Author: David Frawley
Publication: The Organiser
Date: May 13, 2001
A defeatist tendency exists in
the psyche of many modern Indians that is perhaps unparalleled in any other
country today. An inner conflict bordering on a civil war rages in the
minds of the country's elite. The main effort of many of its cultural leaders
appears to be to pull the country down or at least to remake it in a foreign
image.
The elite of India suffers from
a fundamental alienation from the traditions and culture of the land that
would be less poignant had they been born and raised in a hostile country.
The ruling elite appears to be little more than a native incarnation of
the old colonial rulers. This new English-speaking aristocracy prides itself
in being disconnected from the very soil and people that gave it birth.
There is probably no other country
in the world where it has become a national pastime among its educated
class to denigrate its own culture and history, however great. When great
archaeological discoveries of India's past are found, for example, they
are not a subject for national pride but are ridiculed, as if they represent
only the imagination of backward Chauvinistic elements within the culture.
There is probably no other country
where the majority religion, however enlightened is ridiculed, while minority
religions, however fundamentalist, are doted upon. The majority religion
is taxed and regulated while minority religions is carefully monitored
and limited as to what it can teach, minority religions can teach what
they want, even if anti-national or backward in nature. Books are banned
that offend minority religious sentiments but praised if they cast insults
on majority beliefs.
There is probably no other country
where regional, caste and family loyalties are more important than the
national interest. Political parties exist not to promote a national agenda
but to sustain one region or group of people in the country at the expense
of a whole. Each group wants as big a piece of the national pie as it can
get, not realizing that the advantages it gains means deprivation for other
groups. Yet when those who were previously deprived gain power, they too
seek the same unequal advantages that causes further inequality and discontent.
India's affirmative action code
is by far the most extreme in the world, trying to raise up certain segments
of the population regardless of merit, and prevent others from gaining
positions however qualified they may be. In the guise of removing caste,
a new casteism has arisen where one's caste is more important than one's
qualifications either in gaining entrance into a school or in finding it
job when one graduates. People view the Government not as their own creation
but as a welfare state from which to take the maximum personal benefit,
regardless of the consequences for the country as a whole.
Outside people need not pull Indians
down. Indians are already quite busy keeping any of their people and the
country as a whole from rising up. They would rather see their neighbours
or the nation fail if they are not giver, the top position. It is only
outside of India that Indians succeed, often remarkably well because their
native talents are not stifled by the dominant cultural self-negativity
and rabid divisiveness that exists in the country today.
Political parties in India we gaining
power as a means of amassing personal wealth and robbing the nation. Political
leaders include gangsters, charlatans and buffoons who would stop short
at nothing to gain power for themselves and their coteries. Even so-called
modem or liberal parties resemble more the courts of kings, where personal
loyalty is more important than any democratic participation. Once they
gain power politicians routinely do little but cheat the people for their
own advantage. Even honest, politicians find that they cannot function
without some deference to the more numerous corrupt leaders who often have
a stranglehold on the bureaucracy.
Politicians divide the country into
warring vote banks and place one community against another. They offer
favours to communities, like bribes to make sure that they are elected
or stay in power. They campaign on slogans that appeal to community fears
and suspicions rather than create any national consensus or harmony. They
hold power based upon blame and hatred rather than on any positive programmes
for social change. They inflame the uneducated masses with propaganda rather
than work to make people aware of real social problem like overpopulation,
poor infrastructure or lack of education. Should a decent Government come
to power, the Opposition pursues pulling it down as its main goal, so that
they can gain power for themselves. The idea of a constructive or supportive
opposition is hard to find. The goal is to gain power for oneself and to
not allow any one else to succeed. To further their ambitions Indian politicians
will manipulate the foreign press to denigrate their opponents even if
it means spreading lies and rumours and making the country and anathema
in the eyes of the outside world. Petty conflicts in India are blown out
of proportion in the foreign media, not by foreign journalists but by Indians
seeking to use the media to score points against their own opponents in
the country. The Indian who are responsible for the news of India in the
foreign press spread venom and distortion about their own country, perhaps
better than any foreigner who dislikes the culture ever could. Killing
of one Christian missionary becomes a national media event of anti-Christian
attacks while the murder of hundreds of Hindus is taken casually as without
any real importance. Missionary aggression is extolled as social upliftment,
while Hindu efforts at self-defense against the conversion onslaught are
portrayed as rabid fundamentalism. One Indian journalist recently lamented
that Western armies would not come to India to chastise the political groups
he was opposed to, as if he was still looking for the colonial powers to
save him!
Let us look at the type of leaders
that India now has today with its Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav,
Jayalalita or Subrahmanya Swamy to mention but a few. Such individuals
are little more than warlords who surround themselves with psychophants.
