A PILGRIMAGE INTO THE FUTURE VIA THE PAST
Swami Bodhananda
Four ideas
are competing for India's soul - The Gandhian, the Hindutva, the
Secularists and the Romantics. Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and Anna Hazare
belong to the Gandhian tribe; while RSS, BJP, VHP, Shiv Sena and a whole
gang of swamis and gurus and their organizations champion the Hindutva,
the feckless secularists include a wide spectrum of opportunists like
the congress, caste based parties like BSP, SP, RJD, religion based
parties AKali Dal and Muslim League, regional parties like DMK, AIDMK,
TDP, BJD, TMC, western minded middle class, academia, media; and the
Romantics include Communist revolutionaries of all hues,
environmentalists, human right activists and the NGOs that are
supported by international charities.
I,
in my humble effort to work out a vision for India in the context of
the global village, undertook a journey through the heart of India, Nagpur
and Pune, visiting a host of institutions representing the above
streams of thought. The journey was between March 26 and 31, 2012. We
were three in our group- besides me, Dr. Sangeetha Menon, Professor,
Consciousness Studies, National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Bangalore; Dr. Gopal Singh, who along with his wife Kamala, runs a
charitable school for poor girls in the village of Shivapuri, near
Varanasi. This unique pilgrimage took us to Indian Revenue Service
Academy, Ramtek Temple, Paunar Ashram, Wardha Ashram, Ambedkar Deeksha
Bhumi and RSS headquarters- all in Nagpur; Papal
Seminary and Aga Khan Palace in Pune and Raelgaon Siddhi Village, in
Maharashtra. And the pilgrimage culminated with an hour long meeting
with anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare.
The
160 or so IRS trainees were bright but tired and indifferent and some
of them told me that they were there because they couldn't get into the
prestigious IAS, IFS or IPS. But they also knew that there was power,
money and influence, though not much glamour, in being a tax officer and
such mundane thoughts comforted them. My lecture was on the theme
'Ethics in Public Service'. Some trainees took active interest in the
follow up discussion. They were all concerned with falling standards of
ethics in public life, but were more worried about their career
prospects. Human resource development without supporting value based
institutions would be a waste in well intentioned efforts. These young
bright trainees may not grow up in their life and career as great icons
of ethical and compassionate behaviour, but I could see a youthful wish
in them to be one of that kind if the system allows them. The dean of
the academy, a passionate, well meaning, disciplinarian, sounded
frustrated, and finds his solace in spiritual practices. The ambiance
of the place was calm and soothing, ancient trees brooding over gloomy
buildings, built in Mughal style to protect the inhabitants from the
dry tropical heat.
Our
next destination was the Paunar Ashram, on the bank of Dhaam river, the
final resting place of Acharya Vinoba Bhave, where he spent in relative
silence the last 12 years of his eventful life. Vinoba lived for 87
years and died fasting after a mild heart attack. 'Let me drop the body,
before the body drops me' he was rumoured to have said. Vinoba, who
appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, who won the first Magsaysay
Award (1958), was recipient of the highest Indian award Bharat Ratna,
was a frail man, suffering from chronic stomach ulcer and diarrhea
and who lived mostly on honey, yogurt and milk.
Presently
few old women associates of Vinoba live in the ashram. They grow their
food and maintain a gosala with lovely looking healthy cows and calves.
The head of the community is a pleasant and resourceful lady running
listlessly hither and thither. Another very old lady suffering from
slight dementia repeated the same sentence about Vinoba and seemed stuck
in some forgotten past. Another lady appeared feisty in a couldn't
care less mode, and she it was told walked all over India alone. An
Indian looking Japanese lady flitted in and out apparently indifferent
but curious about the new visitors. A lost tribe stuck in a time warp.
Or may be living in a futuristic environmentally friendly community!
