In plain words
The height of Bhārata’s culture, and its state today
Śrī Rāma gave up the kingdom to keep his father’s word and lived fourteen years in the forest. Gāṅgeya vowed never to marry, for his father’s happiness, and remained a brahmacārī to the end of his life. It was because his resolve was so firm that he came to be called Bhīṣma. Many such men of sacrifice, such great souls, were born in Bhārata.
Renowned in every continent, the motherland that bore great souls; having driven out the Western warriors, the field of battle that won its freedom; famed far and wide for its learning, the land of Bharata that showed its brilliance; in music, letters and the sciences the divine land that showed the power of its mind; wondrous with its arts of painting: born in this land of Bharata, to guard the treasure of Mother Bharata’s Dharma the whole charge is yours, O devotees!
In this Bhārata, a land of sacrifice, of yoga and of action, the state of Kerala is especially renowned. Kerala won great fame through Emperor Bali, so generous in giving, and through Vāmana, an Avatāra. To give to whoever asks, never saying no, is the tradition of the people of Kerala. The state of Kerala is another name for sacrifice; it is the home where sacrifice was born. Today people are trying to turn such a land of sacrifice into a land of indulgence.
In the most holy land of Bhārata, forbearance alone is our beauty; of all the vows, the one that shines is the great practice of Satya, the hardest tapas; if you ask what feeling is sweetest in our land, what is more honoured than the feeling for a mother? That which held honour itself greater even than life, our country’s code, they have burned to ash, and handed us today foreign codes they went searching for, and the strange freedom that is a drawn knife. Alas! What can one say of how Bhārata is ruled? As the elephant does not know its own strength, so have the people of Bhārata become today.