RANDOM MUSINGS

The overwhelming lecture on Indian civilization by Michel Danino is necessary for everyone. His book on Indian culture should be compulsory reading for all Indian schools. We are so ashamed of calling ourselves Hindu thanks to a great colonial mindset and the ingrained concept of secularism in the country. In the blind attempt not to hurt any minorities, we are hurting and damaging ourselves. I am now increasingly convinced of the fact that the British rule continues to destroy the country in the form of ‘colonial consciousness.’

We continue to remain divided, there is no national pride, we feel low about our past as if there is nothing worth knowing, and we look at the west as the future of civilization. We need to strengthen ourselves; the schools are the starting point. There should be classes on Indian civilization and culture, without being too apologetic about it. The dangers are evident of the present state, and if our youth do not change their attitudes towards the country, we are in for big trouble. I can now understand the agony of people like Rajiv Malhotra in the US.

The lecture, ‘The great achievements of Indian civilization’ is a  must for anyone remotely resembling an Indian. The biggest fault of our textbooks is the fact that it does not instill a sense of pride in our country. Indians grow up with a negative image of themselves thanks to the systematic mutilation in the hands of the left controlled history books. People like Michel are correcting that to a great extent.

He says a wonderful thing in his book. We are in the process of denying our history. The Germans have acknowledged their Nazi past and now are at peace with it. Similarly, the Muslim and the Christian conquests of India need acknowledgement, accepted, and then move forward. The excessive protection of the children against the past horrors in history books so as not to offend the present-day Muslims and Christians is causing all these problems. Excessive care taken to prevent any offense to the minorities in the name of secularism is ironically causing more frictions. Unfortunately, a stage comes, when members of the majority come to learn the past in bits and pieces, and become angry and bitter. The minorities go into a protective huddle and feelings of persecution and discrimination arise in a dramatic fashion. The majority Hindus get angry. The minorities in their defensive strategy try to break the unity of the majority. The result of all this is a destruction of the social fabric of the country. It is important to realize the havoc played by our historians in the name of secularism and the leftist kind of policies.

Right from the beginning, an honest depiction of the history would have made us accept our past with a stable eye and a stable wisdom. The Muslims and Christians of the country are no way blamed for the horrors of their invasions and Inquisitions just as the present-day Britons are not for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. They are as much a part of plural India as anybody else. But a graceful acceptance by the elders of the past horrors would go a long way in improving the country.

There is a difference between national pride and patriotism. Patriotism has a negative connotation and it is based on ignorance and false knowledge. The Germans were very patriotic in the times of Hitler. National pride is a positive factor which is based on correct knowledge, and is devoid of jingoism. National pride leads to a lasting sense of belonging and a soul-based nationalism.

He lists the greatest points of Indian civilization. This is a common theme of the lecture and the book both.

