In his famous poem, Mein Bharat Hoon (I am India), Swami Ramateerth had explained what is his idea of Bharat. “The land of Bharat is my body. Kanyakumari is my feet. The Himalayas is my forehead. From my tassels flows the Ganga….” For us, the idea of India is much more than a territorial or mundane idea — it is a spiritual concept that forms the core of our existence and identity.
The notion of a nation with a territory that stretches from the Himalayas down to Kanyakumari was always alive in our mind-space from time immemorial. The ancient scripture Rig Veda talks about Bharatvarsha. Both the personal relation between the Rashtra and Individual and the divine Geography has been explained through the eternal dictums of Veda ‘Mata Bhumi Putrah prithivyah’.
This idea of nation finds echo in the poems of Bhakti poets like Narsi Mehta of Gujarat, Guru Nanak of Punjab, Sankara Deva of Assam and Poonthanam of Kerala when the very existence of Bharat was challenged by the alien invaders.
When aliens tried to trample upon our culture and belief systems, great men and women of our country, without waiting for a leader or supreme command launched themselves in the agitations and became the faces of resistance. As we celebrate the 75th year of our Independence, we need to instill this spirit in every field. As Aurobindo puts it: “The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of Government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the Dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the Sanatana Dharma the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that Dharma but of its living reality. For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspirations.”
As we commit ourselves to the task of rebuilding our nation, it is important to revisit the ideals that kept the Idea of Bharat alive despite all kinds of challenges. Dharma is the central theme or core that helped sustain the continuity of our civilization.
Through the Swaraj concept (Tilak) Ram Rajya (Gandhiji) and Jai Hind war cry (Netaji) worship of Swatantrata Devi (Veer Savarkar) had effectively touched the pulse of modern day Bharatiyaas.
We need to rebuild our nation on the foundations of civilizational ideals that passed the test of time and bind us together as one nation. We need to bring in Indian paradigm in all spheres of life. Sri Aurobindo used to say that the modern world thinks with a European mind. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ‘India’s time has come’. It is time for us to think with an Indian mind. It is possible only when all of us work in unison.
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