A Vision of United India

Chapter 8

Factors leading to unity in the subcontinent

In this part of the book, we shall identify the factors that lead to unity in the subcontinent. Many indeed are the elements that have fostered the unity of India. These may be enumerated as: geography, economy, culture, religion and spirituality.

However in order to create a durable unity, we must find out not only the points which help in uniting the people but also those that obstruct unity. In other words, we have to identify the centripetal and the centrifugal forces that are at work in the nation. Before we come to that, let us try to observe and understand the general principles that Nature has followed in building up her human aggregates. We see that in almost all cases in the formation of a united aggregate, there is provided first, a natural body, second, a common life and vital interest for the constituents of the body, and third, a conscious mind or sense of unity and a centre or governing organ through which that common ego-sense can realize itself and act.

1. We see in the past that in the formation of human aggregates there has been in the normal process a common bond of descent or past association that enables like to adhere to like and distinguish itself from unlike. This is the race factor.

2. Second, there has been a common habitation, a country so disposed that all who live within its natural boundaries are under a sort of geographical necessity to unite.

In earlier times when communities were less firmly rooted to the soil, the first of these conditions was more important.

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In settled modern communities, the second predominates; but the unity of the race, pure or mixed—for it need not have been one in its origin—remains a factor of importance, and strong disparity and difference may easily create serious difficulties in the way of the geographical necessity imposing itself with any permanence.

1. In order that the unity may impose itself, there must be a considerable force of the second natural condition, that is to say, a necessity of economic unity or habit of common sustenance

2. and a necessity of political unity or habit of common vital organization for survival, functioning and growth. And in order that this second condition may fulfill itself in complete force, there must be nothing to depress or destroy

3. the third, a conscious mind, and central governing organ, in its creation or its continuance. Nothing must be done which will have the result of emphasizing disunity in sentiment or perpetuating the feeling of separateness from the totality of the rest of the organism; for that will tend to make the centre or governing organ psychologically unrepresentative of the whole and therefore not a true centre of its ego-sense. But that does not mean that the individuality of the sub-units can be suppressed; differences may be allowed to exist within the framework of unity. For it must always be remembered that separatism is not the same thing as particularism, which may well coexist with unity; it is the sentiment of the impossibility of true union that separates, not the mere fact of difference.

To sum up, the elements that tend to bring about unity are: geography and race, economic unity and interdependence and a common ego that is representative of the whole nation. In modern times, the race factor is losing its importance due to the phenomenon of globalization and increased communication. However geography, economics, and a central government that is representative of the whole nation play a very important role in bringing about political unity.

It must be noted that in the Indian subcontinent, before the Muslim invasion, religion was a powerful binding factor; but after the Muslim invasion and its powerful impact, and more particularly in recent times, religion has unfortunately become a divisive factor and has created more problems than ever. This problem has to be tackled and the only way of doing it is to graduate from religion into spirituality. This will be discussed in detail in the later part of the book.

The Indian Nation

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We shall now identify the factors in the history of India, which have helped in fostering the unity of India. These are: the geographical factor, the economic factor and most importantly, the cultural and spiritual factors.

In the Indian subcontinent, it is evident that the geographical unity is strongly present, and accompanying it is the economic unity. The only problem is the political, which in recent times has been completely distorted due to the religious factor.

Recent historical beliefs

There is a widespread belief particularly among the Indian educated intellectual class, even among well meaning Indians that India, as a nation is a creation of the British. The argument is that since India was unified under a single political rule only in few brief periods of its history, it is an artificial state. It is believed that it was only the British who created the idea of India as a single nation and unified it into a political state. Another facile and widespread assumption is that the developed Western countries have a comparatively far greater continuity of nationhood, and legitimacy as nation states, than India. This again is not true, for it must be remembered that France, Germany and modern Italy each took a thousand or two thousand years and more to form and set into a firm oneness.

This belief or myth is not accidental. It was deliberately taught in the British system of education that they established in India. John Strachey, writing in India: Its Administration and Progress' in 1888, said "This is the first and most essential thing to remember about India - that there is not and never was an India, possessing any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious; no Indian nation."

