India

Be cautious about the man who sets himself up as an expert on India; listen to him by all means, but remember he may be wrong. It is a rare person who is right on India every time. We have too vast a geography and too long a history for that. Our regional variations are too many to admit of easy generalizations. We are worlds only living ancient civilization. Greeks are gone, Egyptian civilization died, there is nothing related to the Sumerians that could still be identified in the present geographical region of the Sumerians. In India we still follow the religion of our ancestors, we still follow the same values, morals, almost same dress codes, rituals. The fact is the Indian civilization never declined. The flow of civilization continued since the very beginning. It had its up and downs but the flow never stopped. he Islam and Christianity controlled the Indian geographical region for almost all of the last millennium, but unlike other regions wherever Islam and Christianity went it failed to destroy this magnificent and ancient civilization and culture. Unlike other regions like Egypt, Persia, Rome, Greece, South America etc. where Islam and Christianity completely wiped out the old religions and cultures ,thus completely changing the face of those regions culturally and religiously. But in India both failed on these accounts. Indians lost the battle but not war. Kings and empires lost but not the society. Because the religion and culture was not controlled or regulated by kings or any religious leaders like in other religions. It was not and still is not regulated by any book or law. So it did not matter who ruled, the culture was regulated on its internal strength and self beliefs of the practicing person. This freedom helped the society to face the onslaught of the Islam and Christianity. There also existed some morel power center in the society, more respected than the kings in the forms of the men who renounced the world the sanyasis who provided and supported the moral strength to the society. Deep roots of the culture, respect for the ancestors, and probably the social fabric of the society like caste system also helped the society to face the onslaught. When we try to know and understand India, we must keep these facts in mind because these play some part when we try to understand the contradictions and deference in culture in different regions of India. The rules are riddled with exceptions and evidence can be gathered for any theory in a quantity seemingly sufficient but in fact misleading.

Variety. That is the visitors' most vivid first impression. Variety in landscape, in colour, in costume, in facial features, in food, in language, in shapes of houses, in names, in the very trees that grow. Even the sari, symbol of India, is worn in numerous styles. This variety has bewildered many observers. In fact, it used to be the fashion till a few years ago to write books to prove that there were several Indias but no India. It took a keen eye to note the common purpose animating us. What common institutions we had were put down to the rulers' bounty. But few people who see us now doubt that there is an India

Impatience and irritation with many things Indian can be conquered if only it is remembered that we are living at once in several centuries. A diesel bus halts to let a herd of water-buffaloes cross the road ! A jeep breaks down and is pulled to the nearest service shop by a team of stalwart oxen, with gentle eyes and stately horns. The foundation tablet of a research laboratory is laid, but the moment has perhaps been fixed by astrologers who have employed calculations that go back to 17-18 February 3102 B.C. according to john playfair a Scottish mathematician. So the time when our forebears first discovered the decimal system remains pure guess work.

The ancient is everywhere, but the modern is preferred. In every village centuries-old silverware is being melted down to be re-beaten into 'modern' vessels. No longer does the builder in the village use the wooden pillar for farmers' houses. Modernity is inevitable. Our ancient heritage is no doubt rich, but the future, we realize, lies with science and technology.

For more than a century, we have yearned for them for they alone can enable us to live better. They alone will make us the equals of other nations. Freedom is dear to us not only for itself but because it has given us the opportunity to harness science and technology for more food, more houses, more clothes, more sugar and more medicines for the people. While women in the villages pound grain as women did at the time of the Mohenjodaro civilisation, 5,000 years ago, we are among the few nations who sucssesfully harness the atom for industrial power.

Rural India discovered its rights with Mahatma Gandhi, and now it is discovering its opportunity. This awakening is both the cause and result of the Community Projects which have been described as the agent of a silent revolution. They have taken the idea of planned development to more than India's half a million villages, and provide a striking example of the harnessing of popular initiative to meet local needs.

We are asked about the caste system. Untouchability has been aboushed by law, though it may linger in subtler forms transformed into preference patterns. The universal, uncompartmentalized vote and the wise safeguard that, in the Central Parliament and in the State legislatures, at least a sixth of the total strength must consist of the scheduled castes and tribes, have worked a lifetime's change in less than a decade.

Will democracy live and grow in India? That is a question asked not only within our frontiers. Hierarchy, immobility, ignorance are still too widespread for the claim to be made that democracy informs our every thought and act. And, of course, there is the explosive challenge of poverty. Western Europe and North America had a long period of time in which economic evolution and constitutional advance could resolve their frictions. India, like other Asian countries, has to make the leap from economic backwardness to modernity with the aid of a well-developed middle class. Democracy for us is a faith, but it is a faith that is being tested. As Mr. Nehru has often said, results alone will retain democracy in Asia. The test is in the flow of goods-how soon, how much.

This emphasis on results, on materials, on mundane and work-a-day things often disillusions those Western visitors who go to India hoping to find a reign of unsullied Vedanta and Yoga and Gandhism. To be sure they will meet people of extraordinary spiritual attainments, but they are more likely to notice that the great mass is engrossed, as elsewhere, only in commodity. It is an old problem, this chasm between a nation's best and its average, between the thought of the masters and the desires of the men. 'Getting on' is the current slogan of India. It is almost as though the Gandhian values are gone and forgotten.

Almost, but not quite. It was the great grace of the Mahatma that he preached no dogma. And Gandhiji resisted being institutionalized. The economic and political consequences of the War and Partition and Freedom have obscured Gandhism, but it is blindness to believe that Gandhism is a museum piece. Gandhian ideas are to be seen in the rural development programmes, in the reform of Hindu society, in our foreign policy and more so in the adherence to peaceful methods of change, and in the evolution of Gandhian socialism.

Go to the villages or spend a Holi in any city. You will know that the Indian people know how to laugh. There is rhythm and dance in our people. We are again on the main road of history. We are determined to march on. If we have a past we have a future too. Two things we are indeed proud of-that we have free speech and that we do no window-dressing. We want to be liked for what we are and what we will be.