Today, 15th August, is the Independence Day of India.
India is the best country to live and die in.
Despite its numerous social, political and various other drawbacks and shortcomings, India yet beats every other country in the world at least as far as spirituality and metaphysical matters are concerned.
The mystical truths revealed in the ancient spiritual texts of India are far intellectually incisive and metaphysically relevant than all other esoteric texts of the world put together. And this I say after having gone through most of the basic and most essential scriptural writings of the major religions of current times, as too of the faith and belief of other societies and cultures existing outside India, now or in the times past. In fact I have no hesitation in saying that the scriptures elsewhere in the world - except may be for some Sufi writings here and there and the hard Gnostic teachings of Jesus, if understood with an Eastern eye of the yogic way - the knowledge contained in these foreign texts is but kindergarten stuff in comparison to, say, the Upanishads and the Vedanta.
This is because laissez faire in spiritual matters reigns India.
Anyone and everyone in India has always been free to believe in his or her own crap! In this holy land one may defer to and believe in any deity one fancies; or is foolish enough to hold true. Another may hold true One God theory. Yet the next fella may well worship all the 330000000 gods and goddesses that are said to be there in the Indian belief system. An atheist too is not shunned here. Neither is a devil worshipper or a witch burned. It may have happened in a freak case here and there in the past, committed by some utterly ignorant and extreme elements within the society. But never has it been sanctioned by the Church, as indeed had been the case in Western societies. Indians even find god in a stone. One’s next door neighbour could be an idol worshipper. In other words, as many people there are in India that many belief systems are here in India!
Yet, and despite the above mentioned open and latent differences in one’s faith and belief, the Indians do what they wish or will in spiritual matters. Of course some bad customs and rituals also exist in my motherland vis-a-vis religious practices. As often as they crop up that often they are also opposed by many. At times Indians even take it to the Courts.
However, in India opponents of each other, unlike other religious cults around the world, do not propound the ridiculous theory of the disbelievers going to hell because of their non belief. Nor do believers in one god bay for the blood of another Indian who venerates his or her own fancied deity in one’s own way.
It is so because deep within its spiritual ethos in India lies an unsaid unity of thought. Even if it is not said so aloud, it yet is present consistently and permanently hereof since the ancient times. It brings about an unsaid gentle and generous amicability of heart, mind and spirit between people. Within the Indian societal structure and culture, even among the more simple minded ones, this unwritten metaphysical tenet is held sacred. It is amazing, almost surreal, how it comes about. But it does.
Somehow people of India for most part believe that despite everyone worshipping one’s own god or goddess, at the End is but One Godhead.
This higher metaphysical truth and reality as espoused by Indian sages and seers is that an indivisible, unbreakable, eternal oneness of infinity underlies each and everything. Its message and essence stays within the ethers, so to say. It does so as do dawn and dusk in the sky, and the sky in the cosmos.
Therefore, owing to the ethereal and optimal metaphysical wisdom of higher scriptural texts of ancient India postulating that each and everything is but One, its metaphysical fundamentals, howsoever little and broken, do seem to reverberate in the skies. Thus this ‘oneness of all’ basic tenet of Indian spirituality does seem to linger on and filter down to even the lowest strata of the Indian society. As a result many a religious dispute is settled by just saying, “Well, in the End, is not there but One God?”
So, the Indian spiritual system is very unlike the Abrahamic religions.
The latter label the disbelievers in their own fancied scripturally endorsed (one) god as heathens and infidels. It is interesting to note that Judaism and Christianity do not believe their respective god is identical to each other’s or the same as the Islamic god. Thus Christian god is not the Jewish god. And Jehovah is not Allah. It matters not what the Muslims assert. However, in one way the Abrahamic religions concur. All three seek the non believers’ heads, including those of the other two! More often than not it is sought so literally.
Alternatively, even an uneducated average Indian does not thus believe or hold true and endorse. It is so because of the ever lingering ‘one godliness’ idea ever-present in the average Indian mind; as perpetuated by the ancient saints and yogis of earlier times.
This sets apart India from rest of the world.
In other cultures elsewhere, as historically proven, more or less their traditionally handed down superstitions and beliefs seek compliance with and sublimation to their own ancestral nansy pansy. Dare one defy it or believe otherwise, then, this same cultish parochialism seeks downrightly and up-tightly the damnation and destruction of another fellow’s faith and fancy.
Howsoever lacking behind Indians may be economically, at least spiritually they are not so. For they hardly behave as badly as the belief system of other nations makes do people around the world. At the very least an overwhelming Indians would not ever harbour the thought of killing each other for believing in a god different than their own. To them it would be unholy.
If in the more recent times it has happened, then, it did so because alien cultures and their cults belligerently believe in conversion of the natives to their own fold. It is a sad fact that the pre-independence Colonists and invaders, owing to their insular and non secular isms, keep seeking an active degradation and destruction of the Indian system of faith and belief. It breaks the societal peace.
In the spirit of truthfulness and fairness it must be stated that both Christianity and Islam, though adopted by many an Indian, is largely spread here in India by conceited conversion. Though denying doing so, both isms do so. The Jews and the Zoroastrians in India keep to themselves. Unlike the Christians and the Muslims, they have never ever had any issue with their fellow Indians over matters of religion. Not a drop of blood has been shed thus. The Jews and the Zoroastrians live in peace in India. On the other hand, both Christianity and Islam are evangelical and proselytizing religions. Thus over matters of faith both are forever at war with the rest of the world; as indeed they are in India.
On the whole however every Indian is constitutionally entitled to, as too as a verifiable ground reality, is able to practice one’s religion in peace. An average Indian does not seem to give a damn about another’s belief. If some do, then, they do so of their own free will and volition. But there is a reason even for this bad behaviour. It stems from the historical fact that Indians have been suppressed for long, for hundreds of years in fact, by the Mughal invaders and the European Colonists. Their leftover loyalists’ yet pervasive and invasive religious attitudes and actions do seem to rankle and rouse many an Indian.
Independence of India has done much to bring its people to its roots.
The root belief of India is of everyone being a child of God. It is that of there being One Godhead despite innumerable gods and goddesses. And that whatsoever faith one professes, it will take one to That Which Is, sooner or later, one day or another. Thus being the quantum idea of Indian spirituality, it makes the people of India far more peaceful than the followers of all other isms and religions elsewhere on earth.
Peace is at the root of spirituality in India.
Consequently, the mindset and milieu for seeking and finding the Alpha and the Omega in the land of my birth is exquisitely equivocal and coherently conducive for anyone sincerely wanting to know the Ultimate Reality.
Now, what has Independence of India got to do with it all?
Well, had not India got freedom from the British colonists on 15th August 1947, we the Indians would have remained chained to the invaders’ yoke as an enslaved bull, going in circles, never getting anywhere. We would have been kept down as subdued animals and primates by this ungodly lot. These self righteous uppity usurpers, the Colonial masters were made to leave after a hard fought freedom struggle in India. Had they a choice these Colonists would have been yet bleeding India dry to date.
Written records of those times make manifest the fact that the moral and movable value system under whose banner the alien masters set foot in India was to by hook or crook convert us heathens into Christians. Their agenda was mostly religious. But it expanded and mutated into a more economical one once these greedy foreigners realized there was much bounty to be had in this wonderfully rich ancient land. The French as also the East India Company gained hold here. As did other foreign powers, the British royalty also realized they had a goldmine in their hands. Hence, with conceit and cruelty and with deceit and thuggery the Colonial British Empire occupied India.
With impunity, for close to two hundred years the British colonists pillaged and looted this holy land, which is my motherland.
To date the British have not rendered any apology whatsoever for the various atrocities committed by them in India. The Jalianwala Bagh tragedy in Amritsar is a moot point hereof. The British had ordered opening fire thereof. It resulted in killing hundreds of innocent, unarmed people who had gathered therein to protest against the British atrocities. The Queen has repeatedly refused to return the Kohinoor diamond which her loyalists and royalists stole from India. In fact, it is argued with some pretty good reasons that the Industrial Revolution in Britain came about only with the booty looted from India.
Through implicit and explicit colonial ambitions, the cohorts of the Spanish, the French and the Portugal royalty too occupied India for long periods. Their said agenda too was religious: of ‘harvesting souls’ for their god. But at the core of the black hearts of the Whites was greed and villainy. They wanted very much to do exactly what the British were doing in India; namely, suppressing the locals and taking away their vocals. Thus the aim and objective of the foreign Colonists was to eventually leave the natives impoverished, humiliated, with their basic rights as human beings usurped and eroded. And of course in the process getting the national treasure of India in their ships loaded!
Not many people know that even after the Independence of India the French kept occupying part of India till 1954. Denmark-Norway held colonial possessions in India for more than 200 years! And oh-so goody good Dutch had invaded India but got defeated in 1741. They never recovered from this defeat, and thereafter left us in peace. The Spanish were given territorial rights in India by Pope Alexander VI on 25th September 1493, but the rights were taken away after a year or so. The Portuguese continued to occupy Goa and left only in 1961; that too only when the Indian armed forces left them no choice but to surrender. The British left after 200 years of plunder of India, the Portuguese after 400 years!
India has never invaded another country.
The so-called pillars of democracy now days and the supposedly civilized nations of the West - France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Britain - all of them did.
Mind you, all of these predators and marauders were Christian. Before them, from 643 A.D. onwards the Arabian looters started raiding India. Their reign lasted uptill1958, when the British defeated the last Mughal emperor and exiled him. Of course, as we all know, these Arabian invaders were Muslims.
Independence of India was also from these mental-gentle powers of alien lands.
Despite the predatory and proselytising nature of both Christianity and Islam, the people of India yet do manage to get along with them. And in modern times the Indian people are to a large extent accepting and tolerant of these alien religions, even though these faiths seek the conversion of whole of India to their own harboured god and ism.
As a citizen of India born much after the Independence Day of India I have been made healthy, wealthy and wise by the fruits of a free society. The sacrifices made by our ancestors, my country’s freedom fighters, have enabled me to grow up in a free, secular and democratic India.
The freedom that every citizen of India enjoys now and is entitled to after its Independence cannot ever be repaid by us who are born after it. Thus 15th August, the Independence Day of India, is a born-again day for all Indians. Exonerated from the cruel influences of and inflictions by the Colonists, we the people of India are able to hold our head up high, even now when the Chinese dragon lurks nearby. Of course much needs be done. But much has been.
We are a young democracy. But we are an old civilization.
Our minds, though often burdened by modern living, are free. Had we yet been an enslaved people we would not have been who we are today.
And what are we today?
As a direct consequence of the Independence of India, its beneficiaries, we the people of this nation can just be! No kings or queens, unlike many of the European countries even today, rule us. They may be titular heads of State, yet their monarchy yet is retained and to a large extent revered by the Whites. We got rid of the maharajas, the Europeans have not. No dictators, unlike the heads of many Arabian nations, can dictate terms to us. No religion or religious heads can enslave us.
In other words, we Indians are free to think for ourselves.
Therefore we the people of a free India were we to so choose, can be theist, agnostic and even an atheist. Alternatively, we could very well get what in ancient times Buddha did, or what the sages and seers of India had self-actualized and self-realized from the beginning of time, and that which in modern times Guru Nanak got. Thank God!
Consequently, owing to the freedom of thought and action granted to me by my holy motherland under its democratic and secular milieu, on this day, the Independence Day of India, today I as a spiritual being have got what I wished for, and wanted to be.
I breathe free. I live free. I shall die free. I am free.
I have a life.
