But why do we fail to enquire into the condition of our country in this way? We never look to our country, never think of our countrymen, of our past national history, or our present material condition, for the vanity arising from false education has rendered us blind and callous. Chitta Ranjan has truly remarked in the same paper.
"We boast of being educated; but how many are we? What room do we occupy in the country? What is our relation to the vast masses of our countrymen? Do they think our thoughts and speak our speech? I am bound to confess that our countrymen have little faith in us.
... Besides, we seem to look upon them with contempt. Do we invite them to our assemblies and our conferences? Perhaps we do when we want their signatures to some petition to be submitted before the Government; but do we associate with them heartily in any of our endeavours? Is the peasant a member in any of our committees or conferences?"
By the grace of God this mentality has now been changed. The masses and the classes of our country have associated themselves in the present national movement. The peasant delegates are now honoured members of even the Indian National Congress. The note of warning that Chitta Ranjan struck was very opportune. This set our leaders to feel the heart-throbbing of our mother country. But what led us astray? Chitta Ranjan has justly remarked:--
"Mimic Anglicism has become an obsession with us: we find its black foot-print in every walk and endeavour of life. We substitute meeting houses for temples; we perform stage-plays and sell pleasures in order to help charities. We hold lotteries in aid of our orphanages; we give up the national and healthful games of our country and introduce all sorts of foreign importations. We have become hybrid in dress, in thought, in sentiment, and culture and are making frantic attempts even to be hybrids in blood. What wonder, then, that in this new pursuit of western ideals we should forget that money is only a means to an end and not an end in itself?"
What has made us shallow; why have we, the so-called educated, become strangers to our own countrymen? For like other ideals, our ideal of education also has become mean and impoverished; and so what was easy and natural--we have made it complex and difficult. We must even now beware and listen to the wise warning of Bankim--a warning all too unheeded when it was first uttered. But one thing is certain that unless we change the whole organism of our educational system and make it harmonise with our national ideals even our existence is threatened. For this education has created a wide gulf between the educated and the masses, which our national existence demands to bridge over. About our present system of education Chitta Ranjan has said:--