If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.
Interpretation
Nations are built over time through myths and traditions that can become lost or forgotten.
This quote by Bal Gangadhar Tilak reflects on the origins of nations, suggesting that as we delve into their history, we encounter a time when cultural myths and traditions played a crucial role in shaping their identity. However, as we go further back in time, these narratives become less clear and eventually disappear into obscurity, highlighting the transient nature of history and cultural memory.
In practice
During a speech on cultural identity, one might quote Tilak to emphasize the importance of understanding historical roots.
The most practical teaching of the Gita, and one for which it is of abiding interest and value to the men of the world with whom life is a series of struggles, is not to give way to any morbid sentimentality when duty demands sternness and the boldness to face terrible things.
Religion and practical life are not different. To take sanyas (renunciation) is not to abandon life. The real spirit is to make the country, your family, work together instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God.
The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad.
All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves.
Watergate is an immensely complicated scandal with a cast of characters as varied as a Tolstoy novel.
As a people, our monuments never commemorate victories. They commemorate the names of the fallen. We don't need the Arc de Triomphe; we have Masada, Tel-Hai, and the Warsaw Ghetto - where the battle was lost, but the war of Jewish existence was won.
I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
The Great War was nobody's fault - or everybody's.
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