This is What Makes India a Nation

Questioner: We are on the cusp of the 76th Republic Day of India tomorrow. So on this occasion, I wanted to ask you about the idea of India. So right now when we look at news and anyone who is reasonably aware would know that we are living in a world of identity politics and societal changes. And everyone you talk to, they have their own idea of India based on what side of the political spectrum they are on and so on.

So I wanted to ask you in this day and age how do we preserve and evolve the idea of India and what it is according to you?

Acharya Prashant: You see, India is not really an idea. First thing, ideas are things of the ego. Ideas are things of desire and imagination. Behind every idea is an ideator and the ideator is looking to get something for himself via the idea. That's not what India is.

Nation. We talk of the Indian nation. What is a nation? First thing: basics fundamentals. What is a nation? A nation is a set of people. It could be a very large set of people. It could be a billion people. It could be five billion people. The number doesn't matter. It's a set of people who are together on some ground, who are united on some basis. Some basis.

Now that doesn't seem like a very deep thing to say, because whenever people are together, obviously there is some or the other basis present. That basis is the basis of nationhood. And just as all the reasons that bring people together are not of the same quality, similarly, the foundations of all nations are not equally deep. How deep is the foundation of a nation depends on the depth of what keeps those people together, right?

Five people may come together to have a good time in the evening. Nothing else to do, have a spare hour, let's just go out and gossip. And that's what is keeping them together at this hour. Now this is togetherness on a very flimsy basis. No, a basis is indeed present but the basis has no depth. These five people have come together due to some little shallow reason. This togetherness will bring no goodness to these five or to the others.

Similarly, nations have their basis. After all, all that you need is a set of people, a community where people identify with each other, right? They say we are one. We are together. We have something in common. I'm more like this one than that one. I identify with this one. What is the basis of that identification? Why do these people think of each other as brothers and sisters or members of one community? That's the question to be asked.

And that's a very, very important question because, mind you, we have seen—history tells us that nations can even be founded on very narrow kinds of basis, very shallow foundations. There are instances of nations where the founding principle was food habits. We all eat the same way. Therefore, we are a nation.

There are a lot of nations in the modern world where one of the important basis is language. We speak the same language. Therefore, we are a nation. And what to say of geography? We live in areas that are geographically close by or adjacent to each other, materially contagious. Therefore, we are a nation. Are you getting it?

So you live in the house next to mine, hence you are my brother. This kind of logic. What makes you all call each other brothers and sisters? Well, you know, we all live within 1 kilometer of each other. Hence, we are brothers and sisters. There are so many nations that are founded on this. We all live at places that lie next to each other. Therefore, we are a nation, one nation.

And why are those people not the same nation? Because they live far away. Hence, they are separate. We can even call them enemies because they live in a distant place. Does this make any sense? It makes no sense. Color of the skin. I am green. You are green. So, we are a nation. We all are little green men and women. Therefore, we constitute a nation. And they are tall blue ones. So, they are aliens. What kind of unity is this? What kind of identity is this?

Ethnicity, genetics, purity of blood, whatever that means. Of course, religion is the huge elephant in the room. We follow the same belief system, the same dogma, the same books, the same God. Therefore, we are a nation. Are you getting it? So mostly nations are founded on such things. We follow the same tradition. Hence we are a nation. You look at the seven of us. We believe in the same superstitions. Therefore we are a nation.

No, this is divisive. This is violent. This is full of ignorance. This leads to suffering for one and all. Fortunately, India has a much deeper national foundation and hence, I said India is not an idea. What is the foundation? India was wise enough to realize that anything coming from the human mind is going to be limited. That's what India did. Went into itself. When the entire world was taking an outward direction, India went into itself.

And going within— it realized the limits within, the pettiness within, the constraints within, the darkness within, the ideator within, the one who keeps coming up with these smart ideas.

