Non-British Flashcards
About Civil Disobedience?
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, called Civil Disobedience is a short essay first published in 1849.
He gave a lecture named “The Rights and Duties of the Individual to Government”
It became the basis of this essay. It was published with the title, Resistance to Civil Government in 1849 anthology by Elizabeth Peabody called Aesthetic Papers.
Christian Anarchists like Adin Ballou and William Llyod Garrison inspired him. Non-resistance as praxis against the state is not effective. He compared the government with a machine, as a machine producing injustice that can be stopped only by citizens by resistance.
It was reprinted in 1866 after his death in a collection called “A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers” under the title Civil Disobedience
It also appears as On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Civil here means to the citizens and their interrelation with one another and the state. Gandhi used it for his Satyagrah in India.
It was after the slavery crisis in New England in the 1840s and 50s that Thoreau wrote this essay. He was an abolitionist who resisted slavery and American imperialism especially the Mexican-American War
Summary of Civil Disobedience?
The government cannot be justified as they are more harmful than helpful. Democracy doesn’t help as the majority will don’t necessarily have justice and wisdom in their minds. It is what I think right is what I need to be obligated to and not the law. Lawmakers are themselves, agents of injustices, at many times.
Government is an agent of corruption and injustice and that is why honest men should be rebellious. Revolution causes a lot of expenses and suffering but it is wrong to think about when the government is doing injustice. The people must cease to hold slaves or make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.
They can’t just blame the proslavery people of the South but those who are in Massachusetts thinking more about the profit from agriculture and not humanity. Some people don’t want slavery or war but don’t do anything to stop it.
They should not just vote for justice but be just. You should not commit injustice although you can’t give your life towards giving justice. People pay taxes to the government and they don’t know that they are taking part in the act of injustice by doing so even though they don’t agree with it.
It is not enough to have a process to change the law, but we shouldn’t obey the law itself and it should be broken if it’s not just. The constitution of the USA supports slavery and hence it should be condemned. Abolitionists should not support the government and stop paying taxes. When imprisonment is not just, a just man should go to prison. The minority is powerless when it confirms with the majority.
Not paying taxes is an act of peaceful resistance. Even if there is blood, the blood also sheds when the conscience is wounded. Live simply as you won’t lose much if the government retaliates. He found him being jailed as an interesting experience and it brought a new perspective about his relationship with citizens and the government. He is willing to pay the highway tax as it benefits his neighbours. He won’t pay taxes which helps the government directly. He can reason with God as the government is not made by God, but it’s manmade. The US government also has good qualities but we should always want its betterment.
He accepts the motto, the government is the best which governs the least and wants it to go further, “That government is best which governs not at all.”
Summary of Hind Swaraj?
Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule
It was published in 1909. He wrote it originally in Gujarati when he was travelling from London to South Africa in Kildonan Castle. It was later translated into French
it is in the form of a dialogue between two people, the Reader and The Editor.
The Reader represents Dr Pranjivan Mehta by historians like S.R. Mehrotra. He is the one Gandhi is addressing as an Indian.
The reader talks about some issues and arguments related to Indian Independence.
Gandhi is The Editor who says that these arguments have problems and gives his views about them. He wants to remove any prejudices the Reader has about the issues.
First, Gandhi says that “Home Rule is Self Rule.” He doesn’t believe that if the Indians adopt the British lifestyle after the Britishers left India, their leaving us won’t be enough. Some people want British rule without the Britishers living here. India will become English in nature and will be called Englishtan and not Hindustan. He doesn’t want such a Swaraj.
He also advocated for passive resistance against British rule. He believes that violence is counter-productive as a strategy. The force of love and pity is greater than the force of arms. It is harmful to use force.
It is important to exercise Swadeshi (Self-reliance) as a form of passive resistance. It means that we should not engage in any trades with the English. We want to be your petitioner if you don’t agree with our demands. We won’t be governed by you anymore. If the British want India for trade, they should remove the trade from the equation
Finally, he says that India won’t be free unless it rejects Western civilization. India is no more at the top of the world because of modern civilization. Western civilization will be self-destroyed if we are patient about it. Even the western countries should not follow the western model of civilization as it is unhealthy for them.
The Gujarati version was banned by the British for publication in India.
A Symposium was published in The Aryan Path about Hind Swaraj with many contributors.
Chicago Lecture summary?
The World’s Parliament of Religion began on 11th September 1893 at the Parliament Memorial Art Palace which is not the Art Institute of Chicago as a part of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Vivekanand gave the first lecture of the day,
He began his lecture by first bowing down to Goddess Saraswati. She is the Hindu Goddess of learning. He believed that someone or something has occupied his body as he was feeling new energy inside it.
He saluted the people there by his opening words
“Sisters and brothers of America!”.
He got a standing ovation for these words by seven thousand people.
He gave the greeting from the most ancient order of the monks in the world to the youngest nations. His country has taught tolerance and universal acceptance to people around the world.
