Renascent Mexico

RENASCENT INDIA BY K. S. VENKATARAMANI SVETARANYA ASHRAMA MYLAPORE. MADRAS PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. Sometime ago I laid aside pretty dreams and fancies and began to think of the live problems of my Motherland. While writing Renascent India, The Next Rung came bubbling up and covered the churn-pot with a thin layer of philosophic cream. Renascent India and The Next Rung had a common birth and I left the twins in the same cradle putting but a thin screen of feather-weight paper between. Now the tinfe has come for them to come out of the cradle and to go apart each on his own infant way in this crowded world. I have used the occasion to bless the elder with a parting gift, to dress him now in a few more clothes, all truly home-spun. Kind reader, pray give him a nod of wel come and shelter for an hour if you happen to cross his infant way in the busy thoroughfares of men. 12th November 1929 O Mylapore, Madras. K S CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. I. In the Throes of a Rebirth . . 1 IL Whirlwind or Rain .. 6 III. The Renascent Urge . . 12 IV. Creative Unrest . . 18 V. The Twin Causes .. 25 VI. Federal or Unitary .. 29 VII. Indian States and British India . . 37 VIII. The Indian Village . . 43 IX. Some Problems of Swaraj India. 58 X. The Higher Problem . . 68 XI. The Real Paradise . . 78 XII. Swaraj Constitution for India . . 83 XIII. A New Order .. 92 XIV. A Programme of Rural Recon struction . . 95 XV. Bank the Waters . , 99 CHAPTER I. IN THE THROES OF A REBIRTH THE Great War has plunged the world in the throes of a rebirth. There exists now throughout the East and West a definite un rest very intense and widespread. No for ward movement has ever been so fully charged as now with the longing to realise some of the ideals of the race, as old as Buddha himself. This unrest preludes a basic change of values It is not anarchical in purpose, unless human blindness makes it so. It is a leavening fer ment. It is creative. It is the restlessness and activity of a growing spirit which seeks to widen its consciousness and emerge into a higher and fuller mode of life. It is a rena scent force fecund with a creative and motherly joy seeking for the peace and beauty of life in a new Religion and Philosophy of perma nent values. The cream of twenty-five cen turies of human endeavour waits to be gathered of this renascent churn. Science has been the changing factor of the century, the disturber of the molecules, precipi tating a higher, more varied and perfect crystal 2 KENASCBNT INDIA line form. The rapid mastery which Scfence has given man over externals has left his inner nature more lonely and disconsolate, more divorced from Mother Earth and Her sweet ness and realities. But material progress is only the scaffolding for the raising of a beauti ful structure for the soul. So we are now yearning for a higher unity achieved not through political integration nor by a new kind of social co-operation nor out of a com mon cult of beauty, art and literature, but of a philosophic enquiry into the Oneness of all Life and the abiding verities of its love and sacredness in all its forms and relationship. The quest is not merely for a safe anchorage but for steady progress in all conditions of the storm-tossed sea of life. The search is for a base of action on impersonal grounds, for a Code of Sanatana DJiarwa drawn from perma nent standards of value, which will help us to realise peacefully even in daily life both social happiness and Infinite Bliss. The world is now surfeit of action for actions own sake, weary of mere strenuousness which refines and improves nobody. It is indeed stre nuous action for over one hundred years that has upset the social order specially on its econo mic side. Therefore the economic causes in duced by the marvellous progress of Science are the chief driving forces of this fresh un IN THE THROES OF A EEBIRTH 3 settlement...