The challenge for India as it enters the 21st century is not merely an accretion to its gross national product or an urgent embrace of globalisation or an improvement in foreign direct investment. Critical as these are, our
sometimes wobbly republic must never forget to build and consolidate and celebrate Hindu civilisation's timeless, perhaps unique, gift to mankind, namely the extraordinary and possibly singular ability to absorb, to assimilate and, in the process, be enriched by human diversity. If we squander or wound this persistently undervalued gift, our survival as a nation-state is in jeopardy.
Only slightly less fundamental to a thousand years of generally stable survival is the resilience of Indian society. At regular intervals the elaborate and intricate make-up of civil order receives what appear to be fatal injuries. Already nervous citizens despair. This is the end, they say; we have hit rock bottom.
The disintegration of the loosely-assembled structure we call country seems around the corner. Yet each time the people and the institutions they have painfully constructed bounce back, if not to full health then to at least functioning mode. Our foreign friends ascribe the resilience to fatalism and its attendant 'benefits'. And to good luck. But that is too facile an explanation for an infinitely more complex civilisational habit.
For all of us at Outlook, producing the millennium issue has been a labour of love. Our distinguished contributors - from V.S. Naipaul to Salman Rushdie to Amartya Sen to Sunil Khilnani to Adoor Gopalakrishnan - dissect and discuss the past, present and future with appropriate and, I hope, engaging sobriety, avoiding as far as possible the book-of-lists format. India, not the world, is Outlook's subject not because we are unmindful of the world, but because we had our hands full chronicling the victories and defeats stoically received by the Indian people in the Indian millennium.
Just as we were ready to go to press, nature, which has played a seminal role in defining the way we are, struck Orissa in all its malevolent fury, reminding us once again that the divine we revere moves in mysterious ways. A special report on the horrendous tragedy follows this introductory message.
Despite our manifest interest, I commend to you this bulky Millennium Special.
