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European enlightenment, namely, that every people had its own
characteristic ways of expression, could now be analyzed with
scientific precision; it was language which expressed the character
of a people. Language, indeed, was not just one tool amongst others,
it was the decisive factor in creating a corporate identity. And when
after the declaration of independence of the United States of
America and after the French revolution, the new ideas of social
equality and democracy started to shake the old political structures
of Europe, it was mainly the criterion of a common language which
defined a people. But that people required also a common territory
to make it a real nation. This idea was to inspire a number of new
national movements. The risorgimento in Italy, the panslavistic
movement in Eastern Europe and the national movement in
Germany were all language-based. Jointly they uprooted the ancient
concept of empire which, based as it was on the belief in rulership
by God's grace and on the Christian church, had been able to unite
the many diverging languages and peoples of Europe from the time
of Charlemagne onwards for approximately one thousand years.
This process forms a telling example of the power of freshly
acquired knowledge and new ideas to shape history. In the year
1814, when Hermann Gundert was born and Napolean was exiled
on the Island of Elba, the participants in the Vienna Congress made
a concerted effort to reshape Europe along restorative lines. As you
know, this restoration was not to last. Soon after, in the second
quarter of the century, the rapidly spreading idea of a nation based
on the unity of language and territory inspired many citizens to fight
for its realization. The results are well-known and they changed the
political map of Europe drastically. And the fact that this idea of a
nation was carried from Europe to India towards the middle of the
last century when Gundert was still active in Kerala, has produced
Consequences to which I wish to draw your attention for a short
moment, since their effects can be felt even today. For whatever
material changes the colonial situation may have meant for India, it
was the change in the minds of many Indians and the influx of
Western ideas and ideologies which has produced the most far-
reaching results.
In the 19th century, the British used to import cheap raw
material from India and to export the final product, produced in their
