Preface

This is my translation project for "संस्कृति के चार अध्याय" (Four Chapters of Indian Culture) by Dr. Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

Preface

My friend and colleague Dinkar has chosen a topic for this book which is very entertaining and interesting. This is a topic which has been close to my heart and whatever I have written, this topic has made a deep imprint on it effortlessly. I frequently ask myself what is India? What are its elements and what is its gist? What were the forces which led to India’s creation and what is their relationship with tendencies that affect the past and present world. This is a huge topic and this includes all human activities beyond the borders of India. And I feel that it is impossible for an individual to do justice to this huge topic on his own. Still, we can attempt to understand some aspects of this culture. At least, it is possible that we tried to understand India, although, if we do not keep the whole world in front of us, our knowledge of India will be incomplete.

What is Culture? When we flip through the dictionary we find many definitions. A well known author has said,”Whatever magnificent topics have been learned or said in this world, familiarizing oneself with that is Culture.” In another definition, it is stated that “Culture is training, strengthening, or development  of body and mind or is the state such efforts create.” This is “purification or refinement of mind, conduct, interests.” This is “glowing of light from within a civilization.” In this sense, Culture is something that is fundamental and international. Still, Culture also as national aspects. And there is no doubt that many nations have developed their distinctive personality and attributes within themselves.

Where is India on this map? Some people have mentioned Hindu Culture, Muslim Culture, and Christian Culture. I do not understand these terms, but it is true that the races and nations have been affected by massive religious revolutions. When I look at India, as Dinkar has emphasized, I find that the character of Indian culture is composite and it has developed gradually. On one hand the root of culture extends to great civilizations of  Mohenjodaro and Dravids. On the other hand, there is deep impact of Aryan civilization who came to India from Central Asia. Later this culture had repeated deep impact as the result of  people coming from the North-West and from those who came through the seat route from the west. Thus, our national culture grew and formed gradually. Our culture had the amazing ability of assimilating and harmonizing new influences. As long this ability survived, our culture thrived and remained dynamic. But later this dynamism was gone and because of which our culture became immobile and all its aspects became emaciated. In the entire history of India, we find two opposing and competing forces in action. There is one force which tries to assimilate and harmonize external influences and second, which encourages separation; which encourages us to grow apart from each other. We are still battling this tendency in different contexts. Today also there are many powerful forces, which are not only political, but also for cultural unity. But there are also forces which bring division into our lives and encourage separation among men.

Thus, today the question in front of us is not only a matter of principle, but it also pertains to all activities of our lives and our future depends upon their appropriate resolution and solution. Normally, thinkers provide the leadership in solving such problems. But they did not help us. There are many who do not understand this problem at all! Rest has accepted the defeat. They are suffering from the sense of failure and danger of their spirit and they do not know in which direction they should steer their lives.

Many thinkers have turned toward Marxism and its branches and there is no doubt that Marxism has presented us with an analysis of historical developments that has helped us understand our problems.  But, at the end, that too became a narrow school of opinion and whatever be its importance as a philosophy of economic activity, it too failed to solve our fundamental problems. This is certainly true that economic progress is fundamental for life and development, but life does not end there. In history, we see two types of principles at work. One is about continuity and another is about change. Both the principles may appear to be opposite, but they are not. There is the element of change in continuity. In the same way change keeps the character of continuity in itself. In reality, we pay attention to only those changes that explode in front of us because of violent revolutions or earthquakes. But, every geologist knows about the slow pace of the most massive changes on the surface of the earth and the changes because of earthquakes are considered very insignificant compared to them. In the same manner revolutions too are mere manifestations of a long process of slow changes and subtle transformations. Seeing them like this, change itself is a process that has been continuously going on in the name of tradition. A tradition that appears to be immutable from the outside, unless it became a victim of immobility and death, changes slowly.

There are times in history when the process of change accelerates and its speed becomes visible. But, normally we do not see this speed of change from the outside. The external appearance of change is mostly that of an immutable object. When a human race is in a state of stillness, its strength saps by the day and its weakness grows. As a result, their creative abilities and tendencies wither. And, often, they become slaves in the political sense also.

It is possible that the most significant development of Indian culture has happened as a result of the meeting of Aryans and those who were there before the Aryans, mainly Dravidians. As a result of this meeting, mixing, and assimilation a grand culture came into being which is lead by our ancient language Sanskrit. Sanskrit and ancient Pahlavi, both the languages were born of the same mother in Central Asia, but after reaching India Sanskrit became the national language. Here both the north and the south contributed to the development of the language. In reality, later the people from the south contributed more to the development of this language. Sanskrit not only became the symbol of our thoughts and religion, but also the cultural unity of India took shape in this language. From the time of the Buddha till now, Sanskrit was never the spoken language of the common people. Still, it has continued to have great impact on the entire land of India. Some other influences also reached India and they also provided new directions to the thoughts and expressions.  