This belief was evidently fostered and encouraged as part of the British policy of divide and rule. Unfortunately it still survives among a section of the educated English-speaking intellectuals. But what is generally not sufficiently known and recognized is that the idea of the fundamental unity of India is much older than British rule; it is not a recent growth or discovery but has a history running back to a remote antiquity. And this idea had many components such as geography, culture and religion. There are many proofs to show that the great founders of Indian religion, culture and

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civilization were themselves fully conscious of the geographical unity of their vast mother country. For indeed, India, shut into a separate existence by the Himalayas and the ocean, has always been the home of a peculiar people with characteristics of its own recognisably distinct from all others, with its own distinct civilization, way of life, way of the spirit, a separate culture, arts, building of society.

But first let us see what makes India a nation and a civilization apart from the rest of the world and second, what its mission is. For the nation, like the individual, has been created with a special purpose — a purpose that it alone can fulfil. "Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it". Let us then first see what makes India a distinct entity with a character of its own.

The geographical unity

An important factor in the unity of India is the geographical factor. Here is a piece of land cut off from the rest by the Himalayas on the north east, the Hindukush on the north west; in the south are the three big seas — the Bay of Bengal on the south east, the Arabian Sea on the south west and the Indian Ocean on the south. It is as if Nature herself had marked out this piece of land as a distinct unit and a separate entity.

India is the name given to the vast peninsula which the continent of Asia throws out to the south of the magnificent mountain ranges that stretch in a sword-like curve across the southern border of Tibet. Shaped like an irregular quadrilateral, this large expanse of territory, that we call India, deserves the name of a subcontinent. Ancient geographers referred to India as being "constituted with a four-fold conformation" (chatuh samasthana samsthitam).

On three sides, the South, West and East are the three great seas, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal; while the Himavat range stretches along its north like the string of a bow". The name Himavat in the above passage refers not only to the snow capped ranges of the Himalayas but also to their less elevated offshoots — the Patkai, Lushai and Chittagong Hills in the east, and the Sulaiman and Kirthar ranges in the west. These go down to the Sea and separate India from the wooded valley of Irrawady, on the one hand, and the hilly tableland of Iran on the other. The Himalayas standing tall in breathtaking splendour are radiant in myth and mystery. These, the youngest and tallest mountain ranges, feed the Ganga and the Indus River with never-ending streams of snow.

Vincent Smith, an authority on early India, had said: "India, encircled as she is by seas and mountains, is indisputably a

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geographical unit, and as such is rightly designated by one name."

Indeed, in the Puranas and the epics, we find evidence of the existence of an "India", an ancient superstructure over the various distinct regions that now make up India. This superstructure was and is still known as Bharata to the Indians themselves, and as "India" or variants like Hind and Hindustan to outsiders. The well-known quote from the Vishnupurana says:

"Uttaram yat samudrasya himadreshcaiva daksinam

Varsam tad bharatam nama bharati yatra santatih."

That is, Bharata is defined as the land north of the seas, south of the Himalayas, and where the people are called "Bharati". But the Bharati peoples were not all similar and alike. They were distinct peoples and this was well known to the authors of the Puranas. Yet they used the term Bharata, thus indicating that in spite of differences, there was commonness and an underlying unity.

We see this illustrated in the epics. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata provide a clear example of how the various regions of India were linked by a common culture and awareness. Al-Biruni, writing about India from a place west of the Indus, was aware of the centrality of Vasudeva and Rama to the Indian tradition. All over India, we find local versions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. They may disagree on the details, but not on the essentials. Even the regional variants of the epics show an awareness of the 'whole' and not merely of the region they were composed in. The 'Great' tradition of the Sanskrit epics is mirrored in the 'little' traditions, which are local in their form and yet global in their scope.

Besides this intimate knowledge of the parts, the Mahabharata presents a conception of the whole of India as a single geographical unit. In the famous passage in the Bhismaparva the shape of India is described as an equilateral triangle, divided into four smaller equal triangles, the apex of which is Cape Comorin and the base formed by the line of the Himalayan mountains. As remarked by Cunningham in the chapter Ancient Geography of India, "the shape corresponds very well with the general form of the country, if we extend the limits of India to Ghazni on the north-west and fix the other two points of the triangle at Cape Comorin and Sadiya in Assam." (Mookerji pp. 62-63)from Fundamental Unity of India by Radha Kumud Mookerji

We thus see that the first element of Indian nationhood is drawn from its unique geography. India is one of the few countries that can be located on a physical map of the world, even when no political boundaries are drawn.

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The river systems

The river systems that exist in India also testify to the unity of the subcontinent. Not only are the rivers of India centres of economic development, but they are also cultural and religious centres that bind the people together.

The very name 'India' is derived from Sindhu (Indus), the great river that constitutes one of the most imposing features of that part of the sub-continent, which seems to have been the cradle of its earliest known civilizations. Rising in southwestern Tibet, at an altitude of 16,000 feet, Indus enters the Indian Territory near Leh in Ladakh. The river has a total drainage area of about 4,50,000 square miles, of which 1,75,000 square miles lie in the Himalayan Mountains and foothills.

After flowing eleven miles beyond Leh, in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the basin is joined on the left by its first tributary, the Zanskar, which helps green the Zanskar Valley. Many interesting mountain trails beckon the mountaineering enthusiasts to the Zanskar Valley. The Indus then flows past Batalik. When it enters the plains, its famous five tributaries — Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej —that give Punjab (the food bowl of India) its name as the "land of five rivers," join it. It is this very same river that flows into Pakistan and then into the Arabian Sea.

However, much of the myth and sentiment attached to India is related with the Ganges. The gushing waters of the Ganges are at once peaceful and tumultuous. Nature's glory and man's aspirations have long met along the Ganges. The history of Ganga is as old as the history of Indian civilization. Barring the period of the Harappan civilization, the Ganga basin has been witness to most of the mythology, history, and people of India. It was in this plain that the great kingdoms of India, found their home. Also it was in

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this place that the essence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism were established in India. In short, the Ganga river has been the lifeline of India, economically, spiritually and culturally.

The mighty Ganga (also Ganges) emerges from beneath the Gangotri glacier at a height of 3,959 m above sea level, in the Garhwal region of North India. Here she is known as the Bhagirathi, after the legendary prince Bhagirath who is accredited with bringing her down from heaven to earth. Bursting forth at Gaumukh, out of a huge cavern shaped like the mouth of a cow, snow laden and hung with giant icicles, the Bhagirathi goes rushing, sparkling, foaming around chunks of ice that are constantly breaking off from the glacier above. Eighteen kilometers downstream, stands Gangotri, which was the source of the river until the glacier melted and retreated to its present position above Gaumukh. From here onwards, the river passes through the plains of North India, covering the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal and then through Bangladesh. Along the route that Ganga and her tributaries took, came up different settlements, each of which was distinct and had its own indigenous culture.

Uttarkashi, Devprayag, Rudraprayag, Karnaprayag, Rishikesh and Haridwar are some of the important sites on the coast of this holy river during the early phase of its journey through North India. From Haridwar to Allahabad, the Ganga flows parallel to the Yamuna, another important river flowing through North India, each describing a huge arc. It flows past Garhmukteshwar, the very place where the goddess Ganga is said to have appeared to Shantanu (ancestor of the Pandavas), and Bithur, a city close to but much older than Kanpur, the site of an ancient Shiva temple, before reaching Allahabad, an important religious centre of India.

It is said that Allahabad is a sacred place with soul cleansing powers, particularly so because the mythical, subterranean river Saraswati is said to join the Ganga and Yamuna at this point — a speck of white sand known as the Sangam. In Vedic times, there was a settlement at this confluence, known as Prayag, where the Vedas were written. Brahma himself is said to have performed a sacrifice here. Huen Tsang visited Prayag in 634 AD. It was under the Mogul Emperor Akbar that Prayag was renamed Illahabas, later to be changed to Allahabad. Overlooking the confluence is a massive, historic red stone fort built by Akbar.

