Author: M.S.N. Menon
Publication: Organiser
Date: October 3, 2004
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=44&page=9
Yes. It can. For, India has been
for ages all about the art of living in peace and harmony-in co-existence
of races and religions and cultures. In short, in creating the perfect
man.
Canada is a country of only two
major ethnic strands-the Anglo-Saxons and the French. Both belong
to the European civilisation. Yet they have not been able to find
a way to live together in concord. But here in India, we have dozens
of races, languages and cultures. We live together in peace. Hence,
the global interest in the Indian experience.
Says a Father of the Jesuit Order:
"How people with many languages, religions and cultures live together
in India is a lesson to learn. India has an important role to play
in shaping the destiny of mankind." No wonder, in a sea of mono-
cultural societies, India was the only island of multiculturalism.
The Indian civilisation was founded
on freedom. It was never bound to a system. Aurobindo warned us not
to "chain the human spirit to some fixed mental idea or system of
religious cult . (not to) declare all departures from it a peril
and a disturbance." It is this freedom, which produced the great
diversity and richness of India´s civilisation.
The world can be organised only
on the basis of two principles: the principle of freedom and diversity
and the principle of uniformity with no freedom. The Semitic faiths-
Christianity and Islam-are organised on the principle of uniformity.
They have no freedom of enquiry. Can they become a model for the
world? No way.
The Hindus considered mankind as
one large family. But the Semitic faiths saw mankind as ´pagans´,
´heathens´ or ´ infidels´. And the Muslims
saw the earth divided into two hostile camps: Darul Islam and Darul
Harb. India does not believe that a loving God can divide mankind
into such irrational categories.
No wonder, it was India´s
tolerant spirit which attracted men from all over the world. They
all came-the Sakas, Kushanas, Scythians, Greeks, Tartars, Arabs,
Persians, Turks and so many others. The flow has not ceased. The
Tibetans are the latest to arrive and settle down.
There are believers and non-believers
in India, heretics and sceptics, rationalists and free thinkers,
materialists and idealists, hedonists and atheists. Indeed, the entire
spectrum of human propensities-from affirmation to denial.
Plato was engaged in creating the
perfect republic. That has remained the quest of the Western man
to this day. But India was engaged in creating the perfect man. Without
the perfect man, there can be no perfect republic. (How is it that
this idea did not occur to the Western ideologues? To Karl Marx,
for example?)
Gandhi´s Experiments with
Truth shows that India was on the right track. Gandhi had no faith
in systems. More so in Western systems based on an acquisitive society.
India´s is a universal spirit.
Never parochial. That continues to this day. India had never stretched
its nationalism beyond a point. "I do not subscribe to the doctrine
of ´Asia for Asians´," said the Mahatma to a Japanese
parliamentarian before the World War II.
Today about 10 to 15 million people
are on the move every year, looking for new homes and new jobs. Perhaps
this trend will continue. It cannot be stopped now. With what result?
We will have mixed societies everywhere. But man has not learnt how
to live in mixed societies. He has still the herd instincts. More
so Muslims, who prefer to live in Islamised societies.
If the world looks to India as a
model, it is because India is a more successful model of the mixed
society.
The West stands for an active life.
India for a contemplative, reflective life. Each is not complete
in itself. We have to bring the two together. The perfect republic
(the goal of the West) is not possible without the perfect man (the
goal of India). Hence, the importance of India as a world model.
