So far we have not allowed any considerations of utility to prejudice our inquiry. But having come to its end it will not be out of place to see how far the attributes, which we found to be the essentials of Hindutva, contribute towards the strength, cohesion, and progress of our people. Do these essentials constitute a foundation so broad, so deep, so strong that basing upon it the Hindu people can build a future which can face and repel the attacks of all the adverse winds that blow ; or does the Hindu race stand on feet of clay ? Some of the ancient nations raised huge walls so as to convert a whole country into a fortified castle. To-day their walls are trodden to dust or are but scarcely discernible by a few scattered mounds here and there; while the people they were meant to protect are not discernible at all. Our ancient neighbours, the Chinese, laboured from generation to generation and raised a rampart, embracing the limits of an empire, so wide, so high, so strong, a wonder of the human world. That too, as all human wonders must, sank under its own weight. But behold the ramparts of Nature! Have they not, these Himalayas, been standing there as one whose desires are satisfied—so they seemed to the Vedic bard —so they seem to us to-day. These are our ramparts that have converted this vast continent into a cosy castle. You take up buckets and fill your trenches with water and call it a moat. Behold, Varuna himself, with his one hand pushing continents aside, fills the gap by pouring seas on seas with the other ! This Indian ocean with its bays and gulfs, is our moat. These are our frontier lines bringing within our reach the advantages of an island as well as an insular country. She is the richly endowed, daughter of God—this our Motherland. Her rivers are deep and perennial. Her land is yielding to plough and her fields loaded with golden harvests. Her necessaries of life are few and a genial nature yields them all almost for the asking. Rich in her fauna, rich in her flora, she knows she owes it all to the immediate source of light and heat—the sun. She covets not the icy lands; blessed be they and their frozen latitudes. If heat is at times ’ enervating’ here, cold is at times benumbing there. If cold induces manual labour, heat removes much of its very necessity. She takes more delight in quenched thirst than in the parched throat. Those who have not, let them delight in exerting to have. But those who have—may be allowed to derive pleasure from the very fact of having. Father Thames is free to work at feverish speed, wrapped in his icy sheets. She loves to visit her ghats and watch her boats gliding down the Ganges on her moonlit waters. With the plough, the peacocks, and lotus, the elephant and the Gita, she is willing to forego, if that must be, whatever advantage the colder latitudes enjoy. She knows she cannot have all her own way. Her gardens are green and shady, her granaries well- stocked, her waters crystal, her flowers scented, her fruits juicy and her herbs healing. Her brush is dipped in the colours of Dawn and her flute resonant with the music of Gokul. Verily Hind is the richly endowed daugher of God. Neither the English nor the French with the exception of the Chinese and perhaps the Americans, no people are gifted with a land that can equal in natural strength and richness the land of Sindusthan. A country, a common home is the first important essential of a stable strong nationality; and as of all countries in the world our country can hardly be surpassed by any in its capacity to afford a soil so specially fitted for the growth of a great nation; we Hindus whose very first article of faith is the love we bear to the common Fatherland, have in that love the strongest talismanic tie that can bind close and keep a nation firm and enthuse and enable it to accomplish things greater than ever. The second essential of Hindutva puts the estimate of our latent powers of national cohesion and greatness yet higher. No country in the world with the exception of China again, is peopled by a race so homogeneous, yet so ancient and yet so strong both numerically and vitally. The Americans too, whom we found equally fortunate with us so far as excellent geographical basis of nationality is concerned, are decidedly left behind. Mohammedans are no race nor are the Christians. They are a religious unit, yet neither a racial nor a national one. But we Hindus, if possible, are all the three put together, and live under our ancient and common roof. The numerical strength of our race is an asset that cannot be too highly prized. And culture ? The English and the Americans feel they are kith and kin because they possess a Shakespeare in common. But not only Kalidas or a Bhasa but, Oh Hindus ! ye possess a Ramayan and Mahabharat in common—and the Vedas ! One of the national songs the American children are taught to sing attempts to rouse their sense of eternal self-importance by pointing out to the hundred years twice told that stand behind their history. The Hindu counts his years not by centuries but by cycles—the Yuga and the Kalpa and amazed asks ,The Uttra Kosala of Raghupathi is nowhere to be