Like Haridwar, Varanasi is also a temple town of India. However, it is difficult to describe Varanasi. As Shri Ramakrishna once said, "One may as well try to draw a map of the universe as attempt to describe Varanasi in words." As old as any currently inhabited city on earth, it was already well known in the days of Buddha, 2,500 years ago.

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It finds constant mention in ancient literature and has all along been a pilgrimage centre, sacred to Shiva. Hindus consider it an auspicious place to die, for then one goes straight to heaven. Surprisingly, Varanasi does not mark one of Ganga's great confluences, but is named after two small rivers that join here, the Varuna and Asi. The oldest habitation site of India — Kashi, lies north of the Varuna.

Crossing the vast Gangetic plain, the Ganga flows past Patna, the famous Pataliputra mentioned in the history books across India. She flows past Mokamah, a place famous as the working destination of the great hunter-conservationist Jim Corbett while in India. It flows past Farakka Barrage, built to divert more water from Ganga to Hooghly to prevent the latter from silting. Soon thereafter, the Ganga splits into the numerous tributaries that form the Gangetic delta. The Hooghly, regarded as the true Ganga, is one of these tributaries. The main channel proceeds to Bangladesh as the river Padma, so dearly loved by Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet of India.

Like the Ganges, the vast networks of rivers flowing throughout India are sacred to its people. The same goes for the region south of the Gangetic Plains in north India. This region is a highland zone rising to the chain of the Vindhya Mountains — forming the land of the river Cauvery. Long revered by the people of India for the bounties of fertility bestowed by the gentle waters, this river flows from the azure mountains of the Nilgiris. Today, this region covering the four south Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kanataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, offers visible continuity with traditions in time. Above the land of the Cauvery lies Orissa, another culturally rich state in India that is fed by the river Mahanadi.

Through the east of India, flows the cascading Brahamputra. The waters of the Brahmaputra travel all the way from China to the plains of the Indian state of Assam. Further northeast are seven other states of Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland , Mizoram,and Sikkim — together known as the seven sisters.

The two rivers Narmada and Tapti in central and western India have the unique distinction of flowing in the east to west direction, unlike other major rivers in India. Of the two, Narmada has more mythological significance as being the mother and giver of peace. Legends in India have it that the mere sight of this river is enough to cleanse one's soul, as against a dip in the Ganga or seven in the Yamuna.

All these rivers of the subcontinent of India are sacred to their people. Not only do they enhance and further the cultural unity, they are also strong elements in the economic unity of the subcontinent.

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The population of India

At the same time, the population of India is great. India is home to a large and diverse population that has added to her vibrant character since ages. There are about 3,000 communities in India. So wide and complex is the mix of the Indian population that two-thirds of her communities are found in the geographical boundaries of each of her states. They are a mingling of the most diverse races.

Even the climate seems to obey this principle of unity; there is the southwest monsoon in the summers, which gives rain to most of North India, and the northeast monsoon, which gives rain to the southern peninsula. In this way, the whole country is covered by the monsoon.

However, within this framework of unity, there is also present a tremendous and rich diversity. There are the highest mountains in the world and at the same time, the vastest plains; there are places that receive the highest rainfall in the world, and places that receive almost no rainfall. There are the most fertile plains and the most arid deserts. Amidst all this tremendous diversity, there has always been kept alive and fresh the feeling that this piece of land is a unit and a single entity.

 Other factors leading to unity

Besides the geographical factor, many other factors have contributed to this sense of unity; our great forefathers, the Rishis of ancient India, have consciously created many of them. Probably the most significant formula of national unity invented by the ancient Indians is found in the sacred text which every Indian has to use each time he bathes or sits down to worship his God — the text for the sacrificial purification of water. It runs thus:

Gangecha Jamunechaiva Godavari Sarasvatee

Narmada Sindhu Kaveri jalesmin sannidhim kuru

And it means: May the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Godavari, the Saraswati, the Narmada, the Sindhu and the Kaveri enter into this water. These are the great rivers of the Indian continent. They cover practically the entire riparian system of this great land. It is along the course of these great rivers that the sacred stream of Indian culture flowed over this land. In the days before the introduction of the railways, the great rivers were the highways of commerce and culture. That is why they are so sacred to the Indian. And the Indian, wherever he may be in this wide country, by repeating this text during his daily bath and worship remembers the unity of his country and his people. This is conclusive evidence of the fact that India had realized a very deep, though complex kind of organic unity at the back of the apparent diversities and multiplicities of her land and people.

