Rediscovering India

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Narendra Kumar Tyagi, born in India in a tradition- al Hindu household, grew up in a locality where people professing Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism and Christianity lived in harmony. His father was a lawyer with a small landholding. His mother was a devout Hindu housewife. He completed his M.Sc. (Physics) at the University of Agra, India, before he left for the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 1965 to work for his Ph.D. on Nuclear Physics. After completing his thesis, he did his Graduate Studies in Philosophy, Political Science and Economics at the same University. He was in India in 1981 for a brief period to be with his father. He worked on the present book from 1981 to 1994.

Shri Tyagi acknowledges that the transcendental culture of India inspired him to take up this work. The book is more than words, sentences, paragraphs that encapsulate thoughts and facts about India or reflections on its history and culture or discussions about its future. It is an expression of his boundless love, expressed as ably as it could be done, given the a priori limitations of the human mind, in human words, for the people of his beloved India.

To my Hindu brothers and sisters I would like to say "Ram- Ram!," to my sikh brothers and sisters "Sat Sri Akal!," to my muslim brothers and sisters "Salaam!" and to my christian brothers and sisters "God Bless You!"

Why did I write this book? Those who are sort of idealists and enjoy things at the abstract level, the answer in all sin- cerity and with all humility is this:

"People of my beloved India continue to suffer from and be overwhelmed by problems and more problems. It is my patri- otic duty, with some Divine Power guiding and inspiring me, to help rediscover their rich past. Only the rich past of India, if the people of India can learn to guide themselves by its im- peratives, will deliver them from the physical and mental pains inflicted by their complex and growing problems."

Those who are nominalists and prefer less abstract and more concrete or specific reasons for things, the answer, in deference to nominalism, is this:

If they can learn to guide themselves, in thoughts and ac- tions, by the higher imperatives of their culture and tradition, people of India, then, will:

(a) have access to more truth about themselves;

(b) stay more peaceful and united;

(c) keep their nation politically stable, socially harmonious, economically vibrant and militarily strong enough to keep the region of South Asia and the larger Indian Ocean free and at peace with itself; and.

(d) keep India always in the Act Of Becoming better and better.