English Literature

The understanding of Indian art — be it sculpture, painting or dancing — presents certain difficulties. It is bound up with India's past. That past has been a great one, stretching over an immense expanse of time. During this period a great many events took place which have left their indelible impression on Indian culture and character. Many tribes and races such as the Aryans, Parthians, Greeks, Sakas, Kushanas, Huns, Turks and Mongols made this land their home. They brought with them their indigenous cultures and then merged with the races already here. This mingling of races and cultures and their absorption into what may be called the mainstream of Indian civilization proved to be a significant historical process rich with many possibilities. This mainstream, as is well known, is largely the product of the fusion of the great Dravidian and Aryan cultures. The beautiful rangoli designs drawn by Hindu women every morning on the thresholds of their homes, the variegated pat...

The cultural heritage of India lies in its recognition of sustaining an inner landscape of man which is the centre and the recognition that it expresses itself in an outer landscape of man comprising myriad petals of a lotus flower. Whenever, however, the vision may have come, it is clear that had this not been the guiding star of this country, it would not have been possible for it to have a staggering multiplicity of racial strands, languages, religions, philosophy systems, social structures and artistic expressions, all webbed together in one wholeness. The proverbial staggering multiplicity is held together as planets in a single astronomical orbit. Stated differently, all manifestations in time and space, varied and different, are the rainbow colours of a single white luminosity. Whoever came to this country, fell into this pattern. This unseen but real Indianness transformed all those who made India their home, whether they came as migrants or conquerors, plunderers or rule...

It is not an exaggeration to say that the persons and incidents portrayed in the great literature of a people influence national character no less potently than the actual heroes and events enshrined in its history. It may be claimed that the former play an even more important part in the formation of ideals, which give to character its impulse of growth. In the moving history of our land, from time immemorial great minds have been formed and nourished and touched to heroic deeds by the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In most Indian homes, children formerly learnt these immortal stories as they learnt their mother tongue at the mother's knee. And the sweetness and sorrows of Sita and Draupadi, the heroic fortitude of Rama and Arjuna and the loving fidelity of Lakshmana and Hanuman became the stuff of their young philosophy of life. The growing complexity of life has changed the simple pattern of early home life. Still, there are few in our lands who do not know the Ramayana ...

Hindu civilization will, we believe, retain its continuity. The Bhagavad Gita will not cease to inspire men of action, and the Upanishads men of thought. The charm and graciousness of the Indian way of life will continue, however much affected it may be by the labour- saving devices of the West People will still love the tales of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and of the loves of Dusyanta and Sakuntala and Pururavas and Urvasi. The quiet and gentle happiness which has at all times pervaded Indian life where oppression, disease and poverty have not overclouded it will surely not vanish before the more hectic ways of the West Much that was useless in ancient Indian culture has already perished. The extravagant and barbarous hecatombs of the Vedic age have long since been forgotten, though animal sacrifice continues in some sects. Widows have long ceased to be burnt on their husbands' pyres. Girls may not by law be married in childhood. In buses and trains all over...