Convocation Address, University of Calcutta

[p. 73] I do not propose to address you to-day upon purely educational topics. I have often inflicted them upon previous Convocations. I would like to turn aside for half an hour from those dusty fields and to talk to you about something which is even more personal to the undergraduate body, namely, yourselves and the work that lies before you. The majority of you are about to do what I remember so well doing myself, though it is now rather a long time ago, namely, to gather up the advantages of such education as you have received and with this bundle on your back to start forth on the big road which we call life. What will it mean to you, and what are its lessons?

I do not pretend to know what lies in the mind of young India, or even of that small section of it which I am now addressing. Difference of race carries with it difference of ideas. The currents of the East and West may flow between the same banks, as I believe it is their destiny to do for long generations to come. But they never absolutely commingle; and I daresay when I try to put myself in your place and to see what is in your minds I altogether fail to succeed. I am confident sometimes that it is so when I have observed the obscure meanings attached by Indian commentators to what has seemed to me to be simple and true. Conversely, I am quite sure that the Englishman often fails to understand what the Asiatic mind has been pondering over, and is led perhaps by exaggeration of language [p. 74] into thinking that there was corresponding extravagance of thought, whereas there may have been none at all. These are the dangers common to all of us who walk to and fro on the misty arch that spans the gulf between East and West. But there are certain ideals which are the common property of all humanity irrespective of country or race. These are of universal application, and among this class there are some that are peculiarly applicable to the Indian situation and the Indian character. In the contemplation of these we are on common ground, and it is to them that I wish to call your attention this afternoon.

I place in the front rank of these principles, truthfulness. The truth is not merely the opposite of a lie. A dumb man would find it difficult to tell a lie, but he might be guilty of untruth every day of his life. There are scores of people who pride themselves on never telling a falsehood, but who are yet habitually false—false to others, and, what is worse, false to themselves. Untruthfulness consists in saying or doing anything that gives an erroneous impression either of one's own character, or of other people's conduct, or of the facts and incidents of life. We all succumb to this. It is the most subtle of temptations. Men who make speeches, men who plead cases, men who write articles in the newspapers, men who are engaged in business, even the ordinary talker at a dinner table, each of us for the sake of some petty advantage or momentary triumph is tempted to transgress. The degree of non-truth is so slight that it does not seem to amount to untruth. We salve our conscience by thinking that it was a pardonable exaggeration. But the habit grows. Deviation from truth slides by imperceptible degrees into falsehood; and the man who begins by crediting himself with a fertile imagination merges by imperceptible degrees into a finished liar. But an even commoner form of untruth is the unspoken untruth—the doing something which conscience condemns as not quite straight, but for which the reason is always finding something [p. 75] as an excuse. Those who encourage this tendency end by becoming two human beings in the same form, like the Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of Stevenson's story. Perhaps the guilty man prides himself on being complex. He is really corrupt; and one day he wakes up to find that he can no longer resume the good habit, but must remain the base or distorted deformity for ever.

I hope I am making no false or arrogant claim when I say that the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a Western conception. I do not thereby mean to claim that Europeans are universally or even generally truthful, still less do I mean that Asiatics deliberately or habitually deviate from the truth. The one proposition would be absurd, and the other insulting. But undoubtedly truth took a high place in the moral codes of the West before it had been similarly honoured in the East, where craftiness and diplomatic wile have always been held in much repute. We may prove it by the common innuendo that lurks in the words ‘Oriental diplomacy,’ by which is meant something rather tortuous and hypersubtle. The same may be seen in Oriental literature. In your epics truth will often be extolled as a virtue; but quite as often it is attended with some qualification, and very often praise is given to successful deception practised with honest aim. I remember reading in an Indian newspaper the following paragraph:—“There is not a question but that lying is looked upon with much more disfavour by European than by Native society. The English opinions on this subject are strong, distinct, and uncompromising in the abstract. Hindu and Mahomedan opinions are fluctuating, vague, and to a great extent dependent upon times, places, and persons.”

