Raja Rao - The Meaning of India

The late 1990s saw the publication of two important books on a similar theme. The Idea of India (1997) by Sunil Khilnani turned out to be an international bestseller. Widely read, discussed and promoted in India, it celebrated the Nehruvian idea of India. Putting India's first prime minister at the very vanguard of the makers of modern India, Khilnani asserts: 'But surpassing all in his influence on independent India's political possibilities was Jawaharlal Nehru." (32) The reason was that 'Nehru wished to modernize India, to insert it into what he understood as the movement of universal history' (32). Moreover, the Nehruvian state stood for certain values-democracy, religious tolerance, economic development and cultural pluralism' (35).

I am no scholar. I am a 'creative' writer. I love to play with ideas. is like a chess game with horses, elephano, amberlains, and the kings which might fight with one another. The game is not for winning. It is for rasa-delight.

I enjoy the juxtaposition of ideas. I play. The end, I have been taught, is not a question of success or defeat, but the abolition of contradiction, of duality-and of the peace it should bring to one. I play the game knowing I am the game. That is the meaning of India.

**Contents and Sample Pages**