Lover of Light Among Luminaries Dilip Kumar Roy

Author(s): Amruta Paresh Patel
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES : Dilip Kumar Roy help other unhappy human beings, with his vision of compassion, patience and courage, in his long march through the night so that he could reach with all humanity the dawn of happiness.
Dilip Roy was very much impressed at that time by Russell's "love of sympathy and beauty founded on a large charity of the heart."26 So, he wanted to meet such a magnanimous personality. He got an opportunity to meet him personally during Women's International League for Peace held at Lugano. Dilip Roy was invited to give a lecture-demonstration on Indian music and Russell was visiting it to deliver a series of lectures on China. Both of them conversed on various topics as they stayed in the same hotel for three days.
Dilip Roy had correspondence with him when he went back to India. Two of his letters are printed in Among the Great. Russell's replies, as Roy notices, were full of "his characteristic kindness and lucidity."27 In one of his letters to Dilip Roy, Bertrand Russell guided him to pursue his career as a musician and not as a politician, though politics was the need of the day, because after independence India would need good musicians, too, to be proud of. At the same time, he informed the author that he could only give suggestions. Ultimately, it was for Roy to choose his course of action. He wrote: “No one but yourself can answer this question."28
Again, the author had nice time with Bertrand Russell and his family for three days at Cornwall when he went to Europe on a musical tour in 1927. At that time, Russell answered Roy's queries on many of those topics which were aroused naturally during their conversations. Following is the portrait of Russell as it emerges from Dilip Roy's conversation with him. Needless to say, it is rather a sketch of his philosophy than that of his life and of his mind and over all personality lacking physical and temporal details.
Talking of schools where good education might be imparted, Russell said that the State could tackle successfully an expensive undertaking of an elementary school for all people. If the rich men were to come out with their donations to run such a school, they would impose their own conditions in the matters of regulations and educational policy. In that case it would be disastrous for the whole society. He had no faith in the fair intentions of the rich. He found the rich to be very calculative. He generally did not expect anything from them but lipsympathy. To solve the problem, he felt that the public opinion could be stirred up sufficiently to force the State to take up the advanced schools in the teeth of the opposition from the idle rich, so that the stable reforms in the education system could be introduced. It might, in its turn, remould and remodel people's character.
Referring to pacifism, he observed that combativeness is so ingrained in human blood that children are far from pacifists. Besides, pacifism could not be