This exaltation for India, which we Indians ourselves share with others objectively, historically, spiritually, is not an indication by any means of the truth of India, but of the need for an India. If there were no India, with the Seven Seas to the south and the white-swan Himalaya to the north, if India did not have the holy Ganga and the Cape of the Virgin Goddess (Kanya Kumari), if India were not the land of the elephant and the monkey world, of parakeets and peacocks, and of the saintly cobra—if India did not have the diamonds of Golconda and the pearls of Coromandel, if India did not possess muslin fine ‘as a cloud’ or spice holy, rich as sandal, with cardamom, cinnamon, aloes, musk—if India were not the land of sadhus and of the suttee, of thugs, pariahs, devadasis and unbloody famines—if India were not the country of Asoka or Bhoja Raja, of Vikramaditya or of Akbar Padishah—India would still be. India is not a country (desa), it is a perspective (darsana); it is not a climate but a mood (rasa)4 in the play of the Absolute—it is not the Indian who makes India but ‘India’ makes the Indian, and this India is in all: it is that centre of awareness wherein one’s self dips again and again into the hearth of Agni, as the sacrifice is made. All acts are rites when ‘the perfect performance of our tasks, whatever they may be, is itself the celebration of the rite’—so says Ananda Coomaraswamy.

Of such is the meaning of India. And in that rasa he that liveth, liveth in India. Hence it is Sri Sankara has said: ‘My native land, the three worlds.’5 Let this India be.

So that in our jungle, where the hare and the otter, the jackal and the monkey are companions, each day is a holy day and the god Sakka comes to each one of us to ask of our offerings. And may the holy fire be made and the vermin shaken away—‘If there be little creatures in my fur, let them fall or let them fly’—and once the fire is heaped up, may we spring forth into it, with a joyful mind. The fire is cool, and the snow melts, each stream a little Ganga—on which floats the Paramahamsa, the Royal Swan.

2

India—A Fable1

Advayataiva siva

(Non-duality alone is auspicious)

Sri Sankara