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Home > Kalakosa > Kalasamalocana > List of Books > In the Footsteps of Xuanzang > IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF XUANZANG: TAN YUN-SHAN AND INDIA |
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WRITINGS OF TAGORE, NEHRU AND TAN YUN-SHAN
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The
most memorable fact of human history is that of a path-opening, not for
the clearing of a passage for machines or machine guns, but for helping
the realisation by races of their affinity of minds, their mutual
obligation of a common humanity. Such a rare event did happen and the path
was built between our people and the Chinese in an age when physical
obstruction needed heroic personality to overcome it and the mental
barrier a moral power of uncommon magnitude. The two leading races of that
age met, not as rivals on the battle-field, each claiming the right to be
the sole tyrant on earth, but as noble friends, glorying in their exchange
of gifts, Then came a slow relapse into isolation, covering up the path
with its accumulated dust of indifference. Today our old friends have
beckoned to us again, generously helping us to retrace that ancient path
obliterated by the inertia of forgetful centuries, and we rejoice. This
is, indeed, a great day for me, a day long looked for, when I should be
able to redeem, on behalf of our people, an ancient pledge implicit in our
past, the pledge to maintain the intercourse of culture and friendship
between our people and the people of China, an intercourse whose
foundations were laid eighteen hundred years back by our ancestors with
infinite patience and sacrifice. When I went to China several years ago I
felt a touch of that great stream of life that sprang from the heart of
India and overflowed across mountain and desert into that distant land,
fertilising the heart of its people. I thought of that great pilgrimage,
of those noble heroes, who, for the sake of their faith, their ideal of
the liberation of self that leads to the perfect love which unites all
beings, risked life and accepted banishment from home and all that was
familiar to them. Many perished and left no trace behind. A few were
spared to tell their story, a story not of adventurers and trespassers
whose heroism has proved a mere romantic excuse for careers of unchecked
brigandage, but a story of pilgrims who came to offer their gifts of love
and wisdom, a story indelibly recorded in the cultural memory of their
hosts. I read it when I was received there as a representative of a
revered race and felt proud as I traced the deep marks our ancestors had
left behind on their achievements. But I also felt the humiliation of our
long lasting evil fate that has obscured for us in an atmosphere of
insanity the great human value of a noble endeavour, one of the most
precious in the history of man. I
told my Chinese hosts on that occasion: "My friends, I have come to
ask you to re-open the channel of communication which I hope is still
there; for though overgrown with weeds of oblivion, its lines can still be
traced. I have not the same voice that my ancestors had. I have not the
wisdom they possessed. My life has not attained that consciousness of
fulfilment needed to make this message fruitful. We in India are a
defeated race; we have no power, political, military or commercial; we do
not know how to help you or injure you materially. But, fortunately, we
can still meet you as your guests, your hosts, your brothers and your
friends. Let that happen. I invite you to us as you have invited me. I do
not know whether you have heard of the institution I have established in
my land. Its one object is to let India welcome the world to its heart.
Let what seems a barrier become a path, and let us unite, not in spite of
our differences, but through them. For differences can never be wiped
away, and life would be so much the poorer without them. Let all human
races keep their own personalities, and yet come together, not in a
uniformity that is dead, but in a unity that is living". That
has happened and friends are here from China with their gift of friendship
and co-operation. The Hall which is to be opened today will serve both as
the nucleus and as a symbol of that larger understanding that is to grow
with time. Here students and scholars will come from China and live as
part of ourselves, sharing our life and letting us share theirs, and by
offering their labours in a common cause, help in slowly re-building that
great course of fruitful contact between our peoples, that has been
interrupted for ten centuries. For this Visva-Bharati is, and will, I
hope, remain a meeting place for individuals from all countries, east or
west, who believe in the unity of mankind and are prepared to suffer for
their faith. I believe in such individuals even though their efforts may
appear to be too insignificant to be recorded in history. It
might be supposed that in a world so closely knit by railways, steamships
and air lines, where almost every big city is cosmopolitan, such special
invitations for contact are superfluous. But, unfortunately, the contacts
that are being made today have done more to estrange and alienate peoples
from one another than physical inaccessibility ever did. We are
discovering for ourselves the painful truth that nothing divides so much
as the wrong kind of nearness. People seem to be coming in each other's
way, dodging and trapping one another, without ever coming together. We
meet others, either as tourists when we merely slide against the surface
of their life, entering hotels only to disappear from their land, or as
exploiters in one disguise or another. We are living in a world where
nations are divided into two main groups those who trample on others'
freedom, and those who are unable to guard their own; so that while we
have too much of intrusion on others' rights, we have hardly any
intercourse with heir culture. It is a terrorised world, dark with fear
and suspicion, where peaceful races in dread of predatory hordes are
retreating into isolation for security. I
am reminded of my experience as we were travelling up from Shanghai to
Nanking along the great river, Yang Tse. All through the night I kept on
coming out of my cabin to watch the beautiful scene on the banks, the
sleeping cottages with their solitary lamps, the silence spread over the
hills, dim with mist. When morning broke and brought into view fleets of
boats coming down the river, their sails stretching high into the air, a
picture of life's activity with its perfect grace of freedom, I was deeply
moved and felt that my own sail had caught the wind and was carrying me
from captivity, from the sleeping past, out into the great world of man.
It brought to my mind different stages of the history of man's progress. In
the night each village was self-centred, each cottage stood bound by the
chain of unconsciousness. I knew, as I gazed on the scene, that vague
dreams were floating about in this atmosphere of sleeping souls, but what
struck my mind more forcibly was the fact that when men are asleep they
are shut up within the very narrow limits of their own individual lives.
