The Renaissance in India

There has been recently some talk of a Renaissance in India. A niitaber of illaminating essays with that general title and subject have been given to ns by a poet and subtle critic and thinker, Mr. Janies H. Cousins, and others have touched suggestively various sides of the growing movement towards a new life and a new thought that may well seem to justify the description. This Renaissance, this new birth in India, if it is a fact, must become a thing of immense importance both to herself and the world, to herself because of ah that is meant for her in the recovery or the change of her time-old spirit and national ideals, to the world because of the possibilities involTcd in the rearising of a force that is in many respects unlike any other and its genius very diflFerent from the mentality and spirit that have hitherto governed the modern idea in mankind, although not so fax away perhaps from that which is preparing to govern the future. It is rather the first point of view that I shall put forward at present; for the question what India means to make of her own life must precede the wider question what her new life may mean to the human race. And it is besides likely to become before long an issue of a pressing importance.