Who is Bhawani? …. In the unending revolutions of the world, as the wheel of the Eternal turns mightily in its courses, the Infinite Energy which streams forth from the Eternal and sets the wheel to work, looms up in the vision of man in various aspects and infinite forms. Each aspect creates and marks an age. Sometimes She is Love, sometimes She is Knowledge, sometimes She is Renunciation, sometimes She is Pity. This Infinite Energy is Bhawani. She also is Durga, She is Kali, She is Radha the Beloved, She is Lakshmi. She is our Mother and the Creatress of us all. [Bande Mataram, CWSA 06:79]
A debate has been sparked off recently on the name of India. There is a school of thought that prefers that it should continue to be India whereas there are others who would prefer the ancient term, Bharat. Whatever be the motives behind these ideas that like many ideas have deeper implications, one thing is certain that once again the eyes of the world are turning towards India that is Bharat, as the constitution decided after a similar debate about the name, to play an important role in the comity of nations. There is indeed a rightful place that each nation must occupy in the world-play but it can only be so if the nations discover their nation-soul and do not confuse their identity with the outer vital-ego, its material wealth and military power. India that is Bharat is no exception to the same. Here too we find the effort of the many to reach out and discover its secret soul by finding the golden thread that runs through the Ages. In a way it is easier because India never got completely disconnected with its soul and it always shared its spiritual wealth with all. But in another way, it is difficult because of the immense complexity and layers of civilisations that have developed around it.
Meanwhile we must admit that an Age of Truth has dawned upon mankind, a new Sat Yuga so to say and one of its first action is to uncover truths that have been hidden and buried for long under the dust of Time. It is as if to advance further on the roads towards the future we must take a look back into our past, bring out all that is still useful and restore it to its rightful place in the present. In the process of this digging into the past there is also a need to clear unresolved issues and set the balance of justice right. How else can our burdened collective past move towards the future until its subconscient memories are cleared and wide and free spaces created for the new consciousness to pour in and fill it. As a consequence of all this resetting of the balance we see much tumult due shifting of power equations around the world. Evidently this will go on till the new normal is established and the reorientation of the world in the vision of Truth has taken place… This shifting of positions is taking place in the life of individuals, countries as well as continents. An important aspect of this shift is that individuals as well as nations (and other human groupings) are trying to rediscover themselves, reconnect with their inner being with the hope of finding their soul. It is this effort of the national life that clumsily presents itself as the surge of nationalism that we see in many parts of the world since last few years. The discovery of the Nation Soul is important because without it, a premature attempt at human unity may be dangerous to the diversity of humanity. We see this in the Age of mankind that we just leave behind us when a few nations, religions and ideologies tried to dominate over the world and iron out all differences or made the nations they conquered as slaves and subjects through a swift or slow destruction of their culture and ways of life treating it as something inferior. Yet this was needed since it brought different and divergent segments of humanity so far isolated within their geographical comfort zones.
The first encounter was not so much of the soul of a nation with the soul of another but of national egos and here the law of the jungle prevailed giving success to the stronger. The invasions also threw challenges at the conqueror as well as the conquered forcing an effort to understand each other because of the compulsion created by the circumstances. But it also left plenty of scars and wounds, injured self-esteem and mutual suspicion. Its extreme form manifested in the Nazi cult that hoped to wipe out entire sections of humanity that did not meet their own criteria of civilization or were perceived as a threat to the group or were simply different. The Shadow of national egos had bloated way beyond the legitimate limits of self-defense. It had to collapse and when it did many nations and ideologies with ambitious expansionist design collapsed under the weight of the Asura that had captured the minds of the dictators.
