Frog and the Nightingale Essay Example for Free

Frog and the Nightingale EssayThe phonograph recording is widely regarded as a classic in India since its first publication in 1946, and provides a broad view of Indian taradiddle, philosophical system and finish, as viewed from the eyes of a liberal Indian fighting for the independence of his country. In The Discovery of India, Nehru argued that India was a historic demesne with a right to sovereignty. (Calhoun, Craig, Nations Matter Culture, History and the Cosmopolitan Dream, Routledge.In this book, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru tries to study the history of India starting from the Indus V all(prenominal)ey Civilization, and then covers the countrys history from the arrival of the Aryans to government under the British Empire. He says that India in the historic was country which lie ind in harmony and peace, nevertheless the entry of society evils had a very harmful effect on people. The effect of these different people on Indian culture and their incorporation into India n society is examined.This book as well as analyses in depth the philosophy of Indian life. This book was dedicated 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 arrest BY JAWAHARLAL NEHRU- This book was write by Jawaharlal Nehru in Ahmadnagar Fort prison during the five months, April to September 1944. nearly of his colleagues in prison were good enough to read the manuscript and make a number of of import suggestions.On revising the book in prison he took advantage of these suggestions and made some additions. No one, he need hardly add, is responsible for what he has written or necessarily agrees with it. further 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 throw mind more than or less various aspects of Indian history and culture. Prison is not a pleasant run to live in up to now for a short period, much less for presbyopic years.But it was a privilege for me to live in close contact with men of outstanding ability and culture and a wide mane 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 delineated in their several ways not only politics but Indian scholarship, obsolescent and new, and various aspects of present-day India. Nearly all the principal living Indian languages, as well as the classical music languages which puzzle powerfully influenced India in the past times and present, were represented and the standard was often that of senior high scholarship.Among the classical languages were Sanskrit and Pali, Arabic and Persian the modern languages were Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Sindhi and Oriya. Jawaharlal Nehru had all this wealth to draw upon and the only limitation was his ow n capacity to realise by it. Though he was grateful to all his companions, he specially mentioned a few name callingMaulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose vast erudition invariably delighted me but sometimes also rather overwhelmed me, Govind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M. Asaf Ali.The book stiff as written in prison with no additions or changes, except for the postscript at the end. He doesnt k nowadays how other authors feel about their writings, but always he had a strange friend when he read some subject that he had written some time previously. That thaumaturge is heightened when the writing had been done in the close and abnormal atmosphere of prison and the subsequent reading has taken place outside. He could tell it of course of instruction, but not wholly it seems al intimately that he was reading some familiar piece 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 Jawaharlal Nehru So he ha s felt about this book also. It is his and not wholly his, as he is constituted straight off it represents rather some past self of his which has already joined that long succession of other selves that existed for a while and faded away, leaving only a memory behind . Life in the immure During his stay in the jail as a prisoner, he talked about the ruins that were in that location but were cover up by soil or check 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 army 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 human from the earliest past to now. He is the heir of all these. A few of his chapters which tell about Jawaharlal Nehrus life in prison and the various changes in IndiaTime in Prison The Urge to bodily function Time seems to change its nature in prison. The present hardly exists, for there is an absence of feeling and sensation which might separate it from the dead past. Even news of the active, living and dying creative activity outside has a certain dream-like un-reality, an unalterability and an unchangeableness as of the past. The outer objective time ceases to be, the intragroup and subjective intelligence re main(prenominal)s, but at a lower level, except when thought pulls it out of the present and experiences a shape 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 especially so in prison where we try to find some sustenance for our starved and locked-up emotions in memory of the past or fancies of the future. There is a take overness and everlastingness about the past it changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture or a statue in bronze or mar ble. Unaffected by the storms and upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek encourage in its vaulted catacombs.There is peace there and security, and one may even sense a spiritual quality. But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind of art for arts sake, without the passion and the urge to action which are the very mash of life. Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling checkmate on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us.This passage of the mind is all the easier in prison where action is denied and we become slaves to the routine of jail-life. Yet the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we have comes from the past. We are its products and we live i m-mersed in it. Not to visit it and feel it as something living within us is not to understand the present. To combine it with the present and pass away it to the future, to break from it where it cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrat-ing material for thought and actionthat is life. Any vital action springs from the depths of the being.All the long past of the individual and even of the race has prepared the background for that psychological moment of action. All the racial memories, influences of heredity and environment and training, subconscious urges, thoughts and dreams and actions from infancy and childhood onwards, in their unpaired and tremendous mix-up, inevitably drive to that new action, which again becomes yet another factor influencing the future. Influencing the future, partly find it, possibly even largely determining it, and yet, surely, it is not all determinism.Whether there is any such thing as human freedom in the philosophic sense or whether there is only an smart deter-minism, I do not know. A very great deal appears certainly to be find out by the past complex of events which bear down and often overwhelm the individual. Possibly even the inner urge that he experiences, that apparent exercise of free will, is itself conditioned. As Schopenhauer says, a man can do what he will, but not will as he will. A belief in an living deter-minism seems to me to lead inevitably to complete inaction, to death 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 vivid beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and distortion of what had seemed so right.Was human na ture so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through suffering and misfortune, before it could pay reasonably and raise man above that creature of lust and violence and deceit that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every drift to change it radically in the present or the near future unredeemed to failure? Ends and means were they tied up inseparably, acting and reacting on each other, the wrong means distorting and some-times even destroying the end in view? But the right means might well be beyond the capacity of infirm and selfish 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 untoward 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 invade the so-called unseeyn world before long and h elp us to understand this purpose of life in its widest sense, or at least give us some glimpses which illumine the pro-blem of human existence.The honest-to-god controversy between science and religion takes a new formthe application of the scientific method to emotional and ghostly experiences. Some vague or more precise philosophy of life we all have, though most of us apply unthinkingly the general attitude which is characteristic of our generation and environment. Most of us accept also certain metaphysical inclinations as part of the trustfulness in which we have grown up. How horrific is this spirit of man In spite of innumerable failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and all he held love life 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 unrealizable to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster, he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the sets 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 master 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, remembering that slide fastener that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived so many 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 authorisation and Weaknesses- The search for the sources of Indias strength and for her deterioration and decay is long and intricate.Yet the recent causes of that decay are distinct enough. She fell behind in the march of technique, and Eur ope, 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 husking. New techniques gave military strength to the countries of western Europe, and it was easy for them to spread out and require the East. That is the story not only of India, but of almost the whole of Asia.Why this should have happened so is more difficult to unravel, for India was not lacking in mental alertness and technical skill in foregoing times. One 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 pierce the my-steries of nature and the universe, the wordy commentator comes with his glosses and long explanations. kingly art and sculpture give way to meticul ous carving of intricate detail without nobility 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 overflowing life which led to vast schemes of distant coloni-zation and the transplantation of Indian culture in far lands all these fade away and a narrow 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 slothful 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 coma seizes it. It is not surprising that in this condition of mental stupor and physical tiredness India should have deteriorated and remained rigid and immobile, while other parts of the world marched ahead. Ev ery people and every nation has some such belief or invention 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 drawn its enduring vitality 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 mixing with others and slowly changing they may appear to fret almost and then rise again as a new people or mediocre 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 taking their place. Is it some vital energy, sonic inner source of strength that gives life to a civil ization or a people, without which all effort is ineffective, like the vain attempt of an aged person to plav the part of a youth? Behind the past quarter of a centurys struggle for Indias independence and all our conflicts with British authority, lay in my mind, and that of many others, the need to revitalize India.We felt that through action and self-imposed suffering and sacri-fice, through voluntarily facing luck 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 turned 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 express surprise at t he folly and intransigence of our ways. Whether we were foolish or not, the historians of the future will judge. We aimed high and looked far. in all probability 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 economicalally.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 alien authority. Epilogue of the book- Jawaharlal Nehru has covered a thousand hand-written pages with a jumble of ideas in his mind. He travelled in the past and peeped into the future and sometimes 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 business of thinking and trying to give some air 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 unveil India and find out what India is to-day and what it was in the long past. To-day India is four hundred million 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 lightless threads.