دی کیس فار انڈیا (ہندوستان کا مقدمہ) ول ڈیورنٹ

The Case for India

I went to India to see with my own eyes those people whose cultural history I was studying for “The Story of Civilization.” I neither expected to have any deep attachment to the Indians, nor did I imagine that I would be swept away into the stormy currents of Indian politics. My simple wish was merely to add to my material, see a few works of art with my own eyes, and then return to busy myself with my historical research, completely forgetting the present age.

But what I saw in India shook me to my core. I felt that study and writing were merely games, while a nation comprising a fifth of the human race was suffering in such poverty and oppression that its example exists nowhere else on the face of the earth. I was horrified. I had never imagined that any government could plunge its subjects into such an extreme degree of deprivation and misery. I returned from there with the resolve that I would know not just the glorious India of the past, but the living India as well. I would try to understand this unique revolution that suffers agony but does not return violence. I will read today's Gandhi just as I have been reading yesterday's Buddha.

And the more I read, the more I sank into astonishment and anger that England had been consciously and systematically sucking the blood of India for one hundred and fifty years. Gradually, I began to believe that I was witnessing the greatest crime in history.

Therefore, I ask the reader's permission to temporarily put aside my research efforts and speak my piece on behalf of India. I know that words are helpless before guns and blood. That truth and decency, in the face of the swords of empires and the glitter of gold, appear meaningless. If, on the other side of the globe, even one Indian engaged in the struggle for freedom hears my voice and finds some small support, then this labor of months and this short book will be for me a source of sweetness and comfort. For at this moment, no task in the world is more dear to me than to be of service to India.

Will Durant

October 1, 1930

Pages 192