Excerpt from The Epic of Indian Womanhood

I feel honoured by the request of Mr. K. S. Rama swamy Sastry b.a., b.l., that I should introduce to the public his new work in verse, The Epic of Indian Woman Izooa'. It is a real pleasure to me to have thus an 0p portunity of associating myself with one for whom I have come to entertain a great regard not merely for his many and varied writings to which the literary world is regularly treated, but for the type of training and mind they represent. We find in him a rare example of a love of art or culture for its own sake that refuses to be extinguished in the uncongenial atmosphere of his official life. It is like a spring which has in secret attained to such hidden heights that, in spite of the lower levels, the solid, and arid, strata, through which it has to course in its career; it is not lost, but is car ried along by its own momentum, until it emerges into view as a shooting fountain of beauty and strength! What in him hasfurther struck me is the cast of his mind with its genuinely Hindu and national bent that no amount of modern culture can ever twist, or 'deflect frmnits native and original inclination. It is to suchminds that Hindu India confidently looks for the interpre tation and justification of her culture to the world. Such a mission Mr. Ramaswamy Sastry has been through out serving; and the present work is the latest proof of it. An lndian's attempt at composition of English poetry is, however, liable to be misunderstood and is, in some senses, hard to be justified. But there is a point of view from which such an attempt may be condoned, nay, wel comed. Under present conditions of education, the youth of India are nurtured upon English poetry as part of the curriculum of the schools, and advantage may well be taken of this feature in their studies to introduce to them such English poetry as is English only in its garb, but Indian in Its contents or substance. Thus one more step may be taken towards nationalising our system of education that is derived so largely from alien inspira tion and models and directed so dominantly by alien agen cies. If we are asked to define what we exactly mean by this criticism, the reply is that our education thus inspired and directed necessarily fails at every step and stage to adjust itself to'the true needs and requirements of the nation, of which the most glaring instance is the introduction of our youths to literature which tells of a life and an environment absolutely foreign to their experience, and thus loses a large part of its educative value. Most of the studies prescribed for our young students thus become unduly abstract in their character to which they cannot completely respond. We are not.

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