We often hear that without a properly equipped laboratory, higher
research in this country is an absolute impossibility. But while there
is a good deal in this, it is not by any means the whole truth. If it
were all, then from these countries where millions have been spent on
costly laboratories, we should have had daily accounts of new
discoveries. Such news we do not hear. It is true that here we suffer
from many difficulties, but how does it help us, to envy the good
fortune of others? Rise from your depression! Cast off your weakness!
Let us think, "In whatever condition we are placed, that is the true
starting-point for us." India is our working-place, and all our duties
are to be accomplished here, and nowhere else. Only he who has lost his
manhood need repine.
In carrying out research, there are other difficulties, besides the
want of well-equipped laboratories. We often forget that the real
laboratory is one's own mind. The room and the instruments only
externalise that. Every experiment has first to be carried out in that
inner region. To keep the mental vision clear, great struggles have to
be undergone. For its clearness is lost, only too easily. The greatest
wealth of external appliances is of no avail, where there is not a
concentrated pursuit, utterly detached from personal gain. Those whose
minds rush hither and thither, those who hunger for public applause
instead of truth itself, by them the quest is not won. To those on the
other hand, who do long for knowledge itself, the want of favourable
conditions does not seem the principle obstacle.
In the first place, we have to realise that knowledge for the sake of
knowledge is our aim, and that the world's common standard of utility
have no place in it. The enquirer must follow where he is led, holding
the quiet faith that things which appear to-day to be of no use, may be
of the highest interest to-morrow. No height can be climbed, without the
hewing of many an unremembered step! It is necessary, then, that the
enquirer and his disciples should work on ceaselessly, undeterred by
years of failure, and undistracted by the thunder of public applause. We
may one day come to realise that India in the past has shared her
knowledge with the world, and we may ask ourselves, is that destiny now
ended for us? Are we of to-day to be debtors only? Perhaps when we have
once felt this, a new Nalanda may arise.