Of the many ancient streams of knowledge humanity developed, tested and experienced down the millennia, the manual for man India developed proved outstanding and singularly perfect. Out of the many, India developed the most coherent system, a harmony of values resulting in a perfectly balanced worldview.
All inclusive was its outlook, versatility its hallmark and concordance its culture. “India is an epitome of the world”, this comment by one of world’s most noted philosopher and historian explains well India’s all comprehending culture that took to the inner most recess of its heart all the noble aspects of the world’s cultures, living as well as dead.
British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee believed, India is a living civilization whose vitality would enlighten the future humanity, contribute to human unity and strike a balance between the extremities of all kinds. True, many centuries have elapsed, invaders carrying fire and sword pounded India one after the other. Torn to fragments geographically and psychically, India has for the past many years been a tortured nation bleeding in terrorist violence whose profile has occupied volumes of literature.
It is as if India’s glory has become almost irretrievably stooping with bandicoots of all types eating into the vitals of her national life. Denunciation of the motherland, derogatory writings and statements that blackmail its culture and declining it for mere kickbacks and pay-offs are common place.
Indeed the problems confronting our nation are legion. Yet, in the turbulent ocean with its currents flowing against and furious tides lashing out, India sails safe, looking at its distant destination, reminding one of the lonely sojourner, left untouched by the turbulent surroundings, venting his way to a fixed goal.
The Indian harmony of beauty and discipline
What made India stand the vicissitudes of time and tension that had completely done away many coeval cultures? Definitely it was India’s all comprehending nature, its readiness to imbibe the noble aspects and bring about coherence to give the final touch to the culture of humanity. Greece was an aesthetic culture with its tendency to glorify and enjoy everything beautiful notwithstanding whatever defect what it deemed beautiful had.
Discipline, shape, size and what not, the Greeks would ignore but were particular about Beauty. Hence the aesthetic nature of the Greek culture, opined Indian visionary Sri Aurobindo. Ancient Rome, Aurobindo says, ran in contrast. Beauty they discarded, and zeroed in more on the ethical aspects of life than anything. Enjoyment of beauty gave way to ethics and disciplines of life.
A strong and muzzled body was preferred to the beautiful. They never thought of any beauty attainable through the discipline like the Greeks who didn’t have any idea about the discipline leading to a higher beauty. Beauty and discipline thus had run parallel, never to make their rendezvous in a creative unity.
But India harmonized both discipline and beauty, making the former a means to realise the latter. It, down the millennia, was disciplining life to realize the ultimate beauty which is a “joy forever”. Discipline leads to the ultimate beauty or Saundarya which is another synonym for god. It is both ethics and aesthetics perfectly mixed with superb finish.
Sanatan Dharma and the principle of universal harmony
Though many in modern times interpreted the idea of Sanatana Dharma, Sri Aurobindo’s emendation looms most important. dharayateti dharma, that which sustains is dharma. This sustenance not being exclusive and as to sustain what is not specifically said, one may take the meaning ‘sustain all and everything’ including the very cosmic order.
Rhythm a derivative of the Sanskrit rita is what is at the basis of the order of the universe. What is not rita is anrita or disorder that runs in contrast to the natural order of things. Everything moves in symmetrical order as if directed by an unseen power.
More interesting are the elements of harmony and symmetry inlaid in the flowerbed of the cosmic dynamism which puzzled even scientists like Einstein as to whether God plays dice. Some time it appears, even the very aim of diversity itself is to lead things towards a creative unity which calls for coherence at all levels, individual, social and universal.
For this one must identify oneself with the entirety to see oneself in others and others in oneself which is the quintessence of Sanatana Dharma. It is the universal mutuality or the natural law working behind the secret of the existence. This all inclusive vision, Lokasamgraha, has been one with the thought of India right from the dawn of civilization. ‘Others first and oneself last’ was the idea of India’s national culture which looks to the world as one family or vasudhaivakutumbakam.
Dharma as the soul of India’s national life
Science explains this further. Human consciousness is the split portion of the universal consciousness and any action of man would affect the entire cosmos, opined Erwin Schrodinger when he addressed the question ‘What is Life’.
Definitely it is our thought and action that affect the universe and its consciousness both positively and negatively. Because it is this idea or ideal that sustains the very cosmos and the thinkers of ancient India having realized this and made this dharma or principle the very ideal of her national life.
Aurobindo wanted India to be the very embodiment of this dharma. Nation is parasakti or the universal energy concealed in geographical entity and the dharma the greatest priest appointed in the sanctum of this divinity, believed Sri Aurobindo.
Without following the command of this eternal dharma nothing can thrive, especially the dharmarashtra or the spiritual nation that is India. Hence the Mahayogi’s conclusion of his Uttarapara speech: “… it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish. The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism”.
India’s religion, dharma, was thus motivated by the principle of making human life perfect. Man making was its mission and turning the life divine was its end. In fact, in all the faculties of thought India developed, man was of prime importance. On the incubator of its thought was always a religion or dharma of humanity.
Sri Aurobindo’s vision of humanity as sacred
The entire nature was the ground for man’s sadhana or preparation for the higher life. India’s religion of man helped it realize the supra-rational beauty or the god within. This religion of humanity India developed down the millennia is centered on the worship of man.
It aims at discovering and acknowledging the inherent divinity and the intrinsic superiority of man. Summing up India’s religion of man Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Man must be sacred to man regardless of all distinction of race, creed, colour, nationality, status, political or social advancement. The body of man is to be respected, made immune from violence of outrage, fortified by science against disease or preventable death.
The life of man is to be held sacred also, given scope, protected from violations, from suppression, from mechanization, from belittling influences. The mind of man is to be released from all bonds, allowed freedom and range and opportunity, given all its means of self-training and self-development and organized in the play, of its powers for the service of humanity. Auro
And all this too is not to be held as an abstract or pious sentiment but be given full and practical recognition in the presence of men and nations and mankind”.
This, speaking largely, is the idea and spirit of the intellectual religion of humanity. This is the reflection of a nation’s aspiration to elevate man to godhood and the whole earth to the kingdom of heaven or to quote Sri Aurobindo once again, “to raise the world to god in deathless light, to bring god to the world on earth we come, to change the earthly life into life divine”.
This is the religion of India that stands above all fetters, limitations and confinements of creed, group or narrow minded nationalism.
