Introduction: Being Responsible for India

In a sense, this whole book is an outcome of my feeling responsible to and for my country. Caring for India and being involved in the Indian narrative has been the mainstay of my intellectual life for the last thirty years. This process has implicated me in the question of what it means to be a citizen of India and also what India itself means as a nation, state, civilization, and cultural entity. Who are we? How did we come to be this way? Where are we heading? Such questions inform much of the reflections in the chapters that follow. However, instead of beginning at the other end, with speculations about the meaning of India, I thought a productive way to start was to reflect on the idea of responsibility itself from which this book originates. What does it mean to be responsible? How does one show this responsibility? My opening chapter will try to address this question by trying to take stock of India as a nation and civilization, before going on to ask what responsibility means to us.

India is a very ancient and complex living civilization that is larger than the present nation-state called the Republic of India. This nation, which would be more appropriately described as a civilization-state, is also the custodian of a diverse and plural culture, which has many layers, regions, languages and subnationalities.