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But if Indian
and China, the two giant Asian civilisation still hold their heads high,
while the Greeks, Romans, Scythians, Bactrians, Sumerians, Mongols (whose
grand legacy survives primarily through their descendant Sheikhs and Syeds
of Mughal times in this sub-continent), Aztecs, Mayans and other ancient
societies occupy only footnotes in history, it is because we have the
capacity to reinvent ourselves.Mere countries can afford to remain static;
civilisations must expand, contract or atrophy. India, being a civilisation,
cannot afford to stagnate in tim. And the experience of the last 50 years
exphatically establishes that we won't. This book is a tribute to the
post-Independence Indian rediscovery of itself. In 1963, when I was a
child of eight, I remember reading an article titled "After Nehru who?"
in a Bengali newspaper. And, among the array of possible successors was
mentioned his daughter. I recall asking my father why she should figure
along with worthies like Lal Bahadur Shastri, Gulzari Lal Nanda, Morarji
Desai, S.K. Patil and Arulya Ghosh-names so frightfully alien to the MTV
generation. My father laughed and said: "For all you know, the Shastri
interregnum, it was all over bar the political cremation for the rest.
Decades later, I heard a solemn Indira Gandhi announcing the launch of
Operation Bluestar on TV, ending her curt, tense address by saying "India
will survive. India always finds its feet". When she was felled by the
bullets of her own security guards, I wrote the editorial in The Statesman
referring to her unbound optimism for this country. Just as Nehru's succession
was smoothly resolved, so was Indira's and it hasn't been a problem since
- Chandra shekhars, Deve Gowdas and Inder Kumar Gujrals, notwithstanding.
In our current phase of cynicism we shouldn't forget that this is a resilient
nation. This nation will not just survive but scale incredible heights.
As the Bengali poet Atulprosad Sen wrote in the 1930s: "Bharat abaar
jagat sabhar sheshtba asban lobey" (India shall yet regain that prized
seat in the comity of nations). Indeed, it's time to remind ourselves:
India Matters.
It's also time that all this was put on the record. And the record must
extend beyond a fleeting victory at a cricket match against Pakistan.
We lower ourselves, we compromise our dignity by forever comparing ourselves
with a relatively puny neighour to the West. As Rajinder Puri wrote some
years ago in a rare fit of creativity: "A nation is known by the enemies
it keeps." We are in a different league and it's time we stopped indulging
in collective masochism.
That's the best thing about this book. It dosen't pull punches about the
makers of modern and post-modern India, but simultaneously records India's
preparatory half-century with self-confidence, self-assurance and self-esteem-qualities
that need nurturing if Atulprosad's dream is to materialise. Like an individual,
a nation too must dream, although every achievable dream must be based
on real accomplishments. The achievements, warts and all, are listed in
the pages that follow. Only the dream remains to be painted in VIBGYOR.
India already matters. If it is to matter more, every citizen must internalise
the spirit of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's exhortation to fellow Indians: "Dream,
dream, dream, Dream like a nation of a billion people, not like a country
of a million people."
Here's hoping this compilation spurs that dream.
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