Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Moreover, the new enthusiasm for the vernacular languages, the influence of extreme Hindu nationalists like B. G. Tilak (1859-1920) or anti-Westerners like M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948), led to a wholesale rejection of all that was best in British or in European culture. At the same time, those who sought power, advancement, or knowledge continued to learn English as the key to these ambitions. Unfortunately, these semi-westernized Indians neglected much of the practical side of the European way of life and tended to be intellectualist and doctrinaire and to despise practical learning and physical labor. They lived, as we have said, in a middle world which was neither Indian nor Western, spoiled for the Indian way of life, but often unable to find a position in Indian society which would allow them to live their own version of a Western way of life. At the university they studied literature, law, and political science, all subjects which emphasized verbal accomplishments. Since India did not provide sufficient jobs for such accomplishments, there was a great deal of “academic unemployment,” with resulting discontent and growing radicalism. The career of Gandhi was a result of the efforts of one man to avoid this problem by fusing certain elements of Western teaching with a purified Hinduism to create a nationalist Indian way of life on a basically moral foundation.

It is obvious that one of the chief effects of British educational policy has been to increase the social tensions within India and to give them a political orientation. This change is usually called the “rise of Indian nationalism,” but it is considerably more complex than this simple name might imply. It began to rise about 1890, possibly under the influence of the misfortunes at the end of the century, grew steadily until it reached the crisis stage after 1917, and finally emerged in the long-drawn crisis of 1930-1947.

India’s outlook was fundamentally religious, just as the British outlook was fundamentally political. The average Indian derived from his religious outlook a profound conviction that the material world and physical comfort were irrelevant and unimportant in contrast with such spiritual matters as the proper preparation for the life to come after the body’s death. From his English education the average Indian student derived the conviction that liberty and self-government were the highest goods of life and must be sought by such resistance to authority as had been shown in the Magna Carta, the opposition to Charles I, the “Glorious Revolution” of 1689, the writings of John Locke and of John Stuart Mill, and the general resistance to public authority found in nineteenth century liberalism and laissez-faire. These two points of view tended to merge in the minds of Indian intellectuals into a point of view in which it seemed that English political ideals should be sought by Indian methods of religious fervor, self-sacrifice, and contempt for material welfare or physical comforts. As a result, political and social tensions were acerbated between British and Indians, between Westernizers and Nationalists, between Hindus and Muslims, between Brahmins and lower castes, and between caste members and outcastes.

In the early part of the nineteenth century there had been a revival of interest in Indian languages and literatures. This revival soon revealed that many Hindu ideas and practices had no real support in the earliest evidence. Since these later innovations included some of the most objectionable features of Hindu life, such as suttee, child marriage, female inferiority, image worship, and extreme polytheism, a movement began that sought to free Hinduism from these extraneous elements and to restore it to its earlier “purity” by emphasizing ethics, monotheism, and an abstract idea of deity. This tendency was reinforced by the influence of Christianity and of Islam, so that the revived Hinduism was really a synthesis of these three religions. As a consequence of these influences, the old, and basic, Hindu idea of Karma was played down. This idea maintained that each individual soul reappeared again and again, throughout eternity, in a different physical form and in a different social status, each difference being a reward or punishment for the soul’s conduct at its previous appearance. There was no real hope for escape from this cycle, except by a gradual improvement through a long series of successive appearances to the ultimate goal of complete obliteration of personality (Nirvana) by ultimate mergence in the soul of the universe (Brahma), This release (moksha) from the endless cycle of existence could be achieved only by the suppression of all desire, of all individuality, and of all will to live.

The belief in Karma was the key to Hindu ideology and to Hindu society, explaining not only the emphasis on fate and resignation to fate, the idea that man was a part of nature and brother to the beasts, the submergence of individuality and the lack of personal ambition, but also specific social institutions such as caste or even suttee. How could castes be ended if these are God-given gradations for the rewards or punishments earned in an earlier existence? How could suttee be ended if a wife is a wife through all eternity, and must pass from one life to another when her husband does?

The influence of Christianity and of Islam, of Western ideas and of British education, in changing Hindu society was largely a consequence of their ability to reduce the average Hindu’s faith in Karma. One of the earliest figures in this growing synthesis of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam was Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), founder of the Brahma Samaj Society in 1828. Another was Keshab Chandra Sen (1841-1884), who hoped to unite Asia and Europe into a common culture on the basis of a synthesis of the common elements of these three religions. There were many reformers of this type. Their most notable feature was that they were universalist rather than nationalist and were Westernizers in their basic inclinations. About 1870 a change began to appear, perhaps from the influence of Rama Krishna (1834-1886) and his disciple Swami Vivekananda (1862-1902), founder of Vedanta. This new tendency emphasized India’s spiritual power as a higher value than the material power of the West. It advocated simplicity, asceticism, self-sacrifice, cooperation, and India’s mission to spread these virtues to the world. One of the disciples of this movement was Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), founder of the Servants of India Society (1905). This was a small band of devoted persons who took vows of poverty and obedience, to regard all Indians as brothers irrespective of caste or creed, and to engage in no personal quarrels. The members scattered among the most diverse groups of India to teach, to weld India into a single spiritual unit, and to seek social reform.

In time these movements became increasingly nationalistic and anti-Western, tending to defend orthodox Hinduism rather than to purify it and to oppose Westerners rather than to copy them. This tendency culminated in Bal Gangathar Tilak (1859-1920), a Marathi journalist of Poona, who started his career in mathematics and law but slowly developed a passionate love for Hinduism, even in its most degrading details, and insisted that it must be defended against outsiders, even with violence. He was not opposed to reforms which appeared as spontaneous developments of Indian sentiment, but he was violently opposed to any attempt to legislate reform from above or to bring in foreign influences from European or Christian sources. He first became a political figure in 1891 when he vigorously opposed a government bill which would have curtailed child marriage by fixing the age of consent for girls at twelve years. By 1897 he was using his paper to incite to murder and riots against government officials.