Suddenly, interest rose over a certain Baba Bharati and his take on the west. A famous article of his, the White Peril became the centre of discussion. Presenting here in full, the article which he wrote and comes from the second version of the 1906 November edition of Light of India. The article is still relevant even today and this is a fit case for reading comprehension in schools.
The White Peril
To a student from the East, life in the West is an open book. To the Western student, life in the East is as yet a mystery. The reason is not far to seek. Life is generally lived here upon its surface; while out in the East, life is lived in its depth. The superficial is ever easily seen and understood. The average Westerner is light-minded at best, too light-minded to grasp the serious East— the profound mind of the Real East, a shadowy reflection of which is its external life.
By “ Real East” I mean the East that has kept itself unchanged in its main features of life from the hoary ages to our day, and comprises India, Burmah, Ceylon, Siam, China and Japan, all professing the essentials of the Brahman religion, all following more or less the same ideals of life. Of the inner conceptions of the life lived by these peoples the Westerner knows absolutely nothing, and has hitherto cared less to know anything. The wonderful examples of heroism, intelligence, patriotism and pluck betrayed by the Japanese in their conflict with Russia have, however, succeeded in inflicting a rude shock to this stolid apathy and awakened a genuine interest to unravel the mystery of the Eastern character. It would be a positive benefit if this greatest curse of humanity, war, should prove a blessing in the shape of sustaining this interest until the West has fully grasped the spirit and ideals of the Eastern mind, spirit and ideals which form the backbone and have preserved the life, from the beginning of time, of Eastern civilization; spirit and ideals which form the rock upon which that old, old civilization is based— the rock upon which the surges of the new civilization have beat in vain to break it— spirit and ideals which, if assimilated by the new civilization, can alone insure permanency of existence to the mushroom nations of modern times.
The central point of this curiosity in the Western mind to know the inside of the Eastern character, awakened by Japanese valor and victories over giant Russia, was exposed in a few pithy sentences, expressive of alarm, by a popular London Conservative organ of public opinion. The driving of “ thirty thousand European troops,” said the paper, “ equipped with numerous artillery, from one of the strongest positions in Asia, with but trifling loss, is a feat of arms that proves the redoubtable military qualities of the Japanese and shows that they must henceforth be reckoned not as Orientals but as Westerners.” “ The second battle of the Yalu,” it added, “ has proved that there is no abiding line of demarcation between West and East, and that the Western civilization, transplanted to Eastern soil, loses none of its virtues. The world will now have to revise its estimate of Asia, and this means a complete revolution in human thought.”
The West’s Cannon-Ball Supremacy
This revision of the original estimate would not have been necessary had not that estimate been clouded by the conceited idea of Western superiority in everything over the East, founded solely upon the possession of fire-arms foreign to the Asiatic. That cannon-ball-idea of supremacy blinded the Western races ruling in the East to the facts that the art of bombarding or firing a rifle is in itself a very easy thing to learn for any man, that it is the human intelligence behind the cannon or the rifle that is the chief requisite for success in modern warfare, and that the Eastern peoples possess an abundant share of this prime requisite, perhaps a greater share than the Western people, as evidenced in the recent events in the Far East. Nor are the intelligence and courage of the sons of the middle East a whit less than those of the Japanese. “ An Indian Staff Officer,” said the London correspondent of a Manchester paper, “ who arrived in London yesterday, tells me that the marching capacity, temperance and military qualities of the Sikh, Pathan and Goorka regiments are now manifestly superior to those of the English line regiments sent out from home. This superiority is so well established that the average Sikh soldier begins to look down upon Tommy Atkins as a person who drinks too much beer to be able to march, and who lives too well to be hardened for fighting purposes.”
Delusion, when once it gets hold of the human brain, however, is hard to be dispelled completely, even by the aid of the strongest proofs against it. In order to still maintain the superiority of the Westerner over the Easterner, some wise heads even suggested that the Japanese have come from Western stock. The Japanese, said the St. Janies’ Gazette, “ equally with the British, are of Hebrew origin, and a portion of the missing tribes of Israel, having made their way to Japan across the Asiatic mainland after their migration from Media through the passes of the Euphrates.” Even far-fetched evidence has been adduced showing plausible similarity of Jewish and Japanese religious ceremonies and festivals.
