st time has the cry of "Back to the Vedas" been raised by
Indians who, standing in the old ways, watch with hostility and alarm
the impact on their ancient but static civilisation of the more dynamic
civilisation of the West with which we for the first time brought India
into contact. It would be folly to underrate the resistance which the
reactionary elements in Hinduism are still capable of putting forth. I
have shown how it can still be seen operating in extreme forms, and not
upon Hindus alone, in the two pictures which I have drawn from Delhi and
Calcutta. It meets one in a lesser degree at almost every turn all over
India. But it would be just as foolish to underrate the progressive
forces which show now as ever in the history of Hinduism, that it is
also capable of combining with a singular rigidity of structure and with
many forms repugnant to all our own beliefs a breadth and elasticity of
thought by no means inferior to that of the West.

To those who hoped for a more rapid and widespread fusion of Indian and
Western ideals, some of the phenomena which have marked the latter-day
revival of Hinduism and the shape it has recently assumed in Mr.
Gandhi's "Non-co-operation" campaign, may have brought grave
disappointment. But the inrush of Western influences was assuredly bound
to provoke a strong reaction. For let us not forget that to the abiding
power of Hinduism India owes the one great element of stability that
enabled her, long before we appeared in India, to weather so many
tremendous storms without altogether losing the sense of a great
underlying unity stronger and more enduring than all the manifold lines
of cleavage which have tended from times immemorial to divide her.
Hinduism has not only responded for some forty centuries to the social
and religious aspirations of a large and highly endowed portion of the
human race, almost wholly shut off until modern times from any intimate
contact with our own Western world, but it has been the one great force
that has preserved the continuity of Indian life. It withstood six
centuries of Mahomedan domination. Could it be expected to yield without
a struggle to the new forces, however superior we may consider them and
however overwhelming they may ultimately prove, which British rule has
imported into India during a period of transition more momentous than
any other through which she has ever passed, but still very brief when
compared with all those other periods