Have We Forgotten Our Roots, or Forgotten Why They Matter?
Why did our ancestors regard rivers as sacred? Why was sharing food considered a virtue? And why were we reminded that our actions would eventually find their way back to us?
For many of us growing up in India, these were simply part of life. We observed, participated, sometimes questioned, and often carried these practices forward without thinking much about their origins.
But what if some of these seemingly ordinary practices were expressions of a much deeper understanding of existence?
Consider our (Hindusā) relationship with nature.
A river was not merely a source of water, nor a tree merely a provider of shade. In many of our traditions, they were regarded with reverence. Beyond their religious significance lay an understanding worth contemplating: human life is inseparable from the natural world that sustains it.
Now consider the emphasis on duty.
Long before we began articulating our lives primarily through the language of individual rights, Indian philosophical traditions were asking what we owe to others. To those who nurtured us, to those who preserved knowledge, to the society we inhabit, and to the world that makes our existence possible.
Some may recognise this in the concept of PaƱcha į¹į¹a, the five debts that remind us of our obligations beyond ourselves.
And then there is Karma, a word familiar across the world, yet one whose philosophical depth is often reduced to the comforting expectation that good deeds will be rewarded and wrongdoings punished.
These are glimpses of a much larger intellectual inheritance.
Sanatana Dharma explores questions of cosmic order, moral responsibility, interconnectedness, consciousness, the nature of the self and ultimate reality. Its philosophical traditions do not always offer identical answers, but they invite an inquiry into life that extends far beyond the observance of rituals.
What fascinates me is that fragments of these ideas are still present in how we live, even when we no longer recognise their philosophical origins.
There is also an irony worth considering.
Environmental consciousness, mindful eating, fasting, simpler living and sustainable lifestyles are increasingly discussed in the language of modern wellness and responsible living. Many of us enthusiastically embrace these ideas when they arrive packaged as contemporary discoveries.
Yet our own traditions have long explored restraint, moderation, reverence for nature and the relationship between physical practices and inner discipline.
These ideas are not exclusive to India, nor are all modern practices identical to their traditional counterparts. But isnāt it curious that we sometimes recognise their value more readily when they come to us through a different vocabulary?
Perhaps that is how civilizations begin to lose touch with themselves. Not necessarily when their traditions disappear, but when the practices remain and the curiosity about their meaning fades.
Of course, not every inherited custom is profound merely because it is ancient. Traditions deserve understanding, examination and, where necessary, questioning.
But surely, before we celebrate or dismiss an inheritance, we ought to know what it contains.
Have we really forgotten our civilizational foundations? Or have we continued carrying them, generation after generation, without recognising the ideas beneath them?
And if that is so, perhaps rediscovering our roots begins not with louder declarations of pride, but with a quieter, more demanding act.
The willingness to ask why.