Indian Celebrities Abroad

A large number of Indians have a made a mark in foreign countries, have proved highly successful in their fields of specializations as well as in business enterprises. The question is: can their success be called an Indian success? It could be the success of Indians but it cannot be called an Indian success. It is here, in India the country of one’s birth and upbringing, that we expect authentic Indian contribution to come in a unique way. But it is often said that for doing science, for instance, in India conditions are not very favourable. But then what about those Indians who are favourably placed in the western milieu? They have made a mark in the American society, but then can their success be called Indian success? The frank and plain answer is: in the least; at the best debatable, perhaps. We do not see distinctive Indian-ness in their approach. The faculty of rational mind and its application in solving professional problems has to be developed no doubt, but there has to be also an intuitive perception which brings understanding and knowledge of another kind that cannot be provided by reason alone. If the individuality of an individual lies in the uniqueness of the sense of his perception, the same applies to the nation having its own national soul and national character, national swabhāva. If there is the German-ness of a German, English-ness of an Englishman, Japanese-ness of a Japanese, Russian-ness of a Russian, American-ness of an American, there has to be Indian-ness of an Indian whether he is in India or elsewhere. In the absence of this ‘-ness’ we can only say that there no awakening of the individual’s soul has taken place. It would only indicate one is abroad to make one’s living and not to live in the sense of life’s nation-born character.

This does not get reflected in its real sense in the works of even the winners of Nobel Prizes who hail from the subcontinent, particularly if we pride in them as individuals belonging to this culture. We may include the names of Har Gobind Khorana, S Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam and, with a certain pertinence, Amartya Sen also. Their contributions are quite significant in the respective fields, something which they could not have done by remaining back home. The ambiance, the academic or even the enriching surroundings that are required for their kind of work are absent here,—which also means that it is not just the question of facilities in the country. 

True, science has its own life-style and manners, and needs its own greenhouse to grow and flourish. Yet what is basically important is the overall attitude towards things. We must appreciate that genuine creativity has to be always incontingent. A well-prepared and pioneering mind moulds its own eventualities and its own harmonious accordances, produces its own instruments and rich tools,—as was done by JC Bose and CV Raman. Perhaps it is in our general psychological build-up that we should discover the causes why there is no Indian science, be that in India or abroad. What we practise today is only the western science, more specifically the science of American brand. That may also explain why the kind of science we do cannot receive applause in the world. When the ball is moving fast we may not be able to catch it even if we should increase the speed; the gap may rather increase. We have to cut across it and catch it. In basic sciences it should be something yet different.

Har Gobind Khorana, hailing from Punjab, began his career with proteins and nucleic acids. He was the first to synthesise oligonucleotides, which have applications in biotechnography. Khorana was married in 1952 to Esther Elizabeth Sibler, of Swiss origin. She “brought a consistent sense of purpose into his life at a time when, after six years' absence from the country of his birth, Khorana felt out of place everywhere and at home nowhere.” Isn’t that strange that he should feel out of place everywhere? Apart from that psychological feeling of alienation, in his work also one would like to ask the degree of the Indian-ness he has in his professional contributions. If we should find it rather scant then to pride in his work will be our misplaced sense of belonging.

The name of S Chandrasekhar shines like a star in the new horizon that has suddenly come into our view, Astrophysics. He studied at Presidency College in Chennai and then at Trinity College. From 1933 to 1937 he worked at Cambridge and then joined the University of Chicago where he remained, and preferred to remain, for the rest of his life. In 1930 he showed that a star of a mass greater than 1.4 times that of the sun had to end its life by collapsing into an object of enormous density, unlike any object known at that time. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 “... in recognition of his distinguished researches in mathematical physics, particularly those related to the stability of convective motions in fluids with and without magnetic fields.” According to Hans Bethe, “Chandra was a first-rate astrophysicist.” And Martin Rees: “Chandra probably thought longer and deeper about our universe than anyone since Einstein.” These are high complements indeed, acclaiming great professional advances made, but we do not know how far has knowledge really moved forward.

