Introduction

In the modern world India is not regarded as one of the dominant powers. It faces huge problems of religious division, unstable government and the problem of providing basic services for a huge and growing population. How do we reconcile this modern condition with the fact that India is one of the areas of the world that rests solidly on a heritage that goes back almost 5000 years? Does the collective genius that produces governments, philosophies, economies, societies and religions simply get lost? Or is this genius irrelevant to a modern world? We can speculate about the latter question but we can be assured that a people does not lose the mental faculties that are capable of producing great ideas. Today individual Indians excel in all of the areas of modern life and continually remind us that the collective genius that produced Hinduism, Buddhism, the wisdom of the Arthashastra and the stable unity of the Mauryan empire may not be lost but is only waiting for a modern opportunity to achieve greatness again.

We may also speculate on how the different paths Indians explored in religious discovery may offer some variety insofar as they differ from Western religious traditions. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism all contained an image of the individual as being part of a universal totality. They would be unhappy until worldly ties were broken and unity with all existence is realized. This differs from Western materialism. Likewise, ideas of reincarnation and karmic retribution set India on paths very different from Western and Middle Eastern beliefs in a single guiding deity. The Hindu caste system, for all the criticisms of its divisions, stabilizes Indian society in a way that is hard to give up. Ascetic self-denial is still a respected life style in India. The grandeur of the Vedic period and Mauryan empire still inspires Indians more than 2000 years later. It explains their deep sense of pride in spite of economic and political difficulties. India is perhaps poor only in the collective materialistic sense.