namaste everyone.
Thanks to shrI CLN for his approval of my point that we need to use the adage with caution. I don't know if I would be stretching the point or even far-fetching it with the following observations, but I would like to make them any way.
It is "vasudhaa, eva, kuTumbakam = world, indeed, household (family)". For broad-minded people the entire world is like their family.
But our ignorance of Sanskrit has made a mockery and made it 'vasudeva kutumbakam' which will mean vasud eva kutumbakam; since vasud has no meaning we may make it vasuda = giving wealth, and the new meaning can therefore be said to be "those who give wealth (are) my family".
shrI Sangom seems to indicate that reading the meaning 'world, people' in the term
vasudhA and applying it to 'family, household' in the term
kuTumbakam is 'broad-mindedness' as against the reading of the meaning 'wealth' in the term
vasudhA. I should like to differ, although I would not deny the import of the entire world as a family, structurally, philosophically and spiritually.
The
primary meaning of the terms
vasuda, vasudA, vasudhA are all related to wealth: while vasuda and vasudA relate to granting wealth, vasudhA relates to producing wealth. The meanings 'earth, world, people therein' all are derived only from this meaning of wealth. It seems that the terms are used in the Vedas as related to wealth (as seen in the compilation 'Vedic Concordance': eg. vasudevasya in RV 1.54.9d, vasudAm in RV 8.99.4a, vasudhitI in RV 3.31.17a, vasudhAnaH in Ch.Up.3.15.1, etc.)
Thus, the literal meaning of the statement
vasudhA eva kuTumbakam seems to be
that which produces wealth (considers all its wealth) as a family, thus clearly indicating that the viewpoint of the family is at the level of that which produces, gives, and grants wealth, rather than from the viewpoint of the members of the wealth itself.
This means that
• the mAtru-bhUmi--Mother Earth, who produces all her wealth, grants equal prosperity to all the members of her wealth of humans, considering them as one family;
• the mother who produces all the human wealth of the world, grants them equal nourishment considering them as her family;
although, obviously, the children themselves, whether of the earth or of a mother, do not in practice, consider their own kith and kin as of the same family.
Nature unites all humans in their biological makeup. She unites all her chetana--sentient, wealth at the level of prANa and downwards, and achetana--insentient, wealth at the atomic level physically and further down as universal consciousness. The grosser the level the lesser the implementation of the principle of vasudeva kuTumbakam.
I think this is the right understanding of the world famous Hindu adage. Not because I said it, but because anyone who goes from the context can see it. The broad-mindedness of unity comes only at the level of the bird's eye view.