Nation Building-Swami Chinmayananda

Thursday, December 2, 2010, 18:12

Continued from 'Individual Freedom'
At least in our present state of National emergency, we must pause for a moment, and watch ourselves and ask - "Are we really a nation?" "Can we today call ourselves people?

"Is there in us a ready capacity today to sink our differences and prejudices in order to cheerfully strive for and willfully arrive at a common purpose, which is acceptable to all?"

I need not answer these obvious questions. In case, your answer is that Bharat is today already a united, self-disciplined nation, and that her people are putting forth this integrated strength to reach a common national aspiration, we must congratulate ourselves for it, because, then our future is assured and progress alone can be ours. But, in case, in Bharat we feel that we have yet to consolidate and discover our fuller unfoldments and thereby come to evolve ourselves to be people, the question is "how can we achieve this now?"

The political and the social sciences give no direct method for immediately reversing the disintegrating forces playing so relentlessly now upon the fabric of the community.

An economic vision no doubt, for a short time, may give an artificial look of integration and to that extent we find a temporary communal or national integration during the natural enthusiasm of an age of planning or during any period of revolution, or in any era of war. This cannot accomplish an integrated full development of a nation, as this enthusiasm is never sustained long enough to yield any perceptible fruits. It is at such junctures in history that the available political system crumbles, the economics planning fails, the nation falls and the man decays.

I am not at all an alarmist. But I must admit that, if we were to rub our eyes and look around us today, at least with a minimum sense of scientific detachment, we shall observe that we have much more to do in building up our nation. As we have already indicated, a nation is not built merely by the great things we might posses, or manage to procure. It is essentially rooted in the texture and quality of each individual and his attitude towards the world around him.

This is a problem wherein other objective sciences have no solution to give. The social and political philosophies have no practical remedy to suggest. And yet, none of these philosophers will willingly ever admit their helplessness. Thus we find, improvement of health, enriching the pockets, stepping up of production, removal of communal equalities, a social law discarding religion, an administration advocating secularism, and encouraging technology etc. are suggested by the modern sociopolitical philosophies, as remedies for improving the texture and quality of man, and as sure schemes for nation building.

The fallacy in the argument must be obvious even to the very promoters and champions of pure materialism and sheer objectivity in political and social reconstruction.

To be continued

About the author

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda, a enlightened master of India, led thousands of seekers to eternal bliss. His life is exemplary and in itself is a teaching. This article 'Nation Building' is the continuation of 'Individual freedom' and a part of the write up, 'Dynamics of Togetherness'