Indo-Aryan Thought and Culture, and Their Bearing, on Present Day Problems in India, an Argument from the Standpoint of a Native of That Country (Classic Reprint)

The aim of this study is not so much to bring to Hght new data as to interpret some commonplace facts from the history of I ndo-A ryan culture, the full significance of which is not, in my judgment, properly appreciated nor made use of in dealing with the present day problems of I ndia. The cause of some of India smost acute economic and political problems is to be found in the unique I ndo-A ryan mental evolution, which has crystalized into an almost fixed attitude of the Indian social mind, and which supports some of her deep-rooted institutions. These institutions were formed long before foreigners exploited the country, and to the tyranny of these institutions the population still cheierfully submits, almost unconsciously, I maintain, in spite of the new spirit which is doing so much today for the regeneration of the country. What I mean by a fixed attitude of the Indian social mind and an unconscious homage to ruinous customs even on the part of the most educated amongst us, I shall try to make clear in the course of this study. The lack of full appreciation of these simple facts has created, on the one hand, an unnecessary prejudice against an intelligent population, in consequence of which the British government has committed some serious administrative blunders. A failure, on the other hand, to reckon with these facts on the part of our own political and social leaders has led them into prisons or to the gallows. I cannot subscribe to the attitude of the haughty English civilian and the Western scholar who, with an incomplete knowledge of ethnology, maintain that the dark skinned races of India are degenerate products of a tropical clime, unfit for prosperous economic institutions and incapable of constitutional selfgovernment. Such an attitude is based upon the innate prejudice which the European has against the dark skinned races and tropical clime
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