India Ascendant
Refutes the tall baseless claims
Comments on the article “India Ascendant” by Romesh Diwan
Posted on Sulekha.com
On 28 February 2003
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This article is full of unsubstantiated bad adjectives for the Resident Non Indians (RNIs) and self-serving good adjectives for the Resilient Bharatiya Indians (RBIs). Rather than belonging to either category we should all try to be Truth Seeking Persons or People (TSPs). Our “resilience” should not prevent us from introspection, learning from past mistakes and making changes necessary to prevent them.
As stated in Ishavasya Upanishad, truth is covered by a lid which is golden (and therefore appears to be valuable). To be able to see the truth, we must first identify the lid and remove it. The worst lid that covers the truth is our mamatva, our attachment to what we consider “mine” or “ours” as in “our culture”. For an unbiased view, we must discard this attachment and review the facts independently.
We are also unable to see the truth clearly when we see it through the lenses of one ism or the other such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, capitalism, socialism etc. The seeker of truth must be willing to give up these spectacles to insure that he or she can have an unobstructed view of the truth.
There are many shortcomings in the other religions which is why this writer did not convert to any of them. (Please see Why I did not convert) There are also many good features in Hinduism and more than them there are people to boast about them. But there are very few who would bring to our attention our own shortcomings.
Any social system, whether based on religion, economics, politics or some other consideration, must uphold truth and justice for all. It must also prevent exploitation of the weak by the strong. These are the criteria for evaluating our own successes and failures.
We Hindus claim that we are the best and then by exercising our right to be as bad as some others we forfeit that claim of being the best.
We have an excellent philosophy but fail to live up to it. We are supposed to see God in everybody and everybody in God and therefore not hate anybody. But in practice, we do hate and exploit not only others but even our own. We talk of angels playing where women are worshiped but then we also treat women as our property. Most, if not all, of the words we have for “husband” mean “owner.” Some of us even kill, without fear of social stigma, their daughters before or immediately after they are born. We say that women, along with drums, chamaars, and animals (except cows), deserve to be beaten up.
The other religions that we Hindus love to criticize, if not to hate, came into existence because we failed to spread Hinduism (or Sanatan Dharma, as some like to call it) to the people of the Middle East. We did not care to take the Dharma to them and just brushed them off as Malechchaa or Yavana because we were too busy and happy exploiting our own Shudra and Adivasi populations. We take pride in saying, “Hindus are born, not made.”
For centuries before McCauley introduced the British education system in our country, we had an education system that was worse than his. It denied education to masses, stifled geniuses like Ekalavya, discouraged sincere students like Karna and made it all but impossible to preserve and develop our knowledge and skills. Our “great” teachers waited all their lives for a “deserving” (supatra) disciple to pass on their vidya (knowledge) but did not attempt to train any young man to make him deserve the “vidya”. The vidya was then lost forever. We could not preserve their accomplishments let alone enhance them. As a result we ended up being poor descendants of wealthy ancestors.
India produced more great leaders like Gandhiji between 1857 and 1947 than the total number of leaders she did produced prior to 1857 and after 1947 combined. If McCauley's education system was as bad as it is blamed to be, would this have been possible? Even the nationalistic patriotic awakening of late 19th century and early 20th century can be traced to that system. So, what are we complaining about?
From Sahstrarjuna to Karna was a period of about 2000 years during which our “great” culture could not produce even one deserving Brahmin disciple to whom Parshuram could impart his martial skills. (That vidya could have been useful for our defense against the Muslim invaders had it been available.) And Parshuram was so narrow minded that he would not teach it to a non-Brahmin student. From Ikshvaku to Arjun the long duration made us forget the great “indestructible” (avyayam) yoga. (Gita Chapter 4 verses 1 and 2). These and similar lapses cannot even be blamed on McCauley or other religions because they did not exist then.
Justice would not be served if a person likely to have been a victim of a crime were made to prove that the crime did not take place. Yet Sita was told to submit to the fire-test (Agnipariksha) at the peril of her life. Had Ravana raped her, she would have been burnt to death for no fault of hers. But our sense of justice is overruled by the exclusive importance we attach to a woman’s chastity. Then again, she as well as her unborn child (not knowing that she had twins) were sentenced to exile for no fault of theirs. This we justify as needed to set a good example on the public. How childish (naadaan) must our people been to need punishing an innocent person for having a good role model?
We also had a system in which the eldest brother owned the younger brothers and had a right to place them on bet in gambling. And this person is considered Dharmaraj. How unfortunate!
We do need to stop boasting about our greatness, do serious introspection, identify mistakes of the past and make suitable changes to insure that they are not repeated. Justifying our mistakes and shortcomings will only prevent us from becoming greater.