INDIA'S WORLD-VIEW - EVOLUTION

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According to India’s First Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who tailored its world view during the initial phase, two aspects of India’s world-view, namely, the positive aspect of peace and the desire to promote a larger degree of co-operation among nations were based on India’s past thinking on the formulation of foreign policy.

The chief sources of India’s ancient and traditional values are scriptural texts like the Vedas, the law books by sages such as Manu, Yajnyavalkya and Parashar, the Dharmashastras, the text of Buddhists and Jains, the great epics, the puranas, legends and chronicles of great national events and the theological treatise and manuals of woirship.

Though these traditional values underwent certain changes due to the impact of the Islamic and Western Culture, the works of modern Indian thinkers like Vivekananda, Tagore, Tilak, Aurobindo, Gandhi and Nehru show that they were very much influenced by ancient Indian thought, which in turn influenced their ideas about shaping the destiny of independent India.

Six aspect of India’s traditional values have a bearing on the evolution of its world-view, namely,
- Preference for a middle way,
- Tolerance,
- Idealist and realist traditions,
- Absence of imperialist tradition,
- Approach to International Law, and
- Habit of expressing positive ideas through negative terms.

The British Rule in India helped evolve India’s world-view in two ways. Firstly, it have stimulus to the national movement for freedom, which in turn led to India’s support for the freedom of dependent peoples around the world. As regards merits, facilitating of communication through setting of communication network, introduction of English language, laying of railways and encouraging social reforms, and above all, bringing entire India under one administrative umbrella, the British rule contributed to the rise of nationalism in India. Secondly, the humiliation and suffering experienced by Indians due to the British racialism made the leaders of independent India to strongly oppose racialism. Jawaharlal Nehru in the Constituent Assembly on 16 May, 1949 stated, “One of the pillars of our foreign policy if to fight against racial discrimination.”

The Haripur Congress Resolution (1935), outlined India’s world-view, “The people of India desire to live in peace and friendship with their neighbours and with all other countries, and for this purpose wish to remove all causes of conflict between them. A free India will gladly associate itself with such an order and stand for disarmament and collective security. In order to establish world peace on an enduring basis, imperialism and exploitation of one people by another must end.”

Thus, world-view of a country being a form of social action and its makers being part of the socio-cultural milieu in which they operate, the significance of those values and traditions, especially those transmitted through successive generations, cannot be gainsaid especially in India which has been the seat of an ancient civilization and meeting-place of great cultures.

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