The first quarter of the last
century was the period of Indian renaissance and special souls had come to
build it up. One more example could be that of Charles Freer Andrews (1871 –
1940), an English priest, educator and Indian freedom fighter who is best known
as an associate of Mahatma Gandhi. He was elected President of the All India
Trade Union in 1925 and 1927. “He accompanied Gandhi to the first Round Table
Conference in London,
helping him negotiate with the British government on matters of Indian autonomy
and devolution. While working for Indian independence Andrews developed a
dialogue between Christians and Hindus. He spent a lot of time at Santiniketan
in conversation with the poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore. He also
supported the movement to ban the ‘untouchability of outcastes’. In 1925, he
joined the famous VaikkomTemple protests, and in
1933 assisted BR Ambedkar in formulating Dalit demands. He was now at the
service of India, especially
India’s poor, travelling,
lecturing, writing, and lobbying on their behalf wherever they happened to be
as a result of indentured labor policies, most notably in Fiji and in South Africa. He was always a ready
and lucid writer, and his books include an autobiography, What I Owe to Christ (1932). In a period when Europeans and Indians
often found personal relationships difficult, Andrews made many Indian friends.
Early in his career he had been one of those who succeeded in having SK Rudra
appointed principal of St Stephen’s College, and throughout his career he was a
warm supporter of the Indian national movement. His friendships with Gandhi and
Tagore were close and mutual. Gandhi, in particular, often cited Andrews as a
model Christian missionary who never proselytized but was always prepared to
serve the people of India.”
CF Andrews considered his coming to
India
as his second birth, and it took place on 20 March when in 1904 he first set
his foot on the Indian soil. Soon he found an intimate friend in Tagore to whom
he could write in an affable personal manner. In a letter to him written in
1914, he discloses: “I have often wondered what it was that made me love India
with such an intense love. My mother’s love and devotion played a unique part
in it. All that I saw and learned of Indian motherhood reminded me of my own
mother. I have been able to leap to the recognition of Indian devotion because
it is so like my mother’s. It has made India my home.”
But his heart was for the poor. As
a believer, he always heard his Master telling him that anything he did for one
of his brothers, the humble, went directly to him. He wrote a poem while in
Simla in July 1915 describing the plight of the indentured coolie:
There he crouched,
Back and arms scarred, like a
hunted thing,
Terror-stricken.
All within me surged towards him
While the tears rushed,
Then, a change.
Through his eyes I saw Thy glorious
face—
Ah, the wonder!
Calm, unveiled in deathless beauty,
Lord of Sorrow.
The sentiments of CF Andrews in
their essentiality remain valid even today. It pained him when Englishmen, he
himself an Englishman, inflicted cruelty on the helpless. He would not approve
if they kept India and Ireland
as their vile subject using military force and repression. And by extension he
would condemn if tomorrow India
or Ireland
were to use the same technique to hold power. “Independence
can never be won if fifty million untouchables in India remain in a state of
subjugation which amounts almost to serfdom.” He would not love India if India were to turn from the path of
love and peace. What freedom is it if it is built on compulsions? That is the
question on which we should ponder today when already India has won the political
freedom. What CF Andrews was concerned with was not India
throwing away the shackles of the British Empire, but winning the moral and
spiritual side of true Independence.
National deterioration is no doubt due to the foreign yoke on the neck of the
nation; but more important and more difficult is to throw away the yoke of
mental and spiritual slavery.
John Woodroffe and the Tantric System
John Woodroffe (1865-1936) could
also perhaps deserve a mention in our list of those who came to serve India.
Oxford educated
in Civil Law, he became the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in 1915.
But his enduring contributions were in the fields of Indian Philosophy, Yoga,
and the esoteric aspects of Tantric System in particular. It is here that he brought
a clearer light dispelling the darkness that had covered the interpretations of
the ancient Tantra or the Shakti scriptures. He studied the original Sanskrit
texts and showed the clarity with which the works were written, that there was
nothing obscurantist in the worship of the divine Shakti, Goddess of Power,
Mahadevi. His was an attempt to give an authentic account of the Shakti
Doctrine. Woodroffe remained a civil servant without indulging in politics but
devoting himself entirely to the scriptural aspects. After his retirement from
the services he went back to England
and continued to study these subjects of great interest to him.
