What India Means to Me - John Spiers

It is not because India is a secular state that there is toleration of all faiths here; Indians have always been tolerant. Not because they were secular, but because they were truly non-secular, truly spiritual.

I came to this country when I was 23, and an idealist, in full accord with India’s aspirations for self-government.

I was brought up in a working class family in cold mountainous Scotland, a country physically as different from India as you can imagine. I remember as a child crying because of the bitterness of the freezing weather, the ice and snow. The very thought of a land of sunshine made me try my hardest to get there as soon as I could. But why India? You may ask. There are so many warm countries under the sun – Mexico, Malaya, the South Sea Islands, Africa, Brazil, and so on. Well, India has always endeared itself as a name of wonder to the European.

© "Bhavan’s Journal" (August 15, 2003) published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kulapati KM Munshi Marg, Chowpatty, Mumbai 400 007. Website: www.bhavans.info. Reprinted with permission.

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