Frog and the Nightingale Essay

The declare is widely regarded as a virtuous in India since its head st artistic production publication in 1946, and provides a broad go step forward of Indian narrative, philosophy and refining, as viewed from the eyes of a liberal Indian fighting for the independence of his acres. In The Disco truly of India, Nehru argued that India was a historic democracy with a right to sovereignty. (Calhoun, Craig, Nations Matter Culture, History and the Cosmopolitan Dream, Rout conductge.In this book, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru tries to strike the history of India starting from the Indus Vall(a)ey Civilization, and wherefore covers the countrys history from the arrival of the Aryans to government under the British Empire. He says that India in the obsolete was country which sojournd in harmony and peace, but the entry of society fiendishs had a very bad effect on throng. The effect of these various people on Indian culture and their incorporation into Indian society is examined.Th is book also analyses in depth the philosophy of Indian liveness. This book was sanctified to the Prisoners of Ahmednagar jail. The book became the basis of the 53-episode Indian television series Bharat Ki Khoj, first broadcast in 1988. PREFACE OF THE BOOK BY JAWAHARLAL NEHRU- This book was written by Jawaharlal Nehru in Ahmadnagar firmhold prison during the five months, April to September 1944. rough of his colleagues in prison were good enough to read the domainuscript and relieve oneself a number of valuable suggestions.On revising the book in prison he took advantage of these suggestions and made somewhat additions. No one, he need hardly add, is responsible for what he has written or of necessity agrees with it. But he expresses my deep gratitude to his fellow-prisoners in Ahmadnagar Fort for the innumerable talks and discussions they had, which helped him greatly to clear his own mind to the highest degree various aspects of Indian history and culture. Prison is n on a pleasant place to live in even for a short period, practically less for wide years.But it was a privilege for me to live in close butt with men of outstanding ability and culture and a wide military personnel outlook which even the passions of the moment did not obscure. His eleven companions in Ahmadnagar Fort were an interesting cross-section of India and re register in their several ways not hardly politics but Indian scholarship, old and sore, and various aspects of present-day(prenominal) India. Nearly all the principal living Indian languages, as strong as the classical languages which fetch federal agencyfully influenced India in the past(a) and present, were represented and the standard was much that of high scholarship.Among the classical languages were Sanskrit and Pali, Arabic and Persian the new-fashioned languages were Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Sindhi and Oriya. Jawaharlal Nehru had all this wealth to draw upon and the only limi tation was his own subject to profit by it. Though he was grateful to all his companions, he specially mentioned a few namesMaulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose gigantic erudition constantly delighted me but some sentences also rather overwhelmed me, Govind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M. Asaf Ali.The book ashes as written in prison with no additions or kinds, chuck out for the postscript at the end. He doesnt know how other authors feel just about their compositions, but always he had a strange sensation when he read something that he had written some time previously. That sensation is heightened when the writing had been done in the close and abnormal atmosphere of prison and the incidental reading has taken place outside. He could recognize it of course, but not wholly it chatms al intimately that he was reading some familiar alternate written by another, who was near to him and yet who was different.Perhaps that is the measure of the change that had taken place in Jawahar lal Nehru So he has felt about this book also. It is his and not wholly his, as he is constituted instantly it represents rather some past self of his which has already joined that presbyopic succession of other selves that existed for a while and faded away, leaving only a memory behind . carriage in the Jail During his cover in the jail as a prisoner, he talked about the ruins that were in that respect but were covered up by soil or own collapsed.He talks about a courageous, beautiful lady, named Chandbibi, who fought against akbar to protect the fort(where he was staying as prisoner). But at the end she was killed by her own the States man. He asks himself that what is his ancestral gift? he discovers that, India is his ancestral gift. It is in his blood. he is the ancesteor of victories and defeats of the past kings, brave works of adult male from the earliest past to now. He is the heir of all these. A few of his chapters which tell about Jawaharlal Nehrus heart in pr ison and the various changes in IndiaTime in Prison The Urge to Action Time seems to change its nature in prison. The present hardly exists, for thither is an absence of feeling and sensation which major power separate it from the dead past. Even news of the active, living and dying demesne outside has a certain dream- ilk un-reality, an immobility and an unchangeableness as of the past. The outer(prenominal) objective time ceases to be, the cozy and subjective sense remains, but at a lower level, except when thought pulls it out of the present and experiences a kind of reality in the past or in the future.We live, as Auguste Comte said, dead mens lives, encased in our pasts, but this is peculiarly so in prison where we try to find some animation for our starved and locked-up emotions in memory of the past or fancies of the future. thither is a stillness and everlastingness about the past it changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture or a statue in dye or marble. Unaffected by the storms and upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and tempts the troubled savour and the tortured mind to seek shelter in its vaulted catacombs.There is peace there and security, and one may even sense a impressionual quality. But it is not manners, unless we nates find the rattling links between it and the present with all its meshings and problems. It is a kind of art for arts sake, without the passion and the urge to action which are the very stuff and nonsense of life. Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of intrust and vital force, a settling down on lower levels of existence, a remit merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us.This release of the mind is all the easier in prison where action is denied and we become slaves to the round of jail-life. Yet the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we project comes from t he past. We are its products and we live im-mersed in it. Not to understand it and feel it as something living within us is not to understand the present. To combine it with the present and extend it to the future, to break from it where it cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrat-ing sensible for thought and actionthat is life. Any vital action springs from the depths of the being.All the capacious past of the individual and even of the race has prepared the background for that mental moment of action. All the racial memories, influences of heredity and environment and training, subconscious urges, thoughts and dreams and actions from babyhood and childhood onwards, in their curious and tremendous mix-up, inevitably drive to that new action, which again becomes yet another factor influencing the future. Influencing the future, partly determining it, possibly even largely determining it, and yet, surely, it is not all determinism.Whether there is each s uch thing as human freedom in the philosophical sense or whether there is only an automatic deter-minism, I do not know. A very great deal appears certainly to be determined by the past complex of events which bear down and a lot overwhelm the individual. Possibly even the inner urge that he experiences, that evident exercise of free will, is itself conditioned. As Sc look forward tonhauer says, a man can do what he will, but not will as he will. A doctrine in an absolute deter-minism seems to me to run low inevitably to complete inaction, to wipeout in life.All my sense of life rebels against it, though of course that very rebellion may itself have been conditioned by previous events Lifes Philosophy- The ideals and objectives of yesterday were still the ideals of to-day, but they had lost some of their lustre and, even as one seemed to go towards them, they lost the calendered beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what wa s out-of-the-way(prenominal) worse was the coarsening and distortion of what had seemed so right.Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through and through injury and misfortune, before it could behave pretty and raise man above that creature of lust and violence and dupery that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every effort to change it radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure? Ends and inwardness were they tied up inseparably, acting and reacting on each other, the wrong direction distorting and some-times even destroying the end in view? But the right message might well be beyond the power of infirm and egotistical human nature.What then was one to do? Not to act was a complete con-fession of failure and a submission to evil to act meant often enough a compromise with some form of that evil, with all the stubborn consequences that such compromises result in. Science does not tell us much, or for the matter of that any -thing about the purpose of life. It is now widening its boun-daries and it may combat the so-called invisible instauration before farseeing and help us to understand this purpose of life in its widest sense, or at least(prenominal) give us some glimpses which illumine the pro-blem of human existence.The old dispute between recognition and religion takes a new formthe employment of the scientific method to emotional and religious experiences. Some vague or more precise philosophy of life we all have, though most of us accept unthinkingly the general attitude which is characteristic of our coevals and environment. Most of us accept also certain meta physiological conceptions as part of the faith in which we have grown up. How amazing is this genius of man In spite of innumerable failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and all he held dear for an ideal, for truth, for faith, for country and honour.That ideal may change, but that capacity for self-sacrifice continues, and, because of that, much may be forgiven to man, and it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster, he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values he cherished. Plaything of natures mighty forces, less than a speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought to stamp down them. Whatever gods there be, there is something godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him.The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, retention that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived so numerous perils remembering also that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and that we can always wander if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of nature. Indias Strength and Weaknesses- The search for the sources of Indias strength and for her deterioration and de cay is long and intricate.Yet the recent causes of that decay are obvious enough. She fell behind in the march of technique, and Europe, which had long been backward in many matters, took the lead in technical progress. Behind this technical progress was the spirit of science and a bubling life and spirit which displayed itself in many activities and in ad-venturous voyages of discovery. hot techniques gave military strength to the countries of western Europe, and it was easy for them to spread out and control the East. That is the story not only of India, but of almost the whole of Asia. wherefore this should have happened so is more difficult to unravel, for India was not lacking in mental alertness and technical skill in earlier times. superstar senses a progressive deterioration during centuries. The urge to life and endeavour becomes less, the crea-tive spirit fades away and gives place to the imitative. Where triumphant and rebellious thought had tried to squeeze the my-st eries of nature and the universe, the wordy commentator comes with his glosses and long explanations. Magnificent art and cutting give way to meticulous carving of intricate detail without noblesse of conception or design.The vigour and rich-ness of language, powerful yet simple, are followed by highly ornate and complex literary forms. The urge to adventure and the teeming life which led to vast schemes of contrary coloni-zation and the transplantation of Indian culture in far lands all these fade away and a constrict orthodoxy taboos even the crossing of the high seas. A rational spirit of inquiry, so evident in earlier times, which might well have led to the further growth of science, is replaced by irrationalism and a blind idolatory of the past.Indian life becomes a sluggish stream, living in the past, moving slowly through the accumulations of dead centuries. The heavy burden of the past crushes it and a kind of stupor seizes it. It is not surprising that in this conditi on of mental stupor and physical weariness India should have deteriorated and remained rigid and immobile, while other parts of the world marched ahead. Every people and every nation has some such belief or myth of national destiny and perhaps it is partly align in each case.Being an Indian I am myself influenced by this reality or myth about India, and I feel that anything that had the power to mould hundreds of generations, without a break, must have force its enduring vital force from some deep well of strength, and have had the capacity to renew that vitality from age to age. No people, no races remain unchanged. Continually they are motley with others and slowly changing they may appear to die almost and then rise again as a new people or just a variation of the old. There may be a definite break between the old people and the new, or vital links of thought and ideals may join them.History has numerous instances of old and well-established civilizations fading away or being ended suddenly, and vigor-ous new cultures fetching their place. Is it some vital energy, sonic inner source of strength that gives life to a civilization or a people, without which all effort is ineffective, like the vain attempt of an aged person to plav the part of a juvenility? Behind the past quarter of a centurys manage for Indias independence and all our conflicts with British authority, lay in my mind, and that of many others, the desire to revitalize India.We felt that through action and self-imposed suffering and sacri-fice, through voluntarily facing risk and danger, through refusal to submit to what we considered evil and wrong, would we re-charge the battery of Indias spirit and waken her from her long slumber. Though we came into conflict continually with the British Government in India, our eyes were always moody towards our own people. Political advantage had value only in so far as it helped in that fundamental purpose of ours.Because of this govern-ing motive, frequently we acted as no politician, moving in the narrow sphere of politics only, would have done, and foreign and Indian critics expressed surprise at the folly and intransigency of our ways. Whether we were foolish or not, the historians of the future will judge. We aimed high and looked far. Probably we were often foolish, from the point of view of opportunist politics, but at no time did we forget that our main purpose was to raise the whole level of the Indian people, psychologically and spiritually and also, of course, politically and economically.It was the building up of that real inner strength of the people that we were after, knowing that the rest would inevitably follow. We had to wipe out some generations of shameful subservience and timid submission to an arrogant noncitizen authority. Epilogue of the book- Jawaharlal Nehru has covered a thousand hand-written pages with a unsettle of ideas in his mind. He travelled in the past and peeped into the future and somet imes tried to balance himself on that point of intersection of the timeless with time. His life has been full of happenings in the world and the war has advanced rapidly towards a triumphant conclusion,so far as military victories go. In his own country also much has happened of which he could be only a distant spectator, and waves of unhappiness have sometimes temporarily swept over me and passed on. Because of this vocation of thinking and trying to give some expression to his thoughts, he has drawn myself away from the piercing edge of the present and moved along the wider expanses of the past and the future. The discovery of Indiawhat had he discovered?It was presumptuous of him to imagine that he could disclose India and find out what India is to-day and what it was in the long past. To-day India is four hundred jillion separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of though and feeling. If this is so in the present, how much more difficult is it to grasp that multitudinous past of innumerable successions of human beings. Yet something has bound them together and binds them still. India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads.