MY MOTHERLAND ... 43
India indestructible stands, weathering the aggression of the ages, the tempests of the times to march on invincible with the message of the Spirit. The Upanishads ring clear and conscious, penetrating the veils of aeons to spring to life yet again and send thrilling through the arteries of the nation the life-blood of eternal India.
Vivekananda sounded the clarion call in modern times from the citadel of Chicago that had been reserved by destiny to serve as the springboard for the advance of the universal civilisation of the Spirit.
Shankaracharya had begun the reversal of India's fortunes twelve centuries back and Vivekananda carried the baton forward thereon. The Vedas, rejected by the Buddhists for over thirteen centuries when they lay in hibernation, sprang forth to life and up came the resurgence of the Sanatan Dharma. Countless sages and saints followed, mystics and incarnations of the Divine, to reinvigorate the Vedic dharma.
Then followed the Mohammedan invasions. Wave after wave of Arab, Turk, Mongol, Afghan and Mughal hordes swept through northern India and pulverised its flourishing sublime culture. The Sanatan Dharma went into hibernation yet again largely as millions were forcibly perverted from their faith unto Islam, their temples desecrated and destroyed and mosques, grand in architectural content but destructive otherwise in design, came up. Those that resisted were put to the sword and Hinduism came to a halt. If a synthetic and a syncretic culture followed in phases, it was the genius of Hinduism that could do so despite the imposition of an alien proselytising and fanatical faith on its body politic.
The philosophy of the Vedas could withstand the shocks of the times, absorb and assimilate the foreign fold in its vast and all-accepting embrace to reemerge triumphant in phases. The deathblow from Islam could not deliver the intended death and the Sanatan Dharma lived on to even mould and modify several emerging sects of the desert cult. And thus arose, despite terrible devastation periodically dealt to Hinduism and the Hindus, the grand synthetic Hindu-Islamic culture about which our monuments and our music, our art and our architecture, our prose and our poetry speak volumes.
To be continued ...
Written by Sugata Bose
India indestructible stands, weathering the aggression of the ages, the tempests of the times to march on invincible with the message of the Spirit. The Upanishads ring clear and conscious, penetrating the veils of aeons to spring to life yet again and send thrilling through the arteries of the nation the life-blood of eternal India.
Vivekananda sounded the clarion call in modern times from the citadel of Chicago that had been reserved by destiny to serve as the springboard for the advance of the universal civilisation of the Spirit.
Shankaracharya had begun the reversal of India's fortunes twelve centuries back and Vivekananda carried the baton forward thereon. The Vedas, rejected by the Buddhists for over thirteen centuries when they lay in hibernation, sprang forth to life and up came the resurgence of the Sanatan Dharma. Countless sages and saints followed, mystics and incarnations of the Divine, to reinvigorate the Vedic dharma.
Then followed the Mohammedan invasions. Wave after wave of Arab, Turk, Mongol, Afghan and Mughal hordes swept through northern India and pulverised its flourishing sublime culture. The Sanatan Dharma went into hibernation yet again largely as millions were forcibly perverted from their faith unto Islam, their temples desecrated and destroyed and mosques, grand in architectural content but destructive otherwise in design, came up. Those that resisted were put to the sword and Hinduism came to a halt. If a synthetic and a syncretic culture followed in phases, it was the genius of Hinduism that could do so despite the imposition of an alien proselytising and fanatical faith on its body politic.
The philosophy of the Vedas could withstand the shocks of the times, absorb and assimilate the foreign fold in its vast and all-accepting embrace to reemerge triumphant in phases. The deathblow from Islam could not deliver the intended death and the Sanatan Dharma lived on to even mould and modify several emerging sects of the desert cult. And thus arose, despite terrible devastation periodically dealt to Hinduism and the Hindus, the grand synthetic Hindu-Islamic culture about which our monuments and our music, our art and our architecture, our prose and our poetry speak volumes.
To be continued ...
Written by Sugata Bose
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