Being Living-beings

The Past

A look into the past reveals that Roman Church and Islam had rapid success in converting the populations of Europe, Arabia, parts of Africa, Iran, and parts of Afghanistan, devouring the indigenous cultures and misappropriating many of their traditions. They could take absolute political control of these areas within a few years time. But the story in Bharat was different. The early forays by muslim invaders into Bharat were met with by stiff resistance and they could not establish roots here despite displaying unparalleled brutality. It took them many centuries of constant attacks to gain semi-permanent politcal dominance in this land.

Although they gained political power through deception, and shrewd policies- such as by Akbar, they still were not successful in converting the people to any large extent. Even though they were making progress, the indigenous culture of dharma was strong,  and it motivated the people to resist the adharmis consisitently. When the bigotry of islamists such as Aurangazeb became excessive, they were defeated by the people of this land.

When the britishers came, the close to one millennium of slow wearing down of indian culture was begining to show some discernable results. The britishers correctly identified the prevalent traditional education system as the mainstay of cultural strength and continuity that resisted foreign influence. They went about dismantling and replacing it with western education system with appreciable results, producing brown sahibs. Yet, they were met with resistance regularly from the people inspired by bharatiya samskriti, such as Tilak, Aurobindo, Savarkar. There were also people such as Swami Dyananda Saraswati, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, who revived the spiritual values that strengthened this culture. The cunning british then made a clever move positioning the british-influenced Gandhi, who appropriated the icons of cultural strength such as bhagavad gita and Sri Rama naam, that were vital sources of inspiration for dharmic thought, and misinterpreted them, twisting their meaning around. For half a century the british fostered Gandhi, who went on to emaciate the people of this land of their dharmik strength and vitality. Then weakened by WW II, they handed over power to the brown sahibs that they had bred. These brown sahibs then continued with all the systems created by the british for exploitation and emaciation of this land and its people; their education system continued to churn out coconuts (as defined by Richard Crasta in ‘Impressing the Whites‘).

The trend to be noted is that, the conversion of people away from dharmic thought was extremely slow in the begining, the pace has been slowly picking up over the past millennium.

The Present

The majority of people born in india today automatically grow up to be ‘coconuts’. That is not surprising, considering that the earlier generations grew up listening to stories of Ramayana, Mahabharata and puranas from their grandparents that inculcated a strong sense of dharma in them. The current generations probably hear only stories of Cindrella and red riding hood and grow up to consider Sri Krishna and Sri Hanuman as indian versions of superman and batman. The effect of this is reflected in the way even some supposed torch bearers of indian culture are now seen following the way of the westerners.

The current situation is such that the system of deracination now runs on its own steam. Earlier considerable effort needed to be put in by muslim marauders through acts of monstrous brutality to convert the people, which were met with by strong backlash from the indians. Thereafter, the british had comparatively easier time making use of the already converted people as sepoys and further creating brown sahibs, although they still had to face considerable resistance from the rest. But now, the brown sahibs and sepoys find little resistance; they only get adulation and are even considered role models. Currently, the pace of conversion is very fast, with influence of TV, Internet, prevalent ‘education’ system which has been made compulsory now, and the emerging culture of seeking employment as white collared labourers for MNCs or in companies abroad. The trend is similar to the exponential curve or the trend of compound interest.

The characteristic of an exponential curve is that at advanced stages, the growth is unfathomably phenomenal. When that stage is reached, the transformation of society would be spectacular, yet almost imperceptible to the transforming people themselves in their adharmik stupor. In structural engineering, when an object is subjected to continuously increasing external pressure, at first there may not be any discernable effect, later it starts to deform in elastic fashion, i.e., it changes shape but would return to original shape when the external force is removed. Later it reaches its limit of elasticity called yield point and starts to yield, i.e., deforms in plastic fashion, which means, some amount of deformation is permanent even if external force is removed. By and by it reaches a point, caled Ultimate Strength, beyond which even if the applied external pressure decrease, the deformation will continue to occur, ultimately leading to a point where the material ruptures completely.

bharatiya samskriti has been resisiting applied external forces for millenniums, at some stage it began to yield little by little. At present it seems that the ultimate strength point, beyond which deformation occurs with reduced external pressure, has been crossed. A pessimistic view though it may be, if the trend seen is correct, it seems like things are moving towards rupture point.

However

Unlike material structures, that undergo permanent plastic deformation and yield to rupture inevitably, living beings have the potential to reverse the trend, not only to gain back the previous position of strength, but also to go further beyond the earlier strength. They have the ability to regenerate and rejuvenate themselves- physically, mentally and spiritually. However depraved a being may seem, s/he is always integral with brahma and have the potential to realize themselves as such. 

The question is, will indians utilise their potential, regain their dharmik consciousness and bring back rama rajya ?

The Future

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… is yours ours to fill.

 

 

 

 

Religion

Religion constricts philosophy, even spirituality, turning people into processionary caterpillars.

Religion in this context stands for exclusivistic ideologies tending to dogmatism, some of which may even claim to be secular, nevertheless demand blind faith and unquestioning obedience from followers. eg:- communism, sometimes even atheism and secularism!

Good thing India was religion free originally.
Bad thing, it may not be so anymore.