INDIAN SPIRITUALITY’S ENCOUNTER WITH THE WEST
The Effect of British Colonialism on the Cultural Heritage
Before the modern era, Europe had already constructed an image of the mysterious land called the East. It was viewed as the home of great religious civilizations and the source of the high spiritual teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, British scholars Jones began to research the foundations of customary law in India, and in the process came upon great Sanskrit religious and philosophical texts. The translations of these works by British scholars like the prolific William Jones facilitated the spread of Indian wisdom across Europe and the United States, while modern methods of criticism provided the scholarly foundation for future attempts to reform and transform the traditional religion.
Bengal was the first area of India to be penetrated and controlled by the British. The defeat at the hands of the British first led upper-caste Indians to attempt to preserve their heritage and way of life through withdrawal of contact with the British. But the spread of British education enabled people to encounter European ideas that attracted and intrigued them. The result was the eventual integration of ideas and values from both European and Indian cultures.
Highly literate Bengalis of upper-caste background allied themselves with the British and assumed administrative and professional roles under British rule. However, close association with the British threatened the survival of their Indian cultural values. In particular, they felt pressure to convert to Christianity. In order to preserve their cultural heritage, they embraced a reform Hinduism that combined Christian ethics with the spiritual philosophy of the Upanishads. A more rational and critical attitude toward the traditional religion replaced blind faith as a passion for reform first swept the aristocrats and then reached down to other levels of society.
Both Bengal religion and society had been weakened by institutional rigidity and lack of creative reappraisals of their traditions. The social order was feudal, the vast majority of the population lived at subsistence levels, education was monopolized by landowning aristocrats, and the religion was rife with superstition. In fact, the traditional religion was filled with rituals and customs that were not only at variance with the great religious texts but were oppressive and inhumane. Among these practices were infanticide, the burning of widows, discrimination against widows, child marriage, and polygamy. Thus, increased dissatisfaction with the current state of Indian religion plus the greater availability of ancient religious texts in new critical versions was an important motivation for religious reform in Bengal.
The Dawn of India’s Cultural Renaissance
The first great figure of the Bengali Renaissance was Rammohan Roy who was active during the first third of the 19th century. Roy attempted to meet the onslaught of Western ideas in India by revising the Indian tradition so that it could provide guidance in a modern age. His approach was to synthesize Indian and Western ideas and values. For this task, he was superbly equipped. Fluent in English, he could read Sanskrit, Persian, and Bengali and translated and interpreted many ancient Indian texts. In addition, his knowledge of Greek and Latin enabled him to discuss the Bible with British missionaries. Although a strong believer in the values of intellectual freedom, the rule of law, and the rights of women, he was firmly convinced that such values were not the exclusive possession of the West. Instead, he maintained that they were in harmony with the spiritual values of ancient India. And it was on this basis that he defended such ideas against those Indians who argued that he was imposing Western notions on them. In other words, he saw his mission as reviving and accurately interpreting the Indian tradition rather than as westernizing India.
With his inexhaustible energy, Roy was instrumental in bringing about the Bengali Renaissance which later spread to the rest of India. His synthesis of Western and Indian thought provided an intellectual resource that the influential figures who came later could utilize and elaborate upon. This was especially true in the case of the great Bengali intellectuals Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and Tagore. But Roy accomplished more than merely reforming Hinduism so that it could be passed down to later Indian generations. He was also successful in reaching Western people who were looking to the East for spiritual guidance. His religious writings in English were read by many Western intellectuals, while his visit to England and France attracted considerable attention. His notion that Indian culture possessed spiritual riches from which Western people might benefit was taken up by Bengali intellectuals of the succeeding generations. As Tagore was later to proclaim, in initiating the Bengali Renaissance, Rammohan Roy constructed a religion that all humanity could embrace based on world consciousness.
