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ASIATIC DEMOCRACY
Asia is not Europe and never will be Europe. The political ideas of the West are not the mainspring of political movements in the East, and those who do not realize this great truth, are mistaken; for they suppose that the history of Europe is a sure and certain guide to India in her political development. A great deal of the political history of Europe will be repeated in Asia, no doubt; democracy has travelled from the East to the West in the Shape of Chrislianity, and after a long struggle with the feudal instincts of the Germanic races has returned to Asia transformed and in a new body. But when Asia takes back Democracy into herself, she will first transmute it in her own temperament and make it once more Asiatic. Christianity was an assertion of the unity of the divine spirit, in man, which did not seek to overthrow the established systems of government and society but to inform them with the spirit of human brotherhood and unity. It was greatly hampered in this work by the fact that the European races were in a state of transition from the old Aryan civilization of greece and Rome to one less advanced and enlightened. The German nations were wedded to military civilization which was wholly inconsistent with the ideas of Christianity, and the new religion in their hands became a thing quite unrecognizable to the Asiatic mind which had engendered it. When Mahomedanism appeared, Christianity vanished out of Asia, because it had lost its meaning. Mahomad tried to reestablish the Asiatic gospel of human education in the spirit. All men are equel in Islam,---whatever their soci 1 position power, nor is any man debarred from the full development of his manhood by his birth or low original station in life. All men are brothers in Islam and the bend of religions unity overrides all other divisions and differences. But Islam also was limited and imperfect. because it confined the ideal of brotherhood and equality to the limits of a single creed, and was farther deflected from its true path by the rude and undeveloped races which it drew into its embrace. Another revelation of the truth is needed.
-Sri AUROBINDO great religious awakening has sought to restore the ancient meaning of Hinduism and reduce caste to its original subordinate importance and a social convenience to exercise the spirit of caste pride and restore that of brotherhood and the eternal principles of love and justice in society. But the feudal spirit had taken possession of India and the feudal spirit is wedded to inequality and the pride of caste.
When the feudal system was broken in Europe by the rise of middle class, the ideals of christianity began to emerge once more to light, but by this time the Christian Chruch had itself become feudalized, and the curious spectacle presents itself of Christian ideals struggling to establish themselves by the destruction of the very institution which had been created to preserve Christianty. When the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were declared at the time of the French Revolution and mankind demanded that society should recognize them as the foundation of its structure, they were associated with a fierce revolt against the travesty of the Christian religion which had become an integral part of that feudalism. This was the weakness of European Democracy and the source of its failure. It took as its motive the rights of man and not the Dharma of humanity it appealed to the selfishness of the lower classes against the pride of the upper; it made hatred and internecine war the permanent allies of Christian ideas and wrought an inextricable confusion which is the modern malady of Europe. It was in vain that the genius of Mazzini re-discovered the heart of Christianity and sought to remodel European ideas; the the French Revolution bad become the starting-point of European Democracy and coloured the European mind. Now that Dem crecy has returned to Asia, its cradle and home, it will be purge of its foreign elements and restored to its original purity. The movements of the nineteenth century in India were European movements, they were coloured with the hues of the West. Instead of seeking for strength in the spirit, they adopted the machinary and motives of Europe, the appeal to the rights of humanity or the equality of social status and an impossible dead level which nature has always Jefused to allow. Mingled with these false gospels was a strain of hatred and bitterness, which showed itself in the condemnation of Brahminical priestcraft, the hostility to Hinduism and the ignorant breaking away from the hallowed traditions of the past. What was true and eternal in that past was linkened to what was
India from ancient times had received the gospel of Vedant which sought to establish the divine unity of man in spirit; but in order to secure an ordered society in which she could develop her spiritual insight and perfect her civilization, she had invented the system of caste ideals came to be an obstacle to the fulfilment in society of the Vedantic ideal. From the time of Buddha to that of the saints of the Maharahstra every
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