Let us pick up at random a passage
from Woodroffe’s Śakti and Śakta, pp. 311-12:
A Mantra is not the same thing as
prayer or self-dedication (Atma-nivedana).
Prayer is conveyed in the words the Sadhaka chooses. Any set of words or
letters is not a Mantra. Only that Mantra in which the Devata Las revealed His
or Her Particular aspects can reveal that aspect, and is therefore the Mantra
of that one of His or Her particular aspects. The relations of the letters (Varņa), whether vowel or
consonant, Nada and Bindu, in a Mantra indicate tire appearance of. Devatā in
different forms. Certain Vibhuti or aspects of the Devata are inherent in
certain Varņa,
but perfect Śakti does not appear in any but a whole Mantra. All letters are
forms of the Śabda-Brahman, but only particular combinations of letters are
particular form, just as the name of a particular being is made up of certain
letters and not of any indiscriminately. The whole universe is Śakti and is
pervaded by Śakti. Nada, Bindu, Varga are all forms of Śakti and combinations
of these, and these combinations only are the Śabda corresponding to the Artha
or forms of any particular Devatā. The gross lettered sound is, as explained later,
the manifestation of sound in a more subtle form, and this again is the production
of causal "sound" in its supreme (Parā) form. Mantras are manifestations
of Kuņdalini which is a name for the Śabda-Brahman or Saguņa-Brahman in
individual bodies. Produced Śabda is an aspect of the Jiva's vital Śakti. Kuņdalini
is the Śakti who gives life to the Jiva. She it is who in the Mulādhāra Chakra
(or basal bodily centre) is the cause of this sweet, indistinct and murmuring
Dhavani which is compared to the humming of a black bee. Thence Śabda
originates and, being first Parā, gradually manifests upwards as Paśyanti,
Madhyamā, Vaikhari. Just as in outer space, waves of sound are produced by
movements of air (Vāyu), so in the space within the Jiva’s body, waves of sound
are said to be produced according to the movements of the vital air (Prāņavayu)
and the process of in and out breathing. As the Svarupa of Kuņdali, in whom are
all sounds, is Paramātmā, so the substance of all Mantra, Her manifestation is
Consciousness (Cit) manifesting as letters and words. In fact, the letters of
the Alphabet which are called Akshara are nothing but the Yantra of the Akshara
or Imperishable Brahman. This is however only realized by the Sadhaka, with his
Shakti generated by Sadhana is united with Mantra-śakti. Kuņdalini, who is
extremely subtle, manifest in gross (Sthula) form in differing aspects as
different Devatās. It is this gross form which is the Presiding Deity
(Adhishţātri Devatā) of a Mantra, though it is the subtle (Sukşma) form at
which all Sadhakas aim. Mantra and Devatā are thus one and in particular forms
of Brahman as Śiva-Śakti. Therefore the Shastra says that they go to Hell who
think that the Image (or “Idol” as it is commonly called) is but a stone and
the Mantra merely letters of the alphabet. It is also ignorance of Shastric
principle which supposes that Mantra is merely the name for the words in which
one expresses what one has to say to the Divinity… A Mantra, on the contrary,
consists of certain letters arranged in definite sequence of sounds of which
the letters are the representative signs. To produce the designed effect, the
Mantra must be intoned in the proper way, according to both sound (Varņa) and rhythm (Svara).
For these reasons, a Mantra when translated ceases to be such, and becomes a
mere word or sentence.
This is something solid, with deep
understanding of things occult and spiritual. It is a pity that the modern mind
has no inclination and capacity to enter into these rich worlds that exist
within and around us. Not only this lack of faculty and competence; there is on
the other hand utter disregard for such matters, nay, there is arrogance to
pooh-pooh them. It should be most disappointing when desultory or disparaging,
in fact casual comments are made with respect to the spiritual writings of
accomplished Yogis and Siddhas. We have an example of it in The Lives of Sri Aurobindo when its
author considers Savitri as a
“fictional creation”, when the Mother herself called it a “supreme revelation
of Sri Aurobindo”, it based on his experiences and realisations. The strangest,
and the saddest as well as the cruelest paradox is, the author of the Lives claims himself to be practitioner
of the Yoga given by Sri Aurobindo.
