The Motherland

1. “What a land! Whosoever stands on this sacred land, whether alien or child of the soil, feels himself surrounded – unless his soul is degraded to the level of brute animals – by the living thoughts of the earth’s best and purest sons, who had been working to raise the animals to the divine for centuries. Its very air is vibrant with the pulsations of spirituality. This land is sacred – to philosophy, to ethics and spirituality, to all that tends to give a respite to man in his incessant struggle to preserve the animal in him, to all the training that makes a man to throw off the garment of brutality and stand revealed as the spirit immortal – the birthless, the deathless, the ever-blessed – the land where the cup of pleasure was full, and fuller has been the cup of misery, until here, first of all, man found out that it was all vanity; here, first of all in the prime of youth, in the lap of luxury, in the height of glory and plentitude of power, he broke through the fetters of delusion. Here, in this ocean of humanity, amidst the sharp interaction and strong currents of pleasure and pain, strength and weakness, wealth and poverty, joy and sorrow, smile and tears, life and death, in the melting rhythm of eternal peace and calmness, arose the throne of renunciation! Here in this land whose beginning history fails to trace, the great problems of life and death, of the thirst for life, and the vain and mad struggles to preserve it which only result in the accumulation of woes, were first grappled with and solved – as they were never before and will be never hereafter; for here and here alone was discovered that even life itself is only the shadow of something which alone is real. This is the land where alone religion was made practical and real, and where alone men and women plunged boldly in to realize the goal, just as in other lands they madly plunged in to realize the pleasures of life by robbing their weaker brethren. Here and here alone the human heart expanded till it included not only all human beings but also birds, beasts and plants; from the highest gods to the grains of sand, where the highest and the lowest, all find a place in the heart of man, grown great and infinite. And here alone, the human soul studied the universe as one unbroken unity whose every pulse was its own pulse.

2. If there is any land on this earth that can lay claim to be the blessed Punya Bhumi, to be the land to which all souls on this earth must come to account for their karmas, the land to which every soul that is wending its way Godwards must come to attain its last hope, the land where humanity has attained its highest towards gentleness, generosity, purity and calmness, above all, the land of introspection and spirituality – it is India.

3. India is the ancient land where wisdom made its home before it went to any other country, the soil which has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived, the land where arose the doctrines of immortality of the soul, the existence of a supervising and immanent God in nature and in man, and where the highest ideals of religion and philosophy have attained their culminating points. This is the land from where the tidal waves of spirituality and philosophy have time and again rushed out and deluged the world and once more such tides must proceed in order to bring life and vigour into the decaying races of mankind. It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of hundreds of foreign invasions and hundreds of upheavals of manner and customs. It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the world with its undying vigour and indestructible life. Its life is of the same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end – immortal; and we are its children.

4. The debt which the world owes to our Motherland is immense. Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist, when Rome was not thought of and when the very fathers of the modern Europeans lived in the forests and painted themselves blue. Even earlier, of which the history has no record, and tradition dares not to peer into the gloom of intense past, from then until now, ideas after ideas have incessantly flowed out of her, but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind and peace before it.

5. We hear so much of the degradation of India and an air of despondency and despair seems to surround us from all sides. It may be that the current of our national life at the moment may be flowing slow and half conscious, but it is flowing, it can never stop. Here and there, there may be a weak link in this chain but she is walking with her own majestic steps, our motherland – to fulfill her glorious destiny, which no power on earth or heaven can stop, a glorious destiny which has thrown a challenge to the whole world by proclaiming that, “Not by progeny nor by wealth but by renunciation alone immortality is reached”. Other races tried in the past to solve the riddle of this world on the plane of desires and sense enjoyment and they all failed, got dissipated and became extinct in the process under the weight of wickedness and misery, lust of power and gold or are tottering to fall at present. To them, question is not yet finally decided whether peace will survive or war, whether patience will survive or intolerance, whether goodness will survive or wickedness, whether muscle will survive or brain and whether worldliness will survive or spirituality. But we have solved it ages ago and held on to it through evil or good fortune and will hold on to it till the end of time. Our solution is renunciation. Our aim and end is the spiritualization of the human race, from which we never ever deviated whether the Tartars ruled or the Turks, whether the Moguls ruled or the English. And that too has been done not by the blast of war-trumpets or the march of armies but gently and subtly like the fall of dew which brings into bloom the fairest flowers of the world. This influence being gentle in nature may have to wait for a fortunate combination of circumstances to go out and prevail in other lands, though it never ceased to work within the limits of our country. Millions in all other civilized lands are waiting for this message which will save them from the hideous abyss of materialism in which modern moneymaking civilization is driving them headlong. India our motherland, has an eternal mine of spirituality and stands as beacon of hope for everyone in search of Him, who is the only real existence in an universe of vanishing shadows.

6. It is a generally said and accepted notion that the fittest alone survive. Then how it is that India, the most unfit if tested on the touchstone of this universally accepted premise, could bear the most awful misfortunes that can ever befall on a populace and yet shows no sign of decay? It is the eyewitness of the rise and fall of great empires. Great indeed are the deeds of those who can deluge the world in blood and misery at the batting of an eyelid, great indeed is the glory of those who to keep up a population of a few millions in plenty, have to starve half the population of the earth, but is no credit due to them who can keep hundreds of millions in peace and plenty, without snatching any bread from anyone’s mouth? Is there no power displayed in bringing up and guiding the destinies of countless millions of human beings through hundreds of centuries, without the least violence to others?

7. India is a land whose soil is blessed, as a succession of masters have walked and sanctified it, whose gracious presence and inspiration have made her the light of the world.