Thus although India has become a political unity only in recent times, the underlying psychological unity has always been there and is the basis of the external and political unity.

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This external and political unity also India has tried to realize and manifest in her life. This is the significance of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; it is also the truth behind the unification attempt of Chandragupta Maurya, the later Gupta emperors like Harshavardhan and even some of the Mogul emperors. In addition to all this is the religious diversity that makes India the only place in the world where all the religious streams flow together. And most interestingly, around 500 communities of India follow two religions at the same time.

The religious diversity of India

No wonder then that India is today known all over the world as the "Land of several Religions". Ancient India witnessed the birth of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism; but all these cultures and religions intermingled and acted and reacted upon one another in such a manner that though the people speak different languages, practise different religions, and observe different social customs, they follow certain common life-styles throughout the country. India, therefore, shows a deep underlying unity despite its great diversities. The term Hinduism has emanated from the name given to the people who lived on the banks of the river Sindhu or Indus as it was denominated by the foreign invaders who came from the North West into India many, many centuries ago.

However, Hinduism is not really a religion, it is a philosophy and a way of life that has evolved over the millennia in the Indian subcontinent. Although there are many texts from the Vedic times, which enunciate the basic truths and lay down certain doctrines, Hinduism is not a doctrinaire religion but a catholic one with tolerance as its cornerstone. Hence, the myriad of people of different racial, linguistic and religious faiths, who have come in from the east and from the west, through the mountain passes and along the sea coast, bringing with them their own ideology, their customs and their languages into India, have continued to live their lives according to their own traditions. It must be noted that one of the most powerful means of uniting the Indian people was language. And in this, one will notice that Sanskrit played a very important role. In the words of Chatterjee: "Sanskrit looms large behind all Indian languages, Aryan, and non-Aryan. It is inseparable from Indian history and culture. Sanskrit is India. The progressive Unification of the Indian Peoples into a single Nation can correctly be described as the Sanskritisation of India". (Chatterji, p. 32.)

The economic unity of the subcontinent

There is a strong economic interdependence among the countries of the subcontinent. This interdependence is because the countries in the region have a geographical

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contiguity, and along with it, strong historical, social, cultural and ethnic affinities. Evidently, these could easily act as powerful centripetal forces and thus, contribute substantively to a lasting unity. It is this inherent logic that strongly justifies regional cooperation, particularly among all the South Asian countries. The benefits are that it will facilitate coordination among the nations and make it a powerful force. It is only after this unity takes concrete shape that India can play its true role and fulfil its destiny in the world.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), comprising the seven South Asian countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, formally came into existence in 1985 with the adoption of its Charter at the first Summit in Dhaka in December 1985. The idea of regional cooperation was first proposed through 'a regional forum', with a view to holding periodic, regional-level consultations among countries in South Asia on matters of mutual interest and possible cooperation in economic, social, cultural and other fields. The rationale was primarily based on the premise that regional experiences elsewhere in the globe had been highly successful and that the countries in the South Asian region would benefit enormously from such cooperation as it would strengthen their competitive position, both individually and as a group. Above all, it would usher in a reign of peace and harmony in the subcontinent. After the last meeting of SAARC in Islamabad, the idea of economic cooperation has been given a further boost and it is hoped that this will lead to a stable economic unity.

