“That as many as 170 countries adopted Yoga as a universal practice for wellness, is a good example of the importance of the power India is capable of wielding on the global stage.” - A statement by Bharat ideologue Dr. Sudhanshu Trivedi in a podcast. THAT the world celebrates with much enthusiasm the International Yoga Day on June 21 each year really explains the power of an Indian idea. Without seeking commercial dominance, without dishing out veiled threats of its increasing military capabilities, India been able to influence global thinking so much so that the people from as many as 170 countries are willing to alter their respective lifestyles in order to adopt Yoga as new approach to creating a more mature human being. This also explains what difference the idea of Bharat makes. It is in the form of its classic thinking. Indian civilisation never allowed itself the luxury of thinking that the world is a place that it must conquer on the strength of its military. It also never thought of the world as a market-place (as most other countries do). Instead, since time immemorial, India has considered the world one family and not as a market -- Parivar and not a bazar! The idea of spreading the Indian concept of Yoga as a great tool to wellness of the individuals and societies across the world, thus, stems from that classic thought-process of India’s ancient civilisation.

 

This idea is driven by the thought of everybody’s well being, and disease-free life, everybody’s right to enjoy sound physical and spiritual health beyond the use of medicine. Such a thinking happens only in a family, so to say. When the whole world is a family -- Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam -- then the quality of collective or individual human behaviour also changes. The whole human community, thus, becomes one big extended family where the universal wish for everybody is to live in good health and good spirit at least for a hundred years -- Jivet Sharadah Shatam! The moment this philosophy is adopted, the entire consideration changes, entire paradigm shifts from individualistic thought to a wonderful collectivism. This is the importance of the ‘Bharat’ metaphor -- by way of which what is sought is not the political or economic dominance of any kind but as alternative to those. The world has begun liking the idea, which is reflected in the manner in which the world is taking to Indian brand of internationalism. Historical evidence is available to prove that the India of olden times had in its thought-process this principle of universal accommodation. History also proves that the Indian civilisation survived for thousands of years only because of the idea of comprehensive togetherness (when all other civilisations perished with passage of time and undesirable influences coming through the sword-based politics or greed-based commerce).

 

That is the reason why the resort to pseudo-globalisation did not survive longer than say a quarter of a century in the modern times. The idea of globalisation, thus, lost all its sheen in the space of a few decades because of idea of cornering the global resources rather than sharing those with everybody else. On that wrong premise, globalisation went limp. In India, however, the idea did not have to perish at all. For, for centuries, the Indian society built an accommodative culture in which the basic belief was that common resources should be shared among all the segments of the larger global human community. This is yet another facet of the ‘Bharat’ metaphor -- which the world missed and which needs to be reminded at this stage. The ‘Bharat’ metaphor has to be understood in all its nuances whose spread in human thought-process is phenomenal. The key to understanding it is in India’s very long historical time-line. It explains how India grew into a mature, accommodative and rich civilisation that nurtured the sciences and the arts like no other civilisation in the world was capable of doing.

 

India’s was a knowledge society engaged in pursuit of comprehensive truth through continuous collective pursuit. The idea of this series of articles on the subject is not to push any political ideology, but to put forth the idea of a civilisation with multiple facets that go far deeper than the superficial considerations that often dominate so-called modern thought in which dominance -- whether political or commercial -- is the basic goal. The story of India is totally different from all that. That is one story in which the celebration is of knowledge and the people’s engagement in it. ‘Bharat’ is not just land, but an idea whose metaphor needs to be studied -- less by the world and more by the Indian society of today. Unfortunately, the present-day Indian society appears steeped in the westernised thought-process -- which should be an anathema to the idea of ‘Bharat’as a civilisational entity.