Sceptics often contend that India is an artificially cobbled nation, a nation which has multitude of languages, where people have different food habits and attire, and it could but be a forcefully tied up conglomeration of states
Ajay Bhardwaj
Sceptics often contend that India is an artificially cobbled nation, a nation which has multitude of languages, where people have different food habits and attire, and it could but be a forcefully tied up conglomeration of states into a
country. The argument is buttressed further saying that for the first time the concept of nation was planted here by the British and that but for the Empire, India would have been a group of splintered states.
How naive the contention looks when one takes a little peep into the cultural backdrop of the country. After all, this country was never India or Hindustan. It was perennially Bharat, or Bharatvarsh.
It was way back in 250 BC when Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador to the Maurya empire, coined the word “Indika”, as the title of his book that was an assortment of his impressions about the land he sought to decipher.
At the time, Bharat was popularly known as the land of Saptsindhu. It had no political connotations. The earth and the ethos tended to define it. In the daily ritual mantras, it was chanted religiously: Jambudvepe, Bharat khande…
Whatever sense Megesthenes could make of it, Adi Shankaracharya crystalised it comprehensively after he traversed the length and breath of Bharat and decided to set up four dhaams at the four corners of the country. Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram simply wove the nation together in a subtle but telling manner.
In order to make it more cohesive, Adi Shankaracharya made sure that the priests at Badrinath would be from the South, while those at Rameshwaram would be from the north. A similar discipline was made into a practice at other two dhaams as well.
Could there have been a better way to weave a nation ? And this was much before the USA had emerged out of the American revolution, or France had been formed post the French revolution.
The four dhaams set up by Adi Shankarachrya represented the four Vedas and four Brahamvakyas simultaneously. From Puri, the message was Prajñ?nam brahma (Consciousness is Brahman), from Rameshwaram, it was Aham brahm?smi (I am Brahman) and from Dwarika and Badrinath it was, Tattvamasi (That thou art) and Ayam?tm? brahma (This Atman is Brahman), respectively.
Adi Shankarachrya was not building an empire. He was simply
weaving each segment of Bharat together through the cultural idiom.
And it remains true to the elements till date. Even if every state has its language, the festivals celebrated are alike. Makar Sankranti is celebrated across the land in spite of different languages spoken by the participants.
Even if food customs are different from one corner of the land to the other, the common thread that binds them all together is “Om Namah Shivaay”.
And if we take it up politically, Chandragupta Maurya’s empire was far more consolidated in terms of vastness of Bharatvarsha than that of the Mughals or the British at any given time.
It”s time the sceptics altered their idiom and started
realising the ethos of Bharati that flows through the times in Bharat, despite of variegated food habits and languages that form the lives of Bharatvaasis.