How stupid is that ideator! He realizes it only when you develop the courage to look at yourself. So, India said, ‘You know, two people coming together on the basis of an idea or thought or principle can never be a truly great thing.’ I believe in something, you too believe in something, we share thoughts. So we come together and we call ourselves a nation. That can never be a good thing.

Now, once you say that, all possible principles that could become the foundation of Indian nationhood, they go out of the window. Because everything is mental and what is coming from the mind would be little and divisive. I'm saying, 'India saw that.'

So what did India then put above all nationalistic principles?

India has said ruthless inquiry into the self. We will not stand for a principle. We will stand for a detached investigation into all principles. We will not stand for a dogma. We will stand for freedom from all dogmas. We will not stand for a particular idea. We will stand for examination of all possible ideas. We will not stand for anything under the sun. We will stand for liberation from everything under the sun. We will not stand for any product of the mind. We will stand for freedom from the tyranny of the mind. Are you getting it?

This is the foundation of the Indian nation. This is what India stands for.

So all nations are governed by principles and India is governed by freedom from all principles. And that's what makes India free, liberal, accommodative, tolerant and therefore, inherently extremely strong and vibrant.

But only as strong and only as vibrant as is the depth of the Indians' understanding about the reality of India. What I'm talking of is in some sense a utopia. "You go to most people, and they will say, 'You know, this is the particular ideal that governs India,' or, 'These are the principles that are at the foundation of India.' No, no, no."

India is an ever existing quest to rise higher. Never stopping at any principle. Yes, at this moment some principle might look good. Socialism looks good. But I'm not stopping here. I'm not turning it into a dogma. I'm not turning it into a belief system. I'll keep striving for something even higher. That is India.

The upward glance. Innocent child looking at the sky. Do there have to be limits? No, no, no. Ultimate freedom that is India. That is at the base of the Indian nation. And as long as that remains as at the base of the Indian nation, India will remain eternal. India is not a political construct. India is not a thing on the world map. These are small things. The maps of the world keep changing.

1947— the map of India didn't have Goa and Sikkim. Pre-1947 British India included Peshawar and Dhaka. And there have been times when even Kabul and Southeast Asia and Burma politically were integrated into India. All that is the flow of time.

India stands for the timeless. As a nation, India is extremely unique. All nations have a principle to govern them. India has an inquiry to govern itself.

India realized all principles are limited. All principles will ultimately breed violence. And all principles will ultimately be destroyed. All principles contain within themselves their own distinction. The typical dialectics. You have a principle and some opposite principle will come up. And then you will have something else. And if you are invested too heavily in the principle, you'll have heartbreak and you'll suffer.

1947: political independence— East Pakistan, West Pakistan and they said the basis of our nationhood is religion. They said we are a nation. Why? Because we are all Muslims. So even though the two wings east and west Pakistan are separated by thousands of miles of Indian territory, yet we are one united nation Pakistan. Did that last? Can that last? Can that last? You had Muslims here. You had Muslims there in the east and in the west. The ones in the west didn't give much importance to the fact that the ones in the east were fellow Muslims.

When elections were held for the central assembly, the parliament, the Pakistani parliament and Mujib got a majority, the fellow Muslims in the west refused to let him form the government. But you are a nation and you said that if we follow the same religion, then we are brothers. That didn't happen.

Ego trumps everything. Ego does not care for any principle. All principles are for the ego. No principle is bigger than the ego.

Whenever there will be a clash between the ego and even the most elevated, most sublime, most refined of principles, the ego will win. And how violently did it win? 1971 has been one of the biggest genocides of the last century. Obviously, we know of the Holocaust, but what happened in Bangladesh was terrible. It's not just that the Hindus there were butchered, Muslims were slaughtering Muslims. That kind of basis of nationhood does not hold.

You know, we are a nation because we are one religion. That's what Jinnah came up with, no? Hindus and Muslims are two nations. No sir.

Religion does not suffice to really hold a people together. People can live truly together only when they are united by the truth. An unwavering commitment to the truth. And that's what India stands for. That's what India at least should stand for.

