5 June 2014 - QA 4

Gurudev, I want to know your opinion about India. How according to you should India be?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: India, in my vision, is where people from all religion and communities come together for their country. India has been divided by religions and communities.

I want to see a slum free India. All slums should be removed. I want to see a corruption free, violence free, misconduct free India, hatred free India; where the youth are calm, farmers are happy, and businessmen trade outside the country too.
India was once like that. Those days cell phones and such things were not there. India's fame was known all around.

Columbus set out to look for India and he discovered America instead. See how India’s fame had reached all around the world.
When British left India they carried with themselves 900 ships full of gold. That was India, which was so prosperous that its prosperity never diminished. See where we are today. That time we were spiritual and religious too.

Lord Macaulay, when he went to London, he wrote to Queen Elizabeth, saying, 'I have traveled the length and breadth of India, and I have not see one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage'.