Why India Discovery Center?
As the year of 2016 comes to a close, I wish to reflect on our journey with the concept that makes India Discovery Center.
"India" in the title is a place holder. It is not a political unit, but a knowledge unit. In the early days, the entire subcontinent from Iran to Thailand could have been known as a unit. While we don't think that the man originated in this span of the earth, but we have reason to believe that human beings inhabited this area very early in the history of civilization. On the trail from Africa, human beings also settled in many other areas, but the longest continuous evolution of culture happened in this piece of land on the planet. It is likely that the first structured literary expression blossomed in India leading to a reflective view of life of survival, fellowship and harmony. With the river-fed fertile land and a host of vegetation and wild life, the Indian society evolved to define structures in living, invent techniques of enterprise and over all created organizational methods in order to pursue knowledge. Independent thinking and structured living of men and women in India five thousand years ago would be the envy of people in any age.
Then we come to "Discovery." Among the most fundamental thoughts that developed in India in her early history was the assertion that the human voice was a map of the universe and could enable us to communicate with any object in the universe through proper simulation. The analytic thinking behind such assertion leads to enunciate that the human voice is not confined to the audible speech, but goes to a deeper comprehension and understanding of an object in one's mental faculty. That the humans are blessed with a "mind" that can imagine physical objects and create impressions in the brain is the basis of Indian cosmology. No object or no space is too far for the mind. While we know of these assertions and enunciation, we do not know how such a thought shaped itself. We also do not know who the people were and how they lived their life. Much of the old literature is still not fully studied, many are yet to be uncovered. Sanskrit language though reviving, was put in the cold for several centuries under the colonial rule. Without proper investigation, we are led to the phrases like "revelation" which have no sustained comprehension.
The declaration that the entire universe could be a homogeneous unit led to a greater opportunity of thinking in numbers and organizing in sets. Organizing objects in groups led to organizing thoughts in mind, which eventually gave rise to a distinct grammar, scientific measurement of time and the tools of communication using language. Naming of objects has been the most mysterious exercise for the human civilization. Object names have moved on to all parts of the world modified through accent and tonality. Sanskrit language still uses the science of naming, while the world languages memorize words. Object comprehension than object tabulation has been the most important contribution of the Indian mind. As we said before, comprehension can lead to simulation and in a deeper sense guide to actualization. This process has been called yoga, a concept totally foreign to the rest of the world. India taught to the world that a human has the potential to mirror the universe in himself or herself, but we do not know how such a teaching was enabled and by what schooling. Such empowerment is lately covered in a phrase called "will-power", which is a trait and not an endowment.
We have to come to many more areas of discovery in the fields of music, sciences, technology, engineering, textiles, materials and metallurgy. But I want to conclude this segment with the third word in the tile, which is "Center". We envision building a Center where we can learn the evolution of civilization through exhibits and hands-on activities. We wish to create a laboratory of human curiosity in order to understand how we think and how we organize. We research and display historical facts to understand where human beings excelled and where they failed. We celebrate freedom but we understand occupation. India is a living replica of human civilization. We create a Center to understand India such that we may understand the humanity and the human civilization. We hope the Center would come to life by 2021.
Please join us in our seminar "Study of the Vedic Period" scheduled for January 21, 2017, in Lincoln, MA. Please visit our website at http://www.indiadiscoverycenter,org for registration and participation.