Vinoba
was a Sanskrit scholar and well versed in Hindu scriptures. And he
instantly connected with the villagers with his simple oratory peppered
with anecdotes, stories and practical wisdom. Vinoba was a silent worker
assisting Gandhi in India's freedom struggle as a 'satyagrahi'. He was
also part of Gandhi's fight against untouchability. Vinoba found his
true calling in the Bhudan Movement ( Bhudan Yagna) which he started in
1951. The idea was to bring a bloodless revolution in the farm sector by
effecting redistribution of agricultural land in India. The inspiration
came from a land lord in Telangana who donated 100 acres of land to
Vinoba to be distributed among destitute dalit untouchables. Telangana
was in the paroxysm of a violent land grab movement by the landless
tenants instigated by the undivided Indian Communist party. Indian
Government was clueless and world powers feared another violent
revolution in the making. Vinoba was convinced that violence was not the
right method for land re-distribution; though he believed that
collective ownership of village land by panchayats and right of
cultivation allotted according the number of members in a family were
the only way to bring peace and prosperity to India's 700,000 poverty
stricken villages. The land lord's voluntary act of giving up land
opened a new window of insight in Vinoba's alert sagely mind. He saw
the Bhudan Yagna in vivid colours in his inner eye. Land like water,
air, and sunshine should be free for all, he declared.
Vinoba
was tireless. He would walk every day 10 --15 miles from village to
next village begging for land in the name of God and the poor of India.
In 13 years he covered 20,000 miles and collected 1.5 million acres of
land, far short of his dream of collecting 5 million acres. And most of
the land he got was barren and uncultivable, while some land had
no clear titles. Finally there was only 50,000 acres of fertile land
that could be distributed. But who will ensure that deserving landless
alone will get the land, for Vinoba didn't believe in cumbersome
administration and organizations. He went wherever the wind took him
striking roots nowhere. Not an ideal mind set for organized sustained
work. The Sarva Seva Sangh that he organized was constituted of
possessionless, passive idealists. They were innocent of the ways of the
world. And when the SSS under Jayaprakash Narain, who made jivadan to
the Bhudan Yagna, took to the streets in 1974, Vinoba severed all
connections with it. If dreams were horses we all would have been
riders. By 1965 the much acclaimed Bhudan movement collapsed and a
sulking Vinoba retreated to Paunar ashram.
Unbeknown
to him, Vinoba played a big role in defeating the communist movement in
India. He touched the hearts of pious villagers and their passive
impulses and the seeds of violence could not sprout in the indolent soil
of India.
Vinoba was the disembodied soul of India, very alluring, but ghostly.
Our
next stop was Sevagram-Wardha Ashram. Mahatma Gandhi set up this ashram
in 1936 in three hundred acres of land gifted to him by an admiring
business man. Gandhi lived here till 1946. This ashram was much
more lively than Paunar and school girls giggled perched on mud
plastered verandas. A Tamilian ashramite, Sankar, middle aged and
wiry, took us around, till it was time for his spinning chore. He
narrated to us, his eyes glowing under a prominent forehead, the
philosophy and life style of Gandhi and his followers. Shri. Jha from
Bihar, the secretary of the ashram, was friendly and loquacious,
critical of everything under the sun, and pretending to possess the
ultimate answers to all human and social problems. One irredeemable
irritating habit of Gandhians is the unabashed claim of omniscience.
They are free from self doubt, curiosity and inquisitiveness. Why should
they, for didn't Gandhi offer answers to all possible questions and
wasn't he sort of last prophet? Gandhi himself lived with nagging self
doubt and was ready to admit his mistakes and was open minded in
thinking as a truth seeker. Gandhi also had abiding values which he
wouldn't compromise on opportunistic considerations and short term
benefits. Gandhism and Gandhians do not often do justice to Gandhi.
When
Gandhi first set foot on this village, 8 miles from Wardha, it was a
snake infested wooded settlement of thousand people. He asked and got
permission from the villagers to settle down there and built the first
hut, 20 feet by 15 feet, mud and cow dung plastered and hay thatched
at the cost of then 100 rupees. Gandhi and his 20 followers, both
genders, cooked, ate and slept in that cramped space. Sankar told me
that even Nehru, when he was visiting, had to do all the chores and
sleep in the same hut where the rest slept. Later Gandhi, Kasturba, Mira
Behan and Mahadev Desai got separate huts. A Sanskrit scholar stricken
with leprosy also stayed in the ashram. Gandhi was a stickler for
discipline, and he established his unquestioned personal authority by
demolishing all structures and hierarchies and making his punishing self
discipline as the ultimate standard. Gandhi was an anarchist, a radical
rebel and an unimpeachable dictator. In his Hind Swaraj, a political
document that he wrote on a sea voyage from England to South Africa,
in 1908, the 39 year old Gandhi denounced parliamentary democracy and
all gifts of modern civilization like railways, telegraphs, post
offices, police and army, and the profession of law and medicine. Gandhi
exhorted his followers to live a life of voluntary poverty, living by
manual labour, and not going beyond where their hands and legs can
reach. He did not see any need for lawyers and doctors, police and army,
prisons, schools and hospitals, markets and banking and elections and
Parliament in such a society. He called that system of self
organizing communities as swaraj/ramraj, a life of self sufficiency and
blissfully living in the bare spirit.
