This land has suffered a great deal. From the barbaric fanatic medieval warlords to the sophisticated modern diabolical colonialists to their present-day descendants and apologists, there is hardly any other nation that has been wounded so deeply to its core. There is hardly any trick in the annals of deception and warfare that has not been played upon these people. Their gentleness and benevolence have been used to betray them, their respect of moral and ethical laws has been used to subjugate them, their love and kindness have been used to emotionally blackmail them; the list goes on and on. It is, therefore, a miracle that this nation could still survive bravely withstanding a millennium of evil and malevolence(despite losing a large chunk of her area).
I wonder, at times, what is it that kept us alive when perhaps we should have faded away long ago. What is it that kept a mother alive to take care of her second son when her first was killed mercilessly in front of her eyes? What is it that kept a man alive when his wife was violated in front of his eyes? What is it that kept a young boy alive when his parents were burned alive before him? What is it that kept a young girl alive when all her family members were butchered? It seems that in spite of the unending saga of horror and terror, there was and still is something within each one of these unknown human beings that made them hold on, that made them move, that made them to not give up. That something, I feel, is śraddhā.
Śraddhā is hard to define. I shall try to explain it with an analogy. When something is fundamental to another thing, the existence of the former is, generally, not distinctly perceived in the latter. For example, warmth and fire – it is impossible to think about fire without thinking about warmth at the same time; so the existence of warmth in fire is mostly taken for granted or put in other words, not distinctly perceived. Similarly, for śraddhā and astitva (existence) – śraddhā is the essence or the fundamental nature of astitva as warmth is the essence of fire. Since śraddhā is fundamental to astitva, it is generally not distinctly perceived. In simple terms, śraddhā is the ‘is-ness’ of ‘that which is’.