How to be Vishwa Guru: India must stop squandering its strengths and help solve today’s global problems

Being a Vishwa Guru would make all Indians proud. We all yearn for the glory of those days when our people reached the pinnacle of thought, achieved great understanding of the divine, and invented excellent ways of living.
However, India cannot simply reclaim such a position; it must be earned afresh. Our people will have to do the necessary tapasya once again, with new thinking for modern times. We can be guru only if the global community acknowledges us as such; we cannot thrust our gurudom upon them.
What it takes to be a guru was described by Swami Vivekananda, the man who first gave India this aspiration. In his 1901 essay My Master he wrote: “If you wish to be a true reformer, three things are necessary. The first is to feel. Do you really feel for your brothers? … Are you full of that idea of sympathy? … You must think next if you have found any remedy. The old ideas may be all superstition, but in and around these masses of superstition are nuggets of gold and truth. Have you discovered means by which to keep that gold alone, without any of the dross? If you have done that … one more thing is necessary. What is your motive? Are you sure that you are not actuated by greed of gold, by thirst for fame or power? … Then you are a real reformer, you are a teacher, a Master, a blessing to mankind.”