Gandhi's
'nayi talim' project, an education system that prepares students for
leading a self sufficient village life, --growing food, spinning for
cloth, cooking simple meals, getting just enough reading and writing
skills-- though an effective political weapon against the cultural
domination of the British colonialists was found impractical, out dated,
and unsuitable for modern life and was totally and scornfully rejected
by Gandhi's sworn followers who ascended to political power in free
India. The Nayitalim School that Gandhi established in Sevagram Ashram
flourished for a while but is almost dysfunctional now. Tagore's
Santiniketan that caters to middle class cultural sensitivities is more
successful and functional even today.
Gandhi
led a busy ashram life engaged in village and dalit uplift
programs. However he had a hot line with the Viceroy though he had
resigned from the congress and active politics. Gandhi’s routine was:
morning sun bath followed by body massage then cooking, spinning,
nursing the sick and lifting night soil from the village. Gandhi was
such a magnet that ordinary Indians as well as
politicians and dignitaries made a beeline to this remote village to
take counsel from him. Gandhi was the living soul of India and the
conscience keeper of the world. 'Gandhi is too good to live, India will
be free to pursue her destiny without him, therefore he must die' was
the chilling argument of Nathuram Godse who assassinated Gandhi.
India
though worships Gandhi and the Indian Republic takes its spiritual
inspiration from the Mahatma, Indians have abandoned Gandhi in their
socio-political and economic thinking and organizing. That is the irony
of Gandhi's teaching: its enduring value makes it impractical and
irrelevant in the daily life of people and nations. Gandhi today is only
a reference point on ethical issues and in matters of social justice.
Gandhi represented freedom of being and socially useful disciplined
doing. India is one in being, but many in doing. Only a sanyasi can
touch the soul of India, a person of action, a general or business man
or politician become divisive and sectarian. Gandhi perfected the art of
action in actionless-ness. Gandhi is a mighty peak to be gazed at and
admired from a distance. Indians have no more value for Gandhi, but the
world is discovering Gandhi's value and his values. Gandhi was a world
citizen who happened to be an Indian, his fight for India's freedom was
just a footnote to his struggles for personal freedom-freedom from want
and freedom to want. Gandhi's freedom was freedom for all based
on justice for all-sarvodaya. Today Sevagram looked just a dishevelled
nest with the bird flown away.
I
made it a point to visit Ambedkar's Deeksha Bhumi to imbibe the spirit
of Ambedkar and cleanse myself from the sin of untouchability practiced
by my forefathers. The rise of Abedkar and his position in the Indian
Republic is amble evidence that an intelligent hard working individual
can break through social barriers and climb higher echelons of power and
influence in the Hindu society. Ambedkar had some initial advantages
being the son (14th) of a British army personal. He could study in good
schools though he had to go through the indignity of sitting separate
from upper caste Hindu class mates. But such experiences only hardened
his determination to excel in studies. He acquired two doctorates, one
in philosophy from Columbia University, New York and the other in
Economics from London along with a barrister degree in law.
By
the time Ambedkar, coated-booted-suited, returned in 1924, at the age
of 33, India was in ferment and Gandhi was in the helm of affairs. The
new democratic and egalitarian values that he imbibed from the west
fired Ambedkar's imagination and made his hurt much more intolerable and
resentment acute. Gandhi's anti-untouchability movement looked comical
and cosmetic without substance and condescending to Ambedkar, who
rejected the reference ‘harijan', children of god, to Dalits. 'Are not
others children of god? Are they devil’s children' asked Ambedkar
rhetorically and often embarrassing those who used the term. Ambedkar
organized Dalits and fought for the right of temple entry and access to
public wells and educational institutions. He was pessimistic about a
change of heart in the upper caste Hindus. He burnt copies of
Manusmriti, (partly in an act of juvenile desperation and partly to
force a confrontation,) which canonical text according to him provided
the ideological justification for caste discrimination. I shudder to
think of such an act today, as fundamentalists roam freely with their
suicide bombs and fatwas. On the contrary the upper caste Hindus gladly
accepted Ambedkar as the chairman of the constitution drafting committee
and the Indian Constitution is a lasting monument for Hindu
adaptability and resilience. Ambedkar found no future for Dalits in the
Hindu fold and famously declared," I was born a Hindu over which I had
no control, but I shall not die a Hindu”. That promise he fulfilled by
converting into Buddhism along with 50,000 followers on the Buddha
Poornima Day on October 14, 1954. Ambedkar’s views on Hindu orthodoxy
were similar to that of Buddha. He rejected caste divisions and caste
based discrimination, the conception of God in the human form, elaborate
rituals and Brahmin religious dominance. Religious, political and
social leaders like Dayananda Sarasvati, Rajaram Mohan Roy and
Jawaharlal Nehru did the same on those issues.
