August 15, 2021

Happy Independence Day, India!

I am about to share something I wrote in 2013. It’s not often that I fully agree with what I said eight or ten years ago. Our ideas are always evolving. In this case, I wouldn’t change a thing. I figured I’d share it with you on August 15, 2021, which marks the 75th celebration of the day the British left and the nation of India coming into being. Read on.

This was first written on August 15, 2013. I lived in Bangalore, India at that time. I have made some additions today in 2021. I now live in San Jose, California.

Falling in love with India

I recall reading Plato’s Republic in 1996. In the book, Socrates asks what Justice is and Polemarchus responds by describing it as “helping your friends and harming your enemies.” Indeed, it was the accepted opinion among the ancient Greeks (and many societies which followed them) that the morally right thing to do was to favor the insiders. And Socrates responds to Polemarchus by questioning the exclusivism of his moral position. Thus was launched a debate over the morality of patriotism and nationalism that reverberated through Europe over centuries. Nearly two thousand years later, Kant and others concluded that morality could not be confined to narrow dimensions of ‘me, mine, my family, my city or my nation’ and extended it to include humankind as a whole.

Is patriotism morally just?

I recall pondering, as an immigrant in a foreign land, the notion of patriotism. What logic lay in blind loyalty to a nation, whose citizenship you hold only because of a random act of nature? Or did it make sense to be loyal to a nation which welcomes you as a citizen after having examined what you had to offer? Have nations and governments done enough to deserve our loyalty? Wasn’t cosmopolitanism, a notion first espoused by Diogenes who declared himself a citizen of the world, more morally acceptable than patriotism? Wasn’t patriotism at odds with a just, moral view of the world?

The slippery slope of morality

Should one country succeed at the expense of another? What makes anyone believe that they are the chosen ones? There are no easy answers. Suppose, for example, the Prime Minister of India when faced with the choice of securing Indian access to oil in Iran versus the choice of allowing Chinese access to those reserves, decided (rather disinterestedly and morally) on the latter because it would lead to greater overall good of mankind. While morally laudable, it may, by no stretch of imagination, be construed as a rightful discharge of his duties as a leader of a nation. Morality is often a slippery slope.

Life is immense

The story of India is breathtaking. It is rich, multifaceted and has few parallels in human history. Ancient India had her own ideal of perfection towards which she directed her efforts. Her aim was not the attainment of power. She neglected to cultivate capabilities, institutions and organizations for material purposes. She ignored wealth and its trappings. The ideal that India tried to realize led her best men and women to introspection and contemplation. The treasures she gained for mankind from these endeavors, by piercing the veil of ignorance and peering into the mysteries of reality, cost her dearly in the sphere of material success. Yet, it was a sublime undertaking. It was an achievement of the highest of human aspirations. An ideal of nothing less than the Realization of the Infinite.

For these ancient seers, there was no gap in their vision of perfection. They saw no break in the unity of creation. They acknowledged not even death as creating a rift in the field of reality. They said, “Its reflection is death as well as immortality.” They saw no essential difference between life and death, and they said with absolute confidence that, “It is life that is death, and it is death that is life.”

It fills me with joy and great hope for our own future when I realize that there was a time in the remote past when our ancestors stood under the warm Indian skies and joyfully greeted the unity in creation. Theirs was not a fantasy of an anthropocentric world. Their visions did not entail seeing reflections of man in the grotesque images of human drama. It was the crossing of the barriers of selfishness to become more than human. To become one with everything. It was a liberation from the exaggerations of the self. These ancient Rishis felt in the serene depth of their minds the same stillness, which divides itself into the endless forms of the world, and shines in our innermost being as consciousness.

They celebrated with the same cheer both the comings and the goings of life and death. They knew that mere appearance and disappearance are like waves on the surface of an ocean. That, the Ocean of Existence and Consciousness is permanent, and knows no decay or depreciation.

Life is immense. This is the summum bonum of India’s scriptures, the Upanishad. It is the spirit of India itself. It is the one lesson I have learned from being Indian that I hope I will never forget as long as I live.

Falling in love with India

To this day, I haven’t yet resolved the conflict which Plato created in my mind. I am rather enamored by a universal humanism in which I choose not to belong to just one nation or people. Yes, I am Indian. I am American. And I am much much more. I vibe with John Lennon’s secular humanism that believes that all humans are equal and share the same aspirations, fears and hopes regardless of our histories and geographies. In my heart, I believe in the Vedantic ideals of oneness and universalism. At the same time, I have a hard time holding back tears when the words “Hey Ram” stream into my consciousness and evoke a pride in having come from a society which brought about a man, Gandhi, who Einstein described as “generations to come will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” A pride in having experienced some part, even if small, of a society that sang thousands of years ago about the exalted nature of the human soul. I pray for the day when we will have found our way forward to the spiritual excellence that once defined the Indian ethos.

I have interrogated myself often and at length on why I fell in love with India. And I have come to believe that I love India not because I was born on her soil but because there’s something touching and deeply inspiring about the way she’s tolerant and merciful of the human condition with all its frailties and foibles. It is a country that will lift you from a low to a high that will amaze you. Never mind that it pushed you into the low in the first place. After all, you need to truly understand pain before you can enjoy pleasure. There is no question that she will provide you with an adequate supply of both. If there’s one place on earth which has willingly embraced everything, it is India. If there is a place on earth that will teach you humility and awaken your soul, it is India. May she prosper, shine in all her glory and provide comfort to all other nations and peoples.

Take time to examine your own beliefs. Find yourself before you fall in love with India. And when you do so, I will guarantee you that it will be a love of a lifetime.

Life is immense. Happy Independence Day! God bless India. God bless us all.