1. The Indus-Saraswati civilization: This date back to almost 7000 BC era. It was the oldest civilization in the world and we are the longest continuing civilization in the world. The civilization covered an area of almost a million kilometres of Northwest Indian subcontinent.That includes the present-day Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The city planning and house building technology was fantastic to say the least. The bricks were prepared in the ratio of 1:2:4, something which is in vogue even today. The overriding greatness of the archaeological findings is that the citizens had the maximum importance. There was no highlighting of the rulers and the comfort of the citizens and true community living becomes the prime consideration. There is a complete absence of any war or mass destruction, and the concept of Aryan invasion becomes a big myth based on these findings. It was largely a conflict free society and there was no glorification of the rulers, as compared to the Egyptians and the Mesopotamian civilizations. There were high technological achievements in the field of agriculture, metallurgy, town planning, sanitation, water harvesting, and crafts pointing towards a great economic prosperity. Some of the figurines of that era point towards the traditions of Yoga, meditation, ‘Namaste’, and the application of Sindoor to the parting of the hair.
2. Early experiments in Democracy: The Rig-Veda uses words like Sabha, samiti, etc, which point to a joint decision-making body. The Indian brand was based not on rights but on Dharma-the individual, social, and cosmic order-which bound the rulers and hence limited the abuse of power. There are inscriptions dating to the Chola period of the 10th century CE which lay down the qualifications for a candidate standing for elections. He should be between 35 to 70 years of age, have some knowledge of Vedic texts, own a house and a tax paying land, whose earnings are honest and has not been on any committees in the last three years! There was disqualification of people who have stolen land.
3. Peaceful cultural integration across India: The greatest cultural point of India is its unity in diversity. There has been a cultural definition of India and not geographically. There is a recent attempt to fragment India on the lines of its diversity. So how did this unity come about? In the Vishnu Purana, Bharata is described as the ‘land north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains or the Himalayas’. Bharatavarsha and Jambudvipa were other important unifying concepts. A dense network of holy places and temples created a sacred geography of the country and this in turn created a strong tradition of pilgrimages in the country. The 12 Jyotirlingas, the 52 Shakti Mahapithas, and the 26 Upapithas spread over India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan became the defining point to draw the boundaries of the country. The cultural integration began in the Harappan times and accelerated during the Gangetic civilization phase in about 700 BC. It was an organic process and not controlled by any authority, caste, or power. Danino then says that it is not the Vedas or the Upanishads which were the uniting force, but the two great epics, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. These epics became the major tools for integration. The references to the great epics are all over the country and even places like Indonesia where local traditions always link in some way to the two great epics. The greatness of this integration is in the fact that it did not stamp out any local cultures, unlike the other cultures, which was more of a conquering type. The definition of Hinduism could be as an interface between Vedic and regional folk and tribal cultures. In the words of Tagore, ‘India has been always trying to evolve a social unity in which different people could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom to maintain their own differences. This has produced a United States of social federation, whose common name is Hinduism.’ There was early political unity too in the fact that the Mauryan Empire covered most of India except the far South, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
4. India’s interface with other civilizations: Archaeological evidence has shown that there was a flourishing sea trade between India and Egypt during the Roman era. The Buddhists travelled widely and the present-day Afghanistan had huge Buddhist statues and monuments. The Taliban destroyed the huge statue at Bamiyan in the recent times, something not even done by Genghis Khan. There were travelers and students from China who studied at Indian Universities at Nalanda for example. Indian thought hugely influenced them and Huen-Tsang is an important person in this regard (8th century CE). A huge number of manuscripts which was the source of scientific knowledge in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, and the medical fields accompanied the students and travellers as gifts. The spiritual development in the country never came in the way of material pursuits. There is a Homa Kunda depicted in an ancient Japanese manuscript. The largest temple in the world is at Angkor Vat in Indonesia built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman. There are Indonesian paintings depicting the Gita and the other holy epics. Peter Ellis in ‘The Druids’ says that there are extraordinary parallels and similarities between the Celtic cultures of Ireland and Hindu cultures in the areas of language, law, religious attitudes, mythology, music, and caste. There is an image of a Celtic deity in a Padmasana posture with four Swastikas embedded on the trunk. It is interesting to note that there are a lot of Harappan relics found in Egypt, but there is no evidence of the reverse. Probably, the traders from India took perishable objects from them. Indian culture continues to be a significant contribution to the world interest in Yoga and meditation. There is a need for the Western culture to depend on the Indian culture of Yoga and meditation to give solace to them, something which is not available in their own cultures.
