Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose, His Life and Speeches Part 12

In your congratulations for the recent honour, you have overlooked a still greater that came to me a year ago, when I was gazetted as your perpetual professor, so that the tie which binds me to you is never to be severed. Thirty-two years ago I sought to be your teacher. For the trust that you imposed on me could I do anything less than place before you the highest that I knew? I never appealed to your weaknesses but your strength. I never set before you that was easy but used all the compulsion for the choice of the most difficult. And perhaps as a reward for these years of effort I find all over India those who have been my pupils occupying positions of the highest trust and responsibility in different walks of life. I do not merely count those who have won fame and success but I also claim many others who have taken up the burden of life manfully and whose life of purity and unselfishness has brought gleams of joy in suffering lives.

THE LAW UNIVERSAL

Through science I was able to teach you how the seeming veils the real; how though the garish lights dazzle and blind us, there are lights invisible, which glow persistently after the brief flare burns out. One came to realise how all matter was one, how unified all life was. In the various expressions of life even in the realm of thought the same Universal law prevails. There was no such thing as brute matter, but that spirit suffused matter in which it was enshrined. One also realised dimly a mysterious Cyclic Law of Change, seen not merely in inorganic matter but also in organised life and its highest manifestations. One saw how inertness pa.s.ses into the climax of activity and how that climax is perilously near its ant.i.thetic decline. This basic change puzzles us by its seeming caprice not merely in our physical instruments but also in the cycle of individual life and death and in the great cycle of the life and death of nations. We fail to see things in their totality and we erect barriers that keep kindreds apart. Even science which attempts to rise above common limitations, has not escaped the doom which limited vision imposes. We have caste in science as in religion and in politics, which divides one into conflicting many. The law of Cyclic change follows us relentlessly even in the realm of thought. When we have raised ourselves to the highest pinnacle, through some oversight we fall over the precipice. Men have offered their lives for the establishment of truth. A climax is reached after which the custodians of knowledge themselves bar further advance. Men who have fought for liberty impose on themselves and on others the bond of slavery. Through centuries have men striven to erect a mighty edifice in which Humanity might be enshrined; through want of vigilance the structure crumbled into dust.

Many cycles must yet be run and defeats must yet be borne before man will establish a destiny which is above change.

And through science I was able to teach you to seek for truth and help to discover it yourself. This att.i.tude of detachment may possess some advantage in the proper understanding of your duties. You will have, besides, the heritage of great ideals that have been handed down to you. The question which you have to decide is duty to yourself, to the king and to your country. I shall speak to you of the ideals which we cherish about these duties.

DUTY TO SELF

As regards duty to self, can there be anything so inclusive as being true to your manhood? Stand upright and do not be either cringing or vulgarly self-a.s.sertive. Be righteous. Let your words and deeds correspond. Lead no double life. Proclaim what you think right.

IDEAL OF KINGSHIP

The Indian ideal of kingship will be clear to you if I recite the invocation with which we crowned our kings from the Vedic Times:

"Be with us. We have chosen thee Let all the people wish for thee Stand steadfast and immovable Be like a mountain unremoved And hold thy kingship in thy grasp."

We have chosen thee, our prayers have consecrated thee, for all the wishes of the people went with thee. Thou art to stand as mountain unremoved, for thy throne is planted secure on the hearts of thy people.

Stand steadfast then, for we have endowed thee with power irresistible.

Fall therefore not away; but let thy sceptre be held firmly in thy grasp.

Which is more potent, Matter or Spirit? Is the power with which the people endow their king identical with the power of wealth with which we enrich him by paying him his Royal dues? We make him irresistible not by wealth but by the strength of our lives, the strength of our mind, may, we have to pay him more according to our ancient Lawgivers, in as much as the eighth part of our deeds and virtues, and the merit we have ourselves acquired. We can only make him irresistible by the strength of our lives, the strength of our minds, and the strength that comes out of righteousness.

DUTY TO OUR COUNTRY

And lastly, what are our duties to our country? These are essentially to win honour for it and also win for it security and peace. As regards winning honour for our country, it is true that while India has offered from the earliest times welcome and hospitality to all peoples and nationalities her children have been subjected to intolerable humiliations in other countries even under the flag of our king.

There can be no question of the fundamental duty of every Indian to stand up and uphold the honour of his country and strove for the removal of wrong.

The general task of redressing wrong is not a problem of India alone, but one in which the righteous men are interested the world over. For wrong cries for redress everywhere, in the clashings interests of the rich and poor, between capital and labour, between those who hold the power and those from whom it has been withheld,--in a word in the struggle of the Disinherited.

When any man is rendered unable to uphold his manhood and self-respect and woman are deprived of the chivalrous protection and consideration of men and subjected to degradation, the general level of manhood or womanhood in the world is lowered. It then becomes an outrage to humanity and a challenge to all men to safeguard the sacredness of our common human nature.

