Dr. Hema Hari

Bharat means a place where knowledge is being relished. How did it become India? It was given to India by Persians, from Sindhu it became Indu and then India.Another explanation for the word Bharat is also the word Bhartiyo. It means metallurgy as this was flourishing all over the land. This land has been a land of technology and knowledge. It is a continuously living civilization that has survived all these 8000 years with a lot of knowledge and technology available to us today in the form of ancient texts.
Vedas are not just religious texts as are normally perceived to be, they are traced back and they show the milestones of technology like fire, the wheel and they gave names for the clans that brought forth these technologies. What was the importance of these technologies on this land? Agriculture was also one of the areas that was given thrust on those days. The main ethos to our ancestors was fertility.
Here in South India, we are on a slope from the mountains towards the sea. The ancients understood the topology and that there was a natural gradient in the land and on this gradient they built a series of chain tanks. Tanks or ponds that were chained together. A number of individual village tanks that were connected to each other all the way from the mountain top till the bottom of the Bay. They used to have stone pillars on the bank of the water tank. Just before monsoon they would plug the stone pillars and pack it with mud. When it rained, they would allow the rain to gather in the lake. When there is sufficient water it percolates down into the ground, and all the wells in the village would get their water. Once this was accumulated and percolated, they would break the mud pack and let the water go to the next village and they would then do the same. So even if it rained in 1 place, the water reached the entire region. So none of them had to worry if it didn't rain in their region.
It was an ethos of taking what you need, and not for your greed. What is missing today is the integrating view which integrates technology and connects it with nature, ecology environment and the inner connect of ethos, the human touch, the character and quality of a human being. Technology has to evolve according to the needs of the time. With awareness comes questioning and then it leads to liberation of the mind. When mind is liberated there is no end to the innovation you can bring to the land and the sustainability that comes with it.

Sound Bites

• What is missing today is the integrating view which integrates tech and connects it with nature, ecology environment and the inner connect of ethos, the human touch, the character and quality of a human being. That is what is missing today which is what we have to learn from our ancients. They had an ethos of sustainability and an ethos of fertility for the land. So much as this civilization developed metallurgy and everything they also focused on agriculture. They had entrusted this fertility into the hands of women.