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 For
millions of people across the globe, India lies shrouded in a veil
of secrecy. For the uninitiated, the most common fallacies are those
of India being the land of mystical saints, emaciated street children,
mendicant fakirs, heat and dust, and of a democracy gone haywire.
India is all that. But it is a lot, lot more. For us, India is a belief
in which are ingrained memories of a six-millennia past, and a depth
which one can hardly envisage.India is a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the only way to begin to unravel it is to visit it. It is a nation that spans an area of 3.2 million kilometres and whose written records date back 5,000 years. It is a land where the epic battle of the Mahabharata, the greatest of all wars, was fought; where the exalted Vedas were composed; where the word `Aryan’ was conceived. It is also the land which bore the brunt of invasions from the West, for they came to us, not the other way round. India is a land of immense grandeur, not just in terms of diamonds and gold.  For
centuries it was called a 'Golden Bird' for its wealth, drawing invaders
from the west. In India, temples, forts and palaces were weighted
with gold. For centuries they came, they saw, they conquered and returned
to their lands, richer in a manner they could never have imagined.
Wars were fought, heads rolled but India survived. Then came the Mughals
in 1526, and perhaps the greatest dynasty of India was established.
They ruled for more than three centuries. But by the time the British came to India, the Mughals were mere shadows of their former selves – overridden with corruption, factionalism and sloth. India boasts of being the fountainhead of ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism that are still followed today. It is the land of a thousand dialects, where the oldest religions of the world coexist. Here lies the grandest monument ever built for love, the alabaster-white Taj Mahal. In today’s changing times, India is the hub of technology, of democracy and compassion. India, or Hindustan, seems to be a nation with no parallel. |
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