Did you enjoy the
article “Fifty Years of Growth” by K. R. Kripalani in the Visva-Bharati?[i]
Fifty years of growth refers by the way to the Congress. About the Swadeshi
period he writes: “Along time was to elapse before we were to appreciate the
infinite possibilities of the muddy waters at hand. In the meantime something
startlingly romantic happened. . . .
“The fountain [of
undefiled water] was cut by the fiery shafts of Tilak, Vivekananda, and
Aurobindo, among others. They gave to Indian Nationalism its fiery basis in
India’s ancient cultural glory and its modern mission. . . . It is always more
beautiful and more inspiring to contemplate the Idea and be drunk with it than
to face the actual facts and touch the running sores. . . .
“But this spirit,
fiery and beautiful as it was, was fraught with grave dangers. The glory that
it invoked and the passion that it aroused were so intensely Hindu that Muslims
were automatically left out. Not that they were deliberately excluded. . . .
However that may be, it seems now not unlikely that had the influence of Tilak
and Aurobindo lasted in its original intensity, we might have had two Indias
today— a Hindu-istan and a Pak-istan, both overlaying and undermining each
other. . . .