Roy was the great forerunner of the Indian independence and nationalist movements. He founded the Brahmo Samaj (Society of God) as the vehicle for the promotion of his ideas about the revival of the Hindu religion and the transformation of Indian society. His lineage can be said to have run first of all through Rabindranath Tagore’s father Debendranath, who succeeded him as the leader of Brahmo Samaj. Rabindranath credited his father with helping to stem the movement toward Western culture and away from the Indian tradition among young Bengalis educated in English. Many of these young people had become atheists or were interested in Christianity. They also believed that Western culture was superior to their own traditional culture.
The Impact of Keshub Sen
Debendranath’s strategy was to write about the Indian scriptures and interpret them in a scientific manner in order to make them attractive to the younger educated generation that was largely ignorant of Hindu religious texts. He never doubted the authenticity of the ancient scriptures, unlike his leading disciple, Keshub Sen, with whom he quarreled over just how far Hindu reform should go. Keshub Sen, a great orator, split off from Brahmo Samaj to form the Indian Reform Association, a European-style movement. He believed that he had synthesized East and West in his universal gospel which he called “The New Dispensation, The Religion of Harmony.” The Asian side of this gospel was its transcendental spirituality and focus on the inner world, an anti-materialist outlook, and an emphasis on poverty and asceticism. In contrast, the European aspects were its completely scientific nature, reliance upon what can be observed by the senses, its logical character, and the use of reasoning to draw conclusions.
In Keshub’s vision of the ideal future, Europe and Asia would mutually benefit from cultural exchange. Europe would contribute scholarship, science, and philosophy, whereas Asia would make the even more vital contribution of faith, intuition, and spirituality. Keshub supported this sharp dichotomy between the two civilizations by emphasizing that Jesus Christ was Asian, just as Rammohun Roy had done. But he did acknowledge the highly developed ethical dimension of English civilization as well as the skill with which righteousness was integrated with everyday life. Nevertheless, in his view, Asia’s spiritual orientation, despite shortcomings in the ethical realm, had also produced great benefits such as social harmony. The seeking of total unity and oneness with a tolerant and generous spirit had helped to bring people together rather than to divide them.
Keshub’s approach to Hinduism was seen by Debendranath Tagore as too innovative and radical, although Keshub himself believed that his new religion was clearly based on the spirit of Hinduism. For Keshub, without fundamental reform of the Hindu religion, Indian society would remain in its current degraded form, characterized by idol worship and moral backwardness. Such backwardness was evident in the harsh treatment of women, especially widows, and in the denial of education to women. He contrasted the surface of Hinduism which reflected the superstition and false beliefs of the masses with the deeper spirituality that alone could lift India from degeneration and corruption.
Eastern Spirituality and Western Materialism
The great Indian religious intellectuals who came later resembled Keshub in their tendency to draw a sharp contrast between Eastern spirituality and Western materialism. This was especially true in the case of Rabindranath Tagore. The cultural philosophy that Tagore constructed and attempted to propagate in not only India but also in Japan and China contained the same basic outlook as that of Keshub. India was identified with the East, and the East was viewed as highly spiritual, while Western societies were considered to be overwhelmingly secular. Tagore often compared the two civilizations by saying that the nature of European civilization is political and its goal is the building up of the nation-state, whereas Hindu civilization is spiritual in nature with a focus on spiritual freedom and the liberation of the individual.
Tagore saw the mission of India, and Asia more generally, as the bringing of genuine spirituality to the West and to the rest of the world. Therefore, the European goal of nation building was not universally valid. In fact, although the 19th century had been dominated by the West and its aggressive nation-states, Tagore believed that the 20th century would be the Eastern century. He wanted India and the other Asian nations to protect and preserve their spiritual civilizations organized along the pattern of peaceful villages. They should not blindly follow the Western pattern of development.
