This world status can only be won by the intrinsic value of the great
contributions to be made by its own Indian scholars for the advancement
of the world's knowledge. To be organic and vital our new University
must stand primarily for self-expression, and for winning for India a
place she has lost. Knowledge is never the exclusive possession of any
particular race, nor does it recognise geographical limitations. The
whole world is interdependent, and a constant stream of thought had been
carried out throughout the ages enriching the common heritage of
mankind. Although science was neither of the East nor of the West but
international, certain aspects of it gained richness by reason of their
place of origin.
In any case if India need to make any contribution to the world it
should be as great as the hope they cherished for her. Let them not
talk of the glories of the past till they have secured for her, her true
place among the intellectual nations of the world. Let them find out how
she had fallen from her high estate and ruthlessly put an end to all
that self satisfied and little-minded vanity which had been the cause of
their fatal weakness. What was it that stood in her way? Was her mind
paralysed by weak superstitious fears? That was not so; for her great
thinkers, the Rishis, always stood for freedom of intellect and while
Galileo was imprisoned and Bruno burnt for their opinions, they boldly
declared that even the Vedas were to be rejected if they did not conform
to truth. They urged in favour of persistent efforts for the discovery
of physical causes yet unknown, since to them nothing was extra-physical
but merely mysterious because of a hitherto unascertained cause. Were
they afraid that the march of knowledge was dangerous to true faith? Not
so. For their knowledge and religion were one.
These are the hopes that animate us. For there is something in the Hindu
culture which is possessed of extraordinary latent strength by which it
has resisted the ravages of time and the destructive changes which have
swept over the earth. And indeed a capacity to endure through infinite
transformations must be innate in that mighty civilisation which has
seen the intellectual culture of the Nile Valley, of Assyria and of
Babylon war and wane and disappear and which to-day gazes on the future
with the same invincible faith with which it met the past.
--_Modern Review, vol. XIX, pages_ 277, 278.