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Introduction
India
is a world in itself, it is too vast, too diverse for any complete
description. It is in the midst of a great transformation. Indeed,
anyone who has lived here all his life, traveled many thousands
of miles covering known places as well as those difficult of access
& who has met million upon million of people here cannot claim
to have seen and understood all, or even most of this extraordinary
land. Every journey brings to light some new facet, local legend
or contemporary development. No nation has probably accumulated
such vast experience or endured so long as a civilization. As with
knowledge, the more one delves, the deeper becomes the mystery and
one finds that there is much more to know.
No
country should be judged by the standards of another. Until one
discards all labels and preconditioning, India will not reveal itself.
India is unlike anywhere else, perhaps not fully within comprehension,
yet if one is relaxed and receptive in mind, it is capable of yielding
many worthwhile experiences and stimulating ideas. Look beyond the
poverty, the heat and the dust to the spirit of the people. What
is it that has enabled them to endure when so many other civilizations
have crumbled?
The
concept of unity is almost as old as India itself. Wise men devised
many ways of re-emphasizing it, in epics and teachings and by the
pilgrimages they enjoined upon us. We have all the religions of
the world. But we believe in giving them equal respect. India is
a sub-continent with immense variation in geography, climate, manner
of life, language and taste.
There
is no pure unalloyed Indian. He can be a Dravidian, an Aryan, an
Australoid or Mongoloid. His hair many be fair or dark, straight
or curly, the skin very fair or wheat-colored, beige, brown or
ebony. For India has always accepted races, tribes, way of thoughts
and life, without demanding from them conformity which would negate
individuality, yet stamping on them the unmistakable mark of Indianness.
Yet
the ideals in life, the goal to be reached, the spiritual yearnings
and ethical principles bring together these apparently diverse people
into one integrated nation that makes up “Bharat”. The
mountains, the plains, the rivers, the forests, the deserts and
seas, even these bring together in rare proportion a geographical
unit.
Isn’t
this diversity a marvel and even more so the fact that it has led
not to division but to synthesis and unity? Equally wondrous is
the vitality that has persisted stubbornly in the face of every
kind of hindrance. It is that more rooted in the profundities of
Indian vitality of imperishableness.
India
is a land of contradictions but basically isn’t every developed
human being so? Can one even know another human being fully? How
so a country? India’s seeming lack of sophistication is the
result of centuries of spiritual evolution: the wisdom of countless
saints mingled with experience of vast political upheavals.
India
remains deeply rooted in her past that she loves so well, but is
equally receptive to the most modern discoveries that have revolutionized
life, without losing her balance in taking in both.
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