5. India’s perspective on nature: Indian thought always associated with nature closely. The universe compares to a thousand branched tree. Statements like ‘Heaven is my father, earth is my mother’ in the Rig-Veda show the importance to earth in the relationship of man to nature, of which he is a part. Rivers and mountains are regularly deified, which imbued nature with divinity, and hence worthy of great respect. There is a branch of Ayurveda called ‘Vrikshayurveda’ which deals with treating trees. Kural mentioned centuries back ‘Sparkling water, open space, hills and forests constitute a strong fortress’ which is indeed a strong ecological message. The practical attitudes of Indian ecological traditions resulted in a belief in sacredness of creation, the belief of interconnectedness of all creatures, milking and not conquering of nature, respect of all living creatures, and simplicity of living without greed and limiting the needs.
6. Swabhava and Swadharma: Spiritual freedom and pluralism: This is one of the great points of Indian spiritual thought. Everyone has a right to know the Truth, and not only that, he or she has the right to choose the path for Truth depending on his nature. If daring, one can create a new path to find the Truth. The result is a freedom which is unthinkable in the three monotheistic religions. There is no question of tolerance, but acceptance, and this is the defining aspect of Hinduism. Even atheists have respect for their beliefs. Every individual has a right to achieve the Truth and every individual has a right to his path. These are the defining aspects of Hindu Dharma and Indian civilization which led to an overwhelming number of sects, masters, and teachings. But they were all at peace with each other, because of the ingrained concept of Swadharma. Indian spiritual diversity is about accepting and rejoicing in diversity, something which is hard to imagine in the other religions.
7. Scientific and technological advances: They are too numerous for complete enumeration in a short paragraph. Indian approach to mathematics, astronomy, architecture, poetics, and music was rooted in sound scientific principles. It is a myth that spirituality in India came in the way of secular sciences. In mathematics, the dealing of huge numbers and infinity was common. The value of pi, the age of the Earth in terms of Brahma years as 4 billion years, repeating cycles of Universe creation and destruction, the numeric system including the concept of zero, astronomical charting of the stars and planets, the round shape of the earth were a few of the things which the Indian scientists had conceived and explained. Aryabhata, Bhaskara 2, Sayana, were some of the Indian scientists in the early part of the Common Era. Numbers like 10 raised to the power of 110, 120, and 250 had special names. There was exploration of smaller numbers too, defined in today’s equivalents of micrograms, nanometers, and milliseconds. There were calculations of even the distances to the sun and the explanation to the eclipses. There were speculations on the centricity of the Sun by the earliest scientists. The Shulba Sutras date between the 8th and the 6th centuries BCE, which are treatises of sacred geometry. Ship building was common and ancient India had the knowledge of producing high quality steel. The rust proof steel was very popular for exports to various countries. The Ashoka pillar in Delhi stands as a proud example of the Indian steel making technology. India was in the export of silk, cotton, stones, perfumes, swords, ivory, etc. Her trading partners studied various Indian skills like the making of cast iron, Zinc, soap, glass, along with other skills like dyeing and tanning. It is no wonder that from the 1st century of the CE to the 17th century, India was consistently the top contributor to the world economy with as much as 25% to 30% of the World GDP. It is a cruel irony that the colonial rule not only destroyed that but also successfully conveyed to the world a distorted vision of a primitive and a barbaric country.  Unfortunately, the legacy of this destructive view continues in the mindset of the Indian youth here or abroad who believe that we are inferior to the Western countries.
8. Spiritualization of Art and Literature: Art, literature, music, drama, paintings, and other artistic fields are greatly based on spirituality and sacred concepts not seen in other cultures. The concepts of Dharma, sacredness of life, sacredness of the material world as a metaphor of the Cosmic mind is something which is extremely unique in the Indian perspective. All arts are an expression of the divinity. It is an inbuilt component of arts and science and other cultures rarely show this- art as a means of expression of divinity and arts to achieve enlightenment too.
9. Systems of Yoga and meditation: Yoga and meditation are clearly contributions of Indian civilization which the other cultures can best relate to. The references to Yoga, Hatha Yogic postures, and meditation trace to the Harappan times where the seals and figurines depict accordingly. There have been remarkable skeletal remains of a person in a Yogic posture of Padmasana discovered in Rajasthan traced to the second millennium BCE. Usually, burying a person in the Padmasana posture is for people of spiritual accomplishment. The troubled Western and other cultures do not have anything equivalent to Yoga and meditation which can give them mental solace.
