To discuss and debate about India, we think, it is imperative to know briefly about the journey of Indian Civilization and thus the second page ‘An Idea of India’ briefly does that.
You are invited to correct, discredit, add and enrich the discourse on India since it is impossible to briefly discuss the elaborate journey of one of the oldest and culturally richest civilizations in the world but then it is worth the effort. Thoughts and ideas pouring into this section will only enlighten us more.
The aim of the section ‘An Idea of India’ is to collectively agree upon the traits that could and should decide the identity of India and Indians.

An Idea of India;
The biggest dilemma is to how to start so that you be interested? Where lays generally the interests of people like us? Who are the people like us? To be one among us one has to know English and should have access to net. In India such people are in minority since almost 90% of people do not know English and more than 95% of people do not have access to net.

People like us are generally found involved in Obama and or America, films or jokes, cricket or occasionally sports, gadgets, sex and or sensex, marriage and or shopping.  After having discussed some or all the involvements highlighted above some sadist would lament on riots, bombs, infrastructure and hence the involvement takes a gloomy note. Discussions on sense and sensibilities are our favorite social past time. The way we talk and the things we talk on give us a certain status approved by the society. Discussions on California seems more charming then discussions on UP. A sardar with his turban looks sauve than a muslim with his cap though both sport beards. Politics is dirty but contacts with a politician is strength.  The countries of the world too share a variable status. An American visitor gets more attention than a somalian. Made in Japan or Germany is quality but made in China is cheap. Capacity to build nuclear bomb gets different attention than those blasted in Ahmadabad, Bangalore or Bombay. Why does such variation in status exist? Why do we use words or discuss topics, in the way we do, such as Minority, Muslims, Marathi, Bombs, India, China, US? To answer these questions one is left with no other option but to enter into the world of History and here is the problem. History does not enjoy the same social status as the Management or Science does. History is considered to be boring so lets not dig the graves out instead lets attempt at having a birds eye view of the journey of the mankind and Indian civilization thus far. Let’s see the variation in the status of India in different times and judge what kind of status we would like India to hold in the future.
Lets get started with a short documentary on the grandest and one of the oldest live show called Humanity and India. It is during this documentary we would witness the seeds of all the problems we face and jostle today irrespective whether we recognize them or not. Lets not forget that the History is the prelude to our present which in turn would mould our future.

