Courage to protest

“English rule,” wrote Sri Aurobindo, “. . . undermined and deprived of living strength all the pre-existing centres and instruments of Indian social life and by a sort of unperceived rodent process left it only a rotting shell without expansive power or any better defensive force than the force of inertia.”[7]

Thus have Indians come to surrender to this new and worse monster all sense of initiative, all courage to protest, their proverbial tolerance stretched to the extreme, their no less proverbial lethargy remaining their sole refuge. Thus have the many “good, honest, capable, cultured people” whom I mentioned at the beginning come to shun Indian politics as the dirty field it has indeed become, a “goonda-raj”[8] in Sri Aurobindo’s words of 1935.

Is Indian Culture Obsolete ? Keynote address presented at the Vivekananda Jayanthi Lecture for Youth organized by the Bharateeya Vichara Kendram at Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) on 12 January 2000.---------Michael Danino Michel Danino's Homepage Other Authors Voice of Dharma.com Copyright © 2005. All rights reserved. posted by sandeep Monday, January 16, 2006@ 9:13 AM