He explains the reason behind his disagreements with different religions. He narrates a story about a frog who used to think that his well is the biggest water body of the water as it never went out of it. One day when a frog from the sea came into the well and told him that the ocean is bigger than the well, he didn’t believe it and it drove the frog out of the well.
He concludes from the story that he is a Hindu seating in a well thinking that the whole world is small. Similarly, all religions think the same about their little wells.
He talks about Hinduism and the three oldest religions which included Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism and how Christianity emerged and these three religions survived. He also talked about Vedanta philosophy, the concept of god, soul and body in Hinduism
Religion is not the most important need of the Indians. He was against the Christian Missionaries going to India to “save” them. The most important issue in India is poverty. He wants the Chicago Parliament of Religion to help the poor people.
He also talks about Buddhism, and its origin and its relationship with Brahmanism and Vedas. They both can live without each other.
In the end, he thanks the noble souls who organized the event and he believes that he proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possession of any church in the world. He asks everyone to not fight but Help. They should assimilate and not destruct. They should live in harmony and peace and not dissension.
Summary of The Future Poetry?
The Future Poetry. Serially published in the Arya from 15-12-1917 to 15-7-1920 it has come out in book-form only recently (August 1953).
It has its theme as the vital question in the cultural evolution, whether the modern man will go forward or back and how is poetry important in that.
In this work, he examines the rationale of this vision where poetry is the leader of human evolution.
Poetry is the key to the future
The essence of poetry, its peculiar intensity, says Sri Aurobindo, “comes from the stress of the soul-vision behind the word; it is the spiritual excitement of a rhyth¬mic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer worlds”.
It is one of the main functions of poetry to mediate between immaterial and the concrete and the spirit and life.
Mankind is looking upwards for voices and poetic voices will lead us there with the song will b among the high seer voices. Human intelligence wants to rise through the intellectual to the intuitive mentality. The aesthetic mind, thinkers or prophets will be the main gateways. The aim will be to be the harmonious and luminous totality of man’s being. The whole human existence will be available for this poetry.
Poetry as a power of truth, for the fullness of life and for the future of man to be is the notion of Poetry he believes in. Poetry can be seen as mantras which are heightened and divine rhythmic words having an intuitive and revelatory inspiration with the presence of self, the innermost reality and truth with the divine soul-forms of it. A supreme rhythmic language that seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite.
He explains his theory with examples from Chaucer to the beginning of the twentieth century.
We first should question what higher power that we demand from poetry. What should be the nature and laws of poetry?
Some people think of it only as aesthetic pleasure and others as faultlessly correct. Aurobindo believes that it is the privilege that the poet has to discover the intense illumination of speech and inspired word where the unity of divine rhythmic movement with depth and sense of the power of the infinite from the fountainhead of spirit within us.
“The work of a poet depends not only upon himself and his age but on the mentality of the nation to which he belongs and the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic tradition and environ¬ment which it creates”
It is a psychological phenomenon that evolves with time. It is a highly charged force of expression of the mind and soul of mind. It evolves with the evolution of the human mind.
English poetry started from the external and became deeper and poetry of power and beauty, spontaneous thoughts, joy and passion and pain and the colour and music of life. Later it became attached to Nature and its profound aesthetic suggestion to certain spiritual truths behind it.
“The hope of the race in this crisis lies in the fidelity of its intellect to the larger perceptions it now has of the greater self of humanity, the turning of its will to the inception of delivering forms of thought, art and social endeavour which arise from these perceptions and the raising of the intellectual mind to the intuitive supra-intellectual spiritual consciousness which can alone give the basis for a spiritualised life of the race and the realisation of its diviner potentia¬lities”.
The ideal spirit of this poetry will “voice a supreme harmony of five eternal powers, Truth, Beauty, Delight, Life and Spirit”.
. The result will be “a new great age of his creation different from the past epochs which he counts as his glories and superior to them in its vision and motive”. Deeper Nature poetry and “a larger field of being made more real to men’s experience will be the realm of the future poetry”. “This change will mean that poetry may resume on a larger scale, with a wider and more shining vision the greater effect it once had on the life of the race in the noble antique cultures”. “These new voices must needs be the result of the growth of the power of the spirit on the mind of man which is the promise of the coming era”
Eastern poets will come with the first discovery ofKamal perfection according to him. As they have more closeness with spiritual and psychic sight and experience and.
This theory will be called the theory of essential criticism.
Such poetry will be effective when people will be closer to the Gods. At that time people believed in materialism and scientific reason. If the minds are more complex and enlarged based on culture and civilisation like the Vedic age, we will return to the Mantra.
Summary of Is India Civilized?
Aurobindo wrote a Defense of Indian Culture in support of Sir John Woodroffe’s essay “Is India Civilized?” which was written against the negative portrayal of India by William Archer.
