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 shot heard round the world.
Listen my children and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel the civilisation of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions the old world is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed.
The tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.
Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.
The very notion of Great Britain's 'greatness' is bound up with empire. Euro-scepticism and Little Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood and rotted English teeth.
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