetic notions by English education and influence. The velocity of these rapid, inevitable changes did leave no time for the growth of a sound thought and spiritual reflection. The result may strain, to a bursting point, the old Indian cultural and social system before India has had time to readjust her mental stand and outlook. In that event a rationalised and Western India, a brown ape of Europemight emerge from the chaos. But thanks to Sri Aurobindo’s forewarned efforts in his writings.
At this critical moment Sri Aurobindo warned that India must defend herself by reshaping her culture-forms to express more powerfully, intimately and perfectly her ancient ideal. Her aggression must lead the waves of the light liberated in triumphant self-expanding rounds all over the world. In this process of getting victory over other cultures an appearance of conflict must be admitted for a time. In spite of this conflict let us take account of all that we must inevitably receive from the West and consider how we can assimilate it to our own spirit and ideals. Let us see what founts of native power there are in ourselves from which we can draw deeper, more vital and fresher streams of life than from anything the West can offer. It is not enough to defend our culture against gigantic modern pressures. We should be courageous enough to admit the errors in the Hindu society. It is quite idle to pretend that everything in our past was entirely admirable. But our sense of the great past should be an inspiration to renewed and greater achievement.
A certain robust optimism and unflinching confidence in Sri Aurobindo could explain the declining and decadent Indian culture as only torpid, concealed and shakled but not altogether dead in its spirit. This decline was the ebb-movement of a creative spirit which can only be understood by seeing it in the full tide of its greatness. Nature effects her evolution through a rhythm of advance and relapse, day and night, waking and sleeping. Correspondingly human progress is much an adventure through the unknown, an unknown full of surprises and baffling obstacles often. But even in failure there is a preparation for success; our nights carry in them the secret of a dawn! If ancient spiritual greatness lost its power, there were new gains of spiritual emotion on the lower planes of consciousness that had been lacking before. Architecture, literature, painting and sculpture lost the grandeur, power and nobility; but evoked other powers and motives full of delicacy, vividness and grace. Thus the decline of our past culture may even be regarded as a waning and dying of old forms to make way not only for a new but a greater and more perfect creation. Sri Aurobindo argued that in the process of evolution, Indian and even European civilisations at their best have only been half achievements, infant dawns awaiting the mature sunlight of the future. But behind these imperfect cultural figures there are certain fundamental motives revealing our Svadharma and Svabhava.
What then was the true meaning of this ancient Indian culture as elicited by Sri Aurobindo? He unfolded the mine of this culture layer by layer so that we can recapture the essence of it. He held a mirror upto India’s scriptures, religion, literature and social, political and cultural history to reflect a comprehensive image of the tree of Indian culture. This image loomed large with its roots in the Vedic age, its rugged trunk of historical times and its branches and foliage responding readily to the life-giving rays of the rising sun of the unfolding present and carrying in its secret folds the flowers of the future. To have this efflorescent future we are to gauge our heritage aright to help it in putting forth new leaves of promise during the current dawns and to meet the noons of the future.
If true happiness lies in the finding of a natural harmony of spirit, mind and body, Hinduism has discovered the right key of this harmony. India’s central conception of the Eternal is the victory of the spirit over unconscious matter through repeated births until man is identified himself with the pure spiritual consciousness beyond mind. Her social system is built upon this conception; her philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to this end and her art including literature have the same upward look. It is her fidelity to this highest ideal that has made her people a nation apart in the world. Spirituality is not, the monopoly of India. It is a necessary part of human nature. Other nations have fallen away from it. Indiaalone, with whatever fall or decline, has remained faithful to the heart of this spiritual motive. Even in the midst of the rushing modern culture India alone has refused to give up her ideal. Affected she has been, but not yet overcome. Only her surface mind has been obliged to admit many western ideas. She seeks about already in her thought to give to these ideas an Indian spiritual turn. In the twentieth century the world was awakening at last both to the insufficiency of reason, science and technology and to the possibilities promised by the integral Indian view that made spirituality the bass of the whole music of existence.
