Book review | The meaning of india

The meaning of India advances the view that India is not just a geographical entity, or even a civilizational state, Bhārat, above all, is a chariot leading the world towards truth. Shri Raja Rao's book helps reader to understand the deeper significance of India.

Contemporary India is in midst of a great churn over identity of India and the winning side will leave imprints of it's ideology on generations to come, while we are seeing fall of nehruvian concesus it's time to explore new ideas of India and what better than shri Raja Rao's the meaning of India is to base foundations of our 'second republic' of india. 

Rethinking nationalism 

Nationalism has been a very controversial term and using it always raised eyebrows in post world war 2 europe, rightly so. Also, one needs to acknowledge that definitions change with place and time and in case of post- colonial societies like india and Africa, it has different meanings, that of consolidating and asserting there identies in front of imperial powers, in case of india, i.e, British. 

This raises one question.What is your identity? And who better then these great philosophical articles of raja rao have explained this. Raising above identities of ethnicity, language and purity of race, which in case of europe leads to wars and hatred towards other nationality. The very foundation of indian nationalism, as rao explains in his book, lies in advait philosophy of non-dualism, which joins people instead of deviding them. 

While indians of 70's were comfortable with 'idea of india' that was mainly propounded by a particular party as it's fight against british government, while rao's The meaning of India came with little fuss and fanfare back then. But now when the old consensus stands discredited and indian society is going through a churn over it's identity, this is the work, which our 'new idea of india' should be based on, transcending a time bound consensus of struggle against people who don't exist. Rao in his book brings a idea which people relate beyond the pity boundaries of time, language, race and caste. 

"He felt that India was an ahistorical and abhuman civilisation. ‘Abhuman’—not non-human, inhuman, anti-human, mind you. Abhuman meant that we went for the Absolute, the vertical, not the horizontal or chronological in our quest for perfection. India would, whenever possible, recreate that moment of our own self-realisation both individually and socially through an abolition of duality.That was India’s way, India’s purpose, and India’s mission."

   - prof. Makarand paranjape

Rao's views on nehru, gandhi and white man also help us understand how indian thought during and after independence movement. This selection of nearly six decades of raja rao's non-fiction. 

A must recommended modern classic for anyone interested to know about deeper significance of bharat. 

At the end I will leave you with the only real question !

Is man the universe's centre or Truth the centre of man? 

Read Raja rao's 'The meaning of india' to find ... 

References and further reading

[1] https://thedailyguardian.com/raja-rao-and-his-idea-of-india/