Michael Pym (1889 - ) author of The Power of India writes:

"Hindu philosophy has had more effect upon the world than is perhaps generally realized, though it has often come through at second and third hand. Hinduism as a practical working institution is intended for and has grown out of Indian condition."

"India challenged, one realized, the whole of the West. Not Western inventions, Western science, Western conveniences, which India was perfectly ready to adopt insofar as they suited India's convenience. ...Not that. The challenge was a much deeper thing. A challenge of values, of ethics, of attitude to life.

India, like the rest of the East, had bowed to the illusion of Western superiority, taken it all quite literally - Christianity as the religion of peace and love, of the brotherhood of man. Western education and Western progress as the panacea for the evils of existence.

The West spoke fairly enough, talking of honor, the sanctity of the given word, and of promises; of freedom and enlightenment. It vaunted its poets, its philosophers, its scientists, its classical inheritance from that beautiful, far off Greece, whose greatest philosophers, it forgot to mention, had been inspired through Egypt and Persia, by India.

For years India and all the East really believed all this. Complete subscribers to Nordicism and the theory of the Great Race. Indians did their best to Westernize themselves. It was a dis-illusionizing period. This great Western civilization, what was it? The West brought certain material benefits, certain aspects of learning which nobody could deny….But also it seemed to bring a deadly poison. Beneath its hand, the East withered – its morality destroyed, its physical body destroyed, its ancient learning destroyed. Only its vices added to by the new vices of the West, remained and flourished.

So this wonderful Western civilization made its own people no more happy, no better off ultimately, than the ancient systems of the East. India understood greed; she understood treachery and lies, violence and vice. All that exists wherever humanity exists, is a part of life. But it could not understand a claim to superiority which, as far as it could see, was based upon just these things. It saw that in the West vice hardly troubled any longer even to pay tribute to virtue. The West, India observed, did not revere its holy men. It seemed always to prefer killing them. It saw the West take possession of other lands, because the people to whom they first belonged were, said the West, ignorant and miserable and it was the sacred duty of the Christian West – “the White Man’s Burden” – to bring them enlightenment, education, freedom.

It saw these people, in their turn, strive towards Western education, imitating the White Man, and saw the White man, when this or that individual had successfully obtained the prize, gone through Western universities, Western schools, scornfully deny them equality, and openly declare that Western education spoilt a good Orient. Finally, India, the East, saw the West in its frenzy of destruction turn upon itself, and, in the most horrible of all wars – a conflict disgraced by its barbarism, its inhumanity, its slimy filth of propaganda, tear itself to pieces. The forces of Western civilization revealed themselves to the East as forces of sheer, mad, destruction.

Then India shuddered. It did not condemn the peoples of the West. But it realized that somewhere in the Western scheme existed a dreadful flaw. India does not believe in the validity of Western civilization. It does not believe in Western ethics or in Western standards – taken as a whole. It challenges dynamic action with dynamic thought. It challenges the intolerance which conceives of a personal Deity creating, at his pleasure, a Chosen Race to inherit and rifle the earth, with the tolerance which sees all the world as changing forms expressing the same essential divinity. It challenges the intellectual conceit which sees no divinity anywhere, man as the supreme formation of matter, with the spiritual wisdom which realizes the limitations of the senses and of the intellect. It lifts above the five pointed star, the seven pointed!

That is India’s challenge to the West – a question of values, of attitude to existence. India as Vishnu, preserving the sacred flame; as Shiva dancing the dance of creation over the Darkness he has destroyed; even as Kali, garlanded with skulls, smeared with blood, destroying destruction. India will win. Matter is always molded by spirit. But what is this spiritual power of India? As a sensitive Russian woman asked me: “Why does God seem so much nearer in India?”

India is God-intoxicated. Not, as the limited view has it, religion mad, but infected by what Plato called the divine madness of the philosopher, the seeker after wisdom. Nothing of that explains India’s spiritual power.

It may be that India has realized God. Is that the secret of her power?

India regards the attempt to understand the ultimate reality as the highest and finest aim of existence... This freedom is more priceless than any political institution. Because of this, India has been able to arrive at spiritual knowledge and strength unequalled anywhere in the world.

Were India ever to be influenced by superficial Western ideas as to institute foolish vagrancy laws and organized charity distribution societies, it would lose living torches of spiritual wisdom and knowledge, and perhaps even sink to levels of materialistic barbarism. The spiritual adventurers of India are the yogis, sadhus, holy men and women of all creeds and descriptions…They have existed in India since the earliest days of history, and through all its magnificent and wealthy civilization they have kept alive in India the thought of another beauty, a more wonderful existence, of which is all this is but a lovely veil.

To reach the reality which is concealed by the unrealities of the visible world. That is yoga – literally union with God. With ruthless logic, India dismisses the unthinking Western deification of science as a means of discovering ultimate truth. Science, especially as the popular mind understands it, with its test tubes, its microscopes, its laboratories, all its most delicate instruments, while it is helpful, has an inherent limitation. It is still confined to the bounds of this form world. India, through centuries upon centuries, has taught another method of attaining reality. This is the system of yoga. It is based upon two things: intuitive knowledge; and the development of other faculties, other states of consciousness.

(source: The Power of India - By Michael Pym p. 156 - 160 and 302 - 306 Putnam Publication NY 1930).