The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Friday 20 November 2009

A NATION WITH MULTITUDES..CERTAINLY NOT A HOTCHPOTCH NATION

“We are considered a conglomeration of different faiths, castes, languages, customs and traditions. Whatever we might say in defence or take pride in our ‘unity in diversity’, the world at large believes we are a hotchpotch nation.”

A debate topic on a blog starts saying like India’s slogan of ‘unity in diversity’ doesn’t work and the world at large sees us as a hotchpotch nation.

India is like a microcosm of the macrocosmos of world. We can easily find many Indias in this part of the world, slated to reflect a confusing identity, but is there truly a confusion of this sort? Nations have changed, their characters have metamorphosed but the basic human identity has remained the same over the ages. This basic human identity is at the core to set its other variants. We have always had group identities; identities of fistful of trendsetters; and identities of seas of followers. These identities subsequently reflected in identities of smaller communities; in identities of larger population groups; and in identities of nation states. But this ‘many’ at micro level remains around that sort of ‘many’ at macro level. Layers remain the same. Ethos remains the same. Their scope and paradigms take a shift based on the level they are operating at.

'Unity in diversity' is not India specific. No two human beings are same. The world is heading more and more towards individualism and it is not a new phenomenon. The world history is replete with individuals who really matter. We may represent sameness collectively with this difference of individuality. If we comply, we stay. If we cannot, we split. This basic entity of identity is reflected at every level of societal and population DNA. We make and break identities. That is process of evolution. The subsequent de-stability is a vestige of this process of evolution, to move towards more rational ways. Post-modernism might be a recent literary catch-phrase but what it signifies was always there – making your sphere ‘you’ specific, whether right or wrong. That vestige of process of evolution of identities gives us the rare chance to debate on the post-modern ways of thinking that we inculcate, consciously and sub-consciously.

This multitude of ‘we’ makes societies, communities and nations. This multitude of ‘identities’ is at the core of this process. This multitude of ‘differences’ and hence ‘vestiges’ is in the backdrop of striving for more, seeking corrections, demanding rectifications. We cannot simply do away with it. The world may believe we are a hotchpotch nation but we see that sort of thinking as hotchpotch way of thinking.