A thought for a sixty first birthday

At the stroke of the midnight hour today, when the rest of the world sleeps, India will awaken to its sixty first birthday. Words modified from that memorable speech that India's first Prime Minister, a dreamer, a romantic, above all, my political hero non pareil, Jawaharlal Nehru, gave as the new nation awoke to life and freedom.

This morning, in the several messages that come to me from friends I have known over the years, was a video clip from my good friend Harihara Sarma Sethunathan. Sethu and I have known each from the days we were fifteen, attending Pre University classes at Madras', Vivekananda College. It was a clip of Gandhi's favourite bhajan, a song composed by the sixteenth (or maybe seventeenth century, a matter of trivia) mystic, Narsi Mehta. The song which many who have seen the movie Gandhi would have heard, is Vaishnav Jana Tho, and essentially means

For he or she is the true believer
He or she
Who knows the pain of the other

For those of you who would like to hear it here is a YouTube link

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=PGSf5SIWi1E

The clip is from the movie, Water, a movie, I think, banned in India. Some say that though it is truthful even Gandhi would have called it a 'sanitary inspector's report' like he described Katherine Mayo's book, Mother India.

Notwithstanding the merits of the movie, I have intentionally reproduced the clip, for it contains and captures the hope that Gandhi represented. Look at that scene, the child widow being carried in, the silent masses, and, the single, old man, sitting like the Buddha on the Dhamma Peetha (seat of wisdom) his head bowed in contemplation, and, the love with which he affectionately holds the child who garlands him...and in that there is a new consciousness that one becomes aware of...a consciousness that the Buddha was aware of when he said, "...for hate cannot be conquered by hate...love alone can conquer hate..."a consciousness that Gandhi brought into Satyagraha...

And a strange thought came to me...

In my college days I have read at great length debates in the Indian Constituent Assembly (pre-Independence Parliament) about whether Jana Gana Mana composed by Tagore or Bankim Chandra's Vande Mataram should be the national anthem. On the one hand we had the secularists and on the other, the upholders of a Hindu nationhood. The secularists won, thanks largely to my political hero's insistence that the last verses of the Vande Mataram were not representative of a multi cultural society (in fact several versions of the Vande Mataram do not carry those verses any more)...

Though Vande Mataram was popular in those days no one, even my political hero, did not think of making it the national anthem...wouldn't that have been such a tribute to what Gandhi had believed in...

So, the thought, which I know will get nowhere in the power politics of today, why not make Vaishnav Jan Tho the new national anthem ? Imagine the sight, President Bush or Putin of Russia lands in Delhi. Instead of the traditional jingoistic twenty one gun salute and inspection of the honour guard, they stand for two minutes in silence as the band plays the strains of

Vaishnav Jana Tho
tene kahiye
je peer parayi jaani re

and, an English version, or a Russian one, or a version in a language that those on the podium can understand...

Just a thought, it will perhaps go nowhere today...

However, I recall what Eckhart Tolle says in the opening pages of his recent book, The New Earth. When the first flower struggled its way through the cracks of a mountainside a few million years ago, it had no awareness that it was the start of a new consciousness, one that we associate with beauty, fragrance and peace, today...

And so, as we celebrate the sixty first birthday of India's Independence, a minute's silent meditation as we listen to and reflect on the words of this YouTube clip

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=PGSf5SIWi1E

Thanks for the thought, Sethu...