The Real Origin of the Japanese
All this proves how unbearable it is for the European that the Asiatic should suddenly loom so large as to make the European look almost small by his side. But, alas, there is no help for it. The Japanese is neither a Jew nor a Gentile, he is a pure Asiatic— even a Hindoo, not only in consciousness and ideals of life but even in origin. All the puerile speculations about the relation of the Jew and the Jap are born of the dense ignorance of the knowledge of the deep traits and characteristics, common among the principal peoples of the East. These traits of character are to be found in the creed and conceptions of their home-life, the radiating center of all social and political lives of all refined races of humanity, ancient or modern. That the Japanese homelife is essentially Hindoo in spirit and regulations of daily conduct, any European who knows even a little of the home-life of the Hindoos will admit without hesitation. The respective duties, positions and status of its members are practically the same as those of the Hindoo home. Reverence for ancestors and superiors, relations of husband and wife, feelings of homage to priests, holy men and king, etc., all point to their Hindoo origin. Spiritual unfoldment is the central idea and the mind’s attainment to the state of renunciation of everything earthly is the goal of life, alike of the Hindoos and the Japanese. The Shinto religion with its ancestor-worship is the survival of the Hindoo religion. As for ancestor-worship, there is no greater or more ardent and regular ancestor-worshipper than the Hindoo who offers oblations to the souls of his remote ancestors daily along with worshipping his God. The feudal system of the Japanese, in which these deluded writers are trying to trace the evidences of the feudal system of Europe, is the remnant of the feudal system of the Rajpoot Chiefs of India, the parent of all feudal systems of the world, as a perusal of Lieut.-Colonel Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan will show. The divine homage paid to the Mikado, the head of that system, conclusively proves the Hindoo origin of the Japanese people. The Mikado is believed by his people to be the descendant of the Sun, which means that he is a descendant of the Solar race of Rajpoot Kings and his claim to divinity is founded upon the divine prestige still enjoyed by the head of this solar house in India, because of his having descended from Rám Chandra, the Seventh Incarnation of God (Vishnoo). All Rajpoot Princes and all Hindoo India pay spontaneous homage to the present head of that house, the Maháráná of Udaipur, for this very reason of his divine descent.
In short, Hindusthan extended towards the East to Japan, as it extended to the West as far as the Ural Mountains, about four thousand years ago. In the account of his travels in India, the Chinese traveler Hiouang Thsang tells us that it extended to Kabul and Kandahar, in the seventh century, A.D. The sea and the separation from the main land have helped the Japanese in the preservation of their Hindoo spirit, characteristics and ideals of life. These have been influenced much by the propagation of Buddhistic doctrines, no doubt, but even Buddhism is a branch of Hindooism. Buddha Sakya Singha was the ninth Hindoo Incarnation of God, and the only difference between the parent and its offspring lies in the conception of the Ultimate Principle in Creation; the Buddhist says it is Universal Consciousness (Buddhi), the Hindoo that it is Love of which Universal Consciousness is the first manifestation. As to Gautama Buddha, some say he was of Tartar stock, but “ at any rate,” says Mr. Okakura Kakuzo, the Japanese patriot-artist-philosopher, in his book, the Ideals of the East, “ it is certain, whether or not there was Tartar blood in his veins, that he embodied the root idea of his race, and in thereby universalizing Hindoo idealism in its highest intensity becomes the ocean in which the Ganges and the Hoang-Ho mingle their waters.”
“Civilization” – Worst Phase of the White Peril
The spring of the astonishing courage and capacity of the Japanese soldiers and of the intelligence of the Mikado and his advisers is the foundation of Hindoo morals which are the materials of their mind. The Russo-Japanese war was but the development of natural reaction, the reaction of the extremely aggressive action of the European races upon the unaggressive Asians. The real East has never aggressed upon the West, nor has it ever envied its neighbors. But the Western nations have aggressed upon the Easterns from the time of Alexander on. Yet Alexander was a noble-souled hero of the old-world type. The main object of his scheme of world conquest was military glory. The one aim and object of all subsequent white aggressors of Asia was and is material greed. Their old pretexts for molesting the mild Asians were “ Trade” and “ Salvation of the Heathen Souls”— the thin end of the wedge of war and gun-conquest. To these, new excuses have been added from time to time. The newest is “ Civilization”— to force the poison of a raw civilization down the throats of a people enjoying an ideal civilization from time immemorial.