At
heart Ambedkar loved Hinduism and India (his wife was from the upper
caste Brahmin community) and it was that secret respect that made
Ambedkar give up his demand for a separate electorate for Dalits and
settle for reserved seats for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes,
included in the 9th schedule of the constitution for affirmative state
action. Gandhi fasted against the Ramsay Mc Donald Communal Award 1932,
granting separate electorates for each minority- Dalits, Sikhs,
Christians and Muslims. Though the award was in consonance with
Ambedkar's demand, he changed his stand under intense pressure and
settled for reserved seats for Dalits according the Poona Pact that he
had with fasting Gandhi. Ambedkar acted with responsibility and
foresight, unlike the stubborn and short sighted Muhammad Ali Jinnah who
fought for and won a separate homeland for Muslims whose disastrous
consequences we still suffer. Ambedkar was made the law minister in the
first Nehru cabinet, but resigned after disagreements on the proposed
Hindu Code Bill in 1951. Ambedkar died peacefully in sleep on Oct. 14,
1956.
Today
we find Ambedkar statues in every nook and corner of India. Ambedkar
followers are in power in many states and Dalits have representation in
all government institutions at par with their proportion in the
population. It was Ambedkar's vision, sense of justice and knowledge of
history, law and economics that saved India from disintegration and
anarchy. I consider Ambedkar an incarnation of Vyasa, the fisher women's
son, who laid the foundation of Hinduism as we know it today. Grateful
Indians would remember Ambedkar as one of the founding fathers of modern
India along with Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Rajagopalachari.
The
Deeksha Bumi monument was built in the shape of a stupa and Ambedkar's
ashes are kept there. Thousands of people, mainly Dalits, visit the
place as a center of pilgrimage. Ambedkar is today revered like a
Bodhisattva by the Dalits. The masses replace one god with another god,
but there will always be a god figure to relate to and pray and make
sense of this chaotic and apparently senseless world.
The
RSS head quarters we visited next was a total disappointment. I was
expecting an imposing building with volunteers in khakki and topi
running around, in unsmiling goose steps. What I saw was shabby blocks
of buildings added one to other without any design. The playground in
front and a dilapidated wall and gate indicated that a palace once stood
in this place. There were not many people in the building. The
secretary who talked with us was incurious and was only interested in
blurting out what he was supposed to know and say. He was uncomfortable
when I tried to engage in a discussion. The Hegdewar Museum was quite
informative and was a reminder of the suffering our forefathers
underwent in their struggle against the British. Later they took us to
their new building complex- an L shaped series of large bare rooms. The
common toilets were stinking. Kitchen was filthy and I saw a few women
squatting on the floor cutting vegetables. The Samadhi being built for
Hegdewar, the Sangh founder, was imposing but lacked taste. Guru
Golvalker's final resting place in the same compound was nondescript.
The auditorium on the side of the Samadhi was huge, but again unkempt
and disorderly. This complex conformed to what I have seen in pictures
but felt like a giant without sensibility or humour. The tall young man
who was the care taker of the complex was sincere, simple and active,
but without self doubt and reflection.