With a certain degree of relevance, seeing things in the perspective of the Indian subcontinent, we may also include here the name of the theoretical physicist Abdus Salam who, as a boy, had never seen electric light. Abdus Salam, co-winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, was a professor at Imperial College in London and also Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, where over a period of more than thirty years, 60,000 scientists from 150 countries have taken part in activities. His convictions were typically Islamic and he firmly believed in his heritage. He considered that the universe was “created by God with ideas of beauty and symmetry and harmony, with regularity and without chaos. The Koran places a lot of emphasis on natural law. Thus Islam plays a large role in my view of science; we are trying to discover what the Lord thought..." Abdus Salam is famous for the electroweak theory which synthesised weak and electromagnetic interactions—the latest stage reached until now on the path towards the unification of the known four fundamental forces of nature.

Moving away from science to economics we have the first-rate contribution from Amartya Sen. “I was born,” says Amartya Kumar Sen “in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.” The Bengal famine of 1943, in which something like three million people had died, made a deep impression on young Amartya to look into economic factors that govern a country. Kenneth Arrow's path-breaking “impossibility theorem” of social choice made a deep impact on Amartya Sen. Poverty, inequality, unemployment, real national income, living standards were the important considerations in making any worthwhile economic assessment. “While these were intensely practical matters,” tells Amartya Sen, “I also got more and more involved in trying to understand the nature of individual advantage in terms of the substantive freedoms that different persons respectively enjoy, in the form of the capability to achieve valuable things. My work in social choice theory was initially motivated by a desire to overcome Arrow's pessimistic picture by going beyond his limited informational base.” During his Harvard years he was occupied with the implications of welfare economics and political philosophy. For his work dealing with welfare economics, economic inequality and poverty, on the one hand, and the scope and possibility of rational tolerant and democratic social choice, on the other, Amartya Sen was award Nobel Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. But the roots of economics of the Indian system are yet deeper and more vigorous, more life-nourishing. These find their harmonious place in the fourfold organization we have in our authentic system. Our economist seems to be oblivious to it.

It is pertinent to recall here what Sri Aurobindo wrote a hundred years ago. It seems that when a culture that has fallen into a state of comparative inactivity or sleep, contraction finds thrown upon its novel and successful powers and functionings. But if there is only a mechanical imitation, then that culture gets swallowed up by the invading leviathan. To live in one’s self, determining one’s self-expression from one’s centre of being in accordance with one’s own law of being, swadharma, is the first necessity. This law of one’s own being, this swadharma, is the sole criterion we have to apply to our celebrities—professionals and Nobels—while evaluating the Indian-ness we are looking for in their loud and triumphant merits. The Indian tradition is to create traditions. Assimilating all the gains of the Western world we have to rebuild our own values that will fulfil our deepest longings, our aspirations. When well-founded, we will have followed the “Goethean methods, based on developing intuitive holistic thinking for entering into a different kind of relationship with life.” In the process, even the quantum ‘fuzziness’ of physicists may indeed turn out to be fruitful.

Ilya Prigogine showed that any open system has the capacity to respond to disorder and change and this it does by reorganising itself at a higher level. We have a similar possibility in our freedom to do things. Will from our present-day “dissipative structures” arise a new order? If we practise American science we run along the principal American warp and immediately the answer to our question will be “No.”

Indian success abroad may not reflect Indian character

The success of Indian professionals and artists in foreign lands may not necessarily reflect the Indian character, the Indian dharma in secular activities. They have certainly acquired worldwide and perhaps desirable if not deserving recognition. Plenty of money also has flowed back into the national treasury. But that has brought into the system a good deal of falsification of values too. Now there is a fairly influential segment of people which wants a small America for themselves in India. There have to be in India for them American airports, the American banking system, American management, American hospitals, hotels, clubs, recreation centres. The rest of the vast land of abounding and noble tradition has no relevance for them. If there are societal or political or cultural shortcomings here, they are not concerned about them; they do not have any solution to offer to remove them.

No wonder, the mismatches cause internal as well as external stresses. There are gains no doubt but there is no integration, no genuine harmonisation of what can make the society truly progressive. All that we can say about the success of the professionals is that, they have demonstrated our capacity to acquire skills in advance areas and apply them to solve technical problems. A certain degree of competence of the Indian mind gets acclaimed. But that is not enough. We may apply the same consideration while assessing the great contributions of the celebrities from India. Let us briefly look into the works of Nobel winners from the subcontinent.

We may conclude this rapid celebration of Indians abroad with Amartya Sen’s note on Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian Nobel winner: “In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the excitement that Tagore’s writings created in the early years of this century has largely vanished. The enthusiasm with which his work was once greeted was quite remarkable. Gitanjali, a selection of his poetry for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913, was published in English translation in London in March of that year and had been reprinted ten times by November, when the award was announced. But he is not much read now in the West, and already by 1937, Graham Greene was able to say: ‘As for Rabindranath Tagore, I cannot believe that anyone but Mr Yeats can still take his poems very seriously.’ Graham Greene had, in fact, gone on to explain that he associated Tagore with what Chesterton calls the bright pebbly eyes of the Theosophists. Certainly, an air of mysticism played some part in the ‘selling’ of Rabindranath Tagore to the West by Yeats, Pound, and his other early champions. Even Anna Akhmatova, one of Tagore’s few later admirers (who translated his poems into Russian in the mid-1960s), talks of ‘that mighty flow of poetry which takes its strength from Hinduism as from the Ganges, and is called Rabindranath Tagore.’ ”

It is important to ponder why the early enthusiasm for Tagore vanished later and that these days his poems are not taken “very seriously”. We may have to again go deeper into the spiritual and cultural roots of the country to discover ourselves in the present milieu, be that of poetry or mysticism or science.

We are sparrows flying to yonder fields for grain

In the over-all context we yet feel the Indian character in our activities and occupations missing. We are sparrows flying to yonder fields for grain. We are careerists waiting for Western recognition and adulation. We are putting our every talent and capability in the service of alien masters. We have not discovered ourselves yet. It is pertinent to recall here what Sri Aurobindo wrote more than four score years ago. It seems that at a particular stage of growth and development there is a desirable necessity for imitating others who have made progress in a certain manner. When a culture that “has fallen into a state of comparative inactivity, sleep, contraction… finds thrown upon it novel and successful powers and functionings… it is impelled by the very instinct of life to take over these ideas and forms… But if there is only a mechanical imitation… it is swallowed up by the invading leviathan… I do not suppose that anyone seriously thinks of renouncing or exiling these modern additions to our life… But the question is what we do with them and whether we can bring them to be instruments… of our own spirit…. What I mean… is that we… must go back to whatever corresponds to it, illumines its sense, justifies its highest purport in our own spiritual conception of life and existence, and in that light work out its extent, degree, form, relation to other ideas, application … to live in one’s self, determining one’s self-expression from one’s centre of being in accordance with one’s own law of being, svadharma, is the first necessity.” (The Foundations of Indian Culture, pp. 387-91)

This is the sole criterion we have to apply to our celebrities—professionals and Nobels—while evaluating the Indian-ness we are looking for in their meritorious achievements. The feel-good sentimentalism has to change into endeavours of our own discoverable possibilities. If that does not happen, it would mean we have failed. To witness national character in science and technology and professional endeavours could be prematurely hazardous, but it will give us an idea about the state-of-the-art in the country. But to think of professional improvement and steering the projects for modernised functioning under the vision of governmental expertise may be at the root of much of our failure. What counts are living and dynamic institutions with vision coupled with the sense of the practical and the realisable. These have to come up if are to get our authentic Indian-ness.

Indians succeed, but in countries ruled by the whites

The Times of India columnist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar has a pertinent observation in his column Swaminomics dated 26 December 1999. He summarises our performance in the twentieth century in one sentence: “Indians have succeeded in countries ruled by whites, but failed in their own.” He continues “the saddest story of the century” as follows:

This outcome would have astonished leaders of our independence movement. They declared Indians were kept down by white rule and could flourish only under self-rule. This seemed self-evident. The harsh reality today is that Indians are succeeding brilliantly in countries ruled by whites, but failing in India. They are flourishing in the USA and Britain. But those that stay in India are pulled down by an outrageous system that fails to reward merit or talent fails to allow people and businesses to grow, and keeps real power lies with netas, babus, and assorted manipulators. Once Indians go to white-ruled countries, they soar and conquer summits once occupied only by whites.

Rono Dutta has become head of United Airlines, the biggest airline in the world. Had he stayed in India, he would have no chance in Indian Airlines. Even if the top job there was given him by some godfather, a myriad netas, babus and trade unionists would have ensured that he could never run it like United Airlines.

Rana Talwar has become head of Standard Chartered Bank Plc, one of the biggest multinational banks in Britain, while still in his 40s. Had he been in India, he would perhaps be a local manager in the State Bank, taking orders from babus to give dud loans to politically favoured clients.

