THE PLURAL LEGACY OF INDIA

Traversing the length and breadth of the country, we trace our lineage of spirituality, expressed through places of worship

- MAXIMALISM IN FAITH TEXT BY ANICA MANN

India belongs to so many people beyond the borders of this oasis-like country. Its spirituality and its monumentality could never be contained, right from its ancient past. This isn't a note on history, it's a note on nostalgia of a collective intuition that developed into religions that manifested faiths, that built a materiality that one can feel, one can visit, and one can meditate upon. An infrastructure that isn't based on a set compendium but a living tradition so ancient that not one book, or one sage could have possibly built or led it. It was always open, to spread, to be understood, to be adapted and adopted. This is the legacy of India's maximalist faith, that still lives and breathes beyond its own borders.

Cambodia, home to the largest Vishnu temple in the world, later became Buddhist and then Hindu again, a pulse only something living could transmutate. The walls of this temple are adorned with the Ramayana, the acceptance of Vaishnavism after 200 years of Shaivism, the Samudramanthan, and countless other adoptions and adaptations of intrinsically Indian systems, yet deeply Khmer (as the Cambodians would call themselves). Built at the same time as the Jagannatha Temple, this monumental structure became the centre of the Hindu universe in Southeast Asia for most of the early 12th century. "This development achieved the heights of creative ability in the hands of people who had merely accepted the inspiration of the noblest ideals of the Hindu and Buddhist faiths but worked out their destinies in their own inimitable manner" wrote one of India's finest art historians and Marg's Editor in 1973; Mulk Raj Anand. When Rabindranath Tagore toured Southeast Asia in 1927 he said "Everywhere I could see India and I could not recognise it again!" These thoughts bring together the large heart and even larger fluid plurality of India, that spread without being forced.