A facet-by-facet study of Indian religion, spirituality, art, literature and polity in the light of the comparative criticism was nothing but the utmost importance in this context. These facets are the very foundations of Indian culture. There are the many reflections of a single fountainhead, the one spirit and the one inspiration which was the governing force of this culture. Hence Indian civilisation demanded a pervading religio-philosophic culture. But man does not arrive at that highest inner elevation. For this at first he needs lower supports and stages of ascent. So he asked for some scaffolding of dogma, worship, image or symbol on which he can stand while he builds up in him the temple of the spirit.
The manifestation of intuition is the aesthetic side of any culture. Likewise all Indian aesthetics is the intuitive vision of ancient India. Its art at its greatest tide is to disclose something of the Self, the infinite and the Divine through the finite symbols. In a word there is in all the Indian art an inspired harmony of conception, method and expression.
Right from the beginning of Vedas, Indian literature is the mental activity of so great a creative people. This fine quality commencing more than three thousand years ago is unique and the most undeniable witness to something extraordinarily sound and vital in the culture. The early mind of India in its youth is represented by the four supreme productions of her genius – the Vedas, the Upanishads and the two vast epics. The Veda is the spiritual and psychological seed of Indian culture and the Upanishads the true expression of the highest spiritual knowledge and experience. The pure literature of the period is exposed through the two great epics – Ramayana and Mahabharata. There was an equally opulent and richly coloured decline. But this decline is not to death, for it is followed by a certain rejuvenation as was shown by the extraordinary flourish of Bhartrihari, Kalidasa and others. With the exception of Kalidasa at this stage things are indeed seen vividly, but with the more outer eye or the imagination, observed by the intellect, reproduced by the sensuous imagination of the poet. Thus the intellect has become too critically observant to live things with the intuitive identity. This is the quality and also the malady of an over-developed intellectualism and it has always been the fore-runner of a decadence. Hence the last period showed a gradual decline. But there was splendour even of the decline and especially the continued vitality of religious, literary and artistic creation.
Indian polity explained by Sri Aurobindo is the evolutionary revelation in his usual manner. Aryan India at first seems to have been a natural constitution. After an evolutionary line of development the hereditary kingship was established. This monarchical institution may be an indispensable element of the Indian socio-political system. But after along consequent political change the immemorable Shakti has to recover her deepest self lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and form of her Dharma.
The cloudy sky of Indian culture is silver lined by Sri Aurobindo’s promising thought. India will be the leader in a new world phase. Aided by her cultural infiltration the new tendencies of the West can be spiritualised to emerge a hitherto unexpected human race. The spiritual and intellectual gulf between East and West if not filled up, will at least be bridged. There was already the influence of Gita and Upanishads on great intellects like Schopenhauer and Emerson. There are the farther goals towards which humanity is moving and the present is only a crude aspiration towards them. The aim of Indian culture was a lasting organisation that would minimise or even eliminate the principle of struggle.
Topic:-Sri Aurobindo’s views on Indian culture
Name:-Kailas Gohil
Roll No:-17
Class:-sem-1
Email Id:-kailasgohil1998@gmail.com
Introduction:-
Sri Aurobindo, the herald of India, is unique in interpreting Indian culture. He has distinctly advanced the thought of the age on the subject. The meaning of India’s cultural history is deepened and widened in the fluent ideas and thoughts imbued in his writings. Stung by the ignorant foreign criticisms against Indian culture, Sri Aurobindo has given a new scope to the hitherto unknown world of thought. He estimated Indian culture more as an advocate of the human trend towards spirituality and inner development as different and distinct from that towards materiality and external achievement. His approach was not merely the voice of an advocate of the East, but of one who, upholding the East, pleaded in the best interests of humanity itself, for an integral, synthesis of the East and the West. He loved the spiritual East; but equally admired the vital West. He believed that real fulfilment and perfection of man lay in the scientific development of a real evolutionary spirituality. The image of Indian culture is tarnished indeed in later times but not wholly invisible, nor wholly without its power of inspiration. Sri Aurobindo could see India’s reviving hour of a new dawn, the old force asserting itself once again in all its native strength to give the impulse of a great renaissance.
