INDIA, March 29, 2017 (Daily Mail by David Frawley): India is one of the oldest countries in the world and probably the best at preserving its ancient heritage. The Vedas compiled thousands of years ago remain commonly chanted today. India’s independence movement was rooted in Yoga and Vedanta and the country’s older civilizational inspiration through Swami Vivekananda, Tilak, Aurobindo and Gandhi.
Yet after independence Nehru and his followers rejected India’s past for a very different idea of India. Congress outsourced education and cultural development to the far left, Marxists and Communists, with which Nehru had much affinity. India’s political independence unfortunately continued an intellectual dependence on the West, perpetuating a denigration of the traditional culture, led by Delhi elite, which though located in India, kept their minds residing outside the country. Indira Gandhi brought back some regard for traditional India but in the end supported the same Westernized elite for whom Indian civilisation was a dangerous myth to be eliminated for modern progress.
Then came Narendra Modi, who dramatically changed the equation in his unexpected decisive electoral mandate in 2014, adding a power of vision, personal charisma, a forward development agenda and tremendous work to usher in a new India. Modi as Prime Minister brings in a technologically progressive and intellectually sophisticated form of the older India/Bharatiya ethos as a dynamic creative force.
At the same time Modi visits temples and honors the great deities and gurus of the country. He is not afraid to be a Hindu or to attend Hindu functions, while at the same time excelling as a modern technocrat. Yet his view of Hinduism is equally sophisticated, not of a sectarian, belief-based religion but a broad spiritual path of Yoga, meditation, universal consciousness and self-realisation. Modi shows at a political level what the world has seen at a spiritual level, that the dharmic traditions of India, not only Hindu but also Buddhist, Jain and Sikh, have tremendous relevance if repackaged in a modern language and allied with cutting edge trends in spirituality, medicine, and science.
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