Nations are made on the basis of race, religion, language or ethnicity. India is a colorful combination of all these things and more. Sameness has been the formula in the making of nations. India stands in total defiance of this mediocrity. When we talk about a nation, we’re always thinking of a certain type of people or a certain type of language or race or religion or ethnicity. We’re an absolute amalgamation of a very complex mix of all these things, but still we are a nation. Probably the oldest nation on the planet because if you look back 8 – 10,000 years ago, though at… sometimes we were over two hundred political entities, still people within the subcontinent and also those who dealt with them from from outside; everybody considered it as one nation. It’s always known as Bharath, or sometimes as Hindustan. It needs to be probably cleared in this audience. When we said Hindustan, this predates all religion. We were not talking about a particular type of people. We were talking about a geographical identity – the land between Himalayas and the Indu Sarovar, as the Indian Ocean was known. The land between this was called Hindustan; the land between Himalayas and Indu is the Hindu. So, this predates all religion, but what is it this made these people in the subcontinent as one nation because if you drive fifty miles, they speak differently, they look different, they dress differently, they cook different, they eat different – everything about them is different. But still what is it that has made this one nation? It’s very important to understand this. If you want to understand why Indian democracy ticks… If you look at the country, there is not diversity, it’s simply distraction; totally, entirely different. Even today, I come to United States and if I walk into an Indian family, just the smell of the food; I just tell them, “Okay, this is your community, isn’t it?” “Sadhguru, how do you know?” I said, “Well, the seasoning of the food clearly tells me what community you belong to.” That’s how distinct it is, but still we’ve always been considered a nation. What is the basis? So this is important to understand because this is very unique to India alone. This is a land which is not of believers. Everywhere else, people come together because they believe something, either religious or otherwise, some kind of belief which brings people together. But always India as a land has been identified as the land of seekers. Seekers are not believers because you become a seeker only when you realize you don’t know a damn thing about life. This is the way you must start your life always; that you really don’t know anything about life and you seek, you seek through your whole life – seekers of truth and seekers of liberation, always. This is one nation on the planet, even today, most of the population in the country does not hold god or heaven as the highest goal. We still hold freedom or liberation as the highest goal. Mukti is the goal – heaven is not the goal, god’s lap is not the goal – our goal is always liberation; to be free from god also. That’s always been the goal. This has been… This is a wrong concept for people to believe that if all of us believe one thing, we will be together. People who believe one god or one ideology have been fighting everywhere in the world. When there is no belief system… That means you have no set of concretized ideas in your head; life is your mission, life is your teacher, you have no concretized ideas in your in your mind. You’re always looking – always looking to learn, always willing to learn, always seeking your way through life. You are not like a projectile who has already determined that this is the trajectory you will take. You’re always seeking your way through every step of your life. This milieu of things sets the right kind of atmosphere for a democratic process because a democratic process cannot happen in any reasonable sense if people are already predetermined which party they will vote for, which caste they will vote for, which creed or which race they’re going to vote for. If all of us already determined we are this or that, democracy is just a wasteful exercise. When the opportunity comes in front of us, if each one of us are willing to think from our own intelligence and arrive at a decision, that this is what I’m going to vote for, then it would make sense. All of us are predetermined, we’re going to vote in chunks either because we belong to a family or a community or a caste or a creed or a race or ethnicity, we have already decided this is how we’re going to vote – there is no democracy. It is feudalism of a different kind. So real democracy can only happen when people do not have strong set of beliefs about anything; they are willing to look at everything fresh. Only when individuals vote on their own capacity, on their own intelligence, there is a democratic process. When groups of people vote together, what is the point of secret ballot when I already know this is the party you’re going to vote for? What is the point of secret ballot? We can just raise our hands and say, “This is it”. So the purpose of secret ballot in a democracy is every time you can evaluate, look at it as an individual. If you are voting for one person, your wife may vote for another person, your children might vote for another person, and it’s perfectly fine, and only then democracy will manifest. Such an ideal system of democracy is yet to happen on the planet,
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:51:32 +0000
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