The Kshatriya of old must again take his rightful position in INDIA

Western society today believes only in “exploitation,” “expansion,” “efficiency,” “competitiveness”—and seeks to transform its members into unthinking cogs in a huge Machine. 

We will certainly find some remarkable individuals here and there, but the mass is left to live from day to day, with, now and then, the luxury of a fit of depression, when the void in their hearts becomes a little too acute. 

Or, if it is not depression, it is a bottomless pit of degradation. Western civilization, if it can be given this noble name, was built on cynical greed, with a thin veneer of culture to give it a respectable appearance. 

Anyone who finds this statement excessive should study the way “leading” Western nations spend their time selling weapons of death to everyone, then sending peace missions to extinguish the wars they started, and more bombers in case the peace missions are turned down.

Not to speak of the countless dictators and terrorists they constantly create, only to fight them in the name of “human rights” once they are found inconvenient. Or, again, look at those giant corporate houses which think nothing of laying the earth waste as long as they can make a few more dollars. No one knows where the whole machine is heading, nor does anyone care—although many, especially among the ordinary people, vaguely and anxiously sense that things cannot go on much longer. Such unhealthy foundations are sure to decay before long, and the signs of impending disintegration are not lacking, whether in the economic or the social fields.

Sri Aurobindo, who last century imbibed all the culture Europe had to offer him, saw very soon through the West’s chosen direction. He wrote in 1910 :

Was life always so trivial, always so vulgar, always so loveless, pale and awkward as the Europeans have made it ? This well-appointed comfort oppresses me, this perfection of machinery will not allow the soul to remember that it is not itself a machine.

 Is this then the end of the long march of human civilisation, this spiritual suicide, this quiet petrifaction of the soul into matter ? 

Was the successful businessman that grand culmination of manhood toward which evolution was striving ? 

After all, if the scientific view is correct, why not ? An evolution that started with the protoplasm and flowered in the ourang-outang and the chimpanzee, may well rest satisfied with having created hat, coat and trousers, the British Aristocrat, the American Capitalist and the Parisian Apache. For these, I believe, are the chief triumphs of the European enlightenment to which we bow our heads. [...] What a bankruptcy !'

To achieve India’s “renaissance,” Sri Aurobindo boldly and repeatedly called on his countrymen to develop the Kshatriya spirit, almost lost after centuries of subjection :

The Kshatriya of old must again take his rightful position in our social polity to discharge the first and foremost duty of defending its interests. The brain is impotent without the right arm of strength..What India needs especially at this moment is the aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the passive tamasic spirit of inertia we have already too much. 

We need to cultivate another training and temperament, another habit of mind.