One should go on the pilgrimage alone. I remember my uncle, an eminent academic with Marxist background, once writing to me, saying he had found himself fully one evening while sitting on the bank of Ganga in Haridwar. I, then in my teens, could not have fathomed the drift. I kept on thinking what it meant. later, I realized that to find oneself fully one would have to lose oneself fully.
While in Haridwar, one must seclude oneself from the surroundings to get deep into himself. For, the real wealth of Haridwar cannot be found on its surface. It lies beneath, the accumulated outcome of sadhana of millennia lying hidden in the atmosphere. One would have to relate to it in solitude to get deep into it.
It seems that the Ganga has two sides. One is her eternal movement, her dynamic side. She keeps on flowing, meandering her way through the hills, the plains, the meadows, fertilizing lands, cleansing the sins of humans, providing refuge for them to get peace, helping the contemplative to get above the surface lashings of life. Finally, she merges, loses herself in the sea and then in the ocean.
But there is another side and that is her static side, eternally still, albeit in the timeless movement. When one gets deeper he finds that the river is not being touched by the things happening on her surface and around.
A perfect daughter of Brahma, the Creator, she is absorbed in herself, letting things pass; moving, yet not moving; gliding fast, yet sitting still in the stilled centre of her being. People identify themselves with the Ganga in accordance with the states of their minds, some with the dynamic and some with the static and a few with both. India is great because she accepts the static and the dynamic dimensions of cosmic scheme of things, both fitting in the whole, supporting each other as perfect consorts.
Being a Bengali, I feel Uttarakhand beckons my race irresistibly. No one knows when the stream of pilgrims from Bengal to the deified places like Kedarnath, Badrinath, Rishikesh and Haridwar started landing. However, it has been continuing in full swing since. The procession of deaths has failed to deter them from coming again and again to gain immortality. The spirit is the same amidst death, in spite of death.
While strolling around the Ganga in Haridwar when the Ardh Kumbh was on, I sought to find myself. I failed to, but another realization swept over me when I was viewing the enthralling aarti in the evening. I realized in every fibre of my being what Swami Vivekananda had said many years ago.
“The one common ground that we have in our sacred traditions is our religion. That is the only common ground and upon that we shall have to build. In Europe, political ideals form the national unity. In India, religious ideals form the national unity. The unity of religion is, therefore, absolutely necessary as the first condition of future India. There must be the recognition of one religion throughout the length and breadth of this land…It is not only true that the ideal of religion is the highest ideal…in the case of India it is the only possible means of work; work in any other line without first strengthening this would be disastrous.”
I realized again that evening that the Sanatana Dharma is the essence of the Indian nationhood. And Uttarakhand is, doubtless, the custodian of what holds India together despite the benumbing diversity that India is endowed with.
In the Bengalis, in general, the mind is active. But Uttarakhand in its true essence represents the soul, the pure soul. Unless we stop the rotating lever of the mechanical mind that wheels round and round restlessly around its torrid texture the beauty of soul cannot come out in full. To find oneself fully, the mind must be silenced and the space must be left open for the inmost soul to fill it up with its innate qualities of peace and delight of existence.
I regret that I could not have got myself fully during my recent Haridwar visit amidst Ardh Kumbh. I would go again and again, for I cannot rest till I find myself fully.
This is what India means. It is a land where one must be born or must come to get the final salvation, mukti, from the worldly/fleshy attachments. And Uttarakhand represents the summit of the call of the Transcendence. It embodies the fulfilment too. For here, in Debobhumi, mantras of both Neti (Negation) and Soham (Universalism) are emanating from its deepest soul.