Now the commonest forms which are taken by untruth in this country seem to me to be the following. The first is exaggeration, particularly in language, the tendency to speak or write things which the speaker or writer does not believe [p. 76] or which are more than he believes, for the sake of colouring the picture or producing an effect. It is quite a common thing to see the most extravagant account of ordinary occurrences, or the most fanciful motives attributed to persons. Invention and imputation flourish in an unusual degree. There is a thing which we call in English a ‘mare's-nest,’ by which we mean a pure figment of the imagination, something so preposterous as to be unthinkable. Yet I know no country where mare's-nests are more prolific than here. Some ridiculous concoction is publicly believed until it is officially denied. Very often a whole fabric of hypothesis is built out of nothing at all. Worthy people are extolled as heroes. Political opponents are branded as malefactors. Immoderate adjectives are flung about as though they had no significance. The writer no doubt did not mean to lie. But the habit of exaggeration has laid such firm hold of him that he is like a man who has taken too much drink, and who sees two things where there is only one, or something where there is nothing. As he writes in hyperbole, so he tends to think in hyperbole, and he ends by becoming blind to the truth.

There are two particularly insidious manifestations of this tendency against which you ought to be on your guard. The first is flattery, and the second is vituperation. Flattery is much more than compliment in an extravagant form. It is often a deliberate attempt to deceive, to get something out of someone else by playing upon the commonest foible of human nature. We all like to be praised and the majority like to be flattered. A common-place man enjoys being told that he is a great man, a fluent speaker that he is an orator, a petty agitator that he is a leader of men. The vice is actually encouraged by that which is one of the most attractive traits of Indian character, namely, its warmth of heart. A man has a natural inclination to please, and so he glides into flattery; and flattery is only a few steps removed from sycophancy, [p. 77] which is a dangerous form of untruth. Flattery may be either honest or dishonest. Whichever it be, you should avoid it. If it is the former, it is nevertheless false; if it is the latter, it is vile.

But I think that in India the danger of the opposite extreme is greater still. I speak of slander and vilification of those with whom you do not happen to agree. I do not wish to be tempted this afternoon into anything that might be thought to have a political bearing: for it would not be proper to this Convocation. I will only say, therefore, that to many true friends of India, among whom I count myself, the most distressing symptom of the day is the degree to which abuse is entering into public controversy in this country. It is a bad thing for any State if difference of opinion cannot exist without innuendo and persecution, and if the vocabulary of the nation is trained to invective. Authority will never be won by those who daily preach that authority exists only to be reviled. National happiness cannot spring from a root of bitterness, and national existence cannot grow in an atmosphere of strife. I would like to urge all you young men, when you go forth into the world, to avoid this most dangerous of all temptations. Respect your opponents and do not calumniate them. Believe in the good intentions of others rather than the bad, and remember that self-government, to which you aspire, means not only the privilege of assisting to govern the community to which you belong, but the preliminary capacity of governing yourselves.

Therefore I come back to my original point. Do not exaggerate; do not flatter; do not slander; do not impute; but turn naturally to truth as the magnet flies to the pole. It is better to be believed by one human being for respect of the truth than to be applauded for successful falsehood by a thousand. By truth you will mount upwards as individuals and as a nation. In proportion as you depart from it you will stagnate or recede.

[p. 78] Then my second word of advice is this. Try to form an independent judgment. The curse of our day is the dependence on others for thought and decision of every description, and the multiplication of machines for relieving a man of the necessity of independent opinion. The lowest and commonest of these machines is what school boys call a key, that is, a book in which they are saved the trouble of thinking for themselves by finding the work done for them by somebody else. The highest form is the article in the daily newspaper or the magazine which relieves you from thinking about the politics or events of the day by supplying you with the thoughts of another.

Advance in civilisation multiplies these instruments of selfish convenience. For an anna or less a man can purchase his opinions just as he purchases his food or his clothing. Of course books and the press do much more. They spread knowledge and stimulate intelligence, and without them we should sink back into brute beasts. I am only speaking of their questionable side. For the paradox is also a truth, that while they encourage intellectual activity they are also sometimes an indirect incentive to intellectual torpor. Of course this is truer of newspapers, which represent an ephemeral form of literature, than it is of books, which are often immortal. We all of us get into the habit of reading our favourite journal, and cherish the belief that we are thinking while we are really only browsing on the thoughts of others. Sometimes our anonymous mentor is a very wise man and we do not go far astray; sometimes he is the reverse and we err in his company.