seen, nor is Shri Krishna’s city of Mathura .He does not attempt to rouse the sense of self-importance so much as the sense of proportion which is Truth. And that has perhaps made him last longer than Ramses and Nebuchadnezzar. If a people that had no past has no future, then a people that had produced an unending galaxy of heroes and hero-worshippers and who are conscious of having fought with and vaquished the forces whose might struck Greece and Rome, the Pharaohs and the Incas, dead, have in their history a guarantee of their future greatness more assuring than any other people on earth yet possess. But besides culture the tie of common holyland has at times proved stronger than the chains of a Motherland. Look at the Mohammedans. Mecca to them is a sterner reality than Delhi or Agra. Some of I them do not make any secret of being bound to sacrifice all India if that be to the glory of Islam or could save the city of their prophet. Look at the Jews; neither centuries of prosperity nor sense of gratitude for the shelter they found, can make them more attached or even equally attached to the several countries they inhabit. Their love is, and must necessarily be divided between the land of their birth and the land of their Prophets. If the Zionists’ dreams are ever realized—if Palestine becomes a Jewish State and it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends—they, like the Mohammedans would naturally set the interests of their Holyland above those of their Motherland in America and Europe and in case of war between their adopted country and the Jewish State, would naturally sympathise with the latter, if indeed they do not bodily go over to it. History is too full of examples of such desertions to cite particulars. The crusades again, attest to the wonderful influence that a common holyland exercises over peoples widely separated in race, nationality and language, to bind and hold them together. The ideal conditions, therefore, under which a nation can attain perfect solidarity and cohesion would, other things being equal, be found in the case of those people who inhabit the land they adore, the land of whose forefathers is also the land of their Gods and Angels, of Seers and Prophets; the scenes of whose history are also the scenes of their mythology. The Hindus are about the only people who are blessed with these ideal conditions that are at the same time incentive to national solidarity, cohesion and greatness. Not even the Chinese are blessed thus. Only Arabia and Palestine, if ever the Jews can succeed in founding their state there, can be said to possess this unique advantage. But Arabia is incomparably poorer in the natural, cultural, historical, and numerical essentials of a great people; and even if the dreams of the Zionists are ever realized into a Palestine State still they too must be equally lacking in these. England, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey proper, Persia, Japan, Afganistan, Egypt of to-day (for the old descendants of ‘Punto’ and their Egypt is dead long since), and other African states, Mexico, Peru, Chile (not to mention states and nations lesser than all these ), though racially more or less hemogeneous are yet less advantageously situated than we are in geographical, cultural, historical and numerical essentials, besides lacking the unique gift of a sanctified Motherland. Of the remaining nations, Russia in Europe, and United states in America, though geographically equally well-gifted with us, are yet poorer, in almost every other requisite of nationality. China alone of the present comity of nations is almost as richly gifted with the geographical, racial, cultural essentials as the Hindus are. Only in the possession of a common, a sacred and a perfect language, the Sanskrit, and a sanctified Motherland, we are so far as the essentials that contribute to national solidarity are concerned more fortunate. Thus the actual essentials of Hindutva are, as this running sketch reveals, also the ideal essentials of nationality. If we would, we could build on this foundation of Hindutva a future greater than what any other people on earth can dream of, greater even than our own past; provided we are able to utilize our opportunities. For let our people remember that great combinations are the order of the day. The league of Nations, the alliances of powers Pan-Islamism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Ethiopism, all little beings are seeking to get themselves incorporated into greater wholes, so as to be better-fitted for the struggle for existence and power. Those who are not naturally and historically blessed with numerical or geographical or racial advantages are seeking to share them with others. Woe to those who have them already as their birth-right and know them not; or worse, despise them! The nations of the world are desperately trying to find a place in this or that combination for aggression—can any one of you, Oh Hindus! whether Jain or Samaji or Sanatani or Sikh or any other subsection afford to cut yourselves off or fall out and destroy the ancient, the natural and the organic combination that already exists?