Riddles of Phenomena; It is a common experience to see people asking questions such as “why do we exist? What is the purpose of life? Who is responsible for the creation of life and the biosphere”? One tends to hear people proclaiming that they are deeply into spirituality etc. Spirituality and Religiosity are termed or made to be understood as one and the same or at least both have permeable boundaries. Spirit, it could be safely assumed, is the consciousness of oneself and the nature around. A baby after it is born takes some time before it awakens to consciousness. Infant mortality liquidates babies even before they awaken to consciousness. Infant mortality is one aspect that links Ancient India with the current India since at both the times the mortality rate of newly born babies has been very high.
Today however the life expectancy has increased and one is found to live 70-80 years if one has not been swallowed by eventualities of various kinds’ urban terrorism being the latest one. Even after such technological advancements and after 6 decades of self rule in India why the mortality rate and urban terrorism is so high is in itself a puzzling riddle for almost all of us. This is though a solvable riddle.
Anyways, through out ones life of consciousness one becomes aware of the phenomena consistently unfolding before us and it in itself is laced with innumerable riddles. The biggest riddle is what enable matter turn to life and how life kindles consciousness? Science however advanced it is today is not able to answer this question for us and it seems highly unlikely that Science will ever be able to answer this question. When science runs short of answering a question one is left with no other option but to take refuge in faith. Faith makes one feel secured while one assumes that there indeed is some supernatural power responsible for the creation, governance and preservation of the biosphere which is the prime necessity for us to exist. Science cannot deny such a postulate however nothing confirms for sure that the supernatural power is a human like god that has created the “Shrishti” (as called in hindi). If human like god created the Shrishti and is responsible for the existence of phenomena and consciousness then how did he/she acquired the knowledge to do so? Why was the knowledge not transferred and similarly there could be n number of questions. None of the hypothesis could be confirmed by evidence yet a rational person could always be amused with such questions but it would be difficult for him to be convinced with the human like god concept. Science has proof that the most developed human beings ever to have existed exist today thus no question of our first few generations to have embarked upon the endeavor to bring life, consciousness and the phenomena into existence myth notwithstanding.
Such a situation calls for a personal faith and faith makes one free to lay allegiance to anything as long as one feels secured and peaceful thus a tree, plant, animal, air, water, sun, fire or any other element, one’s own consciousness all and sundry could be laid faith in since they all represent and proves the existence of a super spirit. If one thinks like this and then refers to the life of today one tends to get confused. Faith and Religion’s basic premise seems to acknowledge and appreciate the existence of life, consciousness and phenomena and look at the phenomena today where life is consciously being taken that too in the name of faith. When one is let down by science by not getting answers to the riddles of phenomena one tends to take refuse in faith which allows the mind to wander in the wilderness and uncharted territories of thought justifying the consciousness of spiritual liberty and freedom. How do we classify the faith of today? Majority of faiths today, there seems no plausibility of any other faith coming up now, believe in ultimate creator to be a man like god and scientific advancements are used to liquidate fellow being’s freedom to live and freedom to lay faith in any other man like god or any other thing. Science has developed but we the people are degenerating fast.
There are other riddles which the phenomena present before us which neither the faith nor the religion, forget about science, answers convincingly. What is the purpose of life and consciousness? Why do some sections of matter erupt into life temporarily and why do some lives is endowed with consciousness? Why the other majority permanently remain inanimate and unconscious? Why does life present in organically structured matter strive to perpetuate itself in true to type? What is the agency introducing such inherent efforts for life to reproduce itself that to true to type? Darwin suggested that the mutations played by the natural selection led to differentiation of life into various species but then why did it happen the way it did? Is the phenomena conscious of itself the way human beings are? Were these mutations designed? Is it the success of the life’s design to be true to type or is it the failure of the phenomena’s design of mutations? Or is it that being true to type is the inertia against the grand design of change? Differentiation between lives has brought in two antagonistic things simultaneously namely competition and co-operation. This phenomenon is deliberate in human beings as one chooses to compete with one by collaborating with another. The question of justice is introduced here as whether the choice has been right or wrong, whether the outcome has been good or evil. What is the source of such ethical judgments which is intrinsic to the human nature and alien to other species?
Why today we do not use the faculty of thought and judgment we have which differentiates us from the rest of the species? The cumulative set of riddles today could be grouped into two parts namely riddles those are solvable and those answer to which will always elude us. Answerable riddles look far more difficult to answer today than those which could never be answered.
India today is very favorably placed in time in the sense that it has scientific and technological capability and it is the only place where all the religions except Schintoism are alive today. We are the best people to be eligible to solve the answerable riddles of the phenomena which impact us very closely. We have primarily left Religion and politics in a set of very weak hands that are intellectually bankrupt and morally, ethically corrupt to lead the common masses towards mutual co-operation and coexistence. Religion and Politics the two intrinsic and the most important traits of human beings which aim at existence and harmony are facing their worst times today. For a sane person religion has become repulsive and politics has maligned its philosophy. It would be very destructive to allow the politics to decay and the religion to be suffocated by extremism. Scientific thought is the panacea because only reason, rationality and humanity is to be introduced into Religion and politics for them to yield desired results. The current representatives and leaders in the religious and political front need be replaced and the sooner it happens the better it is for India and the humanity at large. Today politics has become individual fiefdom and the religion has turned from an instrument provisioning personal solace to militia mobilizing people. India needs to be saved from the clutches of 40-50 political families manhandling this country in turns and it is imperative to personalize religion by freeing it from the clutches of pundits and mullahs and all other self proclaimed religious thekedaars. This is not a riddle that cannot be solved.

How do we know that we are an ancient Civilization?