Rajat Gupta is head of Mckinsey, the biggest management consultancy firm in the world. He now advises the biggest multinationals on how to run their business. Had he remained in India he would probably be taking orders from some sethji with no qualification save that of being born in a rich family.

Lakhsmi Mittal has become the biggest steel baron in the world, with steel plants in the US, Kazakhstan, Germany, Mexico, Trinidad and Indonesia. India's socialist policies reserved the domestic steel industry for the public sector. So Lakhsmi Mittal went to Indonesia to run his family?s first steel plant there. Once freed from the shackles of India, he conquered the world.

Subhash Chandra of Zee TV has become a global media king, one of the few to beat Rupert Murdoch. He could never have risen had he been limited to India, which decreed a TV monopoly for Doordarshan. But technology came to his aid: satellite TV made it possible for him to target India from Hong Kong. Once he escaped Indian rules and soil, he soared.

You may not have heard of 48-year old Gururaj Deshpande. His communications company, Sycamore, is currently valued by the US stock market at over $ 30 billion, making him perhaps the richest Indian in the world. Had he remained in India, he would probably a babu in the Department of Telecommunications.

Arun Netravali has become president of Bell Labs, one of the biggest research and development centres in the world with 30,000 inventions and several Nobel Prizes to its credit. Had he been in India, he would probably be struggling in the middle cadre of Indian Telephone Industries.

Silicon Valley alone contains over one lakh Indian millionaires. Sabeer Bhatia invented Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft for $ 400 million. Victor Menezes is number two in Citibank. Shailesh Mehta is CEO of Providian, a top US financial services company. Also at or near the top are Rakesh Gangwal of US Air, Jamshd Wadia of Arthur Andersen, and Aman Mehta of Hong Kong Shanghai Bank.

In Washington DC, the Indian CEO High Tech Council has no less than 200 members, all high tech-chiefs. While Indians have soared, India has stagnated.

At independence India was the most advanced of all colonies, with the best prospects. Today with a GNP per head of $ 370, it occupies a lowly 177th position among 209 countries of the world. But poverty is by no means the only or main problem. India ranks near the bottom in the UNDP's Human Development Index, but high up in Transparency International's Corruption Index.

The neta-babu raj brought in by socialist policies is only one reason for India?s failure. The more sordid reason is the rule-based society we inherited from the British Raj is today in tatters. Instead money, muscle and influence matter most.

At independence we were justly proud of our politicians. Today we regard them as scoundrels and criminals. They have created a jungle of laws in the holy name of socialism, and used these to line their pockets and create patronage networks. No influential crook suffers. The mafia flourish unhindered because the have political links. The sons of police officers believe they have a licence to rape and kill (ask the Mattoo family).

Talent cannot take you far amidst such rank misgovernance. We are reverting to our ancient feudal system where no rules applied to the powerful. The British Raj brought in abstract concepts of justice for all, equality before the law. These were maintained in the early years of independence. But fifty years later, citizens wail that India is a lawless land where no rules are obeyed.

I have heard of an IAS probationer at the Mussorie training academy pointing out that in India before the British came, making money and distributing favors to relatives was not considered a perversion of power, it was the very rationale of power. A feudal official had a duty to enrich his family and caste. Then the British came and imposed a new ethical code on officials. But, he asked, why should we continue to choose British customs over desi ones now that we were independent?

The lack of transparent rules, properly enforced, is a major reason why talented Indians cannot rise in India. A second reason is the neta-babu raj, which remains intact despite supposed liberalisation. But once talented Indians go to rule-based societies in the west, they take off. In those societies all people play by the same rules, all have freedom to innovate without being strangled by regulations.

This, then, is why Indians succeed in countries ruled by whites, and fail in their own. It is the saddest story of the century.

The list of illustrious souls could be updated but the essential observation continues to be what it was ten years ago or even more so, observation of the despicable Neta-Babu Raj. Could it be that the political system we have adapted has embedded in it all the elements of misgovernance, that “citizens wail that India is a lawless land where no rules are obeyed”? But if we have only the wailing kind, then it means that we are still in the unawakened slothful tamasic age, of intellectual apathy, not willing to fight back. We lack in assertive personality to uphold values of life, values that promote creative talent also. It is a pity that our media have no vision and no sense of social responsibility to mould the opinions of people and imbibe in them the spirit of forward-moving nationalism, the ideal of free and progressive expression of life in the nobility of life, that was kindled during the renaissance period a hundred years ago. it is a shame that today our respectable judges are against legislation compelling them to declare their assets publicly. If so, what kind of civil servants they are? So it is not only Neta-Babu Raj; it is also Neta-Babu-Munsif Raj, they all hand-in-glove doing whatever they feel like doing. We are still sleeping in sleep of the mediaeval sleep.

