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. George Eliot famously 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, had this book about Indian culture, in its most refined understanding, 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.
Jeffery D. Long
Elizabethtown College
Professor of Religion and Asian Studies
This book is a presentation of various key elements of classical Hindu thought, without chauvinistic enthusiasm or superficial second hand information. It is based on scholarly research and presented from contemporary perspectives. Its distinguishing features are a pan-Indian perspective (Sanskritic as well as Tamil), extensive bibliography, and references to other cultures as well. It is interspersed with personal encounters with the topics as well as some reminiscences
In this rich and wide-ranging intellectual memoir, Dr. V.V. Raman, a highly respected progressive voice within the global Hindu community, gives his readers a firsthand view of the enormous variety and depth of Indian culture. Written in a highly accessible, conversational style, Dr. Raman’s book touches upon topics ranging from the tensions between religion and science, and tradition and modernity, to India’s linguistic diversity, to the wisdom of the ancient Hindu scriptures and the great reformers of contemporary Hinduism, such as Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi. Insights leap off of every page, and the reader is treated to a panoramic view of Dr. Raman’s Hindu heritage. This book will provide enjoyable and fruitful reading for Hindus and non-Hindus alike.
PREFACE
No matter how far from home and for how long, the land and culture of our birth keep beckoning us homewards. So it has been with me and India: a country and culture that taught me to experience the world in all its richness, to think with sensitivity, and to be respectful of other cultures. I am quite at home and quite attached to the great nation of the USA, but India has always been close to my heart, Like India, the United States has also had a rich past and it too has welcomed people from all over the world. It too has made and continues to make significant contributions to human welfare and culture. It too is facing, like India and many other nations today, difficult challenges to its well-being and integrity.
India and the United States have much to be proud of and quite a few things to be embarrassed about. But it is not of pride and predicaments that I wish to write in these pages. I want to re-live the cultural enrichments I received during the first two decades of my life. I am a Tamil who grew up in Bengal and is fully Hindu in heritage. Linguistically I am at ease with Tamil, Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, and a few European languages including English. As to perspectives, as a Hindu I view religious tolerance as an enlightened and necessary virtue for the modern world, and as a physicist I respect reason and expanding worldviews. As a humanist I try to see all cultures as flowers in a bouquet that is Humanity, Spiritually and intellectually I am a product of both the East and the West. I have benefited from the abundant literature, philosophy, culture, and science of both traditions.
The following chapters are largely personal reflections, but I am indebted to countless authors on the topics. Most of my remembrances here belong to Classical India whose echoes continue to reverberate overtly and subtly in the soul and spirit of modern India. May they continue to do so for all times to come!
I have reminisced in this book on some of the literatures, names, and ideas that inspired me as I was growing up in India decades ago. Unexpected and unplanned events took me away from the land of my birth. During these years I have been keeping in touch with Indian culture in various ways, including periodic visits to different cities and regions.
As a modern dynamic nation India has been changing in many ways since the days it was my home. The nation’s infrastructure has been modernized, its educational system has expanded, there are now lots more academic institutions, scientific centers and productive factories. The standard of living of an increasing number of citizens has been steadily rising. There are more cars on the roads, more planes in the air, more highways and luxury hotels, and more pollution in land, air and waters than when I was growing up as a lad in the 1930s. There are pubs and drinking joints, yoga classes on TV, and racy stuff in movies such as I could never have imagined as a youth six decades ago. Dating—in the American sense of the term—is not uncommon, and reports of rapes and bribes abound in newspapers and on TV.
In a sense, all this is inevitable in an open and evolving society. There are nations which strive to filter out what they regard as the morally negative aspects of modernity, which is commendable. But some insist on reverting to or continuing the unconscionable values and anachronistic modes of the past at great cost to human life and liberty and the experience of happiness. Modernity and technology, like life itself, is a package deal: the good and the bad come together. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, they are thrust upon us. It is for us to handle them wisely.
It is ironic that in this age of freedom, individuals and societies seem to have lost their freedom to choose and reject their lifestyles and values. They are dragged by technology, media, and peer-pressures along roads which, left to themselves, they might not have chosen. It would seem that we are all in it together, zooming with time on one global ski-slope, riding deliriously, even uncontrollably, downhill towards what appears to be a perilous precipice.
In the meanwhile, in the context of Indic culture and the Hindu world, the most ominous change I have been observing in recent years in private conversations as well as in letters to editors, on list serves, in internet postings, lectures, symposiums, books, and other public forums is a growing concern that the very existence of Hindu culture and religion is at stake. The integrity of the Hindu world is challenged, its foundations diluted, and its essence distorted. Most seriously, its survival is threatened by what many see as concerted moves from within India, and by intrusions from the outside. Because of all this, there has surfaced widespread suspicions, if not hatred, between Hindus and others. These fears are also articulated with sensitivity and consternation by a good many Hindus residing beyond the shores of India. I fear that the threats to Hindu identity and culture are genuine. In the midst of all this I well remember the good old days when our family had Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Theosophy friends as well.
I like to think and I often pray that ugly inter-religious dissensions will dissolve with time all over the world, though at this point this seems to many to be unrealizable in the next few decades. All religions, not just in India but all over the world, will have to recognize before it is too late that mutual respect is the only enlightened vision that offers hope for peace and harmony. This has to be based on the principle that all individuals and groups must be allowed to choose their own paths to spiritual and cultural fulfillment: the tenet of polyodosism. It is more urgent to work together as brothers and sisters to resolve the growing planetary problems our species is facing than to be fighting about which God will take us to heaven or which culture is superior to which.
In this context, millions of Hindus in India and abroad, can be enriched by reading and reflecting on the literary, spiritual, and philosophical legacy that our ancestors in classical India have left for all of us. That is what I have tried to offer in this book.
Spurts of Thought 