Sri Aurobindo gave us the panorama of India’s past cultural history in a stimulating and enlightening manner. It was really deplorable if such living ancient Indian culture in its declining condition was attacked by European modernism, was overpowered in the material-field and was betrayed by the indifference of her children. There was a stupendous rush of change coming over the whole world as a result of the recent scientific development. The whole world, including India, is about to be forced into the stress and travail of a swift transformation. Hence there was every danger that European nationalism and commercialism may put an end forever to the spiritual culture of India. The political westernisation was followed by a social turn of the same kind and brought a cultural and spiritual death consequently. All India had been vulgarised and anglicised in its aesthetic notions by English education and influence. The velocity of these rapid, inevitable changes did leave no time for the growth of a sound thought and spiritual reflection. The result may strain, to a bursting point, the old Indian cultural and social system before India has had time to readjust her mental stand and outlook. In that event a rationalised and Western India, a brown ape of Europemight emerge from the chaos. But thanks to Sri Aurobindo’s forewarned efforts in his writings.
At this critical moment Sri Aurobindo warned that India must defend herself by reshaping her culture-forms to express more powerfully, intimately and perfectly her ancient ideal. Her aggression must lead the waves of the light liberated in triumphant self-expanding rounds all over the world. In this process of getting victory over other cultures an appearance of conflict must be admitted for a time. In spite of this conflict let us take account of all that we must inevitably receive from the West and consider how we can assimilate it to our own spirit and ideals. Let us see what founts of native power there are in ourselves from which we can draw deeper, more vital and fresher streams of life than from anything the West can offer. It is not enough to defend our culture against gigantic modern pressures. We should be courageous enough to admit the errors in the Hindu society. It is quite idle to pretend that everything in our past was entirely admirable. But our sense of the great past should be an inspiration to renewed and greater achievement.
A certain robust optimism and unflinching confidence in Sri Aurobindo could explain the declining and decadent Indian culture as only torpid, concealed and shakled but not altogether dead in its spirit. This decline was the ebb-movement of a creative spirit which can only be understood by seeing it in the full tide of its greatness. Nature effects her evolution through a rhythm of advance and relapse, day and night, waking and sleeping. Correspondingly human progress is much an adventure through the unknown, an unknown full of surprises and baffling obstacles often. But even in failure there is a preparation for success; our nights carry in them the secret of a dawn! If ancient spiritual greatness lost its power, there were new gains of spiritual emotion on the lower planes of consciousness that had been lacking before. Architecture, literature, painting and sculpture lost the grandeur, power and nobility; but evoked other powers and motives full of delicacy, vividness and grace. Thus the decline of our past culture may even be regarded as a waning and dying of old forms to make way not only for a new but a greater and more perfect creation. Sri Aurobindo argued that in the process of evolution, Indian and even European civilisations at their best have only been half achievements, infant dawns awaiting the mature sunlight of the future. But behind these imperfect cultural figures there are certain fundamental motives revealing our Svadharma and Svabhava.
What then was the true meaning of this ancient Indian culture as elicited by Sri Aurobindo? He unfolded the mine of this culture layer by layer so that we can recapture the essence of it. He held a mirror upto India’s scriptures, religion, literature and social, political and cultural history to reflect a comprehensive image of the tree of Indian culture. This image loomed large with its roots in the Vedic age, its rugged trunk of historical times and its branches and foliage responding readily to the life-giving rays of the rising sun of the unfolding present and carrying in its secret folds the flowers of the future. To have this efflorescent future we are to gauge our heritage aright to help it in putting forth new leaves of promise during the current dawns and to meet the noons of the future.
