WHAT IS TRUE CIVILIZATION?
READER: You have denounced railways, lawyers and doctors. I can see that
you will discard all machinery. What, then, is civilization?
EDITOR: The answer to that question is not difficult. I believe that the
civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing
can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece shared the
same fate, the might of the Pharaohs was broken, Japan has become
westernised, of China nothing can be said, but India is still, somehow
or other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe learn their
lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome, which exist no
longer in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the
Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome.
Such is their pitiable condition. In the midst of all this, India
remains immovable, and that is her glory. It is a charge against India
that her people are so uncivilised, ignorant and stolid, that it is not
possible to induce them to adopt any changes. It is a charge really
against our merit. What we have tested and found true on the anvil of
experience, we dare not change. Many thrust their advice upon India, and
she remains steady. This is her beauty; it is the sheet-anchor of our
hope.
Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of
duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible
terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our
passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for
civilization means "good conduct."
If this definition be correct, then India, as so many writers have
shown, has nothing to learn from anybody else, and this is as it should
be. We notice that mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it
wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions,
the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to
our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition.
A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he
is poor. The rich are often seem to be unhappy, the poor to be happy.
Millions will always remain poor. Observing all this, our ancestors
dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same
kind of plough as it existed thousands of years ago. We have retained
the same kind of cottages that we had in former times, and our
indigenous education remains the same as before. We have had no system
of life-corroding competition. Each followed his own occupation or
trade, and charged a regulation wage. It was not that we did not know
how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our
hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral
fibre. They, therefore, after due deliberation, decided that we should
only do what we could with our hands and feet. They saw that our real
happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet.
They further reasoned that large cities were a snare and a useless
encumbrance, and that people would not be happy in them, that there
would be gangs of thieves and robbers, prostitution and vice flourishing
in them, and that poor men would be robbed by rich men. They were,
therefore, satisfied with small villages. They saw that kings and their
swords were inferior to the sword of ethics, and they, therefore, held
the sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the Rishis and the Fakirs.
A nation with a constitution like this is fitter to teach others than to
learn from others. This nation had courts, lawyers and doctors, but they
were all within bounds. Everybody knew that these professions were not
particularly superior; moreover, these vakils and _vaids_ did not rob
people; they were considered people's dependents, not their masters.
Justice was tolerably fair. The ordinary rule was to avoid courts. There
were no touts to lure people into them. This evil, too, was noticeable
only in and around capitals. The common people lived independently, and
followed their agricultural occupation. They enjoyed true Home Rule.
And where this cursed modern civilization has not reached, India remains
as it was before. The inhabitants of that part of India will very
properly laugh at your new-fangled notions. The English do not rule over
them nor will you ever rule over them. Those whose name we speak we do
not know, nor do they know us. I would certainly advise you and those
like you who love the motherland to go into the interior that has yet
not been polluted by the railways, and to live there for six months; you
might then be patriotic and speak of Home Rule.
Now you see what I consider to be real civilization. Those who want to
change conditions such as I have described are enemies of the country
and are sinners.
READER: It would be all right if India were exactly as you have
described it; but it is also India where there are hundreds of
child-widows, where two-year-old babies are married, where
twelve-year-old girls are mothers and housewives, where women practise
polyandry, where the practice of Niyog obtains, where, in the name of
religion, girls dedicate themselves to prostitution, and where, in the
name of religion, sheep and goats are killed. Do you consider these also
symbols of the civilization that you have described?
EDITOR: You make a mistake. The defects that you have shown are defects.
Nobody mistakes them for ancient civilization. They remain in spite of
it. Attempts have always been made, and will be made, to remove them. We
may utilise the new spirit that is born in us for purging ourselves of
these evils. But what I have described to you as emblems of modern
civilization are accepted as such by its votaries. The Indian
civilization, as described by me, has been so described by its votaries.
In no part of the world, and under no civilization, have all men
attained perfection. The tendency of Indian civilization is to elevate
the moral being, that of the western civilization is to propagate
immorality. The latter is godless, the former is based on a belief in
God. So understanding and so believing, it behoves every lover of India
to cling to the old Indian civilization even as a child clings to its
mother's breast.