India: Oldest Nation, Youngest People

 

(Remarkable Indian culture that makes India stand out)

                                                                

Introduction:

India is a country where the culture changes every 10 Km. When other nations used stones for fighting, we used them for building monuments. There is a wisdom that is so special to this soil which enables us to have a fantastic mix of knowledge and belief. This sets us apart from any other nation on earth. Many have wondered: How can a nation that is so diverse be a single country? So how does India manage to stay as a close-knit multi-cultural nation and how does that inforce our uniqueness in the world? 

This essay tries to expound on this, while trying to surface the microscopic intricacies of a nation belonging to a billion souls.

Get ready dear reader to witness the 5^th largest economy in the world, a potential superpower, a country whose antiquity is older than the legend, a country where you need to look on both sides while crossing a one-way road, a country with 33 million gods...

                                           - a country, called Incredible India.

 

Read on…..

A land of Seekers, not believers:

For eight to ten thousand years, this land has been referred to as a single entity. There was no binding commonness- not race, not religion and certainly not language. How did we manage to stick together? 

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an Indian mystic says that essentially, we have been a land of seekers – seekers of truth and liberation. In this seeking, we found togetherness. The Rome of gladiators, the Greece of the Olympiads, the civilizations of Babylonia, Syria, Persia and Egypt, have all gone out of existence, but ancient India still thrives – the simple and unsophisticated India, with her rural and sacred culture.

Culture, Spice and everything nice:

India has been the meeting ground of diverse races and is the field of fusion of myriad cultures. The impress of the Greek and the Persian, the Arab and the English, The Turk and Afghan, the French and Portuguese, has been left on this land of Aryan and Dravidian settlers. 

The people of India are thus the inheritors of a complicated past and our culture and modes of living are, to an extent, complex (and definitely unique). It is difficult to assess the degree and the depth to which the ways of living have been affected by foreign inroads, but it would be far more difficult to deny that the diverse strains have not been woven into the social fabric of this great nation. The persistence of the ancient Indian Culture is thus one of the ways which makes us stand out.

The Great Indian Jugaad:

India’s answer to life hacks.

Whether it is using a sofa seat on a bicycle or ironing your clothes with a frying pan, Jugaad is one of the country’s most priceless inventions.

 If photographers outside India are said to take the most beautiful marriage pictures - the perfectly timed pictures in front of the Niagara and all… I present you the Indian Photographer. 

Forget the Niagara, our Indian Photographer can make the marriage couple float in Neptune or even Pluto or even make them stand in the middle of nowhere in the Andromeda galaxy.

Such things are possible widely in India. These may elicit laughter but bring a whole lot of beautiful memories! How is it that the Indian population is capable of such things?..... The nation wants to know!

Women in our society:

When Swami Vivekananda was asked why Indian women generally don’t shake hands with men, he asked the questioner why common men don’t shake hands with the Queen of England. In the Indian society, every woman is a queen.

 Ours was a society that never talked about women empowerment. This was because women were born empowered. There was no need of such talks. It is imperative that we return to such a society if we want our ideals to be recognized and possibly followed. What makes us truly stand out in this realm is that we rightly recognize that a woman’s life finds completion only in motherhood. As a result, we Indians place our Mothers higher than God.

The autonomous Village Community:

This is another feature that makes our country stand out. It is a social institution that is a characteristic of India. In the villages of India, neighbours and relatives get together for festivals and fairs and people know each other intimately; common life and problems, the crops and children and the weather become the topics of conversation. The smallest incident in a village is news of the day. Everyone has to maintain a reputation: for the watchful eyes of neighbours and relatives are on everybody.  

Sharma ji ka beta also comes in every child’s life in India.🤣

Miscellaneous thoughts:

With 1.2 billion people (and counting), India is the world’s second most populated nation. Maintaining patriotic fervor in such a huge population is itself a big thing. Right from their birth our children infuse themselves with great thoughts about their nation and love for their country.

With such an upbringing, patriotism is but a natural choice. It is another aspect in which the country stands out. 

“India has been often referred to through the metaphor of an elephant – an animal whose association with our nation has less to do with local zoology and more with the perception of both the country and the animal as ponderous, slow to move and slow to change”, notes Shashi Tharoor . I think this is because of our large population. Every move that India takes should involve every citizen.

On the dawn of the millennium, India turned a billion strong. 

There are two ways of looking at the billionth Indian. If you go on counting heads, then it is a billion mouths to feed. Or, as pointed out in an article, if you want solutions, you are looking at two billion hands. But the core problem (which also makes us stand out) is our huge population. 

We are nice, but we are too many!

Concluding thoughts:

For those who curl their lips at any talk of India achieving greatness in the near future – here is my answer: 

What has been stated so far does not hide the fact that we are aware of our several shortcomings and imperfections. India will rise to glory. There is no force in the Universe that can stop a nation whose time has come.

The Frenchman is proud of France and everything French, the Englishman thinks his country and his people are great, then why can’t we Indians consider ourselves inheritors of a proud civilization? The question is not who would allow us but rather, who can stop us? 

Despite going through long centuries of change and vicissitudes, foreign invasions and internal dissensions, the Indian society has survived (rather flourished), her people have continued to remain in the old ways of simple living and high thinking, their values of life have remained the same and the spiritual ideals that stirred their forefathers still continue to inspire them. 

This, my dear reader, is culture. This is what is called true spirit. This is what the nation upholds and this, is what makes India stand out.