The History of Bharatvarsha -3

The superstition that history has to be similar in all countries must be abandoned. The person who has become hardboiled after going through the biography of Rothschilde, while dealing with the life of Christ is likely to call for his account books and office diary. And if he fails to find them then he will form a very poor opinion of Christ and would say: "A fellow who was not worth even a nickel, how come he can have a biography?" Similarly, those who give up all hope of Indian history because they fail to find the royal genealogies and accounts of the conquests and defeats in the "Indian official record room" and say, "How can there be any history when there is no politics?" are like people who look for aborigine in paddy fields. And when they do not find it there, in their frustration they refuse to count paddy as a variety of grains at all. All fields do not yield the same crop. One who knows this and thus looks for the proper crop in the proper field is a truly wise person.

An examination of Christ's account book may lead one to a poor opinion of him, but when one inquires into other aspects of his life the account books become utterly irrelevant. Similarly, if we view from a special perspective with the full knowledge that in matters of politics Bharatavarsha has been deficient, this deficiency cannot be dismissed as of no consequence. By not viewing Bharatavarsha from Bharatavarsha's own perspective, since our very childhood we learn to demean her and in consequence we get demeaned ourselves. An English boy knows that his ancestors won many wars, conquered many lands and did extensive trade and commerce: he too wants to be an heir to the glory of war, of wealth, of success in commerce. We learn that our ancestors did not conquer other countries and did not extend trade and commerce: to make just this fact known is the very purpose of the history of India. What our ancestors did we do not know; therefore we also do not know what we ought to aim for. Therefore we have to imitate others. Whom should we blame for this? The way we get our education since our very childhood, with every passing day we get increasingly alienated from our own country till a sense of rebellion against the land of our birth overtakes our mind.

Even the educated people in our country are often dismayed and are found asking every now and then, "What do you mean by our country? What distinctive attitude marks it out? Where is that located now? Where was it located before?" We cannot have answers to these merely by raising questions. Because the issue is so subtle and so vast it cannot be comprehended through mere arguments. Neither the English nor the French, or for that matter, the natives of any country can answer in one word the question: what is the distinctive attitude of one's own country or where is the real location of its spirit? Like the life inside the body this spirit is a directly perceptible reality. And like life, it is extremely difficult to fathom it through logical definitions. Since the very childhood it enters our being through diverse avenues in diverse forms; and it finds passage into our knowledge, our love, our imagination. With its wonderful powers it unobtrusively fashions us; it does not allow the growth of a barrier separating our past from the present. It is by the grace of it that we are not delimited, we are not atomized. How can we give expression in a few words of logical precision to this primordial and hidden spirit endowed with wonderful vigour, in order to satisfy the skeptic inquirer?