fosters in
them tastes and habits which make them despise indigenous products and
render them fit subjects for the exploitation of scheming capitalists,
mostly foreign. Political and economic causes could not have led to the
extinction of indigenous industry if they had not been aided by change
of taste fostered by the Western environment of which the so-called
'education' is a powerful factor."

From all this Mr. Bose concludes that none of the reforms advocated by
the Home Rulers would cure India's ills. "In fact, the chances are, she
would be more inextricably entangled in the toils of Western
civilization, without any adequate compensating advantage, and the grip
of the West would close on her to crush her more effectively."
Therefore, according to Mr. Bose, the only thing for India to do is to
turn her back on everything Western and plunge resolutely into the
traditional past. As he expresses it: "India's salvation lies, not in
the region of politics, but outside it; not in aspiring to be one of the
'great' nations of the present day, but in retiring to her humble
position--a position, to my mind, of solitary grandeur and glory; not in
going forward on the path of Western civilization, but in going back
from it so far as practicable; not in getting more and more entangled in
the silken meshes of its finely knit, widespread net, but in escaping
from it as far as possible."

Such are the drastic conclusions of Mr. Bose; conclusions shared to a
certain extent by other Indian idealists like Rabindranath Tagore. But
surely such projects, however idealistic, are the vainest fantasies.
Whole peoples cannot arbitrarily cut themselves off from the rest of the
world, like isolated individuals forswearing society and setting up as
anchorites in the jungle. The time for "hermit nations" has passed,
especially for a vast country like India, set at the cross-roads of the
East, open to the sea, and already profoundly penetrated by Western
ideas.

Nevertheless, such criticisms, appealing as they do to the strong strain
of asceticism latent in the Indian nature, have affected many Indians
who, while unable to concur in the conclusions, still try to evolve a
"middle term," retaining everything congenial in the old system and
grafting on a select set of Western innovations. Accordingly, these
persons have elaborated programmes for a "new order" built on a blend of
Hindu mysticism, caste, Western industry, and socialism.[237]

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