The Old Order Changeth to Yielding place to New
Change is the law of nature. The crust of the earth, the surface of the sea, the face of the heavens are each under-going daily and hourly changes. The rotation of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides are all indications of the perpetual change going on in the universe. Indeed, it seems that change is one of the conditions of mere existence. Our bodies too are undergoing continual changes. The work that we do causes waste in the tissues of our body, and this waste is repaired by the nourishment which the body derives from the food we eat. Our blood, our flesh, our bones, are all being transformed into newer material every year,—nay, every day of our lives.
Such being the law of nature, it is easy to understand why human life too should be subject to the same law. Not only do our bodies change, not only does our hair turn grey and our faces wrinkle with the approach of age, but our thoughts and feelings likewise change with the passage of time. Our habits also change with changes in our surroundings. Social institutions undergo similar changes. This constant change is not only inevitable but is highly beneficial also. Every new feature in the conditions of our existence gives a new stimulus to human endeavour ; man has to devise new ways of living to suit the altered conditions of life. It is in this way that necessity be-comes the mother of invention. When the European races first came to India, they had their first experience of the Indian climate ; they had to fight against the heat of the Indian summer ; and the result was the invention of the familiar Punkah, which—if the story is true—was invented by the genius of a Dutch settler at Chinsurah in West Bengal, sometime far back in the early part of the seventeenth century.
A change in the old order of things is productive of good in various other ways. It adds vastly to the conveniences and comforts of life. There was a time when slavery was one of the recognized human institutions. The rich owned slaves in hundreds and in thousands, and treated them no better than cats and dogs, and sometimes as absolutely lifeless things. The amount of suffering borne by these poor creatures is inconceivable at the present day. The abolition of slavery—the passing away of the old order—has reduced human suffering, at least to that extent.
No country can furnish more illustrations of old orders changing, yielding place to new, than India. The abolition of the cruel custom of Suttee, and the still more cruel practice of infanticide that was once common among the Rajputs, are perhaps extreme types. Milder instances of change are to be found in the whole life of educated Indians of the present day. Their food, their clothes, their houses, their speech,—every outward feature of them—is new; and each one of these is the result of new environments amid which they live now. Those Indians who have been able to adapt their lives to modern conditions, are in the forefront of progress ; those who have failed to feel at home in their new surroundings, are either lagging behind or languishing in slothful inactivity, and are bound in course of time to perish altogether. Human society does not tolerate anachronisms ; one must either march with the times or fall back and die ; no one can stand still for a long time.
The beneficial effects of, change can best be perceived by imagining what would have been the state of things in India supposing there had been no change since the advent of the English into the country. If the water of a river suddenly ceases to flow, what is the result? Stagnation : and stagnation means foul stench, the dissemination of disease, increase in the public death-rate, and so on. Stagnation in the social and moral world has the same woeful consequences that the stop-page of flowing water has on the health of a town or village. Suppose for one moment that we had stuck to the “old order” of things that prevailed in India in the old Hindu or Mohammedan days : we would have been unable to derive any benefit from the culture of the west, but should also have been obliged to remain altogether aloof from the cultured British race. We should have had no English education, no knowledge of our rights and obligations, no sympathy for one another, none of those material comforts of life, in a word, we should have been little better than, say, the modern Chinese.
The advantages of healthy change in the “old order” are thus unquestionable. But there are certain disadvantages associated with change, which, though perhaps not directly springing from it, are nevertheless indirect consequences. These disadvantages are really of the nature of difficulties ; and the first of these difficulties is the difficulty of suiting the change to the time and the time to the change. This difficulty has always been the hardest problem both of legislature and of social reform. The question as to what is the proper time for the introduction of some much-needed change, has ever been the chief question of administration not only public administration, but also domestic management. A change does not look like a change, if it comes just at the right moment ; by coming in opportunely it disarms all opposition, silences all criticism, and is welcomed by all parties. It is only when a proposed change is felt to be unseasonable that it is denounced as an innovation ; and innovation is a form of change that the most radical apostle of reform is unwilling to accept. Tennyson has well expressed the happy mean between blind resistance to change in any shape and that far-sighted adaptability which welcomes change whenever it brings good :
“So let change which comes be free
To in groove itself with that which flies,
And work, a joint of state, which plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.
A saying hard to shape in act,
For all the past of time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Whenever Thought hath wedded Fact.”
The second disadvantage of change is that the desire of it, which originates from a sort of divine discontent with our present lot, has the tendency to run to excess, so as to breed in the mind a passion for change for the sake of change. The-:e is nothing more harmful than this morbid desire. There must first be an evil to remedy, and abuse to reform, a real demand for a new or modified state of affairs, before any change can have beneficial consequences or be productive of lasting good. No evils are more tormenting than imaginary ones, and no state of mind is more pitiable than grieving over fancied wrongs. Unfortunately in India at the present day there is a good deal of this tendency in evidence. A class of “politicians” seem to have made it the business of their lives to indulge in maudlin sorrow over the unhappy state of things existing in the present, and crying for reforms in every department of life, from religious doctrine and ritual down to the fashion of wearing one’s hair. In everything that they behold they see nothing but the need of reform ; they are dissatisfied with the mode of worship, with the social organisation, with the family system, with the industrial position, with the commercial prospects,—with everything ; and they desire to transform the whole fabric of Indian life and build it anew on an improved model. Evidently this is an extreme wish. The other extreme is that of total resistance to change in any form, to insist that everything that is shall remain as it is without the least disturbance. The correct attitude is to preserve a middle course,—to keep to the old order wherever possible, and to recognize the need of change wherever there is an abuse or the likelihood of an abuse.
This seems very simple on paper ; but in practice it is a most difficult task, at least in India. The commonest fallacy of social reform is, that because a custom or an institution has served well for so many ages, therefore it is bound to fulfill the needs of the present age also. ; although, in nine cases out of ten, the very fact of its being so old is the strongest argument for its in utility. The opposite fallacy is to take no note of the origin of a social custom or the extent to which it is suited to the circumstances of the present age, but to condemn it merely because it is old, or because it has received no coloring from the west. And between these fallacies, which represent blind conservatism on the one hand and hot-headed radicalism on the other, there is the attitude of the sober reformer, the far-sighted statesman, who, without discarding anything that is of value in the old, is eager to adopt everything that is good in the new.
