Indosphere Revival: Strategies To Meet Sinic Challenge
Total Views |
(Existence of Indosphere in South East Asian region is a settled fact. Historically the region’s indigenous communities embraced Indic Civilization instead of Sinic influence. India must revive its Civilizational bonds with other countries in the region to create a framework for wielding and leveraging the soft power capital, a challenge in itself.
A well-researched book titled “Indosphere Revival: Strategies To Meet Sinic Challenge” authored by Shri. Pulind Samant was recently published on the 19th Of July 2021. It is an excellent insight into global reach of Hindu Civilization and strategy for revival. A must read book for garnering knowledge and comprehending what must be India’s action strategy in the near future.
Pulind Samant is Mumbai born and a post-graduate in ‘Labour Studies’ from the University of Mumbai. He is an eminent HRM professional associated with many reputed Indian and multi-national companies for the last three decades. He is regular with his blog ‘Let’s Think for India’, on issues in the socio-cultural and socio-political domain, and is a columnist with the ‘Organiser Weekly’.
Presenting the foreword by Professor Madhav Das Nalapat, the Vice-Chairperson of Manipal Advanced Research Group at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, INDIA.)
Policymakers in India use for substantiation of their views those policy analysts who are in broad agreement with their known views on the subjects being dissected in the making of policy. Just as Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru took care to gather around him "for advice" only those who were in synchronicity with his views, modern framers of policy pass of their use of the 90 degree option of relying only on particular streams of thought as "360 degree consultation". It is not surprising that so many of the policies adopted in India have proved to be less than optimal. Consultation gets carried out within a limited funnel of participants in the thought process, with the same individuals taking different roles at various points of time: close confidants one time, not trusted or taken seriously the other.
Pulind Samant's work on the Indosphere shows the opportunity cost to the nation across the decades of not involving original minds in policy formulation. His assessments are a significant and correct departure from the well-trodden track of colonial scholarship designed to prevent the people of India from reaching the levels of self-empowerment and inner confidence needed to make the breakthroughs in various fields as would cumulatively lead to the emergence of India as the third superpower of the globe, after the US and China.
Shri. Pulind Samant's scholarly treatise may be compared to the discoveries of an archaeologist who comes across ancient verities that have long been hidden from the young minds of India. Colonial scholarship mandates that the history of India be shown in full and misleading effulgence for the past four hundred years and in a light shade for the previous six centuries. The period before that, which covers more than five millennia, has been cloaked in darkness. It is from such opacity that "Indosphere Revisited" brings into the sunlight the truths about the interaction between Indic civilization and the fraternal civilizations to the east of India. Interestingly, while an India still in thrall to colonial practices and habits of thought may not be aware of such linkages, increasingly the younger populations of South-east Asia and parts of East Asia are getting to know the details of the magnificence of the culture that they shared with their brothers and sisters in India. Whether it be in Vietnam or in Cambodia, in Laos or in Indonesia, the link with a civilization that ranks together with the oldest in human history (and the thread of which has remained unbroken despite occupation and conflicts) is becoming known and celebrated. The same is true of the Korean peninsula. We know where the Covid-19 virus came from, we know from where the flights departed in the early months of 2020 to spread the novel coronavirus pandemic across the globe, bringing with it disruption, dislocation and misery on a scale not seen since the conflict of 1939-45. And we know from where at least three vaccines are coming from in 2021 that will assist in bringing back normalcy. As with other pandemics, such as the death-spreading HIV-AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, it is India that is providing the low-cost high-efficacy therapeutics and vaccines needed to bring killer ailments under control. Pulind Samant shows in his work that this is no accident. Such actions are a product of the civilizational spirit that suffuses the land, and is based on the foundations of the entire history of the land, not just that for a single millennium.
Although successive (albeit fortunately temporary) colonial masters sought to stifle knowledge of the Vedic period, this foundational element of the civilization of the peoples of the Indic subcontinent is slowly returning to focus. The Vedic period is truly Indic, in that it belongs. Its treasures of the human mind belong to all citizens of the Republic of India. The Vedic must be joined with the other strands, introduced during the millennium that ended on 15 August 1947, these being the Mughal and the Western (British). A house is only as strong as its foundations, which is why the entire construct of the history of India has to reflect the reality of more than five thousand years of recorded history, rather than merely a few hundred or a few hundred more. The entire continuum of history needs to be elucidated to the young minds who are destined to transform our country and the world. Left to me, I would use the word "Vedic" to characterize what some may term "Indic", using the latter term to describe the entire necklace of the history of the people of India, the Vedic, Mughal and Western periods, all of which form interlocking strands of the cultural DNA of each individual within the subcontinent. The book deals with the countries of Southeast Asia, and does so expertly and with considerable scholarship. Allow it to be added that the Indic strand of civilization as broadly defined may be found in South and North America as well as in Europe, China, South Korea and in the continent of Africa, which will rise in the 21st century in the manner that Asia did in the 20th. Just as Sanatan Dharma embraces all faiths in its universality of application and relevance, so does Indic civilization encompass the entire globe in its cultural ethos and sweep. We are all Sanatanis, we are all the cultural offspring of the wells of Indic tradition and thought. There are no outsiders or strangers in Indic thought. Truly is it Vasudhaiva Kutumbakum. In Set Theory, there are interlocking areas, and the Indic has areas of interlocking with other cultures, including the Anglosphere. Indeed, India is at the heart of the 21st century Anglosphere, where it is the "blood of the mind" rather than the "blood of the body" that is used to define inclusion. India is at the heart of Mayan civilization, as with the Ashanti in Africa. India through the Indic is not just with the Romans in Europe but the Indo-European peoples more generally. India is with the peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia, and is present in the cultural DNA of East Asia, as has been expertly brought out by the scholar Samant.
Shri Samant speaks of the clash between Sinic and Indic. There is indeed a clash which is likely to intensify in severity. However, this is not with the Sinic as such but with the version of that noble civilization that has been created and propagated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to create a favourable climate within the Peoples Republic of China for its activities at home and abroad. The "New Sinic" is in many particulars different from the original. Sinic civilization undiluted by the add-ons introduced by the CCP has much in common with the Indic, including several of the traditions introduced by Hindu and Buddhist monks into China, and needs to be reclaimed from the constructs of the New Sinic, which is what Shri Samant has in mind while speaking of a clash of civilizations. The Indic and the New Sinic are odds with each other. Indeed, the latter are at odds with most other civilizations, unlike the Indic.
The world is at the edge of a conflict that may end up as severe as those of the 20th century, if not worse. Understanding the roots of the tension and turmoil that is leading to such an eruption is vital to make the people understand the existential nature of a conflict that has already been unfolding and which will gain in intensity. The book by Shri Pulind Samant is an irreplaceable guide to such an understanding of the wellsprings of culture in the common history of India and its civilizational friends.
.
.