Our forefathers, our fathers and we were born in glorious India! We are lucky. Have we done something to make it glorious or we just consume and make it dirty? Let us think for a moment. We should say,” India was a glorious country and many saints lived here once” if we have done nothing about it. Are we proud of such India? What kind of India we want to leave for our next generation?
I thought of this mantra of five words: Clean, healthy, sufficient, strong, free India. Why? If you have done this you have done everything. Let us see how it works:
In fact this word clean is the key. Just imagine of clean India- litter free streets, pollution free air, clean water, no beggar on the street, disciplined traffic .You need to work very hard to achieve this. Not a few but, every Indian has to work for this. Otherwise we cannot be clean. Every person must be first internally clean to clean the surrounding. This is mentioned as one of the most important values in the 13th chapter of Bagavat Gita. ‘Soucham’-cleanliness, both internal and external is important. Internal is mind, external is everything outside including your body. If we have achieved this, other values like health,sufficiency,strength and freedom are easier to achieve. There is a saying in Tamil, ”Suttam soru podum”- Cleanliness will feed you. Perhaps this is to say if you are clean you get everything you want.
Healthy India:
Think of India where every child, every mother and every father is healthy. You need to be internally and externally clean to achieve this. Corruption free, greed free public institutions are necessary to achieve this. Everyone has to care for the other equally as you care for yourself and your family. We can see this care for society to a great extent in Japan. This is spontaneous without any coercion as in some other countries. Respect for fellow citizen and politeness in public place can be certainly learnt from the Japanese. No wonder Japan stands first in longevity. We can learn good things from others-in the way Japanese took Buddhism from India. That is the real way to be glorious, not just talking about our past glories. There is something really glorious about our system even today-In our traditional family system, we don’t claim our rights. When every member of the family does his/her duty, that becomes the right of the other member. This has to be followed in public life as well. There will be no need for any LIB movement.
Sufficient India:
Interestingly some historians have mentioned something unique about ancient Indian economy. They have observed that India had self contained villages for ages.They also have noted that India never had a slavery system as they have found in the rest of the world history.
India is capable of achieving self sufficiency. We should not automatically follow what the west does. We need to go back and refer to the values in our system. We can improve on them to suit the current world. Let us think-Why India needs so many cars when patrol price is going up every day? Why do we waste electrical energy for lighting when we have abundance of sun light? With so much of free sun light, what are we searching for self sufficiency? Can we design our houses differently? Can we get our food differently? We can be self sufficient if we work out our own way as even when we interact with other nations. Why don’t we lead the world in keeping it green?
Recycling is our way of life. In my early days I have never seen anything going waste! Banana leaf on which we ate went to the cow and it gave us milk. Effluent water went to the trees in the garden and we got bananas, mangoes and coconuts. We need not go back to ancient days, but we can think and act differently with our background-that is where we get our strength from.
The last two words of the mantra are for an India outside India- Image of an Indian in the world. This is possible only when you have achieved the first three. In fact all the five words in the mantra are closely related.I mean a strong India will have its currency respected in the world, a convertible Rupee.Now we have rupee symbol . It is good. However we should work for a convertible Rupee.
We should travel the world with Rupee and convert it anywhere in the world like Dollar and Pound. I am not talking about military strength here as it is obvious for any independent nation. However we will really be strong if no nation even thinks of a fight with us. I mean they all want to be friendly with us. This is possible when we are united as a nation. Our population can speak the rest of it. What else you need to be strong? Just imagine that India 30 years back with so many mouths to feed and India today with so many skilled youth to work for the world. We can do it with our young population!
Free India:
Again by free India I think differently. A free Indian should travel to any other country without a visa. Now a British, an American, a Japanese can travel to most of the countries without a visa. Economic strength makes you really free to move about. All countries in the world should welcome us. If that happens I am a proud Indian. It is honorable only when others respect me. This would be possible only when we have achieved other four words of the mantra. I have not talked of political and economic freedom separately as they are any way required for any country to survive.
This is my India. I am proud as Indian if I have contributed to any of these.I am sorry if I have disappointed some of you by not mentioning about Industrial growth, Science and Technology etc. etc. These things will be imposed on us even if we don’t want them.
Let us not wait for somebody in the Government, some politician or some social reformer to do the magic. We can do it-Every one of us.
Let us contribute to be a proud Indian.
-Arasu Ramanujam
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