Father Hanxleden started working in Malabar and by 1732 he had compiled first Sanskrit Grammar in a European tongue.

Father Coardoux recognized the kinship of Sanskrit and the languages of Europe.

Sir William Jones, the judge of the supreme court of Calcutta, learnt Sanskrit and initiated the foundation of the Asiatic Society in 1784. Asiatic researchers’ the journal of the Asiatic society took first real steps towards revealing India’s past.

Charles Wilkins translated Bhagwad Gita into English in 1784 and it became the first work to be translated in English. Till the French revolution broke out Wilkins had already translated Hitopdesa and Shakuntalam.  Till 1794 Wilkins had already translated Gita Govindam and the law book of Manu in English. Jones and Wilkins can truly be called as the father of Indology.

The first University Chair of Sanskrit was founded not in India but in France in 1814 and was held by Leonardo de Chezy.

In 1816 Franz Bopp of Bavaria reconstructed the common ancestors of Sanskrit and the classical languages of Europe.

Royal Society of England was set up in 1823 and during 1823 till 1900 Indological scholarship had contributed immensely since the enormous Sanskrit German Dictionary called as St Petersbergs Lexicon was produced, Rig Veda and the sacred books of East were already edited by the great Sanskritist Max Muller.

East India Company brought back from their trips far and wide in India the reports of temples, caves and shrines together with coins and copies of inscriptions on long dead scripts. Asiatic society used these evidences lavishly and thus the study into India’s past continued slowly yet consistently. James Princep interpreted the Brahmi script for the first time and was able to read the edicts of Asoka by 1837. Princep’s colleague Alexander Cunningham became the father of Indian Archeology since he was the first archeological surveyor in India. By 1901, thanks to special interest of the then viceroy Lord Curzon, Indus valley civilization had already been discovered. The colonial powers of the Europe and the emerging Indian Intellectuals in India came to realize how old and grand Civilization India has been. They came to realize that India had been closed for almost a millennium and that literary work in India had only been of fictional nature. Its strength of Science and scientific thought had totally been neglected and the people at large were living in Myth, Superstition and Religious rituals. India needed foreigners to shake it from its sleep and make it conscious of it’s past and glory. Glorious past gives the strength to imagine of a glorious present and thus the seeds of Independence and self rule got planted by the small section of English knowing native intellectuals.  The Europeans, considering themselves to be the most civilized of the lot, got to know their relative newness in comparison to civilizations like India. If I were to look back and trace the Indian civilization till today it is found that India is for the world as Mumbai is for India. Mumbai is the most cosmopolitan city in India and India had been the most cosmopolitan civilization in the world. Every religion and almost all the major civilizations have had some contribution or the other to shape India via peaceful commerce or violent excursions. We will get on with this debate later and as and when desired but for now lets witness the descent of Man.

Descent of Biological Man; The word biological has been used because the man of today can be traced to and compared with the man of the distant past in the biological terms since it is not certain that the first few generations of men were conscious of themselves in relation to the phenomena as the man of today is. If one is not conscious then the ethics quotient does not arise and for the man of today Ethics is paramount. Without considering or rejecting any of the prevalent theories we can safely assume that man and life have been coeval. The different species can be termed as the branches of one tree called life. If we stick to this basic premise then we can attempt to assume that the hominids would have branched out of the families of primates among the mammals at some time surely. This parting would have been a point of no return since the hominids could not have possibly become gibbons, chimpanzees and or gorillas. This would have been the time when the parted hominids had only two options. They could become humans or they would fail to survive. Actually the only genus to have survived within the hominids was Homos and the only specie to have survived within the genus Homo is Homo sapiens. Can we assume now that our ancestors became humans when they descended from the trees to the ground or when they acquired the capacity to walk and run on one pair of limbs and liberated the other pair to devise and play around with tools? Or when they developed brains much bigger with cells capable of communicating with each other far more than any other hominids? Answering such questions with precise date seems impossible today and we can only guess that man and its ancestors have been in existence for the last millions of years. They would have surely witnessed a few ice ages. 

