Mother India and its past teach important lessons, Bal Ram Singh's article

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>Bal Ram Singh <bsingh

>bsingh

>Mother India and its past teach important lessons, Bal Ram Singh's

>article

>Thu, 04 Sep 2003 13:39:52 -0400

>

>

>Dear Friends,

>

>Hope you enjoy.

>

>Bal Ram

>

>http://www.indianewengland.com/news/451576.html

>India New England News - Opinion

>Issue: 09/01/03

>

>

>Mother India and its past teach important lessons

>By Bal Ram Singh

>

>"There are 193 countries in the world, and the U.S. cannot pay special

>attention to all the countries." Such was the response of Dennis Kux,

>former ambassador to Pakistan and a leading scholar in international

>relations, to a question raised during a panel discussion at the National

>Press Club on April 26 on why India, being such a big democracy, is ignored

>by the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.

>

>It's not that U.S. attention to India is going to provide any therapeutic

>effect on India's multifarious challenges. Such unhesitating statements,

>however, reflect an attitude of the West toward a nation that has

>paradigmatic distinction in the world.

>

>At the present, India's preeminent contributions in developing the number

>system, astronomy, medicine, industry, or philosophy (for example, yoga)

>are not even questioned, albeit rarely highlighted. The issue is the

>disbelief that such advances could have been made by a Third World nation.

>How is it possible that such a poor country, with a history of over 1,000

>years of foreign rule, could ever claim to have an enlightened past full of

>glories and gallantries?

>

>Many questions arise, especially in the minds of the younger generations of

>Indian ancestry living in United States and other Western countries. They

>ask: If India had such great traditions and culture, why are we outside of

>India? We were born and brought up outside India, why would Indian culture

>be relevant to us?

>

>Granted our parents and ancestors came from India, and we should be

>respectful to their land of origin. But our motherland is where we are

>born, not some distant place in space and memory, some argue. So, they ask:

>Why shouldn't we learn and become successful non-resident Indians and adopt

>Western values? Isn't India's past glory just a myth created by a fictional

>feel-great mentality? Shouldn't science be our guiding principle of life,

>rather than rituals and traditions of a faraway land such as India?

>

>These questions are very valid, and every parent of Indian ancestry -

>irrespective of his or her religious, linguistic, geographical, and

>political background - should seek and address them, not just to be a good

>parent but to be a good citizen of his or her adopted land. To energize one

>to such an effort, it is important to first be factually convinced of

>India's past record.

>

>Consider the following: India has the only surviving ancient culture on

>this planet. Then, there is the Indian Ocean, the only one out of the five

>oceans on planet Earth to be named after a country. No other country - not

>even Great Britain, whose rule was so vast that at one time there was no

>sunset in its empire, have achieved such a glory. Sanskrit is accepted as

>the mother of all modern languages, including Latin and Greek. And, of

>course, yoga - one part of which is meditation - is now considered the most

>integrated practice of knowledge and medicine. And over 10 percent of the

>U.S. population regularly practices it.

>

>Great philosophers and writers of most modern generations of all lands have

>testified to the unique position of India and its contributions.

>

>In a statement on April 21, the departing U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert

>Blackwill, quoted Mark Twain: "India is the cradle of the human race, the

>birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of

>legend, and the great-grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most

>instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India."

>

>Blackwill and his wife are returning to New England, where he is scheduled

>to be a professor in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard

>University. In his speech, Blackwill added: "So during this coming New

>England winter, our vivid and lasting memories of India - its people, its

>culture, its beauty - will warm us as we face the snows. Mother India has

>marked us deeply and only for the better - for all time."

>

>

>

>Bal Ram Singh is director of the Center for Indic Studies at the University

>of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

>

>

>

>Bal Ram Singh, Ph.D.

>Director, Center for Indic Studies

>University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

>285 Old Westport Road

>Dartmouth, MA 02747

>

>Phone: 508-999-8588

>Fax: 508-999-8451

>Email: bsingh

>

>Internet address: http://www.umassd.edu/indic

 

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