To celebrate India’s 78th Independence Day (Aug 15), Lotus invited eminent people to assess its contribution and role in the world, which is coming centerstage. First of a 3-part series.
India’s civilizational wisdom, spanning many millennia, is a profound and enduring legacy that has continued to enrich the world. Rooted in ancient texts such as the Vedas and Upanishads, India’s indigenous philosophical traditions, including Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, offer deep insights into human existence and ethical living. Systems such as yoga and meditation have inspired global movements for inner peace and holistic well-being.
India’s ethos is characterized by concepts such as ahimsa (non-violence) and vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is one family), underscoring the importance of compassion, tolerance, and unity in diversity. These timeless principles provide a beacon for addressing contemporary global challenges, promoting interfaith harmony and world peace, and fostering a sustainable and inclusive future.
With India finding its rightful place in world affairs and its diaspora contributing notably to fields including technology, healthcare, and governance, some distinguished people in India and the US assess India’s role as the world’s cultural and spiritual guru.
Read on for what our panelists from India and the US have to say on the subject.
Insight into the true nature of reality
~ Rajiv Mehrotra
India’s rich civilizational heritage is a diverse blend of cultural, philosophical, religious, and scientific contributions. These have had a profound impact not only on the Indian subcontinent but also on the rest of the world. Rooted in ancient traditions and knowledge systems, this heritage continues to evolve and adapt while inspiring and responding to present-day challenges.
At its core, it draws on spiritual traditions that encompass sophisticated, profound, and diverse mind-training techniques. These techniques combine method and wisdom to help us achieve a deep understanding and realization of the true nature of reality. This liberates us from the experience of ‘dukkha’, or the unsatisfactoriness we feel in our lives.
Different approaches to this are offered to individuals with different mental inclinations. These range from the path of action and devotion to knowledge and working with the body and mind to more esoteric and mystical practices. This celebration of diversity respects all faiths and traditions.
One of the most secular, inclusive, and accessible approaches is the practice of different forms of meditation. Science has empirically validated many of these practices, which can be pursued independently of any specific faith or belief system.
Meditation practice first trains our minds to concentrate, a valuable skill applicable in various areas of life. It then guides us to nurture compassion for all sentient beings, recognizing our interdependence with others, including our precious Mother Earth, and that change, or impermanence is the only constant in the scheme of things. This fosters a softening of our exaggerated sense of the ‘self’ (the I, my, me, mine) that suffers and spontaneously leads to values such as non-violence and a sense of the human species as a community.
Despite the time we dedicate to training ourselves for our professions or to appear physically attractive to others, we neglect to invest in training our minds to live peacefully with ourselves and others. India’s civilizational heritage, which has evolved and refined over thousands of years, offers us a way to achieve this. There is no greater contribution to our shared human heritage.
Rajiv Mehrotra serves as the Secretary and Trustee of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of HH The Dalai Lama, established with the Nobel Peace Prize. The Foundation nurtures the Indo-Tibetan civilizational heritage to foster inner peace and harmony in the world. His documentary films have won over 300 global awards since 1986, including National Awards in India.
A perfect prescription for a perfect world
~ Suma Varughese
I hesitate to make sweeping assertions about the glory of Indian civilization because I know very little about other civilizations, particularly the indigenous wisdom of Africa, Native America, or South America.
But I can safely say that no matter how lofty their wisdom, others may equal but never exceed the breadth and depth of Indian thought. It was this country that audaciously proclaimed that Oneness was the truth of existence. That the Creator and creation were one. Is there anything more inclusive than this? Oneness embraces everything and everyone. Nothing, and nobody, is left out. And what’s more, not only are we One, but all of creation, from the human to the amoeba, is holy.
The implications of a world that is both interconnected and divine are dazzling. If all of us internalized this understanding and lived by it, it would mean an end to all selfishness, conflict, and exploitation. Because in a world of Oneness, any wrong we do to the other is eventually visited upon ourselves. We are seeing this truth vividly unfold in the environmental crisis that grips us. The centuries of exploitation of our natural resources have today resulted in such extreme weather conditions that we still don’t know if we will survive it even if the planet does.
