…that is the country and the world we inhabit. That is our home.When we were born, we opened our eyes and cast our first glance upon the world. We turned our bewildered gaze around, wide-eyed with wonder. Astonished. A wellspring of curiosity emerged within us. There was so much to understand, and so much that was beyond our comprehension, that we burst into tears.Thus began our life’s journey – in this country, in this world. Or rather, no sooner had it begun than questions, one after another, began popping into our minds. Questions about the world around us and about ourselves. And, babbling away, we grew eager to ask.Look what trying can make us do – we began to speak.As we began to speak, words stirring within us began to find expression, and a growing store of new words accumulated around them. A series of questions followed that gave us our voice. Mma … Ma was the first sound to escape our lips. Then came why, where, when, how and what for. Ceaselessly.Questions about everything. Questioning was the only way to understand the world, find our place within it and gain knowledge.The number of answers we found was not what mattered. What mattered was how the quest for those answers led us along a path of reflection, contemplation and ceaseless exploration. Questions became our teachers, training us to think critically, reflect and investigate thoroughly.Here’s what was important to understand – at the other end of a question is not an answer, but dialogue. A space that exists between two sides. A bridge that forges a connection between the two, an exchange of friendship.Also read: India Ranks 24th Among 33 Countries in Index on Support of Free SpeechQuestioning is the very human instinct that has led nations and the world, century after century, to vast repositories of knowledge. Whether in science, literature, philosophy or the business of everyday life, it is questions that have lit our way. Questioning is linked to thinking, and thinking to understanding. Where there are questions, thought follows; where thought exists, understanding emerges.There may be times when life seems to be moving along a steady, well-worn path, and we feel we need only keep going as we are. But then comes a question – a question that shakes established beliefs – and our eyes open to new paths, new ways of understanding.Had our ancestors in the Rigvedic age not asked questions, where would the Nasadiya Sukta have come from? And what a remarkable hymn it is – in the very act of offering answers, it gives birth to an eternal question, a question that we know will leave us forever in a state of doubt: that the ultimate answer may never be found. And doubt ultimately directs one toward comprehension.Without questions, how would the Upanishads have come into being? A question would arise, and from there would begin an exploration stretching from the genesis of the cosmos to its very end. Each time, another Upanishad would emerge from this process.Recall Prince Siddhartha. Here again, the power of inquiry comes to the fore. Observing the ordinary events and manifestations of everyday life, an extraordinary question arises in his mind: why does suffering exist? He sets out in search of an answer and, in the process, transforms from Siddhartha into the Buddha. He showed us an alternative path.While reclining beneath a tree, perhaps in some drowsy reverie, Newton wondered why the apple fell down rather than up, and went on to formulate an entire theory. A theory that, despite Einstein, remains deeply embedded in the popular imagination to this day.Thought and understanding advanced through questioning. Archimedes sat in his bath, and water splashed out. Why did it rise? How much did it rise? What connection was there between his getting into the bath and the water’s displacement? Questions leapt up in his mind, just like the water. And that is how the world came to know Archimedes’ principle.If there are no questions, what does it mean to be alive, and what is life? Socrates’ entire system of knowledge was founded upon inquiry. The rulers accused him of corrupting the youth. Leave Athens, they told him, or drink the cup of poison. Socrates drank the poison as he refused to abandon his city, declaring that life held no value if he was neither allowed to pose questions nor instil the spirit of inquiry in his students.The question, then, is life itself and what it means to live. And questioning is the route to human progress. Questions form the basis of our connection with the world and with ourselves – they represent a cordial mode of dialogue with both external reality and our internal world. On both sides stand living, vibrant beings. Through conversations sparked by questions, bonds deepen, companionships grow and knowledge expands.When questions cease, progress ceases. We stand where we are, rooted to the spot. How can one call such a robot human?Also read: History Has a Warning About Political Language That Turns Dissent Into DisloyaltyLook into a mirror, and you may see its reflection: flat, mechanical, a toy that moves robotically, wound up by someone else, set in motion for a duration determined by someone else. Programmed. An inhabitant of the world of computers. Regurgitating whatever is fed.Who is inventing these computerised toys? (Yet another question!) They have even pasted big smiles on their mechanical faces. He makes them utter his mann ki baat through their lifeless lips. In the absence of questions and independent thought, he projects the echo of his own voice far and wide, like a slogan. Could this not be his very objective – to establish a system that prohibits questioning, where, if there are no questions, there will be no thought or understanding?Or dissent.But those of us who have not forgotten that we are born questioners – how could we not ask: why? Why is it so, and how is it so?Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once asked: how could a handful of British rule over thirty-three crore Indians? His answer was that it was not because of the might or the diplomatic acumen of the British, but because of the cooperation Indians were giving them. If that cooperation were to cease, British rule would not survive.Gandhiji’s answer, however, was incomplete. The question remained: why, then, did Indians cooperate?Gandhiji found the answer to this question and repeated it throughout his life: the reason for that cooperation was fear. He would say: it is the fear of Indians that forms the foundation on which the British Empire rests in India.The question remains the same today. We see the wrongs, oppression and injustice pervading our country and society. We see that resistance is the only option. Yet why are we unable to mount such a widespread, powerful, non-violent protest?Gandhiji’s reason? Fear? Cooperation?After a long time away, I returned home. The house had disappeared – buried beneath the accumulated dust and rust of years, concealed by the resentment of having forgotten it for so long, lost in the sorrow of lying alone and abandoned, buried beneath all the debris that my neglect had allowed to engulf it.I burst into tears. Where had my home gone? I could no longer recognise it. My home had never been like this.Through my tears, I resolved to dig it out again, bit by bit…Geetanjali Shree is an acclaimed Hindi novelist and short-story writer.This article was originally published on The Wire Hindi. It has been translated by Naushin Rehman.