India’s Soul

Swami Vivekananda was very categorical when he tried analyzing India and its problems. The kernel of India lies, not in religion, or dogma, or politics, nor in dharma or virtue, but in countless sagas of devotion, service, contemplation, sacrifice and wisdom, not found in any other culture. From time immemorial India’s culture has soaked it in the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata, in the Vedas and Upanishadas, in Puranas and other smritis, poems like Gita Govinda or Ramacharitamanasa, Baul, Vaishnava and Sufi ballads. Many holy men have walked on the dusts of this land which has made this country holy, their well wishes and their spiritual practices have played a major role in shaping the destiny of this country despite the many obstacles and many enemies, both internal and external. Very few countries in the world have bled like India had over a span of more than thousands of years through myriads of foreign invasions. There are very few countries like India in which only a handful have been able to dominate and repress many for a long period of time. Internal enemies in the form of treachery, deviousness, callousness, inertia, oppression, bigotry, fanaticism, indifference, corruption, discrimination, poverty, ignorance, in sort most of the what Bhagavat Gita refers to as Rakhashi and Asuri Bhavas, i.e. traits of monsters and demons, have caused more damage than external enemies. Many of those external enemies had been absorbed and assimilated in the larger milieu and had become a part of India. And still the country holds on and tries to assert itself. This is not a mean achievement.

India’s soul therefore is not secular education, nor its people, nor achievements by few individuals or political leaders, who appeared both before and after independence. It is something that helps the country survive and sustain against all odds, it provides strength, courage and a general will to overcome all odds, even in the worst of time. It lies in the heart of the masses, not amongst a few elite. Despite all the apparent differences, a thread of unity binds the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, that which the scholars refer to as “Unity in Diversity”. This unity is perceived in the form of what secular academicians refer to as “mythology” or “stories”, stories that link one end of India to the other, one group of people to another, that are told and retold by countless saints, monks, holy men and sages of all ages, by mothers and grandmothers to their children and grandchildren, by village story tellers to the innocent illiterate villagers, by the kings, poets and wise men, by artists and sculptors in their works, by warriors and peasants, by priests and pariahs.

 In sort, the backbone of Indian unity is spirituality, the essence of Indian culture and the source of its strength is its inner purity, the preserver of Indianness are the characters Rama and Sita, Krishna and the Pandava, Budhha and Mahavira, and countless others, who have molded and shaped the character of the country through ages, by their influence on various strata and substrata of thoughts, beliefs, values. Rama, Krishna and Sita and their associates like Hanuman, Arjuna, lord Shiva and Parvati, goddesses Durga and Kali and others have threaded the very fabric which had woven the garments of culture – folklore, literature, art and sculpture, paintings, temples, thoughts and philosophies, songs, poems, ballads, lifestyle and habits, of all sections of humanity and therefore despite all differences, everything and everybody is interlinked, like different pearls on a common string.

Therefore India’s soul is its spiritual and cultural legacy, which if threatened will be disastrous for the country’s future. Swami Vivekananda discovered it through his travels for ten years throughout the length and breadth of India before he became famous and it is the discovery of this soul that had influenced him in his mission of rousing India and serving its poor and downtrodden.