10. The 19th century renaissance in arts, science, and spirituality: Authors like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore, Subramanyam Bharati, and a great number of regional authors evoked a great following in the country. The British did not quite expect this because they wanted to convert India into a ‘Brown England’ by the Macaulay scheme of education totally swamping the ‘barbaric’ and ‘primitive’ Indian education system. Fortunately, the regional authors did not let that happen. Indian art like the Bengali art, the Southern styles also got a great fillip during these times. CV Raman, JC Bose, Ramanujam were great scientists in the traditional sort of way but they were rooted in deep spirituality. The attitude of Ramanujam used to surprise Hardy, his mentor in many ways. Hardy was an atheist and when Ramanujam used to attribute the solutions of complicated problems to inspiration from goddess Nammakkal of his village, it would mildly stun Hardy. He could not simply believe it, but here was a guy who was doing some serious maths of the highest order! The spiritual renaissance, of course, is too much to cover in a small paragraph. People like Sri Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramana Maharishi, the Bhakti poets of South and West India united the country like never. This again played a great part in the unity of the country; and thus, reiterating the truth of the oft repeated claims that it is religion and spirituality which does that cementing of India.
11. Rejuvenating 19th century Western literature, thought, and humanism: The late 18th century and 19th century saw many Western ideas fueled by Indian thought. Indian thought inspired the Romantic Movement in philosophy and literature. Arthur Schopenhauer and Ralph Waldo Emerson were famous philosophers of the Western world, to name a few, who took a deep inspiration from the Vedas and the Upanishads. Even modern-day scientists like Carl Sagan and Heisenberg were deeply impressed with Indian thought emanating from the Vedas and the Upanishads. Carl Sagan was deeply impressed with the concepts of infinity well entrenched in the mathematical thoughts of the Indic past. Vedic thought directly or indirectly influenced Schrodinger, Tesla, Oppenheimer, and David Bohm. Tesla had met Swami Vivekananda and had discussions on matter energy conversion about two decades before Einstein proposed the theories on the same issue! Swami V had mentioned to Tesla about matter energy equivalence in the Vedantic philosophy and Tesla had promised to get back with mathematical proofs. Unfortunately, the science and maths of that era made Tesla ill equipped to work out the equations. Apart from Tesla, the other scientists openly acknowledged the influence of Vedantic philosophy in their science and philosophy. Fritzof Capra in his ‘Tao of Physics’ compares the subatomic matter dance with the dance of Shiva in a very poetic manner. The plaque of the dancing Shiva in the Nataraja pose has been kept outside the CERN laboratory with the quote of Capra: ’For the modern physicists, then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of sub atomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continuous dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomena.’
12. Survival of Indian Civilization: The greatest point of Indian civilization is that it is a continuing civilization for the past 5000 years at least despite immense challenges in the past from Muslim invasions, British colonial rule, and Christian missionaries in the past. Presently, the influence of Western culture on one hand and a Hinduphobic media and academia on the other is continuing the aggressive challenges. The Christian missionary activity is continuing to play havoc with the integrity of the country. The left controlled history which must take a large share of the blame on the negative perception of the country continues to create some trouble, but thankfully, they are becoming irrelevant. Despite all the pressures, we are still ‘on’, and that is the greatest thing about our civilization. The other civilizations, Sumerian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mayan, etc. have all disappeared but we are still standing tall.

There a few things however which India did not contribute in this world and these are also important to know from the point of view of any citizen of the world, especially India.
1. Wars of religion: There might be a few examples of religious intolerance and physical fights rarely but nothing compared to the bloody conquests associated with the other religions like Islam and Christianity.
2. Colonial conquests and plunders: India even at the peak of its powers traded but never conquered and stamped out cultures.

The lecture is a must see for every Indian; and the book is a must read for every student in college and high school. There is a need for the country’s youth to grow with a genuine pride in their hearts about India. Feeling ashamed of our roots would make our survival very difficult. The pride should be based on correct knowledge and information, and not definitely jingoism. There is also no need to swear to any political or religious affiliation to achieve this. The history should be re-written, because for two valuable generations after independence, we lost a great opportunity. There is fortunately a huge ecosystem of writers, academics, and intellectuals who are in the process of creating a strong alternative account of India; an account which promises to bring pride and harmony without the need to hate anybody else. Michel Danino happens to be an important member of this eco-system.