There
is no wonder why the RSS is lost and clueless. The Rashtriya Svayam
Svak Sangh (RSS) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) were founded on
the same year 1928, but CPC revolutionised China and made that
ungovernable nation into the envy of the world in 85 years where as the
RSS is still dreaming the lotus eater's dream. RSS puzzlingly remained
impotent when their protégé BJP got power in 1997 and their clever
pretext was that they were only a cultural organization. RSS lacked a
socio-geo-political and economic strategy for India. But that doesn't
make RSS irrelevant. They are a resource that India can draw upon in
severe crisis situations. They will remain like a bacterium in India's
body politic--active when India is weak, passive otherwise. RSS can
also be a drag, their reactionary ways some times threatening creative
expressions, scientific pursuits and socio-political innovations. India
has no option but to live with this grand old lady in its household.
From Nagpur
we flew to Pune. There we stayed in a Jesuit Monastery. Fr. Kuruvilla
picked us from the airport. This facility is called Papal Seminary and
is 60 years old. About 800 novices study there for their degree in
theology and philosophy. Later they will fan out to preach and serve
people. What attracted me were their altars which are adaptations of
Hindu motifs. Christ on the cross is overshadowed by
paintings symbolising five elements as the source of everything. Christ
was also depicted like little Krishna lying on a peepal leaf sucking
his toe. But here unimaginatively the Christ shown is a big man not a
baby. I appreciate Christians trying hard to adapt to Hindu customs,
practices, symbols and motifs. But the whole thing looked
as unappealing as a crow trying to be a peacock. To immerse into the
spirit of India Christians will have to change their world view and
motivation for being religious. Later the father who spoke in the
mass tried to compare Christianity with eastern religions and
passionately but unconvincingly tried to prove its superiority.
Evangelical religions are like big corporations--they sell Christ. Fr.
Kuruvilla was a fine gentleman- Secretly admiring liberal Hinduism and
publically professing Christian dogma. After being here I was convinced
that we all are co passengers, dreaming different dreams and telling
different stories. Some say it better, some are impressed hearing it and
others don't bother.
The
vast grounds of the Aga Khan palace that we visited that evening told
us the story of past glory and grief. The building was slowly
deteriorating though was declared as a national monument. Gandhi lost
his wife Kasturba and close aid Mahadev Desai while they were
incarcerated there. We visited their modest cremation sites in one
corner of the sprawling grounds. Gandhi's grief was still felt palpable
in the room where they were imprisoned and Kasturba breathed her last.
A
visit to Raelgoan Siddhi was a dream come true for Gopal Singh who was
a great admirer of Anna Hazare, the anti corruption crusader of India.
Hazare lived in a two room facility in a temple complex which he
renovated after retiring from the army and settling in his
native village. The village at that time had 2000 residents. Due to lack
of adequate rain fall the villagers could not cultivate their land and
instead lived on bootlegging. The first thing Anna did was to conserve
rain water by building 20 check dams in the rivulet that became a
torrential flow in the rain. The water conserved was then directed to a
huge well, 60 feet deep and wide, that was dug with voluntary village
labour. Thus he ensured round the clock supply of water to villagers.
Then he started a reforestation program planting thousands of trees in
the village. A nursery was started for fruit tree saplings. The school
he started has more than 1000 students now. Children from nearby towns
and villages study in this model school. One of the revolutionary
transformations that Anna brought in this village was total prohibition.
Nobody in this village make, sell or consume liquor. Nor do village
shops sell tobacco, cigarettes or bidi. Presently the village is self
sufficient in grain, vegetables and milk and they even export these
items. Anna also runs an institute for training villagers in water
conservation and afforestation. Anna, the elder brother, has become a
legend in the village and a national hero.
Gopal
Singh and I had a one hour discussion with Anna. He was not in good
health after a recent fast. His dream is to influence people's choice
of representatives in 400 parliamentary constituencies. And such an
enlightened parliament alone will enact stringent anti-corruption laws.
He plans to travel all over India and talk to people. He will decide on a
concrete plan of action after this tour. Anna sounded slightly dejected
and disillusioned, but his spirit was alive and flaming. 'It is all in
the hands of God. I am only an instrument, His will be done' said Anna
as an afterthought.
I
think the days of puritan politics the like of Anna's is over. It is
true that Internet savvy young middle class professionals crowded around
Anna while he was fasting in Delhi. But none of them shared his world
view, where God, tradition and patriarchal authority ruled, where
consumerism was taboo, and simple, self sufficient village life was
exalted. Anna has no training in running a company, a municipality or a
research laboratory. Anna's success in transforming a small village
doesn't equip him to understand the complexities of modern world. Anna
and his crusade are bound to fail. Because he is not a stake holder in
the system that he opposes, and he will remain forever a maverick
outsider. I am more interested in the Maoists who are radicalizing
tribal communities, gradually bringing them into the mainstream
discourse, into the global village.