Descent of social Man; we can attempt to date the genesis of the human nature by its social accomplishments such as language and hence the capability to communicate intelligibly to all the members of the community. The ability to communicate among the members of community would have coincided with the ability to communicate with oneself and this ability would have surely led man to awaken to consciousness of himself and the nature around. The liberation of hands, growth of brain, requirement of sociability and hence the advent of language all these important developments in the journey of human beings would have overlapped with each other or might have induced one another thus dating the same too would be as correct as perhaps a guess. Man must have surely been conscious by the time he had overcome the fear of fire and had acquired the knowledge to kindle and rekindle fire.

If we were to consider the shaped tools made out of stone then the dates could go as back as some millions of years but if we were to consider the intentional records such as the Paleolithic paintings found in the caves of France and Spain then the dates are as recent as 40000 to 20000 years.

Our information before the 5^th millennium BC is more materialistic in nature suggesting more about technology and though technology is an enabling condition for the non material constituents of man’s way of life yet there is very little understanding one can get about man’s feelings, his thoughts, his ideas and institutions and ideals. For all practical purposes our understanding of our past is more prominent for the last 5000 years and it is our contemporary history since and as Benedetto Croce would make us believe that all documented history is our contemporary history.

If we were to look at the journey of mankind starting millions of years ago till today then we can see how man has moved from being fully dependant on nature for its survival to the day of today when nature depends on Man to survive in future. The journey from the chipped stone tools of the past to the nuclear weapons of today suggests that in the past Man depended on the nature for its annihilation and today the nature is at the mercy of mankind. Man needed god at the beginning of its journey but it seems unrealistic that the nature too would be able to device any such instrument to feel secured and pray.

India has become a legal nuclear power today and it is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. It is also the only civilization which has given birth to not one but four religions of the world and thus it is the only civilization that could take lead in making the world understand and realize that the world is in the most precarious situation today. The world needs healing and teaching more than it required ever before and only India has the capability to take the lead and embark upon teaching and healing the world. In order to do it India needs to heal and teach its own citizens first and only then will it be able to get the moral acceptability from the world.

Technology, our ancestors and the impact; before 3000 BC innovations in technology existed but were too infrequent. The innovations spread uniformly throughout the human settlements while the only mode of transmission was the pedestrian from every community. Uniformity existed also because the innovations were too infrequent.

Things changed during 3000 BC to 1500 AD when the speed of innovation and dissemination reversed. New tools were devised before the earlier one could have been disseminated and this lead to differentiation. The speed of invention superseded the speed of dissemination and the same were never leveled till 1500 AD. !6^th century witnessed the ability of mankind to keep their ships afloat for months and they had acquired the capability to circum navigate the whole globe. Columbus discovered Americas in 1492 and Vasco d Gama found India 6 years later. By 1510 the compass too was already in use. This was also the time when printing press got devised thus further adding to the speed of dissemination. Within the last 500 years the speed of invention and innovation and the speed of dissemination have been great but the dissemination process has been faster than the speed of invention. Today the situation is quite similar to what it was before 3000BC since in both the times the world has been fairly uniform on the technological plane. Let’s take a look at the important innovations in technology after man had learnt to artificially kindle fire.

It is estimated that man had been sharpening stones and flints to use as tools for almost 2 million years however it was during the time between 70000 BC to 1500AD things started moving substantially on the technological plane. The most important inventions during this time were as follows;