This “ civilization” has been the cry of Russian conquest in the East and the justification of the most bare-faced aggression. But reaction is the law of Nature. It has come at last. However much it was regretted, the Russo-Japanese War did not begin a day too soon. This first protest of the East with the sword against the unbearable aggression— political, moral, social and commercial— of the West had at last to be made. The Far East, before the War, was in the greatest peril— was in the throes of the White Peril. The Yellow Peril is fantastic. The White Peril is real. And the worst phase of this White Peril is its civilization— its new-fangled, soul-killing, unspeakably materialistic civilization.
With her almost inexhaustible patience born of her spiritualized mental equanimity, Asia has stood the selfish rule and aggressive political interference of her European masters and enemies, open and disguised, for a long time almost without a murmur. With her unshaken faith in an ever-just Providence righting all wrongs in the fullness of time, she has endured all such political oppression with a resignation worthy of the wisest mortals on this degenerated earth. But the oppressive influence of this utterly materialistic civilization which forms, in her estimation, the worst feature of the White evil, has been for her too much to bear during the last quarter of a century. The process of spiritual degeneration in the average soulful Asiatic has been developing an alarming stage which justified the wisest among them in hoping that the spirit of reaction could not be far off. The hope has been fulfilled. The reaction, which had its first manifestation two decades ago, is now in full swing. The glamour of Western civilization has ceased to deceive the intelligent Oriental. He has been entirely disillusioned of the merits of the new philosophy of life, which is the parent of selfishness and conceit— the two great enemies of humanity. This disillusion roused the impatience at the inroads of the new civilization into activity. Preachers have been going around denouncing the new civilization and holding up the old before the people in all its radiant colors and pointing out its solid virtues. The spirit of hatred against its introduction has grown more and more intense during recent years, so that all Asia was in a state of seething unrest which burst out in the form of the Russo-Japanese War.
A War Between Civilizations
It is vain to try to search for the true cause of this war on the surface of things in the Far East. That cause lies deep down under that surface. The Orient tries to trace the causes of all external phenomena and human actions to the inner laws of Nature which supply the initial causes from which they spring. All physical phenomena are but the materialized reflections of the operating forces on the moral plane, as the actions of the moral plane are but the expressions of the subtle vibrations of the spiritual plane. Injustice and aggression spring from the violation of the primal laws operating in the soul of Nature— the spiritual plane. Injustice and oppression are born of selfishness which is born of the excessive desire for material gain resulting in the repression of conscience which is the voice of our inmost Nature. What is true of the human microcosm is also true of the macrocosm, for man is but a miniature universe. A century of Western aggression upon the Easterns has created a violent disturbance in the moral plane of Nature, a disturbance which, taking the form of reaction, burst forth on the outer surface of life in all its fury. This bursting of the volcanic wrath of Nature no human power on earth can resist, any more than human power could suppress the recent eruption of Mount Pelee. Japan was a helpless tool in the hands of Nature’s moral forces lashed into action from within. All the European Powers could not thwart Japan’s triumph and progress in that war, for the simple reason that Nature’s forces which backed her operated among the Powers from within, keeping them disunited in spite of themselves.
The Russo-Japanese War, therefore, was a war between civilizations— between the old and the new civilizations. It was a war between the civilization which aspires to plain living and high thinking, and the civilization which develops the taste for high living and plain thinking. It was a war between Harmony and Discord, or, to put it in the language of the East, between Atma (soul) and Maya (illusion). The attitude of Japan was the attitude of the whole of Asia at bay. The giant of Asiatic conscience, so long wrapped in trance-sleep, has moved a limb; has by moving a limb destroyed thousands of molesting Lilliputians. A moment more and the giant will awake and, filled with righteous wrath, potent with unnumbered ages of spiritual devotion, will clear out the white hosts of disturbance from his abode, which is a school of peace and harmony and soul-culture.
Europe’s Pretention Unmasked
The Westernization of Japan is a world-wide delusion. She is too old and solidly Eastern to be Westernized in a day. She has donned the dress and armours of “ Civilization” to fight the battle of Asia’s deliverance from the danger of that civilization, to teach its missionaries that Asia is the cradle of civilization, that the Easterns, being the intellectual aristocracy of the world, can, whenever they like, think and act in everything as well as, if not better than, their Western tyrants.
