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vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
An Opportunity for India
The day has dawned at last, the day which India prayed for so earnestly and so long. The prayer is heard. The spirit which lay entranced and unconscious in the lethargy of despair has succumbed to the immense power of will, the united wishes of the people of this land; and it awaits their commands. The opportunity is presented; the time is come; the work is planned; the leaders are appointed; the campaign begins;—Is India prepared to play her part, to perform the duties falling on herself, to rise equal to the occasion?
We have put the query with fear and hesitation. India has disappointed us before now; India has jilted more than one truthful lover; India has proved herself fickle on several occasions; India has invariably disgusted her best friends. Is India now changed? For our part, we have begun to perceive a certain degree of agitation in the signs of the times, which has filled us with great hopes. For the last few years a steady growth of public opinion has gone on, at first unremarked, but at the present moment filling different hearts with different emotions. We have ever heeded this public opinion, understood its working, and guided its course in our own humble way. Every true lover who has loved India, every genuine reformer, every unselfish patriot, has thrown himself in the current of this public opinion, and carried himself along, assured that the current was smooth and rapid and powerful, and would bring him every day nearer to the goal, which he had been ever after. We hope we have understood. What is this public opinion, where does it lead? The voice of the people is the voice of God. And is the public opinion of India a voice less divine? It is inspired with life, with hope, with truth, with the spirit of immortality. It is a voice that means to be heard. It means to vibrate in the air for centuries. It is a voice wrung from the very heart of the people. Ages and ages have swept by. False echoes drowned and confused the accents of truth, which were smothered as soon as utterance was given them. But echoes are fragments of one sound, while the voice of India is one, an undivided whole, an entity, an individuality that asserts itself wherever it appears.
Whence, then, does this public opinion lead? It leads us back, far, far into the spirit of the past. Born of the past, it leads us back to its own home, the beautiful land, where science and art were understood in all their mysteries, and where mankind, instead of sinking under the wonders of nature as they now do, mastered the keys which open all the secrets of the cosmos, and obeyed while they furthered the aims of those occult laws, which at present are either entirely misunderstood or doubted as regards their very existence. This is where public opinion leads us. But what does it lead us away from? From a hundred thousand things, born of crime and ignorance and superstition and error. The frauds of the Christian clergy, the pious humbug of the Brahmins, the shameless misrepresentations of the Zoroastrian Mobeds, the disgusting criminality of the Mormons, the superstitious ignorance of the Buddhists, all these mushroom products of time public opinion has resolved to level to the<... continues on page 8-194 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ An Opportunity for India by unknown author, Indian Spectator, The, Sunday, April 20, 1879