If true happiness lies in the finding of a natural harmony of spirit, mind and body, Hinduism has discovered the right key of this harmony. India’s central conception of the Eternal is the victory of the spirit over unconscious matter through repeated births until man is identified himself with the pure spiritual consciousness beyond mind. Her social system is built upon this conception; her philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to this end and her art including literature have the same upward look. It is her fidelity to this highest ideal that has made her people a nation apart in the world. Spirituality is not, the monopoly of India. It is a necessary part of human nature. Other nations have fallen away from it. Indiaalone, with whatever fall or decline, has remained faithful to the heart of this spiritual motive. Even in the midst of the rushing modern culture India alone has refused to give up her ideal. Affected she has been, but not yet overcome. Only her surface mind has been obliged to admit many western ideas. She seeks about already in her thought to give to these ideas an Indian spiritual turn. In the twentieth century the world was awakening at last both to the insufficiency of reason, science and technology and to the possibilities promised by the integral Indian view that made spirituality the bass of the whole music of existence.
A facet-by-facet study of Indian religion, spirituality, art, literature and polity in the light of the comparative criticism was nothing but the utmost importance in this context. These facets are the very foundations of Indian culture. There are the many reflections of a single fountainhead, the one spirit and the one inspiration which was the governing force of this culture. Hence Indian civilisation demanded a pervading religio-philosophic culture. But man does not arrive at that highest inner elevation. For this at first he needs lower supports and stages of ascent. So he asked for some scaffolding of dogma, worship, image or symbol on which he can stand while he builds up in him the temple of the spirit.
The manifestation of intuition is the aesthetic side of any culture. Likewise all Indian aesthetics is the intuitive vision of ancient India. Its art at its greatest tide is to disclose something of the Self, the infinite and the Divine through the finite symbols. In a word there is in all the Indian art an inspired harmony of conception, method and expression.
Right from the beginning of Vedas, Indian literature is the mental activity of so great a creative people. This fine quality commencing more than three thousand years ago is unique and the most undeniable witness to something extraordinarily sound and vital in the culture. The early mind of India in its youth is represented by the four supreme productions of her genius – the Vedas, the Upanishads and the two vast epics. The Veda is the spiritual and psychological seed of Indian culture and the Upanishads the true expression of the highest spiritual knowledge and experience. The pure literature of the period is exposed through the two great epics – Ramayana and Mahabharata. There was an equally opulent and richly coloured decline. But this decline is not to death, for it is followed by a certain rejuvenation as was shown by the extraordinary flourish of Bhartrihari, Kalidasa and others. With the exception of Kalidasa at this stage things are indeed seen vividly, but with the more outer eye or the imagination, observed by the intellect, reproduced by the sensuous imagination of the poet. Thus the intellect has become too critically observant to live things with the intuitive identity. This is the quality and also the malady of an over-developed intellectualism and it has always been the fore-runner of a decadence. Hence the last period showed a gradual decline. But there was splendour even of the decline and especially the continued vitality of religious, literary and artistic creation.
Indian polity explained by Sri Aurobindo is the evolutionary revelation in his usual manner. Aryan India at first seems to have been a natural constitution. After an evolutionary line of development the hereditary kingship was established. This monarchical institution may be an indispensable element of the Indian socio-political system. But after along consequent political change the immemorable Shakti has to recover her deepest self lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and form of her Dharma.
The cloudy sky of Indian culture is silver lined by Sri Aurobindo’s promising thought. India will be the leader in a new world phase. Aided by her cultural infiltration the new tendencies of the West can be spiritualised to emerge a hitherto unexpected human race. The spiritual and intellectual gulf between East and West if not filled up, will at least be bridged. There was already the influence of Gita and Upanishads on great intellects like Schopenhauer and Emerson. There are the farther goals towards which humanity is moving and the present is only a crude aspiration towards them. The aim of Indian culture was a lasting organisation that would minimise or even eliminate the principle of struggle.
No comments:
Post a Comment