But the great danger of second-hand thought is not merely that it is not original but that its tendency is to be one-sided and therefore unfair. The common instinct of mankind is to take a side. It is the survival of the old era of combat, when each man had to fight for himself [p. 79] and his family or clan. From youth upwards we find ourselves taking a side in the rivalries of school and college life, and in many ways these rivalries develop the keener instincts and the finer side of human nature. But the mind ought only to take a side as the result of a mental process. If we have examined the two sides of a case and are convinced that the one is right and the other wrong, or that one is more right than the other, by all means adopt and adhere to it; but to make your decision and to shape your conduct simply because a writer in a book or a newspaper has said it, whether it be right or wrong, is not thought, but very often an abnegation of thought. It is putting the authority of the mind in commission and setting up some other authority, of which you perhaps know nothing, in the judgment-seat. So I say to you young men that the first duty of a student, that is of a man who has studied, is mental independence. Strike out a line of thought for yourselves. Form your own judgment. Do not merely listen to the tinkling of the old bell-wether who leads the flock, but stand on your own feet, walk on your own legs, look with your own eyes.

This does not mean, of course, that you can afford to be self-opinionated, or conceited, or obstinate. Nothing is more offensive than arrogance or license in youth. You remember the famous sarcasm of the Cambridge tutor at the expense of a youthful colleague, “We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest.” But the excess of a virtue merges easily into a vice and nowhere more easily than in the case of freedom. Freedom involves not the absence of all restraint, but liberty within the limits of a reasonable self-restraint. Otherwise, as history teaches us, freedom usually degenerates into license, license into disorder, and disorder into chaos. Goethe, the German poet-philosopher, used to say that only in law can the spirit of man be free. So it is; and just as law is the condition [p. 80] of independence of spirit, so are moderation and respect for others the condition of independence of judgment. This combination of qualities should come naturally to the philosophic Hindu. He should cultivate independence of mind, and thought, and action. But his great introspective power should save him from degenerating into intellectual self-sufficiency or insolence.

There is another tyranny which I think that you ought to avoid, and that is the absurd and puerile tyranny of words. It is not the most fluent nations in the world who have done the most in history. Every nation and every time have their orators and they are the secular teachers and apostles of their day. But when everybody talks, then as a rule few act, and when the talkers talk too much and too often, then finally nobody pays any heed and the impression gets abroad that they are incapable of action. When I read the proceedings of the Conferences and Meetings that are always going on in all parts of India, I am far from deprecating the intellectual ferment to which this bears witness, and I am not sure that it is not a direct imitation of English practice. But I sometimes think that if fewer resolutions were passed and a little more resolution was shown—resolution to grapple with the facts of life, to toil and labour for your country instead of merely shouting for it—the progress of India would be more rapid. Eloquence on the platform is very like soda-water in a bottle. After the cork has been removed for a little time all the sparkle has gone. Moreover, eloquence no more regenerates nations than soda-water gives fibre and strength to the constitution.

Now in India there are two sets of people, the reticent and the eloquent. I daresay you know to which class the people in this part of the country belong. I am sometimes lost in admiration at the facility with which they speak in a foreign language, and I envy the accomplishment. All I say to you is, do not presume upon this talent. Do not believe that the man who can make a speech is [p. 81] necessarily a statesman; do not let your fluency run away with your powers of thought. Above all, do not think that speech is ever a substitute for action. The man who in his village or his town devotes himself to the interests of his fellow-countrymen, and by example and by effort improves their lot, is a greater benefactor than the hero of a hundred platforms.