After a long time in history, the geography gave India a shape which made it into a country whose doors were closed from the outside. Being surrounded by the seas and the grand Himalayas, it was not easy to approach this country.  For thousand of years, people came to India in large groups, but, after the arrival of the Aryans that never happened when people from the outside came in large numbers. Exactly opposite to this across Asia and Europe there were massive arrival and displacement of humans; once race would chase another race and establish itself and, thus, there were large changes in the composition of the population. In India, after the arrival of the Aryans, whatever new arrivals happened, their influence was limited. There was some impact, but there was no change in the basic composition of the population.  But, still, we need to remember that there have been such transformations in India. Scythians and Huns and races that came after they joined the Rajput caste and claimed to be the descendents of the ancient Indians. Because of our long separation from the outside world Indian culture and nature became distinct from others. We became such a race that was always entangled in it. Certain rituals came into being among us that the outside world, neither knows nor able to understand. Innumerable faces of the caste systems in India are an example of this strange character of India. People from no other country know about Untouchability and can fathom as to why should there be any objection to eating with or marrying a person because of caste. Because of this our perspective became parochial. Even today Indians find it hard to mix with other people.  Not only that, when Indians venture outside India, even there people of one caste wish to remain separated from those of other caste. A lot of them take these prejudices to be self evident and fail to understand how people from other countries find them strange and hurtful.

In India both the sentiments grew side by side. On one hand, we claimed to be more generous and tolerant in thoughts and principles. On the other hand, our social customs became very parochial. This split personality, the conflict between principles and conduct, is still with us and we are still struggling against those. How strange it is that we wish to sweep under the carpet the narrowness of our views, our poor habits, and customs by claiming that our ancestors were great people and we have inherited great philosophies? But there is a great discrepancy between the wisdom we inherited from our ancestors and our conduct and as long as we do not take care of this anomaly, our personality will remain split.

When life was relatively still, this conflict between principles and conduct was not so obvious. But as the pace of political and economic change has picked up, this dichotomy is becoming more and more glaring. Today we are standing on the doorsteps of the Atomic Age. The forces of this age are so powerful that we will have to deal with our internal conflicts. If we fail to deal with this, this failure will be a defeat for the whole nation and we will also lose those characteristics that we have taken pride in.

As we face big political and economic challenges, we should deal with the spiritual danger of India. India is going through an Industrial Revolution and we are changing in a myriad of ways. Social changes are mandatory consequences of political and industrial changes; otherwise, there will be no harmony in our personal or national life. It is not possible that we have political and industrial progress, but we take it for granted that we do not need to bring any change to our society. If we do not transform our society, we will not be able to bear the load wrought of the political and economical challenges and we will collapse.

The picture of India we find from BC era is very different from the one afterward. Indians in the BC era were very playful, very spirited, very courageous and full of enthusiasm for life and used to take their message to far off places abroad. In the area of thoughts they reached pinnacles and tore the sky. They created a glorious language and they displayed the highest level of creativity in the area of the arts.  In those days, life was neither bound by fences nor lacking of dynamism. At that time there were waves of cultural enthusiasm all across India. At that time, people of  Southern India went to Southeast Asia and set up colonies. Bodhidharma, who carried Buddhist thought to China, was from the South . In the expression of this courageous life the North and the South were united and fed off each other.

After that, the period of the last centuries comes and the process of downfall starts. Artificial language constructs and decorations of establishment are testimony to that downfall.  Here our thoughts become a mere extension of our old musings and our creativity attenuates by the day. We get scared of the courage of body and mind and the caste system gets more entrenched and all the doors of the society close around us. Though we continue to tell tall tales, our conduct gets divorced from our thinking.

Compared to our conduct, our thoughts and tales are so lofty that it is amusing. We talk of peace and nonviolence, but our actions tell a different story. We brag about the principles of tolerance, but our wish is that everybody should share our opinion and whenever somebody disagrees, we cannot tolerate it. We proclaim that we have equanimity and that staying detached from our actions is our ideal, but our activities remain at a much inferior level and our increasing indiscipline is dragging us down at both as individuals as well as a society.  

When people of the West came from across the ocean, the doors of India opened in a special direction. Modern culture entered this country without much fanfare. New expressions and thoughts overwhelmed us and our intellectuals started aping English intellectuals. This psychological revolution was in a way salutary for opening the windows to the outside because, as a result, we began to understand the outside world a little better. But a drawback was that these intellectuals became isolated from the masses because the masses were unaware of the new wave. The old thread of traditional Indian thought was interrupted. Still, some people remained stuck in the system which had no development, no desire for creativity, and no congruence with the new development.

The belief that grew in India because of the Western thoughts is still shaking up India. As a consequence we don't have the old ideals nor the new; we are drifting aimlessly. The new generation has no yardstick, or anything to apply restraint to its thinking or actions.

These are perilous times. If it is not stopped and there is no rectification, there may be disastrous consequences. We are passing through tumultuous times in the area of economics, politics, and society. It is possible that there will be mandatory consequences. But in the Atomic age, no nation will get too many opportunities to make amends.  And missing the opportunity in this age may be catastrophic.

It is possible that we may not fully understand the powerful forces working in this world, but we need to understand what is India and how this nation has developed its inclusive character; what are the different aspects of its personality and where its strong unity is hidden. No ethnic group in India can claim that it has the monopoly of the entire Indian psyche and thoughts. Whatever is there in India, every part of India has contributed to its creation. If we fail to understand this fundamental aspect, we will be unable to understand India. And if we are unable to understand India then our intentions, thoughts, and actions, all of them will remain incomplete and we will not be able to serve India in a meaningful and effective manner.

My opinion is that Dinkar’s book will be able to help understand it to some extent. Therefore, I commend it and hope that many people will benefit from reading this book.

--Jawaharlal Nehru

30th September, 1955