• Domestication of Dogs. Domestication of the erstwhile competitor called dog to serve human purposes would have given a lot of edge to the hunting and gathering human community. Dog added a new dimension to the hunting quality of man providing speed and immaculate hunting quality.
• Archery. The harnessing of woods elasticity to add to the raw muscles of man in throwing a pointed missile in the direction of enemy or the prey was another advancement to have put man supreme in the competition among the predators. Dogs saved man from chasing the prey and archery helped kill the game without risking life by coming near the prey. Man felt a lot more safer than before and had time to spare.
• Painting and modeling. The paintings found in the caves of France and Spain suggests the prelude to the nomadic people turning settlers. People were still mobile yet they started visiting one particular place time and again and started musing themselves by painting and modeling of animals and human forms on the walls of the caves. This was the beginning of leaving traces of human existence. History was about to be born. Lepenski Vir on the banks of the Danube river surely looks like a sanctuary where people did perform some communal rites. Man seems to have entered into the realm of rites and rituals and might have contemplated god already.
• Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. The natural course of development was to domesticate more animals and plants. Agriculture and Animal husbandry followed and they are the most important technological inventions for man as they have been practiced consistently till our times and there seems to be no reason to believe that the same would be discontinued ever in the future. Agriculture and Animal husbandry gave man the control over life as man started manipulating life knowing well that life replenishes itself true to type. The crop and cattle allowed man to stop wandering in the want of food and they settled down.
• Pottery making and weaving. These two inventions along with Agriculture and Animal Husbandry freed for the first time any specie from the clutches of natural difficulties. Crops yielded grains that could be stored in pots to be used at a later date, animal provided consistent flow of fresh meat and milk and weaving led to clothes that made man comfortable in cold and rains. There was no reason for man to be wandering anymore. Man found a lot of time and the creative juices started flowing. The pottery started getting colors and the utility married aesthetics. Potsherds became another important tool to preserve history though rudimentary in nature yet illuminating in insights. The credit for some of these inventions should actually go to the women since they handled kitchen where there was food so came the dogs to eat the remains and be domesticated. When men folks were out hunting women observed plants growing in front of their kitchens and thus the kitchen garden. Weaving and molding clay into pottery would have been their past time.
• Mining and Metallurgy. Man must have noticed lumps of pure metal visible on the ground and they would have used it to throw as stones only to realize that it does not break instead it only changes in shape. Even more startling might have been the realization that the same lump when heated becomes temporarily pliable. When the temperature was to be raised the same metal liquefied. Man hit upon a raw material that was amenable as clay and stronger than stone. The next step would had been an understanding that the metal need not be in pure state rather could be found in its ores which could be disengaged from the slag after it has been heated properly. Utility of metal called for mining as the most obvious step ahead.

 By now animal husbandry has been practiced for around 40000 years, agriculture, weaving and pottery for the last 15-12000 years and mining and metallurgy for 6000 years. Agriculture, weaving and pottery called for some specialization but and mining and metallurgy really brought in the skill quotient to the matrix of human relations. The smiths and the miners were the first specialists in the true sense. Technology started showing its consequence by propagating division of labor. The people and the world never remained the same thereafter. The seeds of class differentiation and class conflicts had now been sowed. The competition had a shift of paradigm where the species were not only competing with each others but the members of the same species started competing with each other. Skill provided the edge. The ethical question of distribution came into existence and exists still. The total product is the fruit of all participants in a society but their respective contributions are unequal in effectiveness and value.  Mining and metallurgy posed another hazard as the side effect of technology. Agriculture and Animal husbandry reared life which was reproducible but metallurgy uses inanimate raw material that is limited and exhaustible. 

Skill in today’s India.  Before going forward let’s pause and relate to what situation India is in today. Indian has all the latest technology available in the world. It has recently entered into the exclusive club of nuclear possessing countries and thereafter Chandrayan took its flight only to land onto the surface of moon comfortably. India seems to be the specialist in software’s and telecommunication and doctors and engineers have impressed the world with their skills and yet isn’t it startling to notice the huge class differentiation and conflict prevalent in India? 77% of the people in India do not earn more than 2o Rs a day. 85% people have very rudimentary skills which is redundant in the skill market of today. Health is a luxury here and preservation of life now is as difficult as it might have been in the Paleolithic age. This is how we are 60 years after we became independent. Is India really free?  40% of Indian need be freed from the subhuman living standards they are in. 80% of Indians are yet to be freed from the darkness of no opportunity because of lack of appropriate skills. The slums in cities remind me of modern nomads stripped of the cleanliness the nomads in the Paleolithic age might have enjoyed. The biggest myth today is that India is free.

These are the following topics to be attempted soon.

Journey of India