The Resurgent India, is dedicated to the integral resurgence of India so that it may assume its rightful place among the community of nations and, by its powerful example and spiritual influence, open for humanity the way leading to its supreme fulfillment. To assume its true position and to fulfil its true role, India must find back and manifest her true soul which, at present, seems to be completely covered up by an overwhelming commercialism which has arisen out of an onslaught on her of the Western spirit of a very shortsighted utilitarianism whose virus seems to have infected every fibre of her frame. Therefore, we shall notice current events – be they regional, national or international – only as they evidence, help, affect or resist the growth of our national life and the development of the soul of the nation. All political, economic, social and cultural problems shall be dealt with, primarily, from this standpoint, seeking first the spiritual roots and inner causes of all such problems and then proceeding to necessary measures and remedies. In a similar spirit we shall deal with all sources of our national strength – whatever collectivity they may manifest into and whatever source they may be drawing from – seeking to bring them home to the comprehension of all our people so as to make them dynamically applicable to all our life and creation.
At present, India is apparently going through a process where all the aspects of its life and values are increasingly coming under the sway of Western spirit and values. It is a great mistake to believe that our salvation can come by allowing ourselves to be even more completely dominated by Western utilitarian spirit and thereby instituting an even more vigorous pursuit of the same goals that drive the modern Western societies. We believe that India is destined to work out her own independent life and civilization, to stand in the forefront of the world and solve the political, social, economic and moral problems besetting modern societies which the West has failed to solve, yet the pursuit of whose solution and the feverish passage in that pursuit from experiment to experiment, from failure to failure she calls her progress. A successful pursuit of great ends requires great means and the strength to discover and use such means can only be found by seeking the eternal source of strength within ourselves – a task which India alone is equipped to perform in spite of its present precarious condition.
We have been seeking to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must get back and seek the springs of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our great past and recover it for the purpose of a greater future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and mould everything to the law of “O our Mother, O Soul of India, Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other masters and denied thee …. Guide us so that we may be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all the peoples.”
India’s eternal spirit before we can safely take a leap towards the future. It will therefore be the object of The Resurgent India to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to our nation, ‘This is our Dharma’. We shall review the Western civilisation and its values and institutions from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge in order to have our people throw off from themselves the dominating stamp of this alien culture. What we need to take from West we should take as Indians. All this must not be taken to mean that we can recover our true dharma either by creating organisation for the perpetuation of the mere dress and body of Hinduism or by multiplying new sects
– of which, at any rate, there seems to be no dearth at present – limited within the inferior ideas of religion imported from the West. In spite of the present wave of religious intolerance and terrorism with which the present century seems to have begun, a deeper perception can clearly see the world moving through an indispensable interregnum of free thought and materialism to a new synthesis of all religious thought and experience, to a world-life free from all intolerance (religious or otherwise), yet full of faith and fervour and capable of accepting all forms of religious and spiritual experience without denying any because it would have discovered the One behind all the human masks. The religion which embraces Science and Faith, Theism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the world-spirit is moving. “In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, – that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced turning it to the soul’s uses, in this Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion.
This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita, Upanishad, Darshana, Purana, Tantra, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling.”
The time has come when humanity has to take a further great and decisive step and rise out of a predominantly material existence into a higher, deeper and wider existence leading ultimately to the establishment of the divine life on earth on the basis of a higher and larger consciousness which will lead to the solution of all the problems which have perplexed and vexed man ever since he began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society.
India is the only country in the world which has always lived for the Divine and never for itself alone. Therefore, our ideal and aim is to work, in whatever way we can, for the building up of an India which will play a decisive role in leading humanity to its divine destiny. We wish this paper to be in the nature of a clarion call to all the people, the world over, who share our vision and will to join their hearts, minds and souls to ours in adherence to the following call of the Mother: “Let us all work for the Greatness of India.”