On India-1

For long I have wished towrite on the nature, mission and destiny of India. Not in any ambitious way, but by way of contributing to the thought on India's destiny. Every great nation on earth has a mission, a destiny it has chosen. Although India also famously 'made a tryst with her destiny', She can hardly claim to have had a coherent, well-thought out course of action and will in the past 60 years. The reasons are there for reading, and I am sympathetic to Her reasons so I wont be critical. The biggest questions that dog India are those about Her identity. What is India? Is it an artificial entity like so many other modern nation-states born out of the legacy of colonialism? Or is She an ancient entity, a soul-creation representing some deep aspiartion of a vast part of humanity? Is She at best an incoherently assmebled series of noises- of languages, tribes, castes, religions (and that dirty word, 'races')? Or She the very hamrony and music of the Soul?

well I dont even claim to address such momentous questions. These are thoughts on recent issues, that touch upon some of them. So here goes:

on China-Tibet vs India-Kashmir

I'd say they are related- but not in the way our cowardly intellectuals (the editor of 'The Hindu' for ex) make it out to be.India (and Hinduism for that matter), is held together by an idea. India has never been a nation in the model of european nations.

India is held together by the idea that humans can find a common spiritual ground behind diverse expressions of mankind's deeper aspirations. this aspiration of man to find something deeper within himself, a greater beauty and order of things than that revealed by mere mind- is universal. but India asserts that everyone can find this goodness, beauty and joy hidden in the depths of their being- and this core of the indicidual is also the core of the universal.

So the whole quest of India sinces ages has been this: to seek this dimension out, by whatever means as feasible for the evolving human conditions. The Vedas, the Upanishads, the gospel of the Buddhists and the Jains, that of the devotees of different great ideals (Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta), the Tantra, Yoga, and in the modern times, that of the Islamic Sufis, Christian mystics and Sikh ones and even that of the leftists (isnt the Truth of onself the Truth of all!)- all these are but different manifestations of that same basic quest. the Indian spirit never tires of discovering ever new paths to this Truth, as suited to the changing times- and as Sri Aurobindo has shown, of formulating greater and greater goals.

the belief in this deeper dimension or Truth, the belief that it can be and should be reached by every one, the pursuit of it as a dedicated quest (whether under Gurus or teachers or individually), and the organization of all life around that quest and the conclusions reached thereof- in short, these points describe all regions that ever came under the umbrella of 'India' throughout history. even those Hindus who accepted Islam out of choice and not force, they too accepted only the Sufi path, that of quest of the divine and not the orthodox and dry Shariaism...(to be contd)