In a world that is breaking apart and looking blindly for answers, the Indian civilization can show the way out. From our systems like Ayurveda and Siddhi, architectural models like Vaastu Shastra, the gurukul education model, our art and dance traditions, our approach to astrology, our four-fold goals of human life – dharma (ethical conduct), artha (wealth), kama (fulfillment of desires) and moksha (liberation), and the four stages of human life from bachelorhood to renunciate, the world will learn how to live, heal, relate, eat, create, love and look after others.
Best of all, these systems are also designed to lead us to enlightenment, so not only will we lead lives of happiness, health, and harmony, but eventually and organically we will also evolve!
A perfect prescription for a perfect world.
Suma Varughese is a writing and spirituality mentor based in Mumbai. Former editor of Life Positive and Society magazines, she is the author of three books – Travelling Light, Travelling Lighter and 50 Life Lessons.
A model for pluralism in the world
~ Srinivas Reddy
India is a microcosm of the world, a land of incredible diversity in every aspect: flora, fauna, people, geography, etc. It is a land of multiple languages, religions, cultures, and customs, and yet, a unifying force organically emerges from this multiplicity to bind people together.
Planet Earth today is a macrocosm of India. The world now faces unprecedented challenges related to war, famine, linguistic diversity, and cultural plurality. Much of the Western approach to diversity has been through assimilation, where foreigners talk, dress and behave like the normative culture. The Indian approach to diversity has always been — live and let live. Thus, individuals and communities in India retain their idiosyncratic cultural practices whilst contributing to an emergent whole.
The two models are curiously different: the Western model is a soup, a uniform whole made of many elements, whereas the Indian model is a salad in which specific elements retain their individuality within the whole. The Indian approach has its problems, no doubt, but it is ancient, holistic, and organic. It provides a living example of how multiple cultures can coexist while maintaining their freedom and autonomy.
Of all of India’s many contributions to the world, one of the most important is the way in which Indians have nurtured pluralism of every kind for millennia. India is a model for the world. And as she celebrates her 78th birthday, we may hope that she lives up to her ancient mandates—in Sanskrit: vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam, the world is one family, and in Tamil: yātum ūre, yāvarum kelir: every city is our city, everyone is our kin.
Srinivas Reddy is a scholar, translator, and classical sitarist. His latest book is ‘Illuminating Worlds: An Anthology of Classical Indian Literature’ (Bloomsbury 2024). He is currently on a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship at IIT Gandhinagar in India.
For sustainable well-being of all life forms
~ Aditi Banerjee
India’s contribution to the world is a civilization, a worldview, an ethos of harmony and pluralism that prioritizes the sustainable well-being of all sentient and non-sentient life forms. This is the basis of Dharma, which upholds and sustains, in accordance with the Rtam, the natural balance and order of the cosmos. Through the vast philosophical and metaphysical treasures of Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, great sages and savants have transmitted to the people of India, and through them, to the far corners of the world the uplifting message that we are inherently divine, we are inherently one, we are here on this Earth to discover our true calling and purpose of self-realization and self-knowledge.
Today, we, especially the younger among us, live in a global marketplace of ideas where we are so overloaded with information (much of it misleading or false) and ideologies, bombarded with propaganda of different kinds, that we need to counterbalance this by going within through silence and meditation, reflection and study of the self, through worship and reverence for nature, through yoga and chanting, through immersion in the words of the enlightened ones, through the storytelling of the epics brought alive by our own imagination. These are the marga, the paths that our rishis and ancestors laid out for us. This is the treasure of Indic heritage and civilization. It is a plurality of paths, each designed for the individual based on his or her nature, contextualized by time, place, and circumstance – a way marked not by dogma or revelation but rather self-exploration and discovery. It is our duty to undertake this journey for our own attainment and the benefit of all living beings.
Aditi Banerjee is an author and practicing attorney at a Fortune 500 financial services company. She frequently writes and speaks about Hinduism and the Hindu-American experience and has published four books including: ‘The Curse of Gandhari’, and ‘Kashi: The Valiant History of a Sacred Geography’.
Lead illustration: Vedant Chopra
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2 comments
Dharm raksha is a primary responsibility.
If dharm is destroyed no values are left.
Well said Suma We are all one and if we inflict wounds on others, we cannot escape