Sri Aurobindo writes in his essays that the Vedas presented profound psychological and spiritual truths as he sees “Nature” presented in them as something more than what we can perceive with our senses. It is an expression of the infinite spirit.
He points out the rationalist western arguments against Indian texts. They think that it is effeminate/primitive to have a focus on egolessness, love, transcendence, calmness etc. Western Philosophers do not have the soul power or intuitiveness to understand India as they have a rigid boundary of intellect around them.
Is Indian thought and culture pre-modern? Do we have to see the future only as founded upon reason and science? Will the man only see things in the light of rationality? This is what western civilization has accepted. The intelligently mechanized civilization with supports rational and utilitarian culture.
Many western philosophers believe that Indian spiritualism is pessimistic and not reasonable. They can’t grasp the outlook of the intuitive mind. They believe in objectivity and can’t comprehend the inner subjectivity of Indian philosophy. For those who believe the reason to be the sole foundation of everyday life, restrict religion to one day in the week. If it only means to accept the dogmatic creed of the after-life it is better than the superstition of the past.
Aurobindo differentiates between religion and spirituality.
Religion, as seen by the west, is an organized belief to which the adherent must subscribe. This doesn’t happen in India, Spirituality offers more in practical terms.
Sri Aurobindo said,
“Indian culture knew the value of morality, and also its limitations. The Upanishads and the Gita are loud and full of the idea of going beyond morality. For instance, the Upanishad says, ‘he does not need to think whether what he is doing is good or bad’ – Sadhu, Asadhu. Such a man attains consciousness and there is no need to think about morality because the action proceeds from the Truth.
The universalist attitude in India is there for ages and it is vibrant and dynamic
My Place Summary?
Sally Morgan
She is an Australian artist. She belonged to an Aboriginal family who wrote the earliest work by an indigenous writer.
My Place
It is an autobiography written in 1987
The book has been published in several parts ‘for young readers’ in the following parts:
• Sally’s Story (1990.) (‘My Place’ for young readers, part 1’.
• Arthur Corunna’s story (1995) ‘My Place’ for young readers, part 2’.
• Mother and daughter: The story of Daisy and Glady’s Corunna (1994) (‘My Place’ for young readers, part 3’.
It is read in many Public schools of New South Wales in Aboriginal Studies.
It is about her life from early childhood where she grew up to false heritage without knowing where she is from. It revolves around the city of Perth in Western Australia and Corunna Downs Station which was managed by Alfred Howden Drake-Brockman.
She had four brothers and sisters. She writes about her struggles in school where she had to fit in, she also writes about how she was accepted in the University by scoring well. She also writes about living a life without her father
It tells us about how she discovered the indigenous roots of her family. She travelled back to the birthplace of her grandmother in 1982. She went through an overwhelming journey that led to a spiritual privilege rather than just a search for her family. She finds out how a family was destroyed slowly. In the end, she can make her mother and grandmother speak about their own stories.
Summary of Am I a Canadian Writer?
MG Vassanji
Am I a Canadian Writer?
He won’t attempt to define what is a Canadian novel or Canadian Literature. It is an illusion to have a central notion about the conflicting ideas in the country. However, he can talk about “Am I a Canadian Writer?”
He asks himself as he is often asked who are you writing for? With all the revies around him, he wonders, will the people remember him, or read him? Where will he be read? In Canada, where he has to spell out his name? Here he has to assert that he is not an immigrant writer. Or where he was born or has a special place in his heart for, but there he is only historically relevant.
In places like France or Germany, these confusions don’t rise as you have to prove yourself. But in new countries with large incoming of immigrants, this is asked. A new Canadian traditionally left his soil and adapted to the new land playing Basketball and hockey. This something essential Canadian you’ll think about nature-cold, wilderness etc.
Multiculturalism is just a waiting area for an immigrant. It’s a joy for them to have a Canadian immigrant speaking in their dialect and pain to accept their version of third world English to be good. Only the Asians, Africans are considered multicultural not the Europeans.
Will the future generation think of those novels set in India as Canadian? A book by a Canadian citizen is a Canadian Novel. Is having full papers for citizenship good enough to be called a Canadian Novelist?
He can’t write in a way to show that he is more Canadian. However, he is under a pressure to write a Big Canadian novel. To show how big a Canadian writer he is. He can only write about where he is from or was from. Canadians post-colonials are those who emerged from colonies in the 60s and 70s.
He says. we are exiled but our home in Canada. We are telling the story of people who have shared our experiences with all kinds of Canadians.
He says, we are telling the stories of Canada, but not of hockey and Mountains but urban multicultural Canada. Are we turning oriental? There are people with strong opinions on the changes and when we have to recognize our culture, they feel these fellows have come to write about something else. New Canadian bring their stories with them which become Canadian stories. His children demand to know about our past. Writers like him have a place as there are thousands of people coming to Canada from outside every year.