An
interesting encounter which I watched on a CD was between one Dr. Zakir
Naik and Sri. Sri. Ravi Sankar. This dialogue took place in Palace
ground Bangalore in front a huge audience. The topic was, “Concept of
God in Islam and Hinduism, according to their respective scriptures”.
Dr.
Zakir was a well read bully, aggressive, insensitive, pretentious and
non reflective. He had no self doubt and thought he knew all the
answers. He had amazing command over facts and figures and phenomenal
memory of the corpus of his selective reading. He was tall, bearded and
bespectacled. His pockmarked square face accentuated his belligerent
nature. Being a medical doctor he had better grip on scientific data.
Sri
Ravi Sankar was ill trained in scriptures and ill prepared with
arguments and wore an amused smile on his moonlike face throughout the
debate. He knew from the very start that he was no match either in
information or in debating skills with Dr.Naik. But surprisingly, in
spite of these disadvantages, he held his ground, mostly because Dr.
Naik was intolerably boorish. Though he could not sway the crowd,
composed mostly of Muslims, Sri Sankar’s ardent followers were not
disappointed. He spoke about love, religious harmony and mutual respect.
He couldn’t offer any effective rebuttal to Naik’s claim for superior
knowledge and interpretation of Hindu scriptures. He sang and quoted a
line or two from Kabir and Rumi. Dr. Naik ridiculed his claim of loving
all and reminded him that the real test of true love is the willingness
to admonish when your beloved is on the wrong path. And according to Dr.
Naik any path other than Islam is wrong. Hitting Ravi Sankar under the
belt Dr. Naik, tongue in cheek, declared that the Koran taught real ‘art
of living’. There was no ripple of protest from Sankar against this
appropriation of his patented product. He simply stated what he had to
say which he learnt by rote and kept smiling, claiming that he was a
convert form head based reason to heart based love. No scripture, no
concept of God and no Hinduism mattered to Sri Sri Ravi Sankar.
Dr.
Zakir Naik, a trained Islamic Scholar preacher and a non practicing
medical graduate, opened the debate by stating that a Muslim is one who
has found peace in submitting to Allah. Allah can be known only through
the words of Koran and Mohammad was the last prophet. God has said the
last word and will no more speak. Allah is omniscient and omnipotent but
not omnipresent. Allah is neither male nor female nor neuter. Allah has
no plural. Hence God is no synonym for Allah. “Everything is Allah’s”
but “everything is not Allah”. Naik took a long breath clinching his
argument for Allah. Quoting profusely from Vedas and Bhavishy Purana,
Naik reinforced his thesis against image worship. ‘Na tasya pratima
asti’/He has no equal’, he triumphantly pulled out a passage from the
Vedas to buttress his argument. Interpreting Bhavishya Purana in an
interesting way he showed that even Hindu scriptures talked about the
last prophet Mohammad. His whole performance turned out to be a boyish
gymnastics in histrionics, cleverly playing to the gallery.
Against
Zakir’s Allah Ravisankar should have presented Vedanta’s Brahman. There
should have been a debate on the epistemology of revelation and the
Sashtras and the exclusivity of Mohammad’s experience. But Ravisankar
had no training for such a calling and he looked helpless.
An inclusivist representation has to marshal greater arguing skills than
an exclusivist representation. Pious statements like ‘all are one’ and
‘love all’ will not give much mileage in a theological debate. It is
high time that Hindus reinvented the old skill of debating on the lines
of purvapaksha and siddhanta.
I
found two different styles in the debate- one aggressive and verbose,
other passive and pseudo. One had force and the other resilience. One
punched hard and the other dodged, though slightly bruised. Dr. Naik
forced Sri. Ravi Sankar to admit that his book, ‘Common Threads’ was
full of conceptual and factual mistakes, after which he proclaimed that
his book interpreting Hinduism and Islam was devoid of mistakes.
It was a mismatch between a lion and a fox- at the end both survived.
