M R LALU
India, the world’s largest and oldest civilization has been witnessing scores of initiatives by the Modi government since 2014. Many of them were largely indicative of a civilisational revamp that Prime Minister Modi has been unequivocally maneuvering and with the global acceptance, his government at the centre is upbeat about everything that it believes as a cultural necessity. While critics prefer to hoot from behind the fence on anything the government brings in its platter, the Prime Minister is seen unperturbed and busy and relentless on his cultural revamping mission. India’s G-20 Presidency came at a point when the government enjoys all possible reasons to celebrate the global leadership that it was pacing forth in a post pandemic world.
The Vedic hymn ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ that the Prime Minister tried to set as the focal thesis for the global community under India’s G-20 presidency was taken from the Maha-Upanishad. Modi’s undisputable efforts to channelize the global attention towards the spiritual splendor that the Vedic traditions defined for humanity had received support from all the corners. This is again marked as a guaranteed significance as the human race is severely troubled by the harrowing effects of war and the highhandedness and hegemony that the superpowers deal with the rest of the world with. India’s global reach through the new leadership of the G-20 would further strengthen its efforts to take the global community closer to knowing the Indic traditions and this should be seen as an occasion that the world would directly test the flavour of spiritual concomitance that India has been actively advocating. Undoubtedly the presidency becomes more significant as India takes its strides through the Amrit Kaal, which the Prime Minister puts as a matter of pride and great opportunity. To see the world as a family has been a Vedic expression and India’s efficiency in effectively communicating this idea of oneness in a post pandemic world irrespective of the differences that humanity is engrossed in deserves admiration. The message ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’ in itself is all encompassing and would probably break all the assumptions that have been keeping the global community on the edge of scepticism and surreptitious denial. Well before its G-20 presidency, India, under the leadership of Modi, was catapulting its agenda of Yoga heritage by highlighting the essence of the tradition and its global relevance. The world community tilting its mind in acceptance for Yogic life and declaring June 21 as the International Yoga Day was undoubtedly a victory that the Modi government could take the credit of.
India’s civilisational revamp since 2014 has been hugely accepted and admired. But Narendra Modi’s ideological interventionism has been forcefully painted as majoritarian by his rivals. The interconnectedness that the Vedic traditions had discovered centuries ago was transformed into a global narrative by the Indian state. With its multiplicity flourishing and expanding, India sets an example for coexistence while diverse views gain respect and resonance. Truth and non-violence and the Vedic means of Dharma would gain global acceptance and its inheritance such as Yoga, Vedanta and Ayurveda would be seen playing a pronounced role in bringing the global diversity under the Indic wisdom of oneness. Aspiring to bring a multicultural world together by stitching differences into amity and eradicating enmity, India’s G-20 leadership is potential and holds vitality to speak for the entire world. The world being divided and disabled by political, ideological and geographical differences, India stands as a potential platform for the global community to lean on for peace and tranquility and experience the essential principle of oneness. Back home, Modi’s civilisational leap in India has been termed as a scripted narrative and the efforts protruding in the direction of a significant revamp are lambasted as divisive. A deliberate denial that India’s civilisational symbols have been made a victim of have now been officially given a face lift, a titivation. You call it an ideological take-over that India never attempted for decades since independence. Modi’s courage to redraw between the missing dots should be seen as an endeavour to retrieve the heritage of an erstwhile colony of the Mughals and the British. The colonial hangover is broken and the chain of servitude is unfastened.
The monumental statue of Subhash Chandra Bose installed in the Kartavya Path tells us stories of valour and sacrifice and the element of pride that the initiative injected in Indians is momentous. To speak about another initiative of the Modi government, with more visible changes put in place, the National Education Policy 2022 comes as a revolutionary step in the area of education. With its ancient glory restored, the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor stands as an example for India’s cultural revival and the Mahakal Lok Corridor in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh dances in tune with the spiritual jugalbandi of Ayodhya, Kedarnath, Somnath and many other spiritual places that received a refurbishment in the Modi era. Abrogation of Article 370 brought significant changes in Jammu and Kashmir too and a spiritual rejuvenation that the Himalayan region is witnessing through the restoration of temples and shrines, would be enlisted as a step towards India’s spiritual renaissance led by a constitutionally elected government. India’s global humanitarian interventions and its distinctive multilateralism and the ideals that it drafted for the global concomitance would redefine geopolitical aspirations of countries. Modi’s spiritualised global diplomacy and the G-20 presidency seem to be emerging as an actual catalyst, cementing irritable differences in a world that is desperately seeking consensus to stay together peacefully and polarization kept at bay. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam would further illuminate the global community to stand in line with ‘oneness’ gaining momentum as a vision and a mission that it can probably cultivate for the future.