THE ILLUMINATION THAT IS INDIA

I thoroughly disagree with you, dear friend, that the British cultural and linguistic tradition stands superior to our Indian cultural and linguistic tradition. A lively debate would be welcome if members may spare the time as and when they can. Thank you, however, for bringing up this contentious issue which is ingrained as an axiomatic truth in some Indians even today, for the colonial hangover simply will not leave them even seven decades after their supposed freedom.
I would have preferred you to have used the word 'excellence' instead of 'superiority' for it would have made your point without passing a blanket judgement, in relative intent, though, and not in articulation direct, on the Indian cultural and linguistic heritage to which you and I belong, and proudly so.
Chhaandas bhasha, Sanskrit, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and all the lore existed when the English and their language had not been born and their civilisation lay in the forests of Britain. Herein was a culture as ancient as any that has been and as glorious as the high Himalayas and the Ganga and the Sindhu and the Saraswati that nourished it.
I am also an ardent reader of the English language and its superlative literature with Shakespeare unshaken as its crowning jewel; I also do write copiously as even now in the English language which has been bequeathed to us by the British in their bid to transform Indians the Macaulay way and I feel gratified that, despite the perfidies of the times that did what they did to subjected races and do what they do even now, the English language and literature has been a gift in treachery to us which we absorbed well enough to outdo the British in many an endeavour they engaged in to subjugate India but failed in the process, for the very exposure to the wide world of Occidental thinking consequent on the mastery of the English language by Indians made continued colonisation impossible in the end for the Crown.
A cursory glance through, a casual acquaintance with the history of our great country and its age-old civilisation, which has in eminent quarters the world over been hailed as the mother of all that is sublime and best in the spiritual culture of humanity, in the scientific culture of linguistics, to which may I add, algebra, arithmetic (ref. the Hindu numeral system), geometry, trigonometry, astronomy (ref. Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Varahamihir, Bhaskara), physics, chemistry, medicine (ref. Shusrut's surgery), literature (ref. Kalidas, Vyasa, Valmiki, Banabhatta, Adi Shanakacharya), grammar (ref. Panini), Yoga (ref. Patanjali) and so many other disciplines encompassing the gamut of human endeavour, will reveal the veracity of my assertion that India and her civilisation stand supreme in the annals of world history as the climactic development of human thinking, for here and here alone has been discovered ages ago, in the remotest times where history dares not peep, the essential unity of all existence and the equation of the individual soul with the universal Self in the celebrated Mandukya Upanishad mantra 'Ayam Atma Brahma' (this Atman is Brahman). And what a revelation will be it be for self-oblivious Indians, mired in the morass of material living and washed in the cerebellum and the cerebrum and the medulla by a culture Occidental that leaves them no space to meditate on their own, when they hear the glad tidings of the Divine coming from afar the other shore or, nearer by far, from the innermost recesses of their own hearts where sings the Lord in eternal company with his friend forever, the Song Celestial! 'Oi mahashindhur opaar hotey ki sangeet bheshey ashey!' (From yonder the other shore of the vast ocean of existence, oh, what melodic strains come floating by!) I leave it now to the discernment and judgement thereof of illumined Indians inspired by the music that is India to come to conclusions, myself having long vouched to live and die for the motherland. Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!