An unwavering commitment to the truth, not to fanaticism, not to hooliganism, not to some nationalistic idea, but to the truth itself. And to a great extent India has successfully done that over the centuries and that's why even when we did not politically exist as a state, yet we always existed as a nation. Isn't that beautiful?

They could come and take political control of our territory. That's fine. We fought back but would have been much worse had we allowed them to take control of our insides. The foundation of India is freedom itself. We do not want to be dominated on the outside.

But much more than the outside, it is extremely unacceptable that somebody dominates us within. I do not allow even myself to dominate me within. My interiors are a space so clean that I do not allow even myself to step there. How will I allow anybody else to intrude? That is India. To a lot of people this would be obtrusive. They'll say this is all just too abstract.

It is not abstract. You must understand this if you want to truly call yourself Indian. India is the ‘I’ that wants to understand. 'I want to know. I don't want to dream. I want to know.' That's what India is. That's the beauty of and greatness of India. And if Indians refuse to see and know then Indians can no longer call themselves beautiful or great. India will always remain great and beautiful.

But there is no guarantee that Indians would automatically be great and beautiful. No, it's a choice. It's a price you have to pay. It is always very comfortable within your belief system, within the paradigm of your assumptions and superstitions and desires.

It requires guts to be a true Indian. One has to fight the battle within. Else you can develop any kind of random way to separate man from man.

You have lived in a campus hostel, haven't you?

Questioner: Yeah, two campus hostels.

Acharya Prashant: Two campus hostels. So have I. You enter the campus as a fresher and you are allotted a particular hostel and the allotment is often quite random. It depends on your entry number or your rank or some other random criteria. Maybe the letter your name begins with some criteria and you are allotted a particular hostel. And then you are supposed to be loyal to the hostel and you are supposed to fight the other hostiles down. What kind of basis of unity is this?

Random. So random. And you are supposed to commit your energies to this and you are supposed to really take the other hostiles as your enemy. Did that happen at IIT Bombay?

Questioner: That was one of the first things that happened in the first year.

Acharya Prashant: Same at IIT Delhi. Just that obviously, we all knew it was for fun. But then some of us did take it way too seriously. You are a kind of traitor if you didn't participate in inter-hostile wars. There were instances in which people were actually beaten up. You can find any random way to divide people within the host. There were regional groups.

So there was this group from Bihar. There was this group from Andhra, obviously from Tamil Nadu, and you know all the places. Gujarat, you name the region. And and you have groups there. You didn't even have to have an entire state. We had a Lucknow gang, even a city suffices. We are together because we belong to the same city and hence everybody else is an alien. Let's be divided. The ego is always looking to create boundaries. Only within boundaries can the ego survive.

Now there is a kind of nationalism that deepens those boundaries and there is a kind of nationalism that destroys boundaries. India stands for the latter. Are you getting it?

Just because you are born on Indian territory, the subtle fact is that you do not qualify to be called a real Indian.

Obviously, technically you will be an Indian. You will hold the Indian passport and the entire world would call you an Indian. But you do not become an Indian by your place of birth. You become an Indian by heart.

Do you value freedom? Do you have love for the truth? Can you lay down your life for something beyond yourself? If yes, then you are an Indian. If no, then you are just an Indian in name — the kind of Indians who think Indianness lies in cheering for the cricket team or beating other people down or berating other countries and avoiding to pay taxes while doing all that.

India is a spirit. The spirit that you find in Vedanta, the spirit that does not impose anything on the mind, a spirit that just asks, asks. The spirit that says I want to know. Does not say I already know, does not say my beliefs are correct, says no I'm prepared to question everything. I'll not let any consideration be too much on me. Nothing is bigger than truth and that's why, you see India knows love.

Because true love can only be towards the truth. All else is just attraction, born of desire. Because India respected and I hope it still does — The Truth. Hence India has known love. A love beyond territory. A love beyond ethnicity. A love beyond materiality.

The true Indian would be a fighter and a lover. He fights what is untrue because he loves the truth.