The spirit of the Nation

Makarand Paranjape examines the history of India to reveal that it’s spiritual backbone is at the heart of all that it is today

- Makarand Paranjape

The history that we are taught doesn’t always tell the truth. I came to this conclusion in two ways: First, I began to arrive at my own understanding of how history works. Second, my readings in the philosophy of history revealed that histories are governed as much by the underlying ideologies of those who write them as they are by ‘facts.’ Everything in history is constructed from a particular viewpoint.

The whole discipline of history is grounded upon the assumption that human life is shaped by political, economic, social, and cultural forces. Yet, even by such a token, there will be many different versions of the ‘same’ events.

Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the manner in which the recent history of India is being written. First, the British wrote our history, partly to understand us and partly to justify their rule. Later, the nationalist schools of history tried to recapture the Indian past and thereby earn the authority to reshape India’s future.

Despite the plurality that is built into these historiographies, all of them tend to underestimate the forces of spirituality in shaping India’s past, present, and future. In fact, the prevalent belief, even among spiritual people, is that India needed to be free so that she could progress spiritually. While this is valid, it is only partially correct. The problem with it is that it subordinates the spiritual to the political, as indeed most histories do. Does the spiritual depend on the material? That is like asking whether consciousness depends on the body. It is the body which requires consciousness for it to exist and not vice versa. Similarly, it is spirituality which controls materiality. That is because the spirit includes and exceeds matter, and is not apart from it.