The Vital Factor in Strengthening India by Shri Aurobindo

Editor's Note: This article by Shri Aurobindo has been taken from "Out of the ruins of the West... Indian's Rebirth, Institut De Recherches Evolutives, Paris"

India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving with agony and tears, but she strives in vain. What ails her, she who is after all so vast and might be so strong? There is surely some enormous defect, something vital is wanting in us, nor is it difficult to lay our finger on the spot. We have all things else, but we are empty of strength, void of energy. We have abandoned Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts, in our brains, in our arms.

If India is to survive, she must be made young again, rushing and billowing streams of energy must be poured into her; her soul must become, as it was in the old times, like the surges, vast or of force.

Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless, lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.

For what a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people, but she is self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons/daughters..

We have to create strength where it didn't exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new with new hearts, to be born again... We need a nucleus of men with in whom the shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilize the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land.

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