What is the machinery which sets a going a world movement for the redress of wrong? For this I need not cite instances from the history of other countries but take one which is known to you and in which the living actors are still among us. In the midst of the degradation of his countrymen in South Africa, there stood up a man himself nurtured in luxury, to take up the burden of the disinherited. His wife too stood by him, a lady of gentle birth. We all know who that man is--he is Gandhi,--and what humiliations and suffering he went through. Do you think he suffered in vain and that his voice remained unheard? It was not so, for in the great vortex of pa.s.sion for Justice, there were caught others--men like Polak and Andrews. Are they your countrymen? Not in the narrow sense of the word but truly in a larger sense, that these who choose to bear and suffer belong to one clan the clan from which Kshatriya Chivalry is recruited. The removal of suffering and of the cause of suffering is the Dharma of the strong Kshatriya. The earth is the wide and universal theatre of man's woeful pageant. The question is who is to suffer more than his share. Is the burden to fall on the weak or the strong? Is it to be under hopeless compulsion or of voluntary acceptance?

DEFENCE OF HOMELAND

In your services for your country there is no higher at the present moment than to ensure for her security and peace. We have so long enjoyed the security of peace without being called upon to maintain it.

But this is no longer so.

At no time within the recent history of India has there been so quick a readjustment and appreciation as regards proper understanding of the aspiration of the Indian people. This has been due to what India has been able to offer not merely in the regions of thought but also in the fields of battle.

Ma.s.s RESPONSE

And remember that when the world is in conflagration, this corner which has. .h.i.therto escaped it, will not evade the peril which threatens it.

The march of disaster will then be terribly rapid. You have soon to prepare yourself against any hostile sides. You can only withstand it if the whole people realise the imminent danger. You can by your thought and by your action awaken and influence the mult.i.tude. Do not have any misgivings about the want of long previous preparations. Have you not already seen how mind triumphs over matter and have not some of you with only a few months' preparation stood fearless at your post in Mesopotamia and won recognition by your calm collectedness and true heroism? They may say that you are but a small handful, what of the vast illiterate millions? Illiterate in what sense? Have not the ballads of these illiterates rendered into English by our Poet touched profoundly the hearts of the very elect of the West? Have not the stories of their common life appealed to the common kinship of humanity? If you still have some doubts about the power of the mult.i.tude to respond instantly to the call of duty, I shall relate an incident which came within my own personal experience. I had gone on a scientific expedition to the borders of the Himalayan terrai of k.u.maun; a narrow ravine was between me and the plateau on the other side. Terror prevailed among the villagers on the other side of the ravine; for a tigress had come down from the forest. And numerous had been the toll in human lives exacted.

Pet.i.tions had been sent up to the Government and questions had been asked in Parliament. A reward of Rs. 500 had been offered. Various captains in the army with battery of guns came many a time, but the reward remained unclaimed. The murderess of the forest would come out even in broad day-light and leisurely take her victims from away their companions. Nothing could circ.u.mvent her demoniac cunning. When all hopes had nearly vanished, the villagers went to Kaloo Singh, who possessed an old matchlock. At the special sanction of the Magistrate he was allowed to buy a quant.i.ty of gunpowder; the bullets he himself made by melting bits of lead. With his primitive weapon with the entreaties of his villagers ringing in his ears Kaloo Singh started on his perilous journey. At midday I was startled by the groanings of some animals in pain. The tigress had sprung among a herd of buffalo and with successive strokes of its mighty paws had killed two buffaloes and left them in the field. Kaloo Singh waited there for the return of the tigress to the kill. There was not a tree near by; only there was a low bush behind which he lay crouched. After hours of waiting as the sun was going down he was taken aback by the sudden apparition of the tigress which stood within six feet of him. His limbs had become half paralysed from cold and his crouching position. Trying to raise his gun he could take no aim as his arm was shaking with involuntary fear. Kaloo Singh explained to me afterwards how he succeeded in shaking off his mortal terror. "I quietly said to myself, Kaloo Singh, Kaloo Singh, who sent you here? Did not the villagers put their trust on you! I could then no longer lie in hiding, and I stood up and something strange and invigorating crept up strength into my body. All the trembling went and I became as hard as steel. The tigress had seen me and with eyes blazing crouched for the spring lashing its tail. Only six feet lay between. She sprang and my gun also went off at the same time and she missed her aim and fell dead close to me." That was how a common villager went off to meet death at the call of something for which he could give no name and the mother and wife of Kaloo Singh had also bidden him go. There are millions of Kaloo Singhs with mother and sisters and wife to send them forth. And you too have many loved ones who would themselves bid you arm for the defence of your homes.

DIFFERENCE OF TEMPERAMENT

The issue is clear, and immediate action is imperative. But action is delayed by misunderstanding arising out of temperamental differences between the Governing Cla.s.s and the People. Curiously enough the respective responsive characteristics of the Anglo Saxon and the Indians are paralleled by the two types of responses seen in all living matter.