—a combination that is bound not by any scraps of paper nor by the ties of exigencies alone, but by the ties of blood, birth and culture? Strengthen them if you can: pull down the barriers that have survived their utility, of castes and customs, of sects and sections: What of interdining?— but intermarriages between provinces and provinces, castes and castes, be encouraged where they do not exist. But where they already exist as between the Sikhs and Sanatanies, Jains and Vaishnayas, Lingayats and Non-Lingayats-suicideal be the hand that tries to cut the nuptial tie. Let the minorities remember they would be cutting the very branch on which they stand. Strenghten every tie that binds you to the main organism, whether of blood or language or common Motherland. Let this ancient and noble stream of Hindu blood flow from vein to vien, from Attock to Cuttack till at last the Hindu people get fused and welded into an indivisible whole, till our race gets consolidated and strong sharp as steel. Just cast a glance at the past, then at the present : Pan-Islamism in Asia, the political Leagues in Europe, the Pan-Ethiopic movement in Africa and America- and then see, O Hindus, if your future is not entirely bound up with the future of India and the future of India is bound up in the last resort, with Hindu strength. We are trying our best, as we ought to do, to develop the consciousness of and a sense of attachment to the greater whole, whereby Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsis Christians, and Jews would feel as Indians first and every other thing afterwards. But whatever progress India may have made to that goal one thing remains almost axiomatically true- not only in India but everywhere in the world-that a nation requires a foundation to stand upon and the essence of the life of a nation is the life of that portion of its citizens whose interests and history and aspirations are most closely bound up with the land and who thus provide the real foundation to the structure of their national state. Take the case of Turkey. The young Turks after the revolution had to open their Parliament and military institutions to Armenians and Christians on a non-religious and secular basis. But when the war with Servia came the Christians and Armenians first wavered and then many a regiment consisting of them went bodily over to the Servians, who politically and racially and religiously were more closely bound up with them. Take the case of America: when the German war broke out she suddenly had to face danger of desertions of her German citizens; while the Negro citizens there sympathise more with their brethren in Africa than with their white countrymen. American State, in the last resort, must stand or fall with the fortunes of its Anglo-Saxon constituents. So with the Hindus, they being the people, whose past,present and future are most closely bound with the soil of Hindusthan as Pitribhu, as Punyabhu, they constitute the foundation, the bedrock, the reserved forces of the Indian state. Therefore even from the point of Indian nationality, must ye, O Hindus, consolidate and strengthen Hindu nationality ; not to give wanton offence to any of our non-Hindu compatriots, in fact to any one in the world but in just and urgent defence of our race and land ; to render it impossible for others to betray her or to subject her to unprovoked attack by any of those ‘Pan-isms’ that are struggling forth from continent to continent. As long as other communities in India or in the world are not respectively planning India first or mankind first, but all are busy in organizing offensive and defensive alliances and combinations on entirely narrow racial or religious or national basis, so long, at least, so long O Hindus, strengthen if you can those subtle bonds that like nerve threads bind you in one organic social being. Those of you who in a fit suicidal try to cut off the most vital of those ties and dare to disown the name Hindu will find to their cost that in doing so they have cut themselves off from the very source of our racial life and strength. The presence of only a few of these essentials of nationality which we have found to constitute Hindutva enabled little nations like Spain or Portugal to get themselves lionized in the world. But when all of those ideal conditions obtain here what is there in the human world that the Hindus cannot accomplish ? Thirty crores of people, with India for their basis of operation, for their Fatherland and for their Holyland with such a history behind them, bound together by ties of a common blood and common culture can dictate their terms to the whole world. A day will come when mankind will have to face the force. Equally certain it is that whenever the Hindus come to hold such a position whence they could dictate terms to the whole world — those terms cannot be very different from the terms which Gita dictates or the Buddha lays down. A Hindu is most intensely so, when he ceases to be Hindu; and with a Shankar claims the whole earth for a Benares ’ Waranasi Medini !’ or with a Tukaram exclaims ‘my country! Oh brothers, ’the limits of the Universe — there the frontiers of my country lie ?’