Karmayogi

SR No.: 011075
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Total Pages: 751
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 139 MB

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bours. She hears. She knows the difference between sound and wilence. And that is all. She feels a kick, and fears it. She feels caresses, and seeks them. But she has no power of mind, to generalise these experiences, or to go behind them, and reason about why and wherefore, much less to take steps for obtaining the mastery over both kinds of bondage.
It is quite possible for a nation to live in the midst of things that concern it, just, like a cat in a circle ot apostles. Events come and go. Sensations occur and pass. But the national response is no more than n twitch of dissatisfaction, or a purr of content. The twitch may take the form of speeches and articles, it may even go so far as tho organisation of palaver-subhas and protest-newspapers. But if it ends there, nothing much has been accomplished. Let the sabhas and the newspapers all bo suppressed, and pussy is very little richer or poorer. It is not hero that her power is lodged. No, for that, we have to turn to the national mind. Has that realised itself? In any sense or degree. It is not necessary to become an Avatar, in order to act with common
KARMAYOGIN.
of every person, in every part of the country, will form a part. No word that is spoken, by mother to babe, by master to workman, by customers to shopkeeper, but will carry a winged message. Every person becomes, to the thinker, a symbol of the Great Mother.
Everything will minister to Her worship. That which is aimed against Her will deepen our rever ence, while that which speaks in her favour will express and re-echo it. Mistakes will scourge and taunt and torture this national sense into being. Acts of friendship and amity will build it up in harmony and concord. Nothing will foster it more rapidly than attention drawn to the prohibition of education. This will make it defiant, menacing, difficult to control and guide. Yet education also will be its ministor and handmaiden. And wherever we see the growth of the national idea, let us learn to think that we see work going forward, a work thut can never cease to be possible. Let men but meet; when the moment comes, the mass will fuse. Let us but think: when the hour strikes, we cannot fail to act.
The need for special attention to nation-making, however, is a question of the moment, a matter of those temporary vicissitudes through which a country may be passing. in a given period. It is always easy, by common consent of res
tutions have arisen in some such way. The need of purity. was first brought forward, in our customs, at some time when loss of civilisa tien was a pressing danger. The regulation of marriage was a device deliberately intended to,prevent mixture of race, in a period that had to face this as a possi bility. Similarly, a people who need above all things the development of a national sense, can make
ponsible persons, or by the sound communal instincts of a healthy people, to select out and emphasise, for a definite purpose, any elements in a general education that may be Of this work, every movement, thought desirable. All our insti
special provision for developing the necessary elements of thought and character, throughout the education of their children.
sense. It is not necessary to reach PAPERS ON NATIONAL EDUCATION. or safety; a father who will fling
NATION-MAKING.
mukti before we attempt to be a little manly. The selfishness of goism is the beginning of a know. ledge of the atman. The Indian poople have begun to understand that there is a place in the world called India. Let them go on to understand this more and more
deeply. Here, in the Indian mind, is the true field of work. The deep ening of the national consciousness is the whole of the constructive programme. Does any man mean to tell us that this depends on the existenco of licensed and tabulated organs! Nonsense! The loppingoff of a limb may actually deepen a man's consciousness of himself, by forcing him to think deeper, and to circumvent destiny. "Fundamental brain-work" is the one thing that saves nations, and stamps the rank of their actions,even as it does their productions. Wherever this fundamental brain-work can go on intensifying the idea of India, the Indian people, Indian duties, and Indian rights, there real work is going forward, whoever may think to the contrary.
himself at any obstacle, in the cause Education in India to-day, has of honour and justice for the people, to be not only national, but nation- these are the best and strongest what a making. We have seen education for nation-making that national education is a training a child can have. The wild-boar, which has a strong colour of its small as he is, throws himself upon own, and begins by relating the the horse and his rider,never doubtchild to his home and country, ing his own capacity to destroy both. through all that is familiar, but This is the courage of the man that is true, cosmopolitan, and uni ends by making him free of all who attacks public evils. This is the object-lesson by which versal. This is the necessary con- a child can best be trained. Hundition of all healthy education, in ger for the good of others, as an end all countries, whatever their poli- in itself, the infinite pity that tical position or stage of develop-wakes in the heart of an Avatar, at ment. These general statements sight of the suffering of humanity, are as true of England or France, these are the seed and root of naas of India, as true in happiness as tion-making. We are a nation, in adversity. when every man is an organ of the whole, when every part of the whole. is precious to us; when the family weighs nothing, in comparison with the People.
National feeling is, above all, feeling for others. It is rooted in public spirit, in a strong civic sense. But these are only grandiloquent names for what may be described as organised unselfishness. The best preparation for nation-making that a child can receive is to see his elders always eager to consider the general good, rather than their own. A family that willingly sacrifices its own interests to those of the village, or the street, or the town, household that condones no act of dishonesty on the part of public servants, out of consideration for its own comfort
China in Asia, and France in Emrope, are the the two countries that have best known how to make the public spirit into religion: This is the fact that made Joan of Arc a possibility. A peasant-girl in a remote village could brood over the sorrows of her country, till she was possessed by the feeling that there