Already she has proved by practical demonstration to the power-drunk, conceit-blinded Europe that its superiority over Asia in bravery and intelligence is the hollowest pretention. With this rude awakening Europe ought to learn, if she has not already learned, that the soul is the seat of highest bravery and the East more soulful than the West; that the East, the home of light and knowledge, is bound to be pervaded by keener intelligence than the West; that intelligence and faith and feeling, and not mere brute-force, are the backbone of true valor; that the lack of modern fire-arms and opportunities of being drilled in modern warfare, of which Asiatics have been deprived by the dominant White races, have so long prevented them from driving out the White Peril from their country in order to be able to live once more in peace and harmony of soul-culture, which is their goal of life. She has shown that the feeling of patriotism, which the Western peoples had so long thought was their exclusive monopoly, is possessed by the reincarnation believing Eastern races of all-surrendering devotion in a higher degree, and that it is of a type not to be found in the modern West. She has already made England fearful of losing India and all the Western Powers fearful of the awakening of China which, however, has already begun; they are even dreaming of Chino-Japanese hordes sweeping over Europe. But this is a mere dream. The Mikado stands for the peace of Asia, and a better understanding between the East and the West.
Anglo-Indian Rule – A Whited Sepulchre
And that desperate plunge of Japan into war was also prompted by her fear of sharing some day the fate of China before the war, and some other day, the present demoralized condition of India under England’s cannon-ball supremacy— India, the cradle of religion and refinement and learning, the never-aggressive land of kindness and piety; India, only the other day, the peerless land of power, valor, wealth and prosperity, now the poorest and the most miserable, all on account of the White Peril.
What a terrible peril indeed the White Peril in India is may be judged from the effects of one century of British rule in that land where it has firmly established its influence. To the skipping globe-trotter, the outward appearance of that rule seems fair and shining. But if he had a chance of looking behind this delusive exterior, he would find the shining was that of a whited sepulchre full of inward rottenness. Every one of the five phases of the White Peril— political, industrial, commercial, social and spiritual— can be seen in all its grim effects in India. Political death, industrial destruction, commercial stagnation, social degradation and spiritual demoralization are the ear-marks of British predominance in that unfortunate country.
The Havocs of “Civilization” on the Hindoo
But even the woeful results and selfish principles of British rule are considered by the true Hindoo as less disastrous than the effects of English civilization on the mind and character and the religious, social and domestic conscience of the people. This new civilization, introduced mainly through an utterly materialistic method of education, is fast removing from their minds the healthy ideals of life and conduct founded upon the wisdom of the illuminated sages of the past. It is destroying their inborn belief in Karma and Reincarnation, the belief that birth in high and low stations of life is not accidental, but is due to the actions of past existences, which enables them to endure the untoward state of things which exist for the moment with comparative contentment, and prompts them generally to good, unselfish actions in the present for the benefit of their future incarnations. It is robbing them of the jewel of their soul, the jewel which they alone, through all the ages, have preserved and enjoyed. That jewel is its faith that God is the only goal of all existence and that temporal power and prosperity are a mere nothing, compared with the priceless privilege of spiritual awakening. It is breaking up their harmonious order of communal, social and domestic life by infusing into their minds the spirit of pure self-aggrandisement. Large joint-families, which were examples of mutual affection and dependence, are being divided into selfish couples with their own immediate issues, poor unfortunate relations being thrust out into homeless helplessness and want.
“Civilization” is a Moral Vampire
It is alienating the hitherto exemplary love and attachment of grown-up sons from their ideally loving parents, and transferring them exclusively to their wives and children who, in their turn, repay their parents with ingratitude. Gratitude, which is one of the predominant virtues of the race, is being felt as a very inconvenient burden to bear. Respect for superiors and reverence for saints and sages, or rendering honor to where honor is due, are fast diminishing. The “educated” classes, rapidly losing faith in everything relating to religion, have learned to deny the existence of God and to ridicule the very idea of spiritual life. Envy, hate, discord, dissension, greed and selfishness are ever increasing wherever this new “light” is making progress. Money making is getting to be the one ambition in life, possession of money the recognized badge of respectability. Selfish interest alone is the inspiration of sympathy and mutual helpfulness. Drunkenness has become a fashionable vice, formerly confined to the lowest of pariahs. In short, a race of people possessing the highest, noblest ideals of life, is being daily demoralized by the influence of crude and artificial morals and ideas, yclept civilization. It is eating into the vitals of the parent source of all refinement and culture of the old as well as the new world. The roots of this creation-old Hindoo civilization are buried deep within the soul of the universe, and the spectacle of a day-old child, begotten of delusion, attempting to suck her life-blood, like a vampire, ought to afford mournful contemplation both to good men and gods. And yet the main boast of British rule in India is that it has conferred upon the people the inestimable boons of “education” and “ civilization,” which none of the people there dare, under the dread of loaded guns, to pronounce them unmitigated curses.