Swami Vivekananda put forward many of these same ideas in India as well as in Europe and the United States. He told Indian people that they should rise up and conquer the world with their spirituality, since the world desperately needs to go beyond its total fascination with the material world. Like Tagore, he believed that Asian civilization was based on Indian spirituality. He identified Asia with religion and Europe with politics and technology. Eastern peoples could learn about machines from the West, but Western peoples needed to look East to learn about spirit, God, the soul, and the meaning of life.
Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Cultural Critic
In India, and especially in Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore is revered not only as a great poet but also as an important thinker whose ideas are still worth pondering and considering. The excellence of his poetry led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, the first non-European to be so honored. Moreover, his essays on literature, culture, society, politics, philosophy, religion, and education have been widely recognized and highly influential in India. He has also been celebrated as a writer of short stories, novels, plays, and songs as well as an acclaimed painter. In 1901, he founded a university in Shantiniketan to carry out his educational ideals as well as give people from abroad the chance to appreciate Indian society and culture. In addition, he visited Europe, South America, North America, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia as an ambassador not only of Indian spiritual culture but also as an advocate of world peace and one world.
As the economist Amartya Sen has pointed out, Tagore is no longer read much in the West, even though he was lionized in Europe when his poetry first appeared in English translation. As Sen has also noted, a huge barrier to the effective appreciation of Tagore’s literary work is the sheer difficulty of translating it from the original Bengali. But his vast nonfiction output has equally met with a lack of appreciation in the West. Part of this is due to his reputation in the West as a romantic and spiritual poet whose outlook fits badly with a scientific and technological age. Yet, as Sen asserts, Tagore was so much more than that. His attempts to achieve coexistence and even integration of traditional and modern ideas make his views more relevant to the current age, in Sen’s view, than those of Gandhi whose outlook was much more hostile toward modern life.
The positive modernizing aspects of Tagore’s educational philosophy should not be overlooked. He promoted a more rational and critical approach to thinking as well as a universal and global perspective that was notable for its inclusivity and breadth of spirit. As much as Gandhi, he was opposed to the narrow religious and communal thinking that often led to mass violence in India and elsewhere. And he endured much criticism in India due to his opposition to nationalism. At a time when India was still under British rule, he did not deny the benefits that Western influence had brought to India. But he warned that India should not give up those aspects of its civilization that were a light to the world.
Tagore prized the ideals of freedom and reason. For him, freedom emanates from an awareness of the infinite and the eternal. It is the One in all humans that is creative; the aim of human life is to give complete expression to the One. Therefore, true freedom resides in the mind and spirit and can never be the result of freedom from external conditions alone. In this way, he goes beyond modern Western definitions of freedom that are found in the political philosophy of liberalism.
Tagore recognized that reason is valuable when it is used to produce goods that enable us to have the leisure to enjoy creative pursuits. And he praised the West for its marvelous training of the intellect. But when it is used only to maximize production and profits, power and wealth, it turns diabolical. The pursuit of utility then takes precedence over beauty, truth, justice, and the rights of others. The unfortunate result is division and conflict which can be seen in the decline and decay of the moral nature of the West.
From this standpoint, Tagore’s relevance to our times is an ability to fuse spirituality with a sufficiently modern and critical view of the world. Blessed with a gift for integrating vastly different outlooks, Tagore promoted East-West synthesis to the world at a time when Western ideologies triumphantly reigned. At the same time, though, we should not ignore his tendency to attribute a much greater role to spirituality within Indian history than was deserved. Nor should we pass over his habit of seeing East and West in monolithic terms. His notion of the East as essentially spiritual and mystical with simple and humble people enjoying freedom of the soul is a portrait of “Eastern” people at their very best. But his several unsuccessful attempts to propagate his message of one Eastern civilization in Japan and China led him to reluctantly give up his belief in Eastern unity.
Tagore also thought that a people must be true to its own heritage and history. The mistake of modernizing nations like Japan and China has been to overthrow their traditional and ancestral way of life in order to follow the West in its quest for wealth and power. If an alien way of life is imposed on India, the society and its people will be crushed. So it is imperative for each society to follow its own unique destiny rather than to take on the civilization of another. However, Tagore’s idea that taking on the way of life of another is a half-truth at best. After all, Japan and China have become modern societies and powerful in their own right. But his message of one world based on a mystical vision of human unity is as valid and valuable today as it was in the early twentieth century. And his moral character, integrity, and state of being provided a splendid foundation upon which his thought was erected and elaborated.
Sri Aurobindo: Nationalist and Mystic
Aurobindo was born in Calcutta in 1872 and at the age of seven went to live in Great Britain where he spent the next fourteen years, including two years studying at Cambridge University. When he returned to India, he worked as a civil servant, professor, and college administrator for thirteen years. Since he had received a completely Western education abroad, he used this time to acquaint himself with the Indian languages, cultures, and traditions. From 1902 to 1910 he was engaged in nationalist politics, at first surreptitiously and then openly. Arrested several times by the British, he had religious experiences while in prison. When his attempts to keep up the momentum of the radical independence movement failed, he retired from politics, concentrating thereafter on his spiritual practice and spiritual work.
One influence of Aurobindo’s Western education was his rejection of the Vedantic notion of maya in which the world is viewed as unreal. But he agreed with Vivekananda that the source of India’s problems and those of the entire world was people’s inability to realize their highest religious ideals. Like Vivekananda, his basic stance was that the political, social, and economic problems of the modern world could only be solved by becoming masters of one’s own mind, the true form of progress. In his outline of a political philosophy suitable for a spiritualized society, he entered a realm that Vivekananda had not found necessary to address.
V. P. Varma in The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo asserts that Aurobindo’s idea of divine fulfillment through the betterment of the world does not exist in the Bhagavad Gita and the ancient Indian scriptures. It strikes a new note in Indian political philosophy and clearly reveals the influence of Hegel’s idealist philosophy in which pure Being is fulfilled through social and political action. His metaphysics also reconciled ancient Vedanta and Western philosophies based on modern science.
Aurobindo’s forceful criticism of later Indian philosophies that viewed the world as an illusion and promoted asceticism was due to his emphasis on improving the conditions of the world as a means to reconcile spirit and matter in cosmic and transcendental consciousness. Although he accepted the Vedantic notion that Brahman is infinite and totally free, he found the source of the world’s diversity and dynamism in latent and seed form within the Absolute. As a result, for Aurobindo, the universe is real, in spite of its grounding in the transcendent infinite. This metaphysical stance motivated him to develop a philosophy of social and political change.
Yet Aurobindo himself withdrew from politics. In a letter to Romain Rolland, he wrote: “India possesses in its past, a little rusty and out of use, the key to the progress of humanity. It is to this side I am now turning my energies, rather than to mediocre politics.” This doesn’t mean he lost interest in politics or in India’s independence and freedom. As late as 1947 at the time of Gandhi’s death, he expressed confidence that the Indian people would bring about the freedom and unity that had occupied the mind of the fallen leader.
Aurobindo recognized that he lived in an age of individualism and that India would have to incorporate the deep truth of this age before it could develop a spiritual vision for the future. The individual is not just a member of a human pack but “a soul, a being, who has to fulfill his own individual truth and law as well as his natural or assigned part in the truth and law of the collective existence.” This truth has been intellectually recognized and given expression in the world by Europe, and it is in harmony with Eastern philosophical concepts that focus on the inner dimension.
But the inner truth is not accessible by reason alone, and the world of spirit is deeper than the outer material domain. Although individualism has an important role to play in the future of the world, it falls short by focusing on superficial desires rather than on discovering the deeper self. As a result, it will be superseded eventually by spiritual philosophies that recognize the need for personal transformation brought about through spiritual practices. When this occurs, an ideal society can come into being.
