"It has been my long-standing conviction that India is like a donkey carrying a sack of gold - the donkey does not know what it is carrying but is content to go along with the load on its back."

(Excerpts from Shri Nani Palkhivala's India's Priceless Heritage.)    

MOTHER INDIA

It has been my long-standing conviction that India is like a donkey carrying a sack of gold - the donkey does not know what it is carrying but is content to go along with the load on its back.

The load of gold is the fantastic treasure - in arts, literature, culture, and some sciences like Ayurvedic medicine - which we have inherited from the days of the splendour that was India. Adi Sankaracharya called it "the accumulated treasure of spiritual truths discovered by the Rishis." Rabindranath Tagore said, "India is destined to be the teacher of all lands."

To Sri Aurobindo, Mother India is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead. He predicted that India will be "the moral leader of the world" and added :

"The Indians must have the firm faith that India must rise and be great and that everything that happened, every difficulty, every reverse must help and further their end.....The morning was at hand and once the light had shown itself, it could never be night again. The dawn would soon be complete and the sun rise over the horizon. The sun of India's destiny would rise and fill all India with its light and overflow India and overflow Asia and overflow the world. Every hour, every moment could only bring them nearer to the brightness of the day that God has decreed."

No greater or better deserved tribute has been paid to any country than by Friedrich Max Mueller in India : What Can It Teach Us?

"If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow - in some parts a very paradise on earth - I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life not for this life only but a transfigured and eternal life - again I should point to India." 

In the last century, the Vedas were translated into European languages; and Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, observed : "Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries." "In the whole world," he added, "there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my death." In his Journal, Ralph Waldo Emerson paid homage to Vedic thought :

"It is sublime as night and a breathless ocean. It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics which visit in turn each noble poetic mind...It is of no use to put away the book; if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the pond, Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently : eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence...This is her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and purity and absolute abandonment - these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the beatitude of the Eight Gods."

The richness of the Sanskrit language is almost beyond belief. Many centuries ago that language contained words to describe states of the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious mind and a variety of other concepts which have been evolved by modern psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Further, it has many a word, of which there is no exact synonym even in the richest modern languages. That is why some of the most enlightened modern writers have been driven occasionally to use Sanskrit words when writing in English. Consider, for example, the following passage in Dr. Raynor Johnson's The Imprisoned Splendour :

"To facilitate discussion I propose to call this higher level buddhi (coming from a Sanskrit word meaning 'wisdom'). Buddhi apprehends Truth directly - fragments of truth only, of course. It offers no reason for its perceptions, but it makes no mistakes, and this wisdom is passed through the level of Mind, to be there clothed in intelligible form."

And the following words by J.Robert Oppenheimer in Einstein : A Centenary Volume :

"Einstein is also, and I think rightly, known as a man of very great goodwill and humanity. Indeed, if I had to think of a single word for his attitude towards human problems, I would pick the Sanskrit word Ahimsa, not to hurt, harmlessness."

THE SUMMIT OF CIVILIZATION

Some of the most luminous periods in human history are those in which various civilizations flowered in India.

The Upanishads are crammed with thoughts that wander through eternity. Their message is that there is far more to life than success, and far more to success than money; and there can be no higher destiny for man than to be engaged in endless seeking after endless truth. They give the most memorable answers to the three immemorial questions posed by T.S.Eliot :

"Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

The countless psychiatric clinics today in Western countries are a grim reminder that a materialistic civilization can never satisfy the hunger of the soul. Carl G.Jung observed that during his practice of over sixty years he had never come across a person who had spiritual faith and strength and who yet needed the attention of a psychiatrist. No tranquillizer can enable you to cope with strains and stresses and tensions as effectively as the boundless reservoir of the Spirit.

In Our Culture C.Rajagopalachari makes the significant point that India, probably more than any other country, had the largest number of very big intervals between one effective government and another. There were a great many long periods during which the people had neither central nor regional governments exercising effective authority :

"All these periods of what may be called a no-government condition could not possibly have been tided over but for the self-restraints imposed by our culture, the joint family, and the jaati discipline. Not only was order maintained, but trade and arts flourished, the fine arts as well as the common artisans' work so essential for life. The absence of government made no great difference. A mere figurehead of a king was enough to do duty. Sometimes even that was not found necessary.

"...The nation did not break up, but held together by reason of the castes and the joint families and the dharma of the nation. There was at all levels something that held people together in good behaviour - the kula dharma, the jaati dharma and Bhaarata dharma...

"I do not believe culture managed affairs on such a vast and effective scale among any other people in the world and through such long periods of governmentless civilization."

Indian dharma emphasized self-restraint. It taught compassion by the strong towards the weak. It inculcated the value of suppression of immediate gratifications for the more distant, but more rewarding, goals of national glory and progress.

Above all, Indian culture encouraged the cultivation of the intellect, not as a commodity for sale in the market-place, but for the inner joy experienced by the questing mind.

THE QUINTESSENCE OF INDIAN DHARMA AND CULTURE

The virtues of self-discipline, self-restraint and self-development, which are the quintessence of Indian dharma and culture, are as fully relevant today as they were at their first teaching three thousand years ago. You must hear their echoes in Sir Thomas Taylor's Convocation Address to the Aberdeen University :

"There are, of course, moral duties which the law will enforce. But beyond the sphere of duty which is legally enforceable, there is a vast range of significant behaviour in which the law does not and ought not to intervene...Now this feeling of obedience to the unenforceable is the very opposite of the attitude that whatever is technically possible is allowable...This power of self-discipline is the very opposite of the fatal arrogance, which asserts, whether in government, science, industry or personal behaviour, that whatever is technically possible is licit...All through history men have needed it to preserve them from the temper which hardens the heart and perverts the understanding. For our generation it is nothing less than the prime condition of survival."

It would be hard to improve upon the sense of values which made ancient India so great. Our old sages judged the greatness of a State not by the extent of its empire or by the size of its wealth, but by the degree of righteousness and justice which marked the public administration and the private lives of the citizens. Their timeless teaching was that man's true progress is to be judged by moral and spiritual standards, and not by material or physical standards. Sacrifice was far more important than success; and renunciation was regarded as the crowning achievement. The citizen ranked in society, not according to wealth or power, but according to the standard of learning, virtue and character which he had attained. The finest example of that is the well-known story of Emperor Asoka, a true follower of Buddha, making it an invariable practice to bow in reverence before Buddhist monks. His minister Yasha thought that it was wrong and improper for a great Emperor to bow before monks. Asoka's answer was :

"After all, I am doing obeisance to them as a mark of my deep respect for their learning, wisdom and sacrifice. What matters in life, Yasha, is not a person's status or position, but his virtues and wisdom. The finest minds and hearts may be hidden in ugly mortal frames. Only when you have raised yourself up from ignorance can you recognise the greatness of a few in a sea of humanity, just as a good jeweller alone can spot a gem among worthless pebbles."

The Sanskrit word dharma cannot be easily translated into English. It has within it elements from the different concepts of the law, righteousness, duty, and basic morality.

Dharma dictates that the highest life is the life of service to one's kind. Swami Vivekanand observed : "The highest truth is this : God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek...the first of all worships is the worship of those all around us...He alone serves God who serves all other beings."