The first Quarter of the Twentieth Century
But coming back to our theme, we
perceive that the first quarter of the twentieth century which brought the
sense of independence and nobility to the soul of India showed itself in many ways of
life also. Let us briefly see these, for instance, in the field of science.
It is absolutely remarkable that
during the decade 1920-39 contributions to science of a fundamental nature were
made by the Indian physicists. And these were made when the British Rule was
bent upon stifling the national spirit. This period can boast of works of Meghnad
Saha, Satyendranath Bose, CV Raman and S Chandrashekhar.
Saha’s Ionisation Formula, Bose’s Statistics, Raman Effect about the Scattering
of Light, Chandrashekhar Limit related to Electron-Degeneracy Pressure acting
against gravitational collapse of a star. This is pure gold doing proud to India.
yet perhaps this gold is not as bright as the Western European gold of the
time. There Quantum Mechanics was discovered, its relativistic formulation
brought to our laboratory the world of anti-matter, the wave-particle duality
deepened into microscopic domain of matter, causality started getting challenged
if not replaced, the universe began to expand and our origins in the Big Bang
made their hesitant appearance. In this rush of epoch-making contributions India
participated if at all only in a distant way and could hardly give any sense of
new direction to the developments. Yet in the socio-political backdrop of the
time whatever was done had its own significance. The spirit of renaissance
could be discerned in several walks of life. We may look at it by acquainting
ourselves, in howsoever a cursory manner it is, with some of the pioneers of
science. The intuitive mind of Bengal and the
solid classical mind of the South were the main contributors initiating a new
activity in the country. Let us present an example or two of them just to get a
rapid glimpse of the best of the time we had.
Meghnad Saha was born on 6 October
1893 not in a very rich family and his early education was not without
financial difficulties. In 1911 he joined the PresidencyCollege in Calcutta to do his BSc in physics.
Satyendranath Bose was his classmate and, if Mahalanobnis was one year senior
to him, Netaji Bose was junior by a year. While in college Saha came in contact
with Bhaga Jatin, but he did not get much involved with the revolutionary
activities. With the encouragement received from Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee Saha,
and also Satyendranath Bose, became lecturers in CalcuttaUniversity.
Here they “both began to pick up problems, solve them and publish papers. While
they published independently, they also collaborated on one paper. And in the
year 1920, that is roughly four years after he started his career, Saha
published a paper that became a turning point in life.” Saha himself writes
about the genesis of the formula that now bears his name: “It was while
pondering over the problems of astrophysics and teaching thermodynamics and
spectroscopy to the MSc classes that the theory of thermal ionisation took a
definite shape in my mind in 1919. I was a regular reader of German journals…
and in the course of these studies… I came across a paper explaining the high
ionisation in stars due to high temperatures… I saw at once the importance of
introducing the value of the ionisation potential in the formula.” By any
measure this must be considered as a competent professional achievement that
turned a new leaf in stellar observations. One may not be using the Saha
formula much these days, and things have gone far beyond 1920, but the fact
that it provided a new manner of looking at the stellar spectra has its own
deeper significance. The derivation of the formula by using the principle first
obtained by Fowler in 1923 added an extra term that took care of multiple
ionisations. This was essentially in the theoretical field.
But later Saha did also carry out
some experimental work in physics, when the climate of work was practically
absent in the India
of those days. Paucity of funds and the lack of the kind of atmosphere that is
needed to do practical things contributed their great share. He could have
perhaps gone abroad and devoted himself to research with all the facilities
that were available there.But those
were also the days when another spirit inspired the people of the country. The
spirit of Indian renaissance was strong and Saha had lent himself to its
idealism.
Apart from teaching physics Saha
was connected with several other aspects of importance for the country’s growth
in science. Two of these may be briefly mentioned here; these were
rationalisation of calendars based on a scientific approach and the study of
rivers. In highbrow science the study of shifts of the rivers across lands and
plains may not get much recognition but it constitutes greatly in the
geo-economic factors that govern societies and civilisations. Saha was aware of
it and he took keen interest in looking into these problems. Large-scale drifts
in rivers do take place over a period of time and, in the case of Punjab, there is as if constant fight between the desert
and river valleys. This can have far-reaching consequences. Thus about Harappa
and Mohenjodaro he says: “…a large number of cities have been found buried
under the sands of Sind and Rajaputana. These
could not have existed unless there was more plentiful supply of water in these
regions 5000 years ago than is to be found now… The lower course of Saraswati
ran dry during Vedic times and its course is marked by a dry channel. The other
rivers have moved away generally to the West.” The disappearance of
Pataliputra, the seat of the Magadhan Empire, has similar causes. The Damodar
Valley Project proved a mess by not understanding the Physics of Rivers.