Aurobindo advocated a spiritualized anarchism which replaced state coercion and restraint with voluntary cooperation. He saw the weakness of the anarchist political philosophy of his time as its determination to get rid of the state before the spiritual maturity that makes voluntary cooperation possible has been attained. Widespread acceptance of the ideal of human fraternity in people’s hearts must come first. And in an age of individualism, he pointed out that democracy had become a facade behind which the interests of the bourgeoisie were promoted at the expense of the people. Genuine democracy existed nowhere in the world and could only be realized by educating people to become creative political participants as citizens, which presupposes spiritual growth.
Mohandas Gandhi: Visionary and Pragmatist
Tagore thought that Gandhi’s program of non-cooperation was shutting out the West and leading to national isolation. Gandhi, though, was focused on improving the economic situation of village people and taking British merchants and their government to task for destroying the local textile industry. In contrast, the aristocratic Tagore promoted spiritual and aesthetic ideals that did not produce immediate results. He placed his hopes for an end to British colonialism on a radical change of heart, mind, and spirit on both sides that would lead to a meeting of minds, a very idealistic stance.
Gandhi maintained that modern civilization promises more freedom but ends up taking away many of the freedoms that traditional societies provide. A machine civilization leads to greater centralization in its pursuit of higher levels of production, efficiency, and profit. People lose control over their own lives as their ability to directly satisfy basic needs diminishes, while also losing their moral sensibilities. Without any prospect of a self-sufficient life in solidarity with other members of the community, they become more greedy, ambitious, and self-seeking as community life breaks down.
Gandhi’s disagreement with Tagore over modernity centers on whether modern technology confers any benefits or is merely destructive across the board. Although they both viewed spiritual and ethical development as necessary for social progress and emphasized rural regeneration, Tagore did not want to abandon advanced technology and city life, maintaining that rural isolation and material impoverishment is too high a price to pay.
Since Gandhi’s approach to nature was more devotional than rational, he viewed nature as sacred. A feminine or yin orientation characterized much of Gandhi’s social and political philosophy and is pointedly in opposition to the prevailing masculine or yang tenor of modern political life. Gandhi’s actions were guided by the relative truths that he came to understand through his experiments. His philosophy, although partial and subjective, was continuously refined by experiment, thereby coming closer to the absolute Truth that is God.
Gandhi wanted others to join him in the search for Truth; yet he was not interested in acquiring followers or building up a political doctrine, despite taking a firm ethical stance toward politics and society. His emphasis was on serving people by leaving self-interest behind. The path of service assures both the individual’s own happiness and that of the world. It is its own reward. Devotion to serving others means taking for oneself only what is strictly necessary.
Gandhi’s example attracted people in South Africa to share his life and participate with him in his experiments in the art of living. A self-centered approach was gradually replaced by higher spiritual awareness, and he tested the teachings of the major religions by trying them out in his life. Ultimately, he found in the Bhagavad Gita his guide to living a virtuous life. For him, the battlefield is the human heart and the choice is between mastering one’s own desires and letting them govern one’s life. In addition, his experience showed him that it was not possible to bring about positive results through violent means and falsehood. There are no shortcuts to lasting and permanent success.
Gandhi’s adherence to nonviolence is based on conscience and ethical awareness, and reflects the teachings of the major religions. It is not surprising that this principle has also been upheld by Christian ministers, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, and by Buddhist monks, the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. But Aurobindo saw that Indian spirituality had rarely been the basis for the kind of social activism that Gandhi favored. In this regard, Gandhi’s stay in England as a young man left a mark on his political outlook. The vegetarians and animal rights activists with whom he associated valued all forms of life and preached the virtues of living simply. They opposed industrial society and capitalism for emphasizing material prosperity rather than moral uplift and competition rather than cooperation. Gandhi’s political philosophy reflects not only such influences but also their activist proclivities.
Gandhi’s outlook toward Western civilization by Tolstoy who saw it as a disease that destroyed natural vitality and purity of being. Nonetheless, despite his highly critical attitude toward Western civilization, Gandhi incorporated the Western focus on improving the world. Rather than confining his horizons to the ashram, he made a great contribution to India’s independence. At the same time, Gandhi’s commitment to making the world a better place was not based on Marxist philosophy. In his view, Marxism gives far too much importance to structural changes in the world while ignoring the personal dimension of being.
Gandhi’s rejection of Marxism was accompanied by skepticism toward any Western political philosophy that failed to acknowledge the centrality of self-inquiry. He also criticized those mainstream philosophies that led to terrible consequences for real people. From his standpoint, progress would not come from disrupting the natural balance of the earth or by placing the self above the rest of creation. Nor could he turn a blind eye to the exploitation and inequality that characterized industrial capitalism. And his experimental attitude toward truth left no room for the belief that the rational mind could draw a map of the perfect society. As modern civilization experiences a deepening crisis, his ecological concerns, rejection of aggressive masculinity, espousal of the simple life, belief in nonviolence, and spiritual outlook make him more relevant than ever.
Positive Aspects of the Indian Response to the Western Challenge
Aurobindo described the 18th and early 19th centuries in India as a time of political decay and loss of vitality in religion and art. At first, India tried to imitate the triumphal Europeans at the cultural level, losing awareness of the magnificent cultural creations from the past that were available to inspire future efforts. However, beneath the political morbidity and hopelessness, there was a living stream of creative energies in different parts of the country that led to an awakening. For Aurobindo, the Indian renaissance was distinguished by its religious focus and the desire to recover and renew the spiritual heritage. A significant positive outcome of these movements of renewal was the tackling of modern social and political problems informed by a rediscovered Indian spirit.
To some extent, the encounter with the dynamic and imperialistic civilization of the West served as a catalyst for the cultural revival of the 19th century. This new appreciation for the ancient wisdom led to the emergence of new religious sects like the Brahmo Samaj. As Vivekananda explained, this process was one of “preservation by reconstruction.” The spiritual and political philosophies of Tagore and Gandhi as well as Aurobindo reflect an integration of modern Western ideas with Indian spiritual wisdom. But this integration was accomplished in different ways by the three thinkers, demonstrating the creative possibilities that are available when a desperate situation requires new ventures into the unknown.
In the case of Tagore, he had hoped that Western influence would provide a spark to help India move vigorously toward the future but he realized that Western civilization itself was declining, as clearly demonstrated by the mass slaughter of World War I. It appeared to him that India’s spirituality could provide the light that would shake the arrogant civilization of the West out of its destructive patterns. With Gandhi, the most harmful aspects of Western civilization were its centralization and bigness that enabled the exercise of imperial power. In his view, the West could find a way out by adopting a nonviolent way of life that is truly moral and based on the pursuit of truth. It is worth noting that when Gandhi first stayed in Great Britain he tried adopting Western attitudes and critics of their own societies showed him the folly of trying to measure up to such Western standards.
Aurobindo characterized Western civilization in terms of its selfish attitudes, perpetration of violence, and overemphasis on the practical and material aspects of life. In line with his more historical approach, he saw the West as an illustration of the achievements and limits of a civilization that maximizes the physical and intellectual dimensions of life. Nevertheless, Western civilization has opened the doors for a spiritually oriented way of life that incorporates these dimensions as integral to the spiritual transformation that reflects a more evolved consciousness.
There is a profound irony in observing that the horrors of British colonialism had the positive consequence, however unintended, of helping to stimulate a new and vigorous appreciation of the Indian spiritual heritage. Moreover, this heritage is now offering spiritual balm to Western people, which justifies the beliefs of Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and Tagore in India’s future role on the world stage. Yet, in this time of Hindu nationalism and neoliberal economics, Indian people need as much healing of their souls as people in the rest of the world. Clearly, another Indian revival of the ancient spiritual traditions embracing tolerance and equality would have beneficial results.
