Some Misunderstandings about India

Abstract

IN MANY RECENT BOOKS, both by Indian and by western writers, is found the statement that the civilization of India is and always has been essentially spiritual. It is a wide-spread idea that Indian civilization has been completely dominated by mysticism and asceticism, by world-renouncing religions. The Indians are depicted as dreamy lotus-eaters who have been so engrossed with spiritual things, with questions of God, their souls, and their salvation, that they have paid a minimum of attention to worldly things. The facts of the matter are in sharp contradiction to the point of view just stated. Indian civilization has always been controlled by precisely the same combination of forces that has controlled western civilizations or any other civilization in the world. There never has been a people which has devoted itself, as a whole, exclusively to the practice of religion, which has directed its efforts exclusively to spiritual and non-worldly ends. This religious element has been only one factor in Indian life, and a much less important factor than is generally supposed. There have been millions whose lives have been dominated, in whole or in major part, by purely spiritual impulses, but these have never formed more than a small minority of the population as a whole. It is probably true that in India a religious sanction has been extended over more social matters than anywhere else in the world, but in the resulting synthesis of religious and social life which we call Hinduism most of these matters have become so stereotyped that they really have much less spiritual content than is commonly supposed. A merely nominal participation in external religious ceremonies does not necessarily imply a deep spiritual content. One reason for the exaggerated emphasis which is often placed upon the spiritual element in Indian life is the fact that the only literature which has been preserved from the first thousand years or so of Indian literary history is almost entirely religious. Moreover, in dealing with the later period much more attention has