REFLECTIONS ON INDIC CULTURE
V. V. RAMAN
Comments by Professor Arvind Sharma
McGill University
I would like to congratulate the author for this delightful read. I had no idea what to expect when I was requested to write this foreword, except a confidence born of our association extending over several years, that it would be something remarkable. It has turned out to be something more than remarkable -it borders on the sensational, as something inspired and inspiring; inspired in the unique approach of the author in weaving the right tapestry of Indian history and culture from the threads of his own lived experience of it, and inspiring in demonstrating that not just Hinduism but India itself is a way of life -a way of life distinguished by a warm and willing embrace of diversity.
This book also possesses the quality of a novel without being one; it is a page-turner. This is all the more remarkable because the book is difficult to categorize as travelogue, or autobiography, or cultural essay, or encyclopedic survey, or a book on Hinduism because it is all of them, sharing specially with the latter its recalcitrance to definition. But its attitude towards Hinduism is like Hinduism’s attitude to the world, which a French Indologist has described as one of “fascination.”
The reader should perhaps be gently warned that the book -charming and anecdotal- is deceptively informal in style while astonishingly rich in content. It carries its learning lightly, even as it teems with epigrams. T.S. Eliot mourned the loss of wisdom in knowledge and of knowledge in information. He would have been more optimistic about information leading to knowledge, and knowledge to wisdom, if this book about Indian culture, in its most refined understanding, had fallen into his hands.
I recommend this book unreservedly but with a warning to the reader: once you flirt with reading it, you might be tempted to go all the way.
Spurts of Thought 