New Beginnings in Indian Culture

C. JINARAJADASA
There is a widespread idea, especially in the West, that India is a very old land with a culture which has already seen its highest expression. This judgment is partly true, because India is a very old land and, to a superficial observer, Indian culture seems hard and unyielding. Yet, as a matter of truth, very great changes are taking place just now, in spite of the fact that, to the superficial observer, everything is the same. Only the other day, an Australian friend of mine expressed with a sense of depression, ‘I was in India twenty years ago, and everything seems exactly the same now!’ He noted only the signs of poverty, and the general untidiness and lack of organisation. He, of course, could not know the changes which have already begun to be effective in the Indian mind during the last fifteen years. India does seem as if she were ‘played out,’ if we note only the conservatism in customs and manners.

On the other hand, one of the most interesting things in India is that, though she is old, she is really at the beginning of a great career. There is it great parallel between India to-day and the beginnings of Greek culture. There is this difference, however, that Greece began for the first time; whereas India, which has already a great culture in the past, is beginning once again. This is a thesis hard to prove, and yet, I will do what little I can to justify my belief.

Let me first take Indian drama. As one sees Indian plays, there is a great rigidity of form, and a very slavish subservience to an old and effete tradition regarding scenery and presentation. In the old days, the Indian drama was not intended to be realistic, but symbolic. Therefore, exactness of costume and scenery was no part of the dramatist’s equipment, for the audience co-operated with him in imagining the atmosphere, which normally is created in the best equipped theatres by intense truth to scenery and to period of action, etc. Indian plays, as one sees them to-day, are intensely distasteful, because of their artificiality and lack of actuality. Yet, on the other hand, the appeal they make, not so much to the outer senses as to the mind, is many steps in advance of what is known in the West, except in a few of the greatest dramatists.
That it is possible to retain the Indian spiritual and subjective quality in drama, and yet be perfectly true to nature, is evidenced by the work of Tagore and Chattopadhyaya. One of my most vivid memories is Tagore’s Post Office, performed in his own house during the Congress of ten years ago, when Tagore himself took one of the parts. Everything was true to life in scenery and costume, and yet, the play retained its own subtle quality. Those of us who have seen the work of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya know how, without in the least ceasing to be Indian, he is at the same time true to nature in his staging and action.

All these characteristics of the new age can be applied to develop Indian drama, without in the least taking any- thing away from its own striking characteristics. I do not think there will ever be any need to imitate the West in this matter blindly. But, on the other hand, Indian drama can be more accurate in presentation. When it does so develop, I see before it a very great era. As the Greek drama grew out of the simple songs and dances of the religious festivals, -the word ‘tragedy’ means the ‘songs at the goat festivals’ -when the dancers sang and danced in honour of Pan, so I foresee a bright future for the Indian drama out of the present stratified ideas.

Similarly too with Indian music. All European musicians know at once the remarkable subtle quality in Indian melody, and the rhythm in the Indian drummer always amazes them with its complexity. But, on the other hand, Indian music has no sense of harmony, and there is, therefore, a sense of monotony. A great Indian musician has told me that he does not foresee that India will ever in her singing develop on the lines of the West with ‘four part’ singing. This may well be. Yet, on the other hand, I do feel that Indian music, though old, is just at the beginning of a great expansion. I am fairly conversant with a good deal of Western orchestral music, and I do not think that India will ever achieve the great range of spiritual ideas revealed in music by composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and others. When one listens, for instance, to the best vina play, one feels that in that pure music, there is something like the effect of a Western orchestra, but in miniature. Just as when we look through the wrong end of an opera glass, the scenery, though clear, is tiny, similarly the delicate tones produced by the vina have a symphonic quality. I see no reason why Indian musicians, if they will study Western music, may not apply its philosophy of music to develop Indian music along her own lines, but into a new field. A great deal can be done in India with Community Singing, because song is very near to the Indian temperament. Every Friday evening at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, there is Community Singing, where the residents sing together Eastern and Western music. If Community Singing could be developed at public meetings, Indian composers would quickly see new possibilities in song.

Taking the field of painting, one of the most amazing things is to note how the Bengal School of painting has such great similarities with the earliest Italian School. Both schools are ‘primitive,’ that is to say, are bent more on the feeling side of life than its actual photographic representation to the mind. In Italy, the  ‘primitive’ school went its way developing stage by stage, till it reached a climax in such an artist as Bottcelli, in whose best work, life and form are balanced, and exquisiteness of painting is inseparable from great feeling and idea. Similarly, 1 see for Indian painting a development in the course of a few generations, which will make painting something closely woven with the highest cultural life of the people.

In similar ways, department after department of Indian culture is feeling a new birth. It is by comparing what the West has already achieved, that one sees clearly the signs of this new birth. In India, in all the arts and crafts, there is a great sense of beauty, but it is now traditional, that is to say, the craftsman works by rote, and does not feel sufficiently a true creative urge. But since life is all the time creative, this urge is in the very texture of our being. If only we understand the principles of creation, that is to say, the principles of art, - ‘art’ means only ‘doing’ - we shall feel how our future life as an Indian civilisation is inseparable from artistic expression.

If only our artists will look with the eyes of the West on Indian scenes and on Indian men and women, they will find plenty to inspire them. Almost every day, as the fishermen pass on Adyar river in their catamarans, I can see many a Greek statue. Even when I look at one of the most pitiful sights in Madras, that is, coolies pushing loads in George Town, I feel a thrill of delight at the perfection of their muscles, and note what perfect models they are for sculpture. There is nothing so lovely as an Indian road, with its colour; a coaly woman sometimes can become the subject of a great poem, so graceful she is.

The rebirth of Indian culture is wonderfully assisted by the fact that there is behind India a great storehouse of spiritual energy waiting to be released. When, with her patriots and her religious leaders, Indian artists come to do their part in the Great Plan for India, once again there will be such a flowering of Indian ideals and achievement, as has never been in the past. Wonderfully great as Indian achievements have been in the long past, I believe that greater achievements still are in store for her in the future, not only in the domain of religion and international achievement, but also in the domain of art.

–Reprinted from Triveni, Jan. 1928