The West’s Criticism of the East
The above need not irritate the votaries of Western civilization. It is a true picture and a true estimate of the effects of Western civilization on the East. It is not a bit overdrawn. If any of my Western readers be inclined to feel impatience with our remarks about the characteristics of his dear civilization, let that reader consider that they may be provoking because they have not been expressed before. The superficial West criticises the deep East in and out of season and calls it barbarous and backward. The deep East smiles its bland smile of silence at such criticism. It even excuses its frivolous conclusions about Eastern men and manners knowing its circumscribed mental vision, its small power of judgment, its lack of knowledge of what is real refinement; knowing it to be a mere child. But this silence has only made the child more conceited and emboldened it to criticise the East more and more, until it has come to think that the East is so idiotic that it has not power enough to think for itself, much less to contradict its criticisms, still less to criticise the West, the “ superior” West. But things have been put to the extremes. A reply has become necessary. The Far East has replied with the sword. The soul of the East, out of the fullness of its heart, must reply in words of wisdom and loving protest.
Civilization’s Ravages in the West
What is this civilization, anyway? I have lived in four of its chief centers for about five years. During this time I have studied this civilization with the little light with which my Brahman birth his blessed me. And I must confess that I have been deeply pained by the facts that study has revealed to me. Oh, what saddening facts! One need not go to India to test the truth of my fragmental portrayal of the degrading effects of this civilization upon the Hindoos. Let him look about himself and mark its ravages upon his own people here, how it is sapping the moral foundation of its deluded victims in the lands where it has sprung into being and where it is holding its undisputed sway. And I challenge him to deny that this vaunted civilization of his is dragging him down from his high estate. It has practically abolished the idea of a human soul, and whatever of it is believed in, by some, is its false shadow. It is daily degrading divine humanity into unashamed animality. It has raised selfishness to a religious creed, Mammon to the throne of God, adulteration to a science, falsehood to a fine art. It has turned holy matrimony into a farce, the marriage certificate into a waste paper, conubial blessings into a chance of lottery. It has banished all seriousness out of life and made it a mere plaything. Self-seeking its breath, self-will its law, self-conceit its essence, self-deception its philosophy. It has created artificial wants for man and made him a slave of work to satisfy them; it has made him ever restless within and without, robbed him of leisure— the only friend of high thought. He knows no peace, hence knows not himself or his real object in life. It has made him a breathing, moving, hustling, fighting, spinning machine— ever working, never resting, never knowing even the refreshing rest of a sound sleep. It has made him a bag of live nerves, ever stretched to high tension. He has learned to call license liberty, breach of social laws and shirking of responsibilities independence, slavery of his own wild will freedom. It has deified sensuality, glorified materialism, beautified sin. It has split human societies into atoms, families into units, fighting against each other. It has sapped the foundation of home-life and, its trunk severed from its roots, its roof-tree threatens to fall, shaken by each passing breeze. Its vulgar haste and love of sensation are invading even the realm of religion which is being classed with fads and crazes. Its boasted scientific inventions have done more harm than good to humanity’s best and permanent interests; they serve only the surface-life which alone its votaries live and know. It is hinting at love as a microbe, reducing romance to illicit love. It openly proposes the killing of chronic patients and all old people over sixty. Humility is hateful in its estimation, conceit and brute-force constitute its superior individuality. It has abolished reverence, depth of character, real genius, real poetry and real philosophy. It is establishing the crime of color and poverty. Flattery is its juice of life, insincerity the substance of courtesy. Morality is mere sentiment, sentiment mere weakness, constancy and chastity antiquated foolishness. That which affords instant pleasure is of worth, that which involves waiting to be enjoyed is deemed worthless. Gross, material enjoyment, in short, is its Heaven of Happiness, its Ideal Salvation. In the language of the Vedas, Civilization is Maya— the magic Illusion of Woman and Gold.
This Mâyâ every Hindoo or Buddhist or Confucianist or Shintoist is taught from childhood to beware of and to resist, and the influence of its subtle force is greatly counteracted by the vibrations generated by daily practice of religious formulas and spiritual devotion, which is the machine-like rule of household-life in the East.
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