Gee’s Reviews > The Soul of India > Status Update

party politics have declined on the national level while becoming more active on the regional and state level, where they express themselves in the vernaculars. The preservation of India’s unity through the medium of the English language can only be maintained at the expense of representative political institutions at the centre

Marxism had failed to make a profound impact on the intelligentsia for basic reasons which are rooted in the psychology and philosophical dispositions of the Indians: dogmatism, to start with, has always repelled the Indians – whether Christian or Marxist–Leninist. Aware of the insubstantiality of all shapes and forms, of the relativity that attaches to all theories and doctrines and philosophic systems

a bird’s-eye view of the Anglo-Indian relationship before and after the turn of our century, the psychological evolution becomes plain: it was based on an instinctive feeling of the Indians that Britain’s great days were over. This psychological evolution that took place all over the Orient and affected, in fact, all the colonizing Westerners and the colonized Easterners, gave the final impetus to Indian nationalism

Their world-outlook, whatever it may be, is an all-inclusive one, a coherent picture of which no part is detachable without entailing the destruction of the rest. We tend to see science, philosophy, religion, ethics, literature and every other segment of human culture as separate, autonomous compartments independent of one another

Indians and Germans both developed a caste system, a rigid structure which classifies and also preserves the originalities and specific characters of hereditary functions and callings. Fettered externally, having mechanized the objective life, the inner personality is free to pursue its own subjective quest and attempt in utter freedom to realize its profound aspirations.

the status of 600-odd Indian states was frozen for almost a century. And so it was that Indian Maharajahs and Nawābs, Malay and Indonesian Sultāns, Indochinese kings and emperors, all continued in odd corners of the colonial world to perpetuate a style of life and preserve a social structure that were becoming increasingly incongruous, in fact soon quite incompatible, with the requirements of the dawning age

Because trade and commerce had been the original incentives of European imperialism, the subsequent political and administrative commitments devolved on Europeans more by accident than design. The easiest way out of such administrative burdens was to foster indirect rule as far as possible, and since there was no real desire to Westernize the colonized Asians, their traditional way of life was preserved

what struck the Asians was the European’s far greater persistence and determination, the continuity of his effort – the history-conscious European was sliding along the time dimension as if it were a concrete substance, working on the future as if it were clay in his hands. Long-term aims, teamwork, the systematic build-up of knowledge, the steady consolidation of positions once acquired

Hinduism, as a world-outlook, gradually acquired certain characteristics that were absent before the advent of the Muslim invaders: hypocrisy and self-pity. The best Hindus forsook a life of action and sought refuge in mysticism

the ethos of a subjugated Hindu nationalism took shape: Hindus, for the most part, led double lives more or less unconnected with one another. They were at the service of any non-Hindu who was powerful enough to compel them, but never granted him their emotional allegiance: they acted as they were expected to, but there was no emotional commitment behind their actions: this was a perverted interpretation of the Bhaga