Family and Nation

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya, A P J Abdulkalam
Publisher: Harper Publications India

Page 86

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THE FAMILY AND THE NATION
TWO MISSIONS
In India, there are 220 million people below the poverty line and 300 million young citizens who are below twenty years of age. This is the innermost core of India that is in need of social and economic development in an ambience of peace and harmony. India has a road map in the form of India Vision 2020 document. 10 This encompasses five important areas that are vital to bring in sustainable prosperity and help this vulnerable section of our population: agriculture and food processing, education and health care, information and communications technology, infrastructure development (including networking of rivers), and providing urban amenities in rural areas (PURA). These areas need to be taken up simultaneously. When the villages prosper, the states prosper. When the states prosper, the nation prospers.
India is a country of plurals. We have multiple faiths and cultural traditions. The vision of celestial love (puja) is central to the Indian heart. And it is very earthy, almost carnal. This has a long tradition in vernacular literature, going back to the devotional poems of Chandidas, and those of the Bhakti movement of Sri Chaitanya and others. This earthiness is essentially the same as that appearing in the devotional lyrics of Kabir or Mirabai, and goes back even further in the tradition of Bhakti Yoga that permeates the special Indian vision of celestial love.
As if refocusing the original vision of celestial love, we made 'Unity of Minds' our foremost mission. 'Let there arise out of you one community, and inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: those will be prosperous. Be not be like those who are divided amongst themselves and fall into disputations after receiving clear signs: for them is a dreadful penalty.'11