The fundamental unity of India

However, the chief factor in creating the unity of India lies in her spiritual culture. Despite successive invasions of India by foreign powers, the cultural unity has not been diminished; rather, it has been enriched and enhanced. This is due to the power of assimilation that is one of the striking features of Indian culture. Indian culture by its wideness had the power of taking all that was good in these cultures and absorbing it into itself. As a consequence, India always knew that her mission was to make the whole of life a means of expressing the spiritual principle. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "It has absorbed all that has entered into it, put upon it the Indian stamp, welded the most diverse elements into its fundamental unity. But it has also been throughout a congeries of diverse peoples, lands, kingdoms and, in earlier times, republics also, diverse races, sub-nations with a marked characteristic of their own, developing different brands or forms of civilisation and culture, many schools of art and architecture which yet succeeded in fitting into the general Indian type of civilisation and culture. India's history has been throughout

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marked by a tendency, a constant effort to unite all this diversity of elements into a single political whole under a central imperial rule so that India might be politically as well as culturally one."

When one looks at the history of India, one will see that India has assimilated elements from the Greeks, the Persians and even other nations. For instance, she took from Greek architecture, from Persian paintings, etc. The assimilation of the Mohammedan culture too was done in the mind to a great extent and it has to go much further. The conflict is in the outer life and an attempt has now to be made to bridge even this shortcoming.

There has thus been a cultural unity binding the diverse peoples of India. However, before we get down to trying to analyze the cultural unity of the Indian people, it would be pertinent to try to understand what we mean by the culture of a people.

The aim of culture

The aim of all human life is to seek happiness in this world, and true happiness lies in the finding and maintenance of a natural harmony of spirit, mind, and body. A culture is to be valued to the extent to which it has discovered the right key of this harmony and organized its expressive motives and movements. And a civilization must be judged by the manner in which all its principles, ideas, forms, and ways of living work to bring that harmony out, manage its rhythmic play and secure its continuance or the development of its motives. A civilization in pursuit of this aim may be predominantly material like modern Western culture, or it may be predominantly mental and intellectual like the old Graeco-Roman or it might be predominantly spiritual like the still persistent culture of India. Let us see then what the Indian conception of happiness and culture was.

The Indian conception

What is the central conception that has governed India's spiritual culture? India's central conception is that at the root of all creation there is a Supreme Consciousness or Spirit. This Consciousness is here incased in matter, involved and immanent in it; and it evolves on the material plane by a process of rebirth of the individual. In this process of evolution, the individual moves up the scale of being from the physical man and vital man till in mental man he enters the world of ideas and realm of conscious morality, dharma. It is this achievement, this victory over unconscious matter that constitutes the concept of evolution in India. This evolution develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until there is the increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind; this enables the individual mental being in man to finally identify himself with the pure spiritual consciousness that

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exists beyond Mind. This, according to the Indian concept, is the ultimate aim of life.

It is on this basis that the whole of Indian life is built. Her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness and its fruits; her philosophy formulates it; her art and literature have the same upward look; even the Indian social system is built upon this conception; her whole dharma or law of being is founded upon it. This is her conception of progress. To the Indian mind, the true meaning of progress is this spiritual progress, not merely the externally self-unfolding process of an always more and more prosperous and efficient material civilization. It is her founding of life upon this exalted conception and her urge towards the spiritual and the eternal that constitute the distinct value of her civilization. And it is her fidelity, with whatever human shortcomings, to this highest ideal that has made her people a nation apart in the human world. We may thus sum up:

The culture of a people

Let us now try to define what we mean by the culture of a people. The culture of a people may be roughly described as the expression of a consciousness of life, which formulates itself in three aspects.

There is first, a side of thought, of ideal, of upward will and the soul's aspiration.

Second, there is a side of creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence and imagination.

Last, there is a side of practical and outward formulation. A people's philosophy and higher thinking give us its mind's purest, largest and most general formulation of its consciousness of life and its dynamic view of existence. Its religion formulates the most intense form of its upward will and the soul's aspirations towards the fulfilment of its highest ideal and impulse.

Its art, poetry, literature, scientific developments provide for us the creative expression and impression of its intuition, imagination, vital turn and creative intelligence.

Its society, politics and economics provide in their forms an outward frame in which the more external life works out what it can of its inspiring ideal and of its special character and nature under the difficulties of the environment. Together they make up its soul, mind, and body.