Similarly, to the plethora of calendars that were present in India he provided a rationalised
basis, for their reformation had become imperative. But Saha’s calendar
remained unaccepted because religious feelings entered into the picture. His
plea was to follow the Chinese maxim: “Religions are many but Reason is one.”
He also added that world harmony can be promoted only by sweet reasonableness.
Some chance!
About the discovery of nuclear
fission Saha gave a lecture at the Indian Physical Society in March 1941 and
said the following: “… a process may be discovered which would render the
reactions to proceed with explosive violence… A tablet of U235, no more than a
homeopathic globule in size, may blow off a mighty Super Dreadnought [a large
battleship of those days]—a feat which can at the present time be performed
only by a torpedo carrying several tons of explosives...” But unlike the
American scientists who in 1939 had heard the fission report from Bohr, none in
India
set up an experiment to verify the findings. Saha’s socialistic ideas about
industrial developments found concurrence in Netaji Subhash Bose’s when as a
President of the Indian National Congress in 1938 he told the scientist: “We
can at best determine whether this revolution, that is industrial, will be a
comparatively gradual one, as in Great Britain, or a forced march as
in Soviet Russia. I am afraid that it has to be a forced march in this
country.” This may be true to some extent in the case of established industrial
activities, but in matters of scientific and technological developments “forced
march” has always frustration laid in it. The commerce-driven project has
different parameters of operation than a creative-innovative enterprise where exceptional
and highly individualistic minds are concerned. Saha looked at India
from a scientist’s point of view which has its own limitations.
The contributions of leaders of
science like Homi Bhabha, Meghnad Saha, Shanti Sarup Bhatanagar, Satyendra Bose
were undoubtedly seminal in nature, yet at times one wonders whether they were
actually doing or promoting Indian science at all. They were doing science in India
no doubt, but it was essentially the European science they were doing. The
problems they were engaged with, and they were professionally high-class
problems, were right on the front-line; yet they were set neither in the
over-all Indian context nor in the Indian perspective. Maybe here and there we
have the Indian touch but perhaps in its totality there is very little which is
radically different from the Western approach towards science. Nor do the
celebrated achievements of Har Gobind Khorana or Abdus Salam or S
Chandrasekhar or
in our days and another field Amartya Sen in foreign lands possess that truer stamp of the sub-continental
authenticity, the sub-continental genius. When we think of Jagadish Chandra
Bose or Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman or Srinivasa Ramanujan we at once get
another feeling and it is that which we have to discern and promote. But we
shall talk about it in another context. But what we generally notice in them is
the fact that, they all essentially did the Western science, be it in India
or abroad.
It may be appropriate to remember
here what, about four decades ago, Satyendra Bose wondered at: “It is a
perpetual challenge to the Indian genius as to how, even though the country is
endowed with such natural resources, even though the country has had such a
brilliant history, it continues to remain third rate in spite of so many
resources and so much manpower.” The answer perhaps lies in the lack of
organised disciplined effort. It is true in all the fields of activity and not
necessarily in science alone where it is generally complained that we do not
have adequate funds to carry out research work. Even in a game of cards such as
Bridge we do not seem to have enough talent. If the U.S.,
France and Italy occupy the top positions in the world, India
stands nowhere. We know too well the story of our cricket and hockey. Perhaps
we have not really discovered our own identity. We have not discovered
ourselves. In that respect pioneers like Bhabha contributed greatly to the
country,—perhaps because he had a typical Western approach in seeing and doing
things. He certainly brought big science to India.
