Sri Aurobindo

Essays Divine and Human

Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950

Renascent India

Everybody can feel, even without any need of a special sense for the hidden forces and tendencies concealed in the apparent march of things, for the signs are already apparent, that India is on the verge, in some directions already in the first movements of a great renascence, more momentous, more instinct with great changes and results, than anything that has gone before it. Every new awakening of the kind comes by some impact slight or great on the national consciousness which puts it in face of new ideas, new conditions, new needs, the necessity of readaptation to a changing environment. The spirit of the nation has to take account of its powers and possibilities and is stirred by a will to new formation and new creation. The change does not always amount to a renascence. But the impact in which we live at the present hour is nothing less than that of a new world. It is not merely the pressure of the whole Western civilisation upon the ancient spirit of the East or of modernism on a great traditional civilisation, but it is a great worldwide change, an approaching new birth of mankind itself of which the change in us is only a part. Therefore the result that we are face to face with, is a renascence, the birth of the Spirit into a new body, new forms in society and politics, new forms of literature, art, science, philosophy, action and creation of all kinds. And the question arises what in the great play of modification and interchange around us are we going to take from the world around us, how are we going to shape [it] in the stress of our own spirit and past traditions, and what are we going to bring out of ourselves and impress upon the world in exchange? In what new forms is the spirit of India going to embody itself and what relations will its new creations have with the future of the world?

Circa 1916/18

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