(from Modern India)

On one side, new India is saying, "If we only adopt western ideas, Western language, Western food, Western dress and western manners, we shall be as strong and powerful as the Western nations"; on the other, Old India is saying, "Fools! By imitation, other's ideas never become one's own - nothing, unless earned, is your own. Does the ass in lion's skin become the lion?"

On one side, New India is saying, "What the Western nations do is surely good, otherwise how did they become so great?" On the other side, Old India is saying, "The flash of lightening is intensely bright, but only for a moment; look out, boys, it is dazzling your eyes. Beware!'

Have we not then to learn anything from the West? Must we not need try and exert ourselves for better things? Are we perfect? Is our society entirely spotless, without any flaw? There are many things to learn, we must struggle for new and higher things till we die; struggle is the end of human life. Shri Ramakrishna used to say, "As long as I live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death. Yes, learn we must many things from the West - but there are fears as well.

A certain young man of little understanding used always to blame the Hindu scriptures before Shri Ramakrishna. One day he praised the Bhagavad-Gita, on which Shri Ramakrishna said, "I think some European Pundit has praised the Gita so he has also followed suit".

O, India, this is your terrible danger. The spell of imitating the West is getting such as strong hold upon you that what is good or what is bad is no longer decided by reason, judgment, discrimination, or reference to the Shastras. Whatever ideas, whatever manners the white men praise or like, are good, whatever things they dislike or censure, are bad! Alas! What can be more tangible proof of foolishness than this?

Western ladies move freely everywhere, therefore that is good; they choose for themselves their husbands, therefore that is the highest step of advancement; the Westerners disapprove of our dress, decorations, food, and ways of living, therefore they must be very bad; the Westerners condemn image-worship as sinful, surely, then image-worship is the greatest sin, there is no doubt of it!

The Westerners say that worshipping a single deity is fruitful of the highest spiritual good, therefore let us throw our gods and goddesses into the river Ganga! The westerners hold caste distinctions to be obnoxious, therefore let all the different castes be jumbled into one! The westerners say that child-marriage is the root of all evils, therefore that is also very bad, of a certainty it is!

We are not discussing here whether these customs deserve continuance or rejection; but if the mere disapproval of the Westerners is the measure of the abominableness of our manners and customs, then it is our duty to raise our emphatic protest against it!

The present writer has, to some extent, personal experience of Western society. His convictions resulting from such experience has been that there is such a wide divergence between Western society and Indian, as regards the main course and goal of each, that any sect in India, framed after the western model, will miss the aim. We have not the least sympathy for those who never having lived in Western society and therefore, utterly ignorant of the rules and prohibitions regarding the association of men and women that obtain there and which act as safeguards to preserver the purity of the Western women, allow an unrestricted intermingling of men and women in our society.

I have observed in the West also that the children of weaker nations, if born in England, give themselves out as Englishmen, instead of Greek, Portuguese, Spaniard, etc., as the case may be. All drift towards the strong; so that the light that shines in the glorious, may somehow fall and reflect on one's own body, i.e. to shine in the borrowed light of the great, is the one desire of the weak.

When I see Indians dressed in European costume, the thought comes to my mind, perhaps they feel ashamed to own their nationality and kinship with the ignorant, poor, illiterate, downtrodden people of India! Nourished by the blood of the Hindu for the last fourteen centuries, the Parsee is no longer a "native"! Before the arrogance of the casteless, who pretend to be and glorify themselves in being Brahmins, the true nobility of the old, heroic, high-class Brahmin melts into nothingness! Again, the Westerners have now taught us that those stupid, ignorant low-caste millions of India, clad only in loin clothes, are non-Aryans. They are therefore no more our kith and kin!

O India! With this mere echoing of others, with this base imitation of others, with this dependence on others, this slavish weakness, this vile, detestable cruelty- would you, with these provisions only, scale the highest pinnacle of civilization and greatness? Would you attain, by means of your disgraceful cowardice, that freedom deserved only by the brave and the heroic?

O India, forget not that the ideal of your womanhood is Sita, Savitri, Damayanti; forget not that the God you worship is the great Ascetic of ascetics, the all-renouncing Shankara, the Lord of Uma; forget not that your marriage, your wealth, your life are not for the sense pleasure, are not for your individual happiness; forget not that you are born as a sacrifice to the Mother's altar; forget not that your social order is but the reflex of the Infinite Universal Motherhood; forget not that the lower classes, the ignorant, the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper, are your flesh and blood, your brothers.

You brave one, be bold, take courage, be proud that, you are an Indian, and proudly proclaim, "I am an Indian, every Indian is my brother". Say, "The ignorant Indian, the poor and destitute Indian, the Brahmin Indian, the Pariah Indian, is my brother". You, too, clad with but a rag around the loins, proudly proclaim at the top of your voice, "The Indian is my brother, the Indian is my life, India's gods and goddesses are my God, India's society is the cradle of my infancy, the pleasure-garden if my youth, the sacred heaven, the Varanasi of my old age". Say brother, "The soil of India is my highest heaven, the good of India is my good." And repeat and pray day and night, "O You Lord of Gauri, O You Mother of the Universe, vouchsafe manliness unto me! O You Mother of Strength, take away my weakness, take away my unmanliness, and make me a Man!"