Are We a Population or a People? by Anthony Esolen

I am trying to imagine what it would be like if I should take up residence in India, and, because I am not a Hindu believer, demand that the public schools not teach the Rig-Veda. I would come in for the roundest abuse. It would be tantamount to demanding that the Indian people sever their children from a rich fount of legend and history, and, though inevitably encrusted with human folly and sin, from a noble way of understanding what it means to be human; from wellsprings of culture more than two thousand years old; from their temples, their songs, and their traditions; even from the subtlest beauties of their very language, insofar as it has been watered and nurtured by these sources. It would be as if I should bang my fist on the table and cry, red in the face, “There must no longer be an India or an Indian people!” …