Following are random thoughts of a public intellectual:
“Gandhi
was confrontational; Gandhi was active; Gandhi became a commodity and
brand name; Gandhi saw that industrial expansion was unsustainable;
Gandhi embodies truth and lived it; Gandhi ahimsa was not just
non-harming, Gandhi brought down empires and systems; Truth based on
sustainability and non-consumerism is to be embodied; Himsa is a wider
category and has to include animals, women and aborigines and
vegetarianism; Gandhi was a eco-feminist; 5 times more land to feed
non-vegetarians than vegetarians; Genocide include cultural genocide not
just human genocide; colonizing project—give food, clothes, education
and medical help but rob the recipients of their cultural heritage;
Gandhi lashed out at Christian missionaries; differences of cultures are
not to be erased but celebrated; universe is built on diversity, we are
not here to homogenize; difference anxiety-psychological condition that
leads to slavery, apartheid, genocide, conversion; different anxiety
from superiority colonizes and inferiority become colonized; Gandhi gave
up English clothes making a statement about who he was and was happy
and proud about who he was; difference without apologies; Gandhi was
against sameness, sameness in whose terms-sameness is a form of
colonization; Gandhi was authentic; Gandhi used non-translatable
Sanskrit words-like svadharma, svaraj; svadeshi, satyagraha, ramarajya,
nayitalim, samaj, panchayat etc.; Gandhi refused to be domesticated;
advaita encourages inaction, escapism, passivity; freedom from religious
homogeneity; Ishta devata, pluralism; Nehru mimicked the west; guru
from Nehru’s India migrated to the west with their yoga and meditation;
Gandhi in power would have been an anachronism; Gandhi’s work was
bottom up; illegal aliens, I have no silver bullet, think out of the
box, Gandhi was a pragmatist and considering the configuration of the
chess board he pleaded for Hindu-Muslim unity; Falun Goan; western
secularists have no abiding values”.
“The
key point is that Gandhi was an authentic Indian who refused to be
appropriated, co-opted and digested. Gandhi fought against not the
westerns, but against western materialism, mindless exploitation,
heartless colonialism and godless atheism, against the whole western
civilization. Gandhi expressed his key ideas in Indian/Sanskrit
categories”
Gandhi
embodied truth and non-violence, but rebelled against injustice and
inequality, by refusing to be a part of the exploitative system, which
he accomplished by reducing his needs and meeting his meagre
requirements by physical labour. Gandhi’s svadeshi is living locally and
svaraj is making a livelihood by one’s labour, Gandhi’s nonviolence was
not employing violence against injustice, but not cooperating with the
unjust system, by not being part of the market economy. Instead of
retaliation, the practitioner of satyagraha takes unjust violence upon
self without showing anger or resistance. The previous description
misses the point. Gandhi has an important point, but it has to be worked
out economically, politically and militarily. Individually Gandhi can
be followed, but the nation cannot. Gandhi should not be a national
leader, he has to be a world leader; no nation can follow him, but the
world cannot ignore Gandhi. This does not mean Gandhi’s death is
justified; Gandhi in death has become immortal and the conscience keeper
of the world.
Nehru
did the right thing in not following Gandhi in economics and science,
but in all other areas Nehru spoke the language of Gandhi.
Indians
are different from Europeans and Americans; Dharma traditions are
different from Abrahamic traditions; India is free, but Indian mind is
still colonized; India has to assert its difference to decolonize and
find her true destiny; Difference is good and the way of nature and is
to be celebrated; Difference is to be respected; Abrahamic religions
because of their exclusive claims to truth cannot respect other
religions; Dharmic tradition being pluralistic accepts that there are
different ways of approaching truth and hence more respectful of
difference. The key word in this narrative is difference, colonization,
respect, decolonization, appropriation, digestion, categories and
identity. There is a critique of the history centric narrative of the
Semitic religions and appreciation for the embodied experience based
narratives of dharma traditions.
No
Indian will dispute the assertion that India has to assert her unique
identity and manifest her destiny on her terms. But, the question is,
how?
Many
streams over centuries have joined to make the larger Indian identity
of today. The Vedic, the Dravidian and the Tibetean. Then the Islamic
and the British. Presently Akhanda Bharat has 1000 million Hindus, 500
million Muslims, 100 million Budhists, 25 million Christians, 20
million Sikhs and 16 million Jains. The influence of modern secular
scientific humanist thinking is evident in academia. The modern India
will emerge from this potpourri. A combination of Vyasa, Chanakya and
Akbar will have to midwife the birth of this new India.
Swami Bodhananda
15 October 2012
[the visit was in February 2012]
