Page 292 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Resisting Colonial Modernity 267

of the nineteenth-century nationalist-reformist thoughts. Although
he conceded that the Christian religion and Western civilization had
done much to improve the material qualities of life, he contended that
the Hindu-Buddhist civilization was also not lacking in the care of the
physical well-being of its people. Waterworks, hospitals, irrigation
channels and other public services had been constructed for public
benefit since time immemorial by Hindu and Buddhist kings of India
and Sri Lanka. Moreover, these efforts, on the part of the state, were
on behalf of religion and were selfless activities in contrast to Western
ventures, where there were political and commercial interests. He,
therefore, concluded: ‘The civilization which uses religion for political
goals, and in which the missionary always happens to be the flagbearer
for the victor cannot show way to the Hindu and Buddhist religions.
To conquer the countries is one thing, but high civilization is another
thing’ (Premchand 1962: Vol. 1, 174–82).
By 1919, however, his perspective about civilizational conflict had
radically changed. In an important article, entitled ‘Purana Zamana,
Naya Zamana’ ([The Old Age and the New Age] 1962), he now posed this
conflict in temporal terms. Ignoring all historical wisdom, he declared
that the ‘ancient civilization was within the reach of everyone and was
democratic’. It did not demean the unprivileged and did not erect a
wall between the rich and the poor. Everyone, from the king to the
pauper, had respect for knowledge and devotion. The old age, therefore,
could be defined as ‘the civilization of soul and of proper conduct’.
The new age, on the other hand, is based on selfishness, materialism,
hypocrisy and arrogance. He also criticized the modern industrial
system which led to the ruin of villages, while causing tremendous
growth of population in cities. Such development forced the people ‘to
spend their lives in the dark and stinking hovels’ in large commercial
centres, where community control was no longer effective and people
were becoming victims of lust and where women were obliged to sell
their bodies. Here, freedom-loving people were ‘becoming the slaves
of the capitalists.... and knowledge, art and spirituality were caught in
the trap of profit and loss’. Premchand is especially harsh on modern,
particularly Western, nationalism, which, according to him, had turned
the world into a bloody battlefield, eliminated the subject peoples in
Africa and elsewhere, and made selfishness a way of life (ibid.: Vol. 1,
258–69).