India Trough a Traveler’s Eye
India had always been part of the background of my life, but I had never seen, it whole and for myself until now. Yet the stories that our Indian family doctor and his wife told me when I was child had woven themselves into my growing dreams, and I had long read everything that I could find about that country from my father I had learned of it through Buddhism and the life history of the Lord Buddha. When did I go to India to see, not the Taj Mahal, although I did see it any by moonlight, not Father Skirl, although i did see it, and not the glories of empire in New Delhi, although I did see the, I want to see India, to see and listen to two groups of people, the young intellectuals in the cities and the peasants in the villages, There i met in little room in the city, in little houses in the villages, and I heard their plans for freedom, Already the intellectuals believed that another world war was inevitable, They had been bitterly disappointed after the first word war by what they felt, where the broken promises of England, The English, they declared, had no real purpose to restore India to the people. I could believe it fresh as I was from china, where the period of people’s Tutelage seemed endless and self-government further off every year, when you are ready for independence, conquerors have always said to their subjects, etcetera! But who is to decide when that moment comes and how can people learn to govern themselves except by doing it?
So the intellectuals in India were Restless and embittered, and I sat thought hours watching their placing dark eyes.