Bharat - Bharati Series Part 2

The situation of life for everyone is ever-changing. In the words of Maithilisharan Gupt — “Sansar main kiska samay hai ek sa sada, hai nishi-diva sam ghumti vipada-sampda.” This means, when is life ever the same for anyone? Crisis and victory keep changing ever like the day and the night.

For Bharat also, this holds true. There was a time when the glory of Bharat spread far and wide. Bharat was, and remains, the crown of the world. Is there any other civilization as old as Bharat? This was the land where rishis performed homas, and because of those rishis, the Bharatiya civilization prospered. They were the well-wishers of the world (e.g., the three lokas in Hindu culture). Where else on earth do we find such examples of ideal living, if not in Bharat? Rishis like Gautam, Vashistha, Valmiki, and kings like Prithu, Puru, Bharat, and Raghu are all examples of people with extraordinary character. These men showed the world what it means to keep a promise. Even at the cost of losing everything dear to them, they never forsook the truth.

Women of Bharat were also equally strong in character. Great women like Savitri, Sumitra, Vidula, Kunti, and Anusuya are epitomes of resilience and dharmic living.

While the world was waking up to the new dawn of civilization, Bharat was already leading the way in commerce, science, education, and culture. When the world was still grasping the way to communicate, we were already chanting the Vedic mantras. Not only in terms of language, but in terms of education, fabric, scientific temper, we were leading the world at a time when the world did not even know these things existed.

We were pioneers in teaching, providers of knowledge. Our literature — the Vedas, Upanishads, Dharmashastras, the Bhagavad Gita, philosophy, astronomy, and astrology — were well advanced. Our contributions to arithmetic (अंकगणित), geometry (रेखागणित), and medicine were fully developed and formalized at a time when the Western world did not even have these concepts.

Not only these, but our poets, artists, artisans, sculptors, and our history, music, and drama were paving the way for the world.

At the time when the Western world was still struggling to find its civilizational structure, Bharat had already made leaps and bounds of progress toward a cultured, scientific, and educated civilization.