Nations are defined by one or a combination of four factors:  Territoriality, Ethnicity, Language, and Religion. India is unique as it is characterized by spirituality which he calls it Indian Chitti and elaborates.

Nations are formed by any one or a combination of four factors. There may be some others but Territoriality, Ethnicity, Language and Religion figure most of the time.  At least that is the case with the West and Europe when the historical factors in the early nineteenth century solidified and shaped European nations. France is a linguistic state though the division of the Iberian Peninsula and France by the Pyrenees is major territorial factor. Germany is to a large extent driven by ethnic pride which has  had many unfortunate consequences but it remains a dominant feature in German notions of Nationhood. While Germans are interrogating their  Nazi past and are guilty about their ethnic excesses it is a latent feature of their body politic and seeps through when there is a World Cup football game or a tennis victory. Religion brought Pakistan into existence and the United Kingdom is distinguished by its adherence to the High Church, the Anglican Church in whose name the Monarch rules or ascends the throne. Religion matters even in the USA where the Bible is prominently used at official swearing in ceremonies. East Pakistan became a nation on the basis of Bengali pride overturning Pakistan’s Two Nation theory based on adherence to Islam. However most Middle East nations are Islamic and a vigorous movement for  a Pan Islamic Nation or Brotherhood is a scary feature of our times .None of these factors is absolute in the making of a nation, though it might be emphatically present

When it comes to India none of these parameters really apply because of her multi layered texture. We have a much aborted area which is the modern nation state of India but traditionally we thought of Bharata Varsha as extending from Gandhara  ( Afghanistan) in the West  to Khamboja (Kampuchea )in the East  and from the northern  Himalayas to southern Kanyakumari. This is Akhand Bharat, no longer physically a reality, nor ever likely to be, but spiritually and psychologically it is still a potent idea. Our scriptures are informed by the concept and our soul believes it. Territory thus means much less to us than the spiritual idea. Religion is a major factor in India’s life but religion in the sense of an organized thing with a Founder, Book and a set of dogmas are alien to the Indian  ethos. Sanatana Dharma knows no one Book. It has Sages and holy persons but no Founder like Jesus or Mohammad. True the Vedas are the fountainhead and considered infallible because they were intuited and transmitted by word of mouth and memorized by generations not written down by persons. It is apaurusheya, not man made. But even the Vedas and the Upanishads show extreme skepticism on many matters including the existence of God. Indeed the Upanishads are a testimony to the unquenchable urge to debate, argue and question, a trait which is still visible in the body politic. Language cannot be our stamp of nationhood because of the multiple linguistic demography of India. And ethically we are so multifarious that it is not possible to define our nationhood in those terms. But there is a factor which Ernst Renan highlighted in his European context which applies to India and that is the idea  that a nation is a spiritual entity.

Our culture and civilization have been in existence for a continual period of centuries and even today it is still a major aspect of our self imagining. Culture is central and that culture is a spiritual one. With Ernst  Renan, therefore, we may say  that  India as a nation is a spiritual entity and not to be reduced to its geography, languages, ethnicities or religions. Deen Dayal Upadhdyaya called this spiritual quality India’s  Chitti or soul or consciousness. He did not think that the Constitution of India was representative of this Chitti but I go along with Subramanya Swami that the Constitution to a large measure  is informed by our nation’s Chitti. I shall in what follows delineate the contours of this Chitti.

First and foremost is the idea of Dharma, a term which has no adequate English translation but which means the world order, righteousness of conduct, moral  probity and a whole set of related ideas. It pervades the Indian chitti and governs all aspects of life, personal and public or societal. It leads to the good life which is also called Purusharthas or the purposes and goals of life. Dharma here is over arching and subsumes Artha or the economic life, Kama the instinctual life and Moksha the final end of all existence. Dharma is not a monopoly of Santana Hinduism but equally central to Buddhism, Jainism  and Sikhism, religious traditions which originated in India. Thus the spiritual moorings of our Chitti get amplification in these concepts.

Karma, another untranslatable idea is central to Indian consciousness. The simple law of actions having  their reactions, either opposite or not, is behind this concept which dominates Indian life and our Chitti. There is a sense  of life as not being confined to the present . Our actions not only in this life but in previous ones have their role to play  in the conditions under which a person lives in the present . Suffering, which Mahtma Gandhi called the badge of the human tribe, becomes tolerable and we are able to see it perspective  when we see it in such a cosmic context. So ordinary human life needs to be consecrated to the purpose of Moksha, precisely  by living it in such  a manner  that the effects of past actions are mitigated or wiped out by our present mode of acting and living. A natural corollary to acceptance of Karma as reality is also acceptance of the idea of past births and future ones. This in many ways allow us to accept our sufferings and our condition in this  life, because we can always take consolation in the fact that our actions in  a previous birth are responsible for the present .But by living life well, Dharmically, ethically and with compassion we can defeat this endless cycle of birth and rebirth and attain to Moksha .

This does not mean that the good life is negated in our chitti. All the restrictions, in Sanskrit called  Acharas, and practices and the hold of tradition are  meant  to refine us into intelligent and aware human beings. Tradition purifies us and Acharas discipline us in the way we conduct our affairs. In fact, the great  achievements in philosophy, religion, art and literature and the various sciences are the direct result of this hold of the past on us, of tradition. Those  practices determine and inform our achievements and no doubt they are vitally operative in our activities now.

Our unbroken civilizational heritage is under attack from secular minded and Left - oriented individuals. We have out sourced our educational system to all these people, to people who have no respect for our nation’s culture. An infusion of intellectuals who respect our history, our religions, our art and our literature,  into the educational life and discourse of our country is the crying need of the day . Since the University Intellectuals are sold out, the job must be done by committed , nationalist minded and  culturally aware and  proud public intellectuals.

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