In the one type the response is slow but proportionate to the stimulus that excites it. The response grows with the strength of external force.

In the other it is quite different--here it is an all-or-none principle.

It either responds to the utmost or nothing at all. This is also ill.u.s.trated in the different racial characteristics. The Anglo Saxon has even by his rights by struggle, step by step. The insignificant little has, by acc.u.mulation, became large, and which has been gained, has been gained for all time. But in the Indian the ideal and the emotional are the only effective stimulus. The ideal of his King is Rama, who renounced his kingdom and even his beloved for an idea. One day a king and another day a bare-footed wanderer in the forest! Who cares? All or nothing!

The concessions made by a modern form of Government safeguarded by necessary limitations may appear almost as grudging gifts. The Indian wants something which comes with unhesitating frankness and warmth and strikes his ideality and imagination. But ancient and modern kingship are sometimes at one in direct and spontaneous p.r.o.nouncement of the royal sympathy. Such was the Proclamation of Queen Victoria which stirred to its depths the popular heart.

"In the Prosperity of Our subjects will be our strength, in their contentment Our security, in their Grat.i.tude Our best Reward."

That there are increasingly frequent reflexes in our Government to popular needs and wishes is happily ill.u.s.trated at a most opportune moment from the statements in the recent _Gazette of India_ and cables received from London. In the former we find that the Viceroy and his council had recommended the abolition of the system of indentured labour. In the telegram from London Mr. Chamberlain states that the Viceroy has informed him that Indians will be eligible for commissions in the New Defence of India Army.

MARCH OF WORLD TRAGEDY

In the meantime the Embodiment of World Tragedy is marching with giant strides. Brief will be his hesitation whether he will choose to step first to the East or to the West. Already across the Atlantic, they are preparing for the dreaded visitation. In the farthest East they have long been prepared. We alone are not ready. Pity for our helplessness will not stay the impending disaster, rather provoke it. When that comes, as a.s.suredly it will unless we are prepared to resist, havoc will be let loose and horrors perpetrated before which the imagination quails back in dismay.

I have tried to lay before you as dispa.s.sionately as I could the issues involved. But some of you may cry out and say, we can not live in cold scientific and philosophic abstractions. Emotion is more to us than pure reasoning. We cannot stay in this indecision which is paralysing our wills and crushing the soul out of us. The world is offering their best and behold them marching to be immolated so that by the supreme offering of death they might win safety and honor for their motherland. There is no time for wavering. We too will throw in our lot with those who are fighting. They say that by our lives we shall win for our birth-land an honoured place in their federation. We shall trust them. We shall stand by their side and fight for our home and homeland. And let Providence shape the Issue.

THE VOICE OF LIFE

The following is the Inaugural Address delivered by Sir J. C. Bose, on the 30th November 1917, in dedicating the Bose Inst.i.tute to the Nation.

I dedicate to-day this Inst.i.tute--not merely a Laboratory but a Temple.

The power of physical methods applies for the establishment of that truth which can be realised directly through our senses, or through the vast expansion of the perceptive range by means of artificially created organs. We still gather the tremulous message when the note of the audible reaches the unheard. When human sight fails, we continue to explore the region of the invisible. The little that we can see is as nothing compared to the vastness of that which we cannot. Out of the very imperfection of his senses man has built himself a raft of thought by which he makes daring adventures on the great seas of the Unknown.

But there are other truths which will remain beyond even the supersensitive methods known to science. For these we require faith, tested not in a few years but by an entire life. And a temple is erected as a fit memorial for the establishment of that truth for which faith was needed. The personal, yet general, truth and faith whose establishment this Inst.i.tute commemorates is this: that when one dedicates himself wholly for a great object, the closed doors shall open, and the seemingly impossible will become possible for him.

Thirty-two years ago I chose teaching of science as my vocation. It was held that by its very peculiar const.i.tution, the Indian mind would always turn away from the study of Nature to metaphysical speculations.

Even had the capacity for inquiry and accurate observation been a.s.sumed present, there were no opportunities for their employment; there were no well-equipped laboratories nor skilled mechanicians. This was all too true. It is for man not to quarrel with circ.u.mstances but bravely accept them; and we belong to that race and dynasty who had accomplished great things with simple means.

FAILURE AND SUCCESS

This day twenty-three years ago, I resolved that as far as the whole-hearted devotion and faith of one man counted, that would not be wanting and within six months it came about that some of the most difficult problems connected with Electric Waves found their solution in my Laboratory and received high appreciation from Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh and other leading physicists. The Royal Society honoured me by publishing my discoveries and offering, of their own accord, an appropriation from the special Parliamentary Grant for the advancement of knowledge. That day the closed gates suddenly opened and I hoped that the torch that was then lighted would continue to burn brighter, and brighter. But man's faith and hope require repeated testing. For five years after this, the progress was interrupted; yet when the most generous and wide appreciation of my work had reached almost the highest point there came a sudden and unexpected change.

LIVING AND NON-LIVING