When in 1935 Nirodbaran had asked Sri Aurobindo about India’s Independence, his reply was that it was already a settled fact, an occultly determined reality. Instead, for him the question was: what was India going to do with her Independence? He spoke of things looking ominous. Nirodbaran asked: “With the coming of independence I hope such things will stop. Now I would like to ask you something. In your scheme of things do you definitely see a free India? You have stated that for the spreading of spirituality in the world India must be free. I suppose you must be working for it! You are the only one who can do something really effective by the use of your spiritual Force.”

Sri Aurobindo replied: “That is all settled. It is a question of working out only. The question is what is India going to do with her independence? The above kind of affair? Bolshevism? Goonda-raj? Things look ominous.” [16 September 1935]

Amending the Judges Inquiry Act of 1968

Goonda-raj and things looking ominous should be matters of concern when one is trying to see the spiritual destiny of the society, of India and the world. But there is a deeper malaise, pertaining to the intellectual or elite segment of the society, and nothing can be more telling than that, nothing more repulsive and revolting. There cannot be anything scarier than a corrupt judiciary. It should come as a surprise if not shock to any honest and upright individual that the judges of the Indian courts cannot come under the scrutiny of anti-corruption laws, that their assets cannot be assessed and they punished for their acts of omission and commission. And the irony is, an elected government kind of feels helpless and has hesitation to have any confrontation with the judiciary—unless they two are hand in glove to absolve each other. The helpless individual falls a victim to the high-handed and brutish system of operation.

Anil Divan, a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court analyses the problem with balance and uprightness. Let us briefly recount the highlights of the controversy. The first shot was fired when an application was made under the Right to Information Act seeking information about the judges declaring their assets as per a resolution passed earlier by the Supreme Court judges. In a landmark order the right of the citizen to information, in furtherance of the principles of judicial accountability, was upheld. The Chief Justice of India reacted and maintained an appeal could be made against the judgement. On the very face of it, in terms of the values, it sounds unsettling, if not hideous, that the judges who are public servants need not disclose their assets. On 3 August 2009 the introduction of the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill, 2009 in the Rajya Sabha brought the controversy to the centre-stage. The Bill supported the Supreme Court judges. But the passing of the Bill due to vehement and well-argued opposition was deferred. Parliamentary support was not forthcoming. But as reported on 27 August 2009, the judges of the Supreme Court had decided in principle to put their assets on the website. What a solution! Where is the integrity?

“Transparency triumphed. Public opinion prevailed. The entire nation was happy,” continues Anil Divan, “that the Supreme Court had enhanced its own reputation by agreeing with the public perception. The decision received laudatory notices in many editorials. The current controversy has broken fresh ground. For the first time, the Supreme Court became a litigant before a High Court; for the first time, a High Court judge spoke up against the view of the Supreme Court judges—not in their judicial capacity because that is not permissible—but on a public issue with ethical dimensions; for the first time, former judges, in an effort to preserve the institutional integrity and respect of the Supreme Court, vigorously entered the fray; and for the first time, the media boldly took a critical stand against the apex judiciary.”

What should have come as an immediate perception took a meandering turn, exposing in the process everybody, individuals and institutions. That would indeed make one wonder, if “transparency triumphed” was not after all an outcome of a strategic move. This is mockery, showing that our intellectuals are hollow men, or made of straw, men without moral, ethical or spiritual backbones. This is the best of the present-day India which hardly gives one a sense of elation; rather it makes one feel sad. The plight of the poor and the helpless makes one shudder at the sordid state of affairs, makes one ask questions if we are living in an India dreamt of by the noble souls who sacrificed everything of theirs for its Independence. Let us take an example or two. The following is related to the judiciary-legislative aspect.

Forgotten behind prison walls

“Under-trials often spend years in jails without trial or conviction because they are too poor to get themselves out,” reports Harsh Mander. “Tens of thousands of deprived men and women are trapped in jails throughout the country, often for many years, without trial or conviction, separated from their families, exiled from hope. The predicament of these ‘under-trial’ prisoners, who constitute as many as two-thirds of our overcrowded jail populations, have for many decades—but all too briefly and ineffectually—stirred the conscience of courts, official commissions and human rights activists, but little has changed for them. Most of these unfortunate, incarcerated men and women—and sadly children—are very poor, and from socially disadvantaged groups. It is by no means a fact that most crimes in our country are committed by very poor people. It is just that these dispensable and forgotten people are too powerless to free themselves from the vice-like grip of the law: they lack the money, education and political clout to walk free. They cannot muster the resources to afford bail and lawyers, and over-burdened courts do not find the time to try them. Individuals who cannot access bail remain in prison until they are discharged or acquitted, or convicted and sent to jail, or released after completing their sentence, paying a fine, admonition, or on probation. It is important to remember that under-trials are incarcerated for these long periods even though no offence has actually been proved against them. It is possible that at the end of the trial they are discharged, but nothing can bring back their irretrievably lost years spent behind jail walls, and the stigma, separation and abuse they suffered, as did their loved ones. Even more tragic is that many of these under-trial prisoners are not even charged with any offence. Some of the under-trial prisoners have been in jail for as many as 5, 7 or 9 years and a few of them even more than 10 years, without their trial having begun. What faith can these lost souls have in the judicial system which denies them a bare trial for so many years and keeps them behind bars, not because they are guilty, but because they are too poor to afford bail and the courts have no time to try them. The Supreme Court has directed repeatedly that under no circumstances can any persons be held in prison as under-trials, if they spend more than half the time they would if they were ultimately convicted of the crime that are charged with. Yet this direction is ignored and flouted with impunity almost universally in jails across the country. And the muffled suffering and casual injustice against these most dispossessed men and women, forgotten behind the tall prison walls, persists without end.”

Fine development of social character: two principal motors of progress

Long ago Sri Aurobindo wrote the following which is not only educative but also charged with power that can uplift our souls: “Gifted with a lighter, subtler and clearer mind than their insular neighbours, the French people have moved irresistibly towards a social and not a political development. It is true that French orators and statesmen, incapacitated by their national character from originating fit political ideals, have adopted a set of institutions curiously blended from English and American manufactures; but the best blood, the highest thought, the real grandeur of the nation does not reside in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies; it resides in the artistic and municipal forces of Parisian life, in the firm settled executive, in the great vehement heart of the French populace—and that has ever beaten most highly in unison with the grand ideas of Equality and Fraternity, since they were first enounced on the banner of the great and terrible Republic. Hence though by the indiscreet choice of a machine, they have been compelled to copy the working of English machinery and concede an undue importance to politics, yet the ideals which have genuinely influenced the spirit which has most deeply permeated their national life are widely different from that alien spirit, from those borrowed ideals. I have said that the French mind is clearer, subtler, lighter than the English. In that clarity they have discerned that without high qualities in the raw material excellence of machinery will not suffice to create a sound and durable national character,—that it may indeed develop a strong, energetic and capable temper, but that the fabric will not combine fineness with strength, will not resist permanently the wear and tear of time and the rending force of social problems:—through that subtlety they divined that not by the mechanic working of institutions, but by the delicate and almost unseen moulding of a fine, lucid and invigorating atmosphere, could a robust and highly-wrought social temper be developed:—and through that lightness they chose not the fierce, sharp air of English individualism, but the bright influence of art and letters, of happiness, a wide and liberal culture, and the firm consequent cohesion of their racial and social elements. To put all this briefly, the second school of thought I would indicate to my readers, is the preference of a fine development of social character and a wide diffusion of happiness to the mechanic development of a sound political machinery. Here then as indicated by these grand examples we have our two principal motors of  progress; a careful requisition for the sake of evolving an energetic national character and high level of capacity, of a sound political machinery; and the ardent, yet rational pursuit, for its own sake, of a sound and highly-wrought social temper.”

That is the message for the social awakening of the country and the imperative is to live in it, to imbibe and express it in our activities. That could be one preparatory way of beckoning the spiritual destiny to us. Should that not happen?

Certain parts of this article have been drawn from Can there be an Indian Science? and reference may be made to Indian Science A, Indian Science B, Indian Science C.