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The application in life

We shall now see how in every field of human activity, India has tried to aim at the highest spiritual expression. We shall illustrate this in the field or philosophy, art and politics.

Philosophy and Religion

One of the most striking and unique features of Indian culture is that philosophy and religion have always worked together, in tandem as it were. Philosophy has been made dynamic by religion and religion has been enlightened by philosophy.

What the intellect grasped through the higher mind was made living by religious and spiritual practice. Religion, which sometimes tends to become narrow and intolerant, has been widened and enlightened by the intellectual study of philosophy.

This is one of the first distinctive and unifying characteristics of Indian culture. It is true that Indian culture shares this with the more developed Asiatic peoples, but it has been brought here to an extraordinary degree of thoroughgoing pervasiveness.

It was in the post-Vedic age of Indian civilization that the great intellectual development took place. This age was distinguished by the rise of the great philosophies, by a vivid, many-sided epic literature, by the beginnings of art and science, by the evolution of a vigorous and complex society, by the formation of large kingdoms and empires and, by manifold formative activities of all kinds and great systems of living and thinking. Here, as elsewhere in Greece, Rome, Persia, China, this was the age of a high outburst of the intelligence working upon life and the things of the mind to discover their reason and their right way and bring out a road to fulfill the noble fullness of human existence. But in India this effort did not ever lose sight of the spiritual motive; it did not ever miss the touch of the religious sense. It was a birth time and youth of the seeking intellect and philosophy was the main instrument by which it laboured to solve the problems of life and the world. Science too developed, but it came second, as only an auxiliary power. It was through profound and subtle philosophies that the intellect of India attempted to analyze by the reason and logical faculty what had formerly been approached with a much more living force through intuition and the soul's experience. But the philosophic mind started from the data these mightier powers had discovered and was faithful to its parent Light; it went back always in one form or another to the profound truths of the Upanishads which kept their place as the highest authority in these matters. There was a constant admission that spiritual experience is a greater thing and its light a truer if more incalculable guide than the clarities of the reasoning intelligence.

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Inevitably there was a close link between religion and philosophy. The relationship between religion and philosophy was complementary, each one helping the other. Philosophy was made dynamic by religion, and religion was enlightened by philosophy. Thus philosophy and religion have been predominant in Indian culture and all the other elements have followed as best as they can. This is the one of the distinctive characters of Indian culture.

Indian art

Similarly, in all other fields of human activity, such as art, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature, the aim has been ultimately to discover and express the Divine. The dominant note in the Indian mind, the temperament that has been at the foundation of all its culture and originated and supported the greater part of its creative action in philosophy, religion, art and life has been spiritual, intuitive and psychic; but this fundamental tendency has not excluded but rather powerfully supported a strong and rich intellectual, practical and vital activity.

As an illustration, the aim of Indian classical music is to bring the listener into contact with his own soul. Here one will notice that many of the well-known Indian classical musicians are not only Hindu but also Muslim. Thus Indian music has become one of the most powerful tools of cultural unification.

Similarly in literature, the Urdu language is a beautiful language made up of different elements from the languages of India.

All this has been brought beautifully in this extract from the writings of Sri Aurobindo on the spirit and soul of India:

"What was this ancient spirit and characteristic soul of India? European writers, struck by the general metaphysical bent of the Indian mind, by its strong religious instincts and religious idealism, by its other-worldliness, are inclined to write as if this were all the Indian spirit. An abstract, metaphysical, religious mind overpowered by the sense of the infinite, not apt for life, dreamy, unpractical, turning away from life and action as Maya, this, they said, is India; and for a time Indians in this as in other matters submissively echoed their new Western teachers and masters. They learned to speak with pride of their metaphysics, of their literature, of their religion, but in all else they were content to be learners and imitators. Since then Europe has discovered that there was too an Indian art of remarkable power and beauty; but the rest of what India meant it has hardly at all seen. But meanwhile the Indian mind began to emancipate itself and to look upon its past with a clear and self-discerning eye, and it very soon discovered that it had been misled into an entirely false self-view. All such one-sided appreciations indeed almost invariably turn out to be false. Was it not the general

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misconception about Germany at one time, because she was great in philosophy and music, but had blundered in life and been unable to make the most of its materials, that this was a nation of unpractical dreamers, idealists, erudites and sentimentalists, patient, docile and industrious certainly, but politically inapt, —"admirable, ridiculous Germany"? Europe has had a terrible awakening from that error. When the renascence of India is complete, she will have an awakening, not of the same brutal kind, certainly, but startling enough, as to the real nature and capacity of the Indian spirit.

Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, —and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, — that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organise the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the suprasensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, —truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence. She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendours of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman. And with the logical practicality and sense of science and organised method, which distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way. Hence from long ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in her, her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning to grapple with the infinite and

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possess it, her ineradicable religious sense, her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy".

Indian society and politics

Even in politics and society, there was a heroic attempt at spiritualizing them. However in the application of spirituality to the political and social life, there were great difficulties. As already seen, the master idea that has governed the life, culture, social ideals of the Indian people has been the seeking of man for his true spiritual self; and it looked upon life as the frame and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This was always subject to a necessary and inevitable gradual evolution, first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature. This dominant idea India has never quite forgotten even under the stress and material exigencies and the externalities of political and social construction.

But the difficulty of making the social and political life an expression of man's true self and some highest realization of the spirit within him is immensely greater than that which attends a spiritual self-expression through the higher being, that is to say, through the things of the mind, religion, thought, art, and literature. It is true that in all these India reached extraordinary heights and wideness in the inner life, but she could not in the outward life go beyond certain very partial realizations and very imperfect attempts.

All that she could manage to do was to create a general spiritualising symbolism, a small amount of infiltration of the greater aspiration into the routine life; it gave a certain cast to the communal life, and created institutions favourable to the spiritual idea. But it could go no further. And that is because politics, society, economics are the natural field of the two first and grosser parts of human aim and conduct recognized in the Indian system, artha, kama — -interest and hedonistic desire. Dharma, the higher law, has nowhere been brought more than partially into this outer side of life, and in politics to a very minimum extent; for the effort at governing political action by ethics is usually little more than pretence. The coordination or true union of the collective outward life with Moksha, the liberated spiritual existence, has hardly even been conceived or attempted, much less anywhere succeeded in the past history of the yet hardly adult human race. Accordingly, we find that the governance by the Dharma of India's social, economic and political rule of life, system, turn of existence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind, was as far as her ancient system could advance. The full attainment of the spiritual life being was left as a supreme aim to the effort of the individual.

However, she did make that endeavour with persistence and patience. There was a constant reminder of the spiritual aim even in the political and social life; and this effort by itself

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gave a peculiar type to her social polity. As a result of this reminder and effort, we do not find in India the element of intellectually idealistic political progress or revolutionary experiment, which has been so marked a feature of ancient and of modern Europe. A profound respect for the creations of the past as the natural expression of the Indian mind and life, the sound manifestation of its Dharma or right law of being, was the strongest element in the mental attitude and this preservative instinct was not disturbed but rather yet more firmly settled and fixed even in modern times after the advent of the European powers. The Indian method of progress that was adopted was a slow evolution of custom and institution that was conservative of the principle of settled order, of social and political precedent, of established framework and structure.

Therefore, Indian polity never arrived at that unwholesome substitution of the mechanical for the natural order of the life of the people, which has been the disease of European civilization now culminating in the monstrous artificial organization of the bureaucratic and industrial State. The advantages of the idealising intellect were absent, but so also were the disadvantages of the mechanising rational intelligence.

The Indian mind has always been profoundly intuitive in habit even when it was the most occupied with the development of the reasoning intelligence, and its political and social thought has therefore been always an attempt to combine the intuitions of life and the intuitions of the spirit with the light of the reason acting as an intermediary and an ordering and regulating factor. It has tried to base itself strongly on the established and persistent actualities of life and to depend for its idealism not on the intellect but on the illuminations, inspirations, higher experiences of the spirit, and it has used the reason as a critical power, testing and assuring itself of the steps and aiding, but not replacing, the life and the spirit that are always the true and sound constructors.

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