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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA
a frank and exalted enthusiasm, the dominant note of love and "Bhakti” of a mingled sweetness and strength, the potent intellect, dominated by the self-illuminated heart, a mystical exaltation of feeling and spiritual insight expressing itself with a plain concreteness and practically - this is the soul of Bengal. All our literature, in order to be wholly alive must start from this base and whatever variations it may indulge in, never lose touch with it. In Bengal again, the national spirit is seeking to satisfy itself in art and for the first time since the decline of the Moguls, a new school of national art is developing itself, the school of which Abanindranath Tagore is the founder and master. It is still troubled by the foreign though Asiatic influence from which its master started, and has something of an exotic appearance, but the development and self-emancipation of the national self from this temporary domination can already be watched and followed. There again, it is the
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