“Idea of India” has become a very loaded political statement of our times. It is loaded, as everyone in political space tries to push his or her own agenda in the garb of “idea of India”. Leftist philosophy in the garb of socialism & their subtle control on the collective consciousness of the political & administrative class of India played havoc with everything that belonged to ancient India. Being anti-ancient in India came to be considered as a fashion statement & progressive. Anything ancient came to be considered as regressive.

I am not saying that everything ancient in India was fabulous & needed no course correction or needed no sifting of good from bad, but to throw everything into dustbin, considering it to be trash, was not justice to those who toiled hard to evolve & develop a culture that generally had no animosity against anyone. In fact it welcomed everyone to its fold to an extent that many of the modern thinkers consider this openness of our ancestors as a sign of their weakness. Ancient India had its marvels, its literature, its culture & tradition that was worth understanding & called for scholarship by Indians who were entrenched in these concepts. Understanding & research by people who breathe the native air & drink native water & who would understand the nuances of the growth of a society in a particular set of circumstances would have been more accurate & precise but unfortunately an atmosphere came to be created where it came to be considered very lowly for Indians to pursue any scholarship in this area. In any case Indians were never good at writing history. As a result most of the research came to be done by foreigners who had no or minimal understanding of the ancient Indian traditions & ethos. They interpreted everything in their own way & sometimes subtly but surely distorted the facts to further their own agenda. It should not be construed that everyone was pursuing his or her own agenda as there were numerous foreigners who tried to put things the way they saw & understood them. If they found these ideas to be good they said so without any hesitation & if they found something bad they minced no words about them but they never distorted facts.

I have been travelling a lot through India. Recently I travelled from Chennai to Kanchipuram, Mahabalipuram & back to Chennai. I was fascinated by being witness to remnants of those glorious times of India. The temples & structures are mute testimony to the engineering acumen & architectural prowess of people that built those centuries ago. As is well known development in engineering field cannot take place in isolation. It is the general environment in which the civilization or the society is developing that brings in excellence in engineering too. These temples were built centuries ago by people who had no recourse to modern technology, tools & tackles. They did not have a theodolite or a work station to say the least. However they built something in this land with the sole aim of leaving something for the posterity to witness. Their understanding about selection of a place for carving out temples or building such huge structures must have been immaculate. A structure built at a right place lasts centuries but the same built at not so right a place gets lost into the wraps of history.

I wonder why modern Chennaiites, the descendants of the builders of Mahabalipuram & Kanchi Puram, built their houses in such disadvantaged locations that rainfall last year submerged everything they built resulting in loss of life & property. Similar tragedy unfolded a couple of years ago in Kashmir too & reasons more or less were the same as in Chennai.

Shore temple in Mahabalipuram has been built by carving one single rock that must have been lying on the sea shore many centuries ago. The temple is named shore temple because of its location. It is not a functional temple though deities are present inside.

Descendants of those who built the shore temple are busy even today carving ‘murties’ in every nook & corner of the town. It is like a cottage industry in which thousands of artisans & craftsmen of Tamil Nadu are engaged. On seeing their creation, using deft skills of their hands, I could not but bow my head to the craftsmen of Mahabalipuran. They were actually carving out life from huge stone blocks by carving ‘murties’ of ‘gods’ & ‘goddesses’ from huge stone blocks. One ‘murti’ that struck me was that of ‘Maa Saraswati’ as it reminded me of senseless controversy in West Bengal recently about its puja. If ‘Maa Saraswati’ is not worshiped in West Bengal then where will it be? Bengalis are generally proud of their intellect & culture & rightly so & ‘Maa Saraswati’ symbolizes both.

I was also witness to a ‘parade’ were people were pulling trucks & cars with the help of ropes that were tied to iron hooks stuck into the flesh of the backs of the devotees. Surprisingly there was no blood flowing though. All this was part of a ritual to please ‘Bhadrakali’. First time I went to any temple of ‘Bhadrakali’ in my life it was in Handwara District of Kashmir. It was a temple located in the serene surroundings of a forest area on top of a mountain which was full of evergreen ‘deodar’ trees. The deity was at peace with itself & also with the environment surrounding it. Bhaderwah, a beautiful & serene town in Jammu Division of J&K State also derives its name from “Bhadrakali Devi”. “Bhaderkali” for me was a peaceful deity. But the celebration of “Bhadrakali” puja in Chennai was ferocious, to say the least. People dressed as “Bhadrakali”, in dresses as perceived by the devotees, had gathered on one side of the road. Men, women & children flocked to them for their good wishes. Some prayed at their feet, others touched their feet with their foreheads. In one case I saw a ‘Bhadrakali’ massage the head of a devotee with her foot. A child, not more than 2 years old, had two small iron hooks stuck to his chest from which dangled two lemons. The child too was presented to “Bhadrakali” for her good wishes. The people dressed as “Bhadrakali” were men, women or none of these, I was not sure.

I was startled.

For a society & people, the inheritors of rich feats of engineering as depicted in the temples of Kamakshya, Ekambernath, Kailasanathar & Vishnu in Kanchi & the marvels of Mahabalipuram including the temple one on the sea shore were also celebrating “Bhadrakali” in a way that seemed to be out of place, at least to me. It also left me wondering as to how many of the children & young boys & girls who were participating in the festival would be landing jobs in the US or European countries as engineers, scientists & several other fields & make a mark in their lives. There would be so many others who would reach pinnacle of their respective professions in India as well.

This is the dichotomy of India & my “IDEA OF INDIA”.

It is so diverse & yet so cohesive. Goddess Bhadrakali is worshiped from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, but in different ways & different manners. The town Bhaderwah in Jammu Division in the state of Jammu & Kashmir derives its name from the goddess but not many people in Tamil Nadu know about it.

The ‘idea of India’ is ancient & not created by the leftists & their philosophers. What needs to be done is to dust the old structures, remove the webs that are clouding our vision & have no relevance in present times & build on what is good & build it ‘unashamedly’.  Ancient India has nothing to feel ashamed of.

Ancient India has been glorious in every field, be it science, mathematics, astrology, construction, literature or whatever else. So why not bring it to the fore proudly, judiciously & with full conviction.

[Other than this some other things that struck me are as under:

The Kanchi Kamakshi temple was undergoing renovation & the corridors & spaces inside had been beautifully lit up with suitable lights that bring out the best in the structures. The renovation has been undertaken keeping in view the ancient ethos of the temple & it just fits into the old. As it is one of the ancient temples of Kanchi, hence this is welcome step.

Kailasanathar temple is built on a smaller area but it is remarkably clean & tidy. It is a functional temple. The corridors of this temple remind me of the corridors of the Martand temple in Anantnag District of the Kashmir Valley which is in ruins. The scale of the Martand temple is much larger.

The Ekambarnath & Vishnu temples need renovation & cleanliness. Priests should not be permitted with their mobiles into the sanctum sanctorum.  They also need to be taught as to how to be polite & ‘noiseless’.]