Like thousands of girls in India, Vrinda was abandoned at birth by her family. But she was lucky--she was brought to the S..
Philosopical issues of Indian Identity : Dr. Swamy

Continued from Understanding the meaning of an Indian Identity : Dr.
Swamy
11. From a study of nations that remain united and contrasted with
those which have disintegrated, it seems that the crucial element
for national integrity is the concept of ‘who we are’ that the
people within a geo-political boundary accept. This concept however
has to be nurtured, renewed, continually enriched and given
substance.
12. Such a concept however cannot be forced down the throats of a
people as USSR and Yugoslavia demonstrates or allow the concept to
derail a society as it did in Hitler's Germany. At the same time
the concept cannot be amorphous, meaning all things to all men, and
without a time frame for its acceptance.
13. Even in United States of America, a relatively young nation
created by an influx of immigration from diverse countries,
scholars have felt the need to define the identity of an American.
Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington has penned a book titled Who
Are We? [Penguin Books, India 2004] to define the American's
identity as a “White Anglo-Saxon Christian who speaks English”. It
seems contrived since majority of Americans are perhaps not
‘White’, but Huntington is emphatic.
14. However, Huntington's contribution is in seeing the two
components of this identity that define it: Salience, which is the
importance that the citizen attributes to national identity over
the other many sub-identities. Second, Substance, which he calls as
the “American Creed”, is what the citizens think they have in
common, and which distinguishes them from others of other
countries.
15. Paraphrasing Dr.Huntington, the ‘American creed’ is identified
as (i) Anglo-Protestant work ethic (such as sticking to contracts,
punctuality, word as bond, honouring IOUs etc.). (ii)
Christianity-religious belief in God, in good being rewarded and
evil being punished by Him. (iii) English language. (iv) Rule of
law and equality before it. (v) Individualism and the pursuit of
happiness.
16. Dr.Huntington quotes a 1931 judgment of the Supreme Court in
which the apex Court held that US is a Christian nation, and hence
he advocates that acceptance of that is part of the American creed.
We shall apply the concepts of salience and substance to Indian
identity.
17. Similarly, the British Prime Minister Cameron on December 17,
2011 was quoted by BBC as stating at Oxford that “ UK is a
Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so”.
Addressing a meeting on the 400th Anniversary of the King James’s
Bible, he called for a revival of traditional Christian values to
counter Britain’s “moral collapse”, adding the slogan “live and let
live” has too often come to mean “do what you please”.
Significantly, he also said that it was wrong to hold that
“standing up for Christianity was somehow doing down other
faiths”.
18. We in India today do not have to conjure up a contrived
identity as Huntington valiantly had to do, or issue dictums as
Cameron. A century ago, Sri Aurobindo declared [as reproduced
inIndia’s Rebirth: Institut De Recherches Evolutives, Paris 1993]:“
I write for those who acknowledge reason but do not identify reason
with Western Materialism; who are sceptics but not unbelievers;
who, admitting the claims of modern thought, still believe in
India, her mission, her gospel, her immortal life and her eternal
rebirth”.
19. The battle to settle the answer to this question is on today
between the Indian nationalist and the internationalist liberal.
The latter deny that the Indians have an overriding identity of
salience and substance.
20. Eminent philosophers and observers have also held so. India has
thus always existed because of the Indian-ness [read: Hindutva as
Substance of Huntington] of the people.“In all the fleeting
centuries of history” holds Dr.Radhakrishnan in his work on Indian
Philosophy, “in all the vicissitudes, through which India has
passed, a certain marked identity is visible. It has held fast to
certain psychological traits which constitute its special heritage,
and they will be the characteristic marks of the Indian people so
long as they are privileged to have a separate existence”.
21. Hindu-ness or Hindutva, judged by Huntington’s criteria, has
been our identifying characteristic, by which we have been
recognized world-wide. The territory in which Hindus lived was
known as Hindustan, i.e., a specific area of a collective of
persons who are bonded together by this Hindu-ness. That is the
Substance.
22. The Salience of Huntington thus was given religious and
spiritual significance by tirth yatra, kumbh mela, common
festivals, and in the celebration of events in the Ithihasa, viz.,
Ramayana and Mahabharata. That is why all great mass movements in
India have been inspired by spiritual persons, or by invoking
spirituality as did Mahatma Gandhi when he made Ram Rajya as a
goal, and Gita as the basis of his actions.
23. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, no Hindu chauvinist, acknowledged this
fact in on two occasions: First in his 1948 Convocation Address to
the Aligarh Muslim University wherein he averred that Hindus and
Muslims have the same ancestry, and Second, in his foreword to one
of Dr.Karan Singh books as follows: “It is significant to note that
great political mass movements in India have had a spiritual
background behind them”.
24. But the towering philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries
have affirmed the cultural oneness of India. I can do no better
than quote Dr.Ambedkar from his paper presented in the Department
of Anthropology seminar of Columbia University in 1916, and titled
“Castes in India, Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development”[
published in Indian Antiquary, Vol XLI, May 1917, p81-85].
25. On page 84, he concludes as follows: “Ethnically all people
[may] be heterogeneous. [But] it is the unity of culture that is
the basis of homogeneity. Taking this for granted, I venture to say
that there is no country that can rival the Indian peninsula with
respect to the unity of its culture. It has not only a geographic
unity, but it has over and above all a deeper and much more
fundamental unity—the indubitable cultural unity that covers the
land from end to end”
Continue at Current Indian History and Conclusion
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