There is a further piece of advice that I should like to give you. Strive to the best of your ability to create a healthy public opinion in your surroundings. Public opinion in India cannot for a long time be the opinion of the public, that is of the masses, because they are uneducated and have no opinion in political matters at all. In these circumstances public opinion tends to be the opinion of the educated minority. But if it is to have weight it must be co-ordinated with the necessities and interests and desires of the community, who are perhaps hardly capable of formulating an opinion of their own. Nothing can be more unfortunate than a divorce or gulf between the two. If what is called public opinion is merely the opinion of a class, however genuine, it can never have the weight of the opinion of the masses, because, like all class feelings, it is necessarily interested. Of course in India it is very difficult to create or to give utterance to a public opinion that is really representative, because there are so many different classes whose interests do not always coincide, for instance the English and the Indians, the Hindus and the Mahomedans, the officials and the non-officials, the agriculturalists and the industrialists. But I think that the great work that lies before educated India in the near future is the creation of a public opinion that shall be as far as possible representative of all the interests that lie outside of Government. If we take the Native element alone, it would be an immense advantage to Government to have a public opinion that was representative of Native sentiment generally, not of one section or fraction of it. For public opinion [p. 82] is both a stimulus to Government and a check. It encourages energy and it prevents mistakes. But if it is to have this vivifying and steadying influence, then it must be public and not sectional, temperate and not violent, suggestive and not merely hostile. Surely this must be patent to all. We have all of us frequently seen a manufactured public opinion in India, which was barren and ineffective because it merely represented the partisan views of a clique and was little more than noise and foam. In my view the real work that lies before Indian patriots is the suppression of the sectional and the elevation of the national, in the life of the people. And I think that any educated young man can contribute to that end by the exercise of personal influence and balance of judgment. It is always a bad symptom when there is one public opinion that is vocal and noisy and another that is subdued and silent. For the former assumes a prerogative that it does not deserve, while the latter does not exert the influence to which it is entitled. The true criteria of a public opinion that is to have weight are that it should be representative of many interests, that it should see two or more sides instead of only one, and that it should treat Government as a power to be influenced, not as an enemy to be abused. Some day I hope that this will come; and there is not one amongst you who cannot contribute to that consummation.

The last question that I put to myself and to you is this—What scope is there for you in the life of your country? In my opinion there is much. When I hear it said that India is a conquered nation and that Indians are condemned to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, I smile at the extravagance, but I am also pained at the imputation. When I see High Court Judges—some of them in this hall—Ministers of Native States wielding immense powers, high executive and judicial officers in our own service, leaders of thought and ornaments of the Bar, professors and men of science, poets and novelists, the nobility of [p. 83] birth and the nobility of learning, I do not say that every Indian corporal carries a Field Marshal's bâton in his knapsack, for the prizes come to few, but I say that none need complain that the doors are shut. To all of you who have the ambition to rise I would say, Use your student days to study the history and circumstances of your race. Study its literature and the literature of Europe, and particularly of the country whose fate is bound up with your own. Compare the two; see what are their lessons or their warnings. Then equip yourselves with a genuine and manly love for your own people. I do not mean the perfervid nationalism of the platform, but the self-sacrificing ardour of the true patriot. Make a careful diagnosis, not only of how you can get on yourselves, but how you can help your countrymen to prosper. Avoid the tyranny of faction and the poison of racial bitterness. Do not arm yourselves against phantasms, but fight against the real enemies to the welfare of your people, which are backwardness, and ignorance, and antiquated social prescriptions. Look for your ideals not in the air of heaven but in the lives and duties of men. Learn that the true salvation of India will not come from without but must be created within. It will not be given you by enactments of the British Parliament or of any Parliament at all. It will not be won by political controversy, and most certainly it will not be won by rhetoric. It will be achieved by the increase of the moral and social advance of your people themselves, deserving that which they claim, and by their deserts making stronger the case for more. To you all therefore I say, Look up, not down. Look forward, not backward. Look to your own country first and foremost, and do not waste time in whistling for the moon. Be true Indians—that is the prompting of nationality. But while doing so strive also to be true citizens of the Empire; for circumstances have thrown you into a larger mould than that of race, and have swept you into the tides that direct [p. 84] the world. As nationality is larger than race, so is Empire larger than nationality. Race weakens and gets overlaid in the passage of time and gives place to broader conceptions. For instance in India I see the claim constantly made that a man is not merely a Bengali or an Uriya or a Maratha, or a Sikh, but a member of the Indian Nation. I do not think it can yet be said that there is any Indian Nation, though in the distant future some approach to it may be evolved. However that may be, the Indian is most certainly a citizen of the British Empire. To that larger unit he already belongs. How to adjust race to nationality, and how to reconcile nationality with Empire,—that is the work which will occupy the British rulers of this country for many a long year to come. I am one of those who believe that it can be accomplished without detriment to race or nationality, and with safety to the Empire. I want the Indian people to play their part in this great achievement and to share the results.