Let us go back a little in time and
see the work of the mathematical wizard Ramanujan who belonged to another class
of those Indians who came to do special work in some specialized field. And
amazing were his contributions! Born on 22 December 1887 in Tamil Nadu into an
average-income Brahmin family, the genius rose to great heights by the power of
his intellect, perhaps more truly than that by the faculty of intuition which
came to him as a gift from the village deity, Goddess Namakkal, eighty miles
west of Ramanujan’s Kumbhakonam. Later about this genius, his mentor GH Hardy
would say: “India has
produced many talented mathematicians in recent years, a number of whom have
come to Cambridge
and attained academical distinction. They will be the first to recognize that
Mr Ramanujan’s work is of a different category.” The gift surely had come from
the Vaishnava Goddess herself. Young Ramanujan was essentially brought up by
his mother, learning from her about tradition and Puranas, as a Brahmin boy
would be.
In the school he was a brilliant
student but often neglected subjects other than mathematics. When he was
sixteen, he came across a book on mathematics with a collection of some five
thousand theorems. Next year he started tackling difficult problems which had
remained unanswered for a long time. After graduating in 1904, he had to seek a
job to maintain the family. But his interest in mathematics continued and wrote
a 17-page paper on Bernoulli’s numbers. The editor of the journal, Narayan
Iyengar, noted: “Ramanujan’s methods were so terse and novel and his
presentation so lacking in clearness and precision, that the ordinary
mathematical reader… could hardly follow him.” His papers were riddles with
“holes”. Soon another turn took in his life, when some of the prominent British
mathematicians were wonderstruck by his genius. Ramanujan was now in Cambridge, in 1914, and
stayed there for about five years. In March 1916 he was awarded a BA degree by
research (later named as PhD) for his work on Highly Composite Numbers (numbers
with a large number of factors). Hardy remarked that this was one of the most
unusual papers and showed its author’s extraordinary ingenuity. In 1918 he had
the unique distinction of being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the
second from India;
this was for his work on Elliptic Functions.
But Ramajunan’s was a highly
one-sided life—of mathematics only. Hardy tried to play a delicate role in it,
of giving to his raw genius an authentic professional character and at the same
time not interrupting with the inspiration he received directly from the World
of Mathematics. Ramanujan’s health continued to worsen with a severe vitamin
deficiency. Soon he was back in India
and died in 1919 at the age of 32.
“Ramanujan has been described as a
person with a somewhat shy and quiet disposition, a dignified man with pleasant
manners. He lived a rather Spartan life while at Cambridge. Ramanujan's first Indian
biographers describe him as rigorously orthodox. Ramanujan credited his acumen
to his family Goddess, Namagiri, and looked to her for inspiration in his work.
He often said, ‘An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a
thought of God.’ "
In his earlier years Ramanujan
worked almost in isolation when he recorded most of his mathematical
discoveries, but without proofs. Probably due to shortage of paper in those
days he had worked them out on the slate and just put them in the notebooks. “Although
many of his results were already found in the literature, most were not. Almost
a decade after Ramanujan's death in 1920, GN Watson and BM Wilson began to edit
Ramanujan's notebooks, but they never completed the task. A photostat edition,
with no editing, was published by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in
Bombay in 1957.”
It could also be that he recorded the results only out of personal interest and
not for publication. Or could it be that these were directly revealed to him?
Who knows? One thing however is certain: the role of Namakkal in his life. We
might understand what a magician has done; but the process by which he does it
always remains to us incomprehensible. There was some opening in Ramanujan and
through it rushed in the knowledge, perhaps he being unaware of its hidden
fount.
Ramanujan lived a short life and
also suffered a lot—like Shelley falling on the thorns of life and bleeding. It
is said that the English poet was an involutionary being who had come here in
the world of birth to do a certain work. Could the same be spoken of Ramanujan?
A special being had come to do a special work, one who found Indian soil
suitable for him. “During our generation no more romantic personality than that
of Srinivasa Ramanujan has moved across the field of mathematical interest,”
said a prominent American mathematician Robert Carmichael in 1932. The phrase
“romantic personality” is striking although in a different connotation.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the Muslim Identity
In the context of this Indian
renaissance, it is pertinent to examine why nothing really outstanding or
worthwhile came out of the Muslim community, a community that constitutes a
vast section of Indian population. Did renaissance not touch it? and if so the
question is, why? what could be its causes? Why is it that we don’t see any
Muslim names, for instance, in the field of science of those days? This may not
be a very palatable subject, but perhaps it is a legitimate inquiry. There were
deeper psycho-historical factors also, of the loss of the Muslim Rule over India.
One early important figure that comes to our mind is that of Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan. And it should also be noted that he was suspicious of the Indian
Independence Movement itself. The genesis of the suspicion lay in the 1867
Hindi-Urdu controversy when he became a leading political voice in the
Hindi-Muslim belt of the then United Provinces. For him Urdu was the lingua franca of the land having been
developed by the erstwhile Muslim Rulers. But that is going back to history
rather than building new history. If the revival of a community is an aspect of
a reaction, then the chances of it surviving are dim. This is a law which is
universal and is applicable to all such self-centred groups or creeds or
doctrines or political formulations. Whatever future was planned or envisioned
by Sir Syed was not on the principles of the future that is to come but on
things that have gone into the past, that have lost their life-breath. In fact,
there has to be also the practicality of the cherished ideal. If the idea is to
revive the Muslim glory, which is quite valid for him, then that can happen
only by recognizing the presence of a very large community with other sets of
ideas and ideals, and imposition of any kind is bound to generate conflicts and
clashes. Ditto is true for the Hindu ambition if it does not recognize the
march of the time-spirit towards a higher collective synthesis. The resolution
should lie in a harmonious association that transcends all limitations. But,
unfortunately, removal of the Hindu-Muslim divide at a deeper psychological
level based on the swabhāva or
soul-nature of each had remained unattempted in these politically motivated attempts.
This was rather regrettable. The same would hold good even today if there has
to be reformulation of unity in the subcontinent. Political unity based on the
western theories of nations is not going to solve the problem. It has to go at
the deeper level recognizing the character of each of the constituents.
Sir Syed was essentially concerned
with the lot of the Muslims in India
and was convinced about the necessity of liberal education being given to them.
He began working as an educator, founded the Scientific Society of Aligarh, the
first scientific association of its kind in India along the lines of Royal
Society, and assembled Muslim scholars from different parts of the country. He
started educational and scientific activities with Urdu as the medium of
expression. A lot of creative energy was thus invested rather spent in this
effort instead of allowing the spirit its free articulation. The demand for
Hindi was considered by him as wearing down of Muslim culture that dominated
the country during the Moghal era. In order to strengthen his strategy, he
started befriending the English rulers by the token of ‘our enemy’s enemy is
our friend’. Urdu Defence Association, OsmaniaUniversity in Hyderabad, and such similar organizations
sprang up in quick succession. This provoked further the cultural conflict
leading to communal tensions.
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was born on 17
October 1817, tracing his lineage to the Moghal court. “As a boy he learnt
swimming and archery, which were favorite sports of the well-to-do class in
those days. He learnt to read the Quran under a female teacher at his home.
After this, he was put in the charge of Maulvi Hamid-ud-Din, the first of his private
tutors. Having completed a course in Persian and Arabic, he took to the study
of mathematics, which was a favorite subject of the maternal side of his
family. He later became interested in medicine and studied some well-known
books on the subject. However, he soon gave it up without completing the full
course.”
Educational field was his main
occupation to improve the awareness of the Muslims. “He was invited to attend
the first session of the Indian National Congress and to join the organization
but he refused to accept the offer. He also asked the Muslims to keep
themselves away from the Congress and predicted that the party would prove to
be a pure Hindu party in the times to come. By establishing the Muhammadan
Educational Conference, he provided Muslims with a platform on which he could
discuss their political problems. Sir Syed is known as the founder of Two-Nation
Theory in the modern era.” The seeds of Partition were sown that long ago and
in the course of time they became weighty—and pernicious also.
“In the beginning of 1898 Sir Syed
started keeping abnormally quiet. For hours he would not utter a word to
friends who visited him. Medical aid proved ineffective. His condition became
critical on 24th of March. On the morning of March 27, a severe headache
further worsened it. He expired the same evening. He was buried the following
afternoon in the compound of the Mosque of Aligarh College.”
If Sir Syed Ahmed Khan identified
himself with the Muslim community it was to regain the lost glory of the Muslim
past, of the couple of preceding centuries. But he never identified himself
with India
with all its vast diversity, never thought of synthesis. Yet the question
remains: why we didn’t have any outstanding contributions from this strong and
vibrant community in the various fields of activities except perhaps music, fields such as science as we have briefly seen here? why it remained untouched by renaissance? why it did not give the call: awake, arise, and build up the future in the spirit's glory of the future?