THE VOICE OF LIFE.
Under the auspices of the Madras Branch of the Madras Students’ Convention, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu delivered a lecture on Dec. 17, 1917, at the Gokhale Hall with Mrs. Besant in the chair. There was a packed gathering present including several Indian ladies. The Secretary of the Convention having read and presented an address to Mrs. Naidu, she said:—
I think very often that the old proverbs that have become truisms are entirely based on an illusion and ignorance of human nature and most of all that hackneyed proverb that familiarity breeds contempt or at least indifference. To-day as I stand in your midst, I realise that, however familiar the voice of life may grow, coming to me from the heart of young generation, it always comes with a new magic, it always comes with a new appeal, it always stirs a new inspiration, it always brings me to the earth with the burden of a new sense of responsibility; it carries me with that trust and confidence that a wise young generation demands in those in whom it reposes its trust.
To-day after nearly ten years, I find myself in your city, so long ago known as a “benighted” city, but to-day no longer benighted, because the dawn is nearing and the voice of hope has sounded from your shores. The “benighted” city to-day stands far more as a beacon, as a star of hope, and it is said that Madras which was asleep has now been awakened to realise the dreams of that sleeping time; and before we proceed further, it is our solemn duty to thank those that have sounded the clarion call of hope and woke up the slumbering voice of night. The voice of life manifold, speaks not only from the lips of the living but most splendidly from the lips of the dead — the immortal dead. To-day the hall that bears the name of my friend and Master, Gopala Krishna Gokhale, bears testimony to the fact that, though dead, he speaks and not with a single individual voice but through the hundred millions of voices of the young generation who are dreaming of the India of tomorrow and who to-day are preparing to be the creators and the fulfillers of that dream.
Gopala Krishna Gokhale dead has left behind for you a legacy that is the legacy of life itself, for over and over again, speaking to your generation, he has said that life is within you, that the future is within you, that there is no death for India, that India cannot die because India renews itself with the hope and the life of the young generation. Mahatma Gandhi speaks with the voice of life that is not merely human but with the voice of a man in whom life has evolved, developed and realised the divinity of man. He speaks to you with that wonderful eloquence of his life in a music that is heavenly, in a music that is immortal, for his life is set to the tune of human compassion, and the voice of compassion is the divinest type of voice. Then, in your midst, you who said that you honour womanhood and that you honour the sex of the land that you call Mother, you have yet another who sits in your midst prophetlike, and she has brought a message of hope to this city. I speak of her who has been to you, young men of India, not merely a mother but a priestess and prophetess, a holder of the torch of hope, one who has set your life to the music of the stars.
One more voice of life before I come to my subject proper. When I was asked to deliver an address in this hall and the object of the organizers of this address was to collect funds—mere sordid money—as an embodied symbol of their homage to that genius of a great scientist, the young generation realised that genius can only accept as homage love, and love embodied means service, love embodied means something that is bought with a price and that, therefore, though one of the young generation has accused me of selling the spirit of my ancestors in selling knowledge as he said, is not an accusation at all, because young Madras wanted to give some tangible evidence of its homage to the great scientist in Bengal. It is an expression of his homage for the great prophet of nature who has revealed one more secret—the voice of life.
The voice of life, he said, was a message of an old proverb to us; the voice of life speaks through all channels of expression that it is possible for an individual or a Nation to find for its realisation. Never before did I realise how the supremest nature of the will has ever found expression till I visited with Mahatma Gandhi a little humble institution in Ahmedabad for the deaf and dumb, where, with a rapture that gives ecstasy, the dumb were being taught to become articulate. I saw with what patience, with what consummate devotion that teacher was labouring to make one little eager boy pronounce one word articulately by following the shape of the letters.
I sat and watched, and each time there was failure I saw eyes dim with anguish, and then I saw the dawning hope in those eyes and I said to myself, “Here is a symbol of life, here is the supreme nature of life, here is the message to this great land that it is in self-expression, in self-realisation that the soul of the race must find its own voice”—the voice of life, and to-day we are like that dumb boy trying to become articulate. There are lessons to follow, but none can teach you those lessons. It is the agony of the individual soul that shapes the letter and makes you articulate, and that is a great lesson that I learnt in that little room in Ahmedabad. It is only individual agony and anguish of failure that gives you hope, and at last with a series of failures which are themselves creative, a race finds freedom of expression and a Nation finds freedom of its own soul and finds manifold voices of life. The voice of life does not mean one single sound and expression, but it rather means the manifold life into which many mighty rivers of self-expression have become unified. How shall we realise in India that beautiful title? How shall we find which is the voice of life through which all currents of National life shall become dignified?
It is only when we realise the manifold rivers of the past that we can prophesy the manifold currents, for, as only recently I have written, it is in the past alone that we, Indians, with our unique history, can find the prophecy and the guarantee of the future. Other Nations must always look forward to tomorrow, because their yesterdays are dead, but we, unique in so many things joyous and grievous, should specially note that in National life we long ago, in the beginnings of time, evolved a certain perfect ideal type that suits our ideal development. There is no Nation in this world that can boast of such a curious achievement, something which almost goes against all the laws of known science, but the laws of science are one thing and the laws of individual or national soul are another. If we realise what the manifold currents of expression in the past were, we can realise what the manifold currents of expression of to-morrow can be or of to-day can be. What is it that made India so great? What is it that across the seven seas the voice of her civilisation went like volumes of music striking upon the sleeping Nations of the West? It was her genius, her life multiform, not single but many-sided, not narrow but complex, not enclosed within but coming out radiating, radiating, radiating the life with energy, art, beauty, wisdom, religion. History, they say, never repeats itself, but that is not true. History will always be made to repeat itself exactly as by your will-power you can make yourself repeat certain things. The whole basis of civilisation is the evolution of our will-power.
It is this wonderful confidence that made man say, “I am God,” that has made man able to say, “As yesterday was, so shall be to-morrow and as to-morrow is so shall to-day be.” That is the real power of the Hindu race, the peculiar teaching of the Hindu race. For some centuries, the divinest possession of Indian people has become disintegrated, emasculated, almost dead, and to lose what has been in you the divinest contribution to the civilization is to disinherit yourself, to sell yourself to exile and make yourselves born slaves when you might be free. That is the shame that I want to bring to your mind that you, having disintegrated your will, are no more capable of saying that history shall repeat itself. You say that National life has gone out of tune. I was told that in this city young men want a message because they are not fully alive.
It is irony to ask any one of my generation to give hope to yourselves, for it is the divine privilege of your youth to come back to their generation with the renewal of hope, with a message of music, on the analogy of nature. If you, because you are Indian, are shut out from the privilege of holding to the older generation a message of hope, you have misread the purpose of youth, because, according to my reading of life and according to my angle of vision, it has always seemed to me that the proper adjustment of life would be that age and especially middle age should always look to the younger generation, because there is no lesson that any civilisation can teach as the divine lesson of hope that comes to younger generation. This is a dream I want to talk about. We are always told that we are dreamers, that we are unpracticable and that we must become a Nation of practical workers. There is a friend of mine who, in his student days with inspiration that comes even to responsible students, said to me that we want practical mystics in the world. My friend, Professor Kandeth, once said that what we want in India is practical mysticism. He uttered the truth that you should all print upon your hearts in letters of fire and gold, for it is this compromise between materialism that deadens the soul and too much introspection that weakens the soul that we want to make a compromise of real strength, not losing the little inheritance of our spiritual power of dream but also assimilating that which makes the dream into deed with power to say, “My dream shall be but the blossom of which the fruit is secured.”
It is not really I but my friend, Professor Kandeth, that is giving you this message. It has always been said that mysticism is ecstasy in the Eastern conception, and those that are real mystics in India are those that are not silent but broke into song time after time, age after age and sing the voice of life. But we want songs not poetry, songs in the widest sense of expression, in the widest sense of achievement. If we are to be practical mystics, it means that our songs are to be their embodied vision, that is embodied in our achievements through every channel of expression. Because we are Indians and it is our tradition always to assimilate the best that a foreign civilisation can give us, it is our duty and privilege to be true to our own traditions and absorb all that energy that comes to us from western lands and transmute into Indian energy for the evolving of Indian life. Professor Bose as a scientist dealing with matter got to the very root of nature’s secret and said: “not in matter but in thought.” I want you to take that sentence to your hearts. When a scientist dealing with matter, whose life is consecrated to wresting the secret of matter and passing it on a truth to the world, when he, with that prophetic vision that he must share with the poet, says: that “not in matter but in thought is life,” it means that the youths of India have begun to readjust themselves to a real conception of life. It means that that which is dead or that which we consider dead really lives, is responsive and is sensitive. It means that we all have greater need of intuition, of calling our own spiritual conception so sensitive that even that which seems dead is really alive and speaks and we can make it respond to our own secret. That is one of the ways where the silence is broken, where the dumb becomes articulate, and in contact with human spirit even dumb matter means life; and it means that the heart of India realises her own power of making the inorganic organic.What is it that is dead in our matter to-day? Nothing more than that which our ancestors realised as really living, and that is our own National capacity. That is the thing that is dead matter which we have to make organic, vital, spreading abroad. You who belong to this wonderful young generation are standing upon the threshold of hope, dream untested, heart unbroken and unscorched. I want to say to you that, though the heart shall be broken and seared, do not be “afraid because you have that power in you which can make the dead live.” The country realises and your soul realises, for remember “not in matter but in thought,” not in possessions, not even in attempts, but in ideals are to be found the seeds of immortality, and the heritage of the Indian Nation is the heritage of ideals, and the ideals of India are immortal.