Page Text
________________
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DUTY War, promised freedom to India in exchange for co-operation in the European battle to prevent Germany and Austria from breaking the iron ring of their mandala, she committed herself 10 something which, when the hour of her extremity had passed, she simply brushed aside as inconvenient to her own prosperity. By that failure in truthfulness, the government of India immediately became a-sat, "non-existent, evil, not answering its purpose; a nonentity," in other words, tyrannical, monstrous, contrary to nature. English rule in India thereby became cut off from the divine vital sources of true being that sustain all earthly phenomena, and was as much as dead: something large that still might cling, like a dead thing, but could be sloughed off by the operation of a higher principle.
The higher principle is Truth, as manifest in dharma, “law: that which holds together, supports, upholds.” Government, "law," based on "untruth" is an anomaly-according to Mahātma Gandhi's archaic, pre-Persian, native Indo-Aryan point of view. Great Britain's perennial punitive aggressions to put down the "lawlessness" of those who challenged the jurisdiction of her “laws" based on lawlessness were to be countered, following Gandhi's program, not in hind, but by the soul force that would automatically come into play as a result of a steadfast communal holding (ägraha) to truth (satya). The grip of the tyrant nation Would disintegrate. The play of its own lawlessness throughout the world would be its own undoing; one had only to wait until it took itself apart. Meanwhile, in piety, decency, and the faultless practice-with faith (śraddhā)-of its own ageless dharma, the land of India must remain with its passions of violence rightly curbed, firm in that power which is the mother of power, namely Truth.
"Whatever Sovereign," we read in Kauțilya's Arthaśāstra, "even one whose dominion extends to the ends of the earth, is of perverted disposition and ungoverned senses, must quickly perish. The whole of this science has to do with a victory over the pow
170
| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |