dr vijaya: The Idea of Bharat

jan 27th, 2011

guha, i continue to maintain, is a mediocrity. he's a brown william dalrymple, who has managed to attach himself to the teats of the nehruvian stalinist brigade. he produces 'history on demand' carefully manufactured to fit with stalinist prejudices.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Vijay 




' The Idea of Bharat'

Dr.Vijaya Rajiva (Haindava Keralam,Jan.25,2011)


Historian Ramachandra Guha has provided a survey of the Indian scene which he
holds together with the phrase 'the idea of India'. It is a bumpy ride, probably


like the motor car drives he undertook from various points in India. To change
the metaphor, his article in Outlookindia is a glad

bag of disconnected thoughts, which he throws in and tries to bind together with


that magic phrase 'the idea of India'
('A Nation Consumed by the State', Outlookindia,Jan.31,2001).

Maoism, Communism, Insurgency, Nationalism, are all thrown together
higglepiggledy and for good measure he
throws in Corruption, the State of the Economy and so on. The burden of his song


is that India has survived as a
nation despite dark predictions by the former colonial masters, notably Winston
Churchill, that India as a nation would not survive.

Yet it has. The question why it has so survived, is not answered by Ram Guha and


the reason for that is not far to seek.
Psychologically and spiritually he belongs to the generation of Indians who
cannot admit the reality of the
Idea of Bharat that historically held together the people of this vast
subcontinent for several millenia. His arguments are weakened by his tacit
assumption that India was never united, was never a nation in the European sense


of the word (an argument to this day advanced by some Western scholars). And yet


clearly, it held together, long before the Indian Constitution of post
independence India, which also makes Indians readily accept the lofty goals of
the Indian Constitution.

That uniting bond, that vision, is the Idea of Bharat. It is older than the Idea


of India. It incorporates the ideals of the Indian Constitution but is not a
lifeless set of goals; it spells out the long cherished and long nurtured living


ideals of Hinduism. The word 'rashtra' is of Vedic origin.In the Rig Veda, Vak
(the Goddess Sarasvati) speaks of the
Rashtra.

Sarasvati is associated in the Hindu mind with the plenitude of rivers and
prosperity and as well the wisdom of existential realities. The Hindu Rashtra is


what binds the Indian people and has bound them together since time immemorial.
The word 'rashtra' cannot easily be translated into the idiom of Western usage.
It is a word that the Hindu mind which has not been colonised can understand. .
. .

The Idea of India is incomplete without the Idea of Bharat and as Ram Guha
presents it  in his truncated version,it is not an authentic account of the
realities of the Indian subcontinent, either of its past or present
configurations. . . . . (READ MORE)

http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=13156

VR