The lamps exclusively belonged to the cottages, which in their darkness
were in perfect isolation. Perhaps, though I could not see them, some
prowling bands of thieves were the only persons awake, ready to exploit
the weakness of those who were asleep. When
daylight breaks we are free from the enclosure and the exclusiveness of
our individual life. It is then that we see the light which is for all men
and for all times. It is then that we come to know each other and come to
co-operate in the field of life. This was the message that was brought in
the morning by the swiftly moving boats. It was the freedom of life in
their outspread sails that spoke to me; and I felt glad. I hoped and
prayed that morning had truly come in. the human world and that the light
had broken forth. This
age to which we belong, does it not still represent night in the human
world, a world asleep, whilst individual races are shut up within their
own limits, calling themselves nations, which barricade themselves, as
these sleeping cottages were barricaded with shut doors, with bolts and
bars, with prohibitions of all kinds? Does not all this represent the dark
age of civilization, and have we not begun to realize that it is the
robbers who are out and awake? But
I do not despair. As the early bird, even while the dawn is yet dark,
sings out and proclaims the rising of the sun, so my heart sings to
proclaim the coming of a great future which is already close upon us. We
must be ready to welcome this new age. There are some people, who are
proud and wise and practical, who say that it is not in human nature to be
generous, that men will always fight one another, that the strong will
conquer the weak and that there can be no real moral foundation for man's
civilization. We cannot deny the facts of their assertion that the strong
have their rule in the human world: but I refuse to accept this as a
revelation of truth. It
is co-operation and love, mutual trust and mutual aid which make for
strength and real merit of civilization. New spiritual I and moral power
must continually be developed to enable men to assimilate their scientific
gains, to control their weapons and machines, or these will dominate and
enslave them. 1 know that many will point to the weakness of China and
India and tell us that thrown as we are among other ruthlessly strong and
aggressive world peoples, it is necessary to emphasize power and progress
in order to avoid destruction. It is indeed true that we are weak and
disorganised, at the mercy of every barbaric force, but that is not
because of our love of peace but because we no longer pay the price of our
faith by dying for it. We must le,arn tom defend our humanity against the
insolence of the strong, only taking care that we do not imitate their
ways and, by turning ourselves brutal, destroy those very values which
alone make our humanity worth defending. For danger is not only of the
enemy without but of the treason within us. We had, for over a century,
been so successfully hypnotised and dragged by the prosperous West behind
its chariot that, though choked by the dust, deafened by the noise,
humbled by our helplessness, overwhelmed by speed, we yet agreed to
acknowledge that this chariot-drive was progress, and that progress was
civilization. If we ever ventured to ask, however humbly: Progress towards
what, and progress for whom? It was considered to be peculiarly and
ridiculously oriental to entertain such doubts about the absoluteness of
progress. It is only of late that a voice has been heeded by us, bidding
us take account not only of the scientific perfection of the chariot, but
of the depth of ditches lying across its path. Today we are emboldened to
ask: what is the value of progress if it make a desert of this beautiful
world of man? And though we speak as members of a nation that is
humiliated and oppressed and lies bleeding in the dust, we must never
acknowledge the defeat, the last insult, the utter ruin of our spirit
being conquered, of hour faith being sold. We need to hear again and
again, and never more than in this modern world of bead-hunting and
cannibalism in disguise that: - By the help of unrighteousness men do
prosper, men do gain victories over their enemies, men do attain what they
desire, but they perish at the root. It
is to this privilege of preserving, not the mere body of our customs and
conventions, but the moral force which has given quality to our
civilization and made it worthy of being honoured, that I invite the
co-operation of the people of China, recalling the profound words of their
sage, Lao-tze [Laozi: Those who have virtueattend to their obligations,
those who have no virtue attend to their claims. Progress which is not
related to an inner ideal, but to an attraction which is external, seeks
to satisfy endless claims. But civilization, which is an ideal, gives us
power and joy to fulfil our obligations. Let
us therefore abide by our obligation to maintain and nourish the
distinctive merit of our respective cultures and not to be misled into
believing that what is ancient is necessarily outworn and what is modern
is indispensable. When we class things as modern or old we make a great
mistake in following our calendar of dates. We know that the flowers of
Spring are old, that they represent the dawn of life on earth, --- but are
they therefore symbols of the dead and discarded? Would we rather replace
them with artificial flowers made of rags, because they were made
"yesterday"? It is not what is old or what is modern that we
should love and cherish but what has truly a permanent human value. And
can anything be more worthy of being cherished than the beautiful spirit
of the Chinese culture that has made the people love material things
without the strain of greed, that has made them love the things of this
earth, clothe them with tender grace without turning them materialistic?
They have instinctively grasped the secret of the rhythm of things,-- not
the secret of power that I
do not know what distinctive merit we have which our Chinese friends and
others may wish to share. Once indeed our sages dedicated themselves to
the ideal of perfect sympathy and intellect, in order to win absolute
freedom through wisdom and absolute love through pity. Today we cannot
boast of either such wisdom or such magnanimity of heart. But I hope we
are not yet reduced to such absolute penury of both as not to be able to
offer at least a genuine atmosphere of hospitality, of an earnestness to
cross over our limitations and move nearer to the hearts of other peoples
and understand somewhat of the significance of the endless variety of
man's creative effort. |
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1999 Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New DelhiAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced any manner without written permission of the publisher.