FEATURES OF THE
INDIAN RENAISSANCE
(I)
Socio
– religious Movements
In the beginning Renaissance led
to the repudiation of Indian values and slavish imitation of all that the west
stood for. It seems that the influence of the west in all spheres of life has
ben so overwhelming that Indians lost their own and became “sedulous apes”.
Such a state of things roused in due course a strong reaction. Consequently a
spirit of revival commenced and everything savoring of the past was supported
whole – heartily, welcomed warmly and honored enthusiastically. It was a
defensive mechanism against extreme reaction. It was symbolized in the
religious messages of Dayannand Saraswati, Ramakrishna paramahansa and Vivekananda.
It may be designated as the ‘revivalists group’. Between the two movements
arose a new one. It sought compromise between the two. It was led by Raja Ram
Mohan Roy and propagated Rabindranath Tagore, Dr. Annie Besant and Ramakrishna
Mission. This ‘Middle group’ aimed to assimilate the best and enduring features
of European culture with those of Indian without elimination or discarding the
essential ingredients of the Indian culture and civilization.
But the first decades of the
twentieth century witnessed the birth of another unique spiritual movement in
India. It was led by Shri Aurobindo. It interpreted Indian Renaissance as the
rebirth of the soul of India into a new body of enthusiasm and energy, a new
form of its innate and ancient sprit.
On account of these religious
movements “there arose in the period a number of reformers, teachers, saints
and scholars who have purified Hinduism by denouncing some of its later
accretions, separate its essentials from non – essentials, confirmed its
ancient truths by their own experience and have been carried its message to
Europe and America.
(II)
Recovery
of Indian history
The renaissance not only awakened and fortified the sense of the
religious greatness, but brought the glories of the Indian history to light.
The slow and patient lab our of many European Scholar helped a good deal in the
reconstruction of the lost story of India’s greatness. The work of
archaeologists, epigraphists, numismatists and art critics like James Ferguson,
Dr. Bulher, Dr.Fleet, Percy Brown, Sir John Marshall and Dr. Ananda Coomarswamy
revealed the glory of India’s numerous ancient monuments scattered all over the
country. They made Indians take pride in their past history. Gradually three
Indians were awakened to the sense of their cultural greatness.
(III)
The
recovery of India’s ancient literature.
The Renaissance enabled Indians to recover their ancient literature
Buddhist, and Jain. It was the Europeans who printed the Vedic and the Buddhist
literatures of India and revealed them to Indians.
European
scholars who cultivated the study of Sanskrit literature opened the eyes of
Indians to the great rich heritage that their ancestors had bequeathed to them.
It was the enthusiasm of European scholars like Sir Charrles Wilkins, Sir
William Jones,colebrooke, Wilson, Muir, Monger Williams, Max Muller and others
for the culture of India that provided the first greatly impetus to the modern
study of classics to the western world. Under the inspiration of Max Muller, a
great German scholar in England, sacred books of India were translated and
published and Indian Philosophy was studied with keen interest in the west. All
this restored India’s classics to Indians, enabled the new middle classes in
India to know of nobler and higher things in their own thought, helped to rouse
the world’s interest in India and provided a great impetus to the sense of
nationalism among Indians.
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