The Heritage of Indian Culture: 1.4 -Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 25, February 2026, 05:45. 
Books
Bhagavadgita & Hinduism
The Heritage of Indian Culture - 3.  
1.The Vision of India - 4.
Swami Krishnananda.
Post-4.

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So, what the name of this country was before these people came, and what their culture was called before they entered India – this is a different matter. I am just mentioning to you that the name of this country is not 'India'; it has come to be called so by these accidents of history, and the people in India are not 'Hindus'. Hence, there is no such thing as 'Hindu' culture, or even 'Indian' culture, in general parlance.

It was a culture which was associated with a vision of perfection. Even today, people sometimes call it the vision of the sanatana, or the Eternal; and the culture or the law that is associated with this eternity is oftentimes called, even now, as sanatana dharma. But today it means something different from what it originally meant; it has become a sectarian doctrine opposed to other doctrines. Names are great problems these days. We cannot give any name to anything, because the moment we designate a thing by any particular name, it sets itself in opposition to things which have another name. It is our laboured intention to discover a non-opposing culture that is India – the Bharatiya samskriti, or we may say, the culture of India.

The culture of India, therefore, is such a comprehensive vision of*** the values of life that it is something which transcends the outlooks of ordinary Indians. We may say that the culture of India is not Hindu religion, if by 'religion' we mean what Hinduism is in our minds at the present moment. If Indian culture was identical merely with Hinduism, it could not accommodate other religions; but we live peacefully with other religious cults and faiths.

In India during the medieval times, ambassadors came from the court of Queen Elizabeth; and during the reign of Shivaji, ambassadors from European countries came. They were greeted and taken care of with such affection that they left with a tremendous encomium of the government of India that prevailed at that time. We should read these histories with great caution and care. There was no antipathy to the views of other people, because somehow in the blood of the people in India was ingrained a kind of tolerance – born of an understanding that truth is multifaceted.

Now, the multi-formed vision of reality should naturally take into consideration the forms it takes in other cultures and other views of life. The prophets of the religions which reign supreme in the world these days naturally told the great truths, but do we not think they differ from one another? We think that one religion is opposed to another religion because of the divergence of the codified instructions in their respective gospels, and the consequent conduct which people adopt in their own countries on the basis of these gospels of their own prophets. The geographical conditions and the historical circumstances of the times required a gospel of the type which was delivered by those great men during those hours. The religious preachings of the prophets – it may be Buddha, or Christ, or Mohammed, or anyone – were like prescriptions of a physician to the diseased humanity. When we are ill with a particular disease, a particular prescription is given to us; but if we are ill with some other disease, the same prescription is not given. And to another individual, the same prescription is not given. Something like this has been the reason behind the divergence of the instructions of the prophets of the religions reigning supreme today, and it would be foolhardy and idiotic for people to think that they represented a complete truth for eternity without requiring any kind of change whatsoever, needing no amendment at all.

It is difficult to believe that the prophets themselves believed this. If Acharya Sankara, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad and Zoroaster had a conference in a room, it would be difficult to believe that they would disagree with one another. They would have been so happy to meet each other in that conference. Each would be smiling at the other and embracing one another in the commonness of the vision that they had in their own selves, but manifested outwardly with certain limitations, as would be required under the geographic and social conditions. But the followers of the prophets spoiled the religions. They cannot smile; in fact, they frown at other faiths, which was not the basic, fundamental viewpoint or standpoint on which India stood, right from the time of the Vedas.

There was, somehow, for reasons which we cannot easily know today, a great spirit of accommodation and tolerance in the minds of people here. This is why, in spite of social problems and political onslaughts, and ignorance of various types which is prevalent in illiterate and dogmatic circles, there is a spirit prevalent in us. The outward forms shake, but the spirit is stable even now. Thus it is that there is a hope which India is raising aloft as its banner, to whose light people turn their visions for guidance even at this moment of time, when the international situation may be said to be in a state of turmoil.

Whenever people think of yoga or the religion of God, they remember India. It is something very mysterious. Why should they remember India, and not any other country? It does not mean that India contains only religion, and nothing else. That it contains something more than religion, is the reason. Religion is not adopted by India as a cult or a bifurcated pattern, along the ruts of which it has to drive its vehicle of daily existence. To the vision of India – which would be the proper way we can describe the culture of India – the religious piety of the cults and the faiths was not merely an aspect of the vision which it held aloft, but a permeating influence which converted the whole of life into religion.

I read a very interesting line in a great work of Sri Aurobindo which I liked very much. He says, “People generally complain that India's fall is due to its religion, but I say India has failed because of the lack of religion.” India has somehow or other got into a quagmire, and run into a blind alley, and maybe it had to pass through a period of test where it had to blink a little bit to the totality of the vision of religion which it entertained originally during the time of the Vedas and the Upanishads, and turned a blind eye due to the little repercussion which it had to bear during the vehement movements of the tempestuous winds that blew over its surface during the passage of time. It is difficult to maintain the vision of God throughout one's life. Even a prophet cannot maintain it, and for a large country like this to maintain this concentrated vision of totality of its religious attitude perpetually, in every walk of life, for all times, would be a terrible job indeed. It failed many a time; it could not understand. “Many times, Homer nods,” as we are told, and India also nodded. Everyone nods when great men nod.

But even with this nod, India is not asleep. It awoke. Now and then it recovered from its slumber. It got out of its bed of complacency, and could remember the foundations of its outlook. Today we are in the year 1980, which is not a happy year, not a happy day. We are not living in happy circumstances either socially, politically or internationally. Notwithstanding all these problems, do we not think we have a ray of hope in our hearts? Are we weeping and crying that we are in hell? Though oftentimes it appears as if we are in hell, and are likely to cry out, “Hell! Get thee behind!” as Christ said to Satan, yet even the most depressed melancholy individual seems to have a little ray of positive hope. From where has this hope come? This is the foundation of our great culture, into whose mysteries we shall have time to dilate a little more.

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Chapter 2: The Vision of True Religion
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