Modern Indian politicians appear more like colonial rulers looting their
own country, following a divide and rule policy, to keep the people so
weak that their power cannot be challenged. Corruption exists almost everywhere
and bribery is the main way to do business in nearly all fields. India
has an entrenched bureaucracy that resists change and stifles development,
just out of sheer obstinacy and not wanting to give up any control. Now
the Congress Party, the oldest in this predominantly Hindu nation, has
given its leadership to an Italian Catholic woman simply because as the
widow of the last Gandhi, she can carry on the family torch, as if family
loyalty were still the main basis of political credibility in the country.
And such a leader and a party are deemed progressive!
The strange thing is that India
is not a banana republic of recent vintage but one of the oldest and most
venerable civilizations in the world. Its culture is not trumpeting a militant
and fundamentalist religion trying to conquer the world for the one true
faith but represents a vaster and more cosmic vision.
India has given birth to the main
religions that have dominated East Asia historically, the Hindu, Buddhist,
Jain and Sikh, which are noted for tolerance and spirituality. It has produced
Sanskrit, perhaps the world's greatest language. It has given us the incredible
spiritual systems of Yoga and its great traditions of meditation and self-realization.
As the world looks forward to a more universal model of spirituality and
a world view defined by consciousness rather than by religious dogma these
traditions are perhaps the most important legacy to draw upon for creating
a future enlightened citilization. Yet the irony is that rather than embracing
its own great traditions, the modem Indian psyche prefers to slavishly
imitate worn out trends in Western intellectual thought like or even to
write apologetics for Christian and Islamic missionary aggression. Though
living in India, in proximity to temples, yogis and great rivals, most
modem Indian intellectuals are oblivious to the soul of the land. They
might as well be living in England or China for all they know of their
own country. They are isolated in their own alien ideas as if in a tower
of iron. If they choose to rediscover India it is more likely to occur
by reading the books of Western travelers visiting the country, than by
their own direct experience of the people around them.
The dominant Indian intelligentsia
cannot appreciate even the writings of the many great modern Indian sages,
like Vivekanand or Aurobindo, who wrote in good English and understood
the national psyche and how to revive. It is as if they were so successfully
brainwashed against their own culture that they cannot even look at it,
even if presented to them clearly in a modern light.
If the enlightened thought of India
is going to arise it cannot through the current educated elite of the country.
Various spiritual groups in India may be able to promote it, including
in foreign lands, but they are becoming a minority and denigrated in their
own land. Given such a twisted and self-negative national psyche, can there
be any hope for the country? At the surface the situation looks quite dismal.
India appears like a nation without nationalism or at least without any
national pride or any real connection to its own history. Self-negativity
and even a cultural self-hatred abound. The elite that dominates the universities,
the media, the Government and the business arenas is the illegitimate child
of foreign interests and is often still controlled by foreign ideas and
foreign resources. It cannot resist a bribe and there is much money from
overseas to draw upon. Indian politicians do not hesitate to sell their
country down the river and it does not require a high price. Fortunately
signs of a new awakening can be found.
There is a new interest ill the
older traditions of the country and many people now visit temples and tirthas.
Many young people now want to follow the older heritage of the land and
revive it in the modem age. The computer revolution and the new science
are reconnecting with the great intelligence of the Indian psyche that
produced the unfathomable mantras of the Vedas. Slowly but surely a new
intelligentsia is arising and now several important journalists are writing
and exposing the hypocrisy of the anti-Hindu Indian elite. Yet only if
this trend grows rapidly can there be a counter to the defeatist trend
of the country. But it requires great effort initiative and creativity,
not simply lamenting over the past but envisioning a new future in harmony
with the deeper aspirations of the region. One must also not forget that
the English educated elite represents only about three per cent of the
country, however much power they wield. The remaining population is much
more likely to preserve the older traditions of the land. Even illiterate
villagers often know more of real Indian culture than do major Indian journalists
and writers.
Meanwhile overseas Hindus have become
successful, well educated and a affluent, not by abandoning their culture
but by holding to it They see Hindus culture not as a weakness but as a
strength. Free of the Indian nation and its fragmented psyche, they can
draw upon their cultural resources in a way that people born in India seldom
can. Perhaps they can return to the country and become its new leaders.
Let us hope that some hood this call.
However, first this strange alienated
elite has to be removed and they will not do so without a fight. The sad
thing is that they would probably rather destroy their own country than
have it function apart from their control. The future of India looks like
a new Kurukshetra and it requires a similar miracle for victory. Such a
war will be fought not on some outer battlefield but in the hearts and
minds of people, from where they choose to draw their inspiration and find
their connection with life. Yet regardless of outer appearances, the inner
soul of the land cannot be put down so easily. It has been nourished by
many centuries to tapes by great yogis and sages. This soul of Bharat Mata
will rise up again through Kali (destruction) to Durga (strength). The
question is how long and difficult the process must be.
