ABSTRACT
It is perhaps typical of our way of looking at things that when we see an Indian and an Englishman together the first thing we notice is the different colour of their skins and the last thing we observe is the “fundamental affinity between British and Indian reactions, physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual” to which no less experienced an observer than Lord Pethick-Lawrence has recently testified. In somewhat the same way the first thing we notice about the cultures of India and the West is the difference, and very often we do not penetrate to the level where community of insight and aspiration is to be found. Yet a culture may be likened to a language. It is the apt means of communication for a certain people or peoples in a given era of human history, and although language reacts on thought, conditioning what can be clearly expressed, it is broadly true that all languages provide the means of expressing all important truths. One of the great needs of our time is for what may be called cultural linguists, men not only of learning but of insight sufficient to interpret East and West to each other; men, in short, like the late Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. The danger of allowing this function to fall into incapable hands is great. Already identities are being lost in a great boiling together of traditions. It is as though, having made the simple discovery that every flower in a garden has its own beauty, the gardener should resolve to graft them all together and so produce one really good flower, or shall we say a flower to end flowers? The contrary danger is an obstinate cultural provincialism whose self-respect is usually centred in the dogmatic belief that its own particular civilization is the “best,” not only for its own people but for everyone else. This is a fault common in the West, and the root of much prejudice against open-hearted reception of the world-message of Mahātmā Gāndhi. “That sort of thing may be all very well in India,” people will say, “but I can’t see it happening over here.” Or, “Non-violence worked with the British, because we are by and large a tolerant and just people. It couldn’t work against people like the Nazis or long-range weapons of mass-destruction like the atom bomb.”
