According to the author, if the culture that prevailed during the Vedic period were to be revived,
Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.
A synthesis of the regional or group cultures into a common national culture has already been achieved thrice in the history of India—first with the fusion of the Aryan Dravidian, then with the Hindu and Buddhist and lastly with the fusion of Hindu and Muslim cultures. Today we are faced with the same problem. But this time it is more complex and has several new aspects to it.
Before we can think of a rational solution we must get rid of the futile mentality which urges some of us to try to revive the culture life which prevailed during the Vedic period. For this implies the exclusion of all elements which have come from outside, especially those of the Muslim culture; these have been so completely assimilated in the intellectual, aesthetic and social life of India that they have, as it were, entered the stream of the life-blood running through the veins of Indian culture. The attempt to separate these ingredients and get them out of the system through a process of blood-letting will never succeed. It will only enervate our culture and cause it to suffer from pernicious anaemia.
The first thing that we have to realize then is that the dominating complexion of the present common culture is that of the North Indian culture. That is why its influence over the South India is very limited. To be truly national it has to assimilate the best elements of the various regional cultures specifically those of the South Indian provinces. This requires a maximum cultural contact. Several important steps have already been taken in this direction. Youth festivals in the late fifties held every year at the beginning of the winter was a welcome step in that direction. It was an occasion for the university students from all parts of the country to live together for a few days and give one another glimpses into the cultural life of their respective regions—their music, dance, drama, paintings and sculpture etc. Earlier, three academies were set up, one, for the promotion of the representational arts, another for music, dance and drama and a third for literature. But these academies which bring together their members and Fellows only for a few days in the year cannot provide the continuous and permanent contact among the representatives of group cultures which is required for the process of fusion of the multifarious cultural elements fructifying into the lasting amalgam of a national culture. If they are to serve as cultural laboratories of the Gupta and Mughal periods, they should be turned into institutes where the Fellows are in a permanent residence and receive liberal pensions so that, free from all financial worries they can devote themselves whole-heartedly to evolving common expression to that inner spirit of unity, animating the various peoples of the vast land called India.
Writers’ Camps under the scheme of “Aadan Pradan” where writers of the various regional languages have their selected books published from each language into all others is a laudable course of action. Another course could be adopted to pull down the barriers separating the various linguistic groups and to awaken and foster the spirit of cultural unity among them is the large scale exchange of teachers. Under an exchange system, selected teacher from each linguistic region who knows several Indian languages could be induced with liberal terms to offer their services in different linguistic areas for sufficiently long periods so that they can enter into the spirit of the regional cultures and recognize in them local variants of the common culture of India. These teachers will